terrific.tools

Another month, another update for my tool site terrific.tools.

Things are starting to get a bit more exciting now. First the numbers, though.

The site is now at 31k session for the last 30 days and has thereby grown by 5k monthly sessions since the last month.

I won't reach my goal of 50k monthly sessions by the end of the year but at least it continues to grow.

But now on the exciting bit: I was accepted into Mediavine (kind of!). I made a few posts on Reddit, asking about ad networks tailored for tool sites.

The CEO of Mediavine eventually reached out and put me in touch with his team.

That said, I won't be onboarded onto Mediavine for now but one of their other ad networks, which is called PubNation (any experience with PubNation is greatly appreciated).

As the tool site continues to grow, so will hopefully my access to better ad products.

I also hope that enabling ads will allow me to make more money on the desktop app since purchasing the license will also grant users an ad-free experience on the main website.

Moreover, I also started releasing some improvements to the desktop app. I will go full-time on our other SaaS and the tool site by the end of the year, so hopefully can get those out more frequently.

Lastly, I finally added Google authentication to the tool site, which allowed me to double my signups in a month. Not sure if all of those are legit but at least I now have a growing email list I can tap into eventually.

After somewhat sluggish growth during spring time, my tool site terrific.tools is now firing on all cylinders.

In my last update, I reported that it took me almst four months to double my traffic from 10k to 20k sessions / month, in large parts due to Google not sending any traffic.

Well, that seems to slowly change. Google finally started to show terrific tools some love, which allowed me to add another 4k sessions (now 24k sessions / month) in traffic.

Google remains the world's largest search engine by a wide distance, so for this tool site project to become a success, it's instrumental that Google thinks it's just as terrific as I do.

Right now, most of my time is spend focusing on our newest product Genviral (www.genviral.io), so I did not invest a great amount of time into terrific tools.

I've mostly just continued adding new tools and videos. The YouTube channel itself currently stands at 23 subs, 147 videos, 2,792 views, and brings anywhere between 3 - 10 visitors to the site per day.

I don't ever expect YouTube to be a major traffic source. However, it likely has positive affects when it comes to sending brand and other ranking signals to Google, so it should (although hard to measure) be worth it in the long run.

Plus, it helps me get better in front of the camera, so there's that.

As far as terrific tools Desktop, the site's desktop app for Mac and Windows, is concerned: I made a few sales but fewer than last time (around $100 worth of sales in the last 30 days).

Hopefully, once Genviral is stable, I can invest more time into improving and promoting the app since I did receive some positive feedback from early customers.

That said, the goal remains to put on banner ads eventually. If traffic continues to grow at current rates, I should hit 50k sessions / month by the end of the year.

I'll continue posting these updates on a monthly basis, so stay tuned & let me know if y'all got any questions ✌️

Over the course of the last 3 months, growth for terrific.tools has been a little sluggish, in large parts because Google is still not sending much traffic.

However, other search engines, especially Bing but also Yandex and DuckDuckGo, are now doing the heavy lifting.

But as of yesterday, I've finally reached 20k sessions / month (= 30 days). 🎉

Boosting traffic is particularly crucial for a tool site, which are oftentimes monetized with ads.

Sites like OmniCalculator rake in multiple six figures every months just with ads, so this can be a very lucrative endevour if you can manage to attract a lot of visitors (from the right countries).

Moreover, since I launched a desktop app for Mac and Windows called **drumroll** terrific tools Desktop (I know, creative), one of the benefits of buying the lifetime access to the app will be that users won't see ads on the website, which should hopefully boost conversions for the desktop app.

I'vew also reapplied to the ad network I wanted to partner with (Mediavine Journey). They did not accept me the first time around when I just hit 10k sessions and had much fewer users from tier 1 countries (i.e., US, Canada, UK, etc.), so let's see if they reconsider.

Thus, growing traffic remains the #1, #2, and #3 objective for the time being, which means more tools and links are needed.

See you at 40k brothas and sistas!

Last year I launched terrific.tools, a site full of browser-based converters — audio, randomizers, image, data, math, etc. All privacy-first, everything runs locally in your browser.

But as the project grew, I saw a new need emerge:

• People wanted to work offline,

• Batch-convert large folders of files,

• And have more control over quality, resolution, encoding, etc.

Meanwhile, many of the popular file conversion sites and apps conduct file conversions on their servers, potentially leaving sensitive user data exposed.

So, I built terrific.tools Desktop — a full-featured local app for Mac and Windows that brings all the conversions offline, supports batch processing, and adds advanced settings.

It’s my first real step into monetization (one-time license), after working on terrific.tools for the past 6 or so months.

Planning to turn on ads soon on the website as well, which hopefully incentivizes more visitors to purchase the lifetime deal (which disables ads on the site).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. <3

On the 6-month mark of starting terrific.tools, I figured it would be a good time to update you guys where the project is at.

With every business endevour, there's going to be a moment where the puck simply stops moving upwards.

In the case of terrific tools, traffic has been largely flat at about 16k sessions / l30d for well over a month now.

On top of that, my request to join an ad network to monetize the site via display ads was declined, which means I haven't started monetizing terrific.tools yet.

