The Most Overlooked Way to Make Money On the Internet Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 trip Adviser Care.com Happyc hundreds of  directories making multiple millions and many more making over six figures That one backlink that  got me to rank one has resulted in 2 years worth of like completely passively $2,300 to $3,000  a month It's just one of those businesses that people don't even think of They've all interacted  with them but they don't see it as an opportunity There's still so many untapped opportunities out  there where there's more demand than supply 100% I think once you see it you can't unsee

00:26 it So if  someone's starting from complete scratch where should they [Music] start What is a directory  and why should you care Travel velocity.com that's a directory billion-dollar business Dry ice  nearme.com that's also a directory It's a five-f figureure business Why should you care Because  there are millions I'm not exaggerating millions of opportunities out there to start a directory  website for almost no money It's just math There's a simple template There's about three tools  you need You log into the tools

00:56 You see where there's more search demand than supply You build  a directory with WordPress or Web Flow And then you wait for it to rank And then you profit And  you do that over and over and over again until you have a portfolio of websites maybe five maybe  500 making you hundreds to thousands of dollars a month passively Does passive income exist No Is  this as close as you get Yes Freychu is a guy that I found on Twitter and all he does is talk about  directories and he builds directories and he tells people how to

01:28 build directories He has nothing to  sell you He just wants to talk about what he does in his free time So thrifting directories balloon  animal directories dog park directories Yes yes yes All the above Anyone with about 100 bucks can  start a directory and learn and hopefully profit when and or if they start ranking So enjoy this  interview share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office You shut down your  business You were bummed out You had to flip items at garage sales to make rent That

01:53 sucked That  got you thinking creatively because constraints equal creativity You just started looking online  passive income websites how to make money what's scalable You came across directories You thought  "Okay if this isn't the thing then this could be the thing that helps me learn SEO to do other  things." You started your first directory Months later you found out it worked What was that  directory like do you mind telling us what the actual website was and what made you choose that  niche Yeah I'm happy to

02:17 share as much as possible without giving the domain just because the first  time I did that it invited like three copycats within 24 hours And yeah it's it's just one of  those things but it's in the thrifting niche And I really just found it scrolling on Tik Tok  actually I noticed these viral videos of people showing their thrifting hauls like a lot of Gen  Z They had millions of views and all the comments were like location-based queries They were like  "Where is this Is there one in Pennsylvania?"

02:49 You know people were very curious and I was like  "Why aren't people just going to Google Maps looking this up and then visiting it nearby?"  And that's when I discovered that there was a bottleneck Like Google Maps was not very good at  very specific location-based queries If you typed in the keyword that I built this directory around  it pulled up like a bunch of irrelevant businesses and locations So yeah I researched it I saw one  website that did cover it and it was getting a 100,000 monthly visitors and I was

03:24 like I could do  better than this I could I could I could improve on this So I did combine some of the stuff I  learned from from YouTube and that's kind of how I landed it Did you use Similar Web to look at  their traffic I use Hrefs Hrefs is always my go-to Oh you look use that for traffic as well Mhm Yep  All right So and then you use AHFS I imagine to to find the demand And you're I'm guessing you're  looking at keyword difficulty as in difficulty to rank highly for it on Google and keyword volume  and you're

03:54 looking for asymmetric bets there right Yep Exactly You always want to find the balance  between something that's low keyword difficulty with high search volume And then there's some  deeper stuff like sometimes keyword difficulty is not the best metric to really uncover the  competitiveness of a niche but it's good enough at a top level And yeah that's essentially what  I did also always find a bounty So like finding a website that already succeeded that looks like  kind of a mom and pop publisher That was really

04:28 really nice to see You call that a bounty like a  template basically I call it someone that's gone before you Yes Yes So someone that's come before  me that's successful that's not like a Forbes looking like website So I know it's like viable  And I call it a bounty because SEO is a PVP game Like I don't know if you played video games  but like not everyone can rank on the top 10 So you're gonna have to be okay taking them over  and completely dominating them And so that's why I call it a bounty And it's it's a good

04:55 sign It's  a green flag in my eyes when you're looking for directory ideas A lot of the times you don't need  to take them over Like you can be second or fifth and still do really well 100% Oh 100% There's so  many niches where people are like "Oh like can't win in that." Well actually like the food niche  is a great example If you look under the hood of any like like I think food near me is searched 13  million times a month or something like that and there's so many directories that are winning in  that space because

05:22 they're specializing in like only food trucks that do Mexican food for example  and they just have a directory around that So yeah 100% What's a good example of a food directory  that you know is just crushing it There's a couple that come to mind There's one for food  trucks I think it might be like foodtruck.com I would have to double check but the other one  that came to mind was Happy Cow That's a really famous directory I've heard of it's for vegan  vegan restaurants and vegan food And my f like I have a lot of

05:55 friends and family who are vegan  So that has just become such a sign of trust Like when you go to a restaurant and you see the Happy  Cow badge you're immediately like you trust that restaurant So it's definitely grown to something  really impressive And that's a good example of like a food niche that's crushing it So Happy  Cow just started as a directory and now they're kind of a vegan authority then They're almost like  the Trip Advisor but for finding vegan restaurants Interesting Okay I think what people often

06:25 find  when they go down this rabbit hole I found this myself I'll get an Ahf's account and it's not  cheap It's like 150 bucks a month and it's like "Okay I'm going to get the most out of this for  30 days because I'm probably going to churn." And then I go in there and I start digging around  and I I'm like "Oh my gosh this one's good Oh this one's good Oh this one's good."

