Transcription
In this episode of I Tried It, we're going to test this side hustle that claims that we can start an online business making about 2K per month simply creating directory sites.
If you've been on the internet, if you've been on YouTube like I have over the last few weeks and months, people have all of a sudden been talking about directory sites as if they're some new, latest, greatest thing that nobody has ever heard of. And so, as a person that had a directory site a few years ago, one of the first business ventures that I started, I figured that I should get back into the directory game, tell you the pros and cons, show you my process, what I'm going to do to see if this actually works.
So, if you've seen any of these videos, and there's a ton of them out there. If you've seen this guy who has talked exclusively about directory websites and how he builds them. If you've seen this YouTube video where there was over 230,000 views in the last 3 months, simply talking about directory websites. Watch this video because I'm going to kind of lay everything out step by step.
Hi, my name is Austin Godbolt and I teach platform proof monetization. I show you step by step how you can start an online business and don't have to worry about unpredictable and unstable algorithms. And if you want to be added to the globe, comment down below with your city, state, zip code, province, or country, and I'll get you pinned.
Just real quick, these guys are are great. They're revealing new ideas that nobody is talking about that have probably have gotten lost in the sauce of all of these other latest and greatest ways to start an online business. And this video is not to hate on them. Um, it's simply to talk about what you should and should not do, how I plan on potentially monetizing this because I think some opportunities were left out in this video. And let's go ahead and get into it.
I first saw a content creator talking about how he builds directory sites and how there are tons of untapped, undiscovered sites out there where they're making substantial money online. and he actually did a video where he responded to this video talking about how to build directory sites. Eventually, they got on a podcast together and and they kind of talked about his process. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to build a directory website based on his process. And this is going to be a live build. you're going to see me uh build in build in action build live where you can come back to the website daily weekly or monthly to see the progress.
So the way that he talks about building the websites or or a directory site's a little bit different than the other ways that I have known in the past. My first directory website was called learn konosha. The first domain I bought was like getfoodanddrink.com. It was focused on restaurants in Kenosha. Now, I didn't make any money from it. I was the only person that had that knew about the website and it spent me a lot of I spent a lot of time driving around Kenosha taking pictures. This was before I learned about the magic of scraping. Now, this was this was maybe seven, eight years ago and I didn't know that you could just go on the internet and scrape a bunch of these things and it would save me a bunch of time and a bunch of money. Now that I have been around the block a few times and I saw his video and I saw the way that he scrapes his websites, it makes things much easier and quicker to get some of that foundational work done.
What he says to do is he says to make long web pages with a bunch of the keywords kind of stacked in there. Okay. Uh for example, let's say you are talking about lawyers in lawyers in Kenosha, right? If your main keyword is lawyers in Kenosha, you are going to have a main web page that says lawyers in Kenosha. And then further down, you're going to have best civil case lawyers in Kenosha, best divorce court lawyers in Kenosha. And so you're going to have a variety of these different keywords and that's how you are going to rank. And essentially what you're going to do is you are going to use a combination of of Google maps. You are going to use a combination of a paid or free keyword research tool and you're going to get all of these keywords and you're going to write I think he wrote maybe 50 or 60 different web pages where he's kind of doing this.
What I'm going to do is slightly different. I'm going to take that and because it it it works for him. But I'm also going to scrape a website that he lists. It's called out scraper. And I am going to actually get the listings and I'm going to make a complete listing website and I'm going to interlink through there and we're going to we're going to monetize and we're going to monetize in a few different ways.
One of the concerns that I had I think it was this video. One of the concerns that I had was a lot of the primary monetization was not talked about correctly with directory websites. People believe that the best way to monetize is with running ads. whether it's Google AdSense is Zoic or some I think it's like um Thrive Ads people believe that that's the best way to monetize and you're literally getting fractions of a cent per visitor in my opinion and and this guy um I'm not I'm going to stop saying guy Frey actually does a real good job toward the end of the interview that he does with this guy talking about hey there's affiliate marketing opportunities out there as well to make quote unquote passive income. He did say that you need to have you need to be selling high ticket things in order to make substantial money, which I I disagree with.
