Job boards, directories, rank and rent, domain investing

Don't read if you have shiny object syndrome

Author

Ian H
August 31, 2024

I have tons of online business ideas.

Tens of thousands of ideas.

But I have just 24 hours a day, so I can’t even build out 0.1% of them.

So in today’s email, I’ll share a few with you. If you suffer from shiny object syndrome, I’m very sorry. I know what that’s like. You may want to stop reading this.

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Subscribe to EMD Gold and buy a paid plan to get a list of available-to-hand-register EMDs sent to you on the first day of every month.

The ones in the image above are like what you can expect if you upgrade to the Gold tier. Except you’d get a list of 1,000+ 🙂 

Perfect if you build rank and rent sites, online tool sites, or simply invest in domain names.

Subscribe and upgrade before the next batch goes out less than 21 hours from now.

Idea #1: Location-specific job boards

Build a job board for a single state county, or even just one city. These can be incredibly lucrative.

For example, milwaukeejobs.com serves Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It has thousands of jobs listed. Employers are charged $295 for a 60-day job listing. That comes out to millions of dollars per year, just for a simple job board for a single city.

You could make a job board for pretty much any decent-sized city, reach out to companies hiring in that location, tell them about your job board, and likely get some listings almost right away. Especially if you charge nothing (or a very low amount) until your site starts ranking.

To get job-seekers to your site, work on SEO to rank for “jobs in [location]” and the longer-tail keyword variations, like “full-time jobs in [location]” or types of jobs, like “construction jobs in [location]”.

SEO takes time of course, so to get job seekers to your site right away, join Facebook groups dedicated to that city and promote your job board. Sometimes there are Facebook groups specifically for job seekers in a certain location. Those would be super relevant.

And, you could always start your own Facebook group for job seekers in that location. As far as what content to post, just share jobs that open up in that city. And link to your job board in the comments as a way for people to find even more openings.

You’d also want to start a newsletter for job seekers in that location. Share a list of jobs every week (or even every day) with your subscribers. Obviously, link to your site from the newsletter. Grow the newsletter organically on relevant subreddits and Facebook groups. Or buy Facebook ads for your newsletter if you want to grow it quickly.

Once you have decent traction from job seekers, charge companies $100-$300 to post a job on your site. This would be a no-brainer for companies in the area if your site/newsletter was one of the go-to places for people to find jobs (which it would be if you have hundreds of local job seekers on your newsletter and visiting your site).

Here’s a job board you can build right now doing exactly what I outlined:

lodijobs .com - a job board for Lodi, California (yup, the exact match domain is available!)

Lodi has a population of 67,000.

There are currently 9,000+ job openings in Lodi right now listed on Indeed:

Check out that search volume!

Out of 9K jobs…there’s a good chance a few companies would be interested in posting on your job board, even if it was brand-new.

But as I laid out already, it wouldn’t be hard to start getting real job seekers to your site right away.

I did a quick Google search for “lodi job openings facebook group” and found this:

According to the rules, advertising job openings is literally exactly what the group is for. So, linking to job openings on your site wouldn’t be self-promotion (in case you were worried about that).

I did a bit more digging and found even more Facebook groups specifically for job seekers in San Joaquin county (where Lodi is located). Here’s one with 41K members:

And another, with 13K members:

Do you see the opportunity here? There are hundreds of cities in the US that are larger than Lodi, California. I used Lodi as an example for how large the opportunity is even for a medium-sized city most people probably haven’t even heard of.

Idea #2: Local, niche-specific directories

You’ve heard of rank and rent. A fantastic business model. But what about a directory of service providers, kinda like Angi or HomeAdvisor?

But instead of competing nationwide like those sites, keep it to a single state. And keep the directory to a single type of service.

Like a directory of pool service companies in Massachusetts. Register the exact match domain “massachusettspool .com” (available at the time of writing).

Build the initial directory by adding pool service companies in Massachusetts to your site. Get organic traffic by creating pages targeting keywords like “pool service boston”, where you list several pool service providers located in Boston.

Once your site starts ranking and generating leads for those companies, reach out to all the pool service providers in Massachusetts and either sell directory spots or do what the big lead generation companies do and start charging per lead.

