SaaS •Entrepreneurship

I Make $15K/Month From One Website

Starter Story • • 16 min • #138
I Make $15K/Month From One Website

Maddox built a $15K/month gaming website. This video breaks down his exact strategy for driving massive traffic to a simple website.

Summary

  • Maddx Schmidtoffer

    • Built Duckmath as an unblocked games website while in college.
    • Launched the site four years before the interview.
    • Saw the site sit mostly passively for about two years while still making money.
    • Sold the business a few weeks before the interview for $120,000.
    • Started building after seeing a younger kid on TikTok promote an unblocked games site.
    • Built the first version in about one or two weeks.
    • Returned to the project after one day unexpectedly made $240 passively.
    • Decided to market it seriously after seeing the site was already earning without much work.

  • Duckmath

    • Is an unblocked games website at duckmath.org.
    • Lets users search for and play games such as Plants vs. Zombies.
    • Makes money through Google AdSense.
    • Earns roughly one cent per monthly user.
    • Funnels users from social platforms and tries to maximize time on site and page views.
    • Was first built on Google Sites with embedded games.
    • Later moved to React after Maddx learned it during an internship.
    • Used AI tools later so he could focus more on marketing than coding.
    • Improved design by copying what competitors were doing.
    • Used A/B testing to increase time on site and page views.

  • Metrics and Exit

    • Grew from 5 to 150,000 daily active users in the last four months before the interview.
    • Grew from about $1,000 per month to $15,000 per month.
    • Reached about 1.5 million users per month.
    • Generated normal daily revenue around $600 to $700 during the growth spike.
    • Got 4.6 million views from the main social account.
    • Sold for $120,000 after contacting a larger company that had bought a similar games site.
    • Used escrow as the middleman for the sale.
    • Slightly regretted selling, but still thought selling was the correct move.

  • Short-Form Growth Strategy

    • Relied on high-volume TikTok posting.
    • Created three TikTok accounts.
    • Posted three times per day, five days per week.
    • Cross-posted to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat.
    • Saw Snapchat consistently deliver 20,000 views or more.
    • Reviewed the previous day’s videos before making new ones.
    • Checked engagement and looked for ways to improve each video.
    • Made simple dopamine-hit videos around games.
    • Researched and copied competitors’ best TikTok formats.
    • Worked at higher volume than competitors who posted once per day or once per week.
    • Mentored someone else to make videos in his format so he could save time.
    • Used a video with a strong visual hook that reached 2.1 million TikTok views and 3.2 million Instagram views.
    • Estimated that one high-performing video may have made about $1,000.

  • 2026 Playbook

    • Pick a niche you already know how to market in.
    • Build a quick MVP in two to three days with AI or another fast method.
    • Research 10 to 20 competitors’ best-performing videos.
    • Identify shared patterns in hooks, calls to action, and viral structure.
    • Write down how to use or copy those formats for the same outcome.
    • Post daily on TikTok.
    • Expect early videos to be weak and improve through repetition.
    • Go all in when the project starts changing meaningfully.

  • Tech Stack and Tools

    • Uses Cloudflare for site hosting, domains, and static data storage.
    • Pays about $200 per month for domains.
    • Uses Supabase for backend, auth, leaderboards, coins, and user data.
    • Pays about $20 per month for Supabase.
    • Switched from Google Analytics to PostHog.
    • Used PostHog startup credits for A/B testing.
    • Uses Google AdSense to automatically place ads with a small code snippet.
    • Uses Repurpose.io to cross-post TikTok videos to YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
    • Built a Discord community that reached about 7,000 members.
    • Paid his girlfriend to post videos.

  • Lessons and Advice

    • Follow the money when a project is already making money.
    • Avoid abandoning a real earning project because it feels less serious than B2B.
    • Stay consistent with a project long enough to see unexpected upside.
    • Keep incrementally improving and posting.
    • Know when to drop a project if it truly is not working.
    • Build for customers instead of building for what outsiders think is serious.
Back to Starter Story