Online Calculators Generate Millions a Year
About
RapidTables is a free website that offers a variety of online calculators, including GPA, mortgage, BMI, and more.
At first glance, it may appear as a boring business, but its traffic is bound to surprise you.
The Team
RapidTables was created in 2007, and the identity of its founder remains undisclosed. However, they do provide a feedback form if you wish to reach out to them: https://www.rapidtables.com/about/about.html#feedback.
Business Model & Revenue
The business model for RapidTables revolves around Google AdSense. Ads are displayed when users access the calculators on certain pages.
As of June 2023, it generates 26.7 million visits per month. According to the Google AdSense calculator, with such traffic, it could generate over one million dollars a year.
Traffic
RapidTables primarily receives its traffic from Northern America, which is advantageous, as Northern America tends to bring in higher Google AdSense value.
For a free tool like this, search engines are its main traffic channel. Additionally, it has an impressive 27% direct traffic, indicating a substantial number of loyal users.
Tech Stack
Let's take a look at the tech stack behind RapidTables. Since starting early, the tech is quite old-school. However, they have utilized frameworks effectively, avoiding the need to build everything from scratch. As the site is a client-side application, the operational cost is likely relatively low.
- Frontend: jQuery + Bootstrap CSS
- Server: AWS
Should You Enter this Space?
Directly competing with RapidTables is no easy task, as the online calculator market is highly competitive.
Here are a few top competitors:
Top Competitors
- https://www.metric-conversions.org - started in 2003.
- https://www.unitconverters.net - started in 2008.
- https://www.inchcalculator.com - started in 2014.
Keywords
RapidTables excels in SEO and holds top ranks for high-traffic keywords.
Think Out Of The Box
An interesting discovery was made when someone online expressed a need for one of the tools provided by RapidTables, but they were looking for an embeddable widget, which RapidTables does not offer.
This presents an idea: why not build something similar to RapidTables but with all calculators embeddable?
To validate this idea, one could start with Shopify, cold email shop owners, and inquire if they would be willing to pay for such a service. If the response is positive, a SaaS version of RapidTables could be developed!
Reference: https://community.shopify.com/c/technical-q-a/add-a-custom-webpage-to-shopify-store/m-p/1818015