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A
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A
Okay, I am medium obsessed with the side Hustle and as you listen in I think you'll understand why. So traditional SEO for article based content, niche sites, authority sites, blogs, whatever you want to call them. That's been a bit of a bloodbath in the last couple of years and maybe that's being gentle harder and harder to make money in that space. But there's one type of content that's been resistant to those changes. It's still thriving. It's still earning creators that elusive call it semi passive income online. And that's directory content. Today you're going to learn how to come up with profitable directory ideas, niches and how to quickly build out that content, and some tried and true marketing and monetization tactics to get the ball rolling there. Now to help school me on this is a guy who walks the talk. He's built several of these directory style websites from scratch and now earns 2000 bucks a month from those relatively hands off from shipyourdirectory.com Frey Chu welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
- [02:08]
C
What an intro. Appreciate you having me on. Thanks Nick.
- [02:10]
A
I'm pumped for this. Like I said, I'm kind of digging this idea as a way to make money online relatively hands off once they're up and running time, leveraged, all that jazz. So my understanding is one of the first ones that you built was in the thrifting space. And we don't want to reveal domains because unfortunately, copycats are very much still a thing. But it's in the thrifting space. And is there a moment where you're like, this might actually work? I think I'm onto something here.
- [02:36]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That was my first directory. And I would say the major turning moment for that directory was six months in, I randomly just pulled up the Google Analytics and noticed there were a thousand people coming to that website that day. And I just remember staring at it for five minutes and being like, what is going on? Like, how. Where is this traffic coming from?
- [03:01]
A
Yeah. Is this real? Yeah.
- [03:02]
C
At that time, I was like, kind of a noob at SEO, too. I was relearning or just learning all the basics. So I was thinking, oh, maybe I did something correct. And I started putting ads that following month, and the traffic kind of steadily came in, and I made $1,200 that month without really doing anything. It was just putting up ads.
- [03:22]
A
Was this just AdSense?
- [03:23]
C
Yeah. I actually end up using Ezoic. That was the media partner that I used. And now I'm using mediavine Grow, which is kind of my. My go to ad partner now.
- [03:34]
A
Okay, so you built the thing and then kind of sat on it like, I guess let it age potentially in the search results and establish some domain I don't do anything proactively to during those six months or just like log in one day. Hey, it actually is getting traffic.
- [03:48]
C
I did post on Reddit, and I talk about that a lot. Every. Every time I finish an entire directory build, I always find a niche subreddit, and I'll make a post. It'll basically sound like, hey, I made a website to make X, Y, Z easier or to find X, Y and Z locations easier. And, yeah, that's kind of the only thing that I did. It was responsible for maybe like a few hundred people coming to the website. Cause that Reddit post performed really well, and people still commented to it on this day, you know, a couple years later. But, yeah, really, nothing much, nothing too fancy was done.
- [04:23]
A
All right, let's dig into. Well, maybe we can pull it back and say, why? What attracted you to this business model?
- [04:31]
C
I think every entrepreneur goes through this moment where they either struggle to start something or start something and realize that's not the thing that they want. So in my case, I was running a footwear Business. I was closing it down, super depressed, very low point of my entrepreneurial life. And I realized what I really wanted was a business with five things. And it was something that was scalable, something cheap to start, something remote where I didn't have to, like, go to a warehouse and pack shoes and ship it to customers. Something with high margin and something that could be sold as an asset. And I scoured the Internet for these businesses. Very difficult to find. I found two.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah, this is a little bit of a unicorn. Like something that checks all those boxes.
- [05:13]
C
Totally. So I found. I think I landed on SaaS or websites. And I'm not a coder, so, you know, and this was kind of pre. Like, this is early AI AI chatgpt.
- [05:23]
A
Yeah, pre. AI Vibe coding stuff.
- [05:25]
C
Exactly. Yeah. The vibe coding was not a thing yet. So I landed on websites and I saw exactly what you mentioned, which is niche informational blogs were getting absolutely destroyed, especially starting September 2023 with the helpful content updates. So I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just look on AHREFS and see what wasn't affected. And I started noticing these directories. I didn't really, like, go into it thinking, I'm gonna go build a portfolio of directories. I was just like, okay, well, this. I found this website that was getting over a hundred thousand monthly visitors, and it was rank one page one for my target thrifting keyword. And I was like, I could do better than this. This is, like, pretty ugly. And I feel like, not that helpful. There could be better information. It's also out of date. They're missing a lot of locations. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go and build it. And yeah, once I started ramping up and that kind of aha moment happened, I was like, okay, yeah, this meets all those five criteria. And I can just keep building these out. That's what launched the directory side Hustle for me.
- [06:26]
A
Did that keyword research start from a standpoint of personal interest? Like, were you a thrift store flipper? Thrift store shopper type of person?
- [06:35]
C
I actually was, yeah. Like my most recent, like, at the time when I realized that it was getting a thousand visitors a month, I just gotten a job because before that I spent the year flipping items, going to flea markets and garage sales, and I paid my rent that way for like a year and a half.
- [06:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a super. We got lots of episodes on that on side Hustle show. Yeah.
- [06:56]
C
The problem is that it failed two of the most important factors in my Opinion. It's like scalability and being remote because I, like, I was stuck in my garage, in my apartment, just like all day shipping, listing items, and then like shipping anywhere outside of the US was just way too pricey. Like, it just didn't make sense.
- [07:14]
A
Yeah, physical inventory, business capital intensive, you know, maybe you sit on inventory for months at a time and if you ever stop sourcing, then you're kind of out of luck.
- [07:23]
C
100%, by the way, most fun side hustle I've ever had though. 100%. Like, there's no better thrill.
- [07:29]
A
Oh, you, you're into the treasure hunt component of it.
- [07:31]
C
Oh man, it's the best. But I had to sacrifice that to look more long term and be like, okay, what else can I do that wouldn't require me to be in a garage all day?
