The Most Passive Business You Can Start With $20 — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00That specific website I've made around like 150k  from. As far as the time commitment, 30 minutes
2. 0:07every 4 months. Sometimes I didn't touch it for  6 months. I still don't touch it really at all.
3. 0:12And I was like, okay, well, I I don't know how to  code, so I'm just going to do a website. I watched
4. 0:16a bunch of YouTube and I just started building. A  Claude Code subscription is all you really need.
5. 0:22The highest offer that I've gotten for the first  directory was around 50k. It had lorem ipsum on
6. 0:28the front page, yet I got a $20,000 lead, already  getting 42,000 monthly organic visitors. It got
7. 0:34to 10k a month in 6 months, which is really  fast. Holy cow. Meet Frey. A few years ago,
8. 0:42he shut down a shoe business that he'd ran for 5  years, and he was pretty bummed out about it. So,
9. 0:47he watched YouTube, learned how people find  websites on Google, and built one simple website.
10. 0:52It's just a list of thrift stores. The first  month he put ads on it, it made 1,200 bucks,
11. 0:57and at its best, it was making $3,000 a month. He  touches it maybe 30 minutes every few months. He
12. 1:03says one $50 link from another website is a big  reason that one site has made around $150,000.
13. 1:11These are called directories. Your startup cost is  basically one AI tool subscription, and by the end
14. 1:16of this episode, you'll know exactly how to find  the idea, how to build it with AI, and how to get
15. 1:22it found on Google. In a few minutes, we'll talk  about the website with fake placeholder text on
16. 1:27the home page that still landed a $20,000 order.  Later on, we'll talk about the exact five-sentence
17. 1:34email that he sends to get other sites to link to  his for only 50 bucks. And at the end, we're going
18. 1:40to talk about a three-month-old website a list  of links to government websites that gets 42,000
19. 1:46visitors a month. Please enjoy. What is your  best like backlink return on investment? Like,
20. 1:51how much did you spend for a backlink that you  can attribute x amount of revenue to? It was
21. 1:56the first directory that I ever built. I built  the directory a month later, found an existing
22. 2:03directory doing well, reached out to their like  best link. Within a day, still remember the guy,
23. 2:09his name is Brian. He was like, "Yeah, just PayPal  me 50 bucks. You got it." And it was a link swap,
24. 2:13so it wasn't a link insert. If there is an exact  sort of like competitor that matches my directory,
25. 2:19I would actually ask them to swap the link because  you effectively remove a link from your competitor
26. 2:25and gain a very solid link for yourself. And  that's what happened. And that single link
27. 2:30basically got me onto the first page for a lot of  different keywords. Woah. That specific website
28. 2:35I've made like around like 150k from just in the  last 4 years. So, I would say that's probably the
29. 2:43most profitable backlink that I It was $50 back I  mean, there's probably a lot of other reasons, but
30. 2:49that That was the only link that I built for maybe  even ever. Cuz what people don't tell you about
31. 2:54link building is once you get to the first rank  on the first page, you naturally accrue backlinks
32. 3:00because people are writing blogs or journalists  are writing about it. So, it's really just how do
33. 3:06you get there? And then like I don't want to say  you can coast, it depends on what your niche is,
34. 3:10but that's what happened. I just started getting  a lot of organic links because I was ranking
35. 3:14position one on the first page. Okay. Is it safe  to say that by the end of this episode people will
36. 3:19have enough knowledge to launch a directory that  can still exist in the age of AI and copycats? I
37. 3:26think so. Okay. Well, why don't we start by  you telling us simply what a directory is?
38. 3:32I've always said that a directory is just a list.  I think it's really just as simple as that, but a
39. 3:38directory in its traditional form, I think we're  used to yellow pages, we're used to TripAdvisor,
40. 3:43Yelp. A directory just guides someone through a  decision-making process in my opinion. And so,
41. 3:48a lot of people on directories are either in the  discovery phase or they're in the decision-making
42. 3:52phase and you're either You're pretty much most of  the time helping them make the decision. And so,
43. 3:57the idea is you build this website and you save  them the time that they would spend manually
44. 4:03looking up a bunch of things with 20 tabs  open. You can put a lead form, people submit
45. 4:08their information, and that all of a sudden  becomes what is effectively like a five, 10,
46. 4:1315,000 dollar lead. What would you say to people  that are like, "Uh directories aren't relevant
47. 4:18in the age of AI. Like AI's just going to get  us what we need without us needing to go to a
48. 4:22website or directory." Yeah, I would say that  there's always a version of your story that's
49. 4:27true. If you try to create a yellow pages, that's  probably not going to work. The age of creating a
50. 4:32directory where you're in 50 different categories  what I'm talking about is, like, let's say you
51. 4:37start "Things to do Denver," and you're talking  about museums, daycares, dog groomers, all of
52. 4:43these categories you're not going to perform very  well, in my opinion. There are examples of that
53. 4:50still working, but it's a very, very small number  of websites that have built authority for years.
54. 4:55What's much more effective is focusing in on one  specific thing and solving one person's problem.
