Niall Doherty's Blog, page 76

$3000/Month Collecting and Sharing Coupons

Uzair FarooqFounder of PennyCanny $3000 monthly revenue Published March 5, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Uzair Farooq is from Pakistan and the founder of PennyCanny

Started in 2021, the site shares coupon codes, discounts and offers for stores like JCPenny and DoorDash.

In a recent interview, Uzair reveals the site is now earning $3000/month

How it works…

Collecting online coupons requires effort, as you’ve to scour promo codes across the web. That’s why I hired a team of 12 members for our operations team. The first member (Ops team manager) I hired already had some experience and had worked with another coupon website. The rest were trained.

We manually collected coupons by visiting online stores, signing up for their newsletters, and using social media channels. And we still follow the same process. 

The team first validates the coupons by applying them and then uploads them on the backend portal we’ve built specifically for their ease.

So they’re basically saving people from having to go to all that trouble themselves to find and validate coupons. 

And if you can save people time and effort, you can probably make money

Best I can tell, PennyCanny is mainly monetized via affiliate partnerships and display ads.

For example, they have affiliate links to Fiverr from this page, and you can see display ads on their blog posts (like this one).

And while there are a ton of other coupon sites on the web, most of them look really spammy and their codes rarely work. PennyCanny is standing out with a clean interface and legit codes.

Also, 12 team members might sound like a lot, but the business is based in Pakistan, where the average monthly salary is only $287.

Plus, there’s clearly a lot of money to be made in the coupon business. Ever heard of Honey, the coupon-finding browser extension that sold to PayPal for $4 billion?

So while PennyCanny likely isn’t earning much profit for Uzair just yet, there’s plenty of potential there.

Lastly…

We only have a handful of stores on the website (around 50), but the response is encouraging… Our main focus is adding more stores to reach and serve a wider audience on a global scale.

I’m thinking there could be an opportunity to build something like PennyCanny for specific niches.

Is there a niche you’re particularly interested in?

What if there was a coupon site dedicated to that niche?

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3 Business Ideas From Least/Most Enjoyable Activities

Check out this study on Time Use

This image in particular stands out…

How do people rate the enjoyment of different activities

The type of activities rated as least enjoyable…

Doing homeworkLooking for a jobLaundry

Most enjoyable…

Theater, concertGo to sportPlay with child

Jakob Greenfeld writes…

This seems like extremely useful data when looking for a business idea.

Agreed.

You’d basically be looking for ways to help people do less activities from the top of the graph and more from the bottom.

But instead of sitting here and racking my brain, I uploaded the graph to ChatGPT and asked it to generate some business ideas based on the data that would be worth exploring.

In particular I asked it for “out of the box” ideas that could be done mostly online, without leaving home

Some interesting ideas it came back with…

Online Decluttering Game: Since household chores aren’t enjoyable, create a gamified online platform where users can set cleaning goals, challenge friends, and earn rewards for completing tasks in their real home.

Online Skill-Betting Platform: Users can bet on themselves to learn a new skill within a certain timeframe (like cooking, playing an instrument, or learning a language) and share progress with a community for accountability and support.

Remote Social Dining Platform: To mimic the enjoyment of eating out at restaurants, develop a platform where people can sign up to have meals with strangers over video chat, sharing the experience of cooking or eating together while apart.

No clue if those ideas are viable.

But hopefully that shows you the potential of brainstorming with ChatGPT. Especially when combined with real-world data

His Little Productized Service Earned $11K in 12 Months

Bas van StraatenWebflow Developer $19,000+ revenue Published March 5, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Bas van Straaten is a Webflow developer and founder of Webflow Cookies, where he provides a simple productised service to build cookie banners on Webflow sites.

The selling point…

Unlike other solutions, we will match the look-and-feel of the cookie consent banners with the rest of your website.

This sells for €72.95 ($78.95) per site.

They’ve apparently had 250+ customers, which works out to $19,000+ in revenue

Bas says in a recent interview…

The service I created was never meant to make any money. When the GDPR rules were announced in Europe, I increasingly received the request to make my clients’ websites GDPR compliant and set up a cookie banner.