- [07:41]
A
So if I'm a student of yours, you're coaching me through this initial research process. Like, okay, I can start with things that I'm interested in. Okay, maybe this is a personal pain point. I'm having a hard time finding thrift shops near me. I'm having a hard time finding new hiking trails, new pickleball courts, new, you know, whatever it is. Is that kind of where you would recommend people begin their research?
- [08:02]
C
When I choose a good niche for a directory, I typically try my best to have that be 70% data based. So the keyword research is good. There's high search volume, low competition. There's clear bounty, like a website directory that's already successful, that probably isn't the most optimized or kind of old and clunky. And then 30% of it will be more passion based, interest based, kind of like what you mentioned. I've tried directories where it's 100% kind of interest based, hobby or passion based. And for me personally, it didn't work out. So I think the way I landed on the thrifting idea was I just audited my life and where I like to go and where people like to go. And I combine that with a framework where I'm like, okay, what saves people time, earns people money or saves people money? And those are kind of like the three umbrella frameworks that I tried to combine when I was socially observing where people were going in the world. And that's when I landed on this very specific thrift store that I built my entire directory around. And people love it because it's so cheap. It's like a warehouse style thrifting experience where everything's by the pound so you don't get markups from regular thrift stores.
- [09:15]
A
Interesting. Okay, I've never heard of that. Yeah. Okay, so I like this. So 70% we're going to let the data kind of steer where we want to go. And bonus points, 30% of this decision is going to be based on. Well, if I'm going to work on this, I at least got to care something about it. Otherwise you know what's going to separate me from everybody else trying to do the same thing. You mentioned having a clear bounty. This is somebody else who has paved the way for you. This is a site that is maybe a little outdated, maybe a little clunky looking. Maybe the data isn't as cleanly presented as it could be. But they're doing okay. You can tell that they're ranking, they're getting traffic. They say I can do better than that. And that's how we're going to try and stair step above that site. They've, they've already proven out the concept and now we, instead of reinventing the wheel, we're going to go after what they did. Just do it better.
- [10:03]
C
A hundred percent. I think it tells you so much, especially with a lot of concern around SERPs changing. Right. There's so many more forums and social media websites and it just really depends if you, whatever you type into Google, you can get a completely different looking search engine results page. So if you see a bounty someone that's successful and yeah, I mean it's basically proof that you can take the structure of their website and just improve it. Like clearly Google has chosen that and has left that there on page one rank one for some time because it finds it trustworthy and matches user intent and search intent to some extent. Yeah, it's like one of the most important factors that I actually look for when I'm building a new directory is a successful one that's come before me.
- [10:47]
A
And what's interesting is you seem to prefer location based queries or location based directories. And not to put words in your mouth, but we had, we did an episode with John Rush late last year and it was almost, it was like online service providers, it was best like all GPTs or I think was the one that he mentioned was like a directory of software tools. It was like kind of the opposite approach.
- [11:09]
C
I just personally think that local queries, local SEO is way more protected kind of going just talking about certain keywords and informational blogs that were destroyed. Local SEO is a totally different beast. And if you go on ChatGPT or any LLM and you look up a local query or local keyword like barbers near me. It's arguably worse than Google Maps right now. So yeah. And the SERPS looks the same, which is great. So that's really all an SEO can ask for. Anyone building one of these directories, relying on SEO as distribution is. I don't want any surprises. I think this challenge is still not entirely solved, even if LLMs can catch up. Because there are certain niches like daycare or anything legal or finance where the consequence of choosing the wrong vendor or local business service is too high. Like with the daycare, you're handing your child to some random people. I'm not just gonna one prompt chatgpt and ask hey, where are the nearest daycares? And be like, okay, cool. That's awesome. There's also price sensitivity. There's many reasons why someone would go beyond just a simple one shot chatgpt prompt and look elsewhere on the Internet for more information around things that they need. Things where trust is inherent.
- [12:25]
A
Yeah. A fun example from the show a few years ago was Rob Pingolo built a database of, I think it was shadedseats.com and it was like where in major league stadiums at a certain time of day, you know, whenever this game starts, like, where are you going to be sitting in the shade if it's 100 degrees in Arlington, I don't want to be baking out there in the sun. Where are the shaded seats? And he built a whole site around that.
- [12:47]
C
Super smart. That's fascinating.
- [12:49]
A
Let's look into some of the research here. We talked about high volume, low competition. I want to get some maybe high and low metrics for what that looks like. Or maybe a seed query. What do you. Where do you start?
- [13:00]
C
One of the most popular ways that I think you can go and find these niche directories is if you do use ahrefs. It is a premium tool. It's expensive, but if you do, it's pretty worth it if you plan to use it and build directories. I just type in near me. And this is really just what everyone types into Google if they're looking for something near them. There's several ways that you can kind of filter this information. The first place I pay attention to is just keyword difficulty and search volume. It makes sense to find a keyword that has high search volume and low keyword difficulty kind of indicates that it would be easier to rank for.
- [13:36]
A
Yeah, look at that pizza near me. Two million searches and almost no competition. If you are a pizza lover, I feel like there's an Opportunity to build something about that.
- [13:45]
C
Yeah, yeah. And ahrefs is just a third party data tool. I will say that like, as you train your eyes and you like. At this point, I've vetted probably over 5,000 different directory niches, at least seen keywords through the lens of directories, and there are trap niches. Pizza near me, I would argue is harder to rank for than it might.
- [14:06]
A
Look that it might originally appear.
- [14:07]
C
Exact. Exactly. What I like to do is I would actually personally, if I were restarting this all over again. I personally like to find keywords right around that, you know, maybe 10,000 to 40,000 monthly search volume. This isn't a hard rule. It's really depending on you and your SEO expertise. But I feel that some of these keywords offer the best kind of bang for your buck, if you will. There's not too many directories still showing a lot of interest. Funny enough, I do have a plasma donation directory that was the second or third directory that I built.
- [14:45]
A
Yeah, look at that keyboard difficulty. 77 out of a hundred though. That's a little bit challenging.