55. 5:01Directories do work. If you look at the data and  you look at how quickly these websites are able
56. 5:07to get indexed and get traffic, it's kind of  crazy. And I have a few examples if you want
57. 5:12me to share them, but I just kind of focus on the  numbers and I build them to see for myself because
58. 5:17I don't want to rely on what I see even in the  data. And directories are still one of the best
59. 5:22vehicles for just getting really early organic  traffic. I launched a directory last week as well,
60. 5:29and there's just like certain niches where AI  overviews are just like...I'm just getting so
61. 5:34much traffic from AI overviews from a fresh  website versus other niches where it's like,
62. 5:39this one's like 25%of my traffic's coming straight  from ChatGPT, and I can see in my analytics. And
63. 5:44it's a a week and two days old, so yeah, nine days  old. Wow. What got you thinking about directories
64. 5:49in the first place? At the time I closed my first  business, I ran for five years, it was a shoe
65. 5:53business, and I remember being really depressed  and telling myself that in my next business,
66. 5:59I need five different things. I needed the  business to be scalable because shipping shoes
67. 6:06to Canada was very expensive. I wanted something  fully remote. I wanted something where I could
68. 6:11sell the business as an asset. I wanted something  that was high-margin. And I think something that
69. 6:19I didn't need to rely like on personnel. Like I  could kind of do it myself. And the two options
70. 6:25that I landed on were really SaaS or website. And  at the time, a lot of people were owning these
71. 6:32niche blogs. And I was like, "Okay, well, I I  don't know how to code, so I'm just going to do
72. 6:35a website." And I didn't even mean to build  a directory. I watched a bunch of YouTube,
73. 6:40spent like 100, 200 hours just learning what SEO  was. And I just started building. And that first
74. 6:46directory ended up getting at the peak around  90,000 organic monthly visitors. Within six
75. 6:51months, it was getting around 30,000 organic  monthly visitors. And I just started job. And
76. 6:56I was like, "Oh, let me put up some ads." And I  remember the first month I made like 1,200 bucks
77. 7:00just from the ads. And I was like, Wow. The heck  is this? What niche was this directory in? This
78. 7:05was a This was a thrifting directory. Okay. in the  thrifting space. Okay. So, you just saw a bunch of
79. 7:11signals out there using some tools that showed  you there was a lot of search traffic for people
80. 7:17trying to find thrift stores. And then, of course,  these thrift stores are listed on Google Maps,
81. 7:21but aside from that, there wasn't like a central  website or a place where people could get answers
82. 7:27to those questions. Actually, there was. And so,  that's actually part of my vetting process. One of
83. 7:32the first things that I do to find opportunities  is I'll literally look up the keyword and
84. 7:37directory into Google. And what I did find was  a small website that was getting 120,000 organic
85. 7:44monthly visitors. The information was wrong. It  looked bad. It was just a bad resource. And I was
86. 7:50like, "I could create something much better than  this." And this is proof, at least from my limited
87. 7:54SEO knowledge at the time, looking at signals  like domain rating and identifying that this was
88. 8:00not that authoritative of a website from an SEO  perspective. And I could just compete in in So,
89. 8:06that was my proof of concept that it was showing  up on the first page of Google, it's getting
90. 8:10traffic, and it wasn't authoritative. And then I  did actually check Google Maps to see if it was
91. 8:16easy to find, and it was not easy to find. This  particular thrift store is a type of thrift store
92. 8:21that it's kind of borderline adjacent to almost  like liquidation stores. And Okay. So, it was not
93. 8:28easily sorted through. You would see liquidation  stores and other types of random things pop up
94. 8:33in Google Maps, and I was like, "Okay, this is an  inconvenience for the user." And that's what gave
95. 8:38me the green light to build. And the fact that  my whole website should probably target a single
96. 8:42keyword. Cuz I don't want to dilute what message  I'm giving to Google and say, "Oh, I'm in like 50
97. 8:48different categories." No, I'm just really talking  about one thing that gets like 100,000 monthly
98. 8:52searches. And so, that's really all I knew. Okay,  so you're saying like that's not too niche for a
99. 8:58directory. Keyword city, that's worth it to build  a directory for. Depending on the industry, right?
100. 9:03Like it can't be like, you know, rhinoplasty Omaha  suburbs. But if it were If it were auto repair
101. 9:11shops, Chicago, that's plenty big enough. As long  as you can reasonably get to tens of thousands
102. 9:17of monthly organic visitors, which is um very,  very possible. Okay. And at its peak, how much
103. 9:23was this website making per month, and how long  were you spending on it every month? At the peak,
104. 9:28it was around like $3,000. It would hover cuz  display ads are very unpredictable. I would say
105. 9:34like 2,300 to $3,000 because around 1,500 to 2,000  was coming in from display ads, and then I do sell
106. 9:41a $19 digital product. That's basically telling  people when new product arrives. To get that, I
107. 9:47had to call like 100 different stores, uh which is  very unscalable, but proprietary data in a sense,
108. 9:52right? You can't find that information online. And  uh that would bring in uh the difference like I
109. 9:57would have like $1,000 sold for digital products.  And so, yeah. And as far as the time commitment,
110. 10:0530 minutes every 4 months. Sometimes I I touch it  for 6 months. Wow. I still don't touch it really
111. 10:11at all for it. Like every 6 months I'll spend  30 minutes just like refreshing content and
112. 10:17uh maybe building a link or two, but not a lot  of time. And how much of your traffic or interest
113. 10:23on this website is coming from like AI tools like  ChatGPT today versus when you first started it? I
114. 10:31wasn't tracking it when I first started, but these  days I would say not a lot for this particular
115. 10:37niche. I would say somewhere around like five  not even 10%. Yeah, probably 5%and it's mainly
116. 10:43ChatGPT. Strangely enough, actually DuckDuckGo  and Bing Hm. and Yahoo give me more traffic than
117. 10:50AI citations for this particular niche, but it's  different for other ones, yeah. Hey, if you're
118. 10:55liking this episode, we spent a lot of time on it.  Please just hit subscribe and it would mean the
119. 11:00world. There's probably 10 different ways that you  can monetize a directory. So, most people do think
120. 11:05of lead generation, feature listings, selling per  lead, selling that kind of stuff. I think ads,
121. 11:11display ads. We've all gone on websites where  there's just a bunch of ads. That's the other
122. 11:15common way. But there's digital products. There  are Hm. like education, like uh subscription-based
123. 11:22education. Now with the Vibe Coding, like  I truly believe there's just so much more
124. 11:27opportunity. Like I just built a job board 2 days  ago where it's not an ordinary job board. There's
125. 11:32a CRM attached to it and there's just so many  ways to make money by packaging it and offering
126. 11:38more value and straying away from Yeah. your two  typical options, ads and leads. You could sell
127. 11:44a $19 PDF on how to find the best senior living  center for your parent. What else is open? Yeah,
128. 11:51I mean, for the senior living, actually people  are doing um violations, like code violations. So,
129. 11:56there's a public database where companies are  legally required to share if there's been any
130. 12:01kind of like official reports. And so, you can  literally scrape that public data and package it.
