647: How to Start an Online Directory as a Side Hustle

Summary

The Side Hustle Show: Episode 647 – How to Start an Online Directory as a Side Hustle

Release Date: December 19, 2024

Host: Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation | YAP Media
Guest: John Rush, Directory Building Expert

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Introduction

In Episode 647 of The Side Hustle Show, Nick Loper welcomes John Rush, a seasoned expert in building and marketing online directories. John Rush shares his extensive experience in launching over 30 directories in the past year, successfully monetizing a dozen, and even achieving a five-figure exit with his directory-focused venture, GPTs Co.

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Why Online Directories Make Excellent Side Hustles

John Rush begins by emphasizing the growing scarcity of attention as a valuable resource in today's digital landscape. He explains that online directories can effectively capture and retain this attention by offering curated, trustworthy lists in specific niches.

John Rush [00:55]:
"The most scarce resource of the future and today is attention. And the best way to win attention is to see what people search for and then have your products and services showing up on the search results."

Rush posits that as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent and potentially less trustworthy, users will increasingly seek out directories curated by knowledgeable individuals or teams. These directories can act as specialized search engines focused on particular topics, thereby becoming trusted sources amidst the noise.

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SEO and Discoverability Challenges

Nick Loper discusses the traditional reliance on Google for traffic and how this has posed challenges for side hustlers aiming to establish themselves as go-to resources. He questions whether SEO remains a viable strategy for driving initial traffic to directories.

Nick Loper [02:25]:
"Are you finding success still marketing through SEO, still finding, you know, that initial, you know, know, like and trust factor through and discoverability through Google it's getting."

John Rush responds by highlighting a shift in SEO dynamics, where directory websites are increasingly favored over SaaS projects that traditionally relied on blog-driven traffic. He notes that directories align more closely with user search patterns, especially when people seek comprehensive, curated lists.

John Rush [02:25]:
"Harder and harder for SaaS projects and it's getting easier and easier for directories because... people search for directories for places where they can have this rich type of content."

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Generating Directory Ideas

The conversation shifts to brainstorming techniques for identifying viable directory niches. John outlines two primary methods:

1. Leveraging Expertise: If you possess deep knowledge in a particular area, you can create a directory around that specialty.
2. Analyzing Search Behavior: Utilize tools like Google, Quora, and Reddit to discover what people are searching for and identify gaps where a directory could provide value.

John Rush [07:24]:
"There are two ways to come up with ideas. So one way is if you're an expert in something and you know something really, really well... the best way is to go and check on Google what people are searching."

He advises against targeting overly competitive niches with little differentiation. Instead, focus on areas where there is a diversity of responses or higher commitment decisions, such as high-ticket services like solar installations or specialized podcast editing services.

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Building and Curating the Directory

John Rush emphasizes the importance of domain name selection, recommending short and memorable .com or .org domains to enhance trust and traffic.

John Rush [49:39]:
"The shorter the name, the higher is the traffic... So don't do the best places to go and eat sushi. Like that's too long."

Once the domain is secured, choosing a no-code website builder is crucial for efficiently setting up the directory. Rush recommends using specialized tools like his own Unicorn Platform, which is tailored for directory creation, or other platforms like Webflow, Wix, or WordPress.

John Rush [19:42]:
"I use my own unicorn platform... but other builders are also capable of that."

Data Curation Process:

Effective data curation is the cornerstone of a successful directory. Rush advises:

1. Initial Manual Collection: Start by personally gathering and vetting the first 50-100 listings to understand the process and ensure quality.
2. Outsourcing: Once the criteria and process are well-defined, delegate data collection to freelancers or use scraping tools, ensuring thorough verification and consistency.
3. Focus on Quality: Avoid cluttering the directory with outdated or irrelevant listings. Maintain freshness by regularly updating content and removing obsolete entries.

John Rush [22:36]:
"It's not necessarily about building out the yellow pages with like every single business possible. It's like trying to curate the best or the most active."

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Monetization Strategies

John outlines several avenues for monetizing online directories:

1. Sponsored Listings and Ads:

   • Sponsorships: Partner with businesses willing to pay for featured placements.
   • Advertising: Sell ad space to companies targeting the same audience.

   John Rush [10:15]:
   "With affiliate links, you can make some money, but it's really hard because you're competing with all the listicles... but if you target high tickets... you can monetize that really, really well."

2. Affiliate Marketing:

   • Incorporate affiliate links within listings, generating revenue from commissions on sales or leads.

3. Freemium Models:

   • Offer basic directory access for free while charging for advanced features, such as detailed information, premium listings, or additional data points.

4. Data Sales and Lead Generation:

   • Sell aggregated data or generate high-quality leads for businesses, especially in high-ticket niches like solar installations.

John Rush [46:24]:
"You have to gamify so that people get some value out of your directory for free... Interface and functionality can encourage users to upgrade."

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Marketing and SEO Techniques

Beyond SEO, Rush underscores the necessity of actively promoting the directory to build backlinks and enhance visibility:

1. Engage in Online Communities:

   • Participate in platforms like Reddit, Quora, and social media to answer relevant questions and subtly promote the directory.

   John Rush [36:59]:
   "You can go to Reddit, you go to Quora, you go to social media... you place your URL there."

2. Content Creation:

   • Develop complementary content, such as blog posts or tools, to drive additional traffic and establish authority.

3. Backlink Acquisition:

   • Encourage natural backlinks by providing valuable resources that others in the niche would want to reference.

4. Tools and Utilities:

   • Create simple tools related to the directory’s niche to attract users and generate shareable content.

John Rush [43:57]:
"For example, I built this tool to test a website for broken links... AI makes it easier to run directories because AI can normalize the data."

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The Role of AI in Directory Building

AI plays a significant role in enhancing efficiency and data management within directory projects. John explains how AI can:

• Normalize Data: Automate the categorization and standardization of listings.
• Enrich Content: Generate consistent descriptions and extract key properties of listings.
• Assist in Research: Help identify new listings and relevant information swiftly.

However, Rush cautions against over-reliance on AI, noting that it can lead to uniformity. To truly stand out, human oversight is essential to infuse directories with distinctive insights and maintain high-quality, differentiated content.

John Rush [33:56]:
"AI can normalize the data... I don't want to use AI too much. You have to run the show... you have to not average."

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Challenges and Common Mistakes

John identifies several pitfalls that new directory builders should avoid:

1. Long and Complex Domain Names:

   • Opt for short, memorable names to enhance traffic and trust.

2. Lack of Depth in Curation:

   • Providing superficial listings without meaningful descriptions or categories undermines user trust.

