---
title: "A $2,000 a year programmatic SEO site | Ian Nuttall"
description: "An 8-hour niche directory built three years ago still earns $2,000 a year with a DR of 9 and 119 natural links, a return that would need six figures invested."
canonical: "https://ian.is/post/pseo-directory-income"
language: "en"
---

# A $2,000 a year programmatic SEO site

Apr 2025 / 53,586 views / [via X](https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1915443131405000808)

3 years ago I built a test programmatic SEO site that took about 8 hours to build

\- I found an untapped niche
\- Scraped a bunch of data
\- Wrote pSEO directory templates for it (basically madlibs)

It's made me $2000 a year ever since with a DR of 9 and just 119 links (all natural)

To make that much with the S&P 500 without selling shares I'd need 6 figures invested

This costs me $9 for the domain and $60/yr for hosting

The crazy part is this:

using AI tools I could build a better version of this in 30 minutes! Anybody could..

I have a bunch of these little experiments that for most "normal" people is life changing annual income, but compared to $100k MRR stories on here seem pointless

The boring, simple (and hidden) niches are out there if you know where to look

![Image from the original X post](https://ian.is/media/tweets/1915443131405000808/1915443128049557504/a6945b5dbd2449d537f09b49f75c64a554f057e27d882a1476e897bed05d0662.jpg)

**What you’re living on**

| Full S&P 500 total-return (price + dividends) | Typical rate | 10% yr/yr long-term average | Lump-sum needed to spin off ≈ $2 k/yr |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Dividends only (let your shares grow) | 1.3% current yield | YCharts | ≈ $155 k |

$2 000 = 0.10 ≈ $20 000$

$2 000 = 0.013 ≈ $154 000$ (or about $110 k if yields revert to the 1.8% long-term average).

**Remember:** averages hide big year-to-year swings, so plan for bad years (cash buffer, diversification, etc.).

Sources: YCharts

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