How MegaLeads Reached 1,000 Customers with Organic SEO in 2021 (Interview with Jim Alamia)

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Jim Alamia. He's the founder and creator of megaleads.com. He's worked with SMBs and enterprise companies for such as Automatch, Comodo Cybersecurity, Momentum Solar, and others. He has a BS in mathematics from Pace University in New York City. Jimmy, you ready to take to the top?

Jim Alamia

00:15>> I am, and it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Nathan Latka

00:16I love the domain name. Megaleads.com. Megaleads. Yeah. Yeah. So what do guys do? What are you doing?

Jim Alamia

00:24>> You know, I'll tell you my story quick. I'm 48 right now. I started marketing on the Internet actually in the late nineties, but I do date back to computers back into nineteen eighty something. As an only child, I tinkered with computers and, you know, I cracked my Apple IIe and I learned how to get into the kernel and I did a bunch of stuff to keep myself occupied with electronics and computers. And lo and behold,

00:49>> that stuff became very popular as I got older into college. And, you know, my first job, I remember I worked for Citibank as a management associate. And sort of every couple years, I would pop around and, you know, go to a different financial institution down on Wall Street here. I live in Northern New Jersey, so I commuted in. And a lot of my friends were very fascinated on trading and the money side of the business. I

01:14>> was more fascinated on what were people doing on these different screens and what was happening and how did the stock market work, and I had a lot of questions. It really dated back to my kinda ingenuity as a child and testing and wanting to understand how things worked and reverse engineering things, as a young age. So, you know, I knew I was really good at numbers. I went to, Pace University. I got the BS in mathematics.

01:41>> I went to Stevens Institute of Technology, pursued a master's degree in technology management. And, you know, I really enjoyed working with technology. And, you know, I got into, I would say affiliate marketing bulk email back in like '99. And I was like, wow, this is pretty cool stuff. I was like, I had the full time job and then I would race home to work on the mailers and get the mail out. Right? We were we were

02:07>> sending out a lot of unsolicited commercial email back in the day. It was the Internet pirate ship, and I was learning a lot. And I love the fact that there was no, like senior person telling me the way it used to be, you know? You strike

Nathan Latka

02:22as a guy who stayed pretty damn independent. So what year did you launch megaleads?

Founding MegaLeads in 2011

Jim Alamia

02:29>> I, you know, I launched megaleads in 2011.

Nathan Latka

02:32K.

Jim Alamia

02:33>> It was a culmination of all the SaaS products I built in the early two thousands. We really pioneered that search widget, being able to ascertain a list count, email distribution, affiliate marketing. But I had all these different automated systems that we built, you know, the ability to tap in to get a list count. I had this automatic email appender. I had this kind of people finder, system. And I brought them all together under megaleads. I remember

03:01>> I was consulting, for a pretty large cybersecurity company at the time in Jersey City. And I was like, I gotta reinvent my my systems. Right? And so I was looking was driving back on Route 3 in Jersey City, and I remember looking up at the Mega Million sign, right, right through the Holland Tunnel. It said Mega Millions. And then I looked and there was one of those big blue mega buses. And I was like, wow. What

03:28>> a cool name. I was like, let me see if megaleads is available.

Nathan Latka

03:32And the rent the rent? Somebody had it.

Domain Purchase and Launch

Jim Alamia

03:34>> I paid a thousand bucks for it and I built it and, you know, nine months later, went live.

First Year Revenue

Nathan Latka

03:40How much revenue in first year? Do you remember? 2011?

Jim Alamia

03:43>> Oh, you know, I I my goal was to have a 100 customers and I got a 100 customers pretty quick. And then it was, you know, ever changing. Right? I'd have new customers come in, customers

Nathan Latka

03:56Do you remember though that first year, how much revenue?

Jim Alamia

03:59>> It it it it was many hundreds, I would say the first year. Couple 100 You know?

Nathan Latka

04:07Jimmy, couple 100,000 in first year.

Jim Alamia

04:09>> Yeah, probably a little bit more than that back when it was a decade or

Nathan Latka

04:12so You would remember if you broke a million bucks in your first year. Did you break a million revenue that year one?

