These Awful Websites Make Millions. You Can Easily Crush Them Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 So, I got scammed. At least that's what I thought last week when I went online to buy something for my mom. The website looked super dated and something on the checkout page didn't feel right, so I Googled the company to make sure it was real. Well, it turns out it was a legit company. And when I did some research, I found out that this business has been quietly pulling in millions of dollars a year for decades.

00:20 Anyway, that got me looking and what I discovered is that there's an entire category of e-commerce sites out there that look like that they were built in the '90s. And a motivated entrepreneur with a Shopify store and a decent brand can just walk in and easily take them down. So, the first awful-looking website is uspc.com. And just let me tell you how I went down this rabbit hole in the first place.

00:43 My mom is a scientist. She spent her career at the NIH working on a rare genetic condition called glycogen storage disease and her research led to a patent that turned into a cure. Now, she's got over 10 patents, but she has never had one of those patents framed before because the government is too cheap to buy them for the researchers. So, I decided to fix that and buy her her very first one.

01:06 So, I went to Google, typed in patent plaque, clicked on the top result, which brought me to a site called uspc.com. And the site looked like it was built in 1998. We're talking grainy stock photos, clunky navigation, the kind of design where you can tell the same person who built the site also runs a print catalog on the side. Then I got to the checkout page and sitting there right there in the credit card field was a fake test credit card number.

01:33 Like they forgot to take it off before the site went live 20 years ago. And that is when I stopped and Googled the company because I genuinely thought I might be about to hand my credit card info to a scam website. But, it turns out that uspc.com has been around since 1983. It is a real legitimate business. It's a woman-owned and veteran-owned company down in Fort Myers, Florida with about 16 employees doing around $2.5 million in revenue.

02:02 Now, I don't have a problem with the people running it. They've built a real business selling a real product for four decades. My point is that when your top result on Google looks so bad that a customer stops mid-checkout to make sure it's not a scam, you are ripe for disruption. Then, I looked at two other big players in this niche. Patent Plaques out of Pennsylvania doing around 17 million a year.

02:25 Patentawards.com, another decades-old player doing several million. All have horrible websites and that same 1990s feel. It would be so easy to take a huge chunk out of their business. And here's the crazy part. The market for these things is enormous and it grows every single year. The US Patent Office grants over 325,000 patents a year. Every one of those patents is a potential plaque order and that is the entire customer base.

02:53 When someone gets a patent, they want a plaque and they want it now. There's no price shopping or comparing brands. They are literally typing in patent plaque into Google and buying from whoever comes up first. And the old guys are winning because they rank on Google and there is no good competition. Any of us watching this video could build a better version of these sites in a weekend.

03:13 Now, this isn't just a patent plaque problem. I'm seeing this exact same thing in categories that are way more profitable. A few months ago, my aunt had a stroke. She survived, thankfully, but she came out of it needing some adaptive equipment to get her through the day. Grab bars, jar opener she could use with one hand, utensils weighted to help her eat, basic stuff that most people never think about until they suddenly need it.

03:37 So, I went to Google and started shopping. And my experience was almost identical to my patent plaque experience. I found one ugly website, then another ugly website, then a third one that looked like it had not been touched since 2004. Now, the main one I kept coming back to was the rightstuff.com. It's been around since 1999, and it's basically the go-to store in this space.

04:02 They sell everything you need to help an elderly or disabled person live at home. And the site is exactly what you would expect. Rows of tiny thumbnails, product descriptions that read like they were pulled straight out of a supplier catalog, no brand story, no lifestyle content, and nothing on the page that would tell an adult child buying gear for their aging parent that they were even in the right place.

04:22 And here's what shocked me. This is not a small market. The US home medical equipment market is projected to hit around $8.8 billion this year. And the numbers are only going in one direction, which is straight up. According to AARP, 77% of American adults over 50 want to age in their own homes rather than move to an assisted living home. And the US Census projects that by 2034, Americans 65 and older will outnumber Americans under 18 for the first time in the history of this country.

04:53 So, think about who is actually buying this stuff. The buyer is the adult son or daughter of the elderly person. Somebody like me, sitting at their computer after a family health scare, trying to figure out how to help. They're stressed, they're researching under time pressure, and they're landing on websites that look like they were designed before the iPhone ever existed.

05:15 Anyone could walk into this category tomorrow with a clean Shopify site and real photography of real people using the products in real homes. And I would full-on make content aimed at adult caregivers about what actually happens after a stroke, a fall, or a diagnosis. I'd have a subscription option for the consumables. I'd create bundles targeted at specific scenarios like just came home from hip surgery or diagnosed with arthritis.

05:40 Any of these would be a massive upgrade over what is out there right now, and it would be almost too easy. Now, if you want to learn how to start your own profitable online store, make sure you sign up for my free 6-day e-commerce mini course below, and I'll walk you through the entire process. It's free, and I guarantee you'll learn a ton. Because once you start seeing this pattern, you cannot unsee it.

05:58 And the next category I want to show you is one of the ugliest examples out there. So, go pull up a website called lynchsupply.com. Lynch Supply is a funeral supply company out of Muskogee, Oklahoma that sells embalming fluids, caskets, cremation urns, cemetery equipment, and everything else a funeral director needs to run their business. And the site looks like it was designed the year the internet was invented.

06:25 Now, here's what makes the category interesting. Lynch Supply was founded in 1932, which means they've been in business for over 90 years. They are a serious, established B2B supplier in a market worth $23.9 billion a year. Now, the funeral services industry is a category that is fundamentally recession-proof, has consistent long-term demand, and runs on B2B relationships where the buyer is a professional with a big budget.