As someone that has made decent amount of money with affiliate marketing, I believe that if you understand what your market wants and needs, which we're going to get into in just a moment, you can be relatively successful without having to have a 100,000 visitors, right? If you truly understand, and there's over 11,000 affiliate programs out there. If you find an affiliate program based on the wants and needs of your customer, what they're really searching for, what they're really asking for, you could make money. For example, Frey talks about while he's answering questions from a from the video response. It's kind of a weird thing, but um he says, "Hey, you know, he uses the example lawyers in in New York, but there are affiliate opportunities out there. For example, if you went over to a website called Offervault, if you went over to a website like OfferVault and you typed in lawyers, you can see that there are affiliate opportunities that will pay you $300 just for a call."
So, if you're getting, I don't know, let's say you're getting 10,000 views, 10,000 page hits per month and 10% of those people or 1% of those people buy or or they make a phone call, they get they turn into a lead, what's what's uh 10% or what's 1% of of 10,000? 1% of 10,000 is 100. And that 1%, that 100 people, if they all fill out this form and they become a lead, that's $300 per person. So, you don't need a huge traffic source to make money if you know how to monetize correctly. And so, that was one of the things that I I wanted to make sure that I highlight. But look at this. $300, $100, $50, $50. And I'm sure you could find, again, if you're doing lawyers, you could find different opportunities. $500. And again, pay per call, pay per lead, we're not even getting them to buy stuff. While Amazon is a really popular affiliate program, if you know the right monetization opportunities out there, and you can even ask AI to help you out with that, you're not going to be thinking about Amazon. You're not going to worry about about Amazon. Okay?
So, let us go ahead and talk about my website. Uh the website is like 3 days old and I can tell you upfront there there's zero traffic. Okay, but what's really cool about this website and this is a a WordPress theme and I'm going to talk about how you could get started for yourself if you want to go along and and and you want to try this out with me. I have probably spent a total of $150 to start this up. Between web hosting, a domain name, buying this WordPress theme, and I'm going to talk about all of that in just a moment, and scraping the internet for the the the restaurants, I probably spent somewhere between $150 and $200. There's probably ways to do it much cheaper, but I've used this this this theme before, so I wanted to go back and use it.
So, if we just look at this real quick, this is a listing pro WordPress theme. And what's really cool about this is I can put in a city in in Wisconsin. And it actually lists the different the different restaurants. I can click on this. And one thing that I'm actually going to go back and clean up is you can see right here it has accessibility, wheelchair accessible, amenities, bar onsite, true. These are things that I'm going to go back and clean up and redo. so that it's a better customer experience. Because what we want to do is we want to create a great customer experience so that they stay on the page a little bit longer, so that they click through and they scroll down. Because I think there are all sorts of opportunities. If we make a great customer experience, we make more money, whether it's with ads or some of the affiliate opportunities that I think I could put on this website.
Like I said, this website is just a few days old. And what I plan on doing is, as I mentioned, I'm going to combine phrase method. So, this website is going to start off with best restaurants in Wisconsin, best restaurants near me. It's also going to have a page dedicated to every single city in Wisconsin so that it could rank. It'll have like best best Mexican restaurants in Kenosha, best Mexican restaurants in Racine all on one page. And so these are going to be long pages. These are going to be 3,000 4,000word pages because I want to try and rank for every single one of these keywords because the more keywords that I rank for, the more traffic I get and the more opportunities for for making money, right?
So let's talk about a few things. How did I start getting these different listings and what is what am I doing? Okay, so Frey recommended using a website called Outscraper. What's really cool about Outs Scraper is that it's relatively inexpensive and they have a free plan where you can get like 500 listings for free every single day. So, as you can see here, I got 16,000 listings and I paid less than $60 for this. And those listings were directly imported into into my website. Not all of them. I've got a I'm I'm actually going to do talk about that in a second. But it includes the address, the phone number, and a link to the website that they have listed, which is awesome because again, we want to make a great user experience so that we go we become their number one source and we can potentially make money.
The difficult part will be after I make out the different web pages for each one of the cities in Wisconsin. I've got to go back and write blog posts. And I'm going to tell you the types of blog posts that I'm going to write, maybe what you should write. I'm going to give you everything that you need to know to start. And I I would actually encourage you to start. I'm going to have a step-by-step directions actually right here on how you can get started yourself. But I wanted to give you an overview of what you could do, what you should do, and the pros and cons of this.