131. 12:07But going into the like some of the more creative  ways to monetize, I've seen like some directories
132. 12:12as of late, which is like it effectively helps you  reach out to journalists or like angel investors
133. 12:18and they just vibe coded a CRM. $50 a month is  kind of like their offer. Gives you access to
134. 12:25essentially what is a bunch of scraped emails  probably ran through something like million
135. 12:30verify or some email verification system and a CRM  to help them track who they're reaching out to,
136. 12:36when to follow up, notifications, that kind of  stuff. Okay. So that's like I think a pretty
137. 12:41good kind of like a also very versatile way  to monetize. I'm intrigued by this story that
138. 12:45you said you have. What story do you have for  me? A woman came up to me and was like, "Hey,
139. 12:49can I get your feedback on this website  that I'm creating?" I was like, "Yeah,
140. 12:53sure. Take a look." And I saw rhinoplasty near  me. I'm like, "Oh, you're building a directory.
141. 12:57So what inspired you to create this?" And she  said, "I spent $6,000 on my nose job at a very
142. 13:02young age and they and they botched my nose. It  was like crooked. It was messed up. So I spent
143. 13:07$40,000 on a nose repair." Ouchies. And  so instead of like yeah, she was angry
144. 13:13but she funneled all of this like angry energy  into creating a resource that actually helped
145. 13:17people not make the same mistake that she did.  That pushed her to create an Instagram handle,
146. 13:24scrape public databases to get license information  for doctors and surgeons who do rhinoplasties. She
147. 13:30was so passionate about this that clearly the  extra work, the extra distribution required to
148. 13:35make what otherwise would be a very difficult SEO  play like rhinoplasties near me, she can make that
149. 13:40work. And so that was like the first thing that  was like, "Oh wait, that kind of reminds me of
150. 13:44like first directory built." Then I met another  guy. Sorry, she she had the right why. She had
151. 13:49a why that was greater than her competitors  why which made all the difference. 100%. Yeah,
152. 13:54that passion was like palpable and like that  why was very strong. The second person was just
153. 14:00opportunistic. He He built an NSFW directory many  directories in the NSFW space. So not suitable for
154. 14:07work, kind of inappropriate type stuff is what  you're saying? Yep. Yep. And so he he got to
155. 14:1210K a month in 6 months which is really fast for  like any business, but particularly directories,
156. 14:18and he just looked at high search intent, high  volume keywords, low keyword difficulty-ish.
157. 14:24Like there are some definitely high difficulty  keywords there, but it was just an SEO play,
158. 14:28and he just kind of creates these directories and  monetizes them in any other way, like just ads,
159. 14:35featured listings. He has other directories  getting like a million monthly organic visitors.
160. 14:40But he's like not He's like, you know, you talk  to him and you're like, "Okay, like clearly this
161. 14:44guy the money, period. He's in it for the money.  So those are like the two ways that I kind of
162. 14:49see the way you can like build directories. You  can just like build portfolios of directories,
163. 14:54and like literally just do the research and find  a lot of different opportunities. to know like
164. 14:59what did your directories number two through five  look like, and how did those go? Yeah. So uh two
165. 15:05through five So up to my I think I was batting  three for three, and then my fourth directory
166. 15:11uh didn't do too hot. I probably have around  like a 30%failure rate. Directory number two
167. 15:17was my first lead gen directory, and sort of  proprietary data directory. I've talked about
168. 15:21it publicly. It's called discoverplasma.com. And  uh it basically crowdsources plasma donation pay.
169. 15:28The third directory was another let me prove  to myself that I actually created the first
170. 15:33directory correctly, and it wasn't an accident.  So I built I built a directory where the whole
171. 15:38goal was to just get a lot of traffic. It was  in an adjacent niche from the first directory,
172. 15:42which is actually a solid framework for anyone  who wants to build directories. That's why finding
173. 15:47something successful first is so valuable.  You can build in an adjacent niche. And so
174. 15:52So that's what I did. Within, I want to say Yeah,  it was very fast. The third directory within like,
175. 15:58I want to say three or four months was getting  20,000 organic monthly visitors. I slapped on ads,
176. 16:03and it was like immediately making like three,  four hundred dollars a month. Nothing crazy.
177. 16:08Sometimes it would spike like crazy. I remember  my highest revenue day for that directory was
178. 16:13three hundred like twenty-six dollars in a day  just from ads. Wow. So very very Passive. spikes.
