Remote closing and appointment setting

The research was done by AI agents that open web pages. Some sites refuse them; where that happened we say so. The small numbers point to the source list at the end. Where a figure is our own sum or guess, it is marked “our estimate” and the basis is given.

The claim

These are examples of the claim, copied from our collection of 11 tweets on this scheme¹. View counts are as collected on 6 October 2026. Dates are worked out from each tweet’s ID number. The page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

“Beginners & 9-5ers are making $5k - $10k a month with appointment setting.”

@salesmaverick__, 19 January 2023, 468,762 views¹

“My free course has helped 27 beginners land a $5,000-$25,000 per month High Ticket Sales position in the past 45 days”

@cadenjara, 20 November 2023, 41,791 views¹

“Here are all of the 1099 WFH sales roles we sourced last month inside of TSSC in case you were wondering

7/1/26, Closer, $4,000 - $8,000/mo, Home Service Biz-Opp 7/1/26, Setter, $5,400 - $6,600/mo, Business Book Publishing 7/1/26, Closer, $15,000 - $40,000/mo, Public Speaking”

@serialsales, 25 August 2026, 3,842 views¹. Our copy holds only these three rows; the list may continue. “Biz-Opp” is short for business opportunity, a programme sold as a way to earn money.

“High ticket sales is how you can make $4k/m+ as a Nigerian.”

@bruno_nwogu, 25 October 2022, view count not recorded¹

Three of these four tweets go on to offer a free guide, course or training by direct message. We quote only the part that states the income. A fifth tweet, from an account too small to name under our rules, says online creators will pay as much as $15,000 a month to someone who replies to their direct messages and books sales calls¹.

What the scheme is

A “high-ticket” offer is something expensive sold on a phone or video call, usually between about $2,000 and $25,000²¹. (“Offer” is the trade’s word for the product being sold.) Most often it is a coaching or training programme. One vacancy we read was for selling a $12,000 career-coaching programme to people who had already bought a $350 product from the same company³³.

Two jobs sit around that call.

• A closer takes the call and tries to make the sale (“close” it).
• An appointment setter finds the people and books them onto the closer’s calendar. Setters work by phone (cold calling, meaning calling people who did not ask to be called) or by direct message on Instagram, X or LinkedIn. That second kind is the “DM setter”.

Both are usually paid by commission, a share of each sale, with no salary. The tweet above calls the roles “1099”, the US tax term for an independent contractor, not an employee¹. “WFH” means work from home.

The job is real. Companies advertise these roles and some people hold them. The questions are what the pay formula needs to reach the claimed income, and who gets the roles that pay.

The arithmetic

Step 1: what one sale pays

The usual closer commission is about 10% of “cash collected”, which means the money the buyer has actually paid so far, not the price on the contract. We read this in job posts:

• 10% of cash collected on an “Average deal size: $20,000+”, so $2,000 or more a sale, plus a bonus of “$500 for every $50,000 collected”⁷.
• “10% commissions upon day 1 cash collected” at an online-education company, in a post dated May 2025¹².
• 15% on deals of $5,000 to $15,000, so $750 to $2,250 a sale⁹.
• 10% of the first month’s payment plus 5% of later payments on deals of $2,000 to $8,000¹⁰. On a $2,000 deal the first 10% is $200 (our sum). The listing’s summary fields show 15% and a $500 monthly retainer, which conflict with the body text; we used the body¹⁰.
• A tiered 10%, 15%, 20% or 25%, depending on how many sales the closer makes in a day, on deals of $6,800 to $22,000⁸. That is $680 to $5,500 a sale (our sum).

In the posts we read, then, one sale pays a closer from about $200 to about $5,500 (our sums).

Sellers of closer training quote a narrower figure. A US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), recorded one seller’s pitch: “The average commission is 8 to10%, and the average price point is $8 to 10 thousand dollars… . That’s 600 bucks to a thousand bucks per close.”² Where we use $600 to $1,000 a sale below, it is that seller’s figure, not a measured one.

None of the closer posts we opened offers a base salary in its text. Three say commission-only outright⁷⁹¹⁰. A fourth lists commission and nothing else⁸. The fifth says it is for people who like to be paid on performance “rather than hourly pay”¹².

Step 2: the money that has to be collected

Income = commission rate x cash collected. At 10%, the sum is simple (our estimate):

One post shows the same sum as the highest figure in the quoted course tweet, $25,000 a month, from the employer’s side. It advertises on-target earnings of $30,000 to $40,000 a month and asks applicants for a “Proven track record closing a minimum of $250k/month in cash collected”⁸. $250,000 at 10% is $25,000. “On-target earnings”, often written OTE, is the pay a hiring company says a person would get if they hit its targets. It is an advertised figure, not pay received.

Step 3: the calls needed

Not every booked call happens, and not every call ends in a sale. The “show rate” is the share of booked people who turn up. The “close rate” is the share of held calls that end in a sale.

We found no measured figure for either. What exists is sellers’ pitches and employers’ posts, and they do not agree:

• One pitch quoted by the FTC says “The average KPI is 20% closing ratio”, on 25 calls a week². (A KPI is a target figure a company tracks.)
• A second pitch in the same complaint says “Average show-up rate is 80 percent” and “Average close rate, we’ll say it’s like 30 percent, but since you’re newer, we’ll say 25”².
• One job post asks closers to keep “a minimum 20% close rate on qualified opportunities”⁷. (“Qualified” means already checked as able and likely to buy.)
• Another expects experienced closers to “close 2-3 deals per day on average” from “at least 5 - 7 live calls per day”⁸. That is roughly 30% to 60% (our division). The same company’s setter post says “1 Closer = 18 - 20 deals per month”, which is about one a day¹⁴. The two posts do not match.

