Rank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Side Hustle Show — "Rank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites"

Host: Nick Loper
Guest: Luke Vanderveer
Date: April 16, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of The Side Hustle Show explores the “rank and rent” business model for generating recurring, semi-passive income by creating and ranking local service websites, which are then rented out to contractors as lead-generation tools. Luke Vanderveer, a seasoned entrepreneur in this space, reveals how he built a portfolio of digital real estate—ultimately reaching 200+ sites and earning substantial monthly revenue. He breaks down every phase: niche selection, SEO, finding contractor tenants, pricing, automation, and how the landscape has evolved, including the impact of AI and new revenue models.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

---

1. Understanding the "Rank and Rent" Model

[01:27–02:48]

• Concept: Build a generic-sounding website in a local service niche (“window washing Livermore”), rank on Google, and rent the leads to a local contractor for a flat monthly fee.
• Comparison: Similar to “drop servicing,” but more scalable — you don’t need to manage service delivery, only the digital asset.

2. Niche & Location Selection

[02:48–06:14], [09:52–12:15]

• Avoid highly-competitive niches: Steer clear of lawyers, plumbers, HVAC, real estate.

  “…think outside the box and try to find something that’s going to be a little bit easier for you to rank in. Which is why I really like the blue-collar stuff.” — Luke Vanderveer, [02:53]

• City size sweet spot: Target cities with population between 50k–400k; avoids too little search volume or too much competition.
• Seasonal businesses: Prefer evergreen services to avoid “off months.”

  “I’d rather have something that’s just all the time. So I can take their credit card, throw it on autopay and they just pay it like a bill.” — Luke, [06:14]

• Specific Tools & Research: Use resources like Wikipedia for city populations, homeadvisor.com and thumbtack.com to brainstorm service niches.

3. Local SEO and Site-Building Process

[12:19–17:06], [19:07–25:10]

• Content Strategy:
  • Benchmark top ranking competitors; cover every service/topic they mention—then double it (become the “Wikipedia” of the local niche).

  “I’m just going to expand on every single one of those on my site so that I am the hub.” — Luke, [13:09]

• SEO for Local Ranking:
  • Directory citations (Yelp, Yellow Pages, Facebook, etc.)
  • Use unique descriptions for each directory for optimal indexing (don’t paste the same blurb everywhere).

  “It’s great to have all these citation sources… but Google’s duplicate content filter kicks in and half… aren’t going to index.” — Luke, [23:17]

  • Google My Business is essential for ranking in the local map pack (requires a verifiable address).
• Site Structure & Tech:
  • Homepage acts as a service overview.
  • Separate detailed pages for each specific offering.
  • Tools: Weebly (for beginners), WordPress (for scale), CallRail for call forwarding and analytics.

4. Finding and Onboarding Contractor 'Tenants'

[27:32–39:47]

• Process:
  • When first leads start coming in, Luke acts as the “secretary” to capture inquiries, then uses these “live” leads as bait to recruit a local contractor.
• Evaluating Contractors:
  • Check Google/Yelp for reviews; threshold is 4.5 stars minimum.
  • Use Thumbtack/HomeAdvisor as a customer to generate prospects.

  “You want those businesses that actually care about their customers and are going to do a good job, because, you know, if they don’t, it’s going to get me some bad reviews on my website…” — Luke, [29:04]

• Incentives:
  • Free trial of leads, then flip to paid rent.
  • Encourage new reviews on Google My Business for social proof (sometimes through incentives or discounts).

5. Pricing the Rental

[33:13–35:51]

• Method:
  • Reference average job cost in the area (from HomeAdvisor).
  • Multiply average job by estimated call volume and expected close rate to calculate “value delivered.”
  • Monthly rents average around $1,000 per site, with some as high as $3,000 in lucrative niches.

  “If I’m charging them 500 bucks, I’m bringing them at least 5 grand in business, usually way more. So that way it’s a no brainer to keep me around.” — Luke, [39:08]

6. Operations and Portfolio Management

[41:05–44:37]

• Maintenance:
  • Extremely hands-off once rankings stabilize; few hours/week for updates or plugin maintenance.
  • Rare issues include needing more backlinks or fixing Google My Business issues (e.g., lost map listings).
• Turnover:
  • Low churn; “since the beginning…I’ve lost one contractor” (due to acquisition).
  • Most rentals are month-to-month.

7. Scaling, Automation, and Evolving the Model

(Time-Travel Segment) [50:25–66:00]

• 2026 Portfolio Update:
  • 230 sites, 80% rented (~185k/month revenue, ±30k).
• Revenue Models:
  • Flat-fee AND “rev share” (revenue share) with clients (10–15%) for higher-ticket jobs.

  “I talked to them about doing Rev Share… I have all incentive to push this as much as possible and make you a lot more money.” — Luke, [51:22]

• Use of AI:
  • AI accelerates content creation, site building, even niche research.
  • Schema and structured data for Q&A sections—helps sites feature in AI search results and Google AI Overviews.
  • In-house tools to automate niche selection and full site builds (“you punch in the niche… it spits out the completed site”).
• Expanding Offline:
  • Used SEO skills to buy/scale offline businesses (e.g., ice cream catering, paving) and apply lead gen skills directly.

  “I’m just trying to combine multiple things I like and be a little bit more choosy.” — Luke, [54:48]

• Team:
  • Delegation to VAs for updating, content refreshes, adopting new AI-driven strategies.

  “To compensate for the slightly increased maintenance level, I have moved one of the VAs to full time going in and kind of fine tuning things for our new AI future.” — Luke, [61:20]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On minding competition:

  “If I put up a website, I’m going to be number one in somewhere between a few weeks to a few months. Even if they’ve been sitting at the top for the last 20 years, it doesn’t matter. It’ll blow right by them.” — Luke, [05:46]

• On negotiating with tenants:

  “I want my contractor ... to get a minimum 10x return. So if I’m charging them $500, I’m bringing at least 5 grand in business…” — Luke, [39:08]

• On why contractors rent instead of copying:

  “It’s like, why not just run Google Ads yourself? … But if it’s coming organic, it’s kind of a different mindset for the customer…they must be the best.” — Luke, [35:51]

• On AI’s impact:

  “Blue collar work appears to be the thing that will be the last to be disrupted [by AI]. White collar stuff…can be erased with AI. But if you can create some kind of income on the side to protect yourself, there’s one way to prepare…” — Luke, [64:19]

• On scaling:

  “What motivates you to keep building, keep growing? … 30% of the sites are rented out, 70% are in the ranking process somewhere.” — Luke, [44:19]

• On the value of action:

  “If you think it can work and you put in the time, you can get results.…You just got to go for it. Take the leap.” — Luke, [46:22]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

01:27 – Explanation of rank-and-rent and why it’s unique
02:48–06:14 – Niche & geo selection process
12:19–14:59 – Website structure and content planning
19:07–25:10 – Local SEO (citations, Google My Business, backlinks)
27:32–33:32 – Onboarding tenants, qualifying contractors
33:13–35:51 – Pricing, average job value, and rent strategy
41:05–44:37 – Maintenance, churn, backup plans
50:25–57:01 – 2026 update: scaling to 230 sites, AI, revenue share
58:27–62:40 – Adapting to AI and modern search/SEO challenges
62:09–64:19 – Custom AI tools for site/niche research and building
64:19–65:13 – Navigating AI disruption and focusing on blue-collar service niches

---

Final Takeaways

• Rank and rent is about building simple, focused local service websites, using SEO to outrank non-tech-savvy competitors, and then monetizing through recurring rentals or rev-share with local contractors.
• Site selection is all about balancing competition (not too high), population (not too small), and service type (not too seasonal or regulated).
• Automation and AI are making both research and site creation faster and are evolving the monetization model (flat fees + rev share).
• The biggest key to success: Take action. Iterate. Find new ways to provide value.

