Starter Story - The $500 billion opportunity

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This is Pat, founder of Starter Story - every week I write this email to share the lessons we learned after talking to successful founders around the world. If you're not interested, you can unsubscribe here.

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Here are this week's stories, enjoy!

The $500 billion opportunity 

The global recruiting industry generated $497 billion in 2019. And it’s just going to grow nonstop. Why? Workers are always seeking new challenges, companies are going out of business and new workers enter the job market every year.

With U.S. unemployment at a historic low of 3.6%, the job market is extremely hot right now. Companies are desperate to find new talent. Also, they now compete in a global market. People can work for virtually any company in the world.

Herein lies your opportunity: Help companies find great talent and staff their companies.

This tool for job seekers reached $180K/year in just a few months, proving just how fast companies can grow in this space.

More recruiting-related businesses that are also killing it:

• This platform to find tech talent made $1.2M in the first year
• This guy makes $240K/year helping people land their dream jobs
• This Etsy shop made $30K selling resume templates

By the numbers:

• 15 -> million open job listings on LinkedIn at the moment
• 50% -> of people said they declined a job offer because the recruitment experience was poor
• 6 -> weeks to develop their $180K/year tool
  

Our take:

The recruitment industry has been around for centuries. Its biggest change? Moving to online. 

However, the fundamentals are still there. Post a job (on LinkedIn now, used to be a newspaper), gather resumes, interview people, and pick the best candidate - hopefully.

There are endless ways to help companies find more candidates, and candidates find more companies. Pick a niche, or pick any part of the process that can be optimised.

Quick hitters

💪 This “portable physiotherapist” makes $2.8M/year. Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but rather bring a solid business model to a new market.

On that note, the fitness industry is growing like a weed. Fitness-focused consumers spend a lot of money - $155 per month on average. Well above most other hobbies. Here are some other businesses that have found how to tap into this market: a $240K/year portable shower, a $1M/year online coaching service, a $1.5M/year healthy meals delivery. 

📦 This business makes $96K/year focusing on one of the most specific niches I’ve ever seen. What do they do? They offer CRM “setups” for professional organizers. Why is this interesting? Because it’s so damn niche!

These succeeded by focusing on one platform: Zapier ($66K/year), Shopify ($120K), WordPress ($210K/year).

✏️ This side hustle made $500K in its second year. What started as a fun side project grew into a handful of sites that generate $70k in monthly profits.

Blogs (1) are super easy and cheap to run, (2) can be about literally anything, and (3) have the potential to turn into huge businesses. See how other bloggers became successful: personal finance blog ($216K/year), books blog ($600K/year), travel blog ($180K/year), lifestyle blog ($180K/year).

From launch to $60K in 5 months

This solo founder with virtually no resources built a marketing tool that reached $60K/year in just 5 months.

How did he do it? The answer is SEO.

Read this case study if you want to learn more about Aaron’s unique SEO strategy? 

His secret? Targeting lots of low volume search queries:

Something I’ve noticed: new founders discount SEO. In my opinion, it’s the most solid marketing foundation for nearly every business. And Aaron proved it doesn’t have to take long before you start seeing results.

Here are some more case studies that kill it by bringing organic traffic:

• This blog reached $240K/year in 24 months
• This food tours business went from $20K to 35K per month
• This $264K/year web scrapping tool beat its competitors with better SEO

If you want to start improving your SEO, check Lean SEO, and steal all the strategies I used to grow Starter Story to 500K monthly visitors (+1M now).

SEO, by the numbers:

• 71% -> of Google searches result in a page 1 click
• 783 -> case studies of businesses making money thanks to SEO
• $60K -> current Aaron’s annual recurring revenue

Our take:

Work on your SEO from day 1. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get results.

Chances are many of your competitors will neglect it. Ranking high for some keywords won’t be as hard as you think.

It’s cool to go viral on TikTok or Twitter, but that will go away quickly. And it’s hard to replicate. A piece of content with a good rank will bring you leads day in and day out.

One last thing...