There were many services out there to help, but most of them were either expensive or lacked styling control. Short story: it was always a hassle at the end of the project.

So

To help the community, I decided to design my own cookie banner and offer it as a free resource to the community.

People started to use it and this is how the story of what is now known as Webflow Cookies was born.

After launching the free resource…

People started to ask me for help with the setup. I installed the cookie banner, set up their Google Tag Manager and sent an invoice for the hours worked.

Only after the 20th order I realized this could be a great little productized service.

A few weeks later, and I built a website, wrote out all SOPs and trained a VA to handle the implementation.

His “little productized service” has done well…

In the last 12 months [it has] made just under $11,000 – with a 90% profit margin. While it only contributes <5% to my annual revenue of all income stream together (freelance work + 2 other small services), it counts as some good pocket money given that it’s fully outsourced.

I reckon Bas’ approach could be replicated in many areas.

You’d basically create a free resource for a popular product (eg. Webflow, Airtable, etc.), then offer a paid product or service that complements the freebie.

Another example of this in action: Zite Design Carrd Tutorial

That’s a tutorial showing you how to build landing pages for Carrd. You can watch the videos for free, and then Zite Design itself is a template marketplace.

So if you get fed up learning how to build templates yourself, you can head over to Zite Design and buy a pre-built template.

Lastly, I love Bas’ advice for aspiring entrepreneurs…

If you’re just starting out, and don’t have a clear idea yet for a service/product – consider going the freelance route first:

– You get to learn new skills, people and software while getting paid for it.

– In the short term – selling your time to clients gets you much more cash much faster than trying to build a product (in my experience).

– As you spend time becoming an expert in a certain niche, you start to uncover problems and new opportunities – which you then can turn into products or services.

Bas said $11K is <5% of his annual revenue.

So he’s earning about $220,000 per year overall.

And it sounds like most of that comes from freelancing

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Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

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1 Year After Starting His Agency = $20,000/Month

Nikola BaldikovFounder of InBound Blogging $20,000 monthly revenue Published February 29, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Nikola Baldikov is the founder of InBound Blogging, which started off as an SEO blog but nowadays is more of an SEO services and link-building agency

Nikola reveals in a recent interview…

As of today, when my company recently turned one year old, our income is around $20,000 per month.

Sounds like he’s been working on some kind of online business since 2012, having tried selling t-shirts online and then blogging and affiliate marketing.

And it’s been about a year since he transitioned into the agency model

How Nikola landed his first clients…

What I was doing was advertising my business through LinkedIn and so-called word-of-mouth marketing.

I had already built a solid network of contacts, so the news spread quickly, and I was able to reach the right people. My efforts in this regard paid off six months later—we had three new clients…

Although I am a digital marketing expert, ironically, my clients came along more traditional paths. One of our biggest clients, even at the moment, is my previous employer.

That’s the most reliable way I’ve seen for agencies and freelancers to find clients: tapping their existing network.

Forget about paid ads and the like until you’ve tried that.

Also, you don’t need a lot of clients to make a good income, as Nikola can attest to…

Currently, we have four clients. Around 50% of what we earn from them is distributed to cover operating costs, etc. The other half is our net profit.

Last words from Nikola…

The best advice I can give to hesitant entrepreneurs is to trust their gut. It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. My intuition led me to the decision to quit my stable job at a major company and embark on my entrepreneurial journey. That was one of my best decisions ever.

My biggest takeaway here: don’t underestimate starting a simple service business.

Nikola tried fancier online business models for years, the kind that promise passive income. But those businesses never really took off for him.

Things finally did take off when Nikola turned to the agency model and started providing SEO services for a handful of clients

First time seeing our Online Money Maker profiles? Click here for a quick intro.

The goal of our Online Money Maker profiles is to show you all the different ways people make money online. We strive to ensure that each profile is realistic – no hype, no scams – so you can see what it really takes to build each type of business.

If you'd like to hear when we publish new profiles, subscribe to our free newsletter below. Each edition is packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday to 21,565 legendary subscribers.

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Learn more about income claims and estimates on this website

Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

Check out our framework to see the 19 types and 6 levels of online business, and discover which is best for you.