- [14:50]
C
Yeah. And I guess the reason I built it is because if you look up plasma like San Antonio, for example, then you will notice that the actual local keyword, plasma donation San Antonio is much less competitive. So I went into this project not thinking I was going to rank for plasma donation near me. That would be insane.
- [15:08]
A
Got it, got it. But you could do it for hundreds of different cities.
- [15:11]
C
Exactly. So a lot of people tunnel vision into the main keyword, which is why I don't think the near me method is necessarily the best. It kind of gives you a foot in, but you kind of want to peel back the curtain and look a little bit deeper because maybe there's lower competition queries that are basically the same search intent that you could target. And that's exactly what I did. I just kind of targeted these type of broader city keywords and that was the play there.
- [15:39]
A
Got it, Got it. Building out those individual pages and yeah.
- [15:43]
C
So like this is one method. Sometimes you'll even run into niches. I think daycares is actually a great example where rather than kind of a more broad location based keyword, you might have phrase daycare, and for whatever reason it's based in Los Angeles, it gets a thousand monthly searches. So people are clearly trying to look for information around phrase daycare and you can kind of use the existing search volume that these individual businesses are getting. And then, you know, if you look at any other big city, you'll see the same trend and get traffic that way because it's super easy to rank for these keywords, sometimes with a fresh domain, no backlinks, just creating a useful directory. You'll be surprised at how far you can rank for individual local business queries.
- [16:28]
A
Yeah, this is kind of interesting because in my head this is like this is Google Maps job, but they're not doing a great job of it. And maybe there's a better way to organize and present that data. I found a splash pad near me 32,000 and a keyword difficulty of zero. Laser tag, basketball courts, teeth whitening, tattoo removal was a fun one. Tanning beds, bike trails, there's tons of these. And actually if you're listening in, Ica's Ahrefs is at least 30 bucks a month and their premium ones are even higher than that. I'll email you this file, we'll link it up in the show notes SignusalNation.com Frey or just follow the link in the description. We'll get you over there. I listed out a hundred that I thought were interesting to me. Batting cages near me, stuff like this, and these local based queries where if you had an in or an interest in that area, you could build out something pretty cool.
- [17:22]
C
Totally. I will say it's really important because you mentioned something interesting, which is that this is essentially Google Maps. And going back to the daycare example, people want to know more than just name, address, phone number. That's kind of the information you need to know. But what about the information you want to know? Maybe if the daycare is licensed, if there's activities, an itinerary for your kids. How do people treat, you know, their clients at the, at the place that you're, you know, taking your kids to? There's so many questions and like I would argue, more important things that I want to know, data that I want to know rather than I need to know that I should include in my directory. That's really how you differentiate yourself from Google Maps.
- [18:02]
B
More with Frey in just a moment, including potential monetization angles and how to begin building out your content right after this. Summer is the season of backyard barbecues, hanging out at the lake, epic family road trips. But when the temperature rises, you don't want to be sweating over your wireless bill. That's why I made the switch to our partner mint mobile in 2019 and haven't looked back. Here's what's great about Mint. Simple, affordable, premium wireless service without surprises and unexpected overages. All Mint plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. The switch was easy. I was able to bring my own phone and keep my old phone number and all my existing contacts. So join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get 33 months of unlimited service for just 15 bucks a month this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer in your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.comsidehustle that's mintmobile.comsidehustleen upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 per month limited time new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Here's a little bit of side Hustle trivia for you. Did you know that our Partner Shopify powers 10% of all E commerce in the US everything from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to dozens of side Hustle show guests you've heard from right on this show. And there's strength in those numbers. Ever notice that purple shop pay button when you're shopping online? That's a telltale sign that a store is powered by Shopify and just one of the reasons Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Shopify makes it easy to sell online with hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates, inventory management tools, payment processing, analytics, and powerful marketing and email tools built right in so you can find and keep more customers. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.comsidehustle go to shopify.comsidehustleen one more time. It's shopify.comsidehustole.
- [20:19]
A
Anything else on that research phase? So this is going to be a starting point. This is going to be. I'm going to go here. This is going to be kind of broad and then maybe there's even subcategories obviously within each of these. You know, the batting cage, does it have baseball? Does it have softball? Is it indoors? Is it outdoor? You know, does it have a snack shack? Like all of these different things people might ask questions about and hopefully we'll get into how to actually collect that data on a nationwide level. But anything else we should think about kind of in this initial research phase?
- [20:47]
C
I mean, there are so many small nuances when it comes to choosing a niche. I would say the most important is finding A bounty, a successful directory. Making sure that directories as a format, as a structured page works on Google. Definitely. Using keyword research, I tend to also look at a lot of my competitors backlinks. So I won't just stop at finding the bounty. I'll look into them. Okay, what kind of backlinks are they getting? Why am I doing that? Well, this is kind of looking further in the future but I want a plan to go and get backlinks because SEO, as I'm sure a lot of your audience knows, is not just content, it's trust signals, it's niche relevant backlinks that are giving you a shout out basically.
- [21:29]
A
Is there anywhere there's a red flag where you're like, even though it says it's a keyword difficulty of 10 or under, but looking at that bounty example website, you know who you're gunning for. It's like there's no way I'm going to be able to touch like they've got thousands of backlinks. Like is there something where you're like hard stop onto the next one?
- [21:46]
C
Yes, I would say looking at the root domain is always a good idea. If they're like a doctor 90, they're extremely trustworthy. A lot of these exist in the food niche. You know you mentioned pizza near meat. There's like a food truck directory that's doing seven figures plus there's a lot of food directory competition. So that's like generally a red flag for me. But yeah, you can also check the backlinks if they're getting backlinks from these massive websites that wouldn't even respond to you if you emailed them. Probably not the move there.
- [22:15]
A
Okay, let the data be your guide, but then put on kind of your common sense hat and detective and be like how am I really realistically going to stand out here?