Okay, so this is an overview of of what we're doing. As I mentioned, this page is only 3 days old. It's not even really filled out that much. One thing that I intend on adding based on Frey's recommendation is he actually will have a link to a map of the United States. And so people will be able to go through and click and they'll be able to find restaurants or lawyers based on their city or state that he's got added. I'm going to do the exact same thing for the cities, the cities or counties of of Wisconsin. So there's going to be a map right here of Wisconsin and it's going to be an interactive map where they can click on it and it's going to take them to a web page. It's going to have probably hundreds of of links, but that's the interlinking strategy that Frey recommends. I'm going to follow Frey's suggestion pretty closely to see if if we can get some some initial traction. Okay.
If you have questions about the process so far, make sure that you are commenting and make sure that you follow along because this is going to be something that I update monthly. I'm going to talk about the the good and the bad. And if you want an inside peak more frequently than than monthly, check out my membership because I disclose all of my business ventures. I disclose probably to a fault. My painting YouTube channel, how much that's making, uh my process for creating content there. You get to see the pros and cons of this website and any other website that I I create. Uh you get to see how I think about things and how I do things. And so if you want more guidance, you want more assistance, check out the membership. But this is an overview of what I'm doing. This is going to be something that takes probably 6 months to to create and to be a finished product. So make sure that you you you come to this website frequently and and check it out so that you can get an idea of the progress that is made. Okay.
So this is the website. It's going to be a restaurant website focused on one state. Let's go ahead and talk about how you can get started, too. This is a this is a 10-step process, but if you follow this, you should be able to get started and find something and create your own own website, right? Create your own directory site.
So, the first thing you need to do is you need to have a niche. And you want to look for something that's location-based, something that's evergreen, and something that is stupid simple, right? So, for example, Wisconsin restaurants. Whoops. I want to show you that in a second. Uh Wisconsin restaurants is locationbased. It's specifically in Wisconsin. It is evergreen. There's always going to be bars and restaurants in Wisconsin. People are always going to be looking for something to eat. And a bonus for that is there's a little bit of seasonality to this as well. I know that because I live in in Wisconsin, I know that in the summer people are going to be going to Wisconsin Dells and so I can write blog posts and focus on Wisconsin Dells. In the winter by next summer potentially I have a couple blog posts that rank. I know that in the fall and the winter, people are going to be looking for food places to eat outside of Green Bay in and around Green Bay because of football and the same thing with with basketball and baseball and even with college sports. So, that's that's a little bit of seasonality that's built in that will help boost my rankings and help me potentially start ranking a little bit quicker.
Also, look for directory sites that are already in your niche. Look and see what they're doing well and what they can improve. For example, there is a directory website about Wisconsin restaurants. This is the website. This would be my competitor. You can see here what they do well is they've got great images. It did take a little bit of time to load. They talk about places to stay, things to do, dining events, and so on. But I think the area of opportunity is that they focus mainly they focus mainly on the big cities, right? But what if what if I focus on what if I write a blog post on Anigo Wisconsin? Now most people have never heard of Anigo, Wisconsin. But if I write a blog post on Anigo, Wisconsin, and it's decent and I focus on a number of keywords, I potentially could rank very quickly for best restaurants in Anigo, Wisconsin or best restaurants in North Fondelac, Wisconsin, and so on. But you can see here that they focus on on bigger locations and bigger events, which is completely fine. What can I improve on? I think my area of opportunity is focusing on smaller websites or smaller cities or counties.
Then you need to get web hosting. I'm going to put a link in the description. You need your website will sit on a server. A server is basically an online hard drive and you can buy server space and you need to have that in order for people to see your website. I'm going to put the first link in the description on how to get started. It is an affiliate link, but I think it's the best web hosting platform for beginners and it'll let you get up and running relatively quickly.
After you get web hosting, you are going to need to get a directory website. This is a WordPress theme. I did not spend any time building this myself. This is a template and if you want to do this quicker, you go out and get a template, a WordPress theme. And I'm going to put a link in the description, second link in the description to a website that I have gone to to purchase a number of themes.
