The Startup Ideas Podcast - The blueprint for building cash flowing online directories

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Join me as I chat with John Rush, a serial entrepreneur, as we dive deep into how to build and scale directories. John shares his strategies and frameworks to for how to use AI and SEO to build and scale cash flowing directories.Episode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:12  Why directories02:59 How to find directory ideas08:43 Building your directory19:47 Promoting your new directory:23:27  SEO for Directory29:53 Data/Content for Directory 34:25 How to monetize Directory 42:29 What are the multiples for Directory 45:20 How large can a directory became1) Why directories are hot right now:• More content online = higher need for curation• People trust well-curated directories• Less SEO competition than other niches2) How to find directory ideas:• Use Google Keyword Planner• Look for high search volume, low competition keywords• Find available domain names that match or are close to target keywords3) Building your directory:• Use no-code tools (like Unicorn Platform) for speed• Start simple - focus on listing items, not features• Use AI to generate initial content and structure4) Promoting your new directory:• Share on relevant Reddit threads (carefully!)• List your directory in other directories• Engage on social media, especially Twitter• Focus on SEO after initial validation5) SEO strategy for directories:• Start with ~10 high-quality articles• Use tools or AI to generate SEO-optimized content• Focus on internal linking and site structure• Add trending items quickly to capture search traffic6) Monetization strategies:• B2B sponsorships and featured listings• Affiliate links (especially for high-ticket items)• Sell anonymized data or insights• Charge for premium listings or access• Brand sponsorships for established directories7) The power of directories for SaaS:• Easier to win SEO traffic than direct SaaS marketing• Use directories to funnel traffic to your main product• Consider buying relevant directories for instant traffic8) Realistic expectations:• $5K MRR achievable as a side project• Up to $20K MRR with focused effort• Million-dollar potential exists (but rare)9) Why start with directories:• Lower failure rate than SaaS• Faster dopamine hits (traffic, first sale)• Great way to learn digital product developmentPro Tip: Don't fall in love with one idea. Launch multiple directories, see what sticks after 30 days, then double down on winners!Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas Work with me and my team: LCA — world’s best product design firm to build apps, websites and brands people love. https://latecheckout.agencyBoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers [BoringMarketing.com](http://boringmarketing.com/)Community Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses http://communityempire.co/FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JOHN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://x.com/johnrushxLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrushx/John’s directory guide: https://johnrush.me/directory-guide/

In this episode, John Rush breaks down how you should start an online directory, how to ideate for an online directory, how to build an online directory using AI, and how to grow an online directory using AI and SEO. And he just walks through the entire process. People are making 5K, 10K, K, 15K, K, 20K a month with these online directories. They're super easy to create. He thinks it's one of the lowest risk ways to start a startup. I'll let you decide.

Enjoy the episode. We got John Rush, king of directories on the pod. You've heard him here before, but today is a special episode. Because what are we learning today, John? Well, we'll learn how to come up with ideas for directories, how to validate them before you build them, how to build them, how to build them and how to work on SEO once you build them. So basically all three important steps you have to build successful directories.

And why you should care about this is we're kind of entering this golden era of directories. We're starting to see them be more and more popular. People want curation and directories provide that. So if you're looking for your next startup idea, directories is a great place to start. And I'm excited to get in with this. I just like dive deep in directories. I haven't done this with you.

I figured you might as well do it publicly. Yeah, that's smart. That's 100% correct. So just to add on that, the reason directories are so big now and they will be much bigger in the future is that as there is more content on the internet, the quality of the content becomes more important.

And I think directors are solving this pretty well because people trust directories. If it's a good director, they trust it that it's a well-cured content and it has some reviews, ratings, and the quality is high. And the person running it understands the space and picks the right things there. So I think people will be outsourcing the decision-making for the content to the directories from good. Google, because now they ask Google, and that's becoming more and more relevant as we see that the top search results of the Google are mostly dominated by all the hacks. All right. Well, let's start with step one.