06:50 And you're telling me that the leading supply company serving that market has a website that a first-year web design student could redo in an afternoon. Now, you might be thinking, "Funerals are dark. This is a weird niche to disrupt." But this is exactly why the category has almost no modern competition. Nobody with real e-commerce chops is looking at funeral supply, which is why the door is wide open.

07:15 You can easily build a modern brand that serves independent funeral homes with better product photography, a better ordering experience, subscription options for the consumables like embalming fluids, and content marketing aimed at funeral directors trying to run more profitable businesses. You can also target direct-to-consumer. Families are increasingly handling more of the funeral arrangements themselves, especially with the rise of cremation and home funerals.

07:40 A direct-to-family brand selling urns, memorial products, and DIY funeral supplies with actual taste and warmth would be a real business. Oak Tree Memorials on Etsy is already doing this in the urn category with an average order value of around 400 bucks. So, the model is proven. And the point is that the funeral supply is a nearly $24 billion industry, and the leading supplier is running a 1990s website, and there is essentially nobody doing it well.

08:08 Now, here's where it gets interesting, because once you've seen the pattern in patent plaques, in elderly aids, and in funeral supply, you start pulling up e-commerce sites in every corner of the internet and find the exact same thing. Let me show you two more. Pull up autom.com. This is one of the biggest church supply and Christian religious goods retailers in the country.

08:30 They've been in business since 1948, and they sell everything from vestments and altar wear to devotional gifts to Bibles. And the site looks like a print catalog someone converted to HTML in 2002. The North America Christian liturgical products market alone is $362 million in 2026, and the broader Christian goods category is a multi-billion dollar space.

08:54 Autom is a top five player, and the top five player has a website that looks like a small church newsletter someone stapled together in the parish office. It is the exact same story as everything I've shown you so far. It's got a huge market, a captive B2B buyer with almost zero modern competition. And this site that would not survive a single day in front of a modern D2C audience.

09:17 Now, let me tell you a story that proves anyone can pull this off. Because I know some of you are watching this thinking, "Sure, Steve. That all sounds great, but I don't have the millions in capital to go take down a 30-year-old e-commerce business." Well, here's someone who proves that you don't need much money. Go to shopjimmy.com. A guy named Jimmy Voska started this business in 2007 by buying broken TVs on eBay, harvesting the broken parts, and then reselling them.

09:44 He mortgaged his house to buy inventory and expanded his garage to hold everything. And he did not quit his day job for 2 years. Today, Shop Jimmy does $17 million a year in revenue, employs 35 people, and Jimmy has built one of the most successful boring businesses in e-commerce. Now, just take a look at his site, which is functional at best. This is what is actually possible in these categories.

10:07 A guy with a mortgage on his house buying broken TVs on eBay ended up with an eight-figure business. Once again, once you start seeing this, you can't unsee it. And the real question is whether you're going to be the one who acts on it. So, if you're watching this and thinking about actually going after one of these categories, here's how you would actually do it.

10:30 Step one, find the ugliest site in a category that makes real money. Type your target keyword into Google, and if the top three results all look like they were designed before smartphones existed, you've got a winner. Then, verify there's real money in the category by checking sites like ZoomInfo, Craft, or LeadIQ for revenue estimates. You want a category where the leading incumbent is doing at least a few million a year.

10:55 If they can do a few million with a terrible-looking website, you can do more with a great one. Step two, build a brand around the buyer and not the product. This is where most people mess up. The incumbents in these categories describe their products in a way that a manufacturer would. Bullet points, part numbers, catalog descriptions. A modern brand describes the products the way the buyer thinks about them.

11:19 The Right Stuff sells a jar opener. A modern brand sells peace of mind for the daughter of an aging parent. AutoM sells vestments. A modern brand sells a parish that looks put together for its congregation. USPC sells a patent plaque. A modern brand sells recognition for the person that you love. It is the exact same product with completely different framing.

11:40 And the buyer will pay a premium for that framing. Step three, match their SEO on the head terms and then win on content. The only real moat these incumbents have is 20 to 30 years of Google authority on their category head terms. You're not going to unseat them overnight on searches like patent plaque or daily living aids. That takes time. But here's what they cannot do.

12:05 They cannot build a YouTube channel about caregiving for a parent after a stroke. They cannot build an Instagram account about the reality of running a parish today. They can't write a blog series on what it is really like to be granted your first patent. They are supply catalogs and they have zero content muscle. You can go around them on the long tail queries where they have never bothered to compete and use content to build brand recognition that eventually pulls them away from Google entirely.

12:30 And step four, charge more and not less. Every instinct will tell you to undercut them on price, but do not do it. These sites price cheap because they look cheap. Their customers assume that they are cheap. If you show up with a clean brand, real photography and a modern experience, you can charge 30 to 50% more and buyers will pay it because everything about your presentation signals quality.

12:57 Look at what Oak Tree Memorials did in the urn space. They charged premium prices for modern urns aimed at families doing their own memorials and their average order value is around $400. That is orders of magnitude above what the incumbent funeral suppliers are pricing. The modern brand commands a premium price. Now, the reason why these categories are still wide open right now is because the boring product categories scare off the founders who are chasing hype.

13:24 Nobody starts a funeral supply company or a church supply company because it sounds cool at dinner party. They do it because the math works and the door is wide open. That is the entire point of this video. And now that you know the opportunities are out there, make sure you watch this video next on how to evaluate your niche for profitability before you invest any money.