- [22:23]
C
Exactly.
- [22:24]
A
So 10 to 40,000 was kind of the sweet spot in terms of monthly search volume. Anything. Well, I mean even you mentioned like I'd go as high as a keyword difficulty in the 70s if you know for those local searches it doesn't seem to be that competitive. So don't let that necessarily be a hard stop.
- [22:40]
C
I mean that's just the way that I do it. And I recently spoke to Tim Stoddart who his first directory was doing 250k in net profits and he chose a niche where there wasn't necessarily a lot of search volume. And his only framework for finding niches is do rich people do it? Check. Then I'm going to Go and build it. It's really as simple as do rich people do it. That was his whole framework for finding and vetting niche ideas. And he's go off and created really successful directories. He's still building directories. Mine's more like probably data driven. And I do ask myself a lot of questions. I poke around in hrefs, but there's a thousand paths to victory here.
- [23:17]
A
Yeah, the one I always wanted to build even had, I don't know if I registered this domain, but I wanted it to be called Happy Hour Hero. And it was like just the directory of the best happy hours around. But I don't know, somebody maybe built that because that was a long time ago since I had that idea. Okay, so what's next? Let's talk about, I don't know, pick an example. We just threw out, you know, half a dozen different ideas. Where do you get the data from this? Like to do it at scale. Like I'll, I'll give you the example. So I built a virtual assistant directory and review site for like outsourcing companies years and years ago. And it was one on one. I'm going to write the profile of this company. There was no, there was no data scraping involved. It was just like create the 500 word post about this company and plug it into this category and you know, boom, boom, boom, lather, rinse, repeat. You know, starting out with a couple dozen companies and then probably getting over to 150 or something by the time we sold it.
- [24:07]
C
Yeah, I would say the, there's a few ways to do it. Taking a quick step back before data scraping is you want to decide how this directory is going to monetize. Like for me it was all about kind of more passive projects. Spend 100 hours up front. Once it's up and monetized, I basically don't work on it. That was my style. If you want to go more lead generation, that's not going to be as passive, but has a much higher ceiling for earning potential. And the reason I say that and why that has to do with data scraping is because if you are doing lead generation, you don't need to build something that attracts a hundred thousand monthly visitors to, to make money. You can focus on a state, in which case you could just scrape for that state and then go deep into that. But definitely want to figure that out first afterwards, after you've vetted your niche. I personally use a tool called Outscraper. Not affiliated, just been a big fan for a while.
- [24:57]
A
Can we pause on lead Generation for a second. This would be if you're building a directory of service providers, for example, like teeth whitening near me. And you partnered with a bunch of dental offices that offer that and say, okay, we'll send you. If we send you a new customer, you know, we expect you to give us a $200 finder's fee or something. And you have to, like, go out and cut those individual deals 100%.
- [25:16]
C
Yeah, that's essentially it. I mentioned that I'm building a luxury porta Potty directory right now. So that's going to be a lead generation play.
- [25:23]
A
Like for rental services.
- [25:25]
C
Exactly. Yeah. So luxury porta potties can rent for $2,000 a day. Think weddings, outdoor festivals, that kind of stuff.
- [25:32]
A
There's another side Hustle.
- [25:34]
C
Yeah. Feel free to build it. I'm sure there's plenty of room for multiple winners. Generally speaking, for lead generation, that's the whole concept. You are creating a directory that helps people find and make a decision around renting luxury restroom trailer. You might be asking, well, Frey, isn't it just as easy as just looking up restroom trailers near me and then just, you know, calling? Yeah, but there's no price transparency. And this exists in so many niches where you can call 10 luxury porta potty restroom trailer companies. One, it'll be a little time consuming. But two, you'll probably get quotes that vary in the several hundreds of dollars. Same thing exists with any, like, landscaping or home renovation project. Yeah, if you're redoing your kitchen, you're going to get a ton of different quotes. So your directory can be the place that provides that information. And it's easier to just go on a directory where all the information is one place and you can kind of quickly compare one or the other. And that's kind of like a simple problem that you can solve that adds a tremendous amount of value. But yeah, in general, that's the lead gen model. You are the website, that SEO is your website. You get the leads, you sell the leads to business owners. And that's how it works.
- [26:46]
A
Okay, so thinking about, well, how am I eventually going to monetize this? And maybe the niche kind of dictates which direction that you go. If you're doing a directory for dog parks or hiking trails, like, they're probably not going to pay you to send people off to the hiking trail, but that's where display ads come in. Or maybe hiking equipment affiliate. I don't know. There's some. I'm sure there's other creative ways you could do it. But like some more, more passive or more kind of just traffic based models.
- [27:12]
C
I sell digital products on my thrifting directory as well and that makes around $500 a month passively. So there's a bunch of ways you can monetize.
- [27:20]
A
This is like a guide to like make money thrifting or something. Like what's the digital product?
- [27:25]
C
I did something really sweaty, really unscalable. I called all the thrift store owners and basically posed as some authority figure within the company and said hey, you need to tell me exactly when new product comes into the thrift store. I need to know the days, the times, how many rotations you have every single day. And I packaged that into a guide and I did that 130 times and I just put it in an Excel sheet, threw it in Canva, made 130 variations that are store specific schedules.
- [27:57]
A
Oh, okay. Yeah. Because if you're, if you're serious about it, you got to be there. You know, if it comes in Tuesday at noon, you got to be there.
- [28:03]
C
Totally. Yeah. There's a ton of resellers who want that information and just one flip, it's a $19 digital product is going to pay off that, that expense. So hobbyists, flippers, resellers, they all want to know when the best stuff comes and how early they should plan their, their trip.
- [28:20]
A
Okay, let's go back to the data collection you mentioned. I think Outscraper was the, was the.