Other ways to make money online

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Get On That Treadmill And Keep Going

From the book Grit by Angela Duckworth…

Many of us, it seems, quit what we start far too early and far too often. Even more than the effort a gritty person puts in on a single day, what matters is that they wake up the next day, and the next, ready to get on that treadmill and keep going.

Remember: it’s rarely one big push that will get you where you want to go.

It’s way more about showing up consistently, day after day, and putting in the work.

His Coding Experiment Turned Into a $30K/Month Business

Alvaro TrigoDeveloper $30,000 monthly revenue Published February 29, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Alvaro Trigo is the Spaniard behind fullPage.js, a JavaScript plugin that helps you “create beautiful fullscreen scrolling websites”

Alvaro wrote in a recent interview…

fullPage.js alone makes around $12K/month nowadays, and its maximum was $20K in one month.

He has built multiple similar plugins and says…

The whole business makes around $30K/month.

How Alvaro got started…

When I was working as a web developer, I had to create a simple site, and I was suggested to mimic a PowerPoint style.

So, looking for inspiration, I came up with the idea of making a full-screen scrollable site.

I was surprised to find out there were no components for web developers to speed up this process, so after building the page, I thought it would be a great idea to create my first plugin.

That first plugin took him a couple of weeks to build with ~300 lines of code…

That was when my first product came out. In fact, it wasn’t even a product, as I didn’t charge anything for it. The component was fully free for about 3 years.

Soon after launch…

some people sent me emails asking for specific customizations… I would deal with them one by one by email and provide them with a quote to create a custom version of the component for them.

Then

I started to notice some people were asking for exactly the same changes or features as others.

So I thought I could probably create those as extensions to the main component. This way they could just purchase and use them right away without any direct contact with me.

He adds…

In the first month, I released about 3 extensions and made more than $1K. I was impressed! I didn’t expect it to work out that well!

I’m sure it helped that the main plugin was free for people to use, so it could gain popularity and send more potential customers Alvaro’s way.

His plugin is still freely available on GitHub for open-source projects. For commercial projects, people have to pay for a license, with prices ranging from $15/month to $477 one-time.

3 years after Alvaro released the first version of his plugin – “with no experience and as an experiment to improve my skills” – he was able to quit his day job and now runs his own business with a small team

I love how he got the idea for his plugin while working as a web developer.

Keep an eye out for problems and pain points you encounter in your daily work

Could you come up with a solution for one of those and turn it into a business?

First time seeing our Online Money Maker profiles? Click here for a quick intro.

The goal of our Online Money Maker profiles is to show you all the different ways people make money online. We strive to ensure that each profile is realistic – no hype, no scams – so you can see what it really takes to build each type of business.

If you'd like to hear when we publish new profiles, subscribe to our free newsletter below. Each edition is packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday to 21,565 legendary subscribers.

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Learn more about income claims and estimates on this website

Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

Check out our framework to see the 19 types and 6 levels of online business, and discover which is best for you.

Other ways to make money online

There are many other ways to make money online, to work from home or anywhere in the world.

Full list of ways to make money onlineMore profiles of online money makers Subscribe to eBiz Insider

Every Tuesday and Friday we email 21,565 people like you with top tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. No hype, no scams, no fake gurus. Sign up below to get the next one.

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How She Built Her 6-Figure Freelance Writing Biz

Alli HillFreelance Writer $100,000+ annual revenue Published February 29, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Alli Hill is a freelance writer, content marketer, and the founder of Fleurish Freelance, where she teaches others how to build a freelance biz.

Alli writes about her journey in a recent interview, starting in 2016…

I went from $0 to a steady six-figure salary in less than three years.

She was working a day job (as a mom of 2) and…

My boss asked me to level up my marketing skills so I could handle more duties for his business (with no discussion of a pay increase).

Instead…

I put my new marketing skills to work for myself.

I landed a few content writing clients after about two weeks of prospecting. This helped me build a real portfolio, which helped me continue to get clients…

Good old-fashioned job boards led me to my first few clients. Without a website, blog, or any other online presence.

She adds…

The first year was a struggle in terms of time management, simply because I was still working my full-time job while trying to build my business.

I wanted to ensure my success was sustainable and not just beginner’s luck.