3. Ignoring Competitive Analysis:

   • Misjudging the competitive landscape can lead to targeting oversaturated niches.

4. Neglecting Continuous Improvement:

   • Failing to regularly update and enhance the directory results in stagnation and loss of relevance.

John Rush [50:04]:
"Don't do the best places to go and eat sushi. Like that's too long."

5. Underestimating the Effort Required:
   • Building a great directory demands significant time and dedication beyond the initial setup.

John Rush [56:05]:
"Enjoy the process, not the outcome because it takes way longer than anyone expects."

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Final Tips and Takeaways

John Rush's Top Advice:

• Enjoy the Process: Focus on learning and gradual improvement rather than instant results.

  John Rush [56:05]:
  "Enjoy the process, not the outcome because it takes way longer than anyone expects or anyone says."

• Continuous Learning and Improvement: Treat directory building as an ongoing effort to enhance quality and relevance.

• Leverage Automation Wisely: Use AI to assist but ensure human input to maintain uniqueness and high standards.

Nick Loper's Key Takeaways:

• Niche Research First: Identify and validate directory ideas based on search behavior and potential monetization models.
• Speed of Execution: Launch quickly to validate ideas, then iterate based on feedback and performance.
• Differentiation is Crucial: Avoid being average by infusing expertise and unique insights into the directory.

Nick Loper [53:35]:
"Easy to build, hard to make it great."

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Conclusion

Episode 647 of The Side Hustle Show provides a comprehensive guide to launching and managing successful online directories as side hustles. John Rush's expertise offers valuable insights into idea generation, building, marketing, monetization, and the strategic use of AI. The episode underscores the importance of quality, continuous improvement, and strategic differentiation in creating directories that not only attract traffic but also sustain long-term success.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Unicorn Platform: johnrush.me/unicorn
• Directory Guide: johnrush.me/directory-guide
• Founder Guide: Upcoming resource from John Rush
• John Rush's Website: johnrush.me

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Transcript

[Nick Loper]

If you've got weekend plans, you might want to clear them because you're going to want to take action on this episode. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the side Hustle Show. It's the business podcast you can actually apply. Today we're exploring the unique side hustle of online directories. Why they're a great starter online side Hustle, how to come up with your first directory idea, build the thing out and start making money. Now, I've got a little bit of experience in this space, but nothing like today's guest who is a master at quickly building and marketing these little side projects, launching 30 in the past year or so, monetizing a dozen of them, and even selling one which was all GPTs Co for a five figure exit from JohnRush Me. John Rush. Welcome to the side Hustle Show.

[John Rush]

Thank you for having me, Nick. I'm ready to share.

[Nick Loper]

All right, I'm excited for this one. Start us off with the pitch. Give me the elevator. Pitch for why directories? How come you've been investing so much time, effort and energy into them in the last year?

[John Rush]

The most scarce resource of the future and today is attention. And the best way to win attention is to see what people search for and then have your products and services showing up on the search results. And then I had this idea that maybe if the search will be more and more polluted with AI generated content, eventually people will want to find places to search for things where they trust the curation. They trust the author who has put the time and expertise to build up this list. So then I thought, like, the directories will really thrive in a world of infinite choice, where users don't trust the former ways of searching for things such as Google and other places, and they will rather trust a place that focuses only on one type of item and knows everything about that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so the idea is to become almost a mini Google in a way for a specific topic. Yeah, okay. All right, I like that. And that's kind of the game that I've been trying to play in the side Hustle space for a long time. Like, hey, you know, we become the go to resource and you know, one of the challenges has been historically relied heavily on Google for that initial traffic. It's great if people know who you are, but it's harder to kind of get that initial traction in the first place. Are you finding success still marketing through SEO, still finding, you know, that initial, you know, know, like and trust factor through and discoverability through Google it's getting.

[John Rush]

Harder and harder for SaaS projects and it's getting easier and easier for directories because I see that the pattern people have with, with, with the search when, when they search for, for something where there is large number of items to choose from, their typical pattern is that they're not searching for the answer, they're searching for a place where they will find the thing. So they're kind of searching for directories. They don't think about that. But in reality, people search for directories for places where they can have this rich type of content where every item has reviews or ratings around it or comments. So I think that game is just getting easier and better and better. I see huge growth on SEO traffic for my directories and I have serious drop on SEO traffic for SaaS projects because SaaS projects usually drive traffic through blogs. And the blog articles are not doing well now because so many people can easily generate them with AI. And some say AI blog posts are low quality, but you know, they do something else. They just take good blog posts and they rewrite it with AI. Now it's a good quality quality because it's just the same blog post rewritten. And Google cannot spot those rewrites, right?

[Nick Loper]

Unfortunately not yet. Here's my theory. I'm going to go off on a little tangent and then we're going to bring it back. My theory and my hope is that even in an AI driven world there's got to be some benefit to being a primary source creator, to scooping a story, to creating a firsthand review. Even if eventually that ends up getting scraped and crawled and regurgitated by a million different AI tools. That's fine. It's like, you know, there's, there's some frustration around that, but like there's still gotta be. So somebody's gotta create this stuff, right? And there's gotta be some benefit of doing that. Now I want to pitch you on my idea. So historically, lots of like listicle type of posts, Best side hustle ideas of 2024 or something like that, right. What I would like to build and what's kind of been on this project radar is like the side Hustle Ideas directory, like every, everything we've ever covered, you know, in one, easily sortable, you know, maybe it has like earning power and a degree of difficulty. And so your argument is like, you know, rather than that traditional listicle 25 best side hustles of the year type of content, building out the database, like the directory of side hustle ideas, like that could be A different type of project or that could be a new way to capture SEO and visitors.

[John Rush]

Yeah, Historically, nearly every directory or database of items that managed to survive for several years and kept improving its content has on and driving a lot of traffic. And I've been researching this a lot, like I've been researching their traffic and the growth. And it's insane the amount of traffic going into these directories. So most people don't even realize they actually use those directories. Because at some point your directory will not look like a directory. It will be like a marketplace or a place where you can put items. For example, even Craigslist is directory right. Even Airbnb is a directory.

[Nick Loper]

Right.