  “You really just got to take whatever that business is and go for it.…If you think it can work and you put in the time, you can get results.” — [46:22]

Resource Bonus:
Listeners can get a starter list of 50 potential rank-and-rent niches via the episode show notes.

---

For more resources, site examples, and the full episode transcript, visit: Side Hustle Nation — Episode Page

Transcript

[Nick Loper]

If you're selling online or in person, you're familiar with this challenge. You need people to find your products, which usually means paying for ads or hoping they stop by. Whatnot flips that this is the live shopping platform that's exploding right now. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to real people in real time.

[Jason]

I've seen whatnot climb to the top

[Nick Loper]

of the App Store. I've seen the seller earnings everything from

[Jason]

small part time projects to multi million dollar businesses.

[Nick Loper]

Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. They see what you've got, they can ask you questions and then they buy. And what's fascinating is they keep coming back for more Whatnot. Buyers are spending more than an hour a day in the app, and all that is great news for sellers. In fact, sellers on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. From collectibles to cookies, from resale treasures to vintage fashion. People just like you are building real audiences and real businesses on Whatnot. And for a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T N O T whatnot.com sell whatnot.com sell here's an oldie but a

[Jason]

goodie from the archives from the side Hustle Show Greatest Hits collection.

[Nick Loper]

Plus stick around at the end for the time travel segment where we catch

[Jason]

up in real time with what Luke

[Nick Loper]

is up to today.

What's up?

What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show because building assets is what frees your future. Super unique side Hustle to share today. Luke Vanderveer calls it his rank and rent business. How it works is you pick a local service niche without a ton of competition, build a generic sounding website targeting that keyword like window washing, Livermore, for example. And when you get it ranking well in Google, the site starts to generate a healthy volume of leads. You find a qualified service provider to partner with to fulfill the work. Then that service provider pays you a flat monthly rent for the leads that your website is generating. This is kind of similar to the drop servicing model that Anthony and Janilka Hartzog covered a couple months ago, but is potentially more scalable because you really don't have to worry about the hiring and labor side of the business. And then you can rinse and repeat in different geographic areas or even across different niches, a lot faster. For Luke, it took six months to leave the day job and 12 months to reach six figures. But stick around in this one to learn the niche selection or keyword research

process, how to price the service, and

how to find qualified quote tenants for your digital rental properties. Notes and links for this one [e-mail] rank and rent ready? Oh, let's do it.

[Luke Vanderveer]

There's actually a lot of research that goes into it and it's trying to identify a profitable niche. And really I try to stay anywhere in the US you can do this anywhere in the world. I just, I'm here, so I try to focus here. But a lot of different things go into it. First one is the niche itself. Things like lawyers, plumbers, H Vac, real estate are generally really high competition. So you want to think outside the box and try to find something that's going to be a little bit easier for you to rank in. Which is why I really like the blue collar stuff. And there's other factors in there too, like competition, variance. So one city, say Dallas, Texas, that might be super competitive for a certain niche. But then if you move to somewhere in New Jersey, maybe that's lower there. And then also seasonality. Pool builders, for example, I can do pool building in Florida all year round, but if I go to, say, New York, we can only do it half the year, so that kind of factors in too. And then some niches aren't even available in certain places, like Hawaii, obviously can't do snow removal there. So a lot of different things to think about. So that's definitely one piece. Another one is also phone driven. So it's a lot easier for us to generate leads for a business that you have to call them up to come to you. Which is why I like contractors. It's very difficult to convince somebody to leave their house and enter a physical location. So that's another one. Also, licensing, you know, if the niche requires a license, you have to find a business who will, you know, take the leads in exchange for allowing you to use their license number on your website. So I try to avoid that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so you're saying I don't want a business where a license is required?

[Luke Vanderveer]

No, generally not unless, you know, somebody in that niche or the state doesn't require it. Just, you know, to protect you in case, you know, you ever get a complaint on your website or something.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Also, city population, you know, generally I stick between 50,000 and 400,000. If it's lower than 50, typically not enough Customer call volume to justify a good selling price for you to like rent that site out and make an income. And the higher you go, the more competitive it's usually going to be. So usually in that range you can find some what I call low hanging fruit. So those are, those, are some of them still going down the checklist? There's a lot of stuff.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, no, I love all this stuff. So trying to target blue collar services where the entrenched competition either doesn't have a website or they're digital marketing savvy may not be up to the skills that you have. And so you might be able. Your thinking is I could get a new site to the top of the search results relatively quickly in this niche versus of course, you know, lawyer, New York City or something like crazy competitive.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right, right.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. But Christmas, light installation, some mid sized suburb like, okay, I'm going to do a little bit better.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. I mean with the SEO skill set, chances are that you have more knowledge than 99% of the business owners who are doing whatever that contract type work is. So if I put up a website, I'm going to be number one in somewhere between a few weeks to a few months. Even if they've been sitting at the top for the last 20 years, it doesn't matter. It'll blow right by them. And then I can collect checks from this.

[Nick Loper]

Do you like the seasonality businesses or the seasonal businesses?

[Luke Vanderveer]

I try to avoid them. I've learned my lesson just doing them enough. Like I tried snow removal is great. Got tons of leads, made a lot of money for a few months, but you know, what do you do for the rest of the year? Then that person doesn't pay you for seven months. And then they're like, I don't know, should I do it again this year? So I'd rather have something that's just all the time. So I can take their credit card, throw it on autopay and they just pay it like a bill.

[Nick Loper]

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So blue collar service trying to go low seasonality because you're, you're billing them like a rental agreement, like, hey, every month we're going to send you, you know, it's going to sit at the top of Google plus or minus any algorithm changes you're going to get. You can expect to get these leads and when the phone stops ringing they're like, wait, why are we still paying this guy? So okay, that makes sense. And then mid sized cities, super small towns. Yeah, it's going to be easy to rank, but There might not be the call volume there to justify it and avoiding the super large metro populations. So look for that and we could probably dig up a list of cities with that size, cities that might meet that criteria. Cross reference that with a list of blue collar services and you're kind of off to the races to start playing some competitive analysis there. Anything else you're looking for in analyzing the existing search results? Results Once you're starting to kind of put a couple of these queries together.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Wikipedia's got a list of all the US states and cities with population sizes. So when I started I threw in a list, I sorted it top to bottom, like highest population down, and then I just stick within that 50 to 400k range. So that's in terms of the cities. And then for the niches, thumbtack.com or homeadvisor both have, you know, tons and tons of different niches to pick from because you can hire contractors from there. So I'll just go through occasionally and look up ones I've never heard of before and you'll see a lot of really cool ones. Or you'll just be, you know, sitting in traffic, somebody drives by with, you know, car wrap on the side of their vehicle that says some service you've never heard of.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Luke Vanderveer]

So I'll look it up and see, you know, how much is this worth? Are there potentially calls for this? And that's kind of like where I'm starting, but then specific to the search itself, when you're actually looking at Google, I'm going to pick whatever I think is the main keyword for that niche in that city. And there's a lot of different tools you can use to help you with this. Whether you want to use a Google AdWord Planner or there's a Chrome extension. Keywords everywhere. That's pretty cool. It's a paid tool now. Used to be free. There's a free one called Keyword Surfer and just get a general idea of what a good keyword is. So like roofing, for example, not a great niche to be in. Definitely not for the example. If I did like roofing New York City, I'm going to see 1300 searches or 1300 searches a month for that niche. So that's a lot of volume. So I know if I rank for that, it's going to be worth a lot of money. And then looking at the results in the maps and the organic, I want to see businesses that don't have a website in the maps. I want to see businesses with no reviews I want to see that the businesses in the maps are different from the ones in the organic search beneath it because that means there might be a break in the chain there. I could probably work my way in. And I also want to see massive companies like HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack, Yelp, all in the top few results organically because Google prefers local businesses. So if they have national ones there, that means the local businesses in the area aren't doing a very good job. And I can jump right in.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, that's interesting. So when you say the map results, this is like the Google my business, you know, map that shows up for a lot of local search results and says, here are the people nearby and you can click on them. And you're saying when you click on that listing and there's no website, that's a good sign for you.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, that's a great sign because if you have a website, Google would much prefer you.

