How Justin Lalonde Grew paidadvertising.com From $0 to $75k/Month
Justin Lalonde started his agency during COVID as a full-time student and grew paidadvertising.com from $0 to $75,000 a month in four years. He and Michael talk about the personalized Looms that booked his first clients, buying a premium domain, pricing on a share of ad profit, why you should learn the service yourself, and the systems that helped him keep clients longer.
Watch the episode
Topics covered
- Starting an agency during COVID while still a student
- Personalized Looms with a 38% meeting rate
- Getting clients from YouTube and referrals
- Buying the paidadvertising.com domain
- Flat fee plus share of ad profit pricing
- Learning advertising yourself vs being a middleman
- Client retention systems and long-term vision
Key takeaways
- Personalized cold Looms got Justin a 38% meeting booked rate.
- He did outreach for the first hour of every weekday and reached nearly $15,000 a month within eight months while still a student.
- YouTube was his top channel for a while. This year referrals lead.
- Justin charges a flat fee plus 10% of the net profit from ads.
- Learn the service yourself. If you just pass clients to a media buyer, you're a middleman.
- Growing too fast cost him clients. A full-time systems integrator helped fix that.
- Build for cash flow first and keep the option to sell later.
Show notes
🦠 Starting during COVID
Justin started out doing media and design work, which was what he studied in college. About four months in, he pivoted to eCommerce to get retainers. He started in the French Canadian market during COVID, when strict lockdowns pushed local businesses online.
He did 25 to 50 touchpoints a day, mixing emails and calls, during the first hour of each weekday. He landed around 10 to 12 clients and reached nearly $15,000 a month within his first eight months, all while studying full time.
🎥 Personalized Looms
What worked best was sending personalized Loom videos to cold prospects. Justin says it got him a 38% meeting booked rate.
Since then his acquisition has changed. YouTube was his top channel in the second half of 2022 and in 2023. This year, referrals and network referrals lead the way.
“I was getting a 38% meeting book rate from my looms”
Justin Lalonde, 3:50
🌐 Buying paidadvertising.com
The agency used to have a different name. Justin wanted a short premium domain. The owner of paidads.com wanted six figures, so he bought paidadvertising.com through a GoDaddy broker for $9,000 USD. He now runs a Google search campaign on it.
💰 Pricing and tracking
Justin charges a flat fee plus 10% of the net profit from ads. In his example, a brand spends $20,000, makes $100,000 in revenue and has 50% cost of goods. That leaves $30,000 in profit, and his share is calculated after the flat fee. He used to charge a percentage tied to ROAS and is now considering a percentage of ad spend.
For tracking, he uses Triple Whale, and Hyros for WooCommerce and info product clients.
🧠 Learn it yourself
Justin's view is simple. If all you do is get clients and pass them to a media buyer, you're a middleman. Knowing the skill means that, in the worst case, you can do the media buying yourself. He also says a freelancer with a VA can make $10,000 to $15,000 a month, and he talks about the ethics of using a freelancer's case studies as your own.
“I believe that you should be learning the service yourself”
Justin Lalonde, 16:56
🔁 Retention and the long game
In 2022, the agency went from 8 to 18 clients and then fell back to 7 by January 2023. Justin says it used to cap out at about 10 clients with 11-month retention, and now runs around 15 clients with about 8 months. To fix it, he hired a full-time systems integrator for a year to build out ClickUp and Google Sheets templates.
Long term, he wants the agency to be sellable but cares most about cash flow. He also wants to rely less on eCommerce.
“let's just become the ultimate ads expert”
Justin Lalonde, 27:29
About Justin Lalonde
Justin Lalonde runs paidadvertising.com, a paid ads agency focused mainly on Meta for eCommerce brands, with Google and TikTok as well. In the episode he says the agency has worked with around 70 eCommerce brands and spent about $9.6 million on ads last year, $5.5 million of it on Meta.
He also runs an ads training program called Ad Engine, a local business lead gen agency with a partner, and a YouTube channel with around 600 long-form videos.
Episode links
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