The table uses the lowest pitch figure, 20%, with an 80% show rate, and a 10% column for comparison (our estimate):

With about 21 working days in a month, 100 held calls is about five a day and 250 is about twelve a day (our division). The best-supplied posts we read offer 4 to 5 meetings a day¹⁰ or 6 to 8 call slots a day⁸¹². So $25,000 a month on a $5,000 offer does not fit in a calendar at these rates. It needs a higher price, a higher commission or a much higher close rate.

The closer does not control the main number. The calls on the calendar come from the company’s advertising and its setters. A closer with few calls earns little however good they are. One post we read supplies nothing: “There’s no base and no lead list — you build the pipeline and you close it.”⁹ (“Base” is a fixed salary. A “lead” is a possible buyer. The “pipeline” is the list of people being worked on.)

Step 4: the setter’s sums

Setter pay is smaller per sale. What we read:

• A flat fee. One post pays the setter $500 for each booked call that ends in a sale, and advertises $8,000 to $10,000 a month¹⁴. That is 16 to 20 sales a month from the setter’s own bookings (our division). The post says one closer makes 18 to 20 deals a month¹⁴. So the advertised figure assumes the setter booked nearly every deal one closer makes. The post also says “we cannot have a basic/inexperienced setter”¹⁴.
• A small base plus a few per cent. Two posts on a Philippines job board. A fitness-coaching employer offers “$650 USD per month” plus “3-5% of cash collected”, states “Expected Earnings: $800–$1,200+ per month” for 40 to 50 hours a week and 80 to 100 or more messages a day, and asks for one to three or more years as a DM setter¹⁶. A coaching brand offers a base of “200–300 USD/month” plus 3% to 5%, says “You can make 800–1,800+ USD/month once you are dialed in”, and asks for at least one year’s experience¹⁷. To reach $5,000 a month on the first post’s terms at 5%, the setter’s bookings would have to bring in about $87,000 (our sum: $4,350 ÷ 0.05).
• Commission only, beginners accepted. One cold-calling setter post, from a marketing agency selling to businesses, says “No sales experience required”, “There is no base salary and no hourly wage”, and “Our full-time standard is 200 dials a day”¹¹. (A dial is one call attempt.) It pays 40% of each deal the setter books that closes, which the post itself says is unusually high¹¹. Its smallest service sells for $2,000, so the smallest payout is $800¹¹. It states the result plainly: “Setters who hold that standard have consistently earned $3,000 USD or more per month. Setters who do not earn less, and some earn nothing.”¹¹ 200 dials a day is about 4,200 a month. $3,000 is therefore at most 3 to 4 closed deals from about 4,200 dials, fewer than one paying deal per 1,000 dials (our division: $3,000 ÷ $800 = 3.75).
• A salary. A coaching business advertised a setter (phone, DMs, texts, voice notes) at “$40k - $45k per year” plus performance pay¹⁵. That is about $3,300 to $3,750 a month before the extra (our division).
• A staffing company’s listings. These advertise most setter roles at $5,000 to $8,000 a month on target; see “Who makes money from it”³³.

We found no primary source for what DM setters are paid per booked call.

Step 5: what comes off the top

• Tax. A US contractor pays self-employment tax: “The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%.”²³ Nothing is withheld by the company. For a US contractor, 15.3% of $10,000 of commission is roughly $1,500 before income tax (our estimate; the taxable base is a little smaller than the full amount and we did not check it). Tax in other countries was not checked.
• No pay floor. The US Department of Labor says of minimum wage and overtime: “Independent contractors do not have these protections”²⁴. Weeks of calls with no sale are unpaid.
• Training fees. Covered below. A $9,800 package takes 10 to 17 sales to pay back at the seller’s own figure of $600 to $1,000 a sale (our sum)².
• Refunds. If a buyer gets their money back, the commission may be taken back too (a “clawback”). This is widely described, but we found no contract or post to quote, so we cannot put a number on it.

What the tweet text does not say

The 11 tweets give income ranges: “$4k/m+”, “$5k - $10k”, “$5,000-$25,000”, “$15k/mo+”, one figure of as much as $15,000 a month, and one list of roles¹. In the tweet text we collected, none gives the commission rate, the price of the offer, the number of calls or messages a day, the show or close rate, who supplies the leads, the experience asked for, or the tax¹. We did not view the images, videos, threads or guides attached to them. At least three tweet texts, and probably four, are cut off in our copy.

What people who tried it report

We found no dataset, study or checked income report of what remote closers or setters earn. No source gives the share who land a role, the share who earn anything, or how long people last. What exists is one regulator case, job posts, and reviews on training companies’ pages.

The regulator case. In December 2023 the FTC sued the companies behind a closer-training programme called “The Sales Mentor”, also sold as Inbound Closer and Sales Closer Academy (FTC v. Traffic and Funnels, LLC and others)². The complaint says: “Since 2018, more than 55,360 consumers have purchased the Sales Mentor program.”² It says buyers paid more than $29 million from January 2019 to October 2022². On what those buyers earned, it says: “Defendants have never systematically tracked the earnings results of purchasers of the Sales Mentor program.”² So the largest record of people who tried this route holds no outcome figure at all. Nobody counted. The defendants agreed to proposed court orders to settle the case³⁴. A settlement is not a finding that the allegations were true. The case concerns only the companies and people named in it. More is under “Who makes money from it”.