[Nick Loper]

Sure.

[Luke Vanderveer]

So easy wins. Easy wins. Easy win.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, as far as the service you mentioned, roofing is not so good, but it's like in my mind that's like that could be $10,000, $20,000 roofing project. I imagine those leads are worth a decent amount. Is there a sweet spot in terms of the price of the service that would be good to go after?

[Luke Vanderveer]

I don't know that there's a sweet spot in terms of the price of the service. It's just after doing this enough in different niches, you learn the problems with each one. There's always some issue. It's just what for roofing, it's usually super competitive and it's really hard to get at the top and stay there. And then if you do, it's hard to find a contractor that does good work and needs the leads.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

So it's a lot of. It's a lot of extra variables that you have to think about. So I'd much prefer something that's a little easier to do. Like tree services, for example. That's a great one. Tons of tree providers. They generally aren't as tech savvy. They're probably not going to rank super well unless it's a really big city and you can usually find, you know, a decent provider.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, tree services, stump removal, stump grinding. Okay. Start to get the gears turning a little bit on the world of possibilities here. Is there a minimum search volume in terms of, you know, what these estimator tools will throw back at you?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. See, it's weird because Google gives you like estimates and numbers and stuff, but Some cities it won't show you anything. But just looking at it logically, there has to be somebody asking for those services in that area. So it's one of those things where you got to kind of take it with a grain of salt, depending on the volume and whatever. Like if I'm looking at a population size of 100,000 people and I type in plumber and it shows me no volume, obviously that can't be accurate. So I'm probably just going to go for it as long as the population size is there.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah, everyone here has perfect pipes. Yeah, they never need any help.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right.

[Jason]

Okay, so what comes next?

[Luke Vanderveer]

So after we get that, we found a nice niche that we think we can go for, I'm going to go out and look at all the top ranking competitors and see what content they have on their websites. And this is another thing, when it kind of plays into the niche too. When I'm choosing, I'm looking for websites that, you know, if the ones ranking at the top don't have a ton. Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to take everything they talk about and I'm going to write double whatever they have. So, you know, if the first guy's got five, six different topics he talks about, the next guy's got three or four, next guy's got a couple. I'm just going to add them all up and I'm going to expand on every single one of those on my site so that I am the hub. I want to be like the Wikipedia.

[Nick Loper]

Are you talking about like blog posts or just like services that they offer?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Services they offer and whatever they talk about. So like it's always easier with an example. But like if you, if you wanted to picture what you would be like, you want to be like the Wikipedia of whatever the topic is. So like if you type in Michael Jordan in Google, Wikipedia probably comes up at this first result even ahead of Michael Jordan's, you know, website, just because it has so much information.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, would it be worthwhile to look at like this carpet cleaning example that you sent over?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, yeah, you could look at that one.

[Nick Loper]

All right, so this is irvingtxcarpetcleaning.com, one of Luke's portfolio sites. So it's got the phone number emblazoned at the top, why you should trust Irving Carpet Cleaners. And it's mostly local business brochure style site, just a couple different tabs. But a lot of the content is on this first page on the homepage. Rather than, you know, hiding it under a services tab or something like that. Is that part of the SEO strategy?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, that's a little bit of it. Because it's going to be whatever the homepage of the website is, is going to be kind of the main one that a lot of the links are going to, and that's going to be the one that Google is focusing on. So I want to make sure that's no killer. And then, you know, it's interlaced with an additional. That content. It's got a lot of keywords and internal links that are linking into the other pages so that Google sees all of it. So then we build out the service pages too, for each one of the services. So, you know, if you were kind of planning out your website design, that homepage would be a general overview of what you do and maybe a little summary about each specific service you offer. And then on the inner part of the website, we're going to have a specific service page for each one of those services. You know, built out 700 to like a thousand words, and the homepage is linking to that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so under services, there's carpet cleaning, hardwood floor cleaning, pet stains and removal, or odor removal, upholstery cleaning, tile and grout cleaning. Okay, so like kind of sub services that a carpet cleaner might do. Okay, Right, right.

[Luke Vanderveer]

And this was one of the first websites, so it's not exactly following what I would say now. It actually needs a little bit of a revision, but it's got the general principles in place.

[Nick Loper]

I was going to say you got your Google link down at the bottom, so I want to remove that part.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, it's been a little while since I touched this one.

[Nick Loper]

All right, fair enough. But, but it's an example of just, you know, kind of a simple, straightforward website that says, here's. Here's what we do, here's what we can help you with. Call us now for a. For a quote. And that's kind of the main call to action that you want somebody to do. Now what happens when I call this number?

[Luke Vanderveer]

It goes to a contractor who's actually doing carpets and takes the leads. And that person pays a few hundred bucks in order to rent the site for me. So, you know, as soon as they're paying me that flat rental fee, anything that comes in from this site calls, you know, form fills, quote requests, it all goes straight to that provider.

[Nick Loper]

And if they don't want your business anymore, then you just route it to somebody else that you find to say, okay, who else is A qualified provider in this area, right?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yep.

I'll call up some other providers, see, you know, who needs the leads, who wants more business, and route it over to them. It's a couple clicks of the button on the back end and then it's completely out of my hands. All the calls are recorded, they're forwarded automatically. And that's one of the reasons there's not a lot of maintenance. I don't have to do anything to make it happen once we set it up.

[Nick Loper]

Is that through Google Voice or some like, master phone tree system? Like, because you've got a bunch of these different sites.

[Luke Vanderveer]

There's.

Yeah, yeah, there's lots of good ones out there. The one I use is CallRail. It's. It's just basic call forwarding and it also records all the calls that come in. And I think, you know, their starter plan is like 50 bucks a month or something. It's not bad. They give you a bunch of local numbers. Instead of having an 800 number on there, people don't want to call that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

And that's pretty much it. System takes care of itself.

[Nick Loper]

And does that give you reporting on the back end, like, so you can say, hey, Mr. Or Mrs. Client, you got 10 phone calls last month. How many of those did you close? Like, is this still a valuable service for you?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yep. It's got a whole dashboard that you can customize with all the details on, you know, who called, where they called from, phone number, person's name, dates, times, all the key information you'd need. And it can even run, you know, automated reports if you want stuff to go to you and something different to go to the client, whatever it may be. You could even brand it if you want to.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. And so on the contractor's end, they recognize that it's a call coming in from the website, so they can answer. Irving Carpet Cleaning versus, you know, their company name might be slightly different, right?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, exactly. One of the cool features of the call system that actually plays a huge role in making the whole process successful is that when you set up one of the call tracking phone numbers, you can choose between branding it as a number so that when a person receives the call, they can just save it and it's always going to show the tracking number, or you can have it show the customer's phone number so they don't have to go back and ask the person for it and instead include a whisper message on the call. That's basically a robot voice that only the contractor hears that says, you know, this is a call from Luke or this is a call from Irving Carpets or whatever you want it to say.

[Nick Loper]

Oh, okay. Just in case they need to answer with a slightly different script.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right?

Yeah.