How do we find a directory idea that is worthwhile to go after? Yeah, so there are many ways of doing it, but the best way is to start based on keyword. research. So the keyword research is a way to see whether people search for certain keywords and certain phrases. And even if you think that certain idea is great, but often other people might not think so. And you can figure out whether that's true or not by seeing what Google says about that. And Google has this tool called keyword planner that people usually use to plan their ads. But you can also use that tool to see the traffic for directories, not for keywords. And I basically spend hours in that tool every day, just throwing all random

ideas into that tool and seeing whether there is traffic or not. And I can show on a real example, I have even an idea I want to test today. And I will show you how I would test that idea actually right here on the park amazing amazing so while you're pulling that up today's episode uh it's going to be like a live cooking session like we're going to find an idea and we're going to go basically build this idea so if you're listening this on audio might might be helpful to head to to to youtube yeah so one thing we saw is that your podcast has been really great and it's been growing the startup ideas. And the idea I got from this is that that's the hottest part of the whole startup journey now is the ideas.

And I think the part people struggle the most with are the ideas. And I think people search a lot for ideas on Google. And to validate that, I went to Google or I will go there now. I done some tests before. And we come here and we say business ideas. You know, you can remove the filter on the US to see the whole world. It's still in English. And now we're going to see whether people search for it.

And as you see a lot of people search for it. Business ideas is almost one million a month. That's a lot. And competition low, this competition is about the, ads so people don't pay for the ads for this keyword. But finding this domain name is pretty difficult because the next thing you have to think about is like I have the keyword and I want to make a directory and I want the domain name of my directory to match the keyword. If there is a match, then it's gold. Like for example, I had this directory called NextJS starters and it was exact match

of the keyword, exact match, like letter to letter. And I launched that and I opened it. I opened back in three months and it has a lot of traffic just because it's perfect and it's dot com. In this case, obviously this will be taken. So I go to GoDaddy and I see whether business ideas.com is taken

and it's obviously taken. So then I have the next group of keywords here. I can sort them and I can just take them one by one and test them. Small business ideas, little business ideas, online business ideas, all of them.

And eventually, just before the pod, I found one that was available, which was the mini business ideas. And I bought it. So the mini business ideas is a domain I will try. Why it's good. So it's basically, I will explain how the domain and the keyword works. So the key part here is that the Google has made a change. where in the old times Google would look at exact word match and now it looks at the meaning more than the actual words.

And that's why you have this small business ideas here, which is really high up here, and basically can replace small with something else that has the same meaning. And if it's available, you can take it. And that's what I did. So I tried tiny, micro, and then the mini was free. So I bought mini business ideas for $9.

Never buy expensive domains. It's always available. Just be more creative and find the one that's available. So now I have the domain name, mini business ideas. I have the idea itself. So the idea is the director of ideas. That's pretty funny. Don't tell anyone.

But I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them a way. for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into a one simple database. Compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast. But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat cheat. The idea bank is your startup shortcut.

Just click below to get access. Your next cash-loving business is waiting for you. And now I will go for the next step, which is building the directory. So there are many ways of building directories. And the worst way of building directories is going into the code. And I'm a developer myself. A lot of people think I'm not a developer. That's why I always promote no code.

code, but I've been coding for like 15 years. And the reason I always say that you should start with no code is this. When you do no code, you start faster because you can use templates. But that's not the most important part. The most important part is that once you launch, you have to do marketing. And marketing goes around marketing pages, marketing experiments, EB-Tests, and all those things. And also the blog and and program. SEO. And all those things are usually out of the box on most modern CMS or web builders.

Because they have thought about it. That's why they built the whole systems. And when you do that with Next.js or you hardcode that with PHP, you don't really think about the future. And maybe in the present, you may find certain template two or boilerplate for that. But then you'll have a lot of problems in the future when you have to do the other marketing work. because everything has to be done manually. And for example, if you want to find somebody on Upwork who will write certain pages for you and publish them, now you can't do that because it's all in code,

so you will get some Google Doc and you will convert that into code. So it's all huge hustle. And that's why it's, even if you know how to write code and you're great at that, it's 100% better to go with no code, any tool. But I obviously go with my own tool, the Unicorn platform, And let me switch the tab to the other tab now.

All right. So here we are. It's a unicorn platform, like simple website builder that I pivoted into, into directory builder, I would say, because most directories or most websites built on Unicorn now are directories. And that's interesting. And so we go here and we say create. and we find the directories.