- [28:24]
C
Tool Outscraper, a scraping tool that allows you to scrape Google Maps and among other websites if you'd like. That's the most non coder friendly in my opinion. It's super easy to set up. You can specify the locations you want to scrape Google categories. That's something that I kind of always do before I use Outscraper. Just go on Google Maps, type in your keyword, look for the Google categories that you want to scrape for and then move forward with the scraping tool and that will basically give you all the information that you want. You can get the name, address, phone number, the website, the working hours, Anything that you want is there. As far as the information that you need to know, as far as the extra, the data you want to know, that's where you have to kind of do extra steps there.
- [29:13]
A
Yeah. For that kind of stuff where it's like, well, does it have a vending machine? Does it have shade, does it have, you know, are dogs allowed like all of that? Like do you have to start combing through the reviews or like how do you Pull all that stuff, especially if you're trying to do it, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of locations.
- [29:28]
C
Yep. So exactly. Google Reviews is definitely like the main place you look. If people are talking about it, there will be a review tag. If you've used Google Maps, we've all seen it. It's basically what people are talking about the most. I'll combine that with some Reddit social listening. Just looking up your keyword on Reddit, see what people are talking about. If those questions just keep reoccurring, then. Okay, then dive in, look at the comments. What are people talking about? What's being upvoted? That's where you can get a lot of ideas for data enrichment as well.
- [29:59]
A
Okay, so this is the output of this is going to be like a ginormous Excel file or something. I imagine like potentially thousands of rows.
- [30:06]
C
Yeah. So you get a big CSV file or Excel file. I'll clean the data. Sometimes I like to scrape certain parameters, like the business status. It'll spit out whether or not the business is temporarily closed or permanently closed. I would remove those because I don't want those to be on my directory. So they're like small, like kind of common sense, logical approaches to cleaning your data. And then once you've kind of ended up with a list that you're happy with, you can go and enrich the data. And that's the whole process. But there are ways to automate it. I actually co founded a tool that helps automate this because it was such a pain in the butt having to go through, as you mentioned, potentially thousands of listings manually. So we kind of automated that whole process.
- [30:49]
A
This was one of the very tedious chores where we had to build some automation. So one of my first side Hustle projects was this shoe shopping site. And so it'd pull in the catalogs through data feeds or through like Amazon's API and we'd get probably over a million products. And I don't want your handbags, I don't want your earrings and stuff, I just want shoes. And so like, you know, build the rules to filter out everything but shoes. And then sometimes they would have very similar names. And we're like, okay, that product is actually the same as this product, even though it's called something slightly different. And this data cleanup was something that could be automated on a recurring basis, but was pretty time consuming upfront to try and build out all those rules.
- [31:30]
C
Super tedious. I mean, yeah, I did it manually the first time, not even exaggerating hundreds of hours, just Doing like quite possibly the most boring task ever.
- [31:40]
A
But this is kind of where your value add is. If all this data already exists on Google Maps and that's where we got it from, it's that questionable. What am, what am I going to be doing that's different and, or better to make somebody come here instead?
- [31:52]
C
I think that that is the question I asked myself a lot. And I realized I have like two takes on this one, which is, I think I probably learned this from Pat Flynn way back in the day. But people will pay for consolidation.
- [32:04]
A
Yeah.
- [32:04]
C
Whether it's through their time as a website visitor or like actually pay. In the, in the case of my digital product, there's all the information online, but it's time consuming. Everyone has their lives that are busy and we're all doing stuff. So if you can be the person that just consolidates it, then there's a massive value add there. The second take is specialized data. And this is kind of my hedge against impending AI threats, in my opinion. But essentially there's data that is available, but in really low quality ways. I guess a really common example is any kind of lack of price transparency with the daycares. Right. You would have to call every daycare just to get the pricing. Again, very time consuming.
- [32:48]
A
Yeah.
- [32:48]
C
What if you can consolidate that information? That information's probably not even out there. Like, I doubt Anyone has called 5,000 of the daycares in America just to get that information, but if you did, that would be some insane value add. You would have specialized data in the sense that you're the only person on the Internet with that level of helpful data. So that's kind of like another way you can create and generate new data that can't be found easily.
- [33:15]
A
Okay. Yeah. And of course, if there's a hundred of these listings in your directory, that's feasible. If there's 5,000, maybe a little less. So without hiring your own outsourced call center team to go and collect it, you want to plug your cleanup tool.
- [33:32]
C
It's called Enrich Directory. That's the website. It's essentially somewhat agentic. You can, let's just say like the daycare example, you can plug in like a license or schedule. You can put in a keyword that, that you want to look for in the reviews rather than manually sifting through it, and it'll identify the most recent ones and you can prompt it as well. You can say, hey, does this daycare have a schedule or some itinerary or some kids program? And then it will basically just give you all of those reviews mentioned it and have a Boolean output that says, yep, they do have a program. Here's the proof. Some reviewer has mentioned it already and they mentioned it recently. So you can kind of see all that data there.
- [34:15]
A
Yeah, this is something we totally did. Like, we built this for our own local area when our young, when we moved and our youngest was looking for preschool. Like, well, what are their hours? What if you do three days a week? How much do they charge? Because so many of them are like 9 to noon or 9:30 to 12. It's like, I was hoping for a little more coverage than that and it's tedious to go find that data. So definitely a value add if somebody puts that together. And that's just, you know, one example of, you know, hundreds.
- [34:40]
C
Exactly.
- [34:41]
A
Okay, so now, so it's in Excel or it's in some CSV file. Like, how do we make that look pretty on a website? How do you start to present that data?
- [34:49]
B
Raise response. Plus the marketing he does to give his directories a nudge towards visibility. Coming up right after this. Hey, you've reached Nick at side Hustle Nation. Sorry I'm unable to take your call right now, but if you leave a.
- [35:07]
A
Message, if that's what your customers are.
