AI models use brand mentions (citations) from across the web to determine authority. Entrepreneurs can create niche review sites and sell these citations to businesses. This influences a brand's organic AI visibility, creating a new monetization model beyond traditional SEO link-building.

Instead of charging doctors for its valuable productivity tools, Doximity offers them for free to maximize user engagement. This creates a highly concentrated, valuable audience of physicians, which is then monetized through targeted advertising from pharmaceutical companies, its primary revenue source.

Horizontal SaaS companies fracture their customer knowledge across diverse industries, forcing generic messaging. Vertical SaaS companies build compounding knowledge with each customer within a niche. This leads to deeper insights, stronger competitive secrets, and more effective, specific messaging over time.

Unlike typical products that build first and then seek distribution, directories are a distribution-first model. By creating thousands of pages on a single topic (e.g., luxury restrooms), they establish strong topical relevance, making it easier to rank for long-tail keywords and build traffic systematically.

The desire to build a complex SaaS or app often overlooks a strategic first step. An online directory, while seemingly boring, can attract thousands of visitors on autopilot. This established traffic provides the ideal foundation to later launch a more sophisticated product to an existing audience.

For vertical SaaS, niche industry conferences where customers get continuing education credits are a powerful growth channel. Lawyers attend events like the ABA Tech Show to fulfill requirements, creating a captive audience and a great sponsorship opportunity for early-stage companies.

Founder Ben Kieran intentionally sought out non-glamorous vertical software markets like HOA management. These niches often have large, overlooked opportunities with less competition and specific pain points, making them ideal for building a durable business without needing to be on the cutting edge of tech.

Use Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) tools to discover unsolved user problems within ChatGPT prompts. Then, build simple applications to solve these specific needs and advertise them directly against those prompts, creating a profitable portfolio of niche software products.

Pray.com diversified its revenue with three streams: B2B software for ministries (SaaS), advertising on free content (Ads), and consumer subscriptions (Subs). This hybrid model, a novel approach in the faith-tech sector, provides stability and allows the company to achieve long-term profitability.