Episode Ninja

In an effort to add an additional revenue stream, I integrated the iTunes Search API into Episode Ninja. If an episode is available for purchase on iTunes it will now display a "Buy on iTunes" button. I get a small percentage of the sale price when the user makes a purchase.

For most of the site's early life, I was responsible for curating and updating the content. I wasn't actually writing any content, but I had scripts that I would run manually to pull in new shows and update existing shows with new episodes and ratings. Eventually I decided that I wanted this process to be fully automated. Using a scheduler, I now automatically add popular new shows on a daily basis and update every existing show roughly once a month.

The site is monetized through the Amazon Affiliate program. Through integration with the Amazon Product Advertising API, I'm able to search for a specific episode and generate a link to Amazon's streaming video service for the episode. If a user clicks one of the links and purchases the episode to watch, I get a small percentage of that revenue.

After releasing the site and not making many significant updates, organic traffic from Google searches started increasing significantly.

After a couple of months of work, I launched the first version of Episode Ninja in early 2017.

The site was built with a NodeJS backend powered by a MongoDB database. The frontend of the site uses Angular Universal, which allows for server-side rendering (better for SEO).