Directories are one of the easiest ways to start marketing a new project.
You ship, you grab a screenshot, you farm a handful of upvotes, and you hope it lands somewhere visible.
You also get a backlink on a site that already ranks, which compounds faster than your empty blog.
That alone can beat publishing ten “SEO optimized” posts.
A friend, Jon gathered a huge list of live directories in one place, so you can go on a launch spree in an afternoon: https://distributionkit.com/.
Pick ten, ship, collect data, then decide which ones are worth a second round.
Today’s pick
Today’s pick is a directory that refused to stay “just a directory.” : TrustMRR.com
Marc started it in November as a simple list, ranked by revenue instead of upvotes. That tiny decision solved a real trust problem: fake screenshots and inflated claims.
Fast-forward to now and TrustMRR pulls around 3,000 daily views and hosts thousands of listed businesses. Founders submit because the ranking is tied to their Stripe, not their social reach.
I tried a similar angle with TrustViews.io by ranking products by views instead of votes.
The fun twist is what came next.
TrustMRR quietly morphed from “cool directory” into a full business marketplace. They built the whole acquisition system around it: Listings, discovery, ads revenue at first, then acquisition fees powered by an escrow layer.
How to copy this play
Why this matters if you’re building “just” a directory. Directories are easy to copy.
You can clone the UI in a weekend and list a few dozen tools from Product Hunt. That’s why most of them die.
Your real edge is the ranking logic and the game/community you create around it.
TrustMRR.com ranks by revenue and built an acquisition marketplace
TrustViews.io ranks by views and (will) provide a newsletter about views acquisition interviewing listed members.
rankinpublic.xyz made a battle arena inspired from video games ones.
Or a leaderboard based on Domain Rating like frogdr’s DR board.
The point is not “make another Product Hunt.”
The point is: pick one metric or niche down into categories AI, waitlists, everything can work. Something that would actually matters to your audience, then build the whole experience around that.
Your MOAT will be around the community you gather.
Here are some more ideas:
Pick a niche: AI tools, newsletters, micro-SaaS, dev tools).
Pick a metric that excites people: MRR, DR, response time, open rate, number of active users…
And don’t forget to launch your project across as many directories as you can using Jon’s list. Worst case, you get a batch of backlinks and some usage graphs.
Best case, your “tiny directory” becomes the marketplace everyone in that niche has to be on.
By the way, just released: you can now get the full Startup Hunt dataset with 10,000+ launches. Refer 3 friends who subscribe and I’ll send you the whole thing for free. More info : startuphunt.io/dataset.
If you build something off this email, send the link. Happy to support your launch.
See you on Monday!