[John Rush]

Like people think that AI is going to change everything and all content game will go to zero because AI will just answer your question right away. I don't think that will be the reality because a lot of questions have no answer. Like AI will answer what's one plus one? And you will trust it. But if you ask AI what's the best place to go with my girlfriend, for example, like whatever answer you get from AI, you will not trust it because it's a topic nobody has the answer for. And then what you actually want AI to do is to say, look here in your town, I think this is the best place. And here's the link to the, to the directory of the places where I research this. And what you would probably do, you would click on that link and go and verify yourself why this is a good place and continue your search there versus using ChatGPT or AI. So I think from this point, directories might be the only content project that will survive because most of the other things, they can be hidden behind the AI chats and users won't really give attention, mention where it's coming from. Like there will be maybe links and citations, but you won't click because the answer is good enough. But for directory type of items, you will always wonder why and what else is there.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, this is really interesting. You know, okay, this could be a small scale weekend side project or it could be some of the biggest websites in the world, like a TripAdvisor, you know, a directory of things to do on your vacation, places to stay.

[John Rush]

Yes, exactly.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, you know, upwork and fiverr, like, you know, directories of qualified freelancers.

[John Rush]

Yes.

[Nick Loper]

There's like side hustle directory and then there's like this could turn into a really substantial business type of directory. Now you built dozens of these things, like talk to me through the like idea generation, like how do you figure out what, what to build or where do you recommend people start there?

[John Rush]

There are two ways to come up with ideas. So one way is if you're an expert in something and you know something really, really well. I think, I really believe that high quality data will. So if you know something really well, you can build directory out of that. But most people don't really have the super expert knowledge on the topic. So then if you don't have that, then the best way is to go and check on Google what people are searching. So the best way is to go to the Google itself and enter a keyword. For example, you enter dogs, you say like dogs. And then you will see shelters for dogs or food for dogs, or trainings for dogs. And now you have three directory ideas because probably there is no directory that has a lot of trainings for dogs and all the ways you can teach all different kind of dogs, etc. So Google helps me a lot. And then you can use other places where people search for things. You can go to Quora and see if people ask, for example, if there is one article there that says what's the best hummer to buy? For example. And then you will see a lot of answers in the comments. And if all the answers are different, then it's pretty much a directory that was just created under this article because in some cases everybody going to ask for the same thing, like what's the best payment solution? People are going to say stripe. There's no point of making directory for that because you'll have stripe and other items nobody cares about. But in this case you have the items and you can see that people debate whether the one item is better than the other. And I would say that such debate is just gold for making directory because A you have the idea and B which is even more important, you understand how exactly people compare these items because it's not clear. And this part is more important than most people think for directory. So you have to be really smart on what exactly you present about the item because people don't come there just to see the list, people come there to see the list and also to see like every item has a lot of stuff about it. But what are the three most important things about this item and how do you highlight them so that I don't have to go and search and read and read and read. Right. So you have to save my time and such core article going to help, Reddit article going to help and social media as well.

[Nick Loper]

How does this differ from, you know, a Traditional affiliate, Amazon affiliate site where it's like best blenders.com and it's like best blenders for smoothies or best blenders for juicing or like. And I see that kind of of listicle content with affiliate links and they've got their own, you know, little blurb or, you know, we tested this and it like a wire cutter type of content. What separates that type of site from a directory in your mind?

[John Rush]

I think it is a directory too. So I think that's just a subset where you take a physical product or any product that's on sale and you niche it down to certain category or many categories, and then you have affiliate links and you make money on that. But I think that space is difficult to win because, you know, you need a lot of sales to happen through your website. So I usually recommend people to bet on the ideas where you can find sponsors who will pay you a lot for sponsoring it because it also means that the directory is valuable because it's kind of one way to test is to find sponsor who will sponsor your directory before you built it. And that's possible. I recommended that to some people and they did and it worked because, you know, everybody wants to pay for growth and traffic. And if you can bring it, people are going to pay you. But with this, like with blenders, there's no way you're going to convince a blender producer to sponsor such directory. And with affiliate links, you can make some money, but it's really hard because you're competing with all the listicles like you say, fifth and best blenders. And, and in this space, I think, especially in blenders, I think the blog articles will often win against the directories because people don't feel so serious about the things so that they go into directory. Like the blog article seems lighter, but if it's a car or a tractor or something more serious, then the director will win against the blog article.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, because you have more perceived expertise in that you've built the entire directory and database and structure around being the expert in that thing.

[John Rush]

Yeah, exactly. Also, you can anticipate what people want to know about the topic. For example, if you're looking for a really good microphone for a podcast, there's really high chance you are looking for the lighting and for the camera and other things. And then if you land on a directory that has it all, like it has five categories like microphone, speaker, light, camera, and you see that it's fresh, you see that it's done by an expert, and then you click on the Expert, and you see that the expert is producing really good YouTube videos that you really like. And you're going to bookmark this place and you will send it to your friends whenever anyone else wants to do the same. So I think with directories there are multiple plays. So one play is where you just do a side project and you win some traffic. You channel the traffic into your main project. But the other way of building directories is to build something that you will turn into full product. And in this case, if you target the people who make podcasts, there are a lot of products you can build on top of this directory. For example, you can connect the people who sell the services on helping you to make podcasts and also the guests for the podcast. There are a lot of things you can sell to this crowd.

[Nick Loper]

Sure, yeah. You could have even a directory of the best podcast editing services or something. And some of these service providers may be hungry for growth. So they would turn around and sponsor that.

[John Rush]

Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

Or they would pay for a featured listing or something. And that's, you know, my directory building experience is somewhat limited to this virtual assistant site that I had years ago. And it was, you know, directory and review platform for outsourcing companies. Where to, where to find your best virtual assistant. And we didn't do this right away, but after years of kind of paying attention, well, what does Yelp do? What does TripAdvisor do? Right? It's like they have the featured listing at the top. It's like this is not necessarily based on any algorithms. It's based on who paid to advertise there. And so that's what you end up up doing, selling a kind of featured listing placement to companies that were looking for extra leads, more than they might get organically. And that worked out really well. So what I'm hearing is start with what you know or have an interest or curiosity in. Look what people are searching for using tools like Google, Quora, Reddit, Try and figure out, okay, what's that? Looking for a diversity in answers. If there's one consensus winner, it's going to be really hard to build a directory around that. But looking for diversity of answers and some back and forth debate, that could be great. And then maybe like looking for higher commitment decisions. Maybe blender's not a great thing to build a directory around. But if I'm looking for somebody to edit my podcast potentially for years and years down the road, like, okay, that's a higher commitment type of decision. And similar to MVP wizards, one of your people who are going to build out this product for me. Top website builders Another one of yours where it's like the switching costs of trying to move different platforms pretty high. So hopefully I get to make the right decision and guide people to the right choice for something like that. More with John in just a moment, including how to evaluate the competitive landscape before you start and the most important thing you can do to differentiate yourself from that competition right after this. Running a business is hard. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it right. You got a to do list a mile long and a dozen different hats to wear. Well, here's a resource to help lighten your load. I'm excited to partner with Gusto for this episode as they've been one of the most recommended services by guests over the years. Gusto is the easy, affordable online paid payroll, HR and benefits tool for modern small businesses. In fact, they help over 300,000 businesses like yours take the pain out of tasks like payroll, tax filing, direct deposit, health insurance administration, 401k benefits, onboarding tools and more. Whether your team is 1099 or W2 or a combination of both, of course, do your own due diligence. Check out their reviews online and I think you'll find some common threads in the comments about ease of use, great customer support and great value. And here's the deal to help you get started or to make the switch from another provider side Hustle show listeners get 3 months free just go to Gusto.com Sidehustle to start setting up your business today and you'll see what I mean when I say easy. Again, that's three months of free payroll at Gusto.com Sidehustle that's Gusto. G-U-S-T-O.com Sidehustle with our partner Airbnb, you already know that you can turn your home into an income generating asset when you're not using it, but you might not be sure where to start. Well, here's a little secret. You ever wonder how some entrepreneurs seem to get so much done and they make it look so simple? A lot of the time it's not about being the expert, but it's about finding qualified people to help you out. With Airbnb's new co host network you can hire a high quality local co host to take care of all the details of hosting your home, starting with creating an eye catching listing and even styling the space. And then they help you manage reservations, communicate with guests and even provide on site support. You provide the space, they handle the details and you get paid. Now That's a side hustle I can get excited about because when I'm traveling for work or with the family, I don't really want to be glued to my phone. Here's a way to add extra income without extra stress. Get started today by connecting with an awesome local co host at Airbnb. Now, are you paying any attention to the level of existing competition here? Like, if I type in a primary keyword and I see nothing but super, super authoritative websites and household name brand type of publishers, is that a deterrent? How do you figure out if there's still room to play here?

[John Rush]

Surprisingly, in this game, really often seeing a competitor is a good sign because you know that people search for it. You know that Google is actually putting that directory up. It also means that you have the chance to, because for some topics, I don't know why, but Google never brings directories up and it will always bring the blog posts there. So I usually expect several directories in the first 20 pages. And one thing that will scare me off is seeing only directories on the first 20 pages. For example, if you search for AI tools, you will see so many directories that there is no room there. Right? But I would say that's the only topic that you shouldn't go after. Like the only one. Because everything else, if there is one winner there, there's always room to play. And I don't really look at the competition at all in a negative sense. I look in a positive sense, like if there's competition, it's good. So it's just the opposite of a normal business where it's. You're looking for less competition.

[Nick Loper]

All right, let's say we've got this idea. We want to build it out. Maybe it's the podcast editors or maybe it's the dog trainers or it's, you know, something where I've got some background or some level of expertise in and I want to go and build this thing. What's your first step?

[John Rush]

The first step is to find the idea, so you have the idea. The second step is to find the domain name, because that's really important. If you don't have a good domain name, it's really hard to win. And it takes time to find a good domain name because.com is usually taken for everything. That's obvious. So you have to be creative. And in my case, I spent weeks and months looking for domain names. Not like every day, but every day I would spend few minutes on that and eventually find something. Like every single time I found something. Now that was really, really good. So you find a good domain name and then you find a website builder to build it it. And I really recommend people to use no code builders because they have everything out of the box. And you're not in the business of inventing technology here. You're in the business of data and you should focus on data, not on the technology.

[Nick Loper]

Any specific ones that you like?

[John Rush]

Yeah. I use my own unicorn platform, which, which I pivoted into being directory builder. It lets you build a lot of things, but also directories. So that's unicorn platform I use mostly, but people can use any other tools. I would say there is no big difference between the tools. So my builder tailored for directories, but other builders are also capable of that. And if you know Webflow, or if you know Wix, or if you know WordPress, just go for them. If you don't know anything, I would recommend using my tool because it's really good for directories. And then once you build that directory, it should take you not more than a day because like, if it takes you weeks doing that, you're just putting wrong focus on the wrong things. It's really difficult to succeed with anything if you're not putting your priorities straight up from the start. So you have to put from the start that this is a data project, this is not technology project. So you have to spend 10% of your time on technology and building the thing, and 90% of the time on actual data curation, because that's exactly what's important. I've seen directories with millions of clicks every month that look like they're from 90s, like they look really bad, but they have millions of clicks. The next step for you is to curate the data. And that's the most difficult step because you have to find everything in this topic. Because usually the people who land on your directory, they know some of the names they know, because otherwise they wouldn't be searching for it. Imagine you are looking for websites to book your holiday travel. That's a directory. You open that and you don't find Airbnb there. The typical user will quit because they will think someone who made this has no idea what he's doing, right? So you have to make sure you have all the big players, because that's what creates trust for the visitor. But also you have to have the players which are not big because users came there to find something they don't know yet. So the big players are there not for the clicks, but for the trust. And then the rest is there for the value. And usually to solve that, I use scrapers or I hire someone for a week, I give them the task and they just spend every day searching for the items. They put them into Google Sheet and then I go through the sheet and I just visit every item and I make sure it's relevant and it's new. Because also it's not about quantity, it's about quality. You should not put items from 90s. It should look fresh, it should look like it's done yesterday. Because one thing with directories, if you. A lot of the websites on the Internet are abandoned and you still land on them, but then once you fill it hasn't been updated for a long time, you lose interest. So people have to feel like this is an active project. So don't put there some boring, ugly items. Just make sure that you filter them and you put good stuff there and that's it.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so that's an interesting point. It's not necessarily about building out the yellow pages with like every single business possible. It's like trying to curate the best or the most active.

[John Rush]

Yeah, well, you have two options. One, if you go after having everything there, if that's your value, and if your directory is called all companies in the world, like that's the name, you have to have them all. And when people come in there, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to test, like people always test places and they will come and they will search for the least known company in the world to see if you have that. And you won't have that, probably. And then they will think you're lying and the whole trust is gone. That's why if you have that, that directory, you have to make sure you're capable of creating the data. And it's really hard. Like you have to put insane effort to, you know, get everything okay.

[Nick Loper]

So instead of. So instead of attempting every side hustle or all side hustles, you know, maybe pivot that to best or top or something like that.

[John Rush]

I would pivot that into, you know, like lazy side hustles, for example. And then you only focus on things that take little time.

[Nick Loper]

Got it, Got it.

