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 17 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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…”