06:44 Is it just me or  there's still like so many untapped opportunities out there where there's more demand than supply  100% I think once you see it you can't unsee it And like if you just think like where's the last  place you and your friends or you and a partner went that that you were really excited about Or  another framework I like to use is think about the most meaningful or impactful like things that  happen in your life Graduations you know getting into a relationship or getting married finding a  new job moving

07:14 to a new city like a lot of those can stir up new ideas for directories and they're  everywhere A personal example is I'm I'm actually in the process of moving right now So I've been  obsessed with like water quality and looking up like gravity filters and like stainless steel  dispensers and everything Yeah Everything So I've been finding myself on these directories  that help me understand what the like best way to find water quality is And something that  niche can be a directory So it's like yeah there's there's so

07:51 many untapped opportunities  Okay So how many directory sites do you own today So I own six but technically like I've spoken  about this recently in my community where you know I I have six but I've really only put like full A  through Z effort in three of them Like I'm talking keyword research like organizing the data properly  building out the website doing the SEO monetizing it like everything Luckily I've been three for  three in that sense They're all cash flowing and profitable and ranking So I think two are

08:21 like  basically dominating the first page of Google The other one is in a very high competition niche  It's in plasma donation Yeah it's a little smaller one It gets around 6,000 monthly visitors but that  one's interesting too What was the signal that you saw that made you want to launch one in that niche  even though you knew there was high competition I think it's because my first directory was B TOC  So I wanted to try a B2B one and I wanted to try a different way to monetize So the original game  plan with the

08:49 plasma donation one was okay like let's go B2B and let's let me try to get this $300  million revenue a year plasma company to like pay me thousands of dollars to either promote their  business And that didn't really end up working as planned cuz the market for plasma donation I  learned is very small There's like eight plasma companies that might be able to buy your sponsored  listings But yeah it was like a combination of a challenge because I felt pretty confident and  even though it was really high keyword

09:19 difficulty like it was like in the 70s or 80s there was a  lot of search volume and there were definitely like few competitors like it was competitive but  there were only like 10 or 15 competitors So the quantity of competitors was small So I was like  okay well maybe there's room for for me to take a little bit of this market share So what is your  monthly traffic across all your directory sites The first one gets around like 60,000 monthly  visitors The second one's around like 8 to 10 kind of fluctuates And the

09:55 last one six So  probably like it it ranges from like probably 70 to like 90,000 monthly visitors cuz yeah it  really fluctuates The the first directory at one point was getting 85 90,000 monthly visitors So  it does fluctuate a good amount And it's like 100% organic or 100% organic Yep That's really my main  distribution channel I only deal with organic and I mainly deal with like passive evergreen niches  So that's kind of my favorite And what kind of revenue do those three pull in combined It also  ranges but like

10:29 completely passively it's probably around like 2300 to $3,000 a month So nothing  crazy but with my specific like high standards way of finding niches and building directories I think  you do give up some revenue like as opposed to if I were to go with the sponsored listings route or  there's a lot of other ways to monetize where you can have a much higher ceiling for much more work  right It's the trade-off between profitability and work And you'd rather have multiple sites doing  500 to 5,000 each than a couple sites

11:01 where you're going out and like at a certain point you become  a sales business You're just finding sponsorships and selling ads and that's a that's a grind And  one site could be a six-f figureure business but it's it's a different lifestyle It's a  different strategy 100% You're essentially a marketing agency at that point you're handling  clients and to put it in perspective like I don't think I've touched any of the my websites for like  six months and they just continue to to bring that in So that's my preference

11:33 It's not everybody's  you know people who you can build a directory I mean I think you know tripadvisor care.com happy  all there there's hundreds of directories making multiple millions and many more making over six  figures in the 100 to 500k range I just want like a very hands-off like I just want some lunch money  at the end of the day Yeah Yeah Okay Where is your revenue coming from Is it affiliate links Is it  ads like AdSense or Mediavine So yeah right now I'm on Mediavine and I'm on Mediavine Journey So  it's

12:08 for Mediavine's main network is for websites I think doing over 50 or 100,000 sessions which my  first directory qualifies for but it actually got denied for some reason but I got into Mediaine  Journey I think it's depending on the type of content But yes Mediavine Journey is my display ad  revenue And then I also sell digital products on one of them It's just like a $19 PDF that I built  in Canva like a year and a half ago and it sells like almost every day Wow Okay So plasma niche  thrifting niche What are the other