Jim Alamia

04:17>> I didn't break a million my first year. So you're

Nathan Latka

04:19the everyone remembers that moment. Okay. So a couple 100,000? No.

Jim Alamia

04:23>> Do remember. I do remember the moment I go to the CPA and I was like, where am I? He's like, you're at a million 20,000. And I was like, I had an amazing feeling. I'm like, holy cow. I started this business with $800, you know, and it was really the blood, sweat, and tears. And I just wanted it so damn bad,

Pricing Plans and ARPU

Nathan Latka

04:38Jimmy you fast forward to today because we've a lot to get in here in the next ten minutes. Right? What are customers paying you on average for this lead service?

Jim Alamia

04:46>> So I have some services that are out of the box on megaleads. I've got

Nathan Latka

04:49the $39.

04:50Only SaaS.

Jim Alamia

04:51>> SaaS, I've got the $39. We get a thousand credits which afford you a thousand downloads. These are c suite executives, accurate data, accurate email, accurate phone numbers. You get a thousand credits a month for the 39 on the silver plan. I got the gold plan, which is $159 a month. You get 5,000 credits.

Nathan Latka

05:10Is that what most people are paying? It's like about 150 a month, something like that?

Jim Alamia

05:13>> Yeah. Yeah. I I would say everybody falls in around $150, $170 somewhere.

Nathan Latka

05:18Yep. And who are the customers you're serving? Who are the buyers of this usually?

Jim Alamia

05:22>> I would say a lot of them are gonna be SMB customers, looking to light stuff up. They're doing cold email. They're doing outreach. They've got their own dialer on hand. They got a couple people on the phone. They're doing appointment setting. I have, you know, small shops. I've got, you know, medium shops. I have a lot of people in specialty finance. I have a lot of,

05:44>> you know, sales professionals, you know, marketing directors, all different, I would say, you know, around the SMB type

Customer Count

Nathan Latka

05:55of How many total customers are you serving today? Again, on the software side of things.

Jim Alamia

06:00>> There are more than a thousand customers on my systems.

Nathan Latka

06:04What do you need to do to get up to, you know, 10,000 customers? Where is growth coming from?

Jim Alamia

06:08>> You know, push out more distribution, more marketing, you know, tick by tick, more backlinks, better content, like growing it.

06:20>> A little more strategic as as time goes on. I've got a whole new megaleads, website coming out. I call the mega I call it megaleads rewrite. Mhmm. Because just the

Team Structure and Contractors

Nathan Latka

06:31last couple ten months I don't mean to cut cutting you off, but I just wanna get a lot in here. Are are you building this yourself, or you or you have a team?

Jim Alamia

06:39>> I project manage it. So I act as almost the, thought leader PMBA behind the things, and then I also get involved with the testing pretty heavy. And then I've got a development crew that will, you know, put together my vision and, I stick with them throughout the whole development life cycle and process.

Nathan Latka

06:56How many people are that team?

Jim Alamia

06:58>> Eight people are on the technical side of the company. Right.

Nathan Latka

07:01This is great. So you basically managed to avoid any fixed headcount expenses. You're the only one really that's getting a fixed salary from this bad boy and then you pay contractors and you have for the past ten years to really build up the technology, clean the leads, things like that.

Jim Alamia

07:14>> I actually manage I've actually built a lot of the programs myself that deal with the data hygiene programmatically.

Nathan Latka

07:20Okay. But you're a lot of Point being though, you're the only full time employee at the company that you have contractors for the rest.

Jim Alamia

07:25>> That's right. I would say that. Yeah. And I have, some better than salespeople. I've got a couple like right hand man, women type of thing helping me. But, yeah, I mean, it's a business with low fixed costs with, high profit potential. You know? It's a data business.

Nathan Latka

07:40And, you know, that's part of the model.

Jim Alamia

07:43>> We've been working COVID before COVID ever ever ever gonna happen. Know? This has been going

Funding and Capital

Nathan Latka

07:47on for a decade. Job to raise capital.

Jim Alamia

07:49>> Raise capital. It's all my own money and then I do have a a silent investor.

Nathan Latka

07:54Okay. Got it. And are we talking like millions or like hundreds of thousands sort of raise?

