Speaker 1Right now, everyone is building apps or chasing the latest AI trend. But what if I told you that I found a dead simple website that is actually crushing it?
Speaker 2I run a job board called CareerHound that made $25k last month.
Speaker 1Well, this is Roman. He built a really simple website that today makes over $25,000 a month.
Speaker 2Initially, our intention was to make just $1,000 each. Since we've started, it has turned into a real business.
Speaker 1But the real story here isn't really about the website. It's all about the marketing. And he does a few things that I think are really unique and I think you're going to love.
Speaker 2What I do as a marketer, I spend a bunch of time trying to understand my audience in depth at their core. What are their fundamental questions and problems? And then I solve for those questions and problems using content.
Speaker 1In this episode, we're going to get into his simple website that makes $25,000 a month. How he gets millions of views on his product with the same content he's been posting. For years. And why all you need is a boring product with the right marketing to win. All right, let's dive in. I'm Gus and this is Starter Story. All right, Roman, welcome to Starter Story. Excited to have you. Can you tell us who you are, what you built, and what's your story?
Speaker 2My name is Roman. I run a job board called CareerHound that made $25k last month. I'm non-technical. I launched it two years ago. I tried everything, but I persisted and eventually made it. It worked.
Speaker 1Awesome, Roman. Well, excited to talk about this boring website that's making $25,000 a month. So let's get into it. What is CareerHound? Can you show us the landing page, what it is, who your users are, and then pull up your revenue dashboards to show us that this thing is actually legit?
Speaker 2Yeah. So CareerHound is a job board that scrapes jobs directly from company websites. And our target users are people that live in the US looking for jobs, either they already have a job. Or they're unemployed looking for a new one. So I'm a strong believer in a hard paywall, so no free plans. Our users pay $7 a week, $20 a month, or $50 a year. And right now we have over 8,000 users, 779 active subs, and the lifetime value of each user on average is $50. The churn is high because we're selling a job search product, so it's 31%. Last month, we did $28,000 in total. And right now, our MRO is $50. Our MRR is $12K. And the reason there's a gap between our MRR and our total revenue for the month is because we have a mix of people who pay a yearly fee versus a weekly fee versus like a monthly. And in social views, in the last 30 days, we did 11.7 million views.
Speaker 1It's honestly amazing. So congrats. Let's go into your background. How do you get here? How do you build a boring website that's last month made over $28,000?
Speaker 2So I'm non-technical. And when I started, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. I thought that was a disadvantage, but in the last two years, I realized it's actually the secret sauce because I've always been super curious about human psychology, which is what I studied in university. And while I was in college, I actually sold alarm systems door-to-door for five summers. And at some point, I even managed teams of salespeople. And I feel like this gave me a huge advantage when it comes to managing content creators, which is how I scaled CareerHound.
Speaker 1You're doing these sales. You're not technical. How do you come up with this app idea and this boring job board website?
Speaker 2I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I was talking to a bunch of friends about starting a business, so I met somebody online, and me and him started brainstorming different ideas. And at some point, when I was looking for a job, my friend told me how he found his, how he built this scraper to find jobs posted directly on company websites, so we turned his process of how he found his job into a product. Just to get our skin in the game, and initially, our intention was to make just $1,000 each, but since we've started, it has turned into a real business.
Speaker 1Okay, what I love about Roman's story so far is how simple his product is. It's just a job board. You've seen this kind of thing a million times. You've probably even used one, and yet it still makes $25,000 a month. The question, I think, is how? Well, in my opinion, I think it's because his website is really simple. It's easy to explain. It's easy to understand, and people get it. You probably know this, but here at Starter Story, we love simple apps and simple websites that make money, and that's exactly why we put together this free database of over 50 simple apps and one-page websites that are all making over $10,000 a month. Inside this database, you'll find real, proven business ideas with real numbers and data to back it up. So, if you've been looking for a proven, simple idea that actually makes money, this database is for you. Just head to the link in the description and grab it 100% for free. All right, let's get back to the episode. For someone watching who's thinking, "Oh, this is just another boring website or another job board," what makes CareerHound different, or what do you think makes it sort of stand out in a way that has allowed it to make this much money?
Speaker 2I think what makes me stand out has nothing to do with the product. It all has to do with my ability to spike people's emotions, to make people think things in their heads through my content. This ability can be developed. You just need to do mass research on your niche. And then produce content using this information, using the insights that come from this research.
Speaker 1I love what you said there because we say this all the time in our Star Story interviews, which is the product matters to a degree. Like someone's not going to buy something that's useless, but you can build almost anything in a proven space like job boards and be successful purely based off the distribution or based off the marketing, which clearly you've mastered and cracked. So, yeah, I think that's good advice. What I'm really interested in learning about is how the heck you grew this to $25,000 a month. And what was the marketing secret behind this $25,000-$28,000 per month business you run?
Speaker 2Yeah, I've been following pretty much the same playbook for the last two years. And it's based on this concept that there's two types of content. There's timeless content. There's timely content. A timely piece of content is something that's in trend right now. But a week from now, nobody cares about it. And if you build your distribution system on timely content, it's a constant grind, chase. Chase after trends. So what you want to do is you want to spend like hours scrolling and watching content in your niche on different platforms like Instagram, Reddit, TikTok. It's got to be video and text. Like you don't want to limit yourself to just one format. And I call it content thrifting. Basically, as you scroll and go through all of this content, you're just accumulating a bunch of stuff that grabs your attention. Because if it's grabbing your attention, there's something about it. And in order to have a breakthrough. In content, you need to spot something that's not obvious to other people. And to spot that you need to do more research than others. Because if you scroll enough, you'll inevitably become aware of things that others aren't aware of in your niche. And those consistent patterns reveal timeless content pieces, timeless topics within your niche. And that's the secret sauce.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, I want to like see some examples kind of like a piece of content you say you've been doing. I've been doing the same piece of content for two years. Just show us one of those examples or a few of those examples. And maybe just break down like for you why it works. Just break down one of those examples for us.
