DEV Community: Haris Ahmad

How to Research Profitable SEO Niches Before Building a Website

Haris Ahmad — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 10:50:41 +0000

Choosing the right niche is one of the most important decisions when building a website.

You can publish high-quality content, optimize your pages, and build backlinks. But if your niche has limited demand or strong competition, growing your website can be difficult.

Instead of guessing which niche to enter, research websites that already attract traffic and show signs of advertising monetization.

Here's a practical way to approach niche research.

1. Research Websites That Already Get Traffic

Most people start niche research by brainstorming broad categories such as technology, travel, finance, health, or gaming.

The problem is that these categories are too broad to reveal specific opportunities.

Instead, look for existing websites that:

Target a clearly defined audience.
Publish content around a specific topic.
Attract consistent organic traffic.
Cover subjects you understand or can research.
Have potential content gaps you could fill.

The objective isn't to copy successful websites. It's to understand what works in a market and identify opportunities to create something better.

2. Analyze More Than Keyword Search Volume

Search volume is useful, but it shouldn't be your only deciding factor.

A keyword with thousands of monthly searches might be dominated by established websites. A smaller topic could offer many related keywords and a more focused audience.

Evaluate potential niches using several signals:

Keyword demand and competition.
Organic traffic estimates and trends.
Domain authority metrics and competing pages.
Content depth and quality.
Advertising and affiliate monetization opportunities.
Your ability to produce original, useful content.

Look for a combination of demand, realistic competition, and monetization potential. No single metric can tell you whether a niche will succeed.

3. Find Websites With Advertising Monetization Signals

One way to discover potential niches is to investigate websites associated with advertising networks.

Examples include Google AdSense, Ezoic, Mediavine, and Raptive.

These associations can provide useful research signals, although they don't reveal exact earnings or guarantee profitability.

Once you identify a website worth studying, investigate:

Which topics attract the most attention.
What types of articles it publishes.
Which keywords its pages target.
Whether its traffic appears stable or declining.
How it monetizes its audience.

Then consider whether you can serve the same audience with better content, a more useful experience, or coverage of underserved topics.

4. Use a Website Database to Speed Up Research

Manually discovering and analyzing hundreds of websites takes time.

This is where tools such as Niche Pickers can help.

Niche Pickers provides a searchable database of more than 386,000 websites checked against advertising network records, including AdSense, Ezoic, Mediavine, and Raptive.

You can narrow your research using filters such as:

Estimated website traffic.
Domain Rating.
Domain age.
Niche and language.
Website type.

The platform uses Similarweb for traffic estimates and Ahrefs for Domain Rating data.

You can explore the Niche Pickers database to discover websites that match your research criteria.

Rather than starting with a blank page, you can build a shortlist of existing websites, compare their characteristics, and investigate the most promising opportunities.

Keep in mind that third-party traffic estimates can be inaccurate. Advertising network records also don't establish how much a website earns.

5. Identify Smaller, More Specific Niches

After finding an interesting website, look deeper into its market.

For example, instead of targeting personal finance broadly, investigate more specific areas:

Budgeting tools for freelancers.
Financial planning for small businesses.
Tax resources for independent professionals.
Expense management for remote workers.

These are research directions, not guaranteed low-competition opportunities.

The same principle applies to almost any industry. Focus on a defined audience, a recurring problem, or a collection of related questions that existing websites don't answer well.

You can use Niche Pickers to discover websites in relevant categories and identify additional markets worth investigating.

6. Validate Your Niche Before Investing

Finding an interesting website doesn't automatically mean you've found a good niche.

Before spending months building your own site, validate the opportunity.

Research keywords and understand search intent.
Analyze the pages currently ranking in search results.
Identify content gaps you can realistically address.
Estimate the amount of useful content you can produce.
Research advertising, affiliate, and other monetization options.
Assess whether the audience has a genuine need for your content.

Start with a focused content plan. Publish a small batch of useful articles, monitor their performance, and adjust your strategy based on actual results.

Remember that your success will depend on competition, execution, content quality, user experience, and changes in search demand.

7. Make Niche Research a Repeatable Process

A structured research process helps you evaluate opportunities more consistently.

Start with a broad market. Find existing websites. Analyze their traffic, content, and monetization signals. Identify smaller topics. Validate demand before committing your resources.

