The Koerner Office: AI Turns Directory Sites Into a Fast Passive Side Hustle

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
You know what's fascinating? The most powerful ideas often sound ridiculously simple at first. Chris Koerner's latest episode of The Koerner Office is a perfect example. He's taking one of the oldest internet businesses around, the directory site, and showing how AI transforms it into a fast, modern side hustle. And his message couldn't be clearer, right? What used to take months can now happen in minutes. But here's what I want to know. Do directories actually still work in 2024?
That's exactly what Koerner addresses. He calls them passive, saying, What I love about directories is their passive nature. Once built, they essentially run themselves. You can monetize them through advertisements, subscriptions, or by selling organic leads to the businesses you list. Pretty scalable model for anyone building an online business. So how does he actually find a niche? That seems like the hardest part. He uses this tool called chatllm.abacus.ai, which lets multiple AI models compete through what he calls route LLM.
GPT suggests commercial kitchen equipment repair. Claude offers estate clean out and senior downsizing. Gemini goes with aging-in-place home modifications. Interesting variety there. Which one does he choose? The estate clean out idea. Partly because 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. That's a real market need. He validates it with Google Trends too. Estate clean out shows a promising upward trajectory, even though broader terms like estate sale fluctuate.
Building on that point, how does he actually populate the directory with real businesses?
He asks AI to compile 20 real businesses in Dallas, Fort Worth. There's a funny moment where a prompt mistake generates the wrong type of businesses at first, but a clearer instruction fixes it quickly.
That's interesting, but what about verification? You can't just trust AI output blindly.
Exactly. Koerner emphasizes this. One model generates the list, while a second, unbiased model checks contact details before anything goes live. Clean, trustworthy information is everything for directories. And the actual site building? The AI agent handles it, asks for business name, category structure, color scheme, even connects Stripe for featured placements. Koerner keeps it nationwide to maximize traffic. The finished product has a searchable homepage, filterable categories, individual listing pages, the whole package.
So what's the bigger takeaway here?
Directories remain relevant in the AI era because models need organized, high quality sources to pull from. Koerner's message is practical and urgent. There has never been a better time to take advantage of these capabilities.