How Ben Adler Successfully Bootstrapped Keyword Chef Into a Full-time Business
Ben Adler had actually been successfully developing niche sites for numerous years
up until one day he recognized that his keyword research process might be automated and become a company. And Keyword Chef was born. His tool is making waves in the market for its simplicity, pay-as-you-go
rates model, and capability to find keywords in any specific niche that are genuinely low competitors. If making a healthy full-time income as a bootstrapped SaaS company during its very first year in operation is any indicator, the future looks bright for Ben and Keyword Chef. Keep reading to find out how he did it, his unique marketing philosophy and development strategy, and his suggestions for other business owners, site contractors, and entrepreneur.
Getting Fired as a Programmer
I went to a tech school where I believed I wished to find out about company, however I decided to choose shows instead. I got fired from my first programs job for being a noob, which is kinda amusing considering where I am today.
I found another programming job where I was able to grow in my profession. I left that task about 4 years ago to start a software application company for car dealers, but it didn’t exercise.
Throughout that time I was constructing specific niche websites, and I discovered to get good at keyword research, and started Keyword Chef.
Finding Niche Sites
Before I understood about specific niche websites, I was searching for company concepts. I came across a post on Reddit where someone was making $500 a month with a crappy-looking vacuum cleaner site. I thought the website sucked and that I could do better.
I messed around developing a number of specific niche sites that didn’t exercise. I later on discovered a specific niche without any competition. Even during this time, people were stating that all the niches were currently taken, so I got fairly fortunate.
Daily I would get back from work, open my laptop computer, and work up until I went to sleep. I would check out every Amazon evaluation, see videos, and go through user manuals to find out about the products I was reviewing. I wound up examining every item in my specific niche, then comparing them with “x vs. y” posts. I didn’t take any courses and found out SEO from checking out blogs from Niel Patel and Brian Dean. I did this for 6 months, till I made my first dollar.
I was just promoting Amazon at the time. Amazon was paying well for my category (8%) and I didn’t understand about display advertisements up until later on, so I missed out on a great deal of money. My most significant month was in December, where I made $5500 just from Amazon, after constructing it for about 12 months.
I kept that review website for 5 years and later offered it for mid-5 figures. It was becoming harder to handle with more competitors and slashed Amazon commissions. I also offered an outdoor camping site which was producing a few hundred a month. Both sites are still active today.
Currently, I run 3 smaller websites in numerous niches, one of which I bought. While I began with an evaluation website, all my sites now are informational sites.
The Beginning of Keyword Chef
I started Keyword Chef because I always wished to have my own software application business. Even as a kid I would make easy programs and sell them to good friends at school for 50 cents.
I got excellent at keyword research and believed my keyword research study process could be automated and turned into a business when I was developing specific niche sites. It was a way of making money by scratching my own itch.
Discovering a Keyword Research Strategy that Worked
Despite my success with my evaluation website, I didn’t in fact have an excellent grasp on keyword research or competitors analysis. It was truly a blanket approach where I reviewed all the items in my niche.
It wasn’t until I viewed a YouTube video from Income School that I discovered to discover keywords using Google Autosuggest and look for forums as an indication of low competitors. I ended up following their practices and had the ability to grab the snippet for a keyword within minutes of requesting indexing in Google Search Console. This is when I knew their techniques worked and expanded on them, incorporating other low competitors signals.
A Game Changer for Starting Keyword Chef
Great deals of tools look at the variety of backlinks or worse, CPC data. These metrics can be deceptive because backlinks do not inform you how optimized the site is (a significant ranking factor to consider) and CPC information is for advertisers.
I knew the way I was finding and verifying keywords worked, so I believed if I could automate the process, it would be a video game changer. Presently, I don’t know of any other tools that are doing real competition analysis in this way.
Considering that I already had an existing audience with my Facebook group, I knew if I might get the keyword process automated and the product working, discovering users would be simple.