You know, I haven't really had an issue too many times with that. I've had a couple people say, you know, the customer's asking me why my company name is different. And my answer to that contractor was, this is essentially just the dba. Yeah, that's basically all it is. It's just another website you own. You can say that it's yours, I don't really care. We have our deal on the back end.

[Nick Loper]

Right. It's kind of a generic sounding local service based name. And whoever is providing. Okay, I want to get back into the playing matchmaker, finding clients, finding contractors to farm out these leads to in a moment. But I do want to address kind of like the local SEO, maybe the 8020 of local SEO on. Okay, so you set this website up, you fill in the content with all the services that somebody looking for carpet cleaning or fill in the blank niche would be interested in. And just by virtue of doing that, you're probably not going to be discovered in Google. So what happens next to kind of push this up onto page one?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right. So let's say you got your content launched, your website looks great, you send it out there, now Google's going to index it and chances are you're going to end up somewhere outside the top 10 pages. And you know, just based on numerous studies of Google, nobody's seeing you unless you're on page one. So you're just. It's like a business card. It's essentially useless unless people see it. And people won't unless you do some other stuff. And that next piece is local citations. So this is adding your company name, address, phone number, and typically website link.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

To other local websites and directories like Facebook, Yelp, Yellow Pages, citysearch, ab, Local Super Pages, all these other websites that are already trusted in Google. So that Google can say, hey, you're one of the crowd now and it'll start trusting you more. So it gives you the boost.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So it's kind of planting all these seeds where other sites allow you to punch in name, address, phone number or area of service. Because you don't have a local address in Texas, you're in New York.

[Luke Vanderveer]

If you don't have an address in the area, you could ask a friend, you know, send a postcard to the friend's house, you could go get a virtual address, post office boxes Used to work along with UPS boxes. Not so much anymore. Google has cracked down on it a little bit. But you want some kind of local address just long enough for you to receive a postcard, because that's Google's basically their entrance. Entrance fee. You need to be able to receive a card there so you can prove that you can serve that area. And if you do that, you essentially establish that address as, you know, whatever that pinpoint is on the map. And that's where your ranking is going to start. So if I want to rank in Irving, Texas, and I want to show up there at the top of the results, I need an address with the city of Irving. If I'm outside of it, my chances of ranking at the top of the maps are very low.

[Nick Loper]

Interesting. They don't necessarily love you doing this from far away, or you just have to partner with somebody locally to be able to verify that address and get that. Google my business listing, right?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. Like, you can rank in the organic search results directly under the maps from anywhere. You don't need an address or anything. But if you really want to double that traffic and really have a lot of calls coming in, you want to spot in the maps, that top three, like, right when you search whatever the keyword is and the spot directly under

[Nick Loper]

it, could you just send it to whoever your future contractor partner is going to be? If you got a good feeling or if you got a good relationship with somebody who's already providing the service, you could do that.

[Luke Vanderveer]

But chances are that they might already have a Google listing out there. And in my case, with the rank and rent stuff, I want to own the asset completely so it's not tied to anybody. So that way, if I have an issue with whoever this contractor is, I can just say, okay, you're done, and find somebody else. And it's a seamless switch.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so local citations, Google, my business. Jumping through a little bit of hoops there to make it work. Or maybe you start with your own hometown. Maybe you start local. That's one way around that, too.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. Use your house.

[Nick Loper]

And there's a way to set it up where it's like, this is the service area that I do. So your home address doesn't show up in Google. How about anything else on the SEO front, like building back? I mean, who's going to link to a carpet cleaning website? I don't know. What do you do for backlink building?

[Luke Vanderveer]

It's one of the things a lot

of the gurus and blogs will say that you have to create all this amazing content and earn the links. But honestly, if it's a lead generation website, it's not going to happen. So you got to spend a little bit more time on the citations. Like one of the key pieces is like people will outsource it. And if you do that, you're going to, you'll be asked for like a 200, 300 word description and the provider is going to go out there and put the same exact description in every single citation. Which, you know, it's great to have all these citation sources like you're listed in all these directories. That's awesome. But Google's duplicate content filter kicks in and then half of those aren't going to index, which means it's not going to help you rank. So when you're doing the citations, a key piece is write a unique description for each one you do. Takes a little bit of time, but if you do it, you might not even need any links, depending on how competitive the niche is.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, interesting. I totally would have been the copy and paste guy.

[Luke Vanderveer]

I mean, everybody does it. It's like an industry wide thing. It's just. This is something I've noticed in the past few years. I've been watching this because I've launched so many sites. I can see what's happening and less and less of the citations will index. And it's because of that filter. Google's seeing that and they're like, why do I want to index something that says the same exact thing as this other site and this other site over here? Yeah, they want something unique. So if you do that, you have significant advantage over thousands and thousands of businesses everywhere because people are using this for tools like yext and Bright Local. And all these citation tools that are heavily promoted in the industry all do the same thing. They put a duplicate, you know, slab of text on all these different sites and that's not helping you.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so spend a little bit of time, create a unique description for each. I mean, you can still have an assistant or a helper do that, but if the budget is low starting out, do that yourself.

All right, we're about to get into

[Jason]

the rent part of rank and rent, but I've got a couple helpful resources

[Nick Loper]

to share before we do. When you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Hoping the right people see your job. Posting really isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs get you the quality candidates when you need them most, like yesterday. How it works is Sponsored Jobs boosts your job Post in the search results so you can reach the people with the exact skills, experience and qualifications you need to help your business thrive. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs you only pay for results. There's no monthly subscriptions or long term contracts. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes with less stress, less time and more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Inside Hustle show listeners will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. A lot of side hustlers suffer from this debilitating disease called what if itis. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't have the skills? What if I picked the wrong path? One thing 100% of our amazing side Hustle show guests have in common is they took their shot. They faced down those what ifs and they got their answers through taking action. Our partner, Shopify helps you turn those what ifs into why nots. Shopify is the commerce platform that powers millions of businesses around the world. What if you never built a website before? Well, they've got hundreds of ready to use templates that help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. What if people haven't heard about your brand? That's where everybody starts. Shopify helps you find your customers with email and scroll stopping social media campaigns too. And what if you get stuck? Shopify's always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com sidehustle go to shopify.com sidehustleen that's shopify.com sidehustlez

let's move on to finding a tenant for this place. So we've got the, you know it's rank and rent. So we've got the rank part taken care of and you can do a deep dive on local SEO. Let's talk about the rent part. So you got to find a qualified local contractor who is good at what they do but is hopefully hungry for a little more business. Right?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. First thing is when calls start coming in, I have the call tracking phone number forward to me, and I'm essentially just going to pretend to be the secretary. Somebody's going to call up for whatever it is. We'll stick with our carpet cleaning example. And they just call up and they're like, hey, you know, is this Irving, Texas Carpet Cleaning? And I'm like, yep, this is. This is Luke. How can I help you? And I just take down all their info. Then they're going to tell me all their problems with their carpets, all the stuff they need. You know, I have their phone number from the system.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

And I'll get an idea of where they are. You know, if they're actually in Irving or if they're somewhere else, I'm going to take that number down and I'm basically going to say something along the lines of, you know, all of our guys are actually out doing estimates right now. Let me do this. I'll put you in touch with one of them. I'll have them call you directly in a couple hours. And they're like, okay, great, thanks. We hang up the phone, and now I'm going to take that lead and I'm going to go find a contractor to fulfill it.

[Nick Loper]

How do you know who's any good?

