Claude Code built me a $273_Day online director

What if an AI could run your online operations like a skilled director? In this episode, we explore how Claude Code was used to build an AI-powered "online director" capable of automating workflows, managing repetitive tasks, and creating a system that generates up to $273 per day.

You'll discover the tools, strategies, and automation techniques behind this setup, along with the lessons learned, challenges faced, and practical tips for building your own AI-driven business. Whether you're an entrepreneur, developer, or AI enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insights into how AI coding assistants are transforming online work and income generation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you want to start a startup that does anywhere between $2,000 and $10,000 a month passive revenue, something that you only have to work on 10, 15, 20 minutes a week, but you don't have a lot of money to start. Maybe you have $200, $500, $1,000. Well, what kind of business would you start? I would recommend an online directory. A directory is basically a website with a bunch of different links and data. And in this episode, I talk about how you can use Claude Code to actually build an online directory that is going to get traffic on autopilot. And I brought on Frey, and Frey is Mr. Directory, and he shows us step by step how to use Claude Code to create a very big directory. I really enjoyed having him just take us through the entire process. What are the prompts he uses? How to think about data enrichment, how do you think about cleaning the data so that you can create an online directory that generates traffic every single day. Now I know what some people are thinking. They're thinking that's really boring. An online directory? Come on, I want to build a mobile app. I want to build a SaaS product. But what they miss is that building an online directory is going to get you thousands of visitors on autopilot. And once you have that, then go and Vivecode a Stats product. Then go and Vivecode an app. In the beginning of this episode, we share multiple examples of people making millions of dollars a year using online directories. And some of them have apps that go with it too. So this is an incredibly important yet boring episode of the podcast, but those who stick to the end I think are gonna have an unfair advantage. I totally recommend you take this link and share it with a friend because this is alpha that is not shared anywhere else on the planet. You're in for a treat. Enjoy this episode with Frey. It is a treat because we have Frey on the pod. By the end of this episode, what are people gonna get out of it?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, thanks for having me on, by the way, Greg. Um, yeah, by the end, I really want people to have a solid understanding of how to use cloud code to build AI coded directories with an emphasis on what I think is the hardest part, which is getting the valuable data. And we're gonna go deep on that. But first, I think it's only fair we run it back. The last time I was on the pod, we played a game where I showed you a few cool directories and you guessed the traffic. So if you're down, I'll share three cool directories. And if you want, you can try to guess the way that these monetize as well, just because I think that'd be pretty fun. So I'll go ahead and share my screen and we can dive into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Let's do it. I can't say no to a game, Frey, you know that.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Alright, so the first one is parting.com. And we can see it's a funeral home directory. This is kind of what it looks like. Click around. And how much traffic do you think that uh this website makes?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Well, it does say it's the number one. If you go to the if you go back to the home page, I think it says the number one funeral home comparison website for price and quality. I'm gonna guess it gets at least a hundred thousand visits a month. That is a solid guess. Let's take a look.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

All right. All right, 61,000 organic monthly visitors. So pretty close. And what's really cool about this directory, I'll kind of share a little bit um about this one, is um, by the way, any guesses on how this might monetize? I'm just curious before I go into this. Well, two things.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I did see some ads pop up, but I don't think that's where they're getting the bulk of the revenue. I would say it's a lead gen uh directory, so they sell leads to funeral homes.