12:38 kind of niches One of them is like kind of adjacent to thrifting  and like you can think kind of liquidation stores Maybe that's a better way to describe it I have  ones that are kind of halfbaked in the portaotti rental space Flea markets I think that that's  the one I'm building out right now And then I do have a dog parks directory that I built that's  really underoptimized that I need to tweak a lot But yeah Sniff Spot right Sniff Spotspot is Yeah  that's not my directory No I know I But similar similar They're

13:16 kind of like an Uber for you know  backyard dog parks but they're broadening the market for people like you to come in and pick up  the leftover traffic Yep Yep Sniff Spotspot does like private dog park rentals Mhm I kind of just  created a directory for all the public free dog parks just to give people some more options and a  easier way to navigate those I would love if you could share your screen go to AHF's or I I can  I have a paid a AHFS account I could do the same and like let's just kind of dig around and

13:46 show  me what you look for what stands out to you Sure let's do it And for anyone listening on audio  only I'll I'll be describing what we're seeing So let's share this screen here So do you want to  kind of understand how I find ideas Are we looking at a specific niche Maybe even Let's do both Let's  let's go inside your brain for a minute and see how you find ideas and then we'll go from there  Okay So I think one that I talked about on like pretty publicly is just typing in near me Okay  And the reason I do this is

14:16 he's on the keywords explorer part of ahrefs.com Yes So right now I'm  looking at the AHFs I just typed in near me in the keyword explorer And this is just one way  to kind of you know find ideas in a very kind of random and broad way And I basically don't look  at anything here I stay away from branded keywords for the most part like Target near me McDonald's  near me Those aren't good directly What are you going to do with that Yeah exactly Like people  have no problem finding McDonald's near me So I usually just

14:54 scroll all the way to like you know  sometimes the 10th page right So I'm just going to keep on clicking down and we can see that of  course the volume every month is going down Show us show us in the columns where the keyword  difficulty and the search volume are So right there Yep So here's the keyword difficulty And you  can see it's a range between 0 to 100 Zero being the easiest to rank for 100 being the hardest to  rank for And search volume is a number for monthly search in the country that you're filtering  for

15:24 in the United States Okay So yeah like I'll just scroll down this list There's so many  random ideas because it's by default showing us the keywords that have the most search volume and  I'll look for green right Green indicates that the keyword difficulty is lower So interesting Dubai  chocolate bar near me Zero keyword difficulty 82,000 searches So if I'm you I'm seeing wow like  on the surface that's amazing Zero and 82,000 But then because of the fact I just posted content  about this this is probably a viral Tik

15:57 Tok trend And I don't know if this is going to be around in  two years so I'm going to pass Is that what you would say I think that's very valid I also think  of anything product based you're going up against e-commerce stores Yeah You know if you're looking  to buy chocolate Yeah Those are going to dominate the search engine results page So it's not really  like it doesn't make sense for people to go to a directory to find Dubai chocolate Yeah I did see  towing If you can scroll up back up towing near me was like a 26

16:32 Mhm Yeah 26 difficulty and 84,000  What do you think about that one Towing is not bad I think that it seems too broad for me and I would  be curious to see something like emergency towing maybe you know overnight towing or something  really really specific So in that case why is that Just because this is lacking the like to me it's  not clear what the search intent is right Like okay you're towing near me Are you probably like  infer that people are looking to tow a car near me But do they need their car towed Has

17:08 their car  already been towed Are they looking for an impound lot Exactly You're going to get lower volume on  emergency towing near me but you're going to get lower competition and it's probably a higher like  cost per click It's a higher ticket item because it's higher intent right 100% And so actually  that's a good example because I might even see that and I'm like well let me look into it deeper  So I'll look up the keyword explorer and I'll just type in towing and then I'll go to matching  terms And one thing

17:34 I'll do is I'll also sort in hrefs by keyword difficulty So I can say I don't  want to see anything above a keyword difficulty 20 which I think is generally a good rule Is that  kind of your your rough barometer Very rough It's not a hard rule Generally speaking yeah it's  it's a rough rough estimate for what's lower competition to rank for So video is cool but you  know what's better Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter tkopod.com Go there to subscribe for  free to my newsletter It's one email a week very

18:12 tactical And then go to my audio podcast Three  episodes a week stuff like this You're going to love it All free No sleazy sales pitch tkopod.com  So this is interesting There's lizard liquid towing So there's like this is interesting because  sometimes you can build a successful directory just leveraging the search volume and reputation  of other businesses right Maybe they're famous So if you if you were to build a directory and  mentioned lizard towing then you might be able to get a little bit of traffic from that

18:42 you know  and that starts to add up if you were to create a nationwide directory Cheap towing kind of gives  us a little bit clearer of intent of what people are looking for There's interesting keywords  around specific like Tacoma towing capacity Towing capacity Yeah But essentially I would  look through this and I'd ask myself you know what longtail keywords exist in the towing niche  that might be worth it Nothing I'm seeing too much A lot of this it seems like towing capacity  is actually a very commonly searched