179. 16:19Very Yeah, very passive, very much the same like  simple directory targeting, low competition,
180. 16:26high search volume keyword, underserved, hard  to find on Google Maps. Only in this case there
181. 16:31wasn't an existing successful site. I just kind  of knew that it would probably work because my
182. 16:37first directory worked. And then after that, it  was a lot of experimentation, even to this day,
183. 16:42a lot of experimentation. Which one was the  dud and why? So, the fourth was a dud in the
184. 16:48sense that I just didn't put effort into it. It  was called portapottymatch.com. I also talked
185. 16:53about it uh publicly. I don't even know if it's  still up, but it was around porta potties and it
186. 16:58had lorem ipsum on the front page, yet I got a  $20,000 lead. I told this story Wow. Um to to a
187. 17:06few people. It was the New Mexico State Fair. They  reached out and they said, "Here's the lineup. I
188. 17:10need like six luxury porta potties, a hundred like  standard porta potties." Yeah, your website. it's
189. 17:17no longer up. Yeah, it was uh it was supposed  to be an experiment for more traditional lead
190. 17:23generation. And what I discovered is I really  don't want to do cold calls to local businesses
191. 17:30after getting leads, but for a long time I was  getting leads from people who were for weddings,
192. 17:36for festivals, for film shoots. Those were kind of  like the three main situations that people would
193. 17:42reach out. And those leads were pretty valuable.  And so, it was a dud because I just really didn't
194. 17:48want to do the sales part of the lead generation  directory, which is instrumental. And um that's
195. 17:55what I learned. And that's probably the number  one reason why lead generation tends to fail for
196. 18:00a lot of people is they're not they're not ready  to accept the SEO side, the website building side,
197. 18:07and the sales side. And it's it's a lot. It's  a lot. I usually know within the first 30 days,
198. 18:13definitely definitely within 60 to 90 days,  whether or not it's worth investing more time,
199. 18:18but more importantly, money in backlinks. That's  literally the thing that moves the needle,
200. 18:24that gets you from page three to page two and  eventually one. So, how did the scratch and dent
201. 18:30appliance one go? It is still there. It's called  scratchanddentlocator.com. There is an advertised
202. 18:37page where I connected my analytics, so you can  see how much traffic it's getting. I think it's
203. 18:40around like 6,000 organic monthly visitors. And  launch a website with 10,000 plus pages to see
204. 18:48how indexing works. Oh. So, Yeah. Yeah, there's  like a theme with at least the way that I build,
205. 18:53I try to experiment with a specific SEO related  thing because I believe the better you get at SEO,
206. 19:01that's like the monetizable trade. It's  really not the directories. It's learning
207. 19:04SEO And you're saying in an age of AI, SEO is as  relevant as ever, if not more so. Oh, yeah. Yeah,
208. 19:11I would definitely say so. As long as humans  or robots are using the internet for anything,
209. 19:16SEO is alive and well, right? Yeah. Even AI agents  trying to find answers need good SEO to find those
210. 19:23answers. What tool did you use to vibe code the  scratch and dent website? I use CloudCode and
211. 19:29I haven't changed since. I'm the kind of person  who just sticks to one thing if it works really
212. 19:36well. I'm not really changing too much. So, today  I still use CloudCode to build all my directories.
213. 19:42Okay. A marketing agency added $133,752 per year  in new recurring revenue in their first 30 days
214. 19:50with zero new hires. That comes from Nico Torres,  who runs an agency called Authority Makers,
215. 19:55and Victor is sponsoring this video. Victor's an  AI employee. He lives in your Slack, connects to
216. 20:01just about any tool that you're already paying  for, and you hand him work like you would hand
217. 20:04it to anybody else on your team. The difference is  that he goes and actually does it instead of just
218. 20:09giving you advice about it. So, if you run any  kind of service business, there is a hard ceiling
219. 20:14on how many clients you can take before somebody  has to go hire another person. The reporting,
220. 20:19the monitoring, the Monday client update, that  is what eats your capacity. Hire Victor for your
221. 20:24team, use code Kerner100 through my link and  get 100 bucks of free work. No credit card,
222. 20:30running in minutes. A co-pilot helps you work,  but an AI employee works when you do not. How
223. 20:35many directories in total do you have today? Oh  man, I honestly don't even know. I think I want
224. 20:40to say like maybe in the ballpark of like inching  towards 15 or so. Like a month ago, I used Grogbot
225. 20:51to build laredocranerental.com, a directory of not  even a directory, but like a lead gen service for
226. 20:59people needing crane rentals in Laredo, Texas. And  I got like a $5,000 and a $23,000 lead in my first
227. 21:072 weeks. And more leads since, and I have not done  anything with it. I'm just I just do it for the
228. 21:14love of the game, you know, which is foolish, but  there's a lot of opportunity like out there. Like
229. 21:18I do it myself for fun. Like especially with these  AI tools, you can do it more easily than ever
230. 21:25before. 100%100% Are you using AI agents at all  to go do research and scrape and build for you, or
231. 21:32are you mostly just like prompting yourself with  Claude code? I do do a lot of AI agent research,
232. 21:39mainly for ideation. I would say that the idea  is the most time-consuming part of building a
233. 21:45directory. Scraping data, also agents. I think  that's um definitely a part. Other than that,
234. 21:52it's yeah, me prompting Claude code to kind of  just brain dump my idea, my vision, and have
235. 22:00it build it for me. It's yeah. And I I I guess I  could go in more depth, but I don't think anyone
236. 22:07who has played with Claude code has an issue  building out these directories. Yeah, it's it's
237. 22:12relatively easy. Just in plain English, you just  kind of prompt it. Any five coding tool out there
238. 22:16could handle what you need to do. Yeah, yeah.  Lovable, for sure. I even found that a Squarespace
239. 22:21directory yesterday. You can use whatever works  for you. What other tools are you using to come
240. 22:27up with that idea? I know you use Ahrefs. Is there  anything else out there? I keep it pretty simple.
