[landon32]

This is a great process for becoming a nice-cashflow side project, but I doubt there's enough people searching for linux commands for this to ever be huge.

Not saying this isn't a great idea, just saying that it's wise to hedge expectations and not expect this to be a get rich quick scheme.

I think if you wanted to turn it into a larger business, the next step would be to determine an adjacent niche that your readers would also like. E.g. maybe a lot of software engineers at tech companies read linux-commands-examples.com, so you could sell them "new hire 1-sheets" for basic linux commands or something. Could help to get more in depth analytics on who's using your product there.

[evbots]

I actually disagree with this. As someone who uses linux as the primary build OS for my software projects, i need to know just enough to make things work but I don't necessarily want to be an uber linux expert. This results in me constantly googling "command for <XYZ> ubuntu", which usually lands me on a stackoverflow page with something that points me in the right direction. Now, i'm not saying a linux example commands website will be successful for my anecdotal reason, but i have to imagine there are many more devs just like me.

[marcus_holmes]

yes, but do the numbers....

how many of you are there? People in that stage of learning Linux where they google the 5 most common things people get wrong?

Let's be generous and say 1 million. That seems reasonable. It's certainly more than 100,000 and less than 10 million.

Let's be more generous and say that all these people search for this once a week.

At $1 per 1000 pageviews (the generous estimate) that caps income at $1K/week maximum.

That's a nice side-project, if it captures 100% of all the traffic and manage to monetise it (I'd like to see the percentages of Linux users/admins who also install an adblocker; I suspect it's high).

I do this all the time... "I want a service that does X". But I'm not typical, so the market always ends up being small. The standard startup advice of "solve a problem you have yourself" doesn't work for me. I call it my "Kardashian Problem": I don't understand why anyone would ever spend any time paying the Kardashians any attention whatsoever. This is clearly my problem, because the Kardashians are very popular, and the bajillions of people who do pay them attention seem very OK with it. So I am clearly not a very good judge of the market and should not trust my instincts about what will sell well.

[jackgolding]

This is where you upsell into ebooks, video courses and paid training. Also if you build an email list you can build partnerships which will lead to a much higher CPM.

[marcus_holmes]

yeah, but then your business model is selling ebooks, video courses and paid training, and this just becomes one of a number of avenues to reach your market. Which is all totally fine, of course, but the business is no longer "a website with the 5 answers to the most commonly asked Linux questions" :)

[earenndil]

A friend of a friend owns and runs google ads on linux.die.net (linux manpages). It pays his mortgage.

[vermilingua]

But I'd wager that the audience of people looking for an article on a command, and the people that want a manpage up on a non linux device (a second screen, a phone?) are mostly disjunct, and that the latter is far larger.

[adetrest]

I never realized there were ads on this website. Always though it was someone doing it for the love of it.

[EADGBE]

They certainly do it for the love. And the mortgage.

[vi1rus]

There is no need to search for a unicorn at first. It's about starting and doing something

[rmetzler]

Check out the Linux command zines Julia Evans creates and sells online. I don’t know the exact numbers, but if I remember correctly she sold like 3.000 PDFs for $10 each.