19:11 query So maybe I'm thinking okay is there opportunity to  make a directory around just towing capacity for different trucks or different types of vehicles  Because look at this There's literally zero keyword difficulty for toy to Toyota 400 towing  capacity gets searched 4,000 times a month and that trend continues throughout tons If you add up  all those all that search volume across thousands of makes and models it's a lot of traffic starts  to add up And I do kind of take a look at this too SV at the very top says 2

19:48 million So this  is saying that of all the keywords that contain the the keyword towing and that's under a keyword  difficulty of 20 there's 2 million people a month or two million searches a month being being made  So that's a lot Even if you get 20,000 of that you know 30,000 now you're scratching the surface  of what could be like a $1,000 a month directory Well and you look on the left side the the most  commonly appearing word in towing is capacity They're not looking for to get their car car  towed at all which

20:20 perfectly proves your point It was too broad of a keyword Exactly Yeah that's  a great observation And I didn't even know that Like this is I think we stumbled upon like lowkey  a pretty interesting directory niche Look at that Someone listening towing capacity website Yeah I  guess like one thing I would be concerned with is if this is a you know likeformational content  I think we've seen in the last few years with the Google core updates are pretty vulnerable  to AI So that's like one angle that I might be a little

21:00 bit concerned about But just I would  research it and try to understand where people are getting this information If if I look it  up on Reddit you know if I copy and paste this and type Reddit and there's a lot of people  asking like this person a year ago as Tacoma towing capacity question mark as 20 comments  20 plus comments how much can you tow in your Tacoma Like these are good signs that people  are looking elsewhere Like people may not be satisfied with the AI overview or going to chat  GBT So what a what a

21:27 great framework in general of if you see something appearing over and over on  Reddit it's probably because they're not getting what they need on Google which probably means that  something needs to be on Google that answers that question because we'd all prefer to go to Google  first right 100% Yeah And just to add on to that like I'm sure there's nuance Like I don't really  tow anything so I don't know anything about this niche but I would be willing to bet if we spent  like two hours going through every single

21:54 Reddit thread there would be nuances to why people are  asking this question Like it's not that's not as simple as seeing like you know Subaru Outbacks  can pull 7,000 pounds And so that's your answer It's like there's probably some nuance within  this niche that you can use and make your directory more valuable All right I didn't want  to derail you from what you're doing on the near me page Yes If you want to go back to that Yeah  So essentially I This is a good starting point This is a good starting point And what I

22:29 just  showed you is really what I do whenever I find something interesting And truthfully I would never  have researched towing near me So like but you it was interesting to you and and I think that's  where a lot of the opportunity lies Like what I think is easy to rank and and the vision that  I see for my directory is very different than than literally anyone else So yeah I'll just keep  scrolling down I find a lot of promise in keywords that hover around like 15,000 monthly search  volume to like 60,000 I think I

22:57 found the most opportunity in that range Not a hard rule but just  mentioning just observations Batting cages that looks I coincidentally I have a friend that lives  across the street that just opened a batting cage and they are thriving Really Okay Great So yeah  So that's that is interesting And right off the bat my mind goes to affiliate plays people I used  to go to the batting cages all the time I played baseball for the first 14 years of my life and  we'd go and sometimes you forget your bat and like it's just

23:35 like there's opportunity there where  you can you know yeah sell something related a glove a bag whatever it is So that's another angle  Whenever I'm going through this I don't just look at the keyword difficulty or the search volume I'm  thinking about what the monetization potential is here How passive is this You know according to my  standards if I want something really passive and evergreen batting cages might be a decent move  because the chances are batting cages aren't going to change in the next 20 years very

24:04 much  It's just going to be a metal cage and a a ball that dispenses at a high speed and and that's it  You just It's very simple So that might be worth researching more for someone like me What are some  other like overarching trends similar to near me like other ways that I find ideas Yeah That  you could use to start your search For sure Yeah that's a good point I like to research  successful directories that are already getting a lot of traffic and I like to kind of snipe their  keywords and get some ideas there So

24:36 so I do have another way to find ideas but I do want to show  you a few different directories first And what I'd like you to do is just guess the traffic and  then we can go into how I find ideas from these successful directories So if that sounds good  then I will show you the first directory here Drag it around here Okay I have a story about this  actually for those listening He's on penguin dry ice.com And it is so funny you brought this up  because I ownund and something domain names and you know a lot of them are

25:17 stupid but I used to  own a third party logistics company that we we helped food brands ship their food and we were  getting dry ice on a regular basis and there was no directory of dry ice We'd have to go to Kroger  or Albertson's and buy it and you didn't know the cost or whatever and so I bought the domain name  dollarry ice.com to be like a directory of dry ice facility So here you are showing me penguin  dry ice.com which seems to be a dry ice directory Mhm Yep And yeah just like you It's a very ugly  website Very