How Keyword Chef Works
I do not want to go into too much detail, however there is an algorithm that finds and filters keywords to make sure they are high quality.
After the keywords are gathered, Keyword Chef scrapes the Google search engine result for the keywords in real time and looks for low competition websites on the first page results. The variety of low competitors websites are combined for each keyword, offering you a SERP Score. It’s generally a competitors metric, where the higher the number, the better.
Here are some screenshots of the tool in action:
< img class=" alignnone wp-image-37187 size-full "src=" https://www.nichepursuits.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/keyword-chef-preview-results.png" alt width=
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0″ allowfullscreen=” allowfullscreen “> Try Keyword Chef Here The Target Market Keyword Chef works really well at discovering long tail keywords, especially for popular specific niches a lot of individuals have concerns about. This makes it terrific for blog writers and individuals developing niche sites. The tool isn’t really created for individuals doing e-commerce or regional SEO. Just How Much Money Keyword Chef is Making In 2015 I was
able to make a healthy full-time income
from my tool. I likewise brought on a part-time designer in December to take over the majority of the software application development. The Black Friday sale brought in a considerable quantity of earnings. Ben’s Marketing Strategies to Drive Growth A couple of years ago I created a Facebook group called Affiliate Niche Builders to promote a course I was producing on how to build specific niche sites. I just got a couple of sign-ups and understood I didn’t really take pleasure in making courses so I stopped. I kept growing the group. When I released Keyword Chef, I already had an audience who liked and trusted me, which was extremely valuable.
Through the Facebook group, I had the ability to get in touch with a great deal of other influencers who helped promote me on their YouTube channels and inside their courses. Some of these influencers ended up connecting to me to say it was one of the very best products they ever used. Word of mouth started growing by itself from there. This was truly handy for me because I do not consider myself a strong marketer. I do not run ads or do fancy
funnels or email projects. I have not even focused on SEO yet. With word of mouth, I can concentrate on producing a quality item and let marketing look after itself. It’s been said that you just require to do two things to develop a company: Talk to clients Resolve issues In my
viewpoint, that’s what service is all about– resolving real problems for your
- consumers
- . You can totally
build an online company just by doing those two things. I think that, specifically when beginning an online business, empathy is the brand-new marketing.
Individuals are tired of being sold to and simply want to be assisted. The very best method to make a connection with your users is to
actually assist them. Have discussions and address their concerns. Despite having thousands of users, I never needed to send out direct messages or ask individuals to register. A lot of Facebook masters may call this” Facebook organic,” which is a term I do not particularly like. For me, I truly do take pleasure in
helping others and it just so occurs to be happening on Facebook. Assisting others isn’t a” marketing method,” it’s a core value; it’s something that takes work and empathy. I see companies doing this increasingly more on social networks however it’s hard for some companies to do. The factor is you can’t fake it, at least not for long.
Companies also need to be eating their own pet food too– that is, using their own item. Starting to Focus on SEO I simply started to focus more on SEO. I’m using Google Search Console to find keywords that I’m getting impressions for and producing pages around those keywords. I want to begin producing more helpful material and become a learning
resource for people in the market. Achieving Current Revenue Levels Although Keyword Chef is only on a pay-as-you-go model right now, profits has actually been surprisingly stable. I didn’t have a huge launch and it took roughly 6 months to get to stable earnings levels.
The Official Launch The first time Keyword Chef was
announced openly remained in January of 2021. It was actually done by another influencer who did a review of it in his Facebook group. Shortly after that, I posted a pre-recorded video demonstrating the item in my own group. I believe soft launches are the method to go as opposed to tough launches
differentiator. The information costs on my end is pay-as-you-go so it was the most basic option to bill my clients the exact same way. Later on, I recognized a great deal of clients enjoy this model. Sometimes individuals just do keyword research study once a month or may go months without doing any. Pay-as-you-go permits them to be able to use Keyword Chef as little or as much as they want without any effects. Furthermore, some users just want to check a lot and import of keywords at the same time and do not wish to pay a monthly strategy just for doing that. Ben’s Top Three Tools I do not use lots of tools at all. I’m not a huge fan of fancy, complex systems and choose to keep things simple. This state of mind likewise comes out in my software, as a great deal of people find it easy to use. If I needed to list tools that I use, they would be: Trello– I use this to appoint and keep track of tasks for my designer. It’s extremely versatile and free. I also utilize this for a composing company I deal with.
