The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 31 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
Rush: Micro-influencer sponsorship prices have crashed from $1,000 to $100
“I was looking at that segment two years ago as well, and I was checking the prices and it was at least one K And they would guarantee maybe 30,000 views. And then I kept asking the same people price again every few months. And now it's way lower just because t…”
Rush: Outrank blog posts on high-traffic keywords by building curated directories
“And then you find a keyword that has high traffic. And then you search for that keyword on Google and only blog posts are shown on the top. That's the idea. Like you just build a directory around that and Google really likes directories and eventually you will…”
Rush: Google searches for 'business ideas' reach nearly one million monthly
“So business ideas is almost one million a month. That's a lot and competition low. This competition is, is about the ads. So people don't pay for the ads for this keyword.”
Rush: Acquire.com bans directories that lack revenue
“Acquire.com doesn't let directors in, because they don't have revenue, and they require their revenue.”
Rush: His average online directory makes $5,000 in monthly revenue
“In, in, in my case, I would say the average directory I have is there. It's on five K.”
Rush: Starter Story is a directory generating over $1M
“Starter story is a directory too, right? It's a directory of starter stories and he's making over a million.”
Rush puts micro-influencers on fixed 12-month retainers over one-off posts
“So I pay influencers fixed amount every month. And there is similar to partnership, like the football stars do with Nike, et cetera, but on a micro, on nano scale, right? So, and I pay them fixed money every month and they know it will be coming in whatever ha…”