In this week’s teardown, I analyze a successful 6-year-old entrepreneurship and business ideas site, StarterStory.com.
The site receives an estimated 198k organic traffic per month according to Ahrefs, but the owner shared a Search Console screenshot that shows over 1 million organic traffic per month.
The owner of this site, Pat Walls, has done a tremendous job creating a valuable resource for aspiring entrepreneurs by building a library of over 4,000 interviews of successful business owners.
Pat shares his revenue on Twitter and stated that Starter Story has grown into a $1.9M/year business.
In this teardown I look at what makes Starter Story successful and what I would do to increase traffic and revenue.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
Starter Story has had very impressive growth since starting just 6 years ago. It got its initial traction from viral Reddit posts like “$10K/mo selling a bidet product” which helped the site earn a lot of links.
Later the site scaled content rapidly, publishing about 19,000 pages of content according to Ahrefs. The site has 4,000 “case studies” which are text interviews with business owners where the founder provides details about their business.
Pat Walls started the site in 2017 as a side project after his Saas company failed. His intended audience is people who want to start an online business and are looking for ideas or inspiration.
Pat Walls explained that he wanted to differentiate his site from other entrepreneurship blogs. One way he provided unique value was by requiring interviewees to reveal their revenue numbers.
In a YouTube interview, Pat said he gets 2,000 new email subscribers per day. One way he is able to collect so many emails is an email prompt that blocks the content when you scroll down past the introduction on certain pages like case studies. Even after you enter your email, you still can’t read the article unless you become a paid member.
Pat said that half of his revenue is from advertising and half of his revenue is from selling his digital products. He switched from a monthly subscription to a lifetime membership subscription with two options at $695 and $1,095.
The site has a minimalistic but attractive and professional design. Pat removed any navigation links from the homepage so that the only action that a visitor can take is to enter an email address.
Highlights
- 4,800 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 75
- About 19,000 pages of content according to Ahrefs
- YouTube channel with 224k subscribers
Why is this site winning?
- Case studies provide unique content that provides great value for the target audience
- Content is highly sharable (e.g., “$70K Per Month Selling Onesies For Dogs”)
- Lots of links from high authority sites like Techcrunch, Investopedia, and LifeHacker
- High branded search volume (700 searches per month for “starter story”)
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors targeting many of the same keywords.
- NichePursuits.com – A site intended for people who are interested in starting an online business or side hustle with 165k organic traffic per month (Ahrefs).
- UpFlip.com – Another site that profiles successful business owners and has similar content like business name ideas. It gets 63k organic traffic per month (Ahrefs).
- Failory.com – A site with similar text interviews of founders like Starter Story but the content is free. It gets 64k organic traffic per month (Ahrefs).
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 5 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Conduct a content audit to remove low quality or thin content
- Create more entrepreneur-focused educational content
- Improve CTAs for the membership product
- Add an email newsletter popup CTA
- Publish affiliate or lead generation content
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Conduct a Content Audit to Remove Low Quality or Thin Content
This site has been aggressive in scaling content for SEO with about 19,000 pages according to Ahrefs.
However, Google has recently been penalizing sites that are mass-producing content primarily for SEO traffic.
Ahrefs shows a small decline in traffic since the September Helpful Content Update but the site still appears to be performing well in search engines.
The site has hundreds of SEO-first content pages like “300+ TikTok Bio Ideas for Boys [2024]” and “270+ Catchy Golf Slogans & Taglines (Ultimate List!)”. Some of these articles are basically a long list of names or quotes, which may be considered thin content. This type of “name ideas” content is also being replaced by AI tools like ChatGPT.
Additionally, many of their top keywords on the site are not related to entrepreneurship such as “sexy youtuber”, “travel slogans”, and “tennis captions”.
Having a ton of low value content that is made to generate search traffic could potentially lead to an algorithmic penalty that pulls down rankings for the important content (like pages that convert to digital product sales).
I would evaluate how much revenue the off-topic this pages are producing to determine if it makes sense to delete the pages or move them to a different domain.
➡️ Win #2: Create More Entrepreneur-Focused Educational Content
There are many articles that are not very relevant to the core audience of aspiring online entrepreneurs. Off-topic article topics include:
- Instagram captions for X
- Best YouTube Channels about X
- Instagram bios for X
- Best quotes for X
Instead, I would focus on creating more valuable educational content for online entrepreneurs such as guides and tutorials.
They have many articles about starting a certain type of business like “How to Start a Cat Treat Business” but they could publish more useful guides about important topics for new business owners like:
- “A Beginners Guide to Hiring Your First Employees”
- “The Complete Guide to Networking for Business Owners”
- “Bookkeeping Basics For a New Business”
They could also create more data-driven articles about certain types of online businesses or growing opportunities. Data-driven articles are valuable to the target audience and have good potential to earn links from authoritative sites. They have done some data-driven articles like “How Profitable Is A Moving Company?” but there is an opportunity to do more.
➡️ Win #3: Improve CTAs for the Membership Product
Currently, most pages have a call to action box in the middle of the content and a sidebar CTA with the text “Join Starter Story”. There is also a CTA button in the navigation with the text “4,418 Founder Case Studies”.
The CTA buttons could be improved to more effectively catch the attention of readers. For instance, the black button can easily blend into the surrounding text and not attract as many clicks.
Also, there is a button in the navigation with the text “4,418 Founder Case Studies” that could be improved because it is not obvious that it is a call to action. Some people may not know they can click on the button as it could be mistaken as a badge. A more action-oriented CTA text could be “Get Access to 4k+ Case Studies”.
➡️ Win #4: Add an Email Newsletter Popup CTA
This site can increase email signups by adding a email signup popup CTA on content pages that don’t have the paywall email prompt.
The site previously had a popup that offered a lead magnet of a list of 20 businesses that can be started from home (according to Archive.org).
They now have better lead magnets to offer like the free video mini-course on “How to Think About Business Ideas” and a Google Sheet with “52 Micro-SaaS Ideas Making Millions”.
Pat might have a good reason why he took off the email newsletter popup CTA but in most cases it is a great way to grow a newsletter subscriber list of potential future customers (especially if you have a digital product).
➡️ Win #5: Publish Affiliate or Lead Generation Content
There are some affiliate links added to articles like when books are mentioned or to look up if a domain name is available. There is a bigger opportunity to create affiliate articles like reviews or buying guides for aspiring business owners.
People who are starting a business are often looking for tools and services to help launch, manage, and grow their business.
This site can leverage its strong SEO authority (Domain Rating 75) to publish reviews and buying guides of relevant software products and services for entrepreneurs.
Some examples of relevant products and services that offer strong affiliate commissions include Freshbooks accounting software ($200), Hubspot marketing software (30% of first year), and Hiscox business insurance ($25 per lead).
They could also build a directory of service providers to solve specific business problems such as accountants for startups, trademark attorneys, and web designers. They could then partner with service providers to sell them leads.
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Avoid mass-producing off-topic content intended primarily to drive search engine traffic as it can lead to an algorithmic Google penalty and lower rankings for important pages.
- Make CTA buttons stand out with contrasting colors and text that makes it obvious to the reader why they should click.
- Instead of creating low earning content like lists of name ideas, focus on affiliate content that will earn much more revenue per visitor.
