I am not a developer. I want to say that upfront so you know what kind of post this is. What ive tried to do is figuring out distribution before figuring out code.
The site is sauna.guide. It has 209 pages. Sauna listings, brand reviews, buying guides, gear recommendations. All of it built with Next.js, all of it static, all of it generated from JSON files and markdown.
I did not write the code by hand. I used AI tools to help me build it. But the decisions, the outreach, the content strategy, the emails to manufacturers. That part is all me. I hope and believe that will make the difference.
Why saunas
I love saunas. That is the whole origin story. No market research spreadsheet, no TAM analysis. I wanted to build something in a space I actually care about, and saunas felt right. There is a growing community, real buyer intent, and not a lot of good independent content online.
So I started. 🧖
Distribution first, features second
The biggest lesson so far: nobody cares about your site until you give them a reason to.
I have spent more time emailing sauna manufacturers than I have spent on the site itself. Real emails, one by one. Introducing myself, explaining what Sauna Guide is, asking if they want their brand page reviewed and updated. Some reply. Some don't. All will ;)
That is the whole distribution strategy right now. Talk to the people who make the things I write about. Build relationships. Get them to share their pages.
What 209 pages actually looks like
Every page on the site comes from data files. Saunas are stored in a big JSON file with ratings, features, editorial notes, and quality scores. Guides are markdown files with a publish date in the header. Products have specs, prices, and Reddit sentiment.
At build time, Next.js reads all these files and generates a static HTML page for each one. No database, no server, no CMS. Just files in a folder that become a website.
I also built a simple scheduling system. Every guide has a date, and the site only shows guides where the date has passed. I have 14 guides queued through September. They go live on their own. All I need to do is redeploy every couple of weeks. 📅
Early signs
I want to be honest here. I do not know if this will work long term. The site has been live for a few months and I am still figuring things out.
But some things are starting to move:
- Google is indexing pages and some are ranking on page one for specific queries
- A few brand pages get steady organic traffic
- Manufacturers who engaged with outreach are sharing their pages
- People who find the site tend to stay and read multiple pages
None of this is explosive growth. It is more like seeds starting to show above the soil. Enough to keep going. Enough to believe there is something here.
What I have learned so far
Content quality beats content quantity. I started by trying to publish as much as possible. That was a mistake. The pages that rank are the ones I spent real time on. The ones with editorial opinions, real tips, honest drawbacks. The thin pages just sit there.
Outreach is the unlock. SEO takes months. Social media is noisy. But a personal email to a manufacturer who then shares your review of their product? That is immediate, targeted traffic from exactly the right audience.
You do not need to code to build. I am proof of that. AI tools can handle the implementation if you know what you want to build and why. The hard part is not the code. The hard part is knowing what to say, who to talk to, and having the patience to wait for results.
What is next
More outreach. More guides. More relationships with people in the sauna world. I am also working on a quiz that helps people find the right home sauna, which feeds into an email sequence.
I do not have a grand vision for where this ends up. Maybe it becomes a real business. Maybe it stays a passion project that makes a little money. Either way, I am grateful to God for the ability to build something from nothing and learn along the way. That alone has been worth it. 🙏
If you are thinking about building a content site, my advice is simple: pick something you love, build the pages, and then spend most of your time talking to people instead of tweaking your code.
The site is at sauna.guide if you want to see it.
Thanks for reading.
Top comments (2)
This is the part most people miss — you did not just build pages, you built distribution first. Cold emailing manufacturers sounds boring, but honestly that is the only thing that actually moves the needle early. Respect for doing the hard part, not just shipping pages.
Thank you! As AI becomes available to more people, personal relationships, built face to face or through email, actually caring about each other — will matter more than ever.