0:02 I just uncovered a niche directory website that is making an estimated $10
0:07 million a year, and this really got my wheels spinning. What other niche
0:11 directory ideas are out there that are just silently crushing it? Today, not
0:14 only will I reveal the niche directory site I found making $10 million a year,
0:19 but I also found four other niche directories that I think you'll love.
0:23 Some of these are really large websites, but a few of these are really obscure
0:27 niche directories that will just make you say, "Wow, can you really make a
0:32 directory on that subject?" And it will make money. Oh, and the last site that
0:37 I'll reveal is only 3 months old and it's already getting over 50,000
0:41 visitors a month. All right, let's dig into these super unique niche directory
0:50 websites. First up is happycow.net. This site is estimated to make $10
0:56 million a year. What is it? Well, it's a directory to find vegan restaurants near
1:02 you. So, if you just enter a location, Mesa, Arizona, where I grew up, it'll
1:07 pull in a map that shows all of the different vegan restaurants that are in
1:11 the area. You can go there. You can check it out. But it's really just a
1:17 database, a directory of vegan restaurants. Now, how much traffic do
1:22 does this website get? Well, I was astounded. I pulled up Similar Web. It
1:25 gets 1.18 million visitors each month. And because it's such an interactive
1:34 directory, it gets 4.3 pages per visit. And that's going to come into play here
1:38 in just a second when I calculate earnings. Where is the traffic coming
1:42 from? Well, it's a United States-based website, so it's within the US. But most
1:47 of it over 60% of the traffic is organic search. So mostly from Google or other
1:51 search engines. But then a lot of people once they find it up to 32% of people
1:57 are direct or returning visitors. Now as I mentioned this site is estimated to
2:03 get $10 million a year in revenue. This is an estimate given by growjo.com. I
2:08 don't know how authoritative or how accurate that is, but they estimate that
2:13 their annual revenue is $10 million a year. Now, what I can calculate is their
2:18 display ad revenue. I can see that all over the website there's ads. Uh you can
2:23 see everywhere that I go. But if we come to a simple ad revenue calculator, I can
2:28 punch in 1.1 million visitors a month, 4.3 page views per visit, and a $15 RPM.
2:36 That gives me approximately $76,000 per month just in ad revenue.
2:42 Now, if you know directory websites, their main source of revenue tends to be
2:48 from sponsored listings or placement or higher placement within results. So, I
2:53 imagine that most of their revenue is not just from display ads. They might
2:58 make up to $75 to $100,000 uh a month just from display ads, but I
3:04 imagine that they make a significant amount of money more for the directory
3:09 placements for the sponsored listings. All right, so this is a huge example,
3:13 but what about something a little bit more niche? Maybe something that you
3:17 might be able to build in your spare time. Let's look at my second example
3:22 here. This is soorggon.com. I love this because it's not just a directory websites on all of
3:32 the hot springs that are out there. No, it only looks at hot springs within the
3:37 state of Oregon. Extremely niche. So, it's Oregon hot springs directory.
3:42 That's literally all it is. And it you can scroll through here. They've got a
3:46 map. They've got a directory. So, if I pull this up, it's going to show me uh
3:52 again the map where you can go for your hot springs bathing, right? A lot of
3:57 fun. Uh but they also have a lot of sister directories at least that they
4:02 link to. They have Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and other websites. I
4:07 don't know if the same person that built Soak Oregon also built these other
4:11 hotring directories, but that would be a really good idea if they did. Now, this
4:16 is more niche, obviously, just taking one state, finding all of the hot
4:20 springs within that state, and then building a website. They have guides and
4:25 books and a lot more to the website, but you can see it's monetized with display
4:29 ads. This gives you an idea of something smaller, more niche that you might be
4:32 able to build, but this website still gets about 30,000 visitors every month,
4:38 according to Similar Web. almost two page views per visit and most of the
4:43 traffic is coming from either organic search almost 39% and then 44% is
4:49 direct. People that found it are coming back time and time again. So a quick
4:53 calculation this isn't going to make you extremely rich. However, how would you
4:57 like an extra $767 per month from display ads from your hot springs directory website?
5:05 That's based on these calculations of how many page views per visitor and a
5:12 $15 page RPM. Not bad for an extremely niche directory website. Now, if you
5:17 want to build your own niche directory or any other type of website for that
5:21 matter, you need the right tools. In particular, you need hosting and a way
5:25 to build a website. I'm excited to share that Hostinger is the sponsor of today's
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6:36 created uh some inspirational blog posts. Let's go ahead and look at the AI
6:39 writer that it's got. I just put in a text description. And just like that,
6:44 I've already got some text generated all about a list of side hustle ideas for
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7:10 off. Thanks again to Hostinger for sponsoring today's video. All right, for
7:15 my next niche directory that I want to highlight, this is somebody that is
7:17 making $250,000 a year from his niche directories. We actually had Tim
7:23 Stoddard on the Niche Pursuits podcast and he revealed that he's the owner of
7:28 sobernation.com. What is it? Well, it's a directory of rehab centers that uh
7:34 he's put together that you can search by zip code or state and you can find a rehab center
7:41 near you. Now, this is a very personal story that Tim shared. He has experience
7:45 in this niche. He's been able to build this up. He has rehab guides, addiction
7:50 guides, and rehab centers. Uh he makes money primarily from uh placements on
7:56 the website. and he actually has a few different niche directory sites that are
8:00 in the similar niche and I believe all combined they make the
8:04 $250,000. But he shared on the Niche Pursuits podcast that what he's done is
8:10 he took his own experience with rehab centers. He built a website and a
8:15 resource where people can then use Sober Nation to find the help that they need
8:20 from the rehab center. But he's gone one step further and because he was so
8:23 successful in marketing of this particular niche directory, he actually
8:29 created an SEO agency, a digital marketing agency specifically for rehab
8:35 directories. Right? So if you look at Stddy Internet Marketing, this is a
8:40 agency that he has where uh you can get more qualified addiction treatment leads
8:45 on autopilot. So he's created a whole agency to serve this particular niche.
