LocalRank: 12 Questions Answered From the Starter Story Interview, With Timestamps
LocalRank is a local SEO product its founder built after a search update and AI answers wiped out his content sites, and it launched at about $20,000 a month, mostly on the back of a YouTube video with fewer than 2,000 views. In the Starter Story interview, founder Jacky reports around $250,000 a month across a portfolio of small internet businesses, with LocalRank at roughly $50,000 a month. His case for daily YouTube videos and for many income streams instead of one is the core of the episode.
We transcribed the interview with transcribe.so and asked it the same questions we ask every episode. Each answer below is written in our own words and points to who said it and the exact second, so you can check it in the video. All figures are self-reported by the founder and we have not audited them. We are not affiliated with Starter Story, and we sell a transcription service.
| Who is speaking | Role |
|---|---|
| Jacky, founder of LocalRank | Answers the questions |
| Starter Story hosts | One asks the questions; the show's producer joins him for the closing reflections |
What does LocalRank do and how does it make money?
LocalRank turns what the founder knew about local SEO into a product (Founder, 02:54), and it is the product his YouTube videos point viewers to (Founder, 07:13). The interview does not walk through its features, its plans or its prices, so we cannot say more about how it charges.
What numbers does the founder share?
Around $250,000 a month across the whole portfolio (Founder, 01:24). By business: his largest does about $85,000 a month and $500,000 over the last 12 months (Founder, 01:52), counting one payment processor only, without bank transfers (Founder, 02:00); LocalRank has done $454,000 since it started last March, roughly $50,000 a month, and a third business $300,000 over 12 months (Founder, 02:05). A fourth does $25,000 to $30,000 a month, and seven or eight smaller sources bring in $170 to $5,000 a month each (Founder, 02:15). The host's intro counts 13 income streams (Host, 00:56).
Who is the founder?
He started an SEO agency in 2015 and has run it for more than ten years (Founder, 02:36). Alongside it he built a portfolio of content sites that did very well (Founder, 02:43) until search updates in late 2023 wiped out their traffic (Founder, 02:48). The interview does not describe a coding background.
Where did the idea come from?
From the loss of those content sites. He took what he knew about local SEO and turned it into LocalRank (Founder, 02:54). The first proof of demand was the launch itself, which hit about $20,000 a month right away (Founder, 03:00).
How did YouTube save the business after search updates and AI answers wiped out the content sites?
His sites earned from display ads and affiliate links on clicks from search (Founder, 03:23). Once AI summaries answered the query on the results page, searches stopped turning into clicks (Founder, 03:29). The agency kept him afloat (Founder, 03:41), and YouTube, where he had already posted for two to three years, became the channel that carried the next product (Founder, 04:56).
"YouTube. It was my insurance policy." (Founder, 04:54)
What single thing moved the numbers most?
The LocalRank launch video. About 80% of the launch revenue came from YouTube (Founder, 05:17), from a video with about 1,800 views, while the launch post on X drew about 30,000 views, 15 times the impressions, and only 20% of the revenue (Founder, 05:22). His explanation is the format: unpolished, stream-of-consciousness videos that land with a small audience (Founder, 05:01).
"It's not amazing, but it's a very, very valuable audience." (Founder, 06:06)
How did it get to $20,000 a month at launch?
The interview gives one channel, not a sequence. His strategy is to show up every day (Founder, 05:45), which he has done for two and a half years (Founder, 05:48). His first video had 30 views in its first day (Founder, 05:52), and his daily uploads now get about 1,000 to 2,000 views (Founder, 06:02). Each video links to a newsletter, which is where the selling happens (Founder, 08:09).
What is the start-over playbook?
Seven steps, in his order:
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Pick a niche you can own (Founder, 06:24). The narrower the better (Founder, 06:34).
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Post daily for six months (Founder, 06:38), one long video and one short a day (Founder, 06:42).
"You'll learn way more in 30 daily bad videos than you know two perfect ones." (Founder, 06:46)
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Solve problems your audience already has, ideally ones you have yourself, and end with a link to your product (Founder, 06:46; 07:13).
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Hook viewers in the first five seconds (Founder, 07:13).
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Ride trends and search, since being first on a new topic lets a small channel rank (Founder, 07:41).
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Build a simple funnel: a free resource in exchange for an email, and no pitch early in the video (Founder, 08:09).
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Make it routine until skipping a day feels odd (Founder, 08:36).
Why does the founder spread his income across many businesses?
Because the agency is what survived when the content sites failed (Founder, 03:41), he now argues that spreading revenue is the only way through the AI era (Founder, 03:48). The host pushes back a little: in his view the founder is really working on one thing, serving the same customer in different ways (Host, 11:05).
What went wrong?
The big failure was the content-site portfolio, which he says a search update plus AI summaries destroyed (Founder, 00:35). The smaller one: he used to open videos with filler instead of a hook, and viewers left at once (Founder, 07:13; 07:41).
What is the founder's advice?
"don't listen to the people who are screaming at you, telling you to focus on that one project." (Founder, 09:03)
He credits spreading his revenue as the reason he is on the show at all (Founder, 09:03).
What did the hosts take away?
The producer was struck by the YouTube strategy and wondered whether he should be making videos himself (Host, 09:33), and noted that a portfolio means not putting everything in one basket, though the misses go unmentioned (Host, 10:32). The main host's point: a captive audience of 500 to 2,000 daily viewers is enough to build a business (Host, 10:00).
The interview does not cover how long LocalRank took to build, who its customer is, how it is priced or what it costs to run.
What to copy
- Judge a channel by revenue, not views. A small audience that trusts you can outsell a post with 15 times the reach.
- Build the audience before you need it. Two to three years of daily videos were already in place when the content sites failed.
- Keep every product near one customer. A portfolio is safer when each business serves the same buyers you already reach.
More from this series: YouTube search as a SaaS growth channel, every Starter Story episode answered, and our free YouTube transcript tool if you want to run the same questions on any interview.