frey

Building a portfolio of directory websites and doing SEO. Sharing directory tips: | Co-built

[frey @freychu]

@Linsey_kolodkin @k3_abhi Definitely! I’ve spent thousands on niche edits and they’re usually hollow backlinks at the $100-$150 per link price

High DR, but zero relevance and traffic going to the referring page.

I think DR is a vanity metric in many cases when it comes to buying links

[frey @freychu]

Cool things that happened in February as a builder with way too many projects

• hit 30k YouTube subs

• built 70% of my first saas that automates building quality backlinks (via link swaps method)

• drove 1,139 plasma leads to plasma centers through my directory + crowdsourced 460 plasma price reports

• got my 40k/mo visitor directory deindexed and revived it after finding a dumb migration error

• built a new SYD Pro dashboard to give beginners a structured directory building process from A-Z

• built a fully autonomous TikTok agent with openclaw that creates and posts photo carousels for my directories (costs $100/mo)

• vibe coded my own tools that saved $79/mo in software subscriptions

Most excited about the saas. Really fun challenge. Lots of nuances and edge cases and testing. Hopefully will have something finished in 1-2 weeks

[frey @freychu]

Yeah just to clarify these are *not* link exchanges where you agree to place links on each others websites

It’s automating the process of finding competitor websites that are ranking for your desired keyword, analyzing their backlink profile, extracting their referring domains via ahrefs, scraping their emails, and drafting tailored responses + multi-day follow up email sequences.

All with the goal of getting your link swapped for your competitors link.

You effectively remove links from your competition and gain it for yourself

Had success with this manually but it’s a lot of work 😅

[frey @freychu]

@scoutsnoop I migrated the domain to a www.domain version but instead of a 301 redirect I accidentally set it to a 307 (temp) redirect.

For the openclaw bot I set up the automation and it works but need to make better photo carousels content before running it so time will tell 🙂

[frey @freychu]

@VinodNarain Yes I do! There’s a calendly where you can book time with me on my website (in bio) 🙂

[frey @freychu]

> Build cool projects that genuinely help people

> Have random people go out of their way to offer help/valuable feedback

> Improve the product

> Product helps more people

Why do I feel like this is a lost concept nowadays

Btw this happens all the time. it’s pretty much the dopamine I need to keep going

[frey @freychu]

@RiseJustWins @dotcomrealty Not yet, but I’m going to make a vid on how I built it soon 👍

[frey @freychu]

I think my 4-day old (rebuilt) plasma directory is already generating thousands of dollars in lead value 👀

Was curious how many website visitors were actually turning into plasma leads, so I built this analytics dashboard.

It tracks a bunch of stuff, but mainly who completed a lead action, AKA:

• clicks ‘visit website’ on a listing
• calls the center’s phone number
• clicks gets directions

Quick napkin math.

Today 36 plasma donors made a lead action.

Cost per click for plasma is probably around $5-$10 (plasma centers run tons of Google ads).

So 36 x $5 CPC = $180 daily lead value

$180 x 30 days = $5,400 monthly lead value

But like, I’m not Google ads.

All my traffic is wayyyy higher intent so a $5 CPC seems low. Might be closer to $10-$20 CPC.

I could be generating like $10k-$20k a month in lead value which is kinda nutty.

All this to say: if I’m gonna sell featured listings, I’d probably want to charge $500/mo per center as a starting price

So far the data is proving that my directory is leading to new customer acquisition.

If I can pull this off, could be a nice little directory business!

Will be breaking down this site in a yt video tomorrow ✌️

[frey @freychu]

Yeah qualified leads in this space looks different.

It’s not a lead submission form that helps me qualify them, which is why when I pitch I’ll be emphasizing lead actions which are people who visit plasma websites, get directions or call a plasmas phone - all from a specific listing

So far this is the best way to track leads because the action implies intent to donate plasma

Basically same as Google ads, except my visitors are inherently higher in intent

[frey @freychu]

@dotcomrealty Had this directory for 1.5 years. Was a sitting duck but was already driving 3-4k/mo organic visitors

Rebuilt in Claude code. Launched on March 1st. Posted on Reddit. And couple days ago built this dashboard and here we are!

[frey @freychu]

@fabianschierz All proactively!

[frey @freychu]

@ppcguru Mainly link inserts & link swaps from referring domains pointing to big plasma centers

Also have some ideas for articles/data heavy blogs that are organically shareable

[frey @freychu]

@bschm0622 I just used Claude codes built in page view tracker!

Was actually pretty amazing. Thought I’d need to rely on GA4 or Vercel’s analytics or something but nope, all just Claude code

[frey @freychu]

@randyLunetto Not really, I’m pretty much fully migrating them over to a nextjs build with Claude code and detaching from Wordpress completely when I do!

[frey @freychu]

I built a plasma donation directory on Wordpress over a year ago that low-key sucked.

It didn’t do anything useful. Only made like $2k in the last year and a half.

I dug deeper into the niche and realized I’m solving the wrong problem.

People who donate plasma don’t have issues finding plasma centers - they have issues figuring out how much $$ plasma centers pay their donors.

So I rebuilt it with Claude code and launched it yesterday.

The new focus is to crowdsource plasma price data. Gasbuddy ($10m+ directory) but for plasma donation.

Made a Reddit post this morning and its poppin off. Already got 58 crowdsourced pricing reports.

It’s so freakin niche but it’s a massive consumer need in a $30B market.

It’s still an SEO play, but now it’s also a “make this so valuable people share it organically” play.

My last YT vid explains how I’m crowdsourcing data + creating incentives

Short-term monetization plan: display ads

Long-tail monetization plan: create a very high-ticket offer where I sell data back to plasma centers. Or featured listings.

[frey @freychu]

@itschrisray Agree. So many niches where people want/need price transparency.

Crowdsourcing properly works best for specific kinds of niches that have a consistent stream of return visitors. I’m sure they��re out there, just gotta dig around 👀

[frey @freychu]

Woke up to 107 crowdsourced price submissions.

All within 24 hrs and 1 Reddit post.

Exploring more Reddit posts + FB pages today

[frey @freychu]

@badchefx I created a lead magnet saying “subscribe if you want to know the highest paying centers” and 1300+ people joined in a short period of time

I didn’t even have the data, it was just a test lol. Had 7k/mo organic visitors at the time and that proved the value

[frey @freychu]

@SebulbaCrypto Depends, Adsense is good cause it’s as passive as it gets. But there’s a real ceiling for earning potential. Subscriptions are harder to pull off but more reliable mrr if you can do it!

[frey @freychu]

@CichyKrzysztof Not sure, feel like I’ve talked about this one a lot lately in the vids 😅

[frey @freychu]

@SebulbaCrypto Challenge is the majority of plasma donors are doing it cause they need money quick so they’re already super price sensitive.

For that reason I think a b2b offer is where the moneys at