Web Scraping can unlock a lot of value by providing you access to web data.
Does that mean that there is money to be made from that value?
The simple answer is… of course!
Offering web scraping services is a legitimate way to make some extra cash (or some serious cash if you work hard enough).
Here are some ways you can use web scraping to make money.
Build and sell a list of leads
Every sale starts with a lead.
As a result, all kinds of businesses around the world will spend thousands of dollars on high-quality lead lists.
In the past, we’ve written about why no one should ever buy a list of emails. Mostly because it is often hard to guarantee that the leads you’re buying are legitimate.
But by working closely with your client, you can earn their trust and follow our best practices for building high-quality lead lists.
Scrape a list of customers / leads
Following up on the previous idea, why not build the list for yourself?
After all, we all have a talent or skill we can sell. From programming to guitar lessons.
If you can scrape a high-quality list of potential customers, you can start advertising and selling.
From emailing them directly to targeting them social media ads via their Audience platforms, there are multiple ways you can scrape a list of leads and monetize it.
Once you get those new clients / customers, you should have a workflow software to keep everything organized. You should have a checklist. From generating your list, to onboarding new clients.
Here’s our in-depth guide on using a web scraper to build a high-quality leads list.
Scrape data to build an app
Why not try your hand at app development?
I know, this sounds quite intimidating. But with web scraping, you can scrape the data you need to build a simple app without the need for any coding skills.
For example, let’s say you’d want to create a simple investment app that sends you an email one a stock hits a specific price. You can do so by following these simple guides:
- Here’s how to scrape stock price data from Yahoo Finance
- Here’s how to export the results from your scrape on to a Google Sheet document
- Here’s how to send an email notification based on the value of a cell on Google Sheets
Uncover market opportunities
You can use web scraping to identify market opportunities and gaps in product offerings.
For example, let’s assume you’ve scrape data on all bicycles being sold on Amazon.
From your research, you have noticed that there’s a certain price range for which all products get low review scores.
For example, bicycles priced within the $500 to $1000 price range all average about 3 stars in review scores. They also get tons of reviews, meaning that people are buying them but are not pleased with them.
This means there is a gap in the market for mid-range bicycles that can actually meet the customers’ expectations.
You’ve just uncovered the demand for a new product or business idea!
Does this sound like your cup of tea? Here’s how to scrape product data from Amazon with a web scraper.
Take up paid web scraping gigs
Why not take on a real-world web scraping job?
Yup, those are a thing.
Multiple companies often decide to outsource their web scraping jobs and can offer some pretty decent payouts for more complex jobs.
A great place to start is UpWork, a platform that allows businesses to connect with freelancers and allows them to hire them for one-off jobs.
Here’s the UpWork search results page for “web scraping”
Closing thoughts
As you can see, there are numerous ways in which you can use web scraping to make money.
We haven’t uncovered every single one of them but we are sure you can probably think of even more ways to make money with web scraping.
Now that you have all these ideas, it’s time to get scraping!
Which Web Scraper Should you use?
Now that you know how you can make money, you'll need to decide which web scraper to choose.
While there are several options are there, we think you'll enjoy ParseHub! It's free to download, easy to use, cloud-based scraping and many more.
No need for a method of payment.
Better yet, become a certified Web Scraping expert with our free courses! Enroll for free today and get your certificates!