So here are the templates. And people always try to overcomplicate things. So I have this Discord group called directory makers. And a guy asked me today, like, I want to make a directory for lawyers. And I want to have this and this and these, like 20 features. And I say, at the first launch of your directory, the only thing that's important, as the items. Like if you put the out,

the ratings and everything, it will be empty because there will be no ratings. There will be no users. So all those features, they don't make sense for a new directory. So the only thing that makes sense for a new directory is a simple page with a name and items and everything else should come later

in the month or even a year. So that's why I always start with very simple director first. So usually it's, for example, this one. So this is probably the simplest one here. So I pick this. All right. And I can actually simplify my work so I can ask AI to generate the director for me. And I say directory of mini business.

Which, by the way, is insane. I had no idea you can do this. Oh, really? That's why I do things really fast. always ask me, what's your routine? I'm like, I use AI for everything. But I do moderate everything, right? So I understand the quality and I add it,

but I always use AI to start of many business ideas for people who want to start a small site project, student, indie hackers, and another founder. All right, let's see. So now it will basically help me to come up with simple things like a menu and the structure, the text, the subtitle. Like basically you could do this all by yourself too, but why not to save time if you can. Yeah. So it suggests me to basically have the directory here and then to have. featured ideas here, which is pretty cool because this is, so in the directory,

everything has to be taken into the, into the prism of SEO. So basically, the more text you have, the more items you have, the more pages you have, the more chance to score an SEO for those pages. And, and for example, in this case, if you have featured ideas, there's a high chance that you can score for SEO compared to just the idea. because ideas will be smaller items and Fisher's ideas. You can probably spend time and create longer pages. All right.

So it's pretty much almost done the work. And okay, now it's a few more seconds. It's making the future for me, I guess. All right. So it's making this also FAQ. So FAQ is pretty important. Yeah, now it's done. FAQ is really important too because in FAQ,

every title here is a possible question people put in Google. That's why the way you usually do with this is pretty straightforward. So you go to Google and you try to search for something. So you write, how do I? And then it suggests you all the other options that other people search for. And that makes it obvious what exactly people search for. And that's how you can basically for or free understand what people search for. then you put them here into this FAQ and you answer those questions.

And then there is a chance you can get traffic for this. So I will show that. Which makes so much sense if you think about it, right? It's... Yeah. It's so basic and obvious, but you'll be surprised that almost nobody does it. Some things look too easy and people don't try because it's... They can't expect things to be complicated and then being valuable.

And if something is easy to do, it feels like it's not valuable because everyone would be doing it. So how to start. So here you see. So how to start a business with no money. How to start business as a teenager. That's interesting. I would never think of this, how to start a business as a teenager. And that's very good keyword, right?

Because it's probably not served well because it's not obvious. And you could cover that. So now I do this research and I write down all these questions. And then I go back to my page where I will cover them. So I go here and they say, I ask AI. Tim for How to Start Business as a Teenager. So I say work for AI and then now it says how to start the business as a teenager. And now it puts the text.

So that's it. So now I basically have a pretty high chance to score on these keywords. And of course, if I want to go further, I will make a page that will have this title and full description. But I usually don't recommend making pages right away because it takes more time to make a page than to make a fake item. That's why start with this and then watch the queries in the search consult. And you will see whether you have any traffic for this keyword.

And if you have any traffic for this keyword, then go ahead and make a page for that. Then you'll win more traffic. So basically my whole approach with directors is this. you have to be doing as little as possible to validate all the assumptions and then the assumption that wins going to take more of your time and you invest proper human time into that and you make it really good because obviously AI is not as good as humans but it's it's pretty good for these experiments but then you make it greater with your own hands yeah so this is my article my website and just to say to time I will switch to the website I just made because it's pretty much the same but with the data. Yeah. So I just made before the call. So this is my directory, the small business ideas.

And I have all the ideas here. And my goal is to have, I don't know, maybe 10 or 100,000 ideas here. And I looked at this keywords. So I put small, little size startup. So every keyword you see here has been validated for traffic, either directly or through indirect words. And same for all the stuff in the FAQ. So every question I have here is coming from the method I just used. So that's pretty much it.

And here I have feature business ideas. So it all takes, if it takes you more than one evening, then you. you're doing it wrong because if it takes more than one evening, you need to redo your method. Otherwise, you're kind of riding on a small car, on a slow car, and you'll never get really far with that. So you have to make sure that you're moving fast because there is a chance that everything I've done will fail.

There's really high chance. And maybe tomorrow or after a week, I will figure out that this will not work. That's why I usually bet for five, six, ten ideas. and I test them all the same time so that I remove the chance to be disappointed when one idea fails. That's pretty good approach, I would say.