Use databases and SEO tools to collect information faster, but make your final decision through independent research.

A database helps you discover opportunities. Your analysis determines which ones deserve your time.

Disclosure: Niche Pickers is featured in this article as a website research tool. It helps users discover websites and investigate potential SEO niches.

What matters most when choosing a niche: keyword difficulty, existing traffic, monetization potential, or the ability to create better content?

I made a free list of 100+ Product Hunt alternatives 2026

Haris Ahmad — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:01:33 +0000

100+ Product Hunt Alternatives in 2026

If you are launching a SaaS, AI tool, startup, app, or software product in 2026, Product Hunt is not your only option.

I made a free list of 100+ Product Hunt alternatives where you can launch, list, and promote your product.

21. G2

38. F6S

44. X

74. WIP

100. Launching Today

If you know another Product Hunt alternative that should be added to this list, let me know.

How I Built a SaaS Launch Directory With Next.js, Supabase and Vercel

Haris Ahmad — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:08:55 +0000

Building a SaaS is one problem.

Getting people to discover it is another.

After working on several SaaS projects, I noticed that many indie hackers and small teams could build good products but struggled with distribution. Product discovery platforms can help, but I wanted to build something focused specifically on SaaS, AI tools, apps, and developer products.

So I built CodeHype, a SaaS launch and discovery platform where founders can submit their products and get a dedicated product page.

You can check it out here: https://www.codehype.ai

This is how I built it and some of the things I learned along the way.

The idea

The initial concept was simple.

A founder submits a SaaS product, we review it, and it gets published on the platform.

Each product gets its own page containing its description, features, links, screenshots, and other relevant information.

I also wanted launches to have an SEO component. A product page should be useful for people discovering the product through search engines and AI search systems, rather than existing only for launch day.

That meant the technical architecture needed to be simple, fast, and easy to scale.

Tech stack

The current stack includes:

Next.js for the application
Supabase for authentication and database
Vercel for hosting and deployment
Cloudflare R2 for image storage
Dodo Payments for payments
Resend for transactional emails
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for analytics
Beehiiv for newsletters

I chose this stack because it allowed me to build quickly without maintaining a traditional server infrastructure.

Building the product submission system

One of the first things I needed was a structured submission flow.

A founder can submit information about their product, including:

Product name
Description
Website
Category
Logo
Screenshots
Social links
Founder information

The submission enters a review process before being published.

This became important because an open directory can quickly accumulate low-quality or spam submissions.

Instead of automatically publishing everything, I wanted to retain some control over the quality of the directory.

Generating product pages

Every approved product gets its own URL.

For example:

/products/product-name

The page contains the information submitted by the founder and additional metadata generated for search engines.

This creates a growing collection of pages around specific SaaS products and categories.

One lesson I learned here is that having thousands of URLs doesn't automatically mean having thousands of useful SEO pages.

Every page needs a clear purpose and enough unique information to be valuable.

Image storage with Cloudflare R2

Images became another problem.

Product logos and screenshots can become expensive and slow if you serve everything directly from your application infrastructure.

I moved product images to Cloudflare R2.

The application stores the relevant image URL while R2 handles the actual object storage.

This keeps the application layer relatively lightweight and makes it easier to manage product assets separately from the main database.

Authentication with Supabase

I used Supabase for authentication and database functionality.

This made it possible to let users create accounts and manage their submissions without building an authentication system from scratch.

Users can save information during the submission process and return to complete it later.

For a directory, this is particularly useful because submissions can contain several fields and assets.

Adding paid launches

The platform started with a free submission option.

I later introduced paid launch options for founders who wanted additional exposure.

The basic model looks like this:

Free Launch

A founder can launch without paying, with certain requirements around the backlink/badge.

Paid Launch

Paid tiers provide additional visibility and features.

Premium placements

Products can also purchase additional promotional placement on the platform.

The important part for me was keeping the basic submission accessible while giving founders optional ways to get more exposure.

What happened after launch

The first version went live with a relatively small amount of content.

Then the number of submissions started increasing.

Within the first 10 days, more than 200 products had been submitted/listed.

The platform also reached hundreds of registered users.

That created a new problem.

