Opinion
Rush: Starting with SaaS as a first product is the worst idea
“Starting with SAS is is it, is the worst idea because you will fail almost a hundred percent and then you'll probably feel bad about that and never start again and go back to your job.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rush: Google counts viral social media backlinks more than website links
“Google, they don't say so, but they do this. I know for sure they look at backlinks from social media. And if there is a good tweet with a lot of views and there is your link there, it's so valuable. And in that particular case, it was like fifth or 50th time …”
Opinion
Rush: Buying a directory offers the best marketing ROI for SaaS
“I think there is probably the best ROI on the market right now for marketing for SaaS companies to buy a directory and channel the traffic. It is way better than newsletter ads or all other ways because directors are pretty cheap.”
Insight
Rush: 5K monthly B2B directory visits yield $3K-$4K ad revenue
“In directories, if you get to stable five K visits a month for a B to B directory, you will sell four or five ads and you will make three, four K a month on that. And that it will stay that way. And even if you do nothing, it will just grow because you have SE…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rush: Users will shift from Google search to curated directories
“So I think people will be outsourcing the decision-making for the content to the directories from Google, because now they ask Google, and that's becoming more and more relevant as we see that the top Search results of the Google are mostly dominated by all th…”
Insight
Rush: Never buy expensive domains when creative alternatives exist
“Never buy expensive domains, like, It's always available. Just be more creative and find the one that's available.”
Insight
Rush: No-code is 100% better than custom code for building directories
“Even if you know how to write code and you're great at that,
It's a hundred percent better to go with no code, any tool”
Insight
Rush: Building an online directory should take one evening max
“So it all takes, if it takes you more than one evening, then you're doing it wrong. Because if it takes more than one evening, You need to redo your method, otherwise you're kind of riding on a small car, on a slow car, and you'll never get really far with tha…”
Insight
John Rush: New websites should publish at most 50 articles monthly
“If your site is fresh and the domain rating is low, if you publish a lot of articles, Google will just never crawl them because it will look like spam for Google. That's why the first month You should have maximum 50 pages or 50 articles on your website, and t…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rush: AI search engines will rely heavily on curated online directories
“So I think the directories will Eventually be really important for AI and the best directories will be chosen by AI to be used for the search results.”
Insight
Rush: Keyword research is the best method to find directory ideas
“So there are many ways of doing it, but the best way is to start based on keyword research.”
Insight
Rush: New online directories should only launch with listed items, not ratings
“At the first launch of your directory, the only thing that's important is the items. Like if you put the out, the ratings and everything, it will be empty because there will be no ratings. There will be no users. So all those features, they don't make sense fo…”
Insight
Rush: Founders should test five to ten directories simultaneously
“That's why I usually bet for five, six, 10 ideas, and I test them all at the same time, so that I, Remove the chance to be disappointed when one idea fails. That's pretty good approach, I would say. Like, don't do just one directory, because it will be disappo…”
Insight
Rush: Validate directories with manual distribution before investing in SEO
“First four steps help me to validate my idea, because if I post it somewhere and no clicks, it means that it doesn't click with people, right? So people saw it, but they don't click it. It means it's a bad idea or the domain name is bad. I have to change somet…”
Insight
Rush: Listing trending items on directories captures early Google search traffic
“The next wave of growth comes from being early to list hot items on your directory, and Google will find nothing else on the internet to supply to the user who is searching for that, and Google will show Your item, your page for that.”
Insight
John Rush: Winning SEO traffic for SaaS is much harder than directories
“It is much harder to win SEO traffic for a SAS tool than for a directory.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rush: Online directories sell between $2K and $100K depending on size
“So small ones go for two to five K and then 15 to 20 K the average ones. And then the bigger ones go to a hundred K. And I think that's where it stops. I never seen a directory being sold for over a hundred K.”
Insight
Rush: Cold-offering unlisted directory owners yields better prices than marketplaces
“I think the best way to actually buy directories is to go to similar web and Research the traffic, research the audience, research the countries, and then reach out to them. An offer to buy. I do that. And because if somebody put their directory for sale, very…”
Insight
Rush: $20K/month is the limit for part-time directories
“I think 20 K is probably the limit for the director right now on the market, unless you want to go full time into that, and that's your main project.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rush: The indie hacker movement is doubling every year
“This movement was very small. Like it was very few people like three, two years ago, but I think it's doubling every year. Like I don't have the count, but my feeling that it's at least doubling and will keep growing just because we see that the access to buil…”
Insight
Rush: 99% of makers can build but struggle to acquire customers
“99% of the makers can build stuff, but only few can actually grow and sell and bring in customers.”
Insight
Rush: The best startup opportunities today are growth and marketing tools
“So that's where I think the best ideas are right now. Like the low-hanging fruits is building something around the growth and the marketing, etc, and tools around that.”
Insight
Rush: Pre-validating waitlists and prepayments creates a derisked startup draft
“If someone actually does this job of coming up with ideas validating the ideas with the users and then collecting a wait list, maybe collecting prepayments. And then you have the whole thing. Like there is an idea. There is there are like a hundred people who …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rush: Sponsors can buy 100k views on X for just $300
“Like from my experience, it was like, you can pay 300 dollars and have a hundred K views on the post now on Twitter.”