Don't do just one directory because it will be disappointing and you have to wait quite a lot for SEO to get in and to validate certain assumptions. But if you have 10 of them, then it's faster. So now the next thing I do is once I built the directory, I have to promote it somewhere. So I do a few things. So the first thing I do, I go to Reddit and I search, I just search on Google,

small business ideas, Reddit. When I do that, I will see all the Reddit articles about that. And then I go into those articles and I reply with my URL. Just have to be careful to not be banned. And to not be banned, you have to reply on articles, where people actually ask for URLs. And there are articles like that where people ask,

do you know places to find the ideas? And then you put your URL, nobody going to hate you for that. And there are a lot of articles like that. So for this particular thing, I found over 100 articles. It took me time. You have to search with different kind of queries.

And then you don't have to just go into every article and reply right away. You just make a plan to make three, replies a day or one or two just to not be blocked or banned by the Reddit engine itself because it has some rules for URLs too besides the subredits. So that's number one thing I do. And that brings some traffic. And then the number two thing I do is I put my directory into other directories. And that's probably the second best way to start on marketing because directors are big. And that's why the other directories might bring traffic to your directory, but it has to be relevant.

So you have to find directories which are relevant. But again, you Google for them and usually find them. And then the third thing I do is I go to social media and I start searching for the same question. And then when I find the question there, I reply with my directory there, which works sometimes really well. if your directory actually helps to the original question. I had that when Fireship had this, what was that? He had this viral tweet about self-hosted software on Twitter. And I replied with my hosted software directory.

And it was DeMoss viewed and like reply there. And since his post was like a million views, mine got like 30 or 4K views. It was really good. And the interesting thing that many people don't know is that Google, they don't say so, but they do this. I know for sure they look at backlinks from social media. And if there is a good tweet with a lot of views and there is your link there, it's so valuable. And in that particular case, it was like fifth or 50th time I approved that. So right after that tweet was going viral with my link there, the next day I had traffic

from Google growing for everything I have, for all the blogs, for all the items. So this is way better backlink than a backlink from websites, actually, now these days. So that's the third thing I do, social media. And I spend some time every day on that, like probably every morning. There are tools for that to spy for keywords. but I'd rather do it myself because search is pretty good on Twitter and it's the same kind of experience, but more native. And then the fourth thing I do is the SEO, and that's probably the most important part. And I do it after the first four steps because first four steps helped me to validate my idea.

Because if I post it somewhere and no clicks, it means that it doesn't click with people. So people sew it, but they don't click it. It means it's a bad idea or the domain name is bad. I have to change something. There's no reason to push it further. But if I have some traffic and it looks fine, then I go for SEO because that's the key way of growing the directories. And I will show you what I do with SEO. So I have built a tool for that too.

But there are a lot of ways of doing SEO and I will walk through all of them. But start with the way I do it myself. Yeah. So I go here and so I put my directory here. And basically where it does is that it scrapes my directory. It will now try to understand everything that's written on it. It will try to do some research. So it will basically do all the actions I do usually myself.

And that's how we build this agent. So I just took all the actions I do. And I programmed them into the. agent. And in a minute, it will come up with some ideas on what can I do with the CEO for this directory. And while it's doing it, there are other ways of doing it. So one way of doing it is to use clothing or chat jeopardy and generate content there. But I would rather recommend using tools for that because SEO is more than just a content. It's a lot about internal linking.

It's a lot about the structure, the keyword research, and all those things. So in this case, it figured out the content of my page and then it found the keywords and it came out with ideas. So these are pretty good, like 10 Locos, Binz's ideas for 2025. and it evaluates the possible traffic it can get for that based on the keywords. And I can just go further. And here I have the plan for 10 articles. So don't start with a lot of articles.

Some people just go crazy and publish hundreds of them. If your site is fresh and the domain rating is low, if you publish a lot of articles, Google will just never crawl. them because it will look like spam for Google. That's why the first month, you should have maximum 50 pages or 50 articles on your website and then second month you can do more. So I usually go for 10 articles on the first month. All right.

I will approve this one. So now it's working on this article. So it's looking for the keywords, evaluating their traffic, the complexity and then working on the outline. So it does pretty good job. And one way to learn SEO is to watch what S.A. O.B.B. does and repeat it manually if if someone wants to do it with their own hands because it does it pretty well.