If you want to learn more about directories, I definitely recommend following Tim Stodz on YouTube.

Directories can be pretty difficult to grow and manage, so if you want something a bit easier, try rank and rent instead.

Idea #3: Rank and rent

I talked about this extensively here, so I won’t go into as much detail in this email.

The basic premise is that you rank a generic site for a service keyword in a specific location. Like “locksmith scranton pa”.

Super weak competition here!

Once your site is ranking and getting traffic, reach out to locksmiths in the Scranton area and strike a deal with one of them where they “rent” the site from you. Forward the number on the site to their number, and in exchange, charge them $500 or $1,000/mo, or whatever you agree on.

Then, just ensure the site continues to rank well for your target keyword (this is not difficult for most local keywords).

Build out a few of these, and you’ll have a nice little side income.

With all the combinations of cities and services, there are literally hundreds of thousands of opportunities for rank and rent.

Idea #4: Domain name investing

You might be surprised to hear this

There are thousands of valuable domain names worth far more than the registration fee that are available to hand register.

I find them all the time and share them with EMD Gold subscribers on the first day of every month (next batch sending less than 21 hours from now!)

For example:

One of the domains I’ll share with Gold-tier subscribers of EMD Gold tomorrow has an Ahrefs DR of 42.

Apparently it was dropped a while back, because it’s available to register right now.

Equivalent domains (even with 0 DR) are listed at thousands of dollars.

Without giving away too much (hopefully), these domains are similar to exact-match human names like “steve .com” or “angela .com” and the domain I found that’s available is equivalent, like “jacky .com”.

So yes, the fact that a bunch of these domains are listed at thousands of dollars means this available domain could also be listed for that amount. It’s 100% equivalent to any of the domains in the above screenshot.

And…it’s not the only one I found. I only mention it here because it has a crazy high DR (considering it’s available to hand register).

Like I said earlier, I’ll share this domain (along with 2,000 other valuable, available EMDs) with Gold-tier subscribers of EMD Gold tomorrow (at 4pm CST, less than 21 hours from now). First come, first served. So if you get on the list, set your alarm!

I’ll share a few other equivalent domains, not just the one with a DR of 42. And I’ll share tons of other great available EMDs, similar to this:

linkedinheadlinegenerator .com (available at the time of writing)

“linkedin headline generator” has a monthly search volume of 6,300 according to Ahrefs!

And, uh…. that domain already has a backlink from ProductHunt!

The EMD Gold list will also include lots of domains that are good for rank and rent projects. Like this:

johnsoncitygaragedoorrepair .com (available at the time of writing)

Johnson City, Tennessee has a population of 72,500. And I know for a fact that the garage door repair niche is very lucrative and many people do very well in it with rank and rent.

“garage door repair johnson city tn” has a search volume of 140/mo according to Keywords Everywhere (and 70 according to Ahrefs).

Gold-level subscribers will get a list of 2,000+ available EMDs similar in value (some better, some worse) to the two I just shared.

Silver-level subscribers will get 1,000 EMDs (but a bit lower value, such as rank and rent domains for cities with populations in the 20,000-60,000 range).

And Bronze-level subscribers will get 200 EMDs, but a bit lower in value than those in the Silver-tier.

EMD Gold premium plans

If you want a giant list of valuable, available EMDs tomorrow, buy an EMD Gold plan.

Remember, the list sent to Gold-tier subscribers will include some EMDs like the ones I talked about earlier listed for thousands of dollars. Not just online tool and rank-and-rent EMDs.

Don’t miss out, especially if you’re a domain investor. 😎 

(btw - if you’re wondering why I don’t just buy all these good domains and sell them for higher, there are two reasons. First, because I don’t want a bunch of domains sitting on my hands I have to renew every year. Domain investing can be super expensive if you can’t find a buyer. Yeah, I realize I may be missing out on some great investments, but I have a lot of fun finding these available domains and sharing them with my EMD Gold list. And second, I make money from EMD Gold subscribers, and if I want to retain subscribers and grow the list, I need to have valuable domains to share - which I won’t have if I just buy them myself.)

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