25:44 ugly website A single page website So the directory just lives on this page There's  Wow Not a lot of detail It just sort of says the name the address the proximity how far it is But  if I'm like buying dry ice like for example my dad has a family business where he ships frozen  food across the country We're not looking for like Albertsonsized dry ice We're looking to buy a lot  of dry ice Mhm B2B business There's not really any clear data enrichment around Hillsboro New Jersey  dry ice on the quantity You know what

26:18 about their service I want to know so much more So based on  what you see how much traffic do you think this directory is getting Oh man So if if I understand  this correctly Penguin is the company that sells dry ice And this is just a directory of their  facilities that sell it So many of these are probably just grocery stores I'm going to say 40  40,000 a month All right let's take a look I'll head over to the site explorer So a little bit off  This is a small directory but it still shocked me 15,000 monthly visitors

26:59 and from climbing  it's climbing and at its peak it was getting an estimated on target of 83,000 monthly visits  back in October of 2024 So it does peak and I would guess that maybe there's some seasonality  to this but you know pretty consistent you know they've had some some of their LOLs but pretty  impressive for just a dry ice directory And they don't have separate pages for all those which is  not optimized at all Right It depends It just kind of depends how you structure your data But yeah  this is a single page

27:34 website And you can see that this single page ranks for a 100,000 keywords  Holy kind of crazy Dry Ice Boston Dry Ice D Like yeah they're completely dominating the space and  I'm sure it does wonders for Penguin as a brand So very niche though Like this is so niche and  they're This is believe it or not not the only dry ice directory I found Otherwise they're smaller  but it's just proof that you can go that niche and still win to some capacity Can you speak for  a second about authority because that's probably why

28:13 they're winning because like they're doing  the hard thing They sell dry ice It's relevant Like Google wants us Google wants to show us  things that are relevant that have high trust and have high authority And Penguin has all the all  those things right Yep How do you get around that If you're not a Penguin and you want to build a  successful directory is it helpful to go in niches that don't really have a high trust high authority  player Sure that's definitely one way to do it Ultimately the game is back links You

28:39 know I think  a lot of people whether they're in SEO or not they know backlinks have been the main driver And so  to your point yeah Penguin is pretty authoritative It's a 37 domain rating which is an indication  of how authoritative a website is but in my mind like I think this is still viable to overtake And  the reason is one of the competing directories for dry ice that I found it looks really bad and  I'll pull it up here It's this website right here Oh okay For those listening one of the worst  websites I've ever

29:11 seen in my life That's just all I'll say It's really bad Holy cow Like 97 Yeah So  just just for a quick comparison right Like if we just see because obviously this directory dry  ice directory.com Yes It gets a little bit less traffic It has its moments as well but I actually  analyzed and did a side-by-side comparison between these two websites and they're not too far off If  we look at the keywords it's ranking for let's see this is dry ice near me There was I mean dry ice  near me now rank five They have some

29:45 keywords on the first page Penguin dry ice is more or less  like dry ice for for sale near me They're rank they're position sixish So it's not like a massive  difference If I were Dry Ice Directory this ugly website I think there's a world where you just  do a lot of link building and you can start to slowly overtake Penguin Dry Ice But from what I  see it's like dry ice is pretty competitive right Like would you enter that space based on what  you've seen If I'm okay with a directory that just based on the volume that

30:26 makes like maybe  tops $500 a month passively then yeah I would And I've done that before I mean I could probably make  this in like a week and be a decent competitor I would give it like a a B minus in terms of like  grades opportunity opportunities Yeah Just just for me would you agree that people often put too  much weight in the appearance of a website Like I'm over here making fun of this website and it's  it's objectively ugly but it works And if someone goes through seven clicks to get to this website  and it

30:55 has what they need they're not going to click back and find a prettier website right So  like all else equal yes make a pretty website but like these are winning because they're answering  questions not in spite of how their website looks right Yeah Yeah I don't want people to listen to  this be like I'm going to go find an ugly website and then compete with them It's like that's  like it I don't think it moves the needle all that much in the grand scheme of things I would  agree I would agree I think people do put way

31:24 too big of an emphasis on design I think there's a  difference between having something really modern and and and looking good and something that's  mobile optimized which is much more important Like across all my directories I think it's like  80 to 82% of website visitors are on mobile So yeah you can have a pretty website but if it's  not really easy to navigate on mobile then then that's that's a really big missed opportunity  Yeah Did you want to show me a couple others The next one one that I talked about

31:51 recently and  it's called movie locations It's to help you find the locations that certain movies and films were  were were shot Movie-loations.com is what we're looking at Lot of ads going on is what I see very  cluttered More updated than the ones we've looked at but still fairly outdated Movie films places  Yeah this is there's a lot going on here There is It's hard to know where your eyes should look  but it's a very simple directory So I'm going to think this is like movie theater locations This is  just like if

