I Make $30K/Month From the Most Boring Website on the Internet

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Video Summary

Jake, a self-taught coder, built ExcelExercises.com as a side project, transforming it into a $30,000-$35,000 per month business by teaching Excel functions and shortcuts through interactive exercises.

Initially developed with a "copy and paste" approach from online resources, the website's simple yet effective freemium model, featuring hands-on simulations instead of videos, attracted users seeking career advancement or needing to bolster their Excel skills. Jake's growth strategy evolved from early SEO tactics, including a lengthy, text-heavy landing page, to incorporating paid advertising and securing university and corporate deals, demonstrating that a straightforward solution to a common problem can yield significant success.

Short Highlights

ExcelExercises.com generates $30,000-$35,000 monthly.
The website teaches Excel functions and keyboard shortcuts via interactive exercises and simulations.
It employs a freemium model with initial free lessons followed by a paywall.
Users are typically individuals undergoing career changes or needing to improve their Excel proficiency for new jobs.
Growth was initially driven by SEO, particularly a detailed landing page, and later by paid advertising and corporate/university deals.
Jake taught himself to code using online resources like YouTube and Stack Overflow.
The core technology stack is HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, hosted on GCP for low monthly costs.

Key Details

The Genesis of ExcelExercises.com [00:00:00]

Jake built ExcelExercises.com, a web app teaching Excel functions and shortcuts.
It currently generates $30,000 to $35,000 per month.
Started as a side project over nights and weekends while Jake held full-time jobs or was in grad school.
He quit his job two years ago to focus on the site full-time, growing it 5x since.

"I built a web app called ExcelExercises.com. It's currently making $30,000 to $35,000 a month."

What is ExcelExercises.com? [00:01:00]

The platform teaches Excel through hands-on exercises and simulations, not videos.
Users are often those looking to learn Excel for career changes, first jobs, or new roles where they may have exaggerated their skills.
Jake describes users as anyone trying to learn Excel, including college graduates and job changers.

"It teaches Excel functions and keyboard shortcuts through hands-on exercises and simulations rather than through videos."

Business Model and Revenue [00:02:00]

ExcelExercises.com operates on a freemium model, offering a few free lessons before a paywall.
The free lessons are crucial for users to understand the unique interactive approach.
In the past four weeks, the site generated over $30,000 in revenue from approximately 50,000 visitors.
Currently, there are about 2,500 active paying subscribers.
The business is largely automated, allowing Jake to take vacations.

"So it's a freemium business model where I offer a few free lessons upfront and then have a hard paywall after that."

Jake's Background and Inspiration [00:03:00]

Jake studied finance in college but became curious about app development.
He self-taught coding by watching YouTube videos and using resources like Stack Overflow.
The idea for ExcelExercises.com came from his own frustrating experience with a long, boring online Excel training at a previous finance job.
He found the video-based training disengaging and felt he wasn't retaining information.

"So I was like, there should be a better way to learn Excel. I don't know what that is."

The Build and Early Validation [00:05:00]

The first working version took months to build, with Jake piecing together code from online resources.
A key challenge was creating tables that mimicked the look and feel of real spreadsheets.
Jake deployed the site online without a separate development environment and hadn't promoted it.
He received his first $50 payment unexpectedly, which served as crucial validation despite the site's unfinished appearance.
A few more sales followed, confirming the concept's viability.

"But I woke up one day and had a notification that someone had paid me $50. And I looked at the site. I was like, this has to be a mistake because it looks scary."

Growth Strategies: SEO to Paid Ads [00:08:00]

Early growth from zero to $10K/month was primarily driven by SEO.
Jake implemented a counterintuitive strategy of adding extensive text (1500-2000 words) to the landing page about learning Excel, which significantly improved search engine indexing and traffic.
From $10K to $30K/month, paid advertising became a major growth driver, shifting Jake's business perspective towards customer acquisition costs.
Growth was also accelerated by university and corporate deals, a form of product-led growth where satisfied users recommended the training internally.

"So from zero to 10K, when I was getting this started, I think I posted on Reddit a couple of times, but real growth came from SEO."

Advice for Aspiring Builders [00:13:00]

Identify problems you have intimate knowledge of to create a better product.
Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible; don't wait for perfection.
Jake advises, "If you're not embarrassed by the first iteration, then you've waited too long."
He also stresses understanding granular unit economics, especially when using paid ads.
Jake discovered his monthly subscribers were barely profitable by segmenting data, leading him to double the monthly price while keeping the annual price the same, which boosted growth.

"I think the first thing you should do is look for a problem that you have intimate knowledge about in order to create a great product."