It does pretty well with all the steps and all the actions. Yeah. So now we will create the articles and I will publish them back to my website. And quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called Boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google.

And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI. I could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers, to my businesses, I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO, and that's why I use Boringmarketing.com, and that's why I invested in it.

They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money-back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend Boringmarketing.com. And that's it. So from that moment, I quit working on this directory completely. So it all takes me usually first day to build and promote it on Reddit and social media. And then the other day for SEO and more promotion.

And then I just stop doing anything with that. And I go for the next directory or I go for other idea. And then I come back in 30 days and I look at the traffic and I see whether there is traffic or no traffic. And sometimes there is no traffic. And the thing is that if there's no traffic, from my experience, if there's no traffic, it's really hard to fix that. So I never managed to make a directory, have no traffic in the month, and then do something so that it actually gets the traffic. It's very difficult because if there's no traffic, then something is wrong fundamentally. Maybe the domain name is wrong.

Maybe the keyword look easy, but in fact, there is not. that's why my recommendation is to never fall in love with the idea for the directory, but rather make maybe five bets and then in 30 days look at the one that does the best and then put more time into that. Otherwise, you'll be trying to push the dying horse and will just never work. And in 30 days, I find the directory that does the best among all I did. And then I do the next phase. And the next phase is the data.

And that part is even more important. Because at the beginning, you're just selling the idea and people click that just to validate that they really care. They have the pain. But you don't focus that much yet on whether your directory is actually good. Because if you focus on everything at once, it's difficult to be good at anything, right? So that's where the first third days I focus only on the value. validation of potential SEO traffic and the interest from people. But after a month, I go full into the data.

And a lot of people who build directories fail here, like must fail here. Because they don't put enough effort into making the data great. And here's what happens. If somebody opens your directory and they know the topic, they understand it, they are probably experts. They can quickly see whether your data is high quality, whether you understand the topic yourself and you're not someone who just used chat jeopardy

to come up with the items, right? And if that expert who sees your directory sees that the value of the content is high, the quality is high, they really respect that and they really want to share with their audience. And that happened with all, all my good directories.

So they all have this moment where an influencer or few shared with their audience because they think it's really good. And they will never think it's good if it's actually not good because they understand the data really well. If they come to, let's say I made this directory, it was LLM models. And then first, I just hired the guy to fill it out with data. And then they open it.

And I see that it's missing mistral. There's no mistral there. And this is the example where if an expert comes in and they see you don't have mistral in your directory, they will quickly realize that you don't know the topic. You would never miss the most important open source project back at the time. And so if the data is great, the influencers might share it with their audience.

And from there, your job pretty much ends because now it just turns into the organic system that people share. If somebody shared, then other people also want to share it. Like people work in a collective mind, right? And the only thing you have to do from there is to make sure the data is great. You keep running your SEO activities. Like I run the agent and others can do other things. But then the key focus is making sure that you check the data, you check the space every week or month, and you make sure that if there is really hot item appearing, like new item that everybody talks about on Twitter,

you have to add it there. You have to add into your directory. Now you have to do it fast because if you do it fast, there's a chance you will actually get the traffic from Google, from people who search for that new hot item right on your directory. directory. And that's why there's very little work to do, but you have to have put attention into the space almost every day. So I have a lot of directories. I don't really do stuff, but I scroll Twitter every day. And once I see that, oh, this item is relevant for this directory. I just bring it in. And that's kind of the next way, the next wave of growth comes

from being early to list hot items on your directory, and Google will find nothing else on the internet to supply to the user who is searching for that, and Google will show your item, your page for that. Yeah. Okay. So that's the whole path. Well, it's the whole path.

So what you've just, first of all, that's, thank you for going through that, but what you've just explained is how to come up with an idea for a directory, how to create content for the directory, how to build the website for the directory, how to grow the directory, and how to iterate with the directory. One of my questions is, great,

now I'm getting 50,000 unique visitors a month on this directory. How are people monetizing directories? And what have you learned around the best ways to monetize directories if there is a best way? Yeah. Yeah, so there are multiple ways depending on your audience. So if your directory is B2B, it's easier to monetize it because obviously you can go to businesses who have the same audience as your directory and you can pitch them in the banner spot

or the sponsor options. That's what I always did. I had directories of all GPs and I just sent an email to all GPD owners saying that do you guys want to be featured on top of this directory because we have 30K items. You're just one of 30K. Do you want to be the number one on the top? And then a lot of people said yes. So that's one way. The other way is the affiliate links.