- [35:09]
B
Hearing, you're leaving money on the table. You fought hard for those leads. You need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected 24 7. That's why I'm excited to partner with OpenPhone for this episode. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer, so no need for a second phone or a landline. And here's what's really cool with OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. That way, any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. See for yourself. Why over 60,000 businesses trust OpenPhone. And right now, OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle show listeners 20% off for your first six months at openphone.com Sidehustle that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com Sidehustle and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. OpenPhone. No missed calls, no missed customers. Before this commercial is over, another 23 entrepreneurs are going to find their next team member on indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. When you need to find amazing candidates fast. You need the powerful matching tech and unmatched reach of our sponsor Indeed. Plus Indeed's sponsor to Jobs help you stand out and hire even faster. It'll make your post jump to the top of the page for your relevant candidates and the proof is in the results. Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed and joining the three and a half million other employers already on board. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn 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. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [37:18]
C
Yeah, so after you've scraped, cleaned and enriched your data, that is the time when I format it on a WordPress website that's kind of historically been my pick. There are again multiple ways to do it. At the end of the day, it's just building a website that points people to the right place with the right information. Right. So you can use everything from your simple themes or you can use like directory specific plugins. Geodirectory is one I've also used. I've also built out static pages where I just literally click create page and I just start dragging widgets over and just hand make the whole directory.
- [37:54]
A
Yeah. If there are a small number of listings feasible. Otherwise it's like there's gotta. There's probably a WordPress like importer tool where you can do something like that.
- [38:03]
C
Yeah, there's WPL Import, that's kind of the famous one. Works really well. Geodirectory has kind of a built in importer so you can programmatically deploy like 4,000 pages in the same day if you want. So it's out there. I've more recently been playing with AI coding tools like V0 and Cursor and Claude code and that's fascinating as well. But I always recommend people just use what you already know. That's usually where I think you should start and it'll probably be the faster way anyways rather than learning some new tech stack that you're not familiar with.
- [38:37]
A
Yeah. So the structure is each listing is its own page or is it like you kind of start to do that editorial content of like the best plasma donation Centers in Houston. Type of like, you know, listicle content.
- [38:51]
C
So it depends. I look at two places you can look at the AHREFS data. If all the. Actually the first place that I look is just look up the first top three ranking websites in your SERPs or look at the most successful directory. How is it structured? Do they have individual listing pages? If so, just follow suit. Pretty easy. If it's more listicle based, you should do what I do, what I did with my first directory, Thrifting One, which is a pillar page directory. It's literally 50 pages for all the different states in America. And when you land on that page, it's a massively long page. It's ridiculous, but that seemed to work out the best. And I kind of determined that by just looking at what was already working. I didn't need individual listing pages. People didn't care about that. The main thing people were typing in was the name of the thrift store. San Antonio or Austin or Los Angeles, not the specific name of the store. If it's like the daycare example going back to that, you're probably likely to have people want to research the name of the exact daycare spot, in which case it would make sense to create its own listing page and you would have a more traditional directory rather than a pillar page directory. So it depends on what's working out there. You can also look at the keyword research to see what the most popular queries are. And that should really inform what your directory will look like.
- [40:12]
A
Yeah, thinking about that site structure, I mean, similar like side Hustle Nation could be an example. Like best side hustles for real estate agents, for doctors, we have that type of content that's kind of the listicle, that's like the pillar page type of stuff at a category level. And then each of those items on that list probably has its own deep dive where it's an interview about how to build directories or how to invest in real estate or how to start a freelance business, like anything like that. And so that kind of structure is going to be dictated by the niche that you, that you select.
- [40:47]
C
100% that is correct.
- [40:49]
A
Okay, so let's say it feels a little bit like fast forwarding through the build out phase here, but once it's built, and maybe this is a longer process depending on the niche you select. You mentioned posting to Reddit. Hey guys, I made a tool. I made a site to help make finding fill in the blank easier. Check it out. That's, that's one potential marketing angle or Tactic. What, what else to like, just, you know, it's not, you know, build it and they'll come. It's build it and like, try and spread the word at least a little bit to get Google to notice you a hundred percent.
- [41:23]
C
I would say my next step is building backlinks and kind of starting to build those trust signals. But that Reddit step is so important because people on Reddit are not afraid to tell you to your face if your project sucks. And you know, you spend all this time researching, scraping the data, you probably spend a little bit of money too. If you're using premium themes on WordPress, you kind of want to take a moment and take in any real time feedback. If it sucks, then why does it suck? If people don't find it valuable and they're like telling you it's just another version of Google Maps, but uglier, then you should probably listen to them. Every single Reddit post I've made, luckily I've made four because I have four directories that I've really put in like a full A through Z effort on. Luckily they've been really well received. Multiple hundreds of upvotes, comments. And the second reason you want to do that is because I've gotten my best monetization ideas from these Reddit forums. People are like, hey, I think it'd be really cool if you added this data. And that's how I got the idea for that first directory for the digital products. People were asking for that data and I was like, that's really hard to get. That's gonna take me hours. But I guess there's like dozens of people asking for it. So if I do it, I could charge for it.
- [42:37]
A
Yeah, do the work upfront and sell it over and over again.
- [42:40]
C
Exactly. So that Reddit post offers so much value in multiple different areas. Once you have that kind of peace of mind too, you're so much more willing to move on to the next step, which is backlinks. Not a fun part. Probably like a lot of people's main struggle with SEO. But yeah, it's how do you build backlinks? There's so many different ways, especially with directories. We've probably all seen them before. But badges is a great way to build backlinks. By that I mean I had a directory for comic shops, which I do. I recently launched that and the full build out video is out there. I could go and approach comic store owners and say, hey, like I created this badge for the top 10 best comics in San Antonio. Do you want to put it on your website. They embed it onto the website, it clicks and then redirects to my website. Boom. I just got a badge backlink.
- [43:30]
A
Nice.
- [43:31]
C
That's actually something that I did three weeks ago.
- [43:34]
A
Yeah, we did this for the VA site too. It was a little like had a kind of the logo and like had a little like tested stamp on it for all the ones that we like tested and personally reviewed. And people put that at the bottom like kind of in their footer. Virtual assistant. Assistant tested. Yeah, it was a little bit of a backlink boost.