Scaling a directory isn't only about adding database rows.

You also need to think about moderation, SEO, page performance, image optimization, email notifications, payments, and the overall submission workflow.

One unexpected SEO problem

One of the biggest lessons came from Google Search Console.

Some product pages weren't being indexed as expected.

I initially assumed that generating a sitemap and creating unique URLs would be enough.

It wasn't.

I had to look at several things:

Page quality
Internal linking
Metadata
Structured data
Canonical URLs
Sitemap configuration
Page performance
Crawlability

I also discovered that adding structured data simply because it was available isn't always a good idea.

For example, product listing pages don't necessarily fit Google's Product structured-data requirements.

So instead of adding more schema markup, I removed schema that didn't accurately represent the page.

The lesson was simple:

SEO isn't about adding as much markup as possible.

The markup needs to accurately describe the content on the page.

Performance became important

As more products were added, page performance became another area I had to work on.

Large HTML responses, unnecessary JavaScript, images, fonts, and database operations can quickly make a site slower.

Some of the optimizations I worked on included:

Reducing unnecessary server-side operations
Optimizing image delivery
Preloading important fonts
Reducing unnecessary JavaScript
Improving database queries
Moving static assets to appropriate storage
Reviewing components that were being rendered unnecessarily

The biggest lesson here was to measure before optimizing.

It's easy to spend hours optimizing something that barely affects the actual user experience.

What I would do differently

If I were starting the project again, I'd spend more time designing the data model and SEO architecture before launching.

Directories have a different problem from normal SaaS applications.

Every new product can create another page.

That sounds great initially, but it also means your architecture needs to handle:

Thousands of URLs
Duplicate content
Low-quality submissions
Categories
Search
Filtering
Internal linking
Indexing
Images
Moderation

I would also build the moderation system earlier.

Once submissions start increasing, manually managing everything becomes difficult.

What I'm building toward

CodeHype started as an experiment in SaaS discovery.

The goal now is to make it easier for people to discover useful software while giving founders another distribution channel for their products.

The platform is available at:

https://www.codehype.ai

If you're building a SaaS, AI tool, developer tool, or app, I'd also be interested in hearing what you're building.

Building the product is only one part of the process.

Distribution is an entirely separate engineering and business problem.

DEV Community: Haris Ahmad

How to Research Profitable SEO Niches Before Building a Website

1. Research Websites That Already Get Traffic

2. Analyze More Than Keyword Search Volume

3. Find Websites With Advertising Monetization Signals

4. Use a Website Database to Speed Up Research

5. Identify Smaller, More Specific Niches

6. Validate Your Niche Before Investing

7. Make Niche Research a Repeatable Process

I made a free list of 100+ Product Hunt alternatives 2026

100+ Product Hunt Alternatives in 2026

1. CodeHype

2. Tiny Launch

3. BetaList

4. Uneed

5. Peerlist

6. Indie Hackers

7. AlternativeTo

8. SaaSHub

9. Dev Hunt

10. There's An AI For That

11. Futurepedia

12. Toolify

13. FutureTools

14. AIxploria

15. TopAI.tools

16. AI Valley

17. AI Scout

18. SaaSFrame

19. SaaS Genius

20. SaaS Worthy

21. G2

22. Capterra

23. GetApp

24. Software Advice

25. Crozdesk

26. FinancesOnline

27. SourceForge

28. Alternative.me

29. Slant

30. AppSumo

31. AppAdvice

32. AppAgg

33. BetaPage

34. StartupBase

35. Startup Stash

36. Startup Ranking

37. Crunchbase

38. F6S

39. Gust

40. Wellfound

41. AngelList

42. Hacker News

43. Reddit

44. X

45. LinkedIn

46. GitHub

47. GitLab

48. SideProjectors

49. Microns

50. Acquire.com

51. Flippa

52. Tiny Acquisitions

53. StartupBlink

54. Startup Pill

55. Launching Next

56. KillerStartups

57. StartupLister

58. StartupBuffer

59. FeedMyStartup

60. SaaS Adviser

61. SaaS Surf

62. StackShare

63. OpenAlternative

64. Open Source Alternative

65. LibHunt

66. Awesome Open Source

67. Free for Dev

68. DEV Community

69. Hashnode