Agency Owner Built a $140K/Month Data Business Delivering Weekly Intent CSVs
An agency owner created a recurring revenue model by packaging intent data into weekly CSV deliverables for clients — building a data-as-a-service business that generates $140,000 per month without running a single ad campaign.
The Situation
An agency owner was running performance campaigns for clients but felt trapped on a services treadmill — trading time for money with no leverage. He saw that what his best clients actually valued wasn’t ad management, it was audience intelligence. He wanted a product-like offering with predictable recurring revenue that didn’t scale linearly with headcount.
How It Was Done — Step by Step
Identified the Core Deliverable: Weekly Intent Audiences as CSV
Rather than positioning around ad management, he built his offer around a single weekly deliverable: a CSV file of people who had shown intent for a client’s target category in the past 7 days — names, emails, phone numbers, and intent keywords. Simple, tangible, immediately actionable.
Priced the Deliverable as a Retainer, Not a Project
He priced the service at $7,500-$15,000 per month depending on audience size and vertical — framed as a data subscription, not an agency retainer. Clients were buying a weekly intelligence feed. This reframe dramatically reduced price sensitivity.
Signed His First Client in the Legal Vertical
His first client was a personal injury law firm. He delivered a weekly list of individuals who had searched for car accident attorney and personal injury claim keywords in the firm’s metro area. Within 90 days the firm was generating $40,000 in monthly case value from the list.
Systematized the Delivery Process for Scale
He built a simple weekly workflow: pull the intent audience, run skip trace for phone numbers, format as CSV, deliver Monday morning. Total time per client per week: under two hours. He could serve 10+ clients with minimal overhead.
Expanded to New Verticals With the Same Model
He replicated the model in roofing, mortgage, healthcare, and financial services. By month six he had 12 clients at an average of $11,500 per month — all using the same two-hour-per-client workflow.
The Result
A $140,000 per month recurring revenue business built on a two-hour-per-client-per-week workflow. The leverage came from the data itself — not from ad spend, headcount, or complex operations. The agency became a data business.
“I spent eight years trading time for money running ad campaigns. The data subscription model completely changed what was possible. My revenue doubled and my hours dropped by 60%.”
Agency Owner — Data-as-a-Service Agency
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