Jim Alamia

07:59>> Hundreds of thousands. Okay.

Nathan Latka

08:00Does did it make you nervous? I mean, I imagine you put a lot of your early before you had revenue. Did it make you nervous putting a bunch of your savings in?

Jim Alamia

08:06>> No. Because I knew when you know, I did things in measurable, manageable pieces over time. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I know how to put irons in the fire. I know when the door opens up. I know when to take a shot. You know? I mitigate my risk. Especially now being 48 years old, I'm a little more cautious than I was doing this stuff, you know, in my thirties. Mhmm. You know? And, it's measured risk. It's

08:31>> it's it's measurable, manageable pieces.

Nathan Latka

08:34And what is And I'm

Jim Alamia

08:34>> not gonna go crazy. I'm gonna do it in time. I'm gonna do it over time. I'm gonna I'm gonna beat them organically. You know?

Nathan Latka

08:40What what is first off, who who do you wanna beat? Is there an enemy you're trying to build or big better?

Jim Alamia

08:44>> I don't have enemies. You know? I mean, you know, I'll go back to the godfather. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, everybody's a friend.

Nathan Latka

08:51So when you say you wanna beat them organically, who are you referring to?

Jim Alamia

08:54>> You know, I have competitors out there in my, you know, B2B sales lead SaaS space that are out there that

Nathan Latka

09:01Name a couple of those. I'm not familiar.

Jim Alamia

09:02>> You know, I'm not that guy. You know, I don't really like to talk about other

Nathan Latka

09:06companies Who's in your space? You don't have to talk negatively about them. I'm just curious who else is in your space.

Organic SEO and Growth Strategy

Jim Alamia

09:11>> You know, there's gonna be companies like UpLead. There's gonna be companies like Salesfully. You've got your, you know, traditional InfoUSA, you know, all your kind of enterprise types of solutions that are out there. Mhmm. MegaLeads places somewhere like in the middle of page one organically for a lot of the money keywords.

Nathan Latka

09:30What is the what is the most money? Are some of money keywords?

Jim Alamia

09:36>> I rotate a a rod around like business leads, sales leads type of thing, email list, email addresses. I try to use action words in there like buy, purchase type of thing. And I'm very good at strategically putting together that array of keyword iterations and you know, being able to kind of, you know, build backlinks and content. And that stretches back to my early years of internet, you know, I would always focus on various keyword iterations and

10:05>> actually build different websites to cover, you know, those different search terms and then megaleads, you know, brought everything together. But there are many, you know, there are many ways that people refer to data and I try to encapsulate that in my thought process and my SEO practices.

Nathan Latka

10:23Yep. Well, and it sounds like you've got a nice following. Right? So you said you have about a thousand customers and you said they're all paying, you know, on average, all this, your middle plan here, a $150 a month. Correct?

Jim Alamia

10:31>> Yeah. Yeah. And I invite more to come and we're all about educating the clients, quality data.

Revenue Discussion

Nathan Latka

10:36So so, Jimmy, can I can I can I multiply a thousand customers times one fifty a month and say you're doing about a $150,000 a month in revenue?

Jim Alamia

10:44>> Yeah. We're doing pretty good. You know? We're doing pretty good. You know, megaleads is a

Nathan Latka

10:48strong company and, you know, we could Is accurate? A thousand customers, one fifty a month, you did over a 100,000?

Jim Alamia

10:54>> Probably a 100 about that. You know, I don't look at the numbers every day, but, you know, I know that we're on track for for our goals and our growth.

Growth Goals

Nathan Latka

11:00What is your goal for the end of this year?

Jim Alamia

11:03>> I'd like to, you know, acquire, you know, a 100 new customers a month on the system.

Nathan Latka

11:10Okay. And how many do you what what improvement would that be over last month? How many did you have last

Jim Alamia

11:15>> We came damn close to the 100. We really did.

Churn and Customer Retention

Nathan Latka

11:18Now, with your space, one of the tricky things is people sign up, they download a bunch of leads and they leave. Churn is a massive issue. How do you get people to stay sticky?

