What info to collect from site visitors for lead generation?

My website provides a lot of educational material on accounting (for free) and attracts a fair amount of visitors. There is also a subscription which gives customers a more robust e-learning functionality, additional content, etc. The website currently has a form to obtain a user's email (only) in return for downlowdable study notes.

I am thinking about going into lead generation on the website. I think (need to validate this) that colleges may be interested in leads from customers who are looking for an accredited accounting degree (which my website does not provide).

What information do you think I should collect from site visitors: name, area of interest, phone, etc.?

How would I go about channeling such leads to interested buyers (e.g., direct contacts to colleges)?

Where can I read more about all legal aspects of obtaining user information and selling it to colleges / third parties?

A simpler first step might be to sell some advertising space on your site to Universities or Colleges.
This would have a couple of advantages:

• You don't have to bother about privacy issues at this stage
• You would meet the relevant contacts at the Universities and find out what their needs are
• You get immediate (and re-occuring) income (when you have made a sale).
• You prove to yourself that educational institutions are the right target market.

Instead of collecting personal info from customers to sell, you could invite them to do a survey and offer a prize. Use the survey to help you gain information that will help you sell advertising to colleges such as, "would you be interested in taking College accounting courses?" demographic data etc. Institutions with online classes may be ideal to target as a first step.

Once you are in the door with institutions, other opportunities are bound to open up.

Alternatively you may find that you made some incorrect assumptions about them wanting to partner with you and you can explore other target markets such as licensing the content to businesses for instance.