241. 22:32I mean, for finding ideas, it really helps to use  the Ahrefs MCP or API connected to your cloud code
242. 22:41and start to feed it prompts that represent how  I look for good directory ideas. For example,
243. 22:47finding a successful directory by typing  in your keyword plus directory in Google,
244. 22:53looking at the top 10 in the SERPs, and seeing if  any of them get traffic and are low domain rating,
245. 22:59kind of prove that this is low competition and  viable. And then you can add extra prompts like,
246. 23:04is this something that has a search intent that  would lead to return visits? Is it something that
247. 23:11could lead to just like a not a one-click  and then leave sort of thing? Like, if you
248. 23:16created a directory around like claw machines,  for example, that's like quick information,
249. 23:23I'm leaving. Never going to probably come back to  that. And so, there's a lot of other things you
250. 23:29can kind of pile onto these prompts that make it  easier for ideation, which is what I do a lot of
251. 23:33the time. And that's really it. I don't spend time  exploring other tools, really. I would say Reddit,
252. 23:39if anything, but feel like that's a that's  a known solid resource. What is like the the
253. 23:44secret to getting good backlinks? Cuz from what  I understand, backlinks is the secret, largely
254. 23:50the secret to having like an okay directory  to get some traffic versus a lot of traffic
255. 23:54that really makes money. My favorite way is the  same way link building agencies build backlinks,
256. 24:01which is really just cold email. And so, the idea  is once you find an existing successful directory,
257. 24:07most of the time they'll have backlinks. Look at  their backlinks in a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush,
258. 24:12and you can simply reach out to the very website  owners who are pointing a link to your competition
259. 24:17and say,"Hey, can I pay you X amount of money  to have this link inserted into your blog, your
260. 24:24listical, your resource page?"I've been doing this  a lot this year. Um I'm getting like a 7%response
261. 24:31rate because that's the next question people will  have is how many people actually respond to this
262. 24:36very specific request? Do people even know what  that link insert means? Sure. And surprisingly a
263. 24:41lot of people do. There's a lot of things that you  can do to negotiate, but it is really as simple as
264. 24:48that. It's very boring. You do need to know email  infrastructure. You need to buy a domain and not
265. 24:54ruin your own business emails domain reputation,  email domain reputation. So, there are some things
266. 25:00that you want to learn and and brush up on, but  it's really like a less than a week learning phase
267. 25:06and more of a let me warm up these emails for 2  weeks and then start sending out these emails in
268. 25:12a targeted way. And there's a lot of nuance when  it comes to that, but that's the general idea. You
269. 25:16just reach out to site owners directly. Now, are  you asking specifically for your link to be on the
270. 25:22exact same page on their website or any page on  their website? So, what I do is I'll go back to
271. 25:28Ahrefs and I'll look at which websites have real  traffic coming to the blog, reading the blog,
272. 25:36because the ideal situation is that someone  reads the blog and clicks on the link and then
273. 25:41ends up on my directory or my website. I think  those user signals are quite valuable. And so,
274. 25:47I do kind of like do some extra research once  they agree and say,"Hey, can I actually have
275. 25:52it on this page?"And then I will pretty much  give them a single sentence that says,"Hey,
276. 25:58just like literally copy and paste this."And  it'll point to you one of my location pages,
277. 26:02sometimes my homepage, kind of just make it easy  for them. Okay. So, you say 7%response rate. Is
278. 26:08that 7%like close rate? Like 7%of people will put  it on their website or they just respond to you at
279. 26:14all? 7%respond and a very high percentage of those  people who respond agree to put the link on. And
280. 26:21that doesn't necessarily mean I take them up on  it because as you do this, you'll discover that no
281. 26:25one knows what the fair market value of a backlink  is. You'll have very low authority websites asking
282. 26:31for $300 for a link. And I'm like, maybe when like  a lot of these people are blogs that used to get a
283. 26:38lot of traffic, but that have really died and get  like zero traffic now for the last few years. And
284. 26:43they're like, I want $500 for a backlink. And I'm  like, I That's crazy. And then on the other hand,
285. 26:49I've gotten DR60 websites, which for people who  are with SEO rating. out of 100? And 60's high.
286. 26:57It's out of 100, but that's high. I mean, a lot of  other websites have five, 10. It's very high. It's
287. 27:01very authoritative. For those who aren't in the  link building game, that is like a $500 backlink
288. 27:08all day. If you hire an actual link building  agency, DR60 with real traffic coming. And I've
289. 27:13gotten those for 50 bucks. I've gotten those for  75 bucks like multiple times. I've even got them
290. 27:18for free because I'll reach out to nonprofits  sometimes, and they'll just be like, yeah, we'll
291. 27:22just list you. You look like a helpful resource.  I'll just list you on the website. And so, you
292. 27:27do have to make sure you have an actually valuable  resource before you do this cuz that does increase
293. 27:34the rate at which people agree to put a link on  your on their site. Now, are you able to read like
294. 27:39the exact email that you sent to these people, the  first email? Yeah. I have a templated approach.
295. 27:47Let me just pull it up here. I might make parts of  this email slightly vague just to protect some of
296. 27:53my niche sites, but um So, basically the format is  the first sentence is it's a quick intro. And I'll
297. 28:01say I'll say,"Hi there."or"Hi Steve. My name is  Frey, and I had an oddly specific question about
298. 28:09your post and then"the post in quotes,"and I  link to it." Insert like the name of the web
299. 28:14page in question? Yeah, like Okay."How to five  best drifting spots in Denver"or something like
300. 28:21that. Okay, so if you have their first name Sorry,  if you have their first name, then it's"Hey first
301. 28:25name."If you don't, then it's"Hey there." And  I love the hook. That first question,"I have
302. 28:30an oddly specific question."Like that's got my  attention. Very brilliant. Yes, and then the
303. 28:35second sentence is personalization. So, I have  scrapers that take the first half of a blog, and
304. 28:44it writes a very brief, concise second sentence  that just shows that I kind of read the article.
305. 28:50So, I'll say like, "You've got this thrift store  on your list, and I really like this one."I try
306. 28:57to not make it sound like AI, but it's very brief.  The third sentence is the offer. Could I pay you
307. 29:02$75 to have a link added in that section or in  this article? The fourth sentence is who you are,
308. 29:09why you built it, why they should even care in  the first place. So, I built XYZ directory because
309. 29:15it was hard to find thrift stores. They never  showed up on Google Maps, and strangely enough,
310. 29:20I get 20,000 people a month coming to my site  now. My fifth sentence is the founder POV,
311. 29:26where I say,"Honestly, this is a side project  I'm trying to grow. I'm trying to get more eyes
312. 29:30on it."Nothing ever to do. I'll just send you the  sentence. 75 bucks for your time. No worries if
313. 29:35it's not a fit. And that's the whole email. Same  structure for every single email, and the founder
314. 29:41POV is insanely valuable. It works really well, I  should say. That just like it puts a human behind
315. 29:47the email. You know? Yeah. I love it. Sell your  story. That's you doing that in one sentence.