8:50 That's what I love is when you build a directory, you might then be able to
8:55 build a service on top of that because of the experience that you have. So just
8:59 from his directory, small network of directories, Tim is making
9:04 $250,000 a year, but then he has an agency on top of that to help do the
9:09 internet marketing for other agencies in the same niche. Brilliant, if you ask
9:13 me. All right, this next directory website is perhaps the mother of them
9:18 all. Welcome to care.com. I'm sure you've heard of Care before. This
9:23 website, well, let's take a look at what it is. You can either find care, whether
9:29 that's senior care, babysitting, pet care, etc., or you can find a job where
9:34 you can provide the care. So, if again, if we just punch in a zip code, we can
9:39 do a search for care. And what I love about this website is that it takes you
9:43 down a funnel. It says, "Okay, I want child care." I'll select the next one.
9:48 I'm looking within a week. And all of these clicks, it's getting me further
9:52 down the funnel and the commitment level. And if I go through this whole
9:56 process, I don't actually get to see any of the care until I register with an
10:01 email address. And so they do an excellent job of getting this huge
10:07 database of email addresses and people interested in getting care whether
10:11 that's babysitting or pet care. And then they also on the other side if you punch
10:17 in I want to provide care and get a job it's also going to get the email address
10:21 of those people. It says that has 29 million families who've used care.com.
10:28 Now this website gets approximately 4.75 million visitors each month
10:34 according to similar web a huge amount of traffic 6.74 pages per visit most of that
10:42 traffic is coming from direct because of the marketing that they do people are
10:46 just aware of this website the oneword domain and then organic on top of that.
10:50 If you look at their website, you can see that they don't have any ads on the
10:55 website because they're going to make a lot more of their money from sponsored
10:59 listings, from getting the higher placement for people providing the care.
11:04 There's membership options that they have for people looking to hire others.
11:08 So, there's a number of ways that they monetize this website. It's absolutely
11:13 massive. We don't know exactly how much money it's making other than in the year
11:21 2020, IA acquired care.com for $500 million. IA Interactive Corp. is a
11:26 publicly traded company on the NASDAQ and Care.com is now one of their
11:31 properties. So, they were acquired for $500 million. So, they're making
11:36 millions of dollars every year from Care.com, this massive directory. Now, I
11:41 know what you're saying. I can't go out there. I can't build a care.com. That
11:45 would take years. That would take millions of dollars of investment. And
11:50 you're absolutely right. But there are newer websites, newer directories that
11:55 are doing really well. And so for my final directory that I want to reveal,
12:00 this is something that is only 3 months old and it's already getting over 50,000
12:04 visitors a month. Let's check out mcp.so. This is a directory for MCP servers and
12:14 clients. What is that? I'm not an expert in that at all other than I know from my
12:20 research that Anthropic who are the creators of Claude the AI tool. They
12:26 recently introduced the model context protocol or MCP. Uh and so this is essentially an
12:35 open-source uh model which is a new standard for connecting AI assistance to
12:40 the systems where data lives. And if you want to learn more, you can read from
12:46 their website. Okay. But this was just announced November of 2024. So we're
12:52 only about 4 monthsish away from that announcement. Somebody quickly then went
12:58 out and started building a database, a directory of all the MCP servers that
13:04 are out there. And so this website mcp.so, you can see that it has all
13:10 these listings, this directory of MCP servers and clients. It's kind of nerdy
13:15 stuff. However, what's really smart as well that they are already getting
13:21 52,000 visitors per month coming to the website, which uh is huge for a brand
13:27 new website. And believe it or not, a significant portion of that traffic is
13:31 coming from organic search. According to Similar Web, about 35% is organic
13:37 search. The other 43% is direct with about 10% is referrals and another 10%
13:42 from so social. So, they're getting traffic from a lot of different sources.
13:48 I don't notice ads all over the website. So, I can't do an ad calculation uh to
13:53 see how they're making money. And maybe they're pre-revenue. I don't know. Or
13:58 maybe they're charging for listings. But either way, they're well set up so that
14:01 they can make money from sponsored ads or make money from display ads on their
14:06 website. A very niche idea that hopefully is going to get the wheel
14:10 spinning for you. Overall, I hope that some of these niche directories have
14:14 inspired you for what's possible. With some ingenuity and hustle, you just
14:18 might be able to build a successful directory website making a few hundred a
14:24 month to millions. Want to see some examples of more simple websites that
14:28 are making good money? I recently created a video of a one-page website
14:34 that is making $21,000 per month. Go ahead and check out that video right