Reviews of training companies. These are on Trustpilot, which does not fact-check reviews. The first reading was through a tool that summarises pages. A reviewer of this page then read the pages through a second route and confirmed the four direct quotes below from Closing Bible, AppointmentSetter.com and Elite Closers; the percentages were not re-checked.

• Closing Bible (closer training and placement): 125 reviews, 93% five-star²⁷. Many reviewers report landing a closer role within two to six weeks, including some who say they had never worked in sales²⁷. One says he landed a “multiple 6 figure role”; that is the advertised level of a role, and no positive review we saw states pay received²⁷. One one-star reviewer, who says a refund was refused, writes: “NOT worth it if you are not in high ticket sales already.”²⁷ Another reviewer who did not find a role says the company refunded the fee²⁷. No company reply was shown under the critical reviews we saw. There were no reviews in the last 12 months²⁷.
• AppointmentSetter.com (reviewers call the programme New Age Setter): 94 reviews, 79% five-star, 9% one-star²⁶. Reviewers cite fees of about £5,000 and “6K”. Several say they got no placement, and several five-star reviewers say they had not yet landed a role, for example “I am in the placement phase still looking for an opportunity”²⁶. One positive reviewer reports a first setter role within 90 days. No company reply was shown under the fee and placement reviews we saw. The company did reply to one other one-star review, saying it had no record of contacting that person and that it is not flagged by the FTC²⁶.
• Elite Closers: 177 reviews²⁸. Some reviewers report job offers within weeks, and one says the fee was earned back. One review cites a fee of $7,800. Three reviews give pay figures of different kinds. One reviewer writes that he and another member “made like 200-300$ each in those two months” in a placed role (first-hand). The same reviewer says a closer he spoke to “did 6k take home the past week” (second-hand). A positive reviewer says she is “in a position to make 150k a year” setting (expected, not received)²⁸. The company replied to the critical reviews, mostly by linking to its own documents, and in one case said the reviewer was never a client²⁸. One reviewer in February 2026 says the company announced it was closing²⁸.
• Remote Closing Academy: three reviews only²⁵. One reviewer writes: “In my first month on an offer I made $4500 and my second month, I made $8,800”²⁵. Another reports a first $5,000 about two months after landing a role²⁵. At the seller-pitch figure of $600 to $1,000 a sale, $8,800 is 9 to 15 sales (our estimate)². According to a review site, Remote Closing Academy and Closers.io, described next, were founded by the same person³⁴; we did not confirm this on the companies’ own sites.

The buyers of the service are not all satisfied either. Closers.io is a company that sells sales programmes to businesses and places sales staff with them. On its Trustpilot page 93% of 1,153 reviews are five-star, and the company invites its reviews²⁹. The one- and two-star reviews are largely from business owners who say they paid $12,000 to $15,000 for a sales programme or appointment-setting service and got few or no sales²⁹. Where the company replied, it disputed the account; in one case it said the client had paid half the fee, missed later payments and lost a payment dispute²⁹. This matters to a closer because a commission-only closer on an offer that does not sell earns nothing.

People outside the course world. Two comments on the forum Hacker News are self-reported and give no income. A software engineer says he went from no sales skill in December 2019 to a close rate “close to near 50%” on well-qualified leads by early 2021, on $3,000 to $5,000 sales³¹. He does not say whether he was selling his own product or someone else’s, so this shows how long the skill took, not what a commission closer earns. In 2025 another commenter, replying to someone considering a business that places closers with companies, wrote: “You can definitely be successful doing this (so don’t be discouraged, if you do it well you’ll stand out) but you’re competing with an ocean of trash that so many businesses / startups have been burned by and/or are apprehensive of.”³¹

Reddit refused our tools, so first-hand forum threads were not read. That is the largest gap in this section.

What the rules allow now

Selling someone else’s product for commission is ordinary, lawful work. The rules below shape how it may be done.

US sales-call law applies to the person on the call. The Telemarketing Sales Rule, as quoted in an FTC complaint, defines a telemarketer as “any person who, in connection with telemarketing, initiates or receives telephone calls to or from a customer or donor”⁴³. The FTC’s guidance says individuals who take part must comply, and gives a penalty of $53,088 per violation⁴⁴. The rule bars misrepresenting “Any material aspect of an investment opportunity including, but not limited to, risk, liquidity, earnings potential”, and bars misstating refund terms⁴⁵. It is also a violation to give “substantial assistance or support to any seller or telemarketer when that person knows or consciously avoids knowing” that the seller is breaking the rule⁴⁵. In practice: a closer may not promise a buyer an income or a refund that the company cannot back.

People on the sales side have been named. In the Sales Mentor case the FTC sued, alongside the owners, a person who the complaint says served as a “salesperson and sales director”². He was a director who, the complaint says, took part in developing the marketing, not an ordinary contract closer. We found no case against an ordinary commission closer or setter.

The offers themselves are a regular target. Many high-ticket offers are money-making programmes. Three FTC actions, each concerning only the companies named in it, and each settled without a court finding on the allegations:

• Lurn (2023): the company and its chief executive agreed to orders requiring them to turn over $2.5 million. The FTC alleged that its telemarketers used a script that asked buyers their income goal and answered, whatever the figure, “I’m 100% confident we can help you.”⁴⁷
• Air AI (complaint filed August 2025): the FTC alleged false earnings claims, and that sellers told buyers they could get a full refund and “focus on this claim when consumers express concern about the cost or performance of the Services”⁴³. On 24 March 2026 the FTC asked the court to enter an agreed order that “resolves all matters in dispute in this action”, stating “The Federal Trade Commission has now approved the proposed settlement.”⁵⁹ We did not read the order’s terms and did not confirm that the court has entered it.
• Growth Cave (January 2026): a settlement under which the defendants were “permanently banned from marketing and selling business opportunities and credit repair programs”⁴⁶.

