How Sergiu is making €5K per month from AI Directories

Meet Sergiu Chiriac.

Sergiu is a software engineer and an entrepreneur. He was born in Moldova but have been living in Portugal for over 20 years. He has always been passionate about building solutions that help others save time and effort.

Currently Sergiu is focusing on AI Directories.

He started working on AI Directories while on his 9 to 5 job. Now he’s working on it while doing a part time. Sergiu has a team of 3 helping him out as the setup requires quite a lot of manual work.

The story told by Sergiu Chiriac

What is AI Directories?

AI Directories is a service that helps founders submit their AI tools to over 100 directories. This process can be time-consuming and tedious, so I created AI Directories to help others increase traffic, improve SEO, and attract potential clients more efficiently.

It all started when I was trying to submit my own AI products. I quickly realized that finding the right directories took a lot of time, and it wasn't always clear which ones were worth it. That's when I decided to curate a list of the most effective directories.

I began offering this list for free on X Jaunary 15th 2024. To my surprise, it took off immediately. Within 24 hours, over 100 people had downloaded it, and I received $40 in donations (using Gumroad). That's when I realised the idea was validated, and I knew I had something valuable.

Launching

As soon as I saw the demand on X, I acted fast. I created a landing page and made the list available for free while also introducing a "done-for-you" service where I would handle the submissions for others. This approach allowed me to help founders directly, saving them even more time.

I announced the launch on X January 29th 2024.

It took about 4 months to reach my first 100 customers, but once the momentum kicked in, it became clear that I was onto something.

Since the begining, I’ve continued to grow steadily and have now served over 200 customers along with several business partners.

The AI Directories website attracts an average of 5,000 visitors per month, and I make on average €5K per month.

The business model

The business model is pretty straight forward. The customer purchases a plan. At the moment there a 3 plan to choose from:

• Starter List: 99$ for 30+ Directories

• Pro List: 149$ for 60+ Directories

• Premium List: 199$ for 100+ Directories

(prices are about to increase though)

When a plan is chosen an automatic email is send to the customer with the success message and the required info that the customer has to provide in order for me to proceed with the submissions. As soon as I get the information I start submitting.

Beside the "Do It For You" service which is my main revenue stream I also offer a “Do it yourself” service. Then the customer would purchase the list and do the submission by himself and adding directories to the list where directory owners can add add their directory to my curated list.

I also have sponsors spots where directories pay between 50 and 100$ per spot per month to be on the top of the list and landing page.

I'm also subscribed to directories affiliate programs but I don't get too much from them. Maybe 100$/mo.

Below you’ll see my gross volume running AI Directories (as of September 24th 2024).

Marketing AI Directories

The biggest challenge has been finding the right market fit and the most effective way to market the product. So far, I haven’t invested in paid advertising, but I’ve noticed that simply posting links without context or engagement doesn’t generate much interest.

People want to know the storybehind the product.

I’ve been fully bootstrapping from the start. Most of my promotion has come through organic reach, particularly on social media like X and reddit (example below), where I initially shared the list.

I also leverage my own service to gain traffic from the directories, which helps boost visibility.

Additionally, I use cold emailing to connect with potential customers.

Sergiu also has a product called CleanSnap.

It's a free AI tool that quickly transforms screenshots into watermark-free, professional images, making them perfect for sharing on social media. Sergiue uses it himself to share his images on X or to generate images for his blogposts.

You can find Sergiu on X.