[Luke Vanderveer]

So you can do a little bit of research with Google. I'm looking through to see, you know, if they have some decent ratings. You can check Yelp. You can look at. I'd say look at the Better Business Bureau, but I know those can be manipulated so that one's hit or miss.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

You could pay for better ratings, but I like Google and Yelp. Kind of look at the stars. If they're anything, you know, four and a half, like lower than four and a half, I'm probably not even going to talk to them. I want those businesses that actually care about their customers and are going to do a good job, because, you know, if they don't, it's going to get me some bad reviews on my website, and then it's going to hurt my potential income from this.

[Nick Loper]

Right.

[Luke Vanderveer]

One of the ways to find people, though, is you go to HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack, and I just fill out the form as if I'm the customer with this issue. And then at the end, when they want contact info, I just put mine. And then when that salesperson calls up from this carpet cleaning website or this, you know, this carpet cleaning contractor, I'm just going to pitch them on using me instead of HomeAdvisor thumbtack for the leads and also give them this referral.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So you can lead with value. Hey, I know you just paid on thumbtack anyways. I know you just paid for this lead, so let me make it worth your while. But while I have you, here's the proposal that I like to make. Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right.

Yeah. Basically just you want some more of these. That's all it is. It's something simple. I'm not going to try to tie them down with contracts and everything. Free leads, value in advance for a few days so they can get an idea of what it's going to be like and they'll see the light.

[Nick Loper]

Did you ever run into the problem of like, well, you know, the companies you're finding are already well reviewed on Google, on Yelp. They're like, well, do I need a duplicate listing? Do I need more exposure here? Like, what's the, what's the appeal?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right. Yeah. It occasionally happens where we come across the business that, you know, they say we have too much or, you know, we can't handle it. And my response used to be like, that doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't you just expand and hire more people? But some companies or some people that are running them just don't have the drive to expand. Maybe they're happy where they are. Yeah. In which case I'm just going to change tactics. I'm now going to search one of the keywords, like carpet cleaning. Irving. I'm going to go back, you know, 10 pages and go through all the companies there because I know for sure that they're not getting any calls.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah. If they still have, I don't know, it's like, do you need the re. And that's a good question. On, on your front, like, do you need reviews for a non existent service before you could start to rank? It seems like a weird chicken versus the egg thing.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. I mean, so you'll have your new Google listing up. Right. You're ranked now. You're sitting number one in the maps, number one in the organic search. And people see your business and it says no reviews. And they're like, I don't know if I want to call that one. So that's going to hurt your call volume a little bit. Some people are still going to call, so it'll be okay. But what I'm usually telling the contractor is, listen, if you want to boost this even more and you want to really ramp up the calls that I'm sending you, I need you to take the next person you serve through this website and have them write a review on this Google my business. Like, I'll pay 50 bucks if you can get somebody to review it. And I don't care whether they do it themselves or if they want to have a friend review it or whether the person actually does some work and reviews it. I do need some kind of review on there just so people see that it's legit and that, you know, the service actually helps people.

[Nick Loper]

Gotcha. Because once it's in this other company's hands, once it's in the contractor's hands, their process may be to collect reviews for their own profile or their own Facebook page or something. Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

I have to find a way to incentivize them to do it. And it's usually something. I found a few different ways to do this. One would be, I will give them a discount on the rental fee for the first month if they get some reviews on there. Another one would be just to give them like a business card. And on that business card, I would put a direct link to the Google my business profile and a free contest run something like, we'll give away a 200 gift card to somebody out of anybody who leaves a review. So then you have them give that out to everybody and then you just pick somebody and give the prize away for one of the people who left a review. And we've had a good success with that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. You know, after you get somebody, hey, here's the pitch we're expecting based on this search volume and maybe you ran it for the first month where the calls came to you. Like, hey, if this month was typical, we expect five to ten calls every month and then just name a price. Like, what do you think those leads might be worth to somebody?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, so I do a little bit of research on that ahead of time, too. So generally when I enter a market and a certain niche, I'm going to look at what the average job is worth in that area. So, you know, I was just looking at this one. So plumbing in Albany, New York. Average job is $365. And that's data provided directly from HomeAdvisor. So that's a multimillion dollar company. I know they've done their research and that number's legit.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

So now if this website is getting 30, 40 calls, you know, I could just multiply the number of calls by the average job. I have the potential value that I'm sending, and then I just have to factor in how many this contractor is going to close. So in my conversation with Them, I'm asking them, you know, how many people are you going to close? If I send you say 10 calls and 90% of the time they're going to tell me, oh, 80%, 90%. And then I'm going to push back on them and say, give me the real number of people you're going to close because this is, I need that information. And then they'll be like, okay, fine, like 40%, 50%.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

And that'll kind of let me come up with a general pricing guideline.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, fair enough. Across your portfolio, is there an average monthly rent for these sites?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, it's around 1,000 bucks a month. Somewhere between 900 and 1,000. A lot of the, if it's really, really low hanging fruit, like super easy ones and a kind of a low ticket item, they're usually going for like 500 bucks, 600 bucks. If it's a little bit higher ticket than 1500, I have one guy that pays three grand. It just depends on how valuable that service is.

[Nick Loper]

It's really interesting. You can see how it wouldn't take too many of these to really make a full time run at it. Make a full time income out of it. It's just fascinating why somebody would rent the site from you versus building it on their own. Because you make it sound like, well, it's not that complicated to, to do it. Or maybe it makes sense where it's like, okay, we can double dip our exposure versus I don't know, it's just a weird, it's a weird one where it's like just run, run Google Ads yourself or something. Like if you're really concerned with getting more leads, it's weird like no, we're going to write this guy a check for a thousand bucks a month and we're just going to get these leads, book the business and we're not going to worry about it.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, it's because, you know, like the ads and stuff or organic is always preferable because ads people are being bothered. Right. Somebody might need it maybe so they'll call it right away. But ads are usually a bother and it's harder to close those people. The leads generally are lower quality. But if it's coming organic, it's kind of a different mindset for the customer because they're seeing you and they're looking at you where you're ranked and they're like, wow, these guys are number one in this entire city. It must be for a reason. They just see where you're sitting and they're like, wow, they must be the best. So they call you sometimes they don't even question the price. So you can generally cherry pick the leads you want and price however you'd like, as long as it's within reason. If you're able to secure that top spot.

[Nick Loper]

What happens when the service provider that you've partnered with has a change in management, has a change in processes? All of a sudden they're not delivering the quality of work that you would like and you get a bad review or just something like it's just not working out anymore. I'm just curious about any horror stories, worst case scenario type of stuff.

[Luke Vanderveer]

It depends on if the person is one, if it's something that can be fixed and you can keep them around, or if it's something where you're just like, okay, this person's got to go. I had one of these recently. I have a restaurant cleaning service in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We were sending him to this guy for a few days just to basically trial it out. We probably would end up charging him around 500 bucks a month. On day three of free leads, customer called up, they're like, hey, we need you to clean it. And he's like, great, I'll be there tomorrow. 10am 10am rolls around, person never comes. Guy calls back the next day. And of course I have all the recordings just listening to all this. And the guy's like, hey, you know, it's, it's 10:30, nobody's here. And the contractor that I was sending the leads to was just like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that. And just hung up.

[Nick Loper]

Wow.

[Luke Vanderveer]

And I, I listened to the call. I have a partner on some of these sites. I listened to the call, he calls me up and he's like, dude, you gotta, you gotta hear this one. And I was just playing it and I was like, why would you ever tell a customer that? How do you, like, that's, that's your income, that's your livelihood. It doesn't make sense. So that was an instant like, dude, you're done.

I just, I called him up.

I'm like, I heard the last call

at the customer, that's it, we're done.

And then we just had to find somebody else. Yeah, it happens occasionally. There's nothing you could really do about that. You try to do your due diligence up front, but people present a great front. You just gotta test it out, see how it goes for a little bit.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Are most of these month to month or do you say like, I want a 6 month commitment 12 month commitment.