32:26 you were curious where Harry Potter was shot or if Lord of the Rings was shot in a  certain country or something like that Yeah Yeah I mean this is huge TAM total addressable market  Like everyone's watching movies A lot of people want to know I would think this is six figures  worth of monthly visitors over 100,000 Okay let's take a look here I'll just grab this root  domain and let's take a look All right overshot it a little bit but 81,000 monthly visitors  Wow And I think I was still surprised by that I know

33:07 there's a large addressable search market  for this niche but how many of the millions of people who watch Fast and Furious actually care  to know where this was shot Like it's probably got to be a very small percentage But this is a  great example of an evergreen niche because you can always just keep this information It doesn't  go out of date And just look at this graph It's so consistent Like it's just been like that for  the last 5 years So whoever whoever owns this is making I would assume close to around

33:34 $5,000  $6,000 passively a month maybe more because they have a lot of ad placements And yeah walk  us through that math That's the question I was going to ask you next anyway How do you convert  81,000 visitors a month to $5,000 a month Yeah So it's really honestly difficult because it's not  arbitrary but it's very depend there's a lot of variables So it depends on could be affiliate  could be AdSense could be Mediaviaine could be e-commerce like so yeah that's that's exactly  one angle like how many monetization

34:06 strategies are there even if there's ads is it a private ad  partnership or not and then not only that it's like nichebased gaming is a notoriously low RPM  niche if you're monetizing through display ads so you might need like a million monthly visitors  for a gaming directory that earns the same as a directory that gets 50,000 monthly visitors in  the finance niche or something along those lines So it's very difficult and I always just use  what I get as far as RPMs in my thrifting niche in my other niche directories

34:43 because they're I  would say pretty in the middle of the road So you know decent RPMs nothing insane but for me those  listening RPM is revenue per thousand views Yep So it is an educated guess At the end of the day  it's very very difficult to say Not only that but Hrefs is third party data So we can only kind of  take this 81,000 monthly visitors with a grain of salt I know with Hrefs it shows my thrifting niche  to get like 35,000 monthly visitors and it's just off by like 20 20 30,000 So they could be getting  more

35:16 and so that makes it even harder Okay So but what is like what is the RPM that you get on your  thrifting niche for example I think it's right right around $16 or $17 ballpark That's good  And it fluctuates too Like sometimes it really fluctuates So it's it's hard to say And I think it  scales based on how much traffic you get because it gets more it's get it gets higher RPMs than my  healthcare directory which is not what you would think but I think the more traffic you get maybe  it's the case that advertisers are

35:48 willing to pay more I'm not really sure how that works but yeah  it is interesting Outside of AHFs what other tools are in your tool belt for building these sites and  for researching opportunity in these sites Yeah for research it's really just a combination of  href's Google Maps reviews I look at these Google Map review tags a lot which we can we can pull  up and Reddit I would say those and then Tik Tok of course was kind of naturally one I feel like  people don't filter their true thoughts on Tik Tok when they're

36:25 leaving a comment which makes it  a great area to do some social listening And then what do you use to build this your directories  It really depends but I guess WordPress has been the chosen CMS for me in the last couple years  Right now I'm kind of diving deep into Lovable and trying my hand at AI coding But yeah so I'll  use WordPress and it's funny like I use Elementor Pro which is like the most basic theme I've used  that And yeah it's like a lot of people which gets a lot of hate by the way People are like  "Oh

36:56 it's slow and clunky." And I'm like "Yeah but if you can build fast sometimes brute forcing  your way to an MVP is way better than trying to automate everything and then like forgetting the  big picture of what you're doing which is like consolidating valuable data on the internet  that people are looking for Do you use any like thirdparty tools Not like a WordPress plugin  but stuff outside of WordPress to connect things Sometimes I'll play with I've used Geodirectory  which is a dedicated directory plugin It's more

37:26 for programmatic builds So what I mean by that is  with a plugin like that you know if you have a a directory that has 2,000 business locations it  would take forever to make to create those pages individually So you can publish those all at once  because kind of it's it's built with a database You can just fill out the information and you can  publish that So that's pretty good For other types of directory builds I've used WPL import just to  bulk import my data and jet engine which helps you filter the data Right If

37:57 I'm looking for a  dog park specifically like a specific type of dog park that offers like fenced in area for small  dogs only like you might want to create a specific filter and that's how you can accomplish that  You can use that jet engine and build that out How much weight do you give an exact match keyword  as the domain name It's a leg up for sure Like exact match domain names are they're effective I  mean it's been proven I don't I think it might So that would be like dry ice near me right I'm just  trying to

38:29 explain to those listening what an exact match domain name is Yeah like petcremation.com  would be in insane Like that'd be amazing You don't need to mention near me in the actual domain  because any query that says near me like dog parks near me It's like it's based on your location So  like you don't need to include that You can just include the main keyword And you always want to go  for tldds if possible I like to choose.org or if it's really if I'm out of options but I would  rather have a hyphen in my name and I

