How This "NICHE DIRECTORY" Website Makes $10M/Year! Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 I just uncovered a niche directory website that is making an estimated $10 million a year, and this really got my wheels spinning. What other niche directory ideas are out there that are just silently crushing it? Today, not only will I reveal the niche directory site I found making $10 million a year, but I also found four other niche directories that I think you'll love.

00:21 Some of these are really large websites, but a few of these are really obscure niche directories that will just make you say, "Wow, can you really make a directory on that subject?" And it will make money. Oh, and the last site that I'll reveal is only 3 months old and it's already getting over 50,000 visitors a month. All right, let's dig into these super unique niche directory websites.

00:46 First up is happycow.net. This site is estimated to make $10 million a year. What is it? Well, it's a directory to find vegan restaurants near you. So, if you just enter a location, Mesa, Arizona, where I grew up, it'll pull in a map that shows all of the different vegan restaurants that are in the area. You can go there. You can check it out. But it's really just a database, a directory of vegan restaurants.

01:17 Now, how much traffic do does this website get? Well, I was astounded. I pulled up Similar Web. It gets 1.18 million visitors each month. And because it's such an interactive directory, it gets 4.3 pages per visit. And that's going to come into play here in just a second when I calculate earnings. Where is the traffic coming from? Well, it's a United States-based website, so it's within the US.

01:42 But most of it over 60% of the traffic is organic search. So mostly from Google or other search engines. But then a lot of people once they find it up to 32% of people are direct or returning visitors. Now as I mentioned this site is estimated to get $10 million a year in revenue. This is an estimate given by growjo.com. I don't know how authoritative or how accurate that is, but they estimate that their annual revenue is $10 million a year.

02:13 Now, what I can calculate is their display ad revenue. I can see that all over the website there's ads. Uh you can see everywhere that I go. But if we come to a simple ad revenue calculator, I can punch in 1.1 million visitors a month, 4.3 page views per visit, and a $15 RPM. That gives me approximately $76,000 per month just in ad revenue. Now, if you know directory websites, their main source of revenue tends to be from sponsored listings or placement or higher placement within results.

02:48 So, I imagine that most of their revenue is not just from display ads. They might make up to $75 to $100,000 uh a month just from display ads, but I imagine that they make a significant amount of money more for the directory placements for the sponsored listings. All right, so this is a huge example, but what about something a little bit more niche?

03:13 Maybe something that you might be able to build in your spare time. Let's look at my second example here. This is soorggon.com. I love this because it's not just a directory websites on all of the hot springs that are out there. No, it only looks at hot springs within the state of Oregon. Extremely niche. So, it's Oregon hot springs directory. That's literally all it is.

03:39 And it you can scroll through here. They've got a map. They've got a directory. So, if I pull this up, it's going to show me uh again the map where you can go for your hot springs bathing, right? A lot of fun. Uh but they also have a lot of sister directories at least that they link to. They have Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and other websites.

04:02 I don't know if the same person that built Soak Oregon also built these other hotring directories, but that would be a really good idea if they did. Now, this is more niche, obviously, just taking one state, finding all of the hot springs within that state, and then building a website. They have guides and books and a lot more to the website, but you can see it's monetized with display ads.

04:27 This gives you an idea of something smaller, more niche that you might be able to build, but this website still gets about 30,000 visitors every month, according to Similar Web. almost two page views per visit and most of the traffic is coming from either organic search almost 39% and then 44% is direct. People that found it are coming back time and time again.

04:49 So a quick calculation this isn't going to make you extremely rich. However, how would you like an extra $767 per month from display ads from your hot springs directory website? That's based on these calculations of how many page views per visitor and a $15 page RPM. Not bad for an extremely niche directory website. Now, if you want to build your own niche directory or any other type of website for that matter, you need the right tools.

05:18 In particular, you need hosting and a way to build a website. I'm excited to share that Hostinger is the sponsor of today's video and they have an excellent hosting website builder and AI tool options to help you build a website. If you go to hostinger.niche, you can see the deals that they're currently running. So, I can currently see that they have up to 75% off their website builder.

05:40 It's just $2.99 per month with three months free. The business website builder is the most popular and perhaps the recommended one because of the AI tools. So, if I just select the uh business website builder and I go ahead and create an account here, I'm going to be able to show you what's on the inside. Be sure to use coupon code of niche when you check out.

06:04 That's going to give you an additional 10% off. So, we're going to start here by creating a website. Select hosting your website builder for speed. We're going to go ahead and put in niche pursuits demo. We want a niche ideas website. And just like that, I've got a Niche Pursuits demo website. It used AI to unlock your side hustles. It gave me a headline.

06:24 It's got a button already. And there's a whole lot of other AI tools that you can use. It's already created uh some inspirational blog posts. Let's go ahead and look at the AI writer that it's got. I just put in a text description. And just like that, I've already got some text generated all about a list of side hustle ideas for somebody that they can do online.