- [43:49]
C
Yeah, totally. That, that one's like a good one. I mean the best backlinks are ones where I just basically take them from my competitors. Sounds bad, but basically I use Ahrefs and I look at my competitors backlinks again, that bounty that I found. And I'll look for a kind of a mom and pop publisher. One where I reach, if I reach out to them, they'll actually respond and I'll be like, do you want to swap your link for mine for 50 bucks? Or I'll use some form of leverage. Hey, I'm getting 5,000 monthly visitors. We're also the most accurate up to date directory around comic books. I noticed that you link to this website. Do you want to swap it out for mine? It's going to be way better, like of an experience. We actually keep up to date with this stuff. Ultimately the idea with backlinks is you're just convincing some stranger in some part of the world to put your link on their website. Right. So there's a million ways to do that. You don't have to just pay 50 bucks because that can get costly. But that's all it is at the end of the day. And the more niche relevant it is, the better, especially in these days. That's kind of how I do it.
- [44:51]
A
Got it. So yeah, if you have a. If somebody's site talks about this particular thrifting store, you can reach out to them and say, hey, would you mind adding a link? Or if they're already linking to your older, worse competitor, you can say, hey, I built a better resource. Check it out. If you genuinely think it's going to be a value add for your readers, hey, we'd love to love for you to swap out the link. It's going to be a better experience. And I get those pitches all the time and sometimes I ignore them and sometimes I act on them. So it's like kind of a volume game, 100%.
- [45:18]
C
You don't need many too I, I recall the first directory in the thrifting space. I think one backlink alone was enough to push me to rank one page one for my wow. Target keyword that gets 60, 70,000 monthly visitors.
- [45:33]
A
Geez.
- [45:33]
C
That's because it was hyper relevant. There was real traffic coming to the page. The article itself was super dialed into my specific thrifting niche. And I paid him 50 bucks. I just reached out and I'm like, hey, like I'm just gonna be frank, like I'm just trying to get a link swap. And he was like, cool. Just PayPal me 50 bucks. And that was it.
- [45:52]
A
Yeah. And that, that one link has been worth how many thousands of dollars?
- [45:56]
C
Yeah, it's been worth three years of two or $3,000 a month.
- [46:00]
A
That's, that's really interesting. So sometimes it doesn't take a lot. Like don't, don't sweat it. Like I'm gonna need hundreds of these things. It may just take a few if you've selected a low enough competition area.
- [46:10]
C
Yep.
- [46:11]
A
So you mentioned the digital product. Is it primarily display ads for you for your sites?
- [46:15]
C
Yep. So Mediavine Grow handles the display ads. 75% of the revenue for that first directory is display ads. So hovering around like 1500 to $2000 is pretty average. And then the digital products are 25% of the revenue. And it's funny saying revenue because there's like virtually no expenses. I think I pay $7 for like a Google email and like $29 for a ConvertKit subscription. So it's like 98% margin or something like crazy.
- [46:46]
A
Yeah. If you are used to running an agency or any kind of other physical product type of business, you're gonna be blown away by the margins in a, in a fully digital business like this, like okay, I gotta pay for hosting a couple software tools and it's all, you know, it's all gravy after I cover those now. Really, really cool. So display ads, digital products, we mentioned kind of lead gen as maybe slightly more advanced. You got to go strike up relationships and cut those deals. One way that the VA site was monetized, we sold like a featured listing like you would see on Yelp or TripAdvisor or some of these other sites. Any other creative ways that you've seen people monetize?
- [47:20]
C
The most successful, which is definitely the hardest to pull off, is using directories as a top of the funnel for SaaS. That's where you end up with your 7, 8, 9 figure directories which are out there. They're not that Rare either, which is cool.
- [47:35]
A
Any examples from Top of Mind?
- [47:37]
C
Yeah, so there's one called car parts. Car-parts.com that's one that comes to mind. There's quite a few. There's I believe Retreat Guru is one of the biggest directories for people who want ayahuasca retreats around the world.
- [47:53]
A
Oh, okay.
- [47:54]
C
And they sell a SaaS where if you're a retreat owner, if your business is putting in these retreats on, they sell you the SaaS to manage that retreat business. So yeah, car Car parts is like the biggest. It's also incredibly ugly, which is hilarious. It makes so many millions a year. But they have so many products for all B2B SaaS for people who are selling used car parts and other like niches within like used car related businesses. Both of those do multiple millions. I think Retreat Guru does like 3 or 4 million in revenue a year.
- [48:28]
A
Yeah. Once you've got the eyeballs, your monetization options really open up and you can figure it out. Are you doing email marketing? You mentioned? Oh, I got my kit subscription. You're doing email marketing for this stuff too?
- [48:39]
C
Yeah, I do sometimes play around with newsletters on my directories. The I think that's actually a really incredible combo. For the plasma donation one, I created a lead magnet where I was like, like, oh, if you want the highest paying plasma donation centers, we email that once a month, every month, just sign up for this thing. And I was Getting something like 500 organic lead form submissions, which is crazier to think about because the actual take it in isn't just a normal newsletter opt in where you put in your email. I make them go through like a minute to two minute long survey where they tell me as much as they know about their local plasma centers. So the way that one worked was I just think it's hilarious because I didn't have any newsletter content. I simply took the information people submitted to join the newsletter because I would ask them, hey, how much does your local plasma donation pay? And I'd put that in the newsletter.
- [49:34]
A
Oh wow. I'm crowdsourcing the data for you. Yeah, I don't have to call all these places up.
- [49:39]
C
Exactly. So I crowdsourced the data. Didn't even have any newsletter content until people started finding that. And to this day I don't really work on that website too much. It's kind of just passively earning with mediavine Grow. But that is kind of one example of a newsletter execution. And the first thrifting store had a lot of signups or still gets a lot of signups, but I don't really know what to do with them, to be honest.
