$8.7K/Month Helping People Write Thank-You Notes

Heidi Bender’s website is Tons of Thanks.

According to a recent interview, Heidi started the site in 2014…

I started my website… to help people write thank-you notes. Before becoming a full-time writer, I worked as a data management consultant for twenty-two years.

Nowadays, Heidi says the site receives millions of visitors each year, with 99% of the traffic coming from search engines, and she’s earning $8,700 per month via display ads 💰

Heidi learned about blogging a couple of years before she started her website, and brainstormed a few different ideas she could focus on…

One idea that I shortlisted was thank-you note writing. My mom taught me at an early age to write thank-you notes, and I continued writing them as an adult. I surveyed my friends about the idea and learned that some had never written a thank you.

To further validate my idea, I found websites already helping people write thank-you notes. And several books had been written on the topic.

However, many of the example messages others were providing felt too generic. I could provide better examples of what a good thank-you note looks like, which would help people write their own meaningful thank you messages.

This is the origin story of many successful businesses: someone looking around for a particular thing, not finding the existing solutions to be good enough, then setting out to make something better 😎

It was a long slog for Heidi though. Sounds like the site earned less than $1000/month for several years, and she only started earning enough to quit her day job in 2021.

All that said, I can’t help but wonder how sites like Tons of Thanks will survive ChatGPT 🤖

Today, my first instinct if I want to write a thank you note is not to google around for a template. Instead, I go to ChatGPT, write a quick prompt, and instantly get back something good enough.

What do you think? 

Will info sites like Heidi’s soon be a thing of the past? 🤔