When an offer is shut down, the people selling it lose that income. The press releases do not say what happened to sales staff, so that is our inference.

Platform rules cut against common DM-setter methods.

• Instagram’s terms forbid users to “solicit, collect, or use login credentials or badges of other users”⁴⁸. DM setters often log in as the client. Meta has business tools for giving staff access without sharing a password, but we could not open the help page, so that is from memory.
• X prohibits “Sending bulk, aggressive, high-volume unsolicited replies, mentions, or direct messages”⁴⁹.
• LinkedIn’s agreement says “You will not share your account with anyone else”⁵⁰.

The account at risk is usually the client’s, and the setter’s work ends with it. This is our reading of the terms. We found no numbers on bans of DM setters.

State licences. Florida licenses individual telemarketing salespeople: “The application fee for the salesperson is $50 annually.”⁵² We did not check which exemptions apply or what other states require.

Paying for placement. The FTC’s general advice to job seekers is: “If a placement firm asks you for a fee — especially one you have to pay in advance — walk away.”⁵³ A community that only lists openings is not a placement firm in the strict sense, so this is general advice, not a ruling on any community.

Income claims by sellers. In 2021 the FTC sent a notice about money-making claims to “more than 1,100 businesses that pitch money-making ventures”; it said being on the list does not suggest wrongdoing⁵⁷. In January 2025 it proposed extending its Business Opportunity Rule to business coaching⁵⁵. A law firm reported two commissioners voting against⁵⁶. We found no final rule, so sellers of closer training are not required to publish what their buyers earn. In the UK, the advertising regulator ruled against a money-making course advert in October 2025 “Because the ads implied the results were typical, and we understood that was not likely to be the case”⁵⁸. That ruling was not about a closer course.

Who makes money from it

In our 11 tweets. None of the tweet texts names an employer hiring closers. Not every shortened link in them was opened¹. Our count of where they lead:

• 4 ask the reader to retweet, like, comment or follow to be sent a free guide, document, course or training by direct message. These four hold about 608,000 of the roughly 613,000 recorded views. Two tweets have no view count¹.
• 3 are from one account, @serialsales, and refer to a community it calls TSSC or to the high-ticket job market¹. We could not find the community’s page, price or member count.
• 2 link to something for sale: a Udemy course, and a product priced at ₦25,000 in the tweet¹. That second link is an affiliate link, meaning the person posting can be paid a commission on the sale, and the seller’s page calls the product an ebook⁴¹.
• 2 are labelled in our collection as coaching or a course in the account’s profile¹. We did not open the profiles, so those two labels are unchecked.

An earlier thread by @cadenjara, dated 27 March 2023, opens: “Give me 24 weeks with you and I’ll have you making $6,000-$15,000/month profit (minimum)”³². We read it on third-party copies, not on X itself. It offers 24 weeks of coaching and says: “I guarantee that if you’re not in a SOLID Sales position with high OTE by the end of the 24 weeks, I’ll send you your money back.”³² No price is shown³². The thread is eight months older than the tweet quoted at the top. We do not know whether this coaching was still offered when the November 2023 tweet was posted.

Training sellers. The Sales Mentor case gives a documented price ladder. Packages ran from $97, through about $497 to $600, to “private” coaching at “around $8,800 to $9,800”². Buyers paid more than $29 million². $29 million across 55,360 buyers is about $520 each (our estimate; the two figures cover slightly different periods), so most buyers took the cheaper packages. The complaint does not say how many bought private coaching.

The FTC’s press release, headed “Bogus Telemarketing Advice”, says the sellers advertised “incomes of $10,000 to $20,000 per month on average”³. The complaint says the promised list of hiring businesses “often turned out to be nothing more than access to scant or outdated job listings”². Under the proposed orders the judgment was $16,363,073.11 against all but one defendant, mostly suspended because the defendants could not pay, with $1 million to be turned over for refunds³.

The FTC sent more than $960,000 to 8,174 people in January 2025⁴. Its refund page says that round “resulted in more than $802,000 in refunds” and that a second round of 1,623 payments totals more than $136,000⁵. The two first-round figures differ; our guess is that some payments were not collected, but the page does not say. Either way, about three cents came back for each dollar paid, and about one buyer in seven was sent a first-round payment (our estimates: $960,000 ÷ $29 million, and 8,174 ÷ 55,360).

These are allegations in a settled case about the companies named in it. They do not show that buyers earned nothing. They show the seller did not measure.

Other training prices we found:

• Remote Closing Academy does not publish a price. A review site reports $8,400, citing a forum user³⁴. That site promotes a competing programme, and the seller’s own site refused our tools.
• Dan Lok’s High Ticket Closer page gives no typical student result. Its standard earnings disclaimer says: “Any financial numbers referenced here, or on any of our sites or emails, are simply estimates or projections or past results, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings”³⁰.
• On Skool, a platform for paid communities, a search for closer communities on 10 October showed monthly prices from $5 to $297, one yearly price of $997, one one-off price of $25,000, and one free group with 22,425 members³⁶. Search results change. The free group is run by the staffing agency 1 Call Closers³⁶⁴². One community charges $107 a month and has 115 members; its page, addressed to closers and setters “already taking calls”, lists “Have consistent $15K + months” among the things members learn³⁵. A $19 community with 2,298 members sells access to job posts and says of course sellers that they “provide NO job opportunities”³⁷. Two setter communities had one and four members when we read them. The first charges $39 a month. The second shows $97 a month on its join button, while its own description says $99³⁹.