[John Rush]

For example, like you have to niche it down somehow because if you say best best than why best? It's not easy with best. A lot of people use best, but I would not recommend best.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Another couple examples came to mind just as we were talking here. ThemeForest and the whole envato suite of different marketplaces that they have, like ThemeForest is a marketplace for different WordPress themes. So I was very meta looked for directory WordPress themes and got, you know, that was the top search result like into their directory, like oh, here's a bunch of WordPress themes that are good for directories. Another one that came came to mind would be like solar installers. Like this is a higher ticket type of project. Like if you want to put these panels on a roof, like who do you trust? How does it work? And you can go and curate that type of kind of lead generation and then like there's built in monetization, like you might have to go make some deals with these companies. But like I imagine if it's a $25,000 install, like they're probably willing to pay you a little bit for that lead.

[John Rush]

Yeah, I actually think that the safest way to build directory is to go after really high tickets like solar or in my case for example, MVP vis. It was really successful having very little traffic because you don't need a lot. You can have 100 visitors a day on this directory and you can monetize that really, really well. If you have a commission system where you get 20% on the money they pay to the vendors and they pay like 10k then you get 2k back and that's a lot. So one deal brings you 2K and that's huge. So I think that space is really empty. Like I don't see a lot of competition there because for some reason the directories mostly target high traffic niches because I think most directories still go after affiliate marketing links and channeling the traffic and very few go after high tickets and few sales. So I think that would be where I would go. If I had nothing going on right now, I would go there.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah, it doesn't need a ton of traffic volume even or even a ton of search volume. It's like you can be the go to authority in that tiny niche. Then all of a sudden if you've got the attention and the leads. Yeah, people will be happy to pay for that.

[John Rush]

Exactly. You don't even need the items. Like with solar power for example, you can say solar power in Texas and then you have to just find all who can deliver it in Texas. And that's not a lot. You can spend one evening and find them all on Internet and then you put them there. And then the chance that you will score high for those who search for that is really high because it's a local search and local search is, is way easier to win than any other search because Google really rewards such websites.

[Nick Loper]

Now scraping data sounds kind of technical. Hiring a researcher sounds less technical. Talk to me about this data curation process because this is the value add in a lot of ways and then adding your own, I guess, insight expertise to layer on top of that. But to first collect the meat and potatoes, the listings themselves in the directory, that's kind of a. The. The hard part here.

[John Rush]

Exactly. I think you should do it yourself first so that you understand where to find them, you. You understand how to evaluate them. Because if you hire somebody to do that or use scraping, you still have to read through all the items and make sure that the they have. Like you have to put some categories, tags and you have to make sure that the description is roughly the same size so that it. You don't want to have one item with one one sentence and the other has a book in it because you want to have similar thing there. So I think you should spend few days yourself just doing that and collect first 50 or 100 items yourself. I always done that, but I always did that for every directory I have. And once you understand it really well, just write the spec for it, like where to search, what to look for and how to describe it, etc. And then the job is easy to outsource to people too. So you would go to place like, like upwork, for example, and you would put your entry there. You would pay a few hundred dollars for that and somebody would do the job for you.

[Nick Loper]

What kind of data points are you going to make sure to collect? In that initial research phase, I start really small.

[John Rush]

I go for title, URL and description and the category. I even skipped logo and images because I think it is not that important. And then later I just enrich the data I have once I see director is working out. But at the first, at the initial stage, it makes more sense to put more effort into finding more items and putting some time into writing descriptions, because I write them myself and that's very interesting. So if you don't write them yourself, there's a problem. They all will look the same. Like for example, you have a microphone and they will all say good microphone works best for podcasts. And then you find hundred of those and they all have the same text on them. It works great for podcasts and everybody loves it. No value, right. So your job is to simplify the suffering for the users because they have unlimited choice and they want to pick one. And that's why I look at all of them and I try to come up with descriptions to Actually differentiate them. Like this one is the smallest microphone, or the cheapest microphone, or the microphone that works well when there's noise around, etc. So some microphones have that option where you can have it cheapest, biggest, smallest, etc. Some don't have that, but for them you just say something like it's rather good value for money. And then for other, you say it's durable, it lasts for 10 years, but if you're not pro, maybe go for something cheaper. So I'm kind of like a reviewer who reviews every item based on everything I find about the item on the Internet. And then I, I put few lines on every item on the directory so that you don't have to do that work I, I've done. So I'm compressing my work and making it easy for you to pick the right one.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. And this is like I'm. One of my earlier projects was a, I guess you could call it a directory for footwear. It was like, where can you find the best price on your next pair of shoes? But in that case it was affiliate driven. And so the, the retailers would happily give you their product catalogs. And so you, you'd mash all of that data into one central database. And then the challenge became kind of normalizing it where there wasn't a hard SKU or product ID across, you know, every different store that carried the same product. And so we had to kind of develop our own type of algorithm to compare this product to this product and make sure it was really the same. And what kind of common words were we going to ignore and which ones were we going to say like, okay, this is actually the same thing and this is, you know, the price. But like that's kind of the, that's the value add here.

[John Rush]

I think you had a good term normalizing data and I think most directories bring that as the key value because most potential directories or the niches, they don't have that. Nobody has ever done that. And just doing that is huge value. And if you're looking for the idea, that's one way to evaluate the potential. If that's not done in this space, then it's, that's something you should do. Because if you do something that doesn't exist, like in my case, for example, with all GPTs, what happened is that it didn't exist when I created it. And then you win all the traffic from Google because people search for something and there's nothing except you there. And even, even if you're on the page number five. People will find you because they're looking for a specific thing. People always say to me like probably the directory thing has too many people in it and every directory that could be created has been created. Like 99% are not created yet 99%. Like every day when I search for new directory ideas, I find so many that I don't know how I will ever build them all. At least 10 per day. So now I'm actually giving away these ideas because I have no time to build them all.