Jim Alamia

11:27>> Well, you know you know, there are certain spaces that are out there that continuously buy data. They have call centers. They they need to keep data in the system. An average call center rep on a predictive dialer is probably gonna go through about a thousand plus names in a day. So, you know, a lot of our customers are are pretty big call centers that, you know, you know, buy a lot of data and, you know, we

11:52>> have contracts with them. They give us the disconnects. So as an entrepreneur, I'm very good at like, cross pollinating and understanding, you know, other things I'm doing with technology and try to connect them in that type of,

Nathan Latka

12:04you know, hey, give me the disconnects and I'll give you

Jim Alamia

12:06>> this type of thing and help me keep the data. And it's all about the cleanliness of the data. You're gonna have, you know, more people coming back if you've got a quality product just like anything else.

Capital Allocation and Profit

Nathan Latka

12:16And to me, how do you personally manage your your caps or capital allocation? If you're a $150 a month and you're a one man show with eight contractors, I mean, imagine you're you're very profitable. How do you decide what to reinvest versus what to pay yourself out as dividends?

Jim Alamia

12:27>> You know, I've been doing this for twenty years, so it's like I could walk into a trade show with technology and I could see how things are metamorphosizing. I could see how the markets are changing. I could see how businesses come about, and I could see who's gonna last and who's gonna fail. And I've got a very good perspective and should I say projection on what the future will hold. And with that said, what do you

12:51>> strategize?

Nathan Latka

12:53Mhmm. What do you do with profit? What I'm asking is as a capital allocator, a lot us build companies to to have more freedom in life, do what we want. And it's always a question of do we reinvest profits every month in the business or do we take them out as dividends and go buy real estate or something else? How do you think about profits?

Jim Alamia

13:06>> I think of profits. I think of long term. I don't think of anything like quick hit.

Nathan Latka

13:12So you reinvest everything?

Jim Alamia

13:13>> Think of investing. I think of diversification. I think of I've got a certain amount in the market. I've got a certain amount of properties. I've got a certain amount of cash. I have a certain amount of insurance types of vehicles. Mhmm. I have a sure a certain amount of things that I take a shot on. I like baseball cards. I like coins. I like fishing.

Nathan Latka

13:35Got it. Like to

Jim Alamia

13:36>> know things that I know about. Right?

Would He Sell the Business?

Nathan Latka

13:38We're running we're I don't mean to keep cutting you off. I promise. But but we like to keep this really short and sweet. We're we're about out of time here. If someone came and offered you $1,800,000 all cash up front to sell the business today, would you sell?

Jim Alamia

13:49>> I have to see. I have to see. It's gonna definitely go to the right person. Right? So I'm not just all about look, years ago, was all about the money. Right? Everything I do, it was all about that. And I'm not saying that it's not. I'm just saying that when I got into my forties, I became more altruistic and I understood more about what marketing is. It's the bigger purpose. It's it's the things that I do

14:13>> to change people's lives and how they're gonna change others' lives.

Nathan Latka

14:16Jimmy, if people I wanna learn about

Jim Alamia

14:17>> don't count everything the way I used to. I put out more than I did before and

Nathan Latka

14:22more If comes people wanna follow-up with you and follow your story online, where's the best place for them to find you?

Where to Find Jim Online

Jim Alamia

14:27>> They could go to megaleads.com and check out my site. I do have a pretty popular YouTube channel, which is called jimmyleads.com. We're also very heavy in the residential solar space. You can check out my agency at inventionsolar.com. And or you could send me an email to [email protected].

Nathan Latka

14:48Guys.

Jim Alamia

14:49>> Touch. I'll spend time with anybody that has questions, and I'm here to help.

Nathan Latka

14:53Guys, megaleads.com. We're a thousand customers paying a $150 a month. He launched us back in 2011, did a couple $100,000 in revenue. Now over 1.5 or $1,800,000 in terms of ARR, a $150 a month. Nice growth. He's done this basically himself with a team of contractors and a right hand man or woman here or there. But again, playing in a very fragmented hyper competitive space doing well. Jimmy, thanks for taking us to the top.

Jim Alamia

15:13>> You got it. Anytime. I look forward to it. I'm gonna watch your show when it comes out. Thank you again.

Nathan Latka

15:19One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM

15:43central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

16:05fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You wanna get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for

16:26that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. If you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We gotta push

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