Little Review Website Now Earns $1.4 Million a Year

Robert Brandl is the guy behind Tooltester.com. 

Back in 2009, he was working at a marketing agency in Germany 🇩🇪 but wanted to start his own business.

His plan was to go on a sabbatical, travel around Asia, and blog about his experience.

But while researching how to start a blog, Robert struggled to find good information on website builders, many of which were still new at the time.

Rather than being frustrated, he saw this as an opportunity 💡

He wrote in a recent interview…

I found really easy website builders like Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace. But unlike today, there was hardly any information about them online. So I used a free website builder (Webnode) and put together a very small review website for them. Initial startup costs: the price of a .com domain name and a couple of stock photos.

Just 5 weeks after launch, Robert earned his first $30 affiliate commission when someone found his site via Google and purchased a website builder package he recommended.

The next month, I already crossed the $100 mark, which I would have never expected. That was the moment when I thought about building a real business on top of this website.

Fast-forward another 6 months and I handed in my resignation!

And now…

Tooltester makes a revenue of around $120k per month.

🤯

Over the years, Robert has focused on growing the site’s traffic through SEO. He targeted high search volume keywords related to top website builders.

This strategy worked well, driving 80-90% of the site’s traffic. At its peak during the pandemic, the site was getting 676K monthly visitors 📈

Robert also expanded the site’s scope by reviewing software beyond just website builders: tools like email marketing services, live chat, and more. This allowed him to tap into new keywords and traffic sources.

Now, the site ranks for over 92,000 keywords (source: SE Ranking) such as 👇

• website set up  
• squarespace pricing  
• how to start a website  
• how to create a website  
• setup websites  
• make logos for free

In 2020, Robert purchased a competing website called HowToGetOnline.com, which had a strong Domain Authority of 71. 

It’s taken them a while to integrate that site into Tooltester (by setting up redirects), but it looks like the acquisition is paying off nicely in terms of increased traffic and rankings 🥳

One more interesting thing about Tooltester is the localization of the site. They started with English and now operate in 7 languages, which further expands their traffic potential.

In fact, SE Ranking estimates that Spain sends more traffic to the site than any other country (14%), while Germany is third (10%).

Perhaps that in itself could be a business: providing “localization as a service” to big websites, helping them translate their content to reach other markets 🤔