← Local SEO
Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast
The Most Passive $104K/M Online Business You've Never Heard Of
4 min read6 May 2026Worth watching
TL;DR
Kyle, a former TV producer, built a $104K/month business by creating simple local websites that rank on Google, then renting the incoming leads to small businesses for a flat monthly fee. The model requires almost no ongoing work once a site ranks, making it genuinely passive compared to most online business models.
Key points
1
The 'website landlord' model involves building generic local SEO sites (e.g., 'junk removal Austin Texas'), ranking them on Google, then forwarding the incoming calls to a local business owner for a flat monthly fee with no contracts.
2
Overhead is as low as $25/month per site (hosting, domain, tracking phone number), while Kyle's company does $100K/month with under $5,000 in total monthly overhead.
3
The sales pitch is frictionless: offer a free one-week trial with no credit card required, let the leads prove themselves, then negotiate a flat monthly fee — the business owner is already making money before agreeing to anything.
4
Once a site ranks in a low-competition local niche, it rarely needs to be touched again — Kyle has clients who have paid him every month for 5 years without a single conversation.
5
The 80/20 of ranking these sites is content and backlinks; advanced SEO tactics like schema markup are unnecessary because you are competing against small local businesses, not major funded websites.
Actionable insights
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Start by contacting people in your existing network who own local businesses — Kyle landed his first $6,000 client by sending a screen recording to a high school friend who was a workers comp attorney, before he had a single result to show.
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Use Ahrefs or Mangools to find supply-demand gaps: look for niches (gutters, epoxy flooring, spray foam insulation, crime scene cleanup) in cities where search volume exists but competitor websites are weak and outdated.
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Keep pricing simple and slightly below what you could charge — clients who forget their monthly bill exists will stay for years without ever calling you, which is more valuable than squeezing out an extra $500/month in churn-inducing fees.
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Use CallRail for call tracking: it provides a whisper message to the client ('call from Kyle leads'), call recordings, and automated email alerts — all of which build trust and eliminate disputes about lead quality.
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Build sites on Weebly if you are a beginner (drag-and-drop, low learning curve) and migrate to WordPress once you have a partner or learn it — WordPress reduces costs and speeds up builds significantly.
Notable quotes
“I have clients that have been with me for 5 years now and I haven't spoken to them or had any communication with them since and they've been paying me every single month and that's my goal.”
“I almost want to present it like I need their help taking over these calls because I can't handle them — I just have to almost trick them into accepting this beautiful gift.”
“Our company does around $100,000 a month as a whole, and our overhead's maybe less than $5,000 a month.”
Worth watching?
✅
Worth watching the full video?
Watch if you want to hear Kyle walk through a live example site (auto glass repair New Orleans) and explain his exact cold-call script — the core framework is captured here but the conversational nuance and live demo add real context.
Saved you some time? The creator still deserves a like.
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