Updated on November 4, 2019
A few months ago I had kind of a crazy idea:
What if Toofr users could sell their Toofr lists to each other?
I've been making an extra few hundred dollars a month selling lists to the Toofr community using the Crunchbase fundraising announcement feed. The problem is list building is tedious and I don't have time to do it. I'd much rather crowdsource the list building, effectively letting other people build and sell the lists. I'd then simply take a cut of the transaction.
It sounded like I should build a marketplace!
With a surprisingly little amount of work (to be described in a future post), that marketplace is now complete: The Toofr List Marketplace. Here's a guide for how you too can make some extra money by selling your "gently used" email lists.
Step 1: Connect a Stripe account
Go to your Marketplace settings and click the "Connect to Stripe" button right here:
Stripe will then ask you a lot of personal information. They'll want the last four digits of your social security number, an address, and a bank account where we can deposit the proceeds from your sales. *Note: all of this data is handled securely and 100% by Stripe, a leader in the payments gateway market. * I don't touch your financial information, so don't worry about giving Toofr any unwanted access to anything. Your information is safe with Stripe.
In all this should take you only a couple of minutes. Now you're ready to sell!
Step 2: Import a List Sale file
Click on the Lists menu icon in the top right of your screen and go to Upload List to Sell.
You'll need to give your list an SEO friendly title (we both want sales, right? SEO is the main way you'll get customers.) In addition to a title and description, please share:
- Which industry or industries are represented?
- What is the main source of this data?
- How many do you want to sell?
- How much will you sell each list for?
Pretty self-explanatory, right? The idea is to give the buyer enough information to feel comfortable buying your list. Be descriptive but not too verbose. A couple of cool things will happen once you save your edits.
You get this cool mosaic of logos on your list
*There will be a public preview of the first 10 records, but the email will be cleansed. *
And then... you wait for a sale. Or if you don't mind being open about the fact that you're selling this data, you can publicize it on social media, your own website, or in Slack channels with your sales buddies.
Step 3: Get paid
When you sell a list, you get 70% of the list price less some Stripe fees. Basically, Toofr takes 30% off the top, Stripe takes its 3% (or so), and you get the rest. Not bad for an Excel file that was just collecting electronic dust on your Macbook.
Stripe will deliver your cut to you immediately and you can then move the balance to the bank account you saved in Step 1. That process takes a couple of days usually. You can sell as many copies as you want, but I advise you to keep the number less than 20 or so, or risk getting some backlash from those prospects. Better to only sell a few and buy yourself a fancy dinner.