Tool Sites Are IH's Dreams
Imagine no users and no support requests. You have a site that can run itself with very little work, and that's pretty much what speedtest.net is. They have added some add-on features, such as an API, but my guess is most of their revenue comes from the homepage.
This truly is the dream of a solo founder. Build a valuable site that gets tons of traffic from SEO, maintain it, and watch the ad revenue come in each month.
A million monthly visitors can equal a lot in ad revenue.
1,000,000 visitors / 1000 * 20 CPM = $20k a month
What are some other examples of tool sites that generate a ton of traffic? What are some ideas IH's could build?
Trending on Indie Hackers
I’ve been going down the same line of thinking. i don’t want to compete with ai tools, i want to be a boring global site that has 5-figure monthly ad revenue and just keeping trying to make sites like that.
some examples i’ve found recently:
most high traffic sites are just a single static page. tech stack does not matter. value matters.
but how does one figure out the CPM rate?
Here is a solitaire site making 10k on IHs https://www.indiehackers.com/product/online-solitaire
Proves there is room for competition if the search volume is high enough
@holgersindbaek, how is the site doing for you?
Thanks for the mention 🙂. https://online-solitaire.com/ Is doing better than ever. Actually I’ve recently bought another card game website called https://worldofcardgames.com/. It still needs a lot of SEO and mobile optimization and a little makeover wouldn’t hurt, but it’s got a stable user base and a lot of potential 🙂.
I’d probably start with a less competitive game if I where to create one now, but if you want a head start with solitaire games, you can create your own custom one to embed on a website here: https://online-solitaire.com/embed
Amazing great job to branch out. Keep us updated on how the new site is going.
guys, thanks for sharing. It made me think that I'm at the wrong job :) guess I also need to buy this type of website.
iirc, solitr has public filings in UK. they made 4M in 3 years
I have been thinking about the same thing ever since I ran in to Photopea story on Indie Hackers. Although it isn't a simple tool and took years to create, but the simplicity of having basically only static site as value creating tool is really interesting.
Simple static tool site truly would be the dream: no db to worry about your user information security, no dealing with payments or refunds, no cloud services or servers to misconfigure to cause 10 000$ AWS bill. Just a static site offering a valuable tool for people and add revenue.
I have been working on a Typescript CAD library and an online tool you can use to generate storage furniture (cabinets, drawers, shelves etc) 3D-models for CNC-cutting. That is quite a niche segment and I have no idea if anyone else than me would need something like that but it is really interesting project.
With the rise of digital manufacturing I am quite sure there is a need for easily customizable 3D-models. I just don't know how to verify this assumption and find the right market segment or business opportunity for me.
PS. Coolors is also a cool really simple tool site for creating color palettes.
$20 cpm? That seems highly unlikely.
It's definitely possible. @holgersindbaek, are you able to share your cpm for your solitaire site?
I won't share specifics, but that's definitely far from what I'm getting. I think CPM differs sooo much from case to case. Depends on which niche your in, how many ads you show to people, how frequently they update, etc.
Thanks for the info.
My partner @amyhoy has basically made a career out of building microsites, both as standalone app/businesses as well as traffic generators. A couple of my favs are https://everytimezone.com and https://perpetual.day
Awesome thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing the lesson that valuable content and SEO can lead to significant traffic and ad revenue. It's a reminder of the importance of creating content that adds value to users. I appreciate the insight into the potential revenue that a million monthly visitors can bring in. It's a great motivation for solo founders to build a valuable site that can attract a large audience.
Thanks! Glad to help.
You're right; such websites are awesome, and this type of site is becoming a hot idea. I recently came across a website that looks fantastic, having done minimal work and reaping the benefits of SEO.
Today, I also saw a website that is a single-page downloader site, and it was awesome. However, in my opinion, such websites take a considerable amount of time to rank higher. What do you think?
You're correct that they mostly generate revenue from ads, and some sites even offer paid promotions on their homepage.
For example, speed testing companies or those working with networking and the internet can showcase their products on such sites to increase their revenue.
