Any ideas on this Local Lead Gen Sites Flipping

Well done James.

Especially for ignoring the "expert" naysayers. "Expert" sales people who can't sell a website for more than $500.

Have you heard of silo structures? You should be able to rank a local site quickly and easily just with decent content and internal linking.

Rental and selling leads are both fraught. With an outright sale, you get a lump sum, no arguments over individual leads, and the possibility of upselling maintenance and SEO and other services. If you just rent or sell leads, you'd have to do the maintenance and SEO anyway.

I saw the early OMG and I wouldn't touch their methods. I don't think I've seen the WSO mention by OP.

From what I can tell those avg mo search volumes should only be used as a general guide. If you run an actual ppc campaign you get to see actual impressions --- because i added a ppc section to my lead gen site i was able to go thru this.

I am still running that campaign and doing split testing with the copy.

I understand why people do this. its seems logical and it some ways it makes sense. But the time tested reality is, it is probably the least effective method to finding terms that pay, let alone professions to target that would be willing to pay.

For the most part anymore I do not use "tools" in my keyword research. as I will explain below there simply is no reason to. Google itself is the only tool you really need. Once you understand what Google does, and how it does it I promise you will never look at another tool again.

I go into Google and search a Core term say "chiropractor" and I look at 2 things and 2 things only on the page. The results number in the top left of the search results and then all the way to the bottom I look at "Searches Related"

So in Google USA there are 27,200,000 matches and in Google AU there is 22,900,000 matches. This is the number of pages that make reference to this term. 22 million is for all practical purposes a term that is high Competition. ( I say practical, because for myself.. this is a number I like to play in after developing the steps below. - A term such as "xbox" with 294,000,000 results is what I consider "high" volume" LOL )

So after looking at that number as I said I look at related terms. In USA results there is nothing that says hey I might be of interest. however in AU results there is the term "chiropractor vs physiotherapist" and if I click on that I see the results drop down to 61,700 pages. This would go on my target list. - anything less than 1 million for sure goes on my list.

Again for each term you click to, you want to look at the "Searches related" section and keep a list terms to look at and as you go click on terms to see what type of page volume or competition there is. You might want to also keep track of which pages have ads on them. - I don't personally, but if you are going to target select terms this is one of those slight indicators there is more traffic for that term - but the flip side is it may not be a true indicator.

So back to the primary term "Chiropractor". My next search after that us usually "Chiropractor <insert city>" and then followed up with "Chiropractor <insert city and state>". For USA terms, <insert city and state> is a Google default in the auto fill. There is going to be more traffic there. Experience has shown me that <insert city> is usually not that far behind - BUT they are in un themselves 2 different terms. You would think that ranking for the longer term <insert city and state> would produce equal results for both terms.. that simply is not the case. One will rank higher than the other if you are trying to use a single piece of content to rank this.

AU is a bit different in the "state" portion that we use in the states. There is a tendency to have terms such as Northside and Southside or West Shore or North Shore etc. There is also the twist of using the major metro area in a term and then adding the more specific community such as "Chiropractor Brisbane new farm" An interesting thing I noticed is "Chiropractor Sydney" there are no top ads. - again using ad data can be convoluted.

So you keep going with this and you can quickly develop a pretty decent list of terms "Sports Chiropractor" or "Chiropractor open on Sunday" all kinds of stuff.

So why does this work? The part that has to be understood is what Google is giving you... those "related terms" on the bottom ( and the auto fill terms for that matter ) they aren't just blind suggestions, they are the output of "data" that suggested based on the term you type, these ARE the terms used MOST to narrow down a search. - In the case of auto fill, they are immediately suggesting "Chiropractor <insert city state>" so not only are they offering terms that are used most, but they are geo targeting the plausible suggestions to get you ( the searcher ) better results.

On the SEO provider side of this, if you want to get real "Technical" and collect the best possible set of terms I might suggest using a GEO specific proxy server to create your list. How terms play out in West Virginia.. may differ from those that are geo specific in Sydney Australia ( and I can tell you YES there is a difference )

Hope that Helps!