One of my small directory websites is 9 months old and just quadrupled it’s daily revenue.
It’s ain’t much, but my daily earnings for this site grew from $2.70/day to $11.50/day to $13/day in passive income.
The trick? Nothing.
I literally did nothing for the last five to six months (the only thing I did was install Mediavine Grow and set up the display ads once I was accepted).
No content changes, no new pages, no link building and no on-page SEO adjustments.
Funny enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen results by doing nothing.
March 13th, 2025, the first day I noticed a spike in traffic
Earnings based on March 13th, 2025 (the first big spike)
March 14th, 2025, the spike in traffic continues to grow
Earnings based on March 14th (the second big spike)
Here are some facts with this directory project:
Not an exact match domain
56 indexed pages
Pillar page style location pages
Nationwide directory
Target keyword hovers around 10k monthly searches, under 5 KD with two major competitors
Now, this spike just happened a few days ago, so it’s too early to say whether or not this will be a consistent $390/month passive directory website yet.
But the potential is evident and motivates me to invest a little more time into further improvements.
While it’s not enough to quit a full-time job, earning $390/month is enough to:
Recoup my initial investment and startup costs (estimated ~$300 to build this one)
Pay for premium softwares and tools (like ahrefs)
Reinvest into building more directory websites
Alternatively, it can sponsor my lunch everyday of the month, cover a premium gym membership, or be a small addition to my future kid’s college fund.
The best part is that *if* I consistently earn $390/month for 12 months, it would be pretty easy to sell the site for 2.5x my annual profit which would hover around an $11,000 exit.
pro-tip: when you sell your directory site, your TTM, or trailing twelve months, is the last twelve months of financials and acts as a strong signal of stability and predictable cashflow. Gives buyers confidence and makes it way easier to sell your site.
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that this directory is earning any money at all.
The website design is sloppy and the entire project was thrown together in under a week.
In many ways, this was a “throwaway” directory project, where the purpose was to test to see what would happen if I just threw together 50 static pillar pages in a low competition niche to create a nationwide directory.
And what’s interesting is, I don’t feel like I’m solving a huge problem.
p.s. I’m probably being overly self-critical, but it’s also the truth. This website is kinda trash. Don’t follow my footsteps with this one. Build with the intention to solve problems and don’t feel the need to finish a directory project in 7 days.
When You Should Highly Consider Doing Nothing
For every directory I build, there comes a time where I’m ready to do nothing.
In fact, doing nothing is so important that it’s baked into the steps of launching a profitable directory.
You should consider doing nothing, only after:
Optimizing your on-page SEO
Fixing any broken or duplicate pages
Publishing your directory website
Submitting your sitemap in GSC
The reason you want to do nothing is simple: you want to give your website enough time to be indexed and for Google to understand where to naturally place you in the SERPs.
Impatience and over-optimization is a big mistake I’m seeing people make right now.
More specifically, people who feel the need to make constant tweaks and changes to a website that’s 2.5 weeks old.
If you’ve just launched a website and already completed the basics of your on-page SEO, you’re pretty much 80% ready to enter the “do nothing” phase.
This includes implementing an internal linking strategy, optimizing header tags, avoiding thin content, and creating valuable, data-rich location and listing pages.
If you’re constantly tweaking, you’ll never give yourself the opportunity to understand the impact of the changes you’re making.
Plus, it’s easy to feel discouraged if you’re constantly checking your traffic metrics and don’t see fast growth.
Remember, SEO is sloooowwww.
Maybe you chose a great niche, but you’re standing in your own way with high expectations and impatience.
So rather than spending time over-optimizing your website for what could be a 1% improvement, it’s better to enter the “do nothing” phase for a month or two, and start another directory project while you wait.
Just one man’s opinion.
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