Anyone can do this (took me 8h)
I saw a hot topic
I checked google search volume
Found high-traffic keyword
Bought a domain on godaddy
Built a directory
Got SEO traffic
Made revenue on sponsors, ads, and referrals
1. Idea. Go to google keyword planner and search for ideas.
I saw hype around nextjs boilerplates, so I searched for this term and found low-competition keywords with good traffic.
2. Then I went to godaddy to search for a domain.
I always start with .com, since after all my tests, .com beats crap out of everything else. So I bought nextjsstarter dot com.
3. I built a directory.
I used my own website/directory builder (Unicorn Platforms) just out of the template in less than an hour. I made a logo using chatgpt Dalle. I went on Google Keyword Planner to grab top 10 keywords and placed them on a home page. I used this template -> Directory Template
4. I scraped all dev tools
from Product Hunt and DevHunt and found all boilerplates there. I also searched on hacker news, devto, github, google and X. I found about 50 items and got 100 more submitted via the from later by the authors.
5. I turned on SEObot
to generate 100 blog articles.
The articles turned out to be really good, I even learned a few things while reading them.
6. I turned on IndexRusher
to get all my pages indexed. I had 250 pages in total. For a new domain it takes months to get the indexed or even more.
7. Things started to grow.
Day after day.
I didn’t publish the blog right away. I launched the site and let it warm up for 2 months and launched the blog on third month.
8. Monetization.
While having pretty decent SEO traffic and also click-traffic (got few viral posts and blogs) the site became attractive for nextjs boilerplate authors, so I made good revenues on selling "featured-spot".
9. Next steps.
- more blog articles around nextjs “how-tos”
- programmatic SEO (got a crazy cool idea on what to do)
- run ListingBott to grow domain rating by getting 100 more backlinks to multiple existing traffic.
Whenever I tried launched many pages at once, I failed at growing the site.
10. That's it.
See full thread with questions & answers here on twitter.
P.S. Let me know if there is anything you wanna me write about. A topic, project, lessons, anything. Reply to this email with your recommendation or just say hi and let me know you read my newsletter, it’d make me super happy.
Would you describe this a s a B2B business?
I've heard of lots of online marketers doing stuff like this, but they were cobbling together stuff that took lots of TIME to master like Wordpress or they were simply paying someone else to do it for them. I've never heard of most of these tools, but they seem simple enough. The timeline is helpful too.
One person did one of these types of sites every WEEK and after 1 year, removed the sites that weren't getting any traffic and only kept the "winners". After 3 years, he managed over 40 sites with an minimum income of $200/month each: $8,000/month "passive". His goal at the time was $10k/mo.