[Luke Vanderveer]

I do monthly. I know a lot of other people in the industry do 6 months, 12 months. But what I found is that if you're doing a good job of providing leads, which if your site's at the top, it's just going to keep bringing them in. Yeah, people generally don't leave as long as you're priced decently. Like I'm aiming for my contractor that I'm sending leads to to get a minimum 10x return. So if I'm charging them 500 bucks, I'm bringing them at least 5 grand in business, usually way more. So that way it's a no brainer to keep me around.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Make it easy for them. Make it money that they're happy to spend and keep spending.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right? Yeah. Because then it's less stuff for me to do too. I don't have to keep looking for new contractors. I can just leave that one and move on. I just want to rinse and repeat the process and get another 20 sites out there instead of trying to get that extra 200 bucks for this site.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. How long does somebody typically stay with you? Or I mean you've been doing it since 2016ish. Have you had clients from the very beginning or is there some turnover here? Just like a regular apartment or rental house is going to have turnover.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Since the beginning when I first started, I've lost one contractor, a single one. He ruined my stats. I had 100% rate until that guy ruined it. He basically, like it was a liquidation company he partnered with. Well, he essentially got acquired by a larger company and that company just had no interest in continuing with lead generation. They were going a different direction. So we lost that person. I had to find somebody else. But it wasn't a big deal because it took us a week to replace it and then I still have that income.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

But we've. So I've lost one person. It's just you got to choose, you know, people up front. Finding the right person is. You might go through a few just trialing out leads and trying to see who's going to work out, but once they start paying you, it's pretty much game over from there.

[Nick Loper]

That's really interesting. They're in it for the long haul. They're saying, hey, keep them coming. What kind of time does it take to manage? After this initial content creation and local citations and this initial contractor outreach, it sounds like as long as the rankings hold is pretty hands off from there. But you do anything to maintenance wise SEO or If somehow you drop off the first page, like oh, the call volume dropped, how are you dealing with that to try and bump it back up?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, I mean I know how it's going to sound, but really not much time. Maybe a couple hours a week on maintenance type stuff. I might go in and make an edit to a site based on something a contractor wants to do or you know, maybe I update a theme because the, you know, the plugin's expiring or something. That's about it. In terms of ranking the site once it gets there, it generally stays if you do the work correctly the first time on the occasional time where there's an issue, you know, you might have to do some more links to try to push your site up a little higher or you know, worst case scenario, maybe your Google my business page goes down. You know, I had that happen for one of the first sites I started. I have a vehicle wraps website in Phoenix. You know, population is 1.6 million people. I was number one, number one. Now I'm still number one in organic. But my map listing disappeared because Google didn't like, you know, how I set it up, which, you know, it occasionally it happens, but it's not a big deal because I can just go find another virtual office, send another postcard and I'll be up and running again in a week.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, it looks like this carpet cleaning site is built on Weebly. Is that your, your go to like tech stack for just for the site structure for beginner?

[Luke Vanderveer]

I would say definitely for ease of use. You know, WIX or Weebly. I personally, I like Weebly. It's super easy. Drag and drop everything. You know, you want to add a title to the page, you click on title, drag it over to the page. You want to add paragraph. You click on the little paragraph icon, drag it to the page. It couldn't be easier for a person who knows, you know, almost zero code like me. So you know, the first bunch of sites were that I built one, built it out how I wanted it and then it has a cool feature where you can duplicate the entire structure of the website. So if you want to build, you know, nine more, the next nine are going to be really fast. You just duplicate the site and paste in new content.

[Nick Loper]

Gotcha. That is a handy feature. And I imagine there's WordPress plugins or something that will do the same thing like across different builders. But yeah, it saves you some, saves you some copying and pasting.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, that's the, that's the easy route. So if you're a newbie. Weebly is a great one. If you're a little bit more advanced, you want to go the WordPress route. That's the way to go if you really want to scale. So if you get to the point where, you know, maybe you've. You've killed your job now, you got enough of these, whatever, you want to go 20, 50, 100 sites. That's when you go to WordPress, you build out. I paid somebody to do it. I took a virtual assistant from the Philippines. I gave them my website, and I said, I want you to recreate this with a free theme and then export it as a file so that every time I want to open a new site, I could just import it, load the whole thing, paste in content, and go. And I just trained VA how to do it all for me.

[Nick Loper]

Luke, this is fascinating stuff. People are starting to do the math, saying, well, you got a portfolio of 100 of these things, averaging a thousand bucks a month in rent. What motivates you to keep building, keep growing? Imagine this like a pretty nice. I mean, even beyond just a lifestyle, business is a pretty substantial operation here. What's. What's going on for the rest of this year? What does the future hold?

[Luke Vanderveer]

So I will say just. Just for clarity purposes, I want to. $100,000 a month is a lot of money.

It's not that high.

30% of the sites are rented out. 70% are in the ranking process somewhere. Page one, like bottom toward or like page two, working my way up. Okay, so all of those aren't rented out because, of course, some of them I built this year, so it's taking me time. Like, a few of them went up last week.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

But, yeah, no, it's absolutely crushing it. So you don't need a job when you get a bunch of these going going forward? I actually, I used to do client SEO. I used to work. I learned the skillset. Then I started working on other people's sites. And I just did not like being in contact with the client all the time because they were always complaining, like, you know, asking me to make changes, sending reports, and it was just taking up a lot of my time, which is why I switched to this model where I essentially own this digital real estate, and I just rent it out to a tenant. But a lot of those clients also, at the time were always asking me, how do I do this? Essentially teach me how to do what you're doing so I don't have to pay you. And at the time, it irritated me. But thinking about it now I don't have them anymore. I've kept in touch with all of them and they're asking the same thing. So I put up a Facebook group specifically for contractors and people who wanted to kill their job by building these rank and rent websites and I started adding them all to it. So I'm coming out with a course in a couple weeks and it's going to be exactly how to do it so they don't have to pay a marketing company $1,000 a month retainer or you know, if it's a normal person with a 9 to 5. Just exactly how I did this, how I built the sites up and just rented it out to help those same contractors.

[Nick Loper]

Appreciate you dropping by, sharing your stuff again. Really interesting, unique business here where it's like, yeah, I'm going to own this digital real estate and find people who would want to rent that out from me. I think it's genius. I'd heard about it first years ago but never really met anybody in the trenches doing it. So I appreciate you coming by. Luke, let's wrap this thing up with a number one tip for side Hustle Nation.

[Luke Vanderveer]

You really just got to take whatever that business is and go for it. It doesn't matter what the business is. If you think it can work and you put in the time, you can get results. With all these different things I've done, I've had some success in each one. You can do it if you push for it. You just got to go for it. Take the leap.

[Nick Loper]

It's so true. Thanks for sharing and we'll catch up with you soon.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Appreciate the time, Nick, thanks.

[Nick Loper]

This one definitely got my gears turning as a really interesting and unique side Hustle. That's a win, win, win. It's businesses getting more jobs, customers are hopefully connecting with great service providers, and you're getting paid too. Now if it were me, I'd probably start local or semi local. I just feel like that might be easier. To build relationships with service providers. You could use a keyword research tool to punch in all of the different service categories from thumbtack or another site and then in combination with the name of your city or town to see what the estimated search volume looks like, what the relative competitiveness looks like, and then also thinking about what the average job might cost in those service categories. It honestly sounds like kind of a fun puzzle or challenge, but let me know what you think. If you give this one a shot. I'd love to hear from you. Once again, notes and links from this episode along with the full text summary are at Side Hustle Nation.