The platform. Skool charges community owners $9 a month plus a 10% transaction fee, or $99 a month plus 2.9%, and pays 40% of the monthly fee to whoever referred a new community owner⁴⁰.

Companies that supply sales staff. Closers.io says on its site that it places “over 110 talented professionals” a month into client sales teams³³. An Internet Archive copy of its openings page from 5 October 2026 lists 181 roles (our count); a reviewer of this page counted 201 on the live page on 10 October³³. In the archived list, about three in four of the 79 setter roles start between $5,000 and $8,000 a month, with a low of “$2k–$4k+/mo” and a high of “$15K+/mo”. About two in three of the 94 closer roles start between $8,000 and $15,000, with a high of “$30K+/mo” (our counts)³³. The page calls these “On Track Earnings”. They are the hiring side’s on-target figures, not pay received, and the listings show no experience requirement³³. Another agency, 1 Call Closers, states “$325M+” in high-ticket sales and 400 active team members; these are its own figures⁴².

The offer owner. With a 10% commission, the company that owns the offer keeps the other 90% of each sale before its own costs (our sum).

The upside

Employers and some individuals say people earn well from this work. None of it is checked by a third party. This section sets out the best cases we found. Each is the statement of an employer, a seller or the person themselves.

What hiring companies say their people earn

• An online-education company with 6 to 8 call slots a day and 10% commission wrote in May 2025: “OTE starts around 30k/mo, with potential to grow into the $60k/mo range - though this is 100% dependent on YOUR performance”¹². It mentions top closers “earning 50k /pm +” and says the role is for people with experience closing high-ticket deals¹². The same post lists a salary range of $150,000 to $300,000 a year, which is $12,500 to $25,000 a month, and says “we have multiple closers on our team doing 40k+ / pm in cash collected consistently”¹². At 10% that would be about $4,000 a month in commission (our sum). The post may mean commission earned; it does not say, and it does not reconcile these figures. For scale: 6 to 7 calls a day is about 140 a month, and at a 20% close rate that is 28 sales, so $30,000 at 10% needs about $11,000 collected per sale (our estimate).
• A second company advertises on-target earnings of $30,000 to $40,000 a month and says “we have multiple closers on our team currently earning this OTE”⁸.
• A Canadian marketing agency with 20 to 30 inbound leads a week (people who contacted the company first), in a commission-only role: “Top performers have historically made $ 6K- 8K / mth.”¹³ The listing is priced in Canadian dollars (“CAD 5,100-8,750 / month”), so this is C$6,000 to C$8,000. The post, from March 2026, is closed, and says “This is not a beginner sales role”¹³.
• A cold-calling setter role: $3,000 or more a month for those who keep up 200 dials a day¹¹.
• A salaried setter: $40,000 to $45,000 a year¹⁵.

The spread, from $3,000 to $50,000 a month, tracks the offer, the supply of calls and the experience asked for.

What people say they earned

Two reviewers of one training programme report $4,500 and then $8,800 in their first two months on an offer, and $5,000 about two months after landing a role²⁵. These are unverified and come from a page with three reviews. The poster of one tweet in our collection describes going from telesales to high-ticket closing in under six months; we did not read the thread¹.

What the top tenth earn

No data covers commission-only closers. The nearest measure is the US government’s wage survey of employed sales representatives of services, 1.26 million people, for May 2025¹⁸:

Telemarketers have a median of $35,450 a year, about $2,950 a month¹⁸. These are employees, most with a base salary, not contractors, so this is a comparison and not a measurement of closers. It says that $10,000 a month sits between the top quarter and the top tenth of employed services sales representatives, and that $15,000 to $40,000 a month is above the top tenth. A contractor’s commission is before self-employment tax and carries no benefits, so the same dollar figure is worth less than an employee’s wage.

Two weaker figures point the same way. A staffing firm reports job-site data putting average US pay for a remote sales closer at “$112,891 per year”, with most between $60,000 and $157,000²⁰. We could not open the job site itself, and such figures are built at least partly from advertised pay. In salaried software sales, one vendor’s data on 25,112 quota-carrying salespeople says “Fewer than 1 in 4 AEs hit quota”²². (An AE is an account executive, a salesperson who closes deals. Quota is the sales target.) That is a different kind of selling, but it suggests the on-target figures in job posts describe the top of the range.

What a good result would look like if you land a role (our guess)

No source says how many people get this far, and nothing we found measures how pay grows over time. Each band below rests on one source.

• First months: nothing to about $2,000 a month. This is a software vendor’s unsourced band for beginners (“often $0 to $2,000 per month”)²¹.
• A beginner setter keeping up full cold-call volume: $3,000 a month or more, from the one cold-calling post¹¹. Experienced DM setters on the Philippines board are offered $800 to $1,800¹⁶¹⁷.
• An experienced closer with supplied leads: C$6,000 to C$8,000 a month, from one agency’s statement about its top performers in a role it says is not for beginners¹³.
• $15,000 and up: the posts at this level ask for a record such as $250,000 a month already collected⁸.