316. 29:53By the way, I have a free weekly newsletter with  super thorough business ideas. It's at tkopod.com,
317. 29:59as in the Kerner Office, tkopod.com. One email  per week. Go check it out. going to ask about
318. 30:04the money. Like, when do you introduce how  much I can pay you, or maybe you don't? So,
319. 30:09you don't because if they're not expecting  to pay, but but you prob-clearly tested this,
320. 30:13and it's like, is 75 bucks the price you put  in every email, no matter what, or is that
321. 30:18just what you happen to put in this one? No, it's  dependent on the amount of root domain traffic,
322. 30:24so how many people are going to the website in  general, verified by Ahrefs, the domain rating,
323. 30:29that's definitely a big one, and me and me  those two things, and then I guess the niche
324. 30:34itself. If you're going to try to rank for like if  you're building links to anything in healthcare,
325. 30:40finance, legal, those are naturally just going  to be more expensive. But for like common niches
326. 30:46like a thrift store or something like that, I'll  even start at $50. I am shameless in that sense
327. 30:52and there's always some negotiation at least most  of the time. And so I think like if it's a higher
328. 31:00if it's a DR60, I might offer like 75 to 100 even.  If it's something like a DR20 or 30, I'm offering
329. 31:0950 bucks in a lot of these cases, which again is  way cheaper than the $300 that a link building
330. 31:16service would charge you. Sure. But it doesn't  cost them anything. They don't lose anything by
331. 31:21inserting your link, right? It's a win-win. I  feel like this exactly what you're describing,
332. 31:26which is the key to all of this, link building,  could be so easily done with an AI agent. Like
333. 31:32connect it to your Ahrefs, your Semrush, your  data for SEO account, either by logging in in
334. 31:37a browser or through the MCP or through the API.  And if you don't know what that means, whatever,
335. 31:41ask ChatGPT. And just saying here's what I'll pay  for 40 to 60 domain rating, 50 bucks. 60 to 70,
336. 31:4975 bucks. 70 plus, 100 bucks. I'm willing to go to  a max ceiling of X, Y, or Z if they negotiate back
337. 31:56and forth. But try to find the owner's first name.  The email should look like this. Go. Like have
338. 32:03you tried that? I built an entire software that  that auto buys that does this. Could you give an
339. 32:11example of what a good prompt looks like to build  this website? Of course there's going to be some
340. 32:16back and forth, but like a master prompt. Even  if you could we could link one in the description
341. 32:21uh for people. But whether we link one or not,  what does your prompt look like to build this
342. 32:25in Replit, lovable, cloud code, whatever?  A like a backlink email there. No, sorry. I
343. 32:31changed subject a little bit. Like the the actual  website, the directory. Oh, the directory? Yeah,
344. 32:37so my my most recent build was a job board for  SDRs, sales development representatives in tech
345. 32:44sales. And my first prompt was really a brain  dumped. Uh it was a brain dumped, but specifically
346. 32:51targeting data acquisition first. So, every  directory that I build, I focus on the data. So,
347. 32:57I would say something like, I have a vision  for a job board. It's not a normal job board.
348. 33:02It's specifically catered to people who want to  break into tech sales and become SDRs, BDRs, AEs,
349. 33:10which are account executives. Basically, entry-ish  level jobs in tech sales. Mhm. I want you to
350. 33:18scrape the data and find any like small, medium,  and large business that is currently hiring SDRs.
351. 33:29I want you to get all the information around what  the pay is if it if it is listed, job description,
352. 33:35experience, all that kind of stuff. And beyond  the data, I would even want you to make it way
353. 33:42more helpful. So, this job board is not a normal  job board because it's actually going to be based
354. 33:47on referrals. Like, I want people to realize  that getting a job is way easier if you just
355. 33:52have someone on the inside referring you. So,  what you should do is really build the job board
356. 33:57and then also scrape all the individuals who  work at said companies hiring so that you can
357. 34:02individually message them very easily with a copy  and paste message that says, "Hey, can I can I
358. 34:08get 2 minutes of your time? I'm trying to learn a  little bit more about what you do on a day-to-day
359. 34:12as an SDR."And um the CRM will track it, so it'll  make it really easy to know when to follow up with
360. 34:17people. I'm explaining this in literally writing  You're just talking. experience. Do you use like
361. 34:21Whisper Flow or like just voice dictation? And  you're just writing down, right? Cuz to me,
362. 34:26that's the best prompt is me just like rambling.  I'm all over the place, and then you just upload
363. 34:31it. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm using Whisper Flow. Yeah.  Have you ever been offered any money for one of
364. 34:36your directories, like to buy it out? And if so,  how did that go? Yeah, yeah. I've had actually
365. 34:41several people try to purchase my first directory  and actually that's not even true. I I had someone
366. 34:49reach out yesterday about a random directory that  I built in the in the trash space weirdly enough
367. 34:54and the porta potty ones. Um the highest offer  that I've gotten for the for the first directory
368. 34:59was around like 50k and so at the time I think it  was roughly around 3x annual revenue which is not
369. 35:08incredible if you look at SAS margins they're like  four to like 7x 10x crazy stuff like that. But
370. 35:14it was during a time where a lot of people were  afraid of Google AI overviews cuz they just came
371. 35:18out but I've never like seen a super significant  drop. But yeah, that was that was how it went and
372. 35:23I think maybe like three other people offered like  40 to 45k for that. Wow. Yeah, so For the thrift
373. 35:30store one or for the trash one? Okay. store one,  I think for one of the porta potty ones someone
374. 35:36offered 10k and then I was like, you don't want  this, man. I'm just trying to do you a favor.