FirstPromoter– This is an affiliate marketing tracking platform to help me pay my affiliates. I keep the affiliate program personal and typically just offer itto other influencers. My
big ol’ white boards– I do a lot of thinking of product style and note-taking, so having a whiteboard in my workplace helps a lot. Obstacles in Growing Keyword Chef Recalling, there were a number of huge stressors that I dealt with: Naming the item– It might seem simple, however coming up with a good name that’s readily available is tough. I wanted something that wasn’t generic and uninteresting like” Keyword Discover.
” I desired something that was fun and memorable that I could construct a brand name around. It most likely took me a couple of weeks to come up with the name Keyword Chef. The concept behind the name is that the software would formulate keywords based upon different” dishes.” I’m pretty pleased with the name. Repairing expense concerns– At one point, Keyword Chef was discovering so many keywords that information expenses began to end up being an issue.
I’ve really seen other projects stop working because of the costs included. During this
- time, I needed to rush to reprogram my app and momentarily limit specific functions while hoping I didn’t piss off too many users. Ben’s Most Important Accomplishment I would state there are 2 huge achievements. Initially, though I have a shows background, I’ve never done a full-stack task prior to from design, architecture, APIs, servers, management, etc. I had to discover a lot and figure things out as I went along, and I’m still learning brand-new technology. A
- lot of it was studying and asking questions in Facebook groups. I had one rival that I’m very grateful to for assisting me with an important technology piece. Having the ability to develop something from scratch on my own that individuals love a lot and pay for is a big accomplishment that I most likely do not offer myself enough credit for. My second-biggest accomplishment was making a healthy full-time earnings my first year. Comparatively speaking, for a completely bootstrapped SaaS business, it’s a multitude and very validating for future growth. When He Started, if Only He Knew I most likely must have thought of the item style more in the start. I understand products can alter typically in their early stages, but certain things that I was undoubtedly lazy about carrying out later on were the source of stress. They state to” introduce early, launch often,” which I concur with, but that does not mean you must be too lazy about planning either. His Biggest Mistake With His Business This is a difficult question for me at the moment
. Though I’ve stopped working at some things, I would not call any one minute a “huge mistake.” For me, it’s all part of the learning and growing procedure. If you’re not making or stopping working
errors someplace in your organization, you’re not growing. Growth requires discovering brand-new things that you will not be familiar with or necessarily good at. Even established multi-million dollar companies make errors all the time.
One error I did make was not offering my review site earlier. It peaked and started declining as the competitors got more difficult and I began disregarding it. Likewise not having ads on my site sooner. I missed out on thousands of dollars because I thought ads were” spammy,” not understanding just how much cash they can make. Guidance for Other Entrepreneurs I understand it’s not for every character type, however developing an online audience has actually been the most handy thing by
far. Go on Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok or whatever
platform you delight in the most and simply start developing and assisting individuals content. In the book, Lost and Founder, Moz creator Rand Fishkin states this is
exactly how he began. He was helping people on forums and blogging about SEO every day. I’m not comparing my company to Moz, however I feel like our philosophy in getting initial traction was the exact same, which is genuinely helping people and producing a community. A lot of people hesitate in the beginning of being on camera, looking great
, stating the right things, or looking wise enough. It does get simpler though the more you do it. People are craving credibility. And if your project fails or you require to pivot, you’ll still have an audience to which you can still offer new products.