How Alli got traction…

I prioritized online reviews and referrals from previous clients and industry connections. To start collecting reviews, I joined Fiverr as a seller, which allowed me to shift to an inbound marketing approach.

I also focused on agency relationships… Agencies handle the day-to-day efforts of generating leads… which leaves me more time to create the content without wasting time on non-billable activities.

She didn’t quit her day job until…

I was spending more time on my side hustle than my day job. It was a natural progression, and I’m glad I waited because it gave me the confidence I needed to keep going.

Check out Alli’s Fiverr profile here, with 1200 five-star ratings

Breaking down Alli’s steps to success…

Try selling your services via marketplace sites like FiverrBuild up reviewsUtilize those reviews to find more clients and partner with agencies

Alli’s advice for others

Just start. You don’t have to have all the answers, a foolproof plan, or thousands of dollars in savings. Motivation follows action, so take the first step and get things moving.

First time seeing our Online Money Maker profiles? Click here for a quick intro.

The goal of our Online Money Maker profiles is to show you all the different ways people make money online. We strive to ensure that each profile is realistic – no hype, no scams – so you can see what it really takes to build each type of business.

If you'd like to hear when we publish new profiles, subscribe to our free newsletter below. Each edition is packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday to 21,565 legendary subscribers.

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Learn more about income claims and estimates on this website

Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

Check out our framework to see the 19 types and 6 levels of online business, and discover which is best for you.

Other ways to make money online

There are many other ways to make money online, to work from home or anywhere in the world.

Full list of ways to make money onlineMore profiles of online money makers Subscribe to eBiz Insider

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His Vampire Website Earned $500,000 in 1 Year

Nebojša Vujinović VujoWebsite Owner $500,000 in one year from The Frisky Published February 26, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Check out this recent article in Wired…

Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin

The blurb…

Serbian DJ turned internet entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović Vujo floods abandoned news sites with AI-generated articles. But he wants you to know he’s a nice guy.

Vujo apparently operates 2,000 such sites

He basically snaps them up as expiring domains after they’ve been abandoned.

Some of the sites he’s acquired…

TheHairpin.com – previously a famous women-run media site.TrumpPlaza.com – former official website of the hotel and casino.Pope2you.net – once an official Vatican website.

From the Wired article…

His most significant—and consistently profitable—purchase is women’s media outlet The Frisky…

“It cost a lot—all the money that I had—but that was my opportunity,” he says.

Vujo says the site generated over $500,000 in the first year he bought the domain. In addition to healthy income from ads and clients willing to pay for backlinks, the brand was a magnet for companies willing to pay for sponsored posts.

From a 2019 BuzzFeed article…

The Frisky as it once existed is gone. Today it’s a vampire website feeding off the property’s former popularity and brand name to sell pay-for-play articles in order to influence search engine rankings.

Back to Wired

Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped… It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” 

He says his economic options have been limited, and this was simply a path available to him…

“Maybe it would be better for you that I’m a bad guy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just an ordinary guy…”

“I’m just one guy who, yes, in business I am using AI to create shitty content on the internet to earn money or a fortune,” he says. 

He’s not a mustache-twirling supervillain, chortling as he spews journalism-killing AI slime. He’s an affable young dad who wants his kid to have a nicer childhood than he did.

Plain to see why people get into this line of work.

Easier to make big money fast, even though it’s unlikely to last.

Case in point: that website The Frisky earned Vujo $500,000 the first year he acquired it, but apparently its earnings are down to $50,000 a year now, a 90% drop

So he has to keep hunting for new sites to take advantage of.

Personally, I’d rather invest my time and effort into building a legit brand/site that can thrive long term

Also, Google is actively trying to find and punish these vampire websites. And Google is a tough opponent to fight.

First time seeing our Online Money Maker profiles? Click here for a quick intro.

The goal of our Online Money Maker profiles is to show you all the different ways people make money online. We strive to ensure that each profile is realistic – no hype, no scams – so you can see what it really takes to build each type of business.

If you'd like to hear when we publish new profiles, subscribe to our free newsletter below. Each edition is packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday to 21,466 legendary subscribers.

