Oct 5, 2020 · 21m · top-founders
HumanProofDesigns Hit $2m Revenue Selling Starter Sites to New Entrepreneurs
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this interview with Nathan Latka, Human Proof Designs owner Brian Brewer explains how his bootstrapped company generates two million dollars in revenue by creating, optimizing, and selling starter niche websites to aspiring entrepreneurs. Brewer details his operational model, hybrid freelance workforce, productized SEO growth services, and multi-tiered website valuation strategies.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 29.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 2.6 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 0.9 Nathan pushing back 2.5
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 14:06 Brian defends value of low-traffic content sites
Brian directly counters Nathan's dismissive 'nothing burger' characterization by pointing out the prohibitive labor of writing 80,000 words from scratch.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 14:00 Nathan calls out negligible site trafficNathan refuses to accept a 2,800 dollar price tag on a site generating just 20 monthly visitors, calling it essentially zero.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:30 Brian explains the Google sandbox mechanicBrian explains the technical six-month indexing lag in SEO to show why ready-made sites need patience compared to aged revenue sites.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 13:07 Nathan audits live marketplace inventoryNathan navigates the company's live listings in real-time to inspect exact word counts, keyword counts, and traffic metrics on individual listings.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan Latka Subscription and Platform Promotion | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Promotional monologue and introduction of guest Brian Brewer. No interview interaction occurs. | |
| Overview of Core Business Model and Ready-Made Sites | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Nathan probes the unit economics of buying, improving, and flipping niche sites, challenging whether a six thousand dollar profit margin is worth the effort. Brian calmly explains the role of standardized content creation and scale across dozens of inventory sites. | |
| Sales Volume, Revenue Breakdown, and Success Guarantee | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Nathan drills into annual sales figures, site sourcing percentages, and revenue streams. Brian breaks down their 1.5 million dollar 2019 revenue, their success guarantee buyback, and the growth of ancillary SEO services. | |
| Productized SEO Services and the Google Sandbox Dynamic | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Brian educates Nathan on the difference between ready-made sites and aged revenue-generating sites, explaining Google's six-month sandbox delay for organic rankings. | |
| Operational Structure, Staffing, and Team Division | 5 | 4 | 2 | 6 | Nathan navigates the live website and bluntly calls out a listing with only 20 monthly visitors as a nothing burger. Brian pushes back by explaining content valuation models based on 80,000 words already indexed. | |
| Empire Flippers Partnership and Lead Generation Channels | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Nathan asks why Brian has not scaled into a marketplace like Scripted or ContentFly given his 300 contractors and 31,000 email list. Brian explains his focus on ready-made site buyers before detailing his 2018 acquisition of the business. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Nathan runs through the Famous Five questions and questions Brian's use of both Ahrefs and SEMrush. Brian clarifies that tool discrepancies require using both. | |
| Episode Summary and Key Metrics Recap | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host solo outro summarizing Human Proof Designs revenue metrics and business model. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Human Proof Designs builds, sells, and grows zero-traffic starter sites
“We find and research niches and topics that are low competition, and we actually build affiliate and e-commerce sites that have no traffic. They're brand new. And then we sell those. We have our customers purchase those, and then we help them grow those into r…”
Human Proof Designs trades starter websites making up to $1,000 monthly
“We also buy and sell sites usually that are making between zero to a thousand dollars a month kind of starter sites. And we help companies are in individuals, entrepreneurs purchase their sites and then grow them.”
Human Proof Designs lists a $4K revenue affiliate site for $10K
“If you look right now, we have a niche site in the organic foods market which is really popular nowadays with healthy eating. That site is selling for 10,000. It's a revenue producing site that has made, earned about 4000 dollars in revenue so far this year us…”
Human Proof Designs holds 50 to 60 sites in active inventory
“We've got, you know, at any time we may have 50 or 60 of these sites That are in our inventory that we're building and working and trying to sell to other customers.”
Human Proof Designs sold 500 to 600 websites in 2019
“It'd be somewhere in the five, 500 to 600 range.”
Human Proof Designs offers a one-year buyback guarantee on sites
“We do have a success guarantee. So if someone purchases a site from us, And they go through our training program. If in one year they aren't making the income they want to make on that site, or they're just got bored with it, or it wasn't for them, then we buy…”
Human Proof Designs generated $1.5 million in 2019 revenue
“Oh, in 2019, we were at revenue standpoints without some of our bigger sites kind of adjust that is about 1.5 million.”
Human Proof Designs projects around $2 million in 2020 revenue
“And this year we'll be somewhere around two million.”
SEO and growth services make up 40% of company revenue
“So it's probably about 40% of our revenue now this year.”
New websites take six months to rank due to Google sandbox
“I mean, the problem with ready-made sites is Google has kind of a six month sandbox. So a site isn't going to rank and isn't going to grow and develop your revenue likely for the first six months.”
Only 20% to 30% of sites sold are already generating revenue
“So most of them are going to be brand new. We sell, you know, maybe 20 to 30% of those are going to be revenue generating sites.”
Human Proof Designs employs about 300 content contractors
“So the content team it varies, you know, we have about 300 contractors, and most of them are on that team. Doing writing services video services, all sorts of creative services.”
Low-revenue starter sites are priced by content replacement cost
“There's two ways to value a site. We can value it on the content. Which this site has very little revenue. So we have to base it off the content. Like how much would it cost to build this site today if you were to start from scratch?”
Income-generating starter sites sell for 30x to 40x monthly revenue
“For those sites that are earning at least a hundred dollars a month, Then we do, we switch over to a valuation model and look at what is the earnings, which most of these sites are going to sell between 30 and 40 times the monthly revenues.”
Empire Flippers mostly lists website deals valued at $100,000 and higher
“If you're going to go to Empire Flippers, you're looking at deals that are 100,000 dollars and up, mostly.”
Human Proof Designs has 31K email subscribers and 11K Facebook members
“Well, we have a total of about 31,000 people on our email list that are active. And we also have a Facebook group with about 11,000 people in our private Facebook group.”