Furthermore, Google seems to not like the project as much yet. Most of the traffic comes from Bing and Yandex while even substantially smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo send more traffic on certain days.

It's situations like these that ultimately determine success and failure. Many founders tend to give up, especially if they're like me and have already invested considerable time (in my case almost 6 months) into a project without much/any financial return.

What has helped me, on top of keeping my day job and thus not having any financial pressure, is a) coming into this with the expectation that progress isn't linear and b) knowing that SEO takes time.

I'm not doing this to make a quick buck but build a long-lasting asset that I hopefully get to work on for many years.

Plus, back in my blogging days, I'd write content for 6 - 9 months before starting to monetize a given content site, so delayed gratification isn't something I haven't dealt with before.

So, if you're struggling or thinking of giving up, try and reframe your situation and accept stagnation as the cost of doing business.

But back to terrific.tools: just because the project isn't growing, doesn't mean I don't try and push it forward.

A large focus remains on adding new tools (close to 600 now) and YouTube videos (almost) every day.

YouTube is finally starting to yield some results and I receive, on average, 3-4 visitors every day. I do expect, since the videos are also SEO-based (and not discovery-based), that this figure should increase linearly as I keep adding more videos.

Plus, showing my face hopefully makes Google decide to send me a bit more traffic than they currently do.

Lastly, I also wanted to share the biggest news when it comes to terrific.tools. I am currently working on a dedicated desktop app for Mac and Windows, allowing users to convert files locally on their machine.

The plan is charge a one-time fee in exchange for lifetime access. Hopefully, I am able to launch within the next 2-3 weeks, which seems doable as of now.

I hope you guys enjoyed this update!

Over the past 2 months, I've worked on terrific.tools every single day - and it seems to coming to fruition.

The most terrific of websites, when I made my initial post back on January 19th, stood at 3.7k sessions for the month.

Traffic over the ensuing months has trippled and is now at over 12k sessions for the last 30 days (despite only a third of all pages having been indexed so far).

I've also managed to grow the site to now 500 tools, with more being added on a daily basis.

A bunch of additional features, such as liking/disliking tools, bookmarking or commenting on them, as well as a whole user authentication system, were released on top.

The YouTube channel, where I'm currently adding 2 videos / day, is also slowly picking up steam (but nothing worth reporting, yet). Subscribing to the channel (https://www.youtube.com/@terrifictools?sub_confirmation=1) is appreciated, though. :)

In the coming weeks, the focus remains on:

• Releasing more tools (goal is to get to 1,000 until the year's end)

• Adding videos (will likely slow down to 1 video / day)

• More features (e.g., being able to embed tools on other websites, bringing your own data, ...)

I will likely start monetizing via display ads in the coming weeks. Currently still busy setting up the company, business bank account, and all that cumbersome stuff.

Will keep you posted on progress. :)

Let me know if you have any q's!

When I wrapped up my studies back in 2018, I quickly realized that the corporate life just wasn’t for me.

This led to me trying all kinds of different online businesses, ranging from dropshipping female make up all the way to presenting myself awkwardly on camera in hopes of becoming a YouTube star.

What ultimately ended up being the biggest overlap with my personality and skill set was blogging – and more precisely SEO-focused content.

Within 9 months of starting the blog, I managed to surpass the salary of my day job. And after 2 years of working on the site, it was generating over $10k a month in display ad revenue.

Little did I know that this would be the peak of the website. Throughout 2022, RPMs continued to plummet alongside the global economy.

And then, in November 2022, a little web app called ChatGPT was launched. While my first and second site, which I launched a few months prior, did continue to financially support me, the writing was clearly in the wall when it came to information-based queries people ask on Google.

After some soul searching, which involved going back into consulting as a freelance product manager, I ultimately found my passion for online building again.

In April 2024, together with a friend, I launched my first SaaS – all without knowing how to code.

While the SaaS never took off, it ultimately taught me how to get a software project from zero to launch.

I since launched two more traditional SaaS projects. While I still actively work on one (plaudli.de), it continues to be the toughest undergoing I ever worked on.

What all of these SaaS products I launched had in common, apart from not making much money, was that they were able to generate constant traffic vis-à-vis free tools.

One afternoon it dawned on me: I a) know how to generate traffic via free tools and b) know how lucrative display ads can potentially be, so why not combine the two?

This ultimately led to the launch of terrific.tools in late November 2024. As you might’ve guessed, the goal is to drive traffic via SEO and then monetize the site with display ads (while keeping it free for users).

And there’s certainly a precedent for this being a successful endeavor. Sites like Omni Calculator attract over 16 million visitors every month. That’s $160k/month, assuming a very conservative RPM of $10.

Meanwhile, terrific.tools has been off to a very promising start. The site’s at 3.7k sessions / 9.7k page views for the past 30 days.

Interestingly, the domain was owned by someone before, which probably helped with the indexing process.

Over the coming months, the plan is to launch more tools (currently at 250), try and record YouTube videos for many of the existing/new tools, allowing people to embed the tools onto their own sites, and eventually translate the site into a few other languages.

Monetization-wise, I will likely start putting on display ads in about 2 to 3 months, which should be the time when I reached the Mediavine Journey requirements.

Let me know if you guys have any questions!