And that way works pretty good. If the items you have on your directory cost a lot. So if you have items costing $10, then you'll make little money on that because you need a lot of clicks. But if you have items for 500 or $500 or $1,000. or a few K, then there is good money to be made there. For example, I have a directory for NextGIS boiler plates, and I have affiliate links to all the boilerplates, and they all cost quite a lot,

and it brings quite a good money, good income. So I would not exclude one way or the other. I would say do the first one, do the second one, do the sponsoring, do the affiliate links. And then the third option is, is to sell the data. Be careful to not sell the data as a risk because obviously you can't sell people private data,

but you can sell the anonymized data or you can sell the insights. And that's possibly bringing good income if you find somebody who needs that. And usually you have to sell it to the corporates and you have to pitch that to the bigger companies where they are interested in the percentage, in the distributions and things like that.

And the most obvious way to monetize directory is to have a paywall to list. For example, in this case, it's probably harder for business ideas because why would someone pay to list their business idea? But for example, if you're making a list of nannies, search for nannies, and then every a nanny would pay quite good amount to be listed there if you have traffic and if you have the buyers and the same the buyers so that's number four payroll for listings charge 500 or 50 dollars for listings and then the number five is charge for access for those who are most interested in a case of nannies if you are interested in hiring a nanny you would probably pay good

amount to get access to the whole database. So you show top five or you show nannis without their contact data, without their photos, and then to unlock that contact data, you have to pay and then you get access to the whole directory. Either you get access for life or you get access for a month, and then you can charge them for that every month. And the sixth is you find the brand sponsors. That's what I do now. So once your directories are pretty big, you can find big companies, big corporates, who don't need the traffic, who just need the brand promotion. Like we have DevHunt, for example, and it's really big.

It's the biggest of the product hunt. And now it's very easy to get big brands like clerk or like SuperBase and others to want to be there, to be affiliated with it because that's where developers hang out and they're willing to pay just to be affiliated with the product so that you write it's sponsored by SuperBase

and it's not for the clicks it's for their brand there and they're willing to pay for that every month or every week so we have very good deals now with a lot of the players like that for ongoing sponsorship and that's the best one

because a it's ongoing usually they will pay forever because your traffic just keeps growing. It just gets better for them. And also it doesn't destroy your directory because the banners are slightly annoying for users because they will be shown and you want people to click on them. So you will make them different color. And that annoys some people. But the sponsor links are usually smaller and they don't annoy people that much.

So those were the six ways. And then the last way is, or there are two more, but they are available for those who have other projects. So if you have SaaS project like I do, and the main reason I started with directories was that I realized one really interesting thing, it is much harder to win SEO traffic for a SaaS tool than for a directory. So instead of trying to win SEO traffic directly for my SaaS, tool, which has some random brand name that has nothing to do with the keyword.

That's why it's hard. I rather make directories following the SEO-driven approach. I win traffic on directories and they channel the traffic from directories into the SaaS tools. And that turned out to be the best idea I ever had in marketing because now, almost all my traffic goes not to my products, but to directories and then to the products. And also directories are competing for the keywords

that nobody want to pay for. For SaaS, you compete with VC back companies who are paying a lot for the keywords, but nobody wants to pay for directory keywords because there's no money there. There are no VC back directory that wants to compete with you. So that's the good way. to monetize directory indirectly.

Basically, it's your free traffic, which you would otherwise pay for. And the last one is you can sell directories. And you can sell them exactly to the people who have SaaS tools, who have the same audience as your directory, and they would buy it just to channel the traffic. And I did that.

