r/LeadGeneration

Curious to know, if it's possible to generate leads with 0 budget

this is a universal problem, which I feel, many founders face. It's not something I am proud of, but I wanna change my situation

Word of mouth has worked for me in the past, but its not enough.

I do LinkedIn ghostwriting for founders (have great case studies and results), so lot of my work is already online, and I can leverage that.

I have tried running email campagins, but it;s not too much success (emails landing in spam even for reputed accounts)

I want to build something that pays long term.

Any suggestions? What kind of funnel I can build for outreach? or whatever?

I have started linkedin lead generation for Saas company and I am following every expert and their Tips
-I post 3 time a week
-I comment
-I connect

I have sales navigator and target my potential leads.
But
-I have less than 50 impression on my posts
-Most of them dont accept or reply
-I am stuck its 3 months and I havent got any single lead.

Help

yoo how are you doing??

in short, I have a client that is doing Web Development and has his portfolio with live websites that he buildt

but sometimes when I share it in a chat or smth, it prohibits me from sending it

now my question is, do you guys use reddit for lead gen and booking meetings, because I'm currently mainly using LinkedIn?

thanks a lot!

I’m 19 building a SaaS right now. We haven’t launched publicly yet, but we’re already at around $500 MRR from beta/design partners. We’ve posted a bit on Reddit and Twitter, generated around 20k views, and ended up getting more beta user requests than we could actually take on, so I decided to start marketing a waitlist.

The product is basically an SEO agent for SaaS founders. It does a lot of the technical SEO/content work in the background instead of just spitting out generic AI blogs. The main wedge is that we’re building automated GitHub integration, so the agent can go from SERP analysis → content opportunity → draft → founder review → GitHub PR/publishing flow. The best part is that the whole thing is email-native. Founders can review drafts, answer questions, approve changes, and stay in the loop without having to constantly log into another dashboard.

We’re launching publicly in about 3 weeks and I want to run a cold email campaign before then to grow the waitlist and hopefully bring in more early customers.

I’m looking for someone who’s good at cold email but maybe still early as an agency/freelancer and wants a real SaaS case study. I’d be willing to pay per conversion, and I’d work heavily with you on the campaign, messaging, targeting, feedback, everything.

Also, I plan on running the cold email strategy by offering a free, fairly sophisticated SEO audit that when clicked on will have a waitlist conversion CTA there. I think the waitlist conversion rate should be a lot higher than just blasting generic cold emails (open to more ideas with waitlist strategy).

Not trying to be cheap. I’m bootstrapping, so I have to be smart with cash, but I also know how hard it is to get your first few real clients when you’re starting out. I think this could be a solid win-win if you’re hungry and actually good at outbound.

If this sounds interesting, comment or DM me with what you’ve done and how you’d approach it.

We are looking for a reliable Lead Generator for our US website agency.
What you’ll do:

\-Find small/local US businesses (plumbers, HVAC, roofing, restaurants, gyms, contractors, electricians, etc.) that have no website or a very outdated one.
\-Deliver clean Google Sheets with: Business Name, Phone, City/State, Niche, Google Rating, Website Status (Confirmed No Website), and Notes.
Compensation:
$150 per batch of 50 qualified leads (paid after review and acceptance)

This is a long-term opportunity with regular batches once quality is consistent.

DM with:
• “Lead Gen”
• Your experience with lead generation
• Sample of previous work (if any)
• Timezone

Serious applicants only. No upfront payment, paid per accepted batch.

Are there any founders here who know their website is costing them customers but keep putting it off because of the cost?

I run a lead gen agency, and we’ve just added an experienced web developer to the team. We’re looking for five businesses to build websites for at around 20% of our usual pricing while we expand this side of the agency.

No templates or AI-generated sites, just custom websites designed to convert visitors into leads.

If that sounds useful, drop a comment or DM me what your business does.

Hi I’m a contractor and my ICP is property management, property manager, investor, and realtor in my location. I’m looking to build a campaign for cold email and sms.

I know I can scrap data from google map, LinkedIn for property management. Is there good way to scrap all realtors in my area? Is there a realtor association database? Also what’s a good way to find landlord or real estate investors in my area? One think I can think of is finding property owner whose mailing address isn’t the same as property address.

I’m new at this please let me know. Also if you offer such service message me and let me know how much it would cost to get verified list.

I'm curious if anyone has actually tested the opposite end of the cold email spectrum. Instead of sending hundreds or thousands of emails with light personalization (first name, company, maybe a custom first line), has anyone tried sending a much smaller number of highly personalized emails where each one takes 20 to 30 minutes to research and write? I'm talking about emails that are obviously not templated and clearly show you've spent time understanding the prospect and why your offer is a great fit for them.