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See our latest profiles of Online Money Makers


Learn more about income claims and estimates on this website

Our goal at eBiz Facts is to give you accurate information about online business so you can gain clearer insights, make better decisions, and achieve your own success.

With that in mind, we strive to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the income claims and estimates that you see on this website.

Here’s how:

We treat all income claims we find online with skepticism.We don’t report incomes that seem especially controversial or unrealistic.We cite our sources and/or share our calculations so you can see where the numbers come from.If there are uncertainties about an income claim or estimate, we tell you what those are.

If you see an income claim or estimate that seems off, please tell us so we can fix it.

Is this kind of business right for you?

Check out our framework to see the 19 types and 6 levels of online business, and discover which is best for you.

Other ways to make money online

There are many other ways to make money online, to work from home or anywhere in the world.

Full list of ways to make money onlineMore profiles of online money makers Subscribe to eBiz Insider

Every Tuesday and Friday we email 21,466 people like you with top tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. No hype, no scams, no fake gurus. Sign up below to get the next one.

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Google’s 293 Failed Projects

As of this writing, Google – or rather Alphabet, its parent company – has a market cap of $1.8 trillion, making it the 6th most valuable company in the world

Keep that in mind while you check out this website: Killed By Google

That site lists all the projects Google has shut down over the years

For example…

Google DomainsGoogle PodcastsYouTube StoriesGoogle links

Lots of those projects had value but not enough for Google to keep them alive.

I know from personal experience that it can be really hard to kill something I’ve built. When I do that, I’m essentially admitting that I wasted loads of time and energy

But as we can see from Google’s example, even the biggest and best companies in the world don’t hit a home run every time.

Far from it.

And I think it’s safe to say that Google wouldn’t be so successful today if not for their constant attempts at new products.

And their willingness to keep trying despite hundreds of failures

Self-Taught Developer Earning $12K/Month From a Simple App

Benjamin HouyFounder of French Together $12,000 monthly revenue Published February 26, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Benjamin Houy is the creator of French Together, an app to help people speak and understand French

In a recent interview, he reveals…

French Together started as a blog 10 years ago while I was studying in Germany and became my full-time job over the next few years.

You can see an early version of the blog from 2014 here

Benjamin writes in the interview…

When the COVID pandemic struck, I decided to turn my main product (an interactive ebook) into a proper web app…

Back when I was a kid, I learned a bit of C++, Python and PHP but never really got deep into it. Somehow, there was always a point when I would lose interest and switch to something else.

However, during the pandemic…

My SEO traffic started declining. I ignored it at first, telling myself it would get better. Months went by with my traffic declining a little more every month.

After a while, I had to face the inevitable: my traffic wasn’t coming back. What I took for a simple seasonal change was in fact a shift in the market.

I found myself backed in a corner with only 2 choices: let the business die, or reinvent it.

He chose the second path…

My initial goal was to take all the content and features of the ebook I was selling and put them in a web app…

After 2 months or so, the app was built and I was eager to get feedback so I contacted all the people who had purchased the ebook in the last 12 months and offered them free access.

Even after launching the app…

My income dropped. That’s because I switched from selling an ebook with an optimized and tested marketing funnel to selling a SaaS [software as a service], something I had never done before.

After a while though, I got used to SaaS marketing and my income started increasing… I’m now at roughly $12k MRR and hope to double it within a year.

Elsewhere he mentions…

The large majority of my sales and traffic come from SEO…

My funnel is pretty simple: people search for some French-related keywords, find the French Together blog and then either sign up for the newsletter or start a free trial directly.

Benjamin’s advice for others…

Don’t overthink it. It’s easy to spend years or even decades dreaming of starting, only to find yourself full of regrets. Start now with the skills and knowledge you have, learn as you go.

You don’t need the perfect idea, you just need to offer something people are happy to pay for.

I suspect there are opportunities to do what Benjamin has done but for other languages.

His app looks simple enough, wouldn’t be too hard to build yourself or outsource

Benjamin’s main advantage though was his 10-year-old blog that already ranked for a lot of relevant keywords. So you’d either need to build up a blog like that yourself or find some other marketing channel.

If you’re a developer, you could find established language-learning blogs and offer to build apps for them, see if you can figure out a revenue share

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