What it takes to compete

What the people in the well-paid roles have

1. A record they can prove. The best-paid posts say so in writing: “Minimum 3 years of high-ticket closing experience”⁷; “You’ve closed before and can prove it with real numbers.”⁹; a minimum of $250,000 a month already collected⁸.
2. An offer with calls supplied. Four to eight qualified calls a day is what the arithmetic needs, and it is what the best posts provide⁸¹⁰¹². This is the scarce thing. Training is cheap or free³⁶.
3. Skill that takes time. The one independent account we found took about a year to reach a high close rate³¹.
4. Tolerance for volume. The one door we read in full that is open to beginners is 200 cold calls a day¹¹. A vendor’s guide puts closers at 3 to 10 calls a day and setters at 30 to 100 or more conversations a day²¹.
5. Months of thin or no income. One post warns: “Expect a real ramp the first month or two”⁹. (The “ramp” is the slow first weeks.) There is no minimum wage for contractors²⁴.
6. The phone, more than the inbox. @serialsales, whose tweets refer to a community it calls TSSC, writes that for anyone aiming at “the big bucks closing ($15k/mo+)”, DM setting is “a super long detour” (the tweet is cut off in our copy)¹. The two DM-setter posts we read on a Philippines job board advertise $800 to $1,800 a month and ask for at least a year’s experience¹⁶¹⁷. A staffing company’s listings advertise most setter roles at $5,000 to $8,000 a month on target, with no experience requirement shown on the listing³³.

Who you compete with

One free closer community has 22,425 members³⁶. DM-setter roles are advertised on a Philippines job board at monthly bases of $200 to $650¹⁶¹⁷. The vendor whose guide we cite sells software that does DM setting from $97 a month²¹.

What it costs

Entry can cost nothing: the setter post that accepts beginners says “You will also never pay us a cent: no training fees, no lead fees”¹¹. Communities run from free to $297 a month³⁶. Courses and coaching run from $97 to about $9,800 in the one documented price ladder², with one mentorship listed at $25,000³⁶. The larger cost is time without pay.

How to tell early which side you are on

These checks are our judgement, built from the figures above.

• Who fills the calendar? If the company supplies several qualified calls a day, the sums can work. If you must find the buyers yourself, you are running a small business, not taking a job⁹.
• What does one sale pay you, and how many can you take? Multiply it out before starting. A $200 commission needs 50 sales for $10,000¹⁰.
• Is it commission on cash collected, and what happens on a refund? Ask for it in writing.
• Can you speak to people already selling the offer? Ask what they were paid last month, not the on-target figure.
• Are you asked to pay to start? The roles we read charged nothing. If the main thing on offer is a programme to buy, the vendor’s own guide puts it this way: “you are the customer, not the closer.”²¹
• After 30 full working days: a setter with no booked calls that closed, or a closer with fewer than a few calls a day, is on the wrong offer or not yet good enough. The number of calls tells you which.
• What would you have to say to make the sale? If the pitch needs an income promise or a refund promise the company cannot back, the legal exposure includes you⁴⁵.

What we did not verify

• What closers and setters actually earn. No dataset, study or checked income report was found. Every earnings figure on this page is an employer’s, seller’s, vendor’s or individual’s own statement, except the government wage data, which covers employees and not contractors.
• How typical the job posts are. We opened about ten posts. Other posts open to beginners exist and were not read; “the one beginner role” describes our sample, not the market.
• Show rates and close rates. The 20% to 30% and 80% figures are from sellers’ pitches quoted by the FTC and from employers’ posts. Real rates for beginners may be lower.
• The claims in the tweets. We did not check “27 beginners … in the past 45 days” and have no figure for how many people took that course. We did not view the tweets’ images, videos, threads or guides, and did not open every shortened link. X profiles could not be opened, so what our collection records about profiles is unchecked. Tweet dates are worked out from ID numbers. The March 2023 thread was read on third-party copies; on review only its opening could be re-read, in an Internet Archive copy.
• TSSC. We did not find the community’s full name, page, price, refund terms or member count. The roles and pay ranges in the tweet are the poster’s and are not checked.
• The Sales Mentor case. We read the complaint, the December 2023 press release, the January 2025 refund notice and the refund page, not the final court orders. A law firm’s summary said the defendants neither admitted nor denied the allegations; we could not re-open that article, so the statement is not used⁶.
• Other regulator cases. We did not read the Air AI settlement order or confirm that the court entered it. News reports of its money terms were not opened. The status of the January 2025 rule proposal was not confirmed. We did not check whether the $53,088 penalty figure has been updated. Whether a video call with no telephone leg falls under the telemarketing rule is not addressed in the guidance we read. We searched US federal sources and one UK regulator only; rules in Nigeria, where two tweets are aimed, were not checked. We found no court or regulator action against any account quoted on this page, and we do not suggest any connection.
• Training prices. Remote Closing Academy’s price, refund terms and earnings disclaimer were not read at source; its site refused us. A second reported price of $18,000 for three months was seen only in a search summary. The Udemy course behind one tweet could not be opened. The ₦25,000 price is from the tweet only. That Remote Closing Academy and Closers.io share a founder comes from a review site only.
• Skool. The search page refused the last re-check, so the price range is as two earlier readings on 10 October gave it. An earlier reading also showed a $2,499 one-off price that was not there on the second reading; it is not used.
• Job posts. Whether anyone hired through the posts received the advertised pay was not checked. Two posts are undated, two are closed, and two are more than a year old. The single Closers.io vacancy ($12,000 programme, $350 product) could not be re-opened on review. The two counts of Closers.io listings were made on different days and by different routes.
• Trustpilot. Read through a summarising tool, first page only; four quotes were confirmed word for word through a second route. Trustpilot refused the last re-check. The Closers.io star percentage and the “invites reviews” label were seen on the first reading only. We do not know whether reviewers were real customers.
• Job-site salary figures. ZipRecruiter and Glassdoor refused our tools; the figure used is second-hand.
• Reddit. Not readable by our tools. One thread is known and unread: r/sales, “What the hell is this remote closing high ticket…” (reddit.com/r/sales/comments/146gjwu), linked from the Hacker News comment in³¹. It is the most likely place for first-hand accounts in either direction, and a person should open it before this page is treated as final. No journalism that followed people who tried this was found. YouTube income videos were not checked.
• Costs a closer bears. Dialling software, phone numbers and other tools were not priced. Commission clawbacks on refunds, and how long commission takes to arrive on payment plans, were not sourced.
• Exact quotes. Quotes from the two FTC complaints, the Air AI motion, the Sales Mentor and Lurn press releases, the job posts^{78101112131417}, the Hacker News comments, the High Ticket Closer page, the Skool pricing page and two Skool community pages were checked word for word against the page text. Other quotes came through tools that extract or summarise text.
• Routes. ftc.gov refused direct requests; its files and press releases were read in Internet Archive copies, and the refund page through a fetch tool. The reader service used earlier in the day later refused every request from our machine. The government wage pages refused us; the same figures came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ public data service. X’s policy was read in an Internet Archive copy of 7 October 2026. Instagram’s terms were read through the reader service, and the Closers.io listing in an Internet Archive copy.
• Whether the people named have seen this page. The people and companies named here were not contacted before publication.

