$250K/Year Helping People Find Sobriety

Tim Stoddart started Sober Nation anonymously as a blog ~12 years ago, as a way to share his personal story of getting sober 💪

In a recent interview, he shares that he’s earning $250,000 a year from the site, primarily via its directory of treatment facilities.

Tim says Sober Nation initially gained traction by sharing user-generated content on Facebook…

when I started [posting on Facebook], people would send me these pictures. Of their sobriety dates. And I called them sober stories. And so I would get pictures from people that I would just post them on Facebook and say like, Hey, Jane has been sober for three years.

And it would just go completely viral… And again, that wasn’t necessarily something that I planned. I was just letting other people speak through the site.

Sober Nation now has more than 300K followers on Facebook 📈

A post from 2012 that shows what they were sharing back then…

• What have you done for your recovery today? 

Most posts were affirmations, prompts, and the sober stories already mentioned.

But Tim soon realized that social media buzz doesn’t always translate to revenue 😕

The breakthrough came when treatment centers started reaching out about advertising.

Tim realized he could create a directory to connect these facilities with people looking for help 💡

But there was a problem…

I would say, yeah, sure. You can advertise on my website, but you don’t have a website. Like you don’t have anything.

I don’t even know what you want me to do for you. And so I thought, huh, why don’t I just create a service business that serves these.

So Tim launched Stodzy, his marketing agency to help these facilities with their marketing needs.

He did a similar thing after acquiring CopyBlogger.com, seeing it as a way to generate leads for his new SEO agency, Digital Commerce Partners 😎

Tim’s model could be laid out as…

1. Build an audience and community around a specific niche
2. Transition it to a directory model to generate revenue
3. Use the audience and authority to attract clients for a specialized service business

Could you do something like this in your niche? 🤔

I really like the idea of service providers starting directory sites as a way to connect with potential clients.

For example, if you wanted to provide marketing services for realtors, how about creating an online directory of realtors in your area?

That’d be one way to get on their radar, and you might ultimately be able to monetize the directory itself like Tim did 🤑