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, that is partially it. Definitely the ads don't make up the bulk of the revenue. So this is reported to do over a million dollars a year in revenue. There's some quotes that go up to five million dollars, but they even raised money, they raised $1.5 million in 2021. Um, but the bulk of their money actually comes from a software. And if we look at Parting Pro, this is kind of their vertical SAS that they offer for cremation arrangement software for funeral homes. Um, what's really like interesting about this is like this software just helps them do things like drop shipping urns. Like that's that's a thing. And then it's kind of got an agency back end where they just help you create the website and then do online marketing, basically lead generation. And I think we talked about this last time, but I still believe that building a directory and creating a micro SaaS or vertical SaaS is a super solid way to go about it. And with Cloud Code, it's never been easier. Um, but the agency directory combo is a potent one, and I see it all the time. Some of the biggest directories that I know monetize this way. Uh, but yeah, this is what's bringing in the majority of it. So um, yeah, that's the first one. Solid guess. Let's move on to the second one. Drag it over here. This one's called a placeformom.com and senior living, massive industry. What are your thoughts on this one?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Is it just for moms or for dads too? You know, what about dad?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

That's what I'm saying. It's messed up. It's messed up, it's for everyone, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah. Um, I would say 50,000 visits a month or more.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Okay. And are you thinking lead generation as well?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yes. Uh there's a huge business around lead gen for senior living. Um it's it's a huge business. Um, and there's huge publicly traded Reitz real estate investment trusts that you know you can see how much they spend on marketing, but yeah, there's uh it's a big business.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Massive space. And you know, care.com, that's the famous one. Uh let's take a look. So placeformom.com is getting 824,000 organic monthly visitors. The estimates on this are wild. Like some websites claim that this makes anywhere between like $100 million a year, $500 million a year. Um, my gut tells me like $50 million a year is probably right where I feel like it's more accurate. And um the way they monetize is basically purely from lead generation. So they have $18,000 or over $18,000 senior living homes that are listening on their directory. And they basically have all of these kind of sneaky ways to collect information and then pass them off to these senior living homes where they collect a portion of the first month's rent or like a fixed fee for every referral that they give. Um, so just a beastly but very simple and straightforward directory and like super classic. Like I think most people think of lead generation when people think of directories. So I love this one. It's just so well made. It's also built on WordPress, I believe. So for the WordPress users out there, this is some inspiration. Um, so just a really cool one. And uh I'll leave the last one over here. The last one's gonna be gasbuddy.com. It's a crowdsourced directory to give you gas prices near you. So if you type in like a random zip code, you can just find the gas prices, save some money, and it's as simple as that. So, what are you thinking on this one as far as traffic?

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Uh this is this is a big one, dude. Like, I I see right here 100 million downloads and counting. I've heard of Gas Buddy. I think that this like data moat is a really interesting one, just as like a business. Um I'm a co-founder of an agency called LCA, and we built some really popular AI products, and like one that we're working on right now is called Stretch AI, so it's grocery prices um around you. And it's by the co-founder, uh, one of the top guys at Waze, which is also a data play. So, anyways, point is I think that if you're number one, you have the data moat, this is getting I'm gonna I'm gonna say one, I'm gonna say three million no, I'm gonna say two million visits a month.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

It's like that's that's a good amount. I mean, okay, yeah, but that's that's actually a really good guess. Um, and I totally agree. I I think on the surface, this looks simplistic, but everyone needs gas. I mean, pretty much everyone. But this directory is getting 1.1 million organic monthly visitors, and they monetize in two main ways. They make a ton of money on ads. So um, with this amount of traffic and tier one traffic coming from the US and Canada, yeah, they're probably I wouldn't be surprised if they're pulling in like on the lower end $30,000 a month to just in ads, uh, which if we clicked around, we would start seeing. But their big play is actually a debit card. And so um, if we go over to Gas Buddy Plus Premium, they have this debit card that they partnered up with MasterCard to create, and it basically allows you to save money on gas, it's ten dollars a month or $99 a year, and so they have a ton of members here. I love this one. This is my favorite one of the list because I think crowdsourcing gas prices is so simple but extremely difficult. So I went back to 2004. They started in 2002, but I wanted to understand how they even incentivized people to get gas prices because that's like why would anyone want to take time out of their day? And um back in 2004, all they did was create a public leaderboard, which they still have today. If we go to gas tools here, we can see all these people, uh, Prince 3.3 leading the pack, and um, they basically did giveaways. So in 2004, they gave away e-bikes. And the way that it would work is that if you updated