How I built one of the biggest websites in the world

Hey there,

Pat here, founder of Starter Story.

30M people have visited my website starterstory.com.

But 3 years ago, the business was on the brink of failure.

Until I had one aha moment.

Which led me to building one of the biggest websites in the world.

This is the story of how I did it:

It all starts in 2019.

My side project starterstory.com is making $8,000/mo.

I've just quit my job to go full time on it.

I feel like I'm on top of the world.

There's just one problem: The entire business is built on the back of a single distribution channel:

Reddit.

And on this day an anonymous Redditor has started a petition to ban me from the platform.

It starts getting upvotes; then it hits the front page.

I'm screwed.

I'm about to lose my golden goose.

Traffic drops 10% in one week.

If things keep going like this, my advertisers are going to pull out.

And I'll be calling up my ol' boss for my job back.

The only fix: I need to find a new distribution channel.

Luckily, I've interviewed 1000s of founders on starterstory.com.

I sort the database from highest revenue to lowest.

What's the #1 distribution channel for online businesses?

SEO.

It's free. It's forever. It's the holy grail.

Only problem: I don't know jack sh*t about SEO.

But I'm determined to LEARN:

1. I follow ALL the SEO gurus
2. I read ALL the blog posts
3. I buy a $200 Ahrefs sub
4. I perfect my meta tags
5. I keyword stuff my articles
6. I send 100 cold emails for backlinks 

"Be patient, SEO takes time" -every SEO guru

I give it 6 months...

6 months later, let's check the results in Google Search Console:

"Your traffic increased by 6%"

🤬 

SIX F*ING PERCENT ?!?!?

All that blood, sweat & tears for 6% more traffic?

But... I take a closer look at the data.

And I notice we're ranking for a very strange keyword...

"business ideas for golfers"

This doesn't make sense.

I never created an article about business ideas for golfers..?

It looks like my interview with a guy who built a golf business is tangentially ranking for this keyword.

But it's ranking #5 in Google.

Not #1. So, what article is actually ranking #1 in Google for that keyword?

This one: "50 Great Golf Business Ideas"

IMO it's crap.

But... it's exactly what you'd expect it to be: It's a simple list of business ideas related to golf!

And this is when I have my first big aha moment:

If you want to rank in Google, understand one concept:

"Search Intent"

Search intent is the goal behind a user's search query.

If your format doesn't match the searcher's expectations, it will never rank #1.

And this is my theory on why I don't rank #1.

Time to change that.

Here's the plan:

1. I'm going to create an entirely new article
2. I'm going to find all our golf-related case studies
3. And repurpose that content into a list of golf business ideas

1 hour later...

Published: "18 Golf Business Ideas You Can Start In 2020"

I check analytics the next day.

Holy sh*t.

I'm already ranking on the first page. I check 3 days later.

The article is the #1 result on Google.

This f*ing works!

But why stop there?

I go to Google and type "business ideas for "

I find 10 more article ideas and publish them.

They start ranking right away!

Now I'm getting 100s of visitors per day.

But... why stop there?

I find 100 article ideas and publish them.

Now I'm getting 1000s of visitors per day.

And this is my 2nd aha moment:

"The Power of a CONTENT TYPE"

A content type is a singular "format" that can be duplicated across 100s of different topics (keywords).

Instead of reinventing the format each time, just find one format and do it over and over.

But... There's something even bigger here.

Bigger than just "business ideas for [x]"

What if I found new content types (formats) that I could rank for?

Could I scale to millions in traffic?

Through tons of trial and error, I build a framework to:

1. Find low-competition content types
2. Validate I can rank for them in 30 days
3. And when they work, scale the crap out of 'em

I rinse & repeat this process 100s of times.

Within a few months, I hit 500k traffic/mo.

After months of banging my head against the wall, I finally crack the code to ranking on Google...

SEO no longer feels like a black box.

And most importantly...

I've finally found my new golden goose!

I'm getting millions of free traffic every month.

Most of these SEO gurus and specialists overcomplicate the algorithm.

And this always stopped me from getting started.

"Be patient, SEO takes time" -every SEO guru

This is bullsh*t.

Take action. Find what works. And then scale it.

Now starterstory.com is a $1M business & gets nearly 2M visitors/month.

I hope this was helpful.

If you want to learn more about this framework, I go into more detail here:

(Plus case studies, community, reports, and more)

Best,

Pat Walls
Founder, StarterStory.com