After that, you're going to install WordPress on your web hosting platform and then install the WordPress theme on WordPress. You've got to follow in that order. And then scrape the internet for listings. You can use this website. Like I mentioned, this website has, I believe, 500 free listings per day. You can you can download. Actually, let me just log out and I'll show you. All right. So, if we look at the pricing, you can see that well, this doesn't look great. They do have they they do have a free level of service, and for whatever reason, it is refusing to let me show you. They do have a free level of service where I believe you can get Yeah, here we go. Free tier. Free tier is the amount of usage you can use free each month. Excuse me. So, you can get 500 a month. For example, some product X has a free tier with 500 requests per month. That means usage of the product below 500 requests during a month will be free. You could do this for free. You would only get 500 requests per month. I would recommend spending $100 to be able to move faster, but you could get started for free.
Anyway, once you scrape the internet for listings, you are going to add the scraped listings to your website. Now, the benefit of using this WordPress theme is that you can import these quicker. So, if you click on import, you can start importing these WordPress themes after you clean up the data and move much quicker.
Then you can get to writing. And then you're going to write blog post with low traffic with I wrote that backwards. You're going to write blog post with high traffic and low competition. And to help me do that, there's a couple ways you can go. You can go over to ahrefs and scroll all the way down to the bottom and you can click on keyword generator and you could type in something like lawyers. So lawyers in Kenosha, divorce lawyers Kenosha, lawyers Kenosha, divorce lawyers Kenosha, Wisconsin. And you can see that people are asking this question, right?
Another place that you can go and this is actually what I did is I went over to chatbt and I said, I'm starting a directory website about restaurants in Kenosha. I need you to act as an expert in keyword research and find all the keywords related to this website. I'm looking for keywords like best restaurants in Kenosha, best restaurants near Kenosha, restaurants near Konosha, Wisconsin, and more. I'm looking for Wisconsin cities and counties only to start. can you help me with that? And then it actually asked me a few questions and it actually did some research for me and it came back with some information and now all I have to do is write blog post on it. Right? So if I write two to three blog po blog post per day using AI, I could potentially start ranking for some of these. And if I start ranking for some, I start getting some visibility. people have a good user experience and I can make money.
And speaking about speaking of making money, let's talk about I think the better ways. As I mentioned, a lot of people talk about about Google AdSense about running ads. While it's passive, you're not going to make a bunch of money, right? You're you're you're the amount of money that you can make is very limited. Uh this person Greg said that you could start a SAS company which I think is a cool idea if you have the technical knowhow or if there is a done for you solution where you can white label. A lot of people out there don't have the time at least up upfront to invest in building out a SAS company and so that might be something that they build down the line once they are getting substantial traffic and they're making a decent amount of money to start.
But I think the best ways are with affiliate marketing a start. For example, as I mentioned with Wisconsin Dells, a lot of people flock to Wisconsin Dells in the summer. Where are they going to need to stay? They're going to need to stay in a hotel. So, what if I become a partner with uh what if I become a partner with Trip Advisor or some of those different websites that have bookings? What if I become an affiliate partner with a Ticketmaster? They have an affiliate program and when I talk about the best restaurants in Green Bay, most people are only going to Green Bay because they're going to watch the Green Bay Packers, right? So, I think those are better opportunities and I don't need a ton of traffic to start capitalizing on those.
I could also do digital products. So, I could potentially come up with a few different digital product ideas where I start making money. And I also have brand deals. So, one of the things that I have on my website is I have a space for sponsored listings. Businesses can claim their own listings. They can add their own listing. They can claim them and I can put ads right in here. In fact, this website has a number of sponsored listings where they're making money. Now, this is probably going to be a couple hundred, $200, $300 per listing, but that's a another great way to make money and a way for businesses to increase their reach and visibility.
Also, what I'm thinking long term is if I start getting a substantial chunk of traffic, I could sell my website to this company. If I'm stealing traffic from them and they want that traffic back, I could in the long run sell my website to them and then they uh they've got their traffic back and I've got a a one-time sale where I can write off into the sunset. And then last but not least, I've got Google AdSense. Google AdSense can go on first. However, it is going to be my least um my least important, my least focused on way to make money.
Comment down below what you think. Again, this is something that I'm going to be uploading and talking about monthly. I'll give you updates. If you are part of my membership, my exclusive community, you'll get more frequent updates. You'll get to see what's actually happening and what's working. Uh so, make sure that you like, comment, follow, share, subscribe, and come back so that you can see the updates on this website. Nobody pe nobody builds in public.