or reported any gas prices, you'd get like 150 points, and then once you reach a thousand points, that gives you one entry into the giveaway, and they were like, Yeah, you could get an e-bike. So I thought that was super interesting. It's like very simple psychology. Everyone loves a public leaderboard. We all can't be Usain Bolt, but if you want to be the best gas price reporter in the world, then you know you can be that. And let me see if I can quickly find the Wayback Machine tab here. Yeah, so check this out. I thought this was kind of cool. So this is a yeah, so this is a snapshot from 2006, and we can see this little leaderboard here. Prince33 was active back 20 years ago. Gary Indiana. Shout out. But now, you know, consistency, persistence has gotten him to number one, and what's insane is this guy hasn't missed a day in almost like in over 5,800 days. Like this guy wakes up and he's passionate about gas prices, apparently. Um, and uh, it's just insane to see the super fans these days, they do give you the giveaway isn't e-bikes anymore, they give away a hundred dollar prepaid debit cards for gas. Um, but I just thought this was super interesting, and um it's actually a rare case where the directory monetization is super aligned with the reason why users are coming to this website because a placeformom.com, parting.com, they have to go and do like outbound sales to like reach out to business owners and create an offer that way. But these guys just were really creative with it. Um, so I love this example, and I wanted to show you these three because like all three of these directories execute this framework that I think all successful directories do, which is they help people save time, save money, or help people make money. And if you look on every any one of these like listing pages here, we can see like more specifically, they've done a really good job with bringing price transparency as a form of data enrichment in areas where it's just really hard to get pricing information. And I think this is actually a massive opportunity for directories. It's incredibly unscalable and manual, but there's so many industries and niches where price transparency just doesn't exist. Um, tons of boring ones. And so for me this year, I think like data can be a moat, it can be a differentiator, and price transparency is a big one because it's so hard to get. Um, so that kind of leads me into what I wanted to show you guys today, which is how to get valuable data. And let me just switch tabs over here to what I built.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Um, let's do this. Good segue because I'm I'm bought in on the thesis. Like I agree, I think the data is the moat. I also think that you can use AI in clever ways to get the data. So uh I'm intrigued, Frey. I'm intrigued.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, it's it's um it's definitely the most boring part, and the reason it was actually kind of hard to decide what I wanted to talk about because with Claude Code, you're doing so many things that I wanted to go deep rather than wide. But um, yeah, I would say for directories, the moat is definitely data and your SEO, like if you have really strong backlinks. Um uh but yeah, like also just quickly, another reason I wanted to show you those three directories is because I think the number one question that I saw reading the comments from the last pod was how do you monetize these directories? And the answer is really unsexy, but it depends on the niche. Um I don't think it has to be display ads or lead gen. It obviously can be really creative. I've seen tons of different offers created on the back end of directories, but um yeah, it's it's super cool. So, anyways, I built this directory in four days, and it literally started from a raw, massive, unorganized CSV of data of over 70,000 rows that I scraped for the entire country for port a potty suppliers. And I just wanted to start with an example where I show you what a directory might look like with high quality data and one that looks yeah, and what one would look like with low quality data. So let's just start with this one. This is my Cloud Code directory, luxury restroom trailers, boring but awesome niche. People are spending a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars a day renting these out for their weddings. You know, there's corporate events, film sets, really all sorts of stuff. Just kind of showing you what you can create in record time, and um yeah, the listing looks great, super, super clear with the amenities and features. We have some images, the types of stalls that you can go and rent, and then of course the lead form, some service areas, and I think this looks solid. But let me take you a year and a half back when I didn't know Claude Code and I created this beauty. This is portapotty match.com. I built this in WordPress, and it still has lorem ipsum on the front page. You know, we got some listing pages that are looking pretty sparse, and all of this is just AI generated, like sentence structures all the same. It's a bad directory, it's ugly, it's bad. All these images are the same for every listing. So I built this thinking like no one could reasonably trust this directory and like inbound as a lead, right? But to my surprise, I just built this and left it up, and I got like some leads coming in. And this is one example here, kind