[Jason]

You can learn more and also apply for a strategy call with luke@website rentalcoaching.com shn for side hustle nation website rentalcoaching.com

[Nick Loper]

shn now let me get the time

[Jason]

machine fired up and we'll be right

[Nick Loper]

back to check in here with Luke in 2026.

In sports, there's this saying that speed is a weapon and the same is true in business. If you're missing calls or being slow to follow up with customers, you're leaving money on the table, sometimes even realizing it because your potential customer they've already moved on. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo spelled Q U O. This is the business communications system built so you never miss a call. Kuo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3000 reviews and is built for how modern teams work. More than 90,000 businesses, from side hustlers and solo operators to growing teams, already rely on Quo to stay connected, stay professional and consistently reachable. And here's what's really cool. Calls, texts, voicemails, transcripts and contact deals all show up in one clean view in an app on your phone or your computer. So that way you and your team are always on the same page. Plus there's built in AI that can even answer calls and qualify leads for you. When you can't pick up the phone, money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com sidehustle that's quoq u o.com sidehustle right now we're all trying to do more with less and I want to let you in on a tool that lean, mean, high performing teams are using right now to be more efficient and buy back some of their time. Our sponsor, Gusto is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one. It's remote, friendly and it's incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and has options for nearly every budget. And if you ever have any questions, you've got direct access to Gusto's certified HR experts so you can get back to running your business.

But you don't have to just take my word for it.

Gusto is ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026 and it's already trusted by over 400,000 small businesses. I want to invite you to try gusto [e-mail] Sidehustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [e-mail] SideHustle one more time, it's Gusto. G U S T O

[Jason]

Luke welcome back to the Side Hustle show.

[Nick Loper]

Catch us up.

[Jason]

It's been five years. What's going on with the rank and rent portfolio these days?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Oh man, things are great, Nick.

Happy to be back on.

The portfolio is much larger than it was before and we've got AI in here and lots of very cool stuff going on. So excited to talk about it.

[Jason]

How many sites are you running these days?

[Luke Vanderveer]

230 sites.

80% rented.

Averages about 185 grand a month depending on what happens with the commission and Rev Share deals. Rev Share is new, so I started doing that and that's had quite a dramatic impact, which is nice.

[Jason]

180 grand a month.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, it averages.

It's all over the.

It's up and down 30 grand from that either way, depending on.

[Jason]

Okay, plus or minus. That is crazy. That's a pretty serious operation. Tell me about the Rev Share thing. So I think previously we talked about, look, it's just going to be a flat fee. It's going to be a thousand bucks a month to rent out the site.

[Luke Vanderveer]

I hadn't really thought about this and

then I was on.

Bradley had me on dropping bombs and we were talking about it afterwards. He's like, yeah, we do a lot of Rev Share. So I came back and I started going to the clients that were paying larger flat fees and I talked to them about doing Rev Share and I've started pitching it to all new people anytime. It was like a bigger niche. So something like demolition or like a high ticket emergency plumbing, things that were just more expensive. And I was basically pitching it as I would like access to the CRM to be able to see, like read only to be able to see what you're bringing in. And you know this will be on me, right? I have skin in the game now if I'm taking a percentage. So I have all incentive to push this as much as possible and make you a lot more money. So that pitch has kind of been going better because they're like, okay, they don't have that much risk because it's

[Jason]

on me to generate instead of a flat fee. It's now performance based, so I could see that being more amenable. But of course you come out ahead if it works because now if they book a couple hundred grand worth of

[Luke Vanderveer]

jobs, it still works out. I have one person that was getting pissed off at the Rev share because

they're like, dude, you're making so much money.

And I'm like, yeah, but you're making the most. I'm like, you wouldn't have any of this if I wasn't doing this. So it's created some interesting conversations with clients. I switched one person to just a higher flat fee, like flip them to Rev share, then flip them back. But it's still working out in my favor. And students favors. So the rev share thing was huge. Really cool.

Definitely recommend.

[Jason]

What's a typical, like percentage wise?

[Luke Vanderveer]

10, 15% depending on what it is.

[Jason]

Okay. It's higher than I would have expected. I don't know how much margin is in some of these higher ticket services, but that's a good chunk.

[Luke Vanderveer]

It depends on the lead, but it's one of those things I'm negotiating. I'm always pitching a little bit higher. And then I'm just like, I don't. Part of the thing that's helping is I don't need it. So if they don't want it, I'm like, all right, that's fine. I could just do it with somebody else. So just pitch somebody else.

[Jason]

Yeah. This is affiliate marketing. Just on a really high touch, localized scale. With an affiliate program, you're gonna have to go cut the deal yourself. You're not gonna find it off the shelf at Impact or Commission Junction or anything like that. You're gonna have to make these deals. And think of it from the buyer's perspective here, the contractor's perspective of like, well, what's my cost of acquisition? Would I be willing to pay 10% to a Luke to not have to worry about my marketing, to have somebody else take care of lead gen and still hopefully make make a good income after completing the jobs.

[Nick Loper]

Right?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And I think it's the rapport building and some of the stuff with, you know, talking to people and trying to establish that up front. That's still the same. People still just want to know that you can connect.

[Jason]

Has anything changed on the niches that you like? You mentioned some of these higher ticket services like demolition and emergency plumb. Anything else been kind of cropping up lately for either you or your students?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Not necessarily changing a ton with the niches, just A little bit more selective in what I pick and trying to find higher level uses of the skill set. Like 2023, I bought an ice cream catering company and I was like, oh, I could apply lead gen to this. So now I'm like looking for things that I can apply lead gen to so that I could just make more money on other things that interest me. I'm in the middle of underwriting for a paving company that I'm going to buy. That's another one. I can just spin up some SEO for it. I get some map listings going and that'll crush.

So I'm just trying to combine multiple

things I like and be a little bit more choosy.

[Jason]

You're out scooping ice cream on the weekends now.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Ice cream. So yeah, bought a company, 52 trucks, three states. Gave my brother half the company to run it.

So I'm not involved.

I'm just doing lead gen for it. I just paid for it. The lead gen skillset, the same skillset applies so I can use that to grow it brings in more stuff and yeah, just trucks driving around selling like, you know, overpriced ice cream to kids. Crushing it for me.

[Jason]

Come come summer, you're like, cha Ching,

[Luke Vanderveer]

okay, dude, by those screwballs, you know.

[Jason]

Yeah, this is an interesting one because it's like to you, the asset may be undervalued. If I'm bringing in kind of this complimentary skill set, maybe they're not really taking advantage of digital marketing or online real estate in the way that, you know, you could. And you can say, well, I can pay this multiple, but I know if I apply steps one, two and three, within six to 12 months, it's going to be worth X. So cash flow in the meantime, plus you know, this equity multiple as you can expand the value there.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, it's huge.

And I didn't really realize it. I was just having a conversation with my CPA and I was like, how do I not pay taxes? And she laughed and she's like, legally? And I was like, yes, legally. And she goes, buy business. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, just buy an existing business. So she like recommended me to go to the seminar. I like learned this. And a few months later, I own it. I own a business. And then I'm just like buying more and now using this to do that. So it's like just another thing I'm kind of adding because I really like that you could apply the SEO skill set to it. You just pick something where it Helps

[Jason]

you on your taxes, though.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Well, yeah, so it'll help one year

and then you got to buy another

one to keep using depreciation.

So like the.

The hard assets, the trucks, the furniture, the equipment, FF&E furniture, fixtures and equipment, you use that to depreciate against your active income.

And then you could do a cost

segregation on the land to also help go against your income. But then every year you would. It's it. We're essentially just delaying this because then

the next year you'll just make more

money because you have two businesses now. You gotta do this again. So I'm in the loop now, but I'm cool that it's. It's great.

Everything's going good so far.

[Nick Loper]

All right.