Smashed it!
Thanks!
I think about this a lot too. It seems that this kind of business model is totally underestimated.
A few examples come to mind:
coinmarketcap.com: Acquired for $400 Million
blockfolio: Acquired for $150 Million
twitchtracker.com: estimated 3.6 Million visitors last month
Also interesting is the freemium approach. Offer a free tool and upsell pro features. BuiltWith and SimilarWeb do this.
This is why I launched mealplanhero.com. If it gets traffic, I might place some ads or add some paid features.
Awesome great analysis. I like the idea of a high-traffic low support site that is supported by ads, especially for Indie Hackers. They can be the best projects to run!
It’s relatively simple to make money with advertising but it sure feels yucky to contribute to the mass surveillance of my users.
$20 CPM’s are also not realistic for mere mortals like myself. In my experience $10 CPM’s can be had but they’re reserved for direct sold premium inventory. If you’re just dropping third party ad’s on the page you’re probably looking at $3 or worse CPMs.
It’s certainty easier to launch a free product and wait for traffic than to convince people to part with their money. And, once you have the traffic it’s easy money.
I guess I’m just giving some insight into my own internal struggle.
Yeah, I think $2-$3 is a more realistic CPM in most verticals.
Not necessarily true. I’m seeing $10-20 on my sites. It all depends on the location of the traffic. If it’s primarily US-based traffic and depending on the niche, ads can be $30-50 cpm
you can also used the ad supported sites to do the non-yucky idea. stepping stones. momentum.
another pro: the lack of fame. the closer i look, the more i don’t want people to know which sites i make.
I agree it can be tough and I don’t like ads but at the end of the day, ads are what keep most of the internet “free” and running.
Just think of some of the largest companies and how they make money. Google and Facebook are some of the top websites and they make most of their money from ads.
I had never thought of this point. Thanks. Most have found good solutions for:
Only tool that I could NOT find a great solution for so far, is not easy. 3 column textbook style table of contents (pdf to text). This is uses to auto-generate the bookmarks. Tabula is best so far but still fails. There is a blog post that captures the problems if anyone is interested.
EDIT: Another tool not yet found.
Lookup tool - Instantly reveal the technology stack of any device app, including within app purchases
Similar to https://www.wappalyzer.com/lookup/ but for device apps (ios/android)
Awesome thanks for sharing the ideas! There are so many possibilities. I sometimes stubble upon a site and think wow why didn't I create this?
I'm in this game. I think a lot about this model and am starting to build play-2048.com.
The reason I chose it is because I'm quite addicted to the game 2048. It's easy to play and hard to become a master. And I also have quite a few ideas to improve it.
If you're interested, please follow the page at https://www.indiehackers.com/product/play-2048. I will update my progress there!
I hope it will be a case study for everyone!
This is the king https://builtwith.com/
Great ideas thanks for sharing. I’ve seen some ideas around word game sites that help people find words that start with or words that end with. People are programmatically building thousands of landing pages that answer those types of questions. Individually each page may not get a ton of traffic but if you have thousands it could add up.
What do you think about an unused code optimizer?
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/product-idea-unused-code-optimiser-5d5915272b
Maybe but I am pretty sure this exists and is part of a build step when compiling CSS.
If you know any tool that does this for commonly used libraries (bootstrap.js, jquery.js etc.), can you please let me know?
Love this! I agree. Been trying to think of smaller products than micro-SaaS and these sites are a great example. Any tips for coming up with one?
Thanks! What is a tool you Google for or wish existed? Is there a tool that already exists but you could make a better version?
Good info..👍
Thank you!
Thank you for sharing the story of speedtest.net. It's a reminder that creating something valuable and relevant to users can lead to long-term success in the online world.
Thanks! It is incredible how long they have dominated the space. Even with Google adding a speed test to their search results and websites like fast.com, they have maintained the #1 spot.
It's fascinating to see how speedtest.net has been able to maintain its relevance and value to users over the years, resulting in steady traffic and revenue.