of blocked out the email, but I actually got a bunch of leads that just inbounded. Uh, this guy named Eric wanted a restroom trailer uh for with multiple stalls. Um, he has a film shoot, so that was kind of a cool way to look at the use cases. Another film shoot guy coming in asking for a trailer for a film chute. Uh Marta looking for a reasonably priced porta potty with a sink or hand wash station. And then this is the big one. I got a lead from the New Mexico State Fair. This is the order that they wanted, and this is like $20,000 plus of port-a-potty slash luxury restroom trailers that they wanted. So just an insane lead. And um I was surprised. So despite my really poor data curation, it kind of just showed me that there is a massive need in this space, and it's not really easy to go and eat compare the different porta potty types if you're in the market for one. And there's also like a vast amount of like use cases. Um, but I knew that things were kind of falling through the cracks, and so if all these leads inbounded with this crappy looking directory with Lorem Ipsum on the front page, what would it look like if I actually built this thing out now that I know Claude Code? So I vibecoded this kind of how I built this directory that outlines this seven-step process on how I'm using Claude Code and an open source GitHub repo called Crawford AI to handle any kind of data curation. So this is where I kind of just want to show people how to tackle that data side because I've seen probably a thousand or two thousand people build directories in the last year. And 100%, this is where people either quit or give up. And I totally empathize. There was a point in my life where I was waking up and being like, all right, I'm gonna sit down in this chair for six hours and click on this website and just manually verify if this is a luxury restroom trailer. And it was hell, like it was awful, terrible, terrible use of time. But as we can see from these stats, I mean, I built this in four days, like I mentioned. I probably saved over 2,000 hours in what would have been manual data cleaning, manual data enrichment. Also, record low costs. I mean, I would have to hire a developer to like write custom Python scripts before, and it's just not necessary nowadays. So I built this in under 250 bucks. Yeah, $100 of that was my Cloud Code max subscription, another $100 was for the data, um, and then $50 for some cloud API credits to do some deep cleaning, which we'll talk about in a moment. So all you really need to get started is your directory niche. Mine's luxury restroom trailers, you need cloud code, and you want an understanding of what drives decision making. Like what do people actually need to make a decision around a luxury restroom trailer? And you can just achieve that by looking at Reddit forums. I think TikTok's great, Facebook groups, Instagram, anywhere where the conversation online is being had around these uh around the topic that you're building a directory around. So as we can see, like this whole process I'm about to go over is just the second step. For me, I think my structured approach to building directories starts with finding the idea, collecting the data, building the website, SEO optimization, SEO optimization, and then figuring out monetization. So let's just start with the first step. The first step is just scraping the data. I just went straight to Out Scraper. I don't think there's nothing new here. I went over this in the last uh pod, but outscraper is still the cheapest option for me. I've used Appy and other kind of alternatives, but just keep it simple. I think Outscraper is a great place to start. And there's tons of videos online where people can learn how to scrape data with from Google Maps using Outscraper. So I went and did this. I got 71,000 rows and potential listings and cover the entire state. I build nationwide directories, and the whole game plan is to sell leads in this high-ticket niche. So pretty straightforward. The problem is 71,000 rows is massive, and we definitely have to do a lot of cleaning as far as data goes. So this is when I introduced claud code into the mix, and I used to have to manually clean data, and I would have all of the obvious junk data removed. So remove things like listings with no business name, address, city, state, permanently closed ones, and any like obvious ones that don't relate to my niche, like big boxed retailers. And so this is the prompt that I wrote. And uh obviously people are gonna have to kind of retrofit this to your own niche, but I'm just telling Claude Code here are my five CSVs, go ahead and just look at every single one and use this criteria to clean the data. And so this simple prompt got me from 71k down to 20,000 listings. And if you are gonna use this prompt, I think anyone can benefit from this particular part, which is just getting rid of obvious junk data. And um, yeah, what we're left with is just still a massive piece of data. So the next round is where it gets a little bit more interesting, and this was like where I had the biggest problem a couple years back, which is okay, we have 20,000 potential port a potty businesses. I've kind of exhausted all of my ways to kind of superficially clean the data. And so at this point, I need a way to automate the process of manually going to every single website and verifying whether or not these are.