This week, I made a video about how non-coders like me can now easily create AI agents in Claude code to handle your data enrichment.
This stuff is exciting for builders who are already knee-deep, but I acknowledge that these limitless opportunities with AI can come across as intimidating for people just starting to learn how to build directories.
So today is just a reminder for those just starting out that...it's still so early.
With that said, it's crazy how this is the new normal.
For context, I spent $670 hiring someone on Upwork to help me with a manual data enrichment task that would've taken me 100 hours.
Today, I can do that same task with a $17/month Claude Code plan.
If you're reading this and it makes you feel behind, that's a silly take.
As long as you're someone with high-agency and a willingness to fail & learn early, you can now catch up faster now than ever before.
Is AI coding accessible to anyone willing to spend $17/mo and a few days to learn Claude code?
Yeah, totally.
But I meet people all the time who fully understand how to use AI coding tools, but don't have a clear workflow or direction with their projects.
Skills don't compound as well as lessons and experience.
Personally, I didn't start learning AI coding tool for nothing.
I'm using these tools to fill in a missing puzzle piece of complete workflow that I'm already familiar with.
It's cliche, but you could own the fastest car in town but slow with clear directions is better than fast and aimless when it comes to building.
I see the golden opportunity with AI because I'm building stuff all the time.
But the road to get here costed me a lot in builder tuition.
AKA hundreds of hours (and dollars) "wasted" to learn the hard lessons of trying to build profitable directories.
In fact, I'm still paying it my tuition.
But I'm happy to because it's the only way for me to get more clarity on what my ideal workflow actually looks like.
So here's the good news: I'm not extraordinarily smart or doing anything special.
And you literally have a thousand ways to win with directories.
I'm just comfortable jumping into the void, ignoring the opinions and warnings of people on social media.
A successful directory just needs:
- To built in a niche that can help hundreds of people experiencing the same problem (Finding unsolved problems, keyword research and social listening)
- Consistent traffic discovering or returning to your website (SEO)
You can learn all this for free on YouTube (from my channel and others), then start applying immediately.
That's how you discover your own workflow.
I'm building a directory in the most manual way right now
Right now, I'm building a directory the same way I did with my first directory back in 2022 (full buildout video coming later this month).
It's super manually built. No fancy tools or programmatic SEO. Just Wordpress and a lot of time brute forcing my way to completion.
Why?
For some twisted reason, I'm willing to drag myself though 50 hours of copying and pasting information into a Wordpress website to show you the simplest way to build a directory.
I'm not necessarily expecting it to make $2k/month passively like my first directory, but mark my words - it's going to rank and get traffic relatively quickly.
Hope this will help my fellow overthinkers.
Will share more deets when that's released.
Keep Building,
Frey
