Strands Today

"A companion website for the NYT Strands puzzle game that lets users check daily puzzle answers and play previous games from an archive, monetized through AdSense."
0
strands.today
Maker: jacksonLiu89
About $600 per month from AdSense

Marketing Channels

Primary

SEO

The site targets search queries for Strands puzzle answers and hints, riding on NYT's brand awareness

Primary

Google AdSense

Revenue model is entirely ad-based, requiring consistent traffic volume

Secondary

Hacker News

Creator shared the project in the HN yearly projects thread

Growth Levers

  • Expand to cover other NYT puzzle games (Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee) to capture more search traffic
  • Build an email list with daily puzzle hints to create a direct traffic channel independent of Google
  • Add social sharing features so users can share their results and drive referral traffic
  • Create a puzzle archive with historical stats and trends to increase time-on-site and page views
  • Optimize ad placement and consider programmatic advertising beyond AdSense for higher CPMs

First Customer Strategy

Capitalized on the popularity of NYT's new Strands puzzle game by quickly building a companion site for answers and an archive of previous games. Traffic is driven primarily by SEO, targeting users searching for daily Strands puzzle help.

Pricing Insight

No user-facing pricing — the site is free and monetized entirely through Google AdSense display ads at approximately $600/month. This suggests decent organic traffic volume.

New Market Opportunities

  • Automated content publishing Question about automation and data sourcing suggests interest in the operational model — potential to build a template/framework for puzzle companion sites
  • Multi-puzzle platform The same model could be replicated for every major puzzle game, creating a network of companion sites

Key Takeaways

  • • Riding the wave of a popular product launch (NYT Strands) with a companion site can generate meaningful ad revenue quickly
  • • SEO-driven content sites around daily puzzles have recurring traffic since users come back every day
  • • AdSense at $600/month indicates solid organic traffic — diversifying ad networks could increase revenue
  • • Puzzle archive features add long-tail SEO value and give users reasons to explore beyond the daily answer
  • • The model carries platform risk: dependency on both NYT's puzzle popularity and Google's search algorithm
  • • Automation of content publishing is key to keeping operational costs near zero for this type of site

Sentiment Analysis

1 Neu

Notable Quotes

"How do you get the data and how do you publish the content? Is it automated? — rishikeshs"

Comments

0 total

No comments yet.