Two products that I use religiously, even though I don't have an account:
Both are great at adding value without paywalling/forcing subscriptions, which I love
Very cool thanks for sharing.
I've been working on https://turbolink.io/ which is a tool for content creators to paywall and password-protect their websites - sort of like Patreon or Gumroad.
Awesome ad-supported or subscriptions?
https://burnernote.com
https://tailwindbreakpoints.com
https://bootstrapbreakpoints.com
No ads yet but that might come.
Excellent watch for potential spam on a site like BurnerNote. The best tools are ones that don't redisplay user data.
I love this concept! Which is why I am building out a portfolio of these tools. Recently I built:
TweetEnhancer - Level up your tweets with AI-generated reactions and optimized alternatives (live right now on PH!)
https://www.tweetenhance.com/
YOU-TLDR - Effortlessly Summarize, Download, Search, and Interact with YouTube Videos in your language (this is a Saas tool but is free to use as well).
https://www.you-tldr.com/
GPT Calculator - Easily calculate the token count and cost of your GPT Prompt.
https://www.gptcalculator.xyz/
AskSteve - Get your questions answered by Steve Jobs based on real life speeches and interviews.
https://www.asksteve.xyz/
I got a ton more but will keep it to these lol. You can follow my progress on these and other projects on Twitter: https://twitter.com/deepwhitman
Cheers,
Bilal
Very cool!
I could see TweetEnhancer being a Chrome Extension. While Im tweeting, give me suggestions.
Yes - I agree! Have to look into it. :)
been playing around with this idea, then I built 4...
svggradients.com
Svgdoodles.com
Windstatic.com
Colorsandfonts.com
i have some with carbon ads running but ain't paying nothing, if anything to be honest. so I just place an add from my paid project, lexingtonthemes.com
i don't know how to aproach the SEO part...
EDIT: I do yave them listed in some parts but is not enough.
Haha, hard to build just one? How much traffic are you getting? Ads only work with a lot of traffic.
1 ain't enough, go big or go home :-)))
Well, colorsandfonts is the oldest, so it around 200 - 300 daily, then windstatic has around a month only, so not much around 150 and 200 daily or so the other ones not much.
I have consider selling svggradients and svgdoodles i havnt bothered to make any traffic, just product hunt :-)
I used to have somethign similar to windstatic, and it gave me only 50 euros with carbonads monthly...not a big deal.
What could you do or change to improve the traffic? How many people are searching for your keywords?
I agree with that so much. That's right, build a basic website and monitor SEO traffic
Yes! Any ideas?
Here are a few examples of my utility sites:
T.LY technically has users and support, but most people use it for free to create short links.
True, but you never know about the trajectory of technology. It's not very difficult to build such websites and the sole reason they get a million visitors is because of their top rank in Google.
Now for a simple task people wouldn't look beyond first or second link on a search page.
However, there's an inherent risk when chatGPT starts accessing live links in future. These tools to covert doc to pdf etc. can come under real threat if the way we perform search changes.
https://photopea.com - Photoshop, but in browser. Okay it is not "simple" or "easy" website, but heard he pulls around 100k MR, also opportunity to promote this master piece. Don't know the guy, but product is awesome.
Ivan Kutskir (Creator of Photopea) - https://twitter.com/ivankutskir
Yes, this is a great example. Pretty sure this guy has put a ton of work into this project! Well deserved.
interesting... never thought about it that way.
usually I use simple tools like measure string length, percentage calculators and paragraph formatting.
but what I noticed is I can do all of that with ChatGPT now without having to open any tool.
agreed. But only for strictly text bound tools. All the file based tools still using.
Those are all great examples. Tool sites that are often Googled can get a ton of traffic. Building a site that solves a need without user accounts is a win-win for a solo IndieHacker developer.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Canva is a "tool site"? ChatGPT, who let you out of the sandbox?
Great advice. In some ways, the domain doesn’t matter. I’ve seen sites that have hundreds of random calculators and tools that get a ton of traffic. Here is a great example: https://www.rapidtables.com/
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.