- [50:01]
A
Yeah, sell them the paid thing and then afterwards, I don't know. There's other thrifting content I'm sure they'd be interested in. What's like a day in the life here, you know, in terms of upkeep and maintenance. Like on the daycares. If you have 5,000 daycares and you want to know the pricing, like you're going to have to. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Like once you get done, you're going to have to start back over at the beginning of the list because their pricing probably changed.
- [50:21]
C
It depends on the niche for sure. With the thrifting one, I don't think I've logged into the backend of WordPress for that website in like 5 or 6 months. I just check every day and I'll be like, okay, cool. There's nothing wrong with the traffic. Takes about five seconds.
- [50:33]
A
Yeah, it's still cranking with something like.
- [50:35]
C
A lead gen one. Of course you want to be a little bit more on top of that, especially if you're starting to sell leads and kind of maintain that trust. I think an easy way is just every six months, every quarter. The lazy approach, which I'm a fan of, just re scrape the data sort by business status. If they're permanently closed, you can cross reference it that way and just remove those listings that have closed.
- [50:56]
A
Okay.
- [50:57]
C
For store hours that change, which kind of. Yeah, that's like a thing. I don't really change it that much. I just add a disclaimer saying, hey, these were the store hours when I first added these to the website. Like make sure to check it yourself if you plan to visit. Other than that, there's not that much maintenance. I would say.
- [51:12]
A
Yeah. Looking for stuff that doesn't change all the time. I found a lot of search volume around like specific classes, dance class near me or CPR training where it's like once it's gone and expired like then it's out of date. There's a lot of upkeep. Same thing with the shoe business. The inventory turned over seasonally for sure, but every day stuff would go out of stock and it would be a pain to stay on top of. So maybe that's a consideration too. You're like thinking of, well, how much upkeep is this going to? Is this going to be a hundred percent?
- [51:41]
C
There is someone in my community that built a Trivia Night Directory First Directory. It was a hit, I think something like 8 or 9,000 monthly visitors. But he was telling me it was a pain. He was like, I'd never want to work on this website. Trivia nights are so random. They could change locations or times on a whim.
- [51:59]
A
Yeah, we used to do it on Tuesdays, but now we do it on Wednesdays. And like nobody's going to tell you.
- [52:03]
C
Exactly. So. And then once someone has a bad experience, guess what, you lost their trust. They're probably not going to come back to your directory. So it's just one of those things where data upkeep is definitely something you want to consider going into this.
- [52:16]
A
Yeah, that's the drawback with the happy hour idea too. It's like the menu price is obviously going to change. The menu items are obviously going to change. It's like, it'll be a cool service but hard to execute. Anything you would do differently. Starting over.
- [52:29]
C
Not to sound at all self centered in a way, but I think I had the right expectations going in if I had to give someone. One main thing that led to me owning successful directory websites is that my first directory was a playground to learn SEO. There was no expectation to earn. I didn't go into it thinking, oh great, this is going to be like making me thousands of dollars a month passively. That didn't even cross my mind. I think maybe one once I was like, oh, if this makes like $300 a month, that'd be insane. But I'm really just building this to see if the SEO knowledge out there, which is scattered everywhere, is actually going to work. And so I was just using as a sandbox and that's kind of my main advice, which is, and it's hard because we all want to make sure that the time we spend into a project is rewarded and hopefully by money. But that's, I think the fastest route to success is just learn the skills. Because you're learning like five or ten different skills when you're building directories. It's not like, oh, I'm just going to whip this up and tomorrow I'm cash flowing. It's like, no, you're learning web design and SEO and keyword research and there's people who have entire jobs with just keyword research. So it's a long process.
- [53:44]
A
Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts here, but set up correctly, it could be, hey, just check those daily earnings and keep it rolling. I love that line about this is my playground to learn, my playground to learn SEO. I think that's really cool. Well, what's next? What's got you excited for the rest of this year?
- [53:59]
C
I think AI coding is fascinating. I'm a total non coder, non technical person and I've just kind of started diving in, I think like playing with WordPress for probably almost 10 years now. There's certain functionalities with directories that I could never do with WordPress. So that's really exciting. A lot of people are afraid of LLM SEO, understandably. But that's exciting to me as well. Just like learning how that evolves and how that works. I think a lot of people are going to stop creating these websites because of this fear. I've already started seeing it in my own communities, but people with high agency are just going to keep creating these and I don't think local SEO is really going to go anywhere in the next few years is kind of my take. And Yeah, I have YouTube stuff going on. I have other fun projects that I have I'm juggling right now.
- [54:48]
A
Yeah, you're helping people learn this stuff at frei. Chew on YouTube. Check him out over there. ShipYourDirectory.com is kind of a membership community for other people involved in the same path and looking for some support and guidance and community along the way. We'll link those up in the show notes as well. Trey, this has been awesome. Like I said, I was excited coming in, I'm excited coming out. I don't know what niche I'm going to tackle, but it's definitely on my short list of future side hustles. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [55:18]
C
Build with an open mind and build to master the skills no one is going to reasonably expect themselves to build directories for forever. I assume if you're listening to this, you're going to build other things. You're probably going to maybe open up an E commerce store or maybe some kind of boring brick and mortar business or whatever works for you. So just learning SEO and learning how to distribute things on the Internet is the play. Directories is just one very narrow niche area where you can apply your learnings.
- [55:50]
A
And if your site has been hit by updates over the last couple years, maybe this is something that you could use to fight back. This is something you could layer on to some existing content or add a little subsection of your site and build out some new authority. So lots of different routes to go. Lots of different niche ideas thrown out in this episode. Again, 100 plus directory niche ideas are yours. Free. I'll email that to you. Just hit up side hustlenation.com Frey F R E Y. You'll be able to download that or hit up the show notes link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. Big thanks to Frey for sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Side hustlenation.comdeals is where to go to claim all the latest offers from those sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share with a friend. So fire off that text message. Hey, I think you get a kick out of this one just like I did. 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. Hustle on.