[Nick Loper]

And if it already exists, find a way to differentiate it in some way make a pivot to to niche it down to serve a different market. The advice that stood out several years ago on the show from John Lee Dumas was like, hey, when I started Entrepreneurs on Fire, I was the best daily entrepreneur interview podcast. I was the worst daily entrepreneur interview podcast because I was the only. Be the best, worst and only. Like if you can be a market of one, if you can be the only, it can be a really powerful place to play. More with John in just a moment. Including the role of AI in your directory project and marketing and monetizing the thing to start making some money right after this. In the next 60 seconds, 23 hires are going to get made on Indeed. I'm excited to partner with Indeed for this episode because when it comes to finding your next team member, the best way isn't to search at all. Instead, let them get matched to you with Indeed. Indeed's powerful matching engine helps you find quality candidates fast and you know it's not just about speed of execution. 93% of employers say that Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to shared with other job sites. Plus, Indeed helps you ditch all the hiring related busy work. You can use it for scheduling, screening and messaging all in one place. That's why I'm turning to Indeed for the next role I need to fill. So why not join the more than three and a half million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast Inside Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to Indeed.com SidehustleShow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. Tell me about the role of AI in either this data curation or this. I feel like there's gotta be a way to accelerate because I especially spent nine years like Building out this virtual assistant directory and every time, like, trying to come up with new, you know, what new companies, you know, launched this month and like, should they be included here? And then hiring somebody to go research them and interviewing the founders, like, it was very tedious and time consuming. And there's gotta be a way to accelerate this stuff.

[John Rush]

Today, AI makes it way easier to run directories because AI can normalize the data. AI can look at all the items and extract certain properties of those items. Or the business ideas directory. AI could say, like, you probably should add a column of difficulty, like, how difficult is the idea? And I always use AI for that because AI is really good at looking at the big picture, looking at a lot of data and extracting certain common properties. I just take the data as CSV file and I just paste it into chatgpt and I ask questions like, what columns should I add so that people could filter on those columns? And then what are the categories I should use to categorize this list? And sometimes I ask it to shorten all descriptions, for example, because I wrote long ones and just made them all roughly the same size. And it helps a lot. So I don't think I would even near where I am now without AI. Like, there are tools that help you to find the data. There are tools to help you to enrich the data, like these AI agents. But I wouldn't use them if you're building just one directory. So I use them myself because I have a lot of directories. But if you're building just one directory, I would not use AI too much. So I would probably stay with ChatGPT and just use it as assistant. But still, you have to run the show. Because one problem with AI is that it makes things look average. So if I use AI and you use AI, our products will look very similar, very similar. And if you're, as a human, you're below average, then AI is better than you. But if you're better than average, then you'll be better than AI.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so what I'm hearing is starting pretty lean and basic with as few data columns as possible. And then once it gets traction, then it's adding on, going back, doing the additional research, adding the logos and the images and the extra columns that people might want to, to filter on and all of that other stuff, but only after. Okay, I'm starting to see some interest in this. I'm starting to see some initial traction, like, what are you doing outside of just relying on SEO? Like, oh, build it and they'll come Anything you're doing proactively to, you know, to breathe some life, to get some algorithms churning in your favor, to get some traffic to these things.

[John Rush]

Yeah, you have to. Because Google will not respect your website if there are no backlinks. It will ignore it completely. So you have to find backlinks. And to find backlinks there are a few ways. So the first thing you have to do is you have to go to places where people ask for this, for example, the Quora article or Reddit article, where people ask for those microphones, for example. And then you go there and you say, hey, I built a directory for the microphones, just check it out. And the interesting thing is that the directory is the only type of business that you can just plug your URLs into replies and nobody getting hate for.

[Nick Loper]

Them because it is a value add. Somebody did all this work for me. Yeah.

[John Rush]

Like really, this is free. Yeah, because it's free product. Right. Because there is no paywall there. And I've never had even once the case where people said like, why are you bringing the URL here? And yeah, because on Reddit it's really hard to put URLs, but this one is fine. So you go to Reddit, you go to Quora, you go to social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, and you find hundreds of places where people talk about that and then you place your URL there. But you don't, you don't spam it, you just try to answer the questions. For example, the tweet says what's the best microphone for a podcast? And then you say, hey, I have directory with all the microphones. And I think these three are good based on like whatever. So you do a little work for them in the, in the text so that it doesn't look like automated reply. And then you say, but you can go and look for yourself on my directory if you want to learn more about that. And it works really well because you gave little value and some just used that and then others will click and learn more. And that part is probably the most important part of the directory because you get backlinks from those replies. It's not like reply giving you a backlink for Google, it's just when you reply, somebody sees your link and then there's high chance that people will link to your URL from their blog article or from somewhere else. That's your hope being present in the social media discussions.

[Nick Loper]

Got it, got it. So yeah, it's user generated content. It's probably going to be a no follow Link but by virtue of being visible on these, especially Reddit and Quora too. But like all these sites that already have a bunch of search traffic that if people are looking for this thing, you have expanded your surface area of opportunity of luck where now other people can find it and get traffic traffic both from the thing directly and from other people now linking to you in editorial content with hopefully a do follow link.

[John Rush]

Yeah, exactly. So that's the thing about directories. Directories are by design made in a way to be shared by others. So you have to do very little for others to share your directory very little. Like with SaaS, it's difficult because every SaaS it has paywall and it has million competitors. But with directories it's usually not the case and, and people both share and link to it a lot. But you have to show it to the world. So you show it through replies on social media and Reddit and then if you have good directory, the rest happens. If nothing happens, then you know why? Because directory is not good enough. And often that's the case. Like if you build your first directory, I have this directory guide community where I guide people on building directory and it's really interesting to watch how people build and how they approach it. And most people put such a little time. It almost feels like in school when you want to pass with little effort possible and you know, get that whatever grade you get and go to next year. So I think a lot of people have that kind of mentality to business too. But with directories you have to be really putting your heart into it because people can feel that, that it's really easy to judge directory and understand whether somebody put time into it or not. Because if you are a user of directory, you understand what you're searching for, you understand what you need, you understand the space slightly. So it's really easy to judge. That's why there is no chance you can make bad directory and it will score. But at the same time also there's small chance to make a good directory that nobody going to link to or share. So it's really fair space.

[Nick Loper]

I've got like dozens I have ideas of like, oh shoot, we could build this, we could build that. Like. And to me that's the mark of a good episode. So I'm sorry to pause and derail. It's like I've taken notes, I've got like, that's good and that's really cool to kind of spark this and kind of broaden the definition of what it could be. And there's limitless niches, limitless potential here I think is really, really cool the stuff you can do. So going back to the marketing stuff, it was this first wave of backlinks and mention was from this user generated content answering people's questions, questions what happens? And hopefully getting some positive word of mouth from that. Anything else, what happens next?

