- eBiz Insider
- Posts
- This boring quiz site earns $1+ million per year 😴
This boring quiz site earns $1+ million per year 😴
Sponsored by
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
This Boring Quiz Site Earns $1+ Million Per Year
Advertise in newsletters with the beehiiv Ad Network
He Replaced His Friend's Mum With AI in 80 Minutes
$3500/Month via Upwork as a Digital Nomad
Site Owners Are Mad As Hell, Not Gonna Take It Anymore
His Simple Directory Website Sold For $10,000
With This Approach To Business, You Don’t Need Luck
Did someone forward this to you? → subscribe here
This Boring Quiz Site Earns $1+ Million Per Year
@staticmaker1 tweets 👇
"boring" quiz playing website.
founded by two brothers.
generates 2 million page views per day!
monetization via premium membership and display ads.
estimated revenue $1.6 million a year.
The site is called JetPunk, started by brothers John and Daniel Hostetler back in 2008 🚀
According to Wikipedia…
The website was originally a travel agency-like website and its purpose was to search for airline flights, and afterwards the creators added a search feature for hotels.
By September 2008, the website began to display quizzes, beginning with a quiz that required one to name all 196 countries of the world.
By the end of the year, the quizzes began branching out into other genres.
In 2009, the website's design had changed, and JetPunk had its first major change in the beginning of 2011 when it allowed users to create their own quizzes.
The quizzes became the primary feature and the JetPunk fish was introduced as the website's logo.
Sounds like John and Daniel saw visitors engaging with the quizzes and doubled down on that feature 💪
The site now features quizzes like…
Countries of the World Quiz
World Capitals Quiz
U.S. Presidents Quiz
NBA Teams Quiz
Back to the original tweet, and the site is estimated to be earning $1.6 million per year from display ads 🤑
I ran the numbers myself via the Google AdSense calculator and came up with earnings of $94,000 per month or $1.1 million per year.
Either way, that's amazing for such a "boring" quiz site.
Note that JetPunk does also have a merch store and offers an ad-free experience for $20/year, so probably bumps up the revenue 📈
Probably the biggest reason for their success though is time: they've been around since 2008 and have built up strong SEO over the years.
But this got me thinking about Tim Bennetto and all the traffic he generates to his site via simple free tools…
You could try this with quizzes instead of tools, create a few specific to your niche with the help of ChatGPT, pop them on your site and see what happens 🧐
Or perhaps you could offer this as a service, build SEO-optimized quizzes for client sites to help them get more leads.
Use the beehiiv Ad Network to advertise across hundreds of newsletters.
Wondering how you can sponsor hundreds of newsletters at once, without spending hours managing campaigns?
The beehiiv Ad Network delivers 800 million impressions a month across hundreds of the world's top newsletters, paid on performance.
Our managed service enables you to unlock newsletters as a growth channel without the added time.
He Replaced His Friend's Mum With AI in 80 Minutes
💬 Tom Osman tweets…
I spent 1h 20m replacing my friends mum with AI.
He elaborates…
A family friend of ours has a successful business running Tours in London.
It's a good business but the problem is that his mum who runs the show is tied to her desk, answering calls then manually entering the bookings into her booking software.
🤖 That’s when…
I built a voice assistant in SynthflowAI to take the calls instead so she never has to do it manually ever again.
The assistant knows everything about her business and will be able to make the bookings over the phone with zero human input.
On the off chance there's something it can't answer, the call gets routed to her mobile.
Synthflow AI is impressive, lets you build "human-like conversational AI voice assistants" … check out the video demo on their homepage 👈
Along the same lines, there's this tweet from Max Brodeur-Urbas…
A YC batch-mate was quoted $16k from a consultant for a custom AI invoice processor
Their intern built it in 2 hours on Gumloop.
GPT-4o now:
– Analyzes any receipt sent to their Gmail
– Extracts vendor + amount
– Categorizes it
– Adds it to their Notion DB
– Texts their finance admin
Gumloop is a drag-and-drop automations builder, powered by AI.
I reckon one of the best online business opportunities right now is to become an AI Automation Consultant 😎
You'd basically practice using tools like ChatGPT, Synthflow and Gumloop until you have basic competence, then get out there and find clients, help them increase efficiency and cut down on costs.
As you work with those clients you'd likely stumble across recurring issues that could lead you to create a productized service or SaaS solution (ie. a much more scalable business) 📈
🗂 $3500/Month via Upwork as a Digital Nomad
From the archive, published November 2023…
Hollie Kingsland is a freelance editor and writer from the UK 🇬🇧
From her Upwork (login required), she has earned over $80,000 since starting out in 2020.
Though the early days were a struggle, she has since built a business that allows her to travel the world and work from anywhere 🏝️
She recently wrote…
I never expected to be using a platform like Upwork, nor did I ever really expect to become a freelancer – much less be my own boss – but life took an unexpected turn in 2020 when the global COVID-19 pandemic put a hold on my travels and sent me packing back to the UK without a job.
As it turned out, the pandemic provided the perfect opportunity to pursue an alternative approach to work.
Now…
After nearly three years of being a freelancer, I’m making a comfortable living and I have clients who value my contributions and expertise. I’m certainly not making millions, nor am I working three-day weeks.
I’m actually earning more than I did in my last full-time employment.
Via Hollie’s LinkedIn, her last full-time employment was as an Individual Giving Officer for a company called Sense. A few months after she left, the job was advertised with a salary of £29,500 GBP (about $40,000 USD).
So presumably Hollie is now earning $3500 or more each month as a freelancer 🤑
How she got started…
In the early days, I was applying to jobs I was way overqualified for that were paying pennies… My first job paid me the grand total of $5… After Upwork’s fees and the exchange rate, I made £3.08.
Considering that was the first money I’d earned in six months, I remember feeling pretty chuffed!
The thing is that, for me, this approach worked. It enabled me to make valuable contacts, gather gushing reviews, and most importantly, it allowed me to figure out the whole Upwork ball game as quickly as possible.
However, she feels things are changing…
To find success on Upwork in 2023, you’ll need a bucket-load of patience, a willingness to invest in Connects to get your proposals seen, and the dedication to create an epic profile and submit stellar applications. But more than anything, you’ll need to be the real deal and have legitimate skills.
(Upwork Connects are used as a currency on the platform, to make sure people don’t submit spammy applications.)
💬 In reply to a comment asking if one should pay for Connects, she says…
I did buy connects at the start. I thought of the expense as an investment.
Starting a business always requires some investment, whether that be paying advertising fees to market your services, paying a web developer to create your website or paying for a course to consolidate your skills.
Hollie’s experience is similar to many others we’ve featured in this newsletter.
I’d say the recurring theme is: it’s hard before it’s easy.
Sounds like Hollie’s first few months as a freelancer on Upwork were a tough grind, but her willingness to endure such tough times is what made her digital nomad dreams come through 💪