375. 35:42There's Laura Mibsum on the front page. Like yeah,  I'm getting leads but like like let me just be a
376. 35:46good person and just want to scam you. Yeah, like  I'm not trying to do that to you. So uh yeah,
377. 35:51it was a pretty No. decently known founder as  well. Oh, that's cool. Didn't you have like a
378. 35:57headlight bulb directory? How how did that come  to pass? So I launched that two weeks ago and so
379. 36:03Okay. that's a very very new directory and I mean  it's slowly trickling up uh for sure. It is a very
380. 36:13interesting experiment in the sense that there's  a lot of successful versions of this in different
381. 36:18niches. For example, I think findmywipers.com is  a directory where you do the same thing. You put
382. 36:25in your year make and model and you can find  the wiper blades and it's an affiliate play.
383. 36:29What's the startup cost for this business? I would  say a Claude code subscription is all you really
384. 36:35need especially if you take the generous free  offers from like Vercel for example which is like
385. 36:43think about it like the GoDaddy or hosting for 5  coders, but you there's other options out there.
386. 36:48And then like GitHub, which holds and that's  where your code lives, that's free. Supabase,
387. 36:54where your database lives, has a free project.  And so if you just utilize these free versions
388. 36:59for your first project, you really just need your  Cloud Code subscription. I also use the Astro
389. 37:05framework. It's basically a free open source way  to create a website that's really great for like
390. 37:10content-heavy websites. So it there's really not  much cost until you want to actually build links.
391. 37:18And before if you asked me this like a year ago,  I would have said,"Oh yeah, like Outscraper,
392. 37:23that's how I'm using that's how I'm collecting my  data."That can cost in the ballpark of 50 to even
393. 37:29$100, 150 bucks, depending on how much data you're  scraping. You can scrape your data through Cloud
394. 37:35Code. But I don't really spend money on anything  else besides Cloud Code and backlinks. Sometimes
395. 37:42Supabase cuz I I have a lot of projects  there, so I'm paying $10 a month. Yeah,
396. 37:46domain. Yep. Obviously, not much else. So tech  stack you can't live without Cloud Code, GitHub,
397. 37:53Vercel, Supabase, Ahrefs, data for SEO, anything  else? I would say Resend. Resend is really solid
398. 38:01for email marketing. Yep. Um also very generous  free free plan. Mhm. And yeah, I would say that's
399. 38:10my tech stack right now. Um and I would argue you  don't even need some of them. Yeah. Do you have a
400. 38:17few minutes to share your screen and log in to  Ahrefs and just kind of just for a few minutes
401. 38:22show us like, all right, here's a good idea,  here's a good idea, and here's why I think so.
402. 38:27Or here's what might seem like a good idea on the  surface, but is actually not and here's why. Yeah,
403. 38:32yeah. All right, so this is entitysearch.us. It's  official business entity search. It's a directory.
404. 38:40Very cool. literally just It's so funny because  it's just linking to the public databases. It's
405. 38:47really not doing anything else besides this for  every single state. It gets 42,000 organic monthly
406. 38:55visitors at a DR 21. So, again, out of 100, this  is in the range of something that is absolutely
407. 39:01beatable from like an SEO authority perspective.  Mhm. And they started they started in during the
408. 39:09summer around mid-July. Wow. is maybe 3 months  old roughly. Actually, yeah, pretty pretty much
409. 39:15on the dot. It's 3 months old already getting  42,000 monthly organic visitors. And it's not
410. 39:22even offering anything that unique. It's just  convenience. So, it's a very boring idea. Yeah,
411. 39:28so this is this is a cool one. I think this  is another quite new one here. It's called
412. 39:34geoblackout.com. Outages mapped live worldwide.  Mhm. for all of these places. outages or power
413. 39:43outages? I think they're power out power outages.  Interesting. And so this one's doing pretty well
414. 39:50as well. So, it's a DR 9. I think this is possibly  the first DR 9 low authority SEO website with this
415. 40:00much traffic. 134,000 organic visitors. it could  be doing so much better. I mean, but it possibly
416. 40:06I think what this speaks to is that there may  be a bigger version of this website that gets
417. 40:11millions of monthly organic visitors. Yeah. Uh  but all the time. But yeah, it could be doing
418. 40:16better. Uh and it's relatively low barrier to  entry. But this is yeah, around June 2025. So,
419. 40:24maybe like a year and a couple months old, but  their growth has been really really solid. And
420. 40:29so this is like a perfect ad play in my opinion  because there's so much traffic. And um yeah,
421. 40:35that's another cool one. Hey, so if you're  serious about starting a directory business,
422. 40:39we put together a 27-page guide business plan  template, whatever you want to call it. Super
423. 40:45thorough. It's 19 bucks. It's pinned in the top  of the description and in a pinned comment. And if
424. 40:50you don't think it's good enough, we will give you  a full refund, no questions asked. It's really,
425. 40:54really good. tradeschoolsnearme.co. Find top-rated  trade schools and programs online. This could be
426. 41:00like an interesting like potential lead generation  play. DR 1.4, guys. When you start a brand new
427. 41:07website, you're a DR zero. When you build a  couple links, you know, this is kind of probably
428. 41:13where you're sitting if it's a high quality,  high DR link. 49,000 organic monthly visitors.