39:02 choose a.com than than just go straight to a.org But yeah  you want your your main keyword for sure Are you using AI at all to build these or to do research  Directories is a multi-step process and AI is used in multiple steps of that process In terms of  ideiation sometimes but I like to rely more on user generated content because it more accurately  depicts what the challenges are in terms of like finding dry ice right I'd much more I'd be more  interested in what people are saying But yeah AI is definitely a very

39:43 big part especially when  it comes to data enrichment You know you have your idea How do you bring it to life How do you  make it an actually valuable directory people want to visit Well you have to enrich the the hell out  of your directory You know you have to offer data and information that's going to save people time  And if you had a horse that needed to be cremated you might go to Google Maps and type in horse  cremation But what realistically might happen is a lot of business profiles will will show up

40:14 and  you'll have to spend a lot of time sifting through the reviews maybe typing a keyword in review to  see if anyone's cremated a horse at this specific cremation service It's it's timeconuming So AI is  used to essentially automate parts of that process where you can essentially enrich your data I built  a enrichment tool called enrich.directory and it essentially does that You can type in horse and  it'll look at all the cremation companies in the in the United States and look for the keyword  horse and then you

40:42 can prompt it and say can I cremate a horse at this place and it'll say yes  So that's cool Yeah So long-winded way to say yes AI is definitely used in in the process So if  someone's starting from complete scratch the only thing they know about directories is hearing  this one podcast Where should they start and how do they get from where they are today  to they have a website built ready to go A lot of my recommendations and advice actually  has less to do with practical tactical advice I think people who see

41:21 directories think it's like  super simple which relative to other businesses they are But I think what led me to succeeding  with my first three directory websites initially it was just to learn SEO Like I think people  realize they have to believe that SEO works And a lot of people I'm noticing are choosing the  wrong niches and they can't rank and then they just give up They're discouraged They're like  "Oh this doesn't work Directories don't work."

41:48 So I guess my tactical recommendation is use  your unique personality and character your life experiences the same way I did with the  thrift stores and try to come up with unique and quirky niche directory ideas that probably no  one's building a directory in There's literally thousands of opportunities There's thousands of  people looking for very specific information on the internet and you can cater to those people So  that's kind of what I would recommend But start in a low competition niche Don't go for

42:17 something  broad like towing near me That's an intermediate niche Intermediate to advanced You you need to  know the fundamentals of SEO and know need to know what you're doing to succeed in that niche  So prove to yourself that it works Could you dive deeper on that on why something like towing near  me is too advanced for a beginner Yeah it's part of just me and my experience knowing that anything  service- based with a high with the opportunity to make a lot of money right Like towing companies  is like I don't

42:46 think you have to be a genius to know that there's a lot of towing companies Why  is that Well people are making money towing cars So there's naturally going to be more competition  which if you place all that knowledge in an SEO environment you know that you're going to need a  lot of backlinks to rank for a directory website or any website for that matter Yes it's the driver  of SEO but with that said you need high quality backlinks It's not that easy for someone who's  just getting started right Requires a little

43:11 bit of creativity being crafty being knowledgeable  about all the ways you can acquire these back links So in that sense intuitively I'm saying that  I think it's an intermediate niche What would be a more beginner niche A beginner niche I would say  the dry ice if we're if we're staying on topic Dry ice is a pretty low competition niche I mean it's  it's it's pretty pretty in there The thing is like every competitive niche typically has some low  competition niche layered underneath Is there like a generalized keyword

43:48 difficulty or or search  volume that you'd look for on a more beginner niche or is it just totally industry dependent  Keyword difficulty is is a big one I would look at zero to five Like if we if we looked up the  near me method that I described and and you set your keyword difficulty at a maximum of like five  or even three I'm sure you'd find some pretty low competition stuff Backlinks could be a three-hour  long conversation But in your experience what's the 8020 of getting good backlinks Like the the  growth hacky

44:20 clever way in your experience Before even thinking about the clever ways you have to  decide how black hat you want to be how if you're okay crossing the lines of you know Google toos  and here's a secret that's not so secret Everyone breaks the rules in SEO No one really plays fair  They do what works But if I'm just strictly saying okay here are some ways that you can go get back  links One thing that's really worked well for me is to look at a bounty right A existing directory  in your space use hrefs or a tool

44:51 similar to hrefs and look at their back links Reach out to those  people giving those back links to your competitor and you can pay them You can leverage anything of  value that you have You can say "Hey my directory gets 10,000 monthly clicks We're proud to be the  most accurate pet cremation directory online and I saw that you linked to this this website Can I  pay you 50 bucks to swap out the link for ours You know we we we think we do a better job Not just  to add mine but to swap it That's the key To swap it And

45:31 so you have this situation where now your  competitor loses a very good backlink You gain that backlink without overpromising anything Like  it's literally taken me one strong backlink with that exact method to rank one in a low competition  but high search volume niche which is kind of bananas That is like one Now the domain authority  of the backlink is is everything right If you have a backlink from CNN.com versus an a backlink  to Martha's Pet Cremation Facility Nashville Tennessee.com it makes all the difference