[John Rush]

There are very few things you have to do. It's rather you have to repeat the same thing. So you have to repeat the work on data every day. And that's the thing a lot of people ask me what's next often and I say do the same thing again. Better data, more data, improve the data, add the data, find more content on the Internet where people talk about it, that plug it in. Because Internet is not static, it's dynamic. And every day there is new stuff there. And also create your own content too. Like you have a lot of items and there are million ways of creating articles out of it. For example, best microphones for that. And like you can make all those listicles that others do as well. And since you have the data, you can use the data too. Like for example, if you have data on clicks or something like that, you can have an article saying the most popular microphones this month on my directory. And nobody knows your directory, but people will think you have a cool directory because there's an article that uses your directory. As when you say Craigslist is a brand. And if you use your directory name the same way, it will be like a brand too. And it's on the brand at the start. But if you behave like a brand and you create articles, it'll work. And then you also find all the articles on Internet that talk about this and you contact the app, the author and you tell them that you have this directory and if they want to link to it, and very often they will say yes, because it will improve their article by linking to your directory, they will improve it and they will do it. So basically you have to hunt for more backlinks because SEO game is your game. And SEO has two factors. One is backlinks, the other is the content. That's why improve the content every day and then make the articles. And then the other thing you can do, you can create little tools. For example, if it's microphone, you can have a little tool that tests the microphone if it's working or not, or so something like that. And it's easy to make those tools because you can either pay somebody a few hundred bucks for that or you can just use AI generators and create a tool. So, and those tools are pretty cool because if your directory is having items, blog articles, and also the little tools about the same space, then when the visitor comes in, they have this feeling that you put effort, you're an expert, you know what you're talking about and you're serious because most directories are not like that. And also there is really high chance to be linked to like you take this link and you go to all articles talking about microphones and you say, look, I also have a link to test and you can link people to this. So that's kind of the boring part of the job. So you have to just do these little things every day.

[Nick Loper]

Do you have an example of a tool that worked for you on one of yours?

[John Rush]

Yeah, for example, I built this tool to test a website for broken links. I built it with AI in half an hour. So you put URL there and it tells you if there are any broken links on this URL, it just looks at the whole page. So that one and a lot of small tools like that, where mostly you enter something, you click something and then something else happens. Right. It can be a calculator, it can be a generator and et cetera. And now is the best. Like now it takes less time to create the tool than write an article because all these AI generators for code, they will work really well. You don't have to be a coder for using them.

[Nick Loper]

Fascinating. On the monetization side, we talked a little bit about sponsored listings or even like, you know, the title sponsor of the entire directory. We've talked about kind of a lead generation model, especially for high ticket services where if it's, you know, a multi thousand dollar solar install or something. Yeah, we'll pay you for that lead. To strike up those partnerships, we talked kind of on the affiliate side, more traditional product, affiliate marketing, you know, best blenders, best podcast, mics, type of stuff. Anything else that we should know about on the monetization side, once this thing is built, once it's got some traffic and track action.

[John Rush]

Yeah. So there are two ways of monetizing. So one is by using technology and one is by using sales. So by using sales you can just sell the ads, you can sell the data. So one, you can sell the ads to anyone. It doesn't have to be somebody who, who owns these items. It can be anyone who is interested in the audience. Like if it's microphones, you can sell ads for those who sell light. Right. So because the same audience, and I usually do that really very Often. And then the other way is to. Is to have paid listings. So you don't let anyone list anything on the directory and you charge them something for listing. It works really well if your directory is large and you expect a lot of people listing things there, like yellow pages. And then you have this freemium directories where you show something and then you hide something else. So. So it can be anything. It's kind of a gamification. So you either show all the items and you hide the rest. You show 100 and then you hide the 500. Or you have categories. For example, you have. If it's cars, like the cars that are cheaper than 30k, you can view them. And if it's more expensive, you have to pay.

[Nick Loper]

No, I forget the name of the company, but it was like industry research reports where they show you a little bit of the data, but. But then some of it is grayed out and you got to pay them. The 2995 it is. Yeah, maybe it was that. Yeah. Whereas, you know, if you want the full report, you can. You can pay us for it.

[John Rush]

Yeah, they do really well with that. Like, I pay them and I can imagine how much money they make because they charge a lot. So you have to gamify so that people get some value out of your directory for free. And maybe even the first time they come, they are satisfied, but then they come there the third or fifth time, and then they will pay to see more. It can be either items or it can be the metadata of the item. For example, you see all the items, but you don't see reviews or you don't see the contact information. In some cases, the contact information can be hidden.

[Nick Loper]

So that's really common on job boards, where it's like, hey, you know, we'll show you the, you know, the profile and some of the skills and qualifications. But if you want to be able to actually contact this person for an interview or to hire this person, then you're going to have to pay us.

[John Rush]

Exactly, exactly. Anything around humans gonna work that way. Like if it's a marketplace for skills or jobs or anything, then you have humans, then you have their contact information. You can hide that and charge for every click or charge subscription and then show completely. And then the other way is to let businesses claim their items. So you add items with really poor metadata and then you email all the owners.

[Nick Loper]

Like intentionally poor.

[John Rush]

Not bad, but poor. Right. So just put title and that's it. For example.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Just not super complete. Got it.

[John Rush]

So it's still there. Yeah. Exactly. So it's still there. But if anyone is looking for items in this directory, they would probably ignore the one that has only title. But they can still click on it. And for the sake of quantity, you have it all. For the sake of trust, you have them all too. If I know that item and I see the title, I'm happy it's there. Okay. And then you email all the owners. And I think this is probably the strategy that will make you must make money at the start. So you just find all the owners, you email them and you say, hey, Your item has 20 people viewing it last week. Do you want to improve the listing? Like right now it's this. And do you want to improve it? Like add images, add tags, add contact information, add a link to your website or something like that, then click here and claim the item and pay for it. And then it's verified as well. So you just list the perks. It's verified with a check mark, your contact information is there and the link is dofollow because that's important very often.

[Nick Loper]

Got it. There's so many different directions that this type of project can go and what you could build and how it can make money and how you can get traffic. And it's just lots of different niches and ideas spinning around in, in my head. Anything stand out to you as far as mistakes to avoid or common problems? Because you've built dozens of these things and by your own admission, not all of them work. So does the hit rate improve over time or what do you see as mistakes to avoid for new directory builders?

[John Rush]

Well, one thing. Use short names in the domain name.

[Nick Loper]

Interesting.

[John Rush]

The shorter the name, the higher is the traffic. In my directories there is like direct correlation between traffic and the name. Because when you're looking, looking for a good name that has high traffic on Google, often it's something out of few words and it's long and don't go for that. So don't do the best places to go and eat sushi. Like that's too long.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, something six words, you know.info and like. No, no.

[John Rush]

Yeah, exactly. So buy only.com or org. Like these two. Only these two work for me. The rest didn't work even with the short name.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, I guess.org sounds authoritative. Like hey, we're building the go to database directory in this niche and we got the.org to prove it. Yes.