429. 41:19This one's a little bit older. So, it started a  couple years ago now. But, this is a very, very
430. 41:25nice directory cuz the keywords are much higher in  commercial intent. People looking up trade school
431. 41:31near me, yes, they could be in discovery, but  some of them are literally money in hand, ready
432. 41:38to pay for these plumbing schools or vocational  schools. Yeah, you don't get more bottom of the
433. 41:44funnel keywords than trade school in Tampa. Maybe  if it was like electrical trade school Tampa,
434. 41:51yeah, that's slightly better, but this is this  is really solid. And so, that's a really cool
435. 41:56one. This is a more of a Actually, really like  this one, tubstays.com. This is a really funny
436. 42:02one because it's it found a very unique angle to  entering one of the, I guess, more competitive
437. 42:09like affiliate landscapes, which is hotels and  like hospitality. But, it's literally mapping out
438. 42:14It's a directory to find hotels with jacuzzis  in them. Ooh. It's a whole directory. DR 11,
439. 42:20couple thousand monthly organic visitors. And the  keyword is quite literally hotels with jacuzzi in
440. 42:26room. There's 7,000 people a month looking it up.  Holy cow. imagine the affiliate angles that you
441. 42:34could do that they're already um implementing  here. Like, these are not These look really,
442. 42:39really nice, but when you view the deal, it just  goes to Kayak and there's you know, affiliate
443. 42:45link. So, very straightforward. I would say the  only one that I can predict with any sort of
444. 42:53remote accuracy are those that monetize through  display ads. And so, what I look at, again, lead
445. 43:00generation impossible to tell, but what I look  at is where their traffic's coming from. So, you
446. 43:04get paid more when your traffic's coming from the  United States or other tier one countries, which
447. 43:08there's a a list you can look up like AdSense tier  one to tier the first five countries on that list
448. 43:15right there. Exactly. Yep, exactly. And then, of  course, how much traffic they're getting, and then
449. 43:20I'll look at the niche itself if it's in something  that is high in High in cruise ticket. Which is
450. 43:25a little bit foggy, right? You just have to  think about what advertisers would consider
451. 43:29valuable. The notoriously low-paying websites,  niches I should say, are gaming. You know,
452. 43:36you can get a million I met a guy with a million  monthly visitors, and he was making very similar
453. 43:42to my Drifting Directory, which is getting like  50,000 uh organic monthly visitors. So, it really
454. 43:48depends on the niche, and that's the biggest  variable. Now, how did you get to these? Like,
455. 43:52could you go back a couple steps? Like, back to  the the homepage or whatever when you log in to
456. 43:56Ahrefs, like, what are you typing in to even find  these cool opportunities? Ooh, so, are you talking
457. 44:03about finding these actual websites? Yeah, cuz  you showed me some cool examples, but how did
458. 44:07you get those? Like, how did we get there, you  know? Like, what do you search for in that search
459. 44:12bar? Or which tab on the top of the page are you  clicking for? Go to the keyword explorer, again,
460. 44:17type near me, but in my opinion, this is like it's  very much less efficient than all the other ways
461. 44:22that you could do this. Although, you can find  some gems here. I actually really enjoyed it, and
462. 44:27um, it's just kind of like easier for me to talk  to it and say that here's my structured process on
463. 44:35finding ideas and vetting them, and I'll explain  exactly what I explained to you, which is like,"I
464. 44:40don't want you to give me pumpkin patches near  me."I don't want you to give me plumber near me.
465. 44:45I'm looking for real untapped underserved niches  where there's an existing website that's doing
466. 44:52well with a low DR under 20 and that gets some  kind of substantial traffic and then it gives
467. 44:59me a few ideas and I'm like, this one's bad,  this one's great. Let's do more of this and
468. 45:05it's really not that novel of a way to find ideas,  but between Claude Code, the Tido and even like
469. 45:13scraping databases. Like I recently scraped all of  the sites on Mediavine, Raptive and Ezoic. 27,000
470. 45:20plus websites. 24%of them by the way, which  are directories. So that was one way that I
471. 45:26found ideas and started to analyze like what these  top site portfolio owners do, which a lot of the
472. 45:32time is they find something that works and they  just build the same type of website over and over
473. 45:37and over again. Like the top portfolio website  has 118 sites. They're all forums. It's kind of
474. 45:43interesting. But going back to ideation is like I  only come to the keyword explorer when I actually
475. 45:49get the idea from Claude chat or Claude code or  the Tido and then I will vet it in the keyword
476. 45:57explorer and then of course look up the existing  successful version of the competitor. So yeah,
477. 46:03like just to show you the visual, let's just say  like hotel directory, right? I would look up some
478. 46:10kind of directory, click around. Let's say I  was curious about this one. I would take the
479. 46:15root domain like so and then head over to the site  explorer and then from here I'm crafting the story
480. 46:22of like can a small potato like me overcome this a  very authoritative SEO presence in this particular
481. 46:29niche around hotels. And even if I see this, I'm  not freaking out. I'm not immediately quitting.
482. 46:37I'm going back to the search engine results page  and maybe testing a more long tail version of
483. 46:42this keyword. Like hotels with jacuzzi. Gotcha.  directory. And then doing the same thing until
484. 46:49I find successful versions. Like this looks just  small, I can just tell. And I'll just plug this
485. 46:55in, look at the root domain. Okay, it's a DR21  and it gets a couple of thousand monthly organic
486. 47:01visitors. That's within range. Anything under  like a DR25 or DR30, that's a that's beatable
487. 47:07in my eyes. Yeah. And so now I'm asking myself,  if I were here, would I be able to meaningfully
488. 47:13monetize this in any way? And if I think I can,  then I'll go and build it. Got you. Oh, Fray,
489. 47:19this has been amazing. If people want to learn  more, where can they find you or your business
490. 47:24or anything? Fray Chew on Twitter. That's where  you can find me. Okay. Anything else we should
491. 47:28have covered that I neglected to ask you about?  I would say just like just build, like if you're
492. 47:33contemplating it. I meet a lot of people who spend  months building their first directory. And when
493. 47:38you're trying to get good at anything, I think the  best way is just to not have any expectations to
494. 47:44make money quickly and just Any more reps. Yeah,  and low expectations. Yeah, just have fun with
495. 47:49it and start building stuff. Beautiful. Fray,  thank you for your time. Of course. Thanks,
496. 47:53Chris. I firmly believe the best business to start  right now is one that implements AI into small
497. 47:58businesses. And so I have a community where we're  doing exactly that. It's called playmakersai.com.
498. 48:03I'm in there instructing myself. And we have 22  other experts. We have dozens of people in here
499. 48:09that make thousands of dollars a month based  on things that we taught them in the community.
500. 48:13How to learn AI, how to implement AI, and how to  find customers that will pay you a lot of money
501. 48:18for it. So check out playmakersai.com and I will  see you there. If you like this content, please
502. 48:23share with a friend. Give it a like or comment  below and we'll see you next time on The Krutner