Sources

“Read at source” means we opened the page itself on 10 October 2026, in some cases through a reader service or an Internet Archive copy because the site refused our tools directly. “Secondary” means we read an article, copy or summary about the source, not the source itself.

1. Does It Pay collection of 11 tweets on this scheme, collected 2026-10-06. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (our own file; tweets not re-opened on X).
2. FTC, Complaint, FTC v. Traffic and Funnels, LLC and others (M.D. Tenn., 3:23-cv-01277). https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/TrafficandFunnelsComplaintfiled.pdf. Filed 2023-12-05. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (Internet Archive copy).
3. FTC press release, “FTC Acts Against Operators of Income Scheme ‘The Sales Mentor’ That Charged Consumers Millions for Bogus Telemarketing Advice”. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-acts-against-operators-income-scheme-sales-mentor-charged-consumers-millions-bogus-telemarketing. 2023-12-11. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (Internet Archive copy).
4. FTC press release on Sales Mentor refunds. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-sends-more-960000-refunds-consumers-harmed-income-scheme-sales-mentor. 2025-01-14. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
5. FTC, Sales Mentor refunds page. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/sales-mentor-refunds. July 2026. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
6. Orrick InfoBytes, summary of the Sales Mentor settlement. https://infobytes.orrick.com (site address only; the article could not be re-opened). 2023-12-14. Secondary; no statement on this page rests on it.
7. Salesfolks, job post: high-ticket B2B closer, marketing services. https://salesfolks.com/job/high-ticket-b2b-closer-marketing-services. 2026-01-08. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
8. ScaleClients, job post: senior account executive (closer). https://scaleclientsio.teamtailor.com/jobs/5876653-senior-account-executive-closer. Undated, live on 2026-10-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
9. Salesfolks, job post: remote setter/closer, software sales. https://salesfolks.com/job/remote-setter-closer-high-ticket-software-sales-commission-150k-ote. 2026-06-21. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
10. Salesfolks, job post: remote high-ticket closer. https://salesfolks.com/job/remote-high-ticket-closer. 2025-07-08. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
11. Workable, job post: commission-only appointment setter. https://jobs.workable.com/jobs/045542fe-b2ba-4b16-8ded-726bf32c8b73.md. 2026-08-14 (date in page data). Read at source on 2026-10-10.
12. Workable, job post: closer, Impact Clients. https://apply.workable.com/impact-clients/jobs/view/3F6F07E3F2.md. 2025-05-21. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
13. MaRS job board (Toronto), job post: high-ticket sales setter/closer, Influicity (closed). https://techjobs.marsdd.com/companies/influicity/jobs/70151174-high-ticket-sales-setter-closer-remote. 2026-03-11. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
14. ScaleClients, job post: high-ticket appointment setter. https://scaleclientsio.teamtailor.com/jobs/6799984-high-ticket-appointment-setter-8k-10k-month-ote. Undated. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
15. Dynamite Jobs, job post: high-ticket appointment setter, Pause Breathwork (closed). https://dynamitejobs.com/company/pausebreathwork/remote-job/high-ticket-appointment-setter-coaching-transformation-programs-2. April 2026. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
16. OnlineJobs.ph, job post 1656529: DM setter, fitness coaching. https://www.onlinejobs.ph/jobseekers/job/1656529. Updated 2026-09-29. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
17. OnlineJobs.ph, job post 1672201: DM setter, coaching brand. https://www.onlinejobs.ph/jobseekers/job/1672201. Updated 2026-08-05. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
18. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025: sales representatives of services, and telemarketers. https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/OEUN000000000000041309113 (the median). The other figures are the series OEUN0000000000000413091 followed by 01, 11, 14 and 15, and OEUN000000000000041904113 for telemarketers, at the same address. May 2025. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (through the public data service).
19. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, sales occupations. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/home.htm. Last modified 2026-08-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (background; not cited in the text).
20. Hire in South, “The Ultimate Guide to Remote Closer Salaries and FAQs”, reporting ZipRecruiter data. https://www.hireinsouth.com/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-closer-salaries-and-faqs. 2026-10-08, data labelled July 2026. Secondary.
21. SetSmart, “What is a remote closer”. https://setsmart.io/blog/what-is-a-remote-closer. 2026-09-21. Read at source on 2026-10-10; its income bands are the vendor’s estimates, and the vendor sells DM-setting software.
22. Everstage, sales quota attainment benchmarks 2026. https://www.everstage.com/resources/sales-quota-attainment-benchmarks-2026. 2026. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
23. IRS, self-employment tax. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employment-tax-social-security-and-medicare-taxes. Last reviewed 2026-06-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
24. US Department of Labor, Fact Sheet 13. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/13-flsa-employment-relationship. Revised March 2024. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
25. Trustpilot, reviews of remoteclosingacademy.com. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/remoteclosingacademy.com. Reviews dated 2024-01-08 and 2024-07-30. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
26. Trustpilot, reviews of appointmentsetter.com. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/appointmentsetter.com. Reviews dated 2024-09 to 2026-07. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
27. Trustpilot, reviews of closingbible.com. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/closingbible.com. Reviews dated 2024-03 to 2025-09. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
28. Trustpilot, reviews of eliteclosers.com. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/eliteclosers.com. Reviews dated 2024-05 to 2026-02. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
29. Trustpilot, reviews of closers.io, one- and two-star. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/closers.io?stars=1&stars=2. Reviews dated 2023-08 to 2026-09. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