I sold all GBT's dot go to, cheap.AI and they bought it because it has exactly the same audience and and it was really useful for them. I think there's probably the best airway on the market right now for marketing for SaaS companies to buy a directory and channel the traffic. It is way better than newsletter ads or all other ways because directors are pretty cheap. If you look at their traffic, let's say there's a directory with 100k views a month and you can buy it and in a year you get a million views and in that million views you can channel at least 3%. So it's 30K. 3K clicks a year and you'll pay for the directory maybe 20K. And if you pay 20K, so it's less than a

dollar per click, less than a dollar. What are the multiples for directories approximately? Like what are people paying for a directory? There's no system at all. It just depends on the audience because you can't have multiples based on the revenue because revenue is usually not that important. The traffic itself also like some traffic is more expensive than the others. I think from what I seen, the actual deals, they go from 2K, they start their 2K. So you can find and buy a directory for 2K, which is,

has traffic. So it will definitely pay the investment back. And then the average directories go for 20K in average. So small ones go for 2 to 5K and then 15 to 20K the average ones. And then the bigger ones go to 100K. And I think that's where it stops. I never seen a director being solved for over 100K. And where are people finding like if someone wants to go and buy a directory. Is there a marketplace that people can go to or is this like reaching out to founders who are selling directories? Well, I just bought the domain called selldirectors.com yesterday. So I will launch the marketplace. That's hilarious. Right now, I see them mostly on small marketplaces, like not the Acquire.com because Acquire.com doesn't let directors in because

they don't have revenue and they require their revenue. But then there are these smaller marketplaces for smaller websites and I see directors there often. For example, one I seen the director is the most on called Micronio, I think. It's a small one. And they had like 10 directories under 10K there. Some sold, some still being sold. But I think the best way to actually buy directives.

is to go to similar web and research the traffic, research the audience, research the countries, and then reach out to them and offer to buy. I do that. Because if somebody put their director for sale, very often they want to sell for quite a lot. But if you surprise a founder with an offer for a directory, they might just sell it right away for the offer you made. And you can have a better deal, I think. That's what I do right now. Last question.

And I know you don't brag or really share MRR that much. But as much as you're willing to share, if someone, you know, what I like about directories is you can do it yourself or even a micro or tiny team. team. What sort of scale could some of these businesses get to? How big could some of these directories get to if someone wants to start one of these? I think the 5K is probably where you can get without being lucky or being too smart. In my case, I would say the average directory I have is there. It's on 5K. And I know that if I put more time, I can bring it to maybe 15 to 20K. I think 20K is probably the limit for the director right now on the market, unless you want to go full time into that.

And that's your main project. But I don't see directors as main projects. So I only see them as side projects. And I think as a side project where you have either I have my main projects, but other people have main jobs. for that kind of case, I think people can expect 5K MRR on that and then eventually get to the 10K. But I wouldn't hope for a lot more than that.

So I would look at directories as a way to fund your life if you don't live in the US, because that's a good money outside of US. Or I think directories are really good way to start building software, not software, but digital products. because starting with SaaS is the worst idea because you will fail almost 100% and then you'll probably feel bad about that and never start again and go back to a job. But with directories, it's really hard to fail.

I don't think anyone can fail if they launch enough directories and if they spend six months on those directories. Because in SaaS, failure means that you don't have growing revenues. But in directories, if you get to stable 5K visits a month for a B2B directory, you will sell four or five ads and you will make 3, 4K a month on that. And it will stay that way. And even if you do nothing, it will just grow because you have SEO as your channel. And SEO tends to grow even if you do nothing if it's a directory. because directories are in non-competitive keywords.

So that's why my recommendation, start with the directory as your first attempt to build internet business. And you will have more fun because you will get the dopamine faster. So big traffic and maybe the first sponsor, all those things you will get faster compared to SaaS. and then you decide either you go full. I know people who go with directories full in, for example, starter story is a directory too, right? It's a directory of starter stories, and he's making over a million.

And Prudohant was a directory of ideas first. There was no voting system at all. It was just a list of products. He would just look around the internet and put in and send into a newsletter every day, right? So there is a way to grow into millions, but also the risk of failing completely is pretty low too. Yep. Well, I think that's a beautiful place to end.

John, where could people find out more about you and get to know you better on the internet? Twitter is the best place is John Rush X or my website, John Rush.com. And I have this directory guide I launched where I walk through all these steps of ideating, building, growing, selling, monetizing. So that's probably something people should look into if they want to learn the directory world. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, man, this has been a gift. You gave people a gift.

I think directories are criminally underrated. And I appreciate you coming back on the show. If people liked it, you got to like it on YouTube, I guess, right? And you got to, you know, comment and build John up. You know, he came, he shared some secrets. Let's get this, let's spread the love and subscribe. And I'll see you all on the next pod. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming on. You're the man. Appreciate you. You know,