06:46 And as you can see, there's a whole host of other AI tools that I can use. An AI image generator, an AI SEO assistant, AI logo maker, and much more. If you want to try Hostinger for your website, just go to hostinger.com/niche, and be sure to use coupon code niche in order to get 10% off. Thanks again to Hostinger for sponsoring today's video. All right, for my next niche directory that I want to highlight, this is somebody that is making $250,000 a year from his niche directories.

07:19 We actually had Tim Stoddard on the Niche Pursuits podcast and he revealed that he's the owner of sobernation.com. What is it? Well, it's a directory of rehab centers that uh he's put together that you can search by zip code or state and you can find a rehab center near you. Now, this is a very personal story that Tim shared. He has experience in this niche.

07:43 He's been able to build this up. He has rehab guides, addiction guides, and rehab centers. Uh he makes money primarily from uh placements on the website. and he actually has a few different niche directory sites that are in the similar niche and I believe all combined they make the $250,000. But he shared on the Niche Pursuits podcast that what he's done is he took his own experience with rehab centers.

08:10 He built a website and a resource where people can then use Sober Nation to find the help that they need from the rehab center. But he's gone one step further and because he was so successful in marketing of this particular niche directory, he actually created an SEO agency, a digital marketing agency specifically for rehab directories. Right? So if you look at Stddy Internet Marketing, this is a agency that he has where uh you can get more qualified addiction treatment leads on autopilot.

08:43 So he's created a whole agency to serve this particular niche. That's what I love is when you build a directory, you might then be able to build a service on top of that because of the experience that you have. So just from his directory, small network of directories, Tim is making $250,000 a year, but then he has an agency on top of that to help do the internet marketing for other agencies in the same niche.

09:09 Brilliant, if you ask me. All right, this next directory website is perhaps the mother of them all. Welcome to care.com. I'm sure you've heard of Care before. This website, well, let's take a look at what it is. You can either find care, whether that's senior care, babysitting, pet care, etc., or you can find a job where you can provide the care. So, if again, if we just punch in a zip code, we can do a search for care.

09:36 And what I love about this website is that it takes you down a funnel. It says, "Okay, I want child care." I'll select the next one. I'm looking within a week. And all of these clicks, it's getting me further down the funnel and the commitment level. And if I go through this whole process, I don't actually get to see any of the care until I register with an email address.

09:59 And so they do an excellent job of getting this huge database of email addresses and people interested in getting care whether that's babysitting or pet care. And then they also on the other side if you punch in I want to provide care and get a job it's also going to get the email address of those people. It says that has 29 million families who've used care.com.

10:25 Now this website gets approximately 4.75 million visitors each month according to similar web a huge amount of traffic 6.74 pages per visit most of that traffic is coming from direct because of the marketing that they do people are just aware of this website the oneword domain and then organic on top of that. If you look at their website, you can see that they don't have any ads on the website because they're going to make a lot more of their money from sponsored listings, from getting the higher placement for people

10:59 providing the care. There's membership options that they have for people looking to hire others. So, there's a number of ways that they monetize this website. It's absolutely massive. We don't know exactly how much money it's making other than in the year 2020, IA acquired care.com for $500 million. IA Interactive Corp. is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ and Care.com is now one of their properties.

11:28 So, they were acquired for $500 million. So, they're making millions of dollars every year from Care.com, this massive directory. Now, I know what you're saying. I can't go out there. I can't build a care.com. That would take years. That would take millions of dollars of investment. And you're absolutely right. But there are newer websites, newer directories that are doing really well.

11:53 And so for my final directory that I want to reveal, this is something that is only 3 months old and it's already getting over 50,000 visitors a month. Let's check out mcp.so. This is a directory for MCP servers and clients. What is that? I'm not an expert in that at all other than I know from my research that Anthropic who are the creators of Claude the AI tool.

12:20 They recently introduced the model context protocol or MCP. Uh and so this is essentially an open-source uh model which is a new standard for connecting AI assistance to the systems where data lives. And if you want to learn more, you can read from their website. Okay. But this was just announced November of 2024. So we're only about 4 monthsish away from that announcement.

12:52 Somebody quickly then went out and started building a database, a directory of all the MCP servers that are out there. And so this website mcp.so, you can see that it has all these listings, this directory of MCP servers and clients. It's kind of nerdy stuff. However, what's really smart as well that they are already getting 52,000 visitors per month coming to the website, which uh is huge for a brand new website.

13:24 And believe it or not, a significant portion of that traffic is coming from organic search. According to Similar Web, about 35% is organic search. The other 43% is direct with about 10% is referrals and another 10% from so social. So, they're getting traffic from a lot of different sources. I don't notice ads all over the website. So, I can't do an ad calculation uh to see how they're making money.

13:51 And maybe they're pre-revenue. I don't know. Or maybe they're charging for listings. But either way, they're well set up so that they can make money from sponsored ads or make money from display ads on their website. A very niche idea that hopefully is going to get the wheel spinning for you. Overall, I hope that some of these niche directories have inspired you for what's possible.

14:12 With some ingenuity and hustle, you just might be able to build a successful directory website making a few hundred a month to millions. Want to see some examples of more simple websites that are making good money? I recently created a video of a one-page website that is making $21,000 per month. Go ahead and check out that video right here. Thanks again for watching.