All the way back in 2015, I made my first successful niche website, avocadoo. com, which at that time was making over 35 grand per month in the health and fitness space. From 2015 till now, I built several different websites, some that reached incredible marks, making over 100 grand per month pretty passively, and most of which I have sold.
All of this to say, I have a ton of experience in this topic, and I'm not here to sell you any BS. Today, I'm going to show you three real websites that are making extraordinary money, but the subjects are incredibly boring. We're going to talk about why they're succeeding, what they could do better, and what kind of site you should be making in 2025 and beyond.
Important disclaimer, making money on the internet is hard. Like really hard. I know there are about a 100,000 different blowhards on YouTube telling you how easy it is.
It's not. The reason people tell you it's easy is because they want to sell you something. The reason these sites are successful are because they are both very old and the creators have spent a ton of time hammering down on solving one problem.
You see, the secret to making money is number one, solving people's problems, and number two, being stupidly consistent and persistent in doing so. I only bring this up because I need to set the right expectations. If you're on this video, if you're on this video, you're probably interested in making money websites, and that's awesome.
It's made me a lot of money to make profitable websites on the internet. But please accept it's going to take you a while to find success. This is not a get-richquick scheme.
Okay, that's my rant. Let's get to the first website. Website number one, JPEG to PNG.
This is an utterly basic site and was built in June of 2015 for converting your JPEGs to PNGs. There's a few advantages of having a PNG over a JPEG. Like PGs have lossless compression.
And PGs can also have image transparency, so you can easily remove the backgrounds. But you probably don't give a crap about any of that. What you care about is how much money the site makes.
This site generates, by my estimates, around 25 grand to upwards of 51 grand per month. How do we get that data? Well, we start by using tools like Hrefs and Similar Web to see how much traffic the site generates.
Using Similar Web, we can see the site generates a little bit over a million visitors per month. When those visitors are on the site, they are shown display ads like these. Now, the average CPM for a site like this is about $3 to $10 per thousand visitors.
We want to be on the conservative end, so let's call it about $5 CPM. Using a basic ad revenue calculator online, we can see that this site on the high end makes around 51 grand per month. But the reason why I gave you such a large range is because similar web traffic has been shown to be a bit generous in its traffic estimation, sometimes even double the amount.
So I would say at its worst, it's probably making around 25 grand per month. And at its best, it's making $51,000 per month. Now this is a great cash cow of a site.
It sits there, does all the work while the owner is probably in the Bahamas somewhere. It's also incredibly simple, which leads me to my next question. Should you start a site like this?
This site is what we call a free tool website. You visit it, you use the free tool, and the owner of the site usually makes money with ads. There's not really a lot of cost to running this site like this.
So, most of the income is automated. It also does a great job of naturally building back links over time because it has a high amount of satisfaction for the user. They come to the tool, they use it, they get what they want, and then leave.
All of that being said, I wouldn't start a site just like this one. It's tough to get to the top spot of Google, especially if you're running in a race that's already started. This site has been collecting back links effectively since 2016, and Google loves that historical data.
Sure, if you had enough money and time, you could go after outranking this exact website. But a way better idea is to think of the fundamentals of why this site works and consider creating your own in your own niche. I'll explain more on that in a minute, but first I want to show you our second website that is also a tool website making tons of money online.
Site number two, unitconverters. net. Spencer from Niche Pursuits did a great breakdown of this site and it looks to be making around 35 grand per month.
Now, this site is a step up in complexity from the last one, even though it looks worse. Instead of solving one problem, it solves a lot of problems around the same topic, calculations. Want to know the conversion of a meter to a kilometer?
They've got you covered. Incredibly boring, but useful for the right person. There's actually a lot of people that find this site useful.
Crazy enough, according to Similar Web, it generates around 4,300,000 visitors a month. Now, the reason it's making less money than the previous site is it doesn't have as many ads on it, which is crazy because that means the owner of this site are leaving a lot of money on the table, but that's another topic for another day. I just wanted to show you how you can generate even more traffic and build a bigger site by solving more problems.
For the final site, I'm going to show you a tool website that takes this concept even further. Our third website is what is my IP address. com.
I've been doing this for a long time on the internet and this site is a 10 out of 10. Here's why. Number one, it immediately solves a problem immediately.
People click on this website looking for their IP address and they find it instantly. The satisfaction of the click is really high. And because Google measures how relevant a click is in SEO, they know people love this site.
This site alone gets them around 5 million to 9 million visitors a month. And very conservatively based on ads on the site and the total traffic, it's definitely bringing in over 100 grand per month on ad revenue alone. But that's not it.
What makes this site brilliant and make even more money is that point number two, this website understands the psychology of why someone wants their IP address and goes deeper. Basically, they are asking the question, "Why are you looking up your IP address in the first place? " Perhaps the website visitor is scared of people knowing what they're searching for on the internet and wants more privacy.
Or maybe they just want to watch their Netflix shows in a foreign country. Well, guess what? They have an article for that.
So, if you can scroll up here, you can see your IP address. But when we come down here, it also then addresses what is your biggest concern with using the internet? Is it security?
Is it privacy? Is it access? Do you want to access your uh Netflix, Hulu, or some other site that you're not allowed to access?
And security and privacy is a big thing that people can are concerned with online today. So, if you say, "Hey, I want security. " Guess what it does?
It takes you to an affiliate article that then shows you the top VPNs. Every time someone clicks on this and signs up for a VPN, this is their affiliate link, and they get paid on it. And VPNs pay well.
So, this site not only makes a ton of money from the ads it shows you, it makes a ton of money affiliate marketing as well. I almost imagine it makes as much affiliate marketing as it does with the ads. Now, by solving more of the users problems, they are able to make more money.
And they are already making a ton. Both JPEG top and unit converters. net could make a lot more money with the same process by asking the question of why is the user visiting the site in the first place and what other problems they could solve.
Okay, back to you and your problems. How do you get started? Well, if you had a modern tool in mind, you could just go ahead and start there.
There are plenty of AI tools and needs that have not yet been created. But I've got an even better strategy for you, especially if you're a beginner. Here it is.
Build a site around your interests, and these tools and ideas will naturally pop up. I play a lot of pickle ball, so let's start there. Let's say you build a site in the pickle ball space.
You publish a bunch of articles and grow an audience in that community. And by doing so and by learning more of what people want online from pickle ball, you'll discover hidden tools that are needed in your space. With pickle ball in particular, you discover that most people are looking for local courts to play and players who are as obsessed as they are.
You could then build a tool around finding local courts and people to play with. And thus, the site pickleheads. com exists.
This site gets around 350,000 visitors per month. and they actually just seed raised $2. 5 million to further the venture.
This happened to me a lot when I was blogging. I would see tools and products people needed just by writing articles and trying to help others. If you want to make your own site like that, we've got hundreds of premium tutorials for free on this YouTube channel.
I hope that this video not only helped inspired you with learning how people are making money online with websites, but also educated you on why they're making money and on if you should start your own. Again, the internet is a crazy place and a lot of people on YouTube have no clue what they are talking about. I hope that over time I can build content on this channel that you can trust.
I know this topic is unsavory, but I'm here to help you build it and help you build it the right way. If creating websites is something you want to do, the best way to learn is by starting and starting today. Don't overthink it.
Get rolling and I'll see you guys on the next one.