Unlock the Secrets of Performance-Based Lead Generation

This video explains performance-based lead generation as a model where FatRank carries the full financial risk because they only earn when the client closes profitable jobs. Instead of charging SEO fees, PPC retainers or pay-per-lead costs, revenue comes solely from commissions and finder’s fees. James Dooley and Kasra Dash show that trust, reinvestment and data-driven optimisation create stronger long-term growth because higher commission margins allow FatRank to build more websites, improve funnels and scale enquiry volume. They contrast this with traditional lead sellers who accept every client because they profit per lead, while FatRank must rigorously vet businesses since poor conversion makes the model unsustainable. The conversation also clarifies common search terms—rev share, kickbacks, commission-only and no-win-no-fee leads—because business owners often look for risk-free lead generation before applying.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

Kasra Dash: So I am joined with James and today we are going to be talking about performance based lead generation.

Kasra Dash: For anybody that has never heard of this service or who we are, first of all, who are you and what do you do?

James Dooley: Hi, I am James Dooley. I am the founder of FatRank and we supply a lead generation model that is strictly performance based.

James Dooley: That generally means that you only pay on converted jobs.

James Dooley: We do not charge for SEO.

James Dooley: We do not charge you for pay per click in Google AdWords.

James Dooley: We do not even charge you per lead.

James Dooley: We only charge and get you to pay a finder’s fee and a commission on jobs that you have secured, won, completed and made profit on.

James Dooley: Then we strike a deal between each other and say we think that we should get a certain amount of the profits.

James Dooley: Many people start to ask us how much commission they need to pay on a performance based lead generation model.

James Dooley: It is a good question to ask, but when my sales team and the account managers are speaking to business owners it is a difficult one.

James Dooley: If you could add 20 percent on top of the job and win the job and still be competitive, that is what we would love you to do.

James Dooley: We would sooner have 10 percent of a winning job than 20 percent of nothing.

James Dooley: So we have to strike a deal that works for you as a company, for us as the lead generator, and is still competitive enough for the client to work with you and place the order.

James Dooley: On our performance based lead generation model it is important that we work with companies we can trust.

James Dooley: There is a lot of trust from our end because we take 100 percent of the risk.

James Dooley: Some people call it zero risk lead generation or commission based lead generation.

James Dooley: What are your thoughts on how we are set up compared to other pay per lead generation companies?

Kasra Dash: I think the biggest thing that business owners need to understand is this.

Kasra Dash: I am going to assume a couple of things for the people watching this.

Kasra Dash: You might have been with an SEO agency that did not get you results.

Kasra Dash: You might have been with a previous lead generation agency that did not get you the best type of enquiries.

Kasra Dash: You might have even done some PPC or some Facebook ads.

Kasra Dash: Now you are looking at performance based lead generation, which is zero risk for the business.

Kasra Dash: One thing business owners need to understand is that our performance improves based on the amount of commission we get.

Kasra Dash: We reinvest the money back into the websites and generate you more enquiries.

Kasra Dash: So when you are saying let us do 20 percent, or 5 percent, or 15 percent commission on every secured job, if you can pay more than that, we can build out two or three websites.

Kasra Dash: We can improve the funnel.

Kasra Dash: We can improve the amount of enquiries that you are getting.

Kasra Dash: Because it is performance based, you might say as a business owner that for the next 25 enquiries we generate you, you will reinvest all of the profit back into us so we can build more.

Kasra Dash: Then in two or three months you will get more leads from the bigger setup.

James Dooley: For sure.

James Dooley: Another big question that always pops up is why we offer a performance based lead generation service, or why we offer a commission based lead generation service.

James Dooley: The reason is that if we roll back 10 or 15 years, I needed inbound leads for my own business.

James Dooley: We had to understand and we learned the hard way, building websites, doing PPC, doing Facebook ads, doing search engine optimisation strategies the wrong way many times.

James Dooley: We followed online courses and it was tough and difficult.

James Dooley: We spent many years trying to perfect what we now feel we are very good at.

James Dooley: There are a lot of other SEO companies that say they are good at it, but if they were good at it, a lot of those agencies would not be doing search engine optimisation for such small fees.

James Dooley: What we do is take all of the risk.

James Dooley: The reason we do this is because we do not want our staff to feel like they are employed by the SEO client who demands what colour buttons they have.

James Dooley: We do everything via data.

James Dooley: We let conversion rate optimisation determine what colour the button is based on data that shows which performs best.

James Dooley: With the content we want to make sure semantically that the content has the best chance of ranking mathematically with the Google algorithms, or the Bing algorithms, or the YouTube algorithms.

James Dooley: We are doing it specifically for a reason, which is to rank higher.