If you've tested both approaches, how did the results compare in terms of reply rates, positive responses, meetings booked, and ultimately closed deals? Was the extra effort worth it, or did it perform about the same as a more traditional cold email approach?

Title: GTM lesson from working with a YC startup: ICP isn’t found, it’s tested

I was working closely with a YC-backed company, and one thing that stood out in their GTM approach was how unstructured it actually was in the beginning.

There was no rigid framework, no overthinking about personas or perfect ICP decks.

Instead, they focused on speed + experimentation.

For ~6 months, they kept:

• Testing different markets
• Positioning the same product in slightly different ways
• Running continuous A/B tests on messaging, outreach, and use cases

The goal wasn’t to “define the ICP” upfront.. it was to discover it through data.

Some segments looked promising but didn’t convert.
Some random niches unexpectedly showed strong pull.

Over time, patterns started emerging:

• Who actually converts
• Who sees immediate value
• Who sticks around

That’s when they doubled down.

Big takeaway for me:
Your ICP is not a hypothesis to perfect in a doc.. it’s something you earn through iteration.

Curious how others here approach ICP discovery.. structured frameworks vs brute-force testing?

One thing surprised me. Almost nobody is asking how to write better emails anymore.

Instead people keep asking:

-who should I contact?
-when should I reach out?
-what makes a company worth contacting?
-how do I find relevant signals?

It feels like the bottleneck is slowly moving from copywriting to decision- making.

Am I the only one noticing this ?

I still can't understand if lead generation is a decent career path that's worth pursuing or it's just a hyped get rich quick scheme by internet gurus? Thx.

Trying to build a crm-style saas. One of the things which is a part of a bigger system - potential leads (human contacts inside companies). I do know that I can get them via lusha/appolo/linkedin navigaator. But it is forbidden by their agreement to re-sell those contacts.

Those contacts are not the core of the product but a nice touch.

And following all the EU gdpr rules - my question is : where to buy such info and not get burnt for misuse and further reselling ?

I would imagine that there are a lot of viable mobiles and emails to be had?

From last 3 months I've been generating 4-6 clients from the Ads library because the business that are running the ads they have the budget and are looking for growth, plus i reach out to those who are specifically in my niche. For eg I'm sending around 300-400 cold emails and like 5-10% is the reply rate of those.

Has anyone of you also doing the same thing to generate leads for your businesses? Would like to know if any suggestion u have or if u are not doing then why not?

Guys I have a list of linkedin urls, I want to check whether they are open profiles or not.

Any way to do it at scale?

Hey everyone,

I run a small AI agency focused on building internal business tools, workflow automations, and AI-powered systems for companies.

Right now, all of my clients come from Upwork, and I’m averaging around $5k–10k/month. It’s working well, but I don’t want to rely on a single platform long-term.
I’m starting to post on LinkedIn (currently getting almost no impressions, but I know it takes time). My goal there is mainly to build credibility and trust.

I don’t have the budget for paid ads yet, so I’m looking at other acquisition channels.

For those who run agencies or consulting businesses:

-Is cold email still working in 2026?

-What response rates should I realistically expect?

-How many emails/day were you sending when you started seeing results?

-Did you offer something free (audit, consultation, teardown, etc.) to get replies?

-What acquisition channel gave you the best ROI besides Upwork?

I’d love to hear what actually worked for you and what you’d avoid if you were starting again.

Thanks!

Hello everyone, I am brand new to Ai Agency’s. I am looking for a partner preferably 18+ and in the USA who can put about 3 hours a day into the business. I am very friendly and energetic. Pretty good at sales as well and cold calling. If you’re interested definitely reach out!

Generating leads is tiresome. I'm doing it for a startup that doesn't have the budget for paid tools right now. I'm wondering if there's any illegal or efficient way to generate or scrape leads from the internet.

Hi all,
Anyone here with experience in helping dentists with leads?

Considering moving my lead agency into the space and am curious if there's a case in terms of them having a lot of old, inactive leads they aren't activating.

Seeing possibilities in customers who booked and never showed up, old quotes never actioned etc.

Could be a good pocket to help them reingage. Especially for veneers and cosmetic work that's not pain-driven and largely inbound.

Anyone with experience here?

Hi!

I’ve been sending cold emails for a while now, and honestly, I’ve been getting a good response rate.

But I’ve always had the same question.

When should I reach out to a company’s CEO, and when should I reach out to a marketing employee (since I offer marketing services)?

I know it’s always best to contact the decision-maker, but in companies with many employees, the CEO might never respond.

So the question is, how many employees should a company have before I should look for another contact if the CEO doesn’t respond? More than 50? Fewer?