46:03 It makes  a big difference So like if I were to break down what makes a high quality backlink it's definitely  like domain authority domain rating That's that's a great indication But it's also how much traffic  is that referring page getting right If that CNN page that's backlinking to your website if  it's getting zero visitors yes it's kind of worth something But what would be way better is  if it was getting 500 monthly visitors and people are scrolling the article then clicking on the  backlink landing on your

46:31 directory Now Google's like "Oh wow This is a highly relevant blog post  or article." And people are engaged Those user signals are becoming increasingly important in  a world of AI spam So traffic for the referring page is a biggie Link domains right So if that  CNN page is linking to a 100,000 websites it's like there's not that much link equity or link  juice as people call it And a simple way to think about that is like imagine trying to split  a birthday cake a 100,000 ways It's just not going to you're going to

47:08 get like a crumb So that's  kind of the same you know thing that happens with with a backlink that's refer you know linking  to a bunch of pages So you want low link domains Okay What about those many services that sell back  links 500 bucks a month for X number of backlinks Do you put any stock in those I think it could  work You just have to be really careful I think a lot of gray hat stuff going on there Oh black hat  Gray or black hat Yeah Like I feel like a lot of those backlinks that you pay 500 or thousands

47:36 of  dollars a month for very low quality I would for the most part never just go on Google and type in  backlink services and choose the first one I think that's kind of crazy Same with Fiverr backlinks  Like oh $5 for like a thousand back links Those are spammy backlinks They may result in well first  of all they're not going to help Second of all it might even get you penalized which could lead  to being de-indexed which is like the worst case scenario Like your your website will not be able  to be searched on Google

48:06 So it's just really risky and you want to be very careful buying backlinks  is like I guess technically against Google to but again no one really plays by the rules there So  you just have to be very yeah you have to trust the backlink vendor If you don't trust them you  can always buy the backlink and then don't send it to your direct site Send it to a you know an  article that backlinks to your website So you're bumping up the backlink if that makes sense and  there's less risk there There's a lot that we can talk

48:44 about around backlinks The best way to get  back links in your opinion like let's say it's a pet cremation site is I'm gonna go find like a  high domain authority a very relevant site in in this case maybe about like end of life care for  pets and I'm going to reach out to them manually because the harder way is often the better way  and say "Hey we provide a really good service Would you would you mind linking to us If no then  like can I give you 50 bucks to link to us?"

49:04 Like that's the 8020 of it That works That's reliable  I think it's the best balance between what's like in your control right You can aggressively  reach out to people and like yes it's out of your control that you respond and accept the  offer but it's the balance between like highest quality backlink speed and like being aggressive  with your link building and price That's because if you were to buy the same quality backlink if  they knew what they were giving you it would be 500 bucks 1,000 bucks for that backlink

49:37 Because  like I said that one backlink that got me to rank one has resulted in like two years worth of  like $2,000 a month you know to $2,500 a month revenue you know and I bought it for 50 bucks  So wow Which niche was that in That that's in the thrift store niche Okay That's And I've tested  buying back links I've spent thousands of dollars on different link building services and like I  can say that yeah this is the best bang for your buck and for for quality any other like closing  best practices you'd like to

50:06 leave people with on just how to build a profitable directory Any  advice that you could give that would help them save themselves a world of hurt that you you had  to go through Oh man there's a lot You know it's funny because the best advice is oftentimes the  most cliche like just just build it Learn learn while building right That's what I did I didn't  have a massive emphasis on making money from my directory website As I mentioned it was more of  a playground to learn the skill It's very hard because once you

50:43 start building and you have a  successful directory you never know what's going to follow Like you literally don't know if you're  end up you're going to end up like talking about it and then people want to hire you and become  an SEO consultant and that's going to lead to building an SEO agency like this is a very common  route and so I would say just like be convinced yourself that SEO works Choose a low competition  niche Try to focus on the skill development not just the monetization efforts because those

51:10 will  come Once you have traffic it's like you have like a dozen ways to monetize You get you can just  choose but you need to get traffic before that And yeah it's a slow game Like that's a really  big one People are like I don't see any progress two weeks after I launched my directory I'm like  "Dude show me one business in general where maybe SAS but that's like with years of experience  where you can whip something up that quick and it gets like a lot of organic traffic."

51:37 Yeah  Like while you wait go build another one and then another one and then next thing you know  it's going to be six months later you have 15 sites and seven of them are cranking Yep Yep A  numbers game Yeah So it's all the cliche stuff you know It it it's true It's it's Yeah At the  end of the day it is true Well this was amazing Thank you for your time Frey Where can everyone  find you No this was awesome This was really fun I post on YouTube just under my name Freychu  You can follow me on X or Twitter also

52:05 Freychu Yeah if you want to join a free community I  have that as well People are building their directories so you can hop in there if you'd like  And yeah I'm around I'm around on the internet What' you think Please share it with a friend  Someone could use this episode about directory