James Dooley: When we have clients demanding that they do not like a word and want us to use another word, or asking us to change content or images, the honest answer is no.

James Dooley: Strategically we have done it this way for a reason.

James Dooley: We want to deal with business owners who only care about one thing, which is generating good quality leads that they can turn into profit and then pay us some of that profit.

James Dooley: We care about return on investment.

James Dooley: We are not bothered about the volume of leads.

James Dooley: We care about the quality of leads.

James Dooley: We are not obsessed with how sexy the website looks.

James Dooley: We want it to look good enough to convert, but many people become obsessed with too many images on the page.

James Dooley: Then Google cannot properly parse what the image is and prefers content.

James Dooley: So we are generally content heavy unless we are running PPC or other ad strategies.

James Dooley: If you were a bricklayer you would allow the bricklayer to build the wall.

James Dooley: We want to be the lead generation company that you allow to do what we are good at.

James Dooley: For that reason we went down the performance based lead generation route.

James Dooley: Then we know what you actually care about is how many leads you get, how many you convert, and how much you owe us out of your profits.

James Dooley: Like Kasra said, our best clients by a country mile are the ones who have embraced what we do.

James Dooley: They understand that we take all of the risk and there is a lot of risk involved.

James Dooley: That is why we do not accept everyone.

James Dooley: That is why you have to be almost in an exclusive type of club.

James Dooley: You have to tick all the boxes for us to say we are willing to work with you.

James Dooley: It is not you choosing the lead generator.

James Dooley: You could go to Clutch, Bark, Checkatrade and many other lead generation companies and every single one of them will accept you.

James Dooley: They are guaranteed to make profit on you because they will sell leads.

James Dooley: They might generate a lead for £5 and sell it to you for £50, so they are guaranteed to make profit and will accept everyone.

James Dooley: We are not guaranteed to make profit.

James Dooley: We give you the leads and you pay nothing up front.

James Dooley: You pay zero up front.

James Dooley: Then you pay on the conversions.

James Dooley: When you make profit, we make profit.

James Dooley: If you do not make profit, we do not make profit.

James Dooley: We make nothing if you do not convert those jobs.

James Dooley: Because of our onboarding process with who we work with, we now get a much better working relationship on performance based lead generation.

James Dooley: It is a no brainer for business owners, so they are happy working with us.

James Dooley: Our culture within the team is very good.

James Dooley: It gives our team a happy working environment and they are willing to keep growing the system.

James Dooley: It has worked well for us, but we have made a lot of mistakes over the years.

James Dooley: Our onboarding is now a lot more rigorous.

James Dooley: We have to make sure clients tick the boxes and are good enough at converting the jobs.

James Dooley: That is why we do a performance based lead generation model.

James Dooley: What do you feel some companies or some clients might be typing in or searching for when they look for what we do as a company?

Kasra Dash: No win no fee leads, success based lead generation, no upfront cost leads.

Kasra Dash: There is definitely a variety of phrases.

Kasra Dash: What do you think?

James Dooley: I think some people are typing in leads that convert, guaranteed ROI lead generation company, finder’s fee lead generation.

James Dooley: Finder’s fee is a great one because we are not looking to generate you leads completely for free forever.

James Dooley: We are giving you the leads initially on the upfront for free, but we want you to work some sort of finder’s fee or commission for us doing the hard work of finding you the client to sell your service or product to.

James Dooley: Add that little bit of finder’s fee on for yourself.

James Dooley: Here is actually a list.

James Dooley: Commission only lead generation, pay for performance leads, zero upfront fee leads, revenue share leads, incentive based lead generation, kickback based lead generation, finder’s fee lead generation, referral fee lead generation, pay per referral leads, lead generation with kickbacks, pay for result referral leads, pay on conversion leads.

James Dooley: That should be the main list.

James Dooley: If you have any other terminology for what we are offering, drop it in the comment section.

Kasra Dash: For sure.

Kasra Dash: The main ones I would use out of that list would be rev share, where we are doing a share of the revenue or profit, and kickbacks, where you are giving a finder’s fee.

Kasra Dash: You are giving a kickback.

Kasra Dash: You are happy because you have done a job and made a few thousand, and you give us a percentage of the profits you have made.

Kasra Dash: That is why FatRank has gone down the performance based lead generation route.

Kasra Dash: If you want to apply, head over to FatRank.com, go to the contact page, put your information in there and we can see where we might be able to work with you.

Kasra Dash: Ideally that is in the UK and over a large area.

Kasra Dash: In a perfect world you would be working nationwide within the UK.

Kasra Dash: There are lots of different caveats about why we might still work with you over smaller areas.

Kasra Dash: Head over to FatRank.com and fill in the form to see whether you might be eligible for performance based lead generation service.

Kasra Dash: The link will also be in the description down below.