30. High Ticket Closer. https://highticketcloser.com/. Undated. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
31. Hacker News comments. https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/27654903 (2021-06-27) and https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/43585437 (2025-04-04). Read at source on 2026-10-10.
32. Third-party copies of a thread by @cadenjara (https://x.com/cadenjara/status/1640406111017746445). https://en.rattibha.com/thread/1640406111017746445 and, for the opening only, https://web.archive.org/web/20250615091518/https://en.rattibha.com/thread/1640406111017746445. 2023-03-27. Secondary.
33. Closers.io, client job openings and one vacancy. https://closers.io/client-job-opening/ (also the Internet Archive copy https://web.archive.org/web/20261005142223/https://closers.io/client-job-opening/) and https://closers.io/client_job_openings/high-ticket-career-coaching-closer/. 2026-10-05 to 2026-10-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
34. Ippei.com, review of Remote Closing Academy. https://ippei.com/remote-closing-academy/. 2026-04-27. Secondary.
35. Skool, The Remote Closing Lab. https://www.skool.com/remoteclosinglab/about. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
36. Skool, search results for “high ticket closer”. https://www.skool.com/discovery?q=high%20ticket%20closer. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
37. Skool, Start High Ticket Sales. https://www.skool.com/appointmentsetters/about. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
38. Skool, Remote Sales 101. https://www.skool.com/remotesales101/about. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (background; not cited in the text).
39. Skool, two setter communities. https://www.skool.com/the-5k-setter-lab-6771 and https://www.skool.com/apex-appointment-setters-8145. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
40. Skool, pricing and affiliate programme. https://www.skool.com/pricing and https://www.skool.com/affiliate-program. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
41. Selar, product page linked from one tweet. https://selar.com/7s77k81561. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
42. 1 Call Closers. https://1callclosers.com/. 2026. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
43. FTC, Complaint, FTC v. Air AI (D. Ariz., 2:25-cv-03068). https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/AiraiComplaint.pdf. 2025-08-25. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (Internet Archive copy).
44. FTC, “Complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule”. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-telemarketing-sales-rule. Undated. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
45. 16 CFR 310.3, Telemarketing Sales Rule, as published by Cornell Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/310.3 (the definitions are at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/310.2). Last amended 2024-12-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
46. FTC press release on Growth Cave. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/01/ftc-secures-settlement-banning-growth-cave-defendants-marketing-selling-business-opportunities. 2026-01-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
47. FTC press release on Lurn. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-acts-stop-online-business-coaching-scheme-lurn-deceiving-consumers-about-money-making-potential. 2023-09-28. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (Internet Archive copy).
48. Instagram, Terms of Use. https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870. As served on 2026-10-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
49. X, authenticity policy, Internet Archive copy. https://web.archive.org/web/20261007195718/https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/authenticity. Policy dated April 2025. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
50. LinkedIn, User Agreement. https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement. Effective 2025-11-03. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
51. Meta, spam standard. https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/spam/. Version after 2024-06-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (background; not cited in the text).
52. Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, telemarketing. https://www.fdacs.gov/Business-Services/Telemarketing. Undated. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
53. FTC consumer advice, “Job Scams”. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams. March 2023. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
54. FTC data spotlight on reported losses that began on social media. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spotlight/2026/04/reported-losses-scams-social-media-eight-times-higher-2020. 2026-04-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (background; not cited in the text).
55. FTC press release on proposed rule changes for money-making opportunities. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-proposes-rule-changes-new-rule-deter-deceptive-earnings-claims-multilevel-marketers-money-making. 2025-01-13. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
56. Kelley Drye, article on the proposed rule. https://www.kelleydrye.com/viewpoints/blogs/ad-law-access/ftc-puts-pedal-to-the-metal-to-release-proposed-rule-on-mlm-earnings-claims-changes-to-business-opportunity-rule-but-republican-commissioners-pump-the-brakes-in-potential-foreshadowing. 2025-01-14. Secondary.
57. FTC press release on its notice about money-making claims. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-puts-businesses-notice-false-money-making-claims-could-lead-big-penalties. 2021-10-26. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
58. Advertising Standards Authority (UK), ruling. https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/charlie-johnson-a25-1293121-charlie-johnson.html. 2025-10-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
59. FTC, Unopposed Motion to Enter Stipulated Order, FTC v. Air AI (D. Ariz., 2:25-cv-03068-SMB, document 43). https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/AirAi-Motion.pdf. Filed 2026-03-24. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (Internet Archive copy).

Corrections

If you are quoted or named on this page and think something is wrong, want your reply shown beside it, or want to be removed, write to [email protected]. We aim to reply within 14 days, and always within one month. Factual errors are corrected with a dated note here. A sentence that is seriously disputed comes down while we check it.

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