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John Rush
- Serial Entrepreneur
- $8000+ monthly revenue from directory sites
- Published July 19, 2024 by Fardeen Khan
- Reviewed and edited by Niall Doherty
John Rush tweets…
Years ago I bought an apartment for $300k.
Rented out for $600/mo after expenses.
Lots of headache with the tenants & things breaking.
Today, most of my web directories make more than $600/mo.
It took me years to earn the cash for an apartment and it took me one evening to build and launch one directory.
These 20 directories were built using @unicornplatform in few hours.
Unicorn Platform is John’s own website builder that he acquired back in 2022.
He adds…
I came up with the idea by scrolling twitter feed and seeing what’s trending and then testing these ideas for SEO traffic using Google Keyword Planner.
A reply in the comments lists out some of John’s directories along with traffic metrics 
nextjsstarter
20k visits / month
How he monetises these directories…
The links on my directories are affiliated links, I get paid for every sign up via my link.
On this one link alone as you can see on Marc screenshot I got $280/mo. Just one link.
I have 1000+ links.
Which reminds me of this tweet by Ayush…
Put more buy buttons on the internet!
In John’s case, those “buy buttons” happen to be affiliate links on directories.
He says he has about 25 directores and most of them make at least $600/month. So likely a total of $8000/month minimum, and it all sounds fairly passive 
Directories are something anyone can build pretty fast with no-code platforms like Unicorn Platform, Softr, WordPress or Webflow.
And you can use tools like Easy Scraper to scrape data 
Like job boards, the trick with directories is probably persisting through that initial stage where you don’t get much traffic.
An idea here: you could build local directories in your country for each state/city for different type of trades and business (plumbers, pet shops, accountants, etc).
Instead of affiliate, you could monetise by charging for top positions in the directory.
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