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I have an addiction.
It’s web scraping. It’s super easy and as it turns out, super fricking powerful.
And there’s an opportunity here. An arbitrage of clicking some buttons, clicking some more buttons. And selling to companies less sophisticated than your fine self.
Apify is the tool that makes this possible at scale.
The Platform: Apify
It's a marketplace of ready-made web scrapers (they call them "Actors") that can extract data from pretty much any website you can think of.
Someone else has already built the technical stuff. You just use their tools to collect data, organize it into something useful, and sell it to businesses who'll pay for it.
Think of it as outsourcing the technical headache whilst keeping the profitable bit - finding customers and delivering what they need.
The Money Play
Forget building your own scrapers. Here's the accessible route that doesn't require you to write a single line of code:
Use existing Actors to scrape data → Clean and enrich it → Sell it to businesses
Let me break this down with examples.
Example 1: Local Business Lead Generation
There's an Actor on Apify that scrapes Google Maps. You could:
Scrape all plumbers in Manchester with fewer than 10 reviews
Export to a spreadsheet with their contact details
Add a column noting they probably need help with online reputation
Sell this list to a reputation management agency for £200-500
Your cost is maybe £20-30 in Apify credits to run the scraper. Time investment ~20 minutes.
Example 2: Product Research for E-commerce
Scrape product listings from marketplaces, clean the data, identify pricing gaps or trending products, sell the analysis to Amazon FBA sellers or dropshippers.
There are people charging £500-2,000 monthly for this exact service.
Example 3: Recruitment Data
Scrape job listings from specific industries, organize by salary ranges, company size, and location. Sell to recruitment agencies who need current market data.
Think about it. Fresh data full of buying intent signals delivered straight into a recruiter douche’s inbox that could make them 20 grand for a placement.
Sweet eh?
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Why This Works
Businesses need data. They're willing to pay for it. But they don't have time to figure out web scraping, and hiring a developer is expensive.
You're solving a real problem: turning messy public data into clean, actionable information they can use immediately.
The beauty is you're not competing on technical skills. You're competing on understanding what businesses need and delivering it in a format they can use.
The Technical Bit (It's Simple)
Sign up for Apify - free tier includes $5 credit monthly, paid plans start at $49/month
Browse the Apify Store for relevant Actors (scrapers already built)
Run the Actor with your target parameters
Download the results as CSV or JSON
Clean it up in Excel or Google Sheets
Deliver to your client
That's it. The platform handles all the complicated scraping infrastructure. You just need to know what data to collect and how to make it useful.
Most scrapers cost $0.25-2.00 per 1,000 results, depending on complexity. Your margins are massive if you're selling cleaned, organized data to businesses.
Pricing This Service
One-off data pulls: £200-800 depending on complexity and data volume
Monthly subscriptions: £300-2,000 for regular data delivery
Custom projects: £500-3,000+ for specialized research
Don't underprice yourself. You're not selling CSV files - you're selling time saved and decisions enabled. A client paying you £500 monthly for lead data is getting incredible value if it saves them 10 hours of manual research or generates one extra sale.
Getting Started
Sign up for Apify's free tier ($5 monthly credit). Browse their Actor store for relevant scrapers. Run a test scrape, clean the data in a spreadsheet, and present it to one business in your network as proof of concept.
Start with people you already know. Estate agents want competitor property data. Recruiters need job posting intelligence. E-commerce sellers want pricing analysis. Find one person with a data problem they're solving manually and show them a better way.
Once you've delivered value to one client, ask for referrals. The easiest path to clients 2-10 is through client 1.
Oh, and when in doubt, just ask Gemini Pro 3 to take you through the entire process from start to finish, to business like your life depends on it. What a bloody time man.
The Future of Shopping? AI + Actual Humans.
AI has changed how consumers shop, but people still drive decisions. Levanta’s research shows affiliate and creator content continues to influence conversions, plus it now shapes the product recommendations AI delivers. Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified.
Different Angle for Developers
If you can code, there's a separate opportunity: building and selling your own Actors on the Apify Store.
Top creators are making $10,000+ monthly recurring revenue. September 2025 alone saw Apify pay out $560,000 to community developers. There's even a $1M challenge running until end of January 2026 rewarding developers who publish new tools.
But that requires development skills and ongoing maintenance. The data arbitrage play I've outlined above is accessible to anyone who can work a spreadsheet and talk to businesses about their data needs.
To your success,
Lewis
P.S. If you build something on Apify, let me know. I honestly think there’s an untapped reservoir of opportunity here.