[Jason]

So far, so good. There was the ice cream one. What was the second one you said?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Paving company.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Ice cream was one of the company,

[Jason]

kind of a similar structure where the existing ownership is going to stay on or you find another operator.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah. So the ice cream, I'm running out of brothers. So the ice cream was 50% I gave to my brother to run it so I could keep me passive. The paving one, I'm going to have to hire somebody to run it so I don't have to. So I'll be in there for a couple of weeks, kind of learn what he's doing, hand it off to somebody,

and then back out to do my

lead gen and then that person will do it. Just owner since the start, 40 years in business. He's got a whole team in place, so I shouldn't have to do much.

[Jason]

That's the dream anyways. I don't know how often that works out.

[Luke Vanderveer]

We'll see. We'll see.

I've done a lot of due diligence trying to do it. There was a lot of stuff we missed on the first company because obviously I'd never bought a business before. So you always learn things trial by fire.

[Jason]

Got it. So it sounds like parlaying some of the online cash flow into more of an offline asset, almost becoming the type of customer who would have hired you for these website build outs.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason]

Combining it and a tax strategy at some point. So anything that has changed in the world of rank and rent? We've had a couple of your proteges, a couple of your students on in between our episodes. But what's going on there in terms of either the SEO side of things or Google business profiles?

[Nick Loper]

Like what's.

[Jason]

What do you see?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah, I see a lot of stuff. I know there's a lot of hype about AI and you know, taking away search and so forth. Google still got 90% of the market share, so that's good. But across lead gen sites and things, people still want to talk to a person. So that's, that's not really having much of an impact on our blue collar stuff. And then if we want to take advantage of it, we're using a lot of structured data. So changing the way that we're doing headers and things to be more question based like who, who do we serve? And just changing everything into a question and then writing the paragraph under it and we try to get like a direct answer right away and then go into the detail below the answer. Lots of schema.

[Jason]

Okay, so schema is a fancy word for this structured data to tell Google that this is a frequently asked question rather than just just straight text on the page. And so it can kind of index it somewhat differently and, and hopefully serve that up to somebody who's looking for that exact thing.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right. Yeah.

So a lot of that, the frequently asked questions is super helpful in just making sure the structure is correct. When you're like setting it up. If you're using like something like Elementor and WordPress, it's just a drag and drop so you'll have the questions as like H2s and then little paragraph below it it. And just doing that has helped a lot more websites appear in those AI overviews. And you could also manipulate what appears in the AI overview with press releases like you used to do in the old days.

[Jason]

What would be an example of a press release you're sending out?

[Luke Vanderveer]

Just like who's the best ice cream company in state? And then you write a whole article about how your company's the best company in the state and then it goes out and you'll notice that ChatGPT starts picking up you're the best ice cream company in the state because you've appeared in so many places. So it's like taking us Back to like 2000s when we're like manipulating things to move things up in the search engine with using press release.

[Jason]

Even if it's like a completely self serving press release, it's not like you got an award for being the best ice cream. It's just like we're going to raise our hand and say we're the best ice cream.

[Luke Vanderveer]

No, but I've seen it work.

I've seen it work, which was really funny and it just. Yeah, it just gave me a laugh.

Yeah.

[Jason]

That is what a time to be alive. We've seen the interesting thing is if you can get your company to show up in the search results and it's fun. We did a whole episode on ranking in AI and the guest mentioned press releases there as well. But the conversion rate from that she said was like 10 to 15 times higher than Google. Like the inherent trust that people are putting into some of these AI answers notwithstanding how easily manipulated they are or may be at the moment, it was kind of crazy. It was really eye opening to see how much maintenance is required for this portfolio of 200 plus sites as things go stale and links break and content needs updating. It sounds like a full time job.

[Luke Vanderveer]

So to compensate for the slightly increased maintenance level, I have moved one of the VAs to like full time going in and kind of fine tuning things for our new AI future here. So using our new stuff, like using Manus and Claude to write better content and insert more topical relevance and put in landmarks and other things to make content better, they're going back through old sites and making those more robust so that it kind of further secures my spot, generates more leads, kind of protects the future safeguards a little bit.

[Jason]

Right. Because if you're the competition isn't standing still.

[Nick Loper]

Right.

[Jason]

You can't just have a completely static resource that you never touch and expect the paycheck to keep coming in.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Right.

[Jason]

Well, what's next for you? What's got you excited these days?

[Luke Vanderveer]

I'm pumped to do a few things. I mean one with my students, I've changed a lot of things and I'm bringing out, I have a friend who's an AI engineer by trade. He's worked at some really big companies like Coinbase, Amazon, Google, all these things. And we've been developing tools that can automate portions of the process. So he just created a tool that does all the niche research for me that we'll be releasing to our members soon, which is cool. So it'll go in, it'll take all

[Jason]

of the biggest piece of the pie or one of them, the first building block.

[Luke Vanderveer]

Yeah.

For all the profitability and figuring it out. So it's like taking all of my example sites that are doing well, funneling in all the stuff that didn't work, all the stuff that does work, all the mistakes I've ever made, all that's in there. And then it's looking at all these different data sources to pull in just intelligence on, like why is this market good? Why is this one we should do why or why not? And it'll give you all the Reasons like, here's your level of risk, here's all the reasons it would make sense and like, how much money it would cost and the average price of the job. And this market's a good one because it has X number of companies that you could reach out to. And, you know, here's how fragmented the market is. These people are paying for ads. These people aren't like, it'll give you everything. So I know going in that my chance of success is this number on a scale, which is awesome. And then once we get in, he's also developing another tool. This one's taking a little bit longer, but we're in the middle of it. To just take it from you. Punch in the niche you want and it spits out the completed site following my exact process end to end.

[Jason]

Yeah, that'd be really cool. I think that would be.

[Luke Vanderveer]

It's so cool. I wish it was already done so I could just like show you this live. But we're. We're just in the middle of it now.

[Jason]

Well, coming soon. Coming soon. We'll be sure to link that up or if you check out website rentalcoaching.com shn you'll be able to see what Luke is up to over there. Again, appreciate you stopping by. Any other parting words of guidance here for this time travel catch up segment

[Luke Vanderveer]

where AI is going. Blue collar work appears to be the thing that will be the last to be disrupted.

[Nick Loper]

Right.

[Luke Vanderveer]

White collar stuff where we're sitting in front of a computer typing things in. That's something that can be erased with AI. But if you can create some kind of income on the side to protect yourself, there's one way to prepare and the other one is to learn some of these AI tools. If you think of like distribution and maps, math, Math class, if anybody remembers this or stats, there's like that bell curve. And I'm thinking about it from like an adoption perspective. There's the people who are like, I'm never going to use AI. There's people who are like, I want to know everything that's coming out. And then there's everybody in the middle. If you could shift yourself closer to the all right, AI is coming whether

we like it or not.

Let's try to figure it out. You're going to be in a better position to at least know how to use some of these things so that you're not the person that gets removed when AI is replacing a job.

[Jason]

Well, this is such an interesting place to play. I'm going to use these AI tools to support these blue collar, unaiable businesses. The driveways, the demolitions, the pavers, the roofers and stuff. It's like, okay, that's unlikely to get outsourced, but maybe some of their marketing may be. And if I could position myself to use some of the AI tools to improve their marketing, maybe I can keep myself safe from that. It's a fascinating world to live in. Listener bonus for this one 50 potential rank and rent niches to kickstart your research process. You can download that for free at the Show Notes for this episode Just hit the link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. Big thanks to Luke for sharing his insight. Thanks again to our sponsors for helping

[Nick Loper]

make this content free for everyone.

[Jason]

Sidehustlenation.com deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.

[Nick Loper]

Hustle on the.