[John Rush]

Yeah. Sometimes.org is better than. Com if you target nerds or technical people or like the people who actually like that domain.

[Nick Loper]

You don't have to be like a registered nonprofit or anything. It's just like anybody can register it, right?

[John Rush]

Exactly, exactly. But you suddenly look like non profit. And that's why I should trust you more when you have the org, right? But both work really well and more like a business level. Mistakes were that I didn't put enough attention into thinking through the directory because like it's from one hand. Directory is something simple that lists all the items in the space, but you still have to have this wow moment where people enter it and, and they fall in love with it. For example, when I launched old GPT, the reason people loved it, there's like there was one clear reason why I won that game and it was there were 30k GPTs, 30,000 GPTs on the Internet. It's a lot, right? Like how can you pick one? There were no reviews, no ratings, nothing. And if I put that on my directory, I will not have enough data to rank on them too. So I was thinking like I had to figure out how to sort this huge list because every type of GPT had hundred clones. Whatever you type, it has hundred options. Which one do you choose? I invented this really simple hack where I went to Google and I counted the number of backlinks to every GPT and I rank based on them because the more backlinks you have, the better GPT probably. Like there has to be some correlation. And if you made a clone of somebody's GPT, it was clear. Like for example, you search for math teacher, for example, and then one item has 500 backlinks and other has zero. It's obvious that the other one is like not used by anyone. It's probably not even good. And when I did that, suddenly the, the first page of my directory was so good. You come there and you, you try something and you see somebody put time into this GPT and when you make a directory, you have to really think hard on what can you do that. People try it and they say, wow, it's cool. And in my case, people loved it so much that they went on Twitter and they started sharing it. So I did nothing. So I literally just launched it and went to sleep and I woke up and it was the most popular directory in the world. So why? Because some people saw it, I made a tweet, but it was was small tweet. And some people tried it, liked it, shared it, and then it was network effect because it was good. And with some other directories I didn't do that. I just collected items and I made it okay, but it was not great. So I think one thing people should really understand is that, like, directories are easy to build, but it's really hard to make it great. Every directory I didn't put enough time into to failed, or in my case, I don't say it's failed, it's just didn't get enough traffic and now I have to go back and do the real work so that it's actually a good directory.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, I love that line. Easy to build, hard to make it great. I think that's a metaphor for so many different side hustles and so many different businesses where it's like the motivation is so strong early on and you get the thing going, but then to really have that marketing flywheel start to spin, it's gotta be great.

[John Rush]

Exactly, exactly.

[Nick Loper]

You know, to capture people's attention and get them to do some of that marketing on your behalf. How to turn one user into two, have them spread the word. It's gotta be really a strong product. And that's the challenging part in churning through the data and sprinkling in your own industry knowledge and expertise to make it something that is really worthwhile. So, yeah, I'm excited. Like I mentioned, dozens of different ideas spinning around as a result of this conversation. What's next for you? You got all these SaaS projects, you got all these directories, you got the directory guide at johnrush me. What's got you excited these days?

[John Rush]

Well, I really like to help others build businesses on the Internet. And it just feels so good when I see someone launching a directory that's built on my website builder, that's using my blog generator, and the founder has read my directory guide, so I'll just do more of that. And I think my whole mission is to build tools and guides for founders. So now I launched one more guide called Founder Guide, where it's not just the directories, but it's the other things too. How to build SaaS projects, micro SaaS projects, no code platforms. And I'm launching more products to help the founders. For example, I'm launching one product specifically for directories. It's basically an AI agent that does the curation work for you. You still have to help it and you have to moderate it, but it does the scraping of the Internet, it does the enrichment of the data, and it finds the emails of the items and then it helps you send them an email to claim the item. So basically I'm trying to automate the whole directory thing for myself because I have more than 20 and I don't have resources to run them all. And I want to automate it. And when I automate it for myself, I basically automated for the others too.

[Nick Loper]

Well, very good. We've got the Founder's guide on top of the directory guide. We'll link up all this stuff. Unicorn platform was the directory builder platform of John's. We'll link all the stuff up in the show notes for you. All you got to do is follow the show notes, link in the episode description and I'll get you right over there. John, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for stopping by. Let's wrap this up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.

[John Rush]

Enjoy the process, not the outcome because it takes way longer than anyone expects or anyone says. And for me personally, it took more than 10 years to get to a place where I could build things and make money on them. So I think if you start this and expect to make money in a few months or a few weeks, you're going to have difficult times. So.

[Nick Loper]

Well, come on, that's, you know, where's the clickbait headline in that? You know, it took 10 years.

[John Rush]

Exactly. So I say things people don't want to hear. But I think the only thing you have to be focused as a startup founder or somebody who doing side hustles is just be better than yourself today. You have to better than yesterday and just try to learn. Because the business and side hustle is no different than musical instrument or sport. Like there is no secret to become good at sport. You have to just do a lot of the sport. And I think exactly. Same goes with side hustles or businesses. You have to learn. You have to learn to sell, learn to build, learn to design, learn to market. And it takes years to do that. That's why look at this as learning and then as a side effect of this, one day you know you'll get great results.

[Nick Loper]

Be better today than yesterday. Enjoy the process. Wise words from John Rush. Couple takeaways from me before before we wrap. I liked this section on niche research first. Trying to come up with maybe even a potential monetization model before you go into it. Looking at the existing competition and seeing if there are already directories ranking, which, you know, an earlier me would have been discouraged by that. But no, John says, hey, that's actually a positive sign that Google is rewarding and ranking. If I can build something that is better, that's differentiated in some way, then there's a chance to compete and win. They are there I like the speed of execution part this quick launch, quick validation. Look, if nobody likes a thing, then either back to the drawing board or try something new. Maybe that just wasn't good enough. And I liked your line about look, AI makes things look average. Don't be average. You gotta love the niche. Fall in love with this problem and really build something that is great, that is worthy of traffic and attention in an era of really fragmented attention. So build something that's great. AI makes things, things look average. Don't be average. Whether you're a first time listener or a long time listener, thank you so much for tuning in to the side Hustle Show. If you're wondering what to listen to next, make sure to build your own personalized playlist. How it works is you go to Hustle show, you answer a few multiple choice questions, takes a couple minutes, you can do it on your phone and it'll spit back out a custom curated playlist based on your answers for the Side hustles or the episodes 8 to 10 episodes that will hopefully be most impactful and insightful and actionable for you based on where you're at, where you want to go. Again, that's Hustle Show. Big thanks to John for sharing his insight today. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. So that is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hassle on.