Speaker 2This is an example of a timely piece of content. Everyone's doing this format right now. And guess what's going to happen? People are going to see enough of it. And they're going to start scrolling past it because they already know this is an ad. And here's an example of a timeless piece of content because everyone is looking for it. They're looking for jobs that are hiring remotely and worldwide. Like that's the dream. So this format gives it to them. It calls them out with this hook. It can't be made any more simple. And then it goes through a list of companies that are offering this dream outcome that people want. And at the very end, he says, hey, to find more jobs like this, go on Roman's website. So the key to escape the hamster wheel in UGC and content marketing is to discover the right formats that are converting and repeatable. For example, in my niche, people will always want to find companies hiring remotely and worldwide. So I can keep running this list over and over and over again.
Speaker 1I love what you shared there about like kind of finding like the right formats that work for you and sort of repeating them over and over again. You're right. You could do this forever probably and continue to run like that same playbook until you find like maybe a different format that works. And then you run that one as long as you can. That's right. That's right. So what I want to talk briefly about is this like working with quote unquote older creators. Why do it this way? How do you find them?
Speaker 2Yeah. Break that down for us. Yeah. I think every niche is different. Like for certain niches, young people make sense. But if you're looking for job search advice, why would you be listening to somebody who's 19 years old? But when you see somebody who's older, maybe has some gray hairs, some wrinkles, that is on a subconscious level associated with wisdom and credibility. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. is because I make it so easy for them to make content for me. It's zero research. All they have to do is open up their laptop and there's a sheet of formats perfectly instructed. And when I'm designing the instructions for their content, I'm asking myself, have I left any room for confusion or is it stupid simple? That's why I'm able to give content to people in their fifties who've never done content in their life.
Speaker 1Awesome, man. Yeah, this is really cool. I can see some of the examples you have here and just like how much of a system you have going here. And I think that's like the real secret there is like you spent so much time scrolling, you spent so much time researching that you're almost not really guessing anymore. You kind of have a sense of like, I think this is going to work. And so you were able to reach out to these creators, put a deal together that kind of helps it like scale. So for someone watching, someone who wants to build a really simple product and doesn't know where to start, what would be your advice to them on how to build a successful, simple website or simple business?
Speaker 2One creative way to source product ideas is to sign up on SideShift, which is a creator marketplace and look at what companies are hiring creators because these companies have money, pay them, which means they're making money. Or you can also use Sensor Tower to find apps that are getting downloads. Then choose one that you like because it's important that you enjoy it as well and create a similar product and then use. Their content as inspiration for marketing your product. This way, if you struggle to get paying users, you know, it's not the product, but your execution skills. And then it's just a matter of running many marketing experiments on a daily basis. So you want to strive for failed results because this way you can eliminate what doesn't work and get closer to the thing that's going to work. When I did door to door, we used to tell ourselves I get closer and closer to my sale with every door I knock. So you get closer and closer. To your first dollar with every marketing experiment you do.
Speaker 1A real piece of sauce you dropped there was to sign up for apps like SideShift for someone watching who's looking for an idea that could be one place to go find something that's working right now. So that's really good. We didn't talk a lot about the build, but I am interested to know what is the tech stack behind this website that makes twenty five, twenty eight thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2We use Shortimize for tracking social views, PostHog for running marketing experiments, WhatsApp to communicate with creators. Clarity to have an easy view over website visitors. Headsner as a server, Postmark for emailing campaigns, Google Suite for email and Cloudflare.
Speaker 1So really, really lean. That's really cool. OK, and then finally, a question we ask everyone at the end of our interviews, if you could go back in time and stand on younger Roman shoulders, what advice would you give to younger self or to somebody watching who is a couple of years behind you?
Speaker 2I think once you make your first money. Online, it becomes really obvious that you can do it. So it's really important to have faith in yourself in the early stages, because if you're running marketing experiments on a daily basis, extracting insights from every failed experiment, it's actually inevitable that you are going to create a profitable business. It's not a rocket science. It doesn't take a genius. It just takes consistent work over a couple of years.
Speaker 1That's great advice, Roman. Thank you so much for coming on Starter Story. And breaking everything down. Maybe we'll talk to you again when you're at, you know, 100K per month. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. All right. That wraps up my conversation with Roman. My biggest takeaway is that it's all about the marketing. If you go back into our archive and look at all the Star Story videos, the secret that everybody says is that it's all about marketing. Now, Roman had some really kind of unique things to share, right? The whole finding like different formats that work and spending hours and hours scrolling. Other people have said that. But he really seemed like he was really, really, really analytical about it. And then secondly, was finding sort of these older creators. And it's not necessarily about like whether a creator is old or young, but he knows sort of his like demographic and his niche. And so I think he was able to like properly identify the right kind of creators or influencers that would promote his product in a way that made sense. So those are two things that I think I'm taking from this episode. And so I think it just proves that no matter the idea, as long as it's. In a proven category, you can almost make anything work and Roman, I think, is proof of that. And so with that, if you are interested in finding a simple website or simple app ideas in the link of the description, we put our research to over 51 page websites that have a lot of people to quit their full time jobs. Once you dig into that data, I think you're going to find some cool and really simple apps and websites that maybe you can get inspired by and go build. All right, guys, thanks for watching. We will see you in the next one piece. Thank you.
PodcastTranscript AI