aha-sites

No, I Don't Think You Should Stop Marketing Your Business

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:00:46 GMT

What's The Difference Between and Aha Site and Marketing Your Own Site?

I've spent a lot of time explaining what we're building with Aha Sites, and I know some of the questions that are going to come with it.

Why would I build someone else's website instead of my own?

Why wouldn't I just hire an SEO company?

What happens when a customer realizes this isn't my main website?

Isn't this just rank-and-rent?

Why wouldn't my internal marketing team just do this?

They're fair questions.

So let me start with probably the most important thing I can say about Aha:

I don't think you should stop investing in your own business. Seriously.

Build your brand.

Build your primary website.

Invest in your Google Business Profile.

Build reviews.

Create real content.

Film your people.

Develop your sales process.

Build your internal operations.

Track your customers.

Run advertising for your own brand.

Do SEO on your own website.

You should absolutely be doing those things.

Aha Sites isn't supposed to replace your companies existing marketing efforts.

It's supposed to give your company another way to expand.

Aha probably isn't for everyone.

If you're starting a service company tomorrow and don't have your phones figured out, don't know your margins, don't have anybody to answer inquiries, and don't have the operational capacity to take another 20 customers...

You probably don't need five Aha properties.

Build your business first.

The companies I'm really interested in working with tend to understand the economics of their market already.

They know approximately what a customer is worth.

They understand what they're willing to pay to acquire one.

They understand that a $50 lead for one service might be fantastic while a $50 lead for another might make absolutely no sense.

They've probably run Google Ads.

They've probably paid an SEO company.

They've probably had an agency tell them about impressions, clicks and rankings while they sat there thinking:

“Okay... but how much money did we actually make?”

Those are the people I built Aha for.

Because I've been on the other side of that table.

“But we already have a website.”

Good.

You should.

Aha isn't asking you to replace it.

Let's say you're a plumbing company operating across Chicagoland.

Your primary website is your company.

That's where your brand lives.

Your history.

Your reviews.

Your team.

Your careers.

Your full service offering.

Your story.

Keep building it.

But now let's say you decide:

“Water heater replacement is incredibly profitable for us, and we want more of those jobs in Geneva.”

That's a different question.

Now we're talking about acquiring market share for a specific service in a specific geography.

That's where an Aha property can come into the picture.

Your website doesn't disappear.

Your marketing department doesn't disappear.

Your brand doesn't disappear.

You've simply added another digital property capable of capturing demand in a market you care about.

“We have an in-house web developer.”

Awesome.

Keep them.

Aha isn't built around convincing you that nobody else knows how to make a website.

There are plenty of talented developers.

There are plenty of good SEO people.

There are plenty of good marketing departments.

What we're saying is:

This particular thing is our job.

We research these properties.

We acquire them.

We build them.

We structure them.

We maintain them.

We work on getting them found.

We test them.

We track them.

And increasingly, we're building technology and processes specifically around operating them as a portfolio.

Could your company recreate everything we're doing internally?

Probably.

The better question is:

Do you want to?

Because your team's time has a cost.

My job isn't to teach your company how to become Aha Sites.

My job is to make sure you have more opportunities sitting in your pipeline.

And at some point I have a pretty unsophisticated way of looking at that:

Who gives a shit how the sausage is made if it tastes good?

A customer is not thinking "I need my plumber to teach me how he replaces the water heater."

They're thinking, "I need hot water."

You don't necessarily need to become an expert in how we're developing and maintaining an entire portfolio of digital properties.

You need customers.

We're going to obsess over our part. You obsess over yours.

And the reverse is equally important.

“Okay, but won't consumers think it's weird?”

This was something I wondered about too.

So I tested it by running ads to one of our portfolio sites using my own money.

We got leads.

And what I've learned from years of running search campaigns and now from testing the Aha concept is that consumers searching for a service tend to be remarkably practical.

Someone has a broken water heater.

They go to Google.

They search.

They look at the top results.

They click something relevant.

They evaluate what they see.

They call or request information.

They're trying to solve a problem.

They're not conducting a forensic investigation into the corporate ownership structure of every domain in the search results.

That's especially true when someone is collecting estimates.

If your company is the exclusive provider behind an Aha property, we can clearly represent the provider relationship on the property, including using your branding where appropriate.

And if somebody asks?

Tell them.

“That's one of the websites we use to market this service.”

There's nothing particularly mysterious about it.

The important part is that we represent the relationship accurately and don't mislead someone about who will actually provide the service.

And this concept is much bigger than Aha.

Aha's particular structure is our own, but the broader idea of building digital properties and marketplaces that capture consumer demand and connect it with service providers is already well established.

Look at QuinStreet.

QuinStreet operates performance marketplaces across several high-value industries, including home services, insurance and financial services. The company describes its model as matching consumers who are researching products and services with relevant brands and providers.

Its Modernize Home Services business has operated across categories including roofing, HVAC, windows, solar, siding, bathrooms and kitchens. When QuinStreet acquired Modernize in 2020, it reported that the combined businesses had connected more than 3 million homeowners with home-service professionals during the preceding 12 months .

And in January 2026, QuinStreet completed its acquisition of HomeBuddy, another home-services demand-generation platform focused on connecting homeowners with service professionals.

Those aren't the same business model as Aha Sites.

But they demonstrate something important:

Consumers already use independently operated digital properties and marketplaces to find companies that can solve their problems.

We're approaching that opportunity differently.

So who is Aha actually for?

I think it's the company that already understands this conversation.

You don't need me to convince you that marketing matters.

You already know.

You don't need me to explain that Google Ads costs money.

You've probably spent plenty.

You don't need another SEO agency promising that they'll “10X your organic visibility” if you sign a 24-month agreement.

You've heard it.

You're looking at your market more strategically.

Maybe you want to enter another city.

Maybe you want to dominate one particularly profitable service.

Maybe you're acquiring another company and expanding the territory.

Maybe you already have great operations and simply need more demand.

Maybe your primary website is doing well, and you want another asset working alongside it.

Or maybe you look at our available properties and think:

“If you can get that thing producing opportunities in my market, I'll take them.”

That's who I want to work with.

You build your company. We'll build the property.

That's really the relationship.

Keep investing in your brand.

Keep building your own website.

Keep hiring good people.

Keep improving operations.

Keep doing the marketing that's already working.

Aha doesn't need to replace any of that.

We're another asset in the portfolio.

And if one property works?

Maybe we build another.

If that market works?

Maybe we expand to five surrounding cities.

If one service performs exceptionally well?

Maybe we build an entire Market Takeover around it.

And because we can layer Aha Tracking onto those properties, we can increasingly measure what actually happens after those opportunities enter your business.

That's ultimately how I want this relationship to work.

Not:

“Fire your marketing team and give us all your money.”

More like:

“You know your business. We know ours. Tell us where you want to grow.”

Then let's go build something there.

Generating the Lead Was Never the Hardest Part

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:00:45 GMT

How Do We Track Lead-to-Revenue Attribution Through Aha Tracking?

A few years ago, through my marketing agency, I started working closely with a tree service company.

We didn't just run a few ads.

We went through what I would consider a pretty significant digital transformation .

Website. Search. Advertising. Lead generation. CRM. Follow-up. Tracking. Content. The pieces started coming together.

Eventually, there were days where we were seeing 2, 5, sometimes 10 new leads come through in a day.

That's an exciting problem to have.

But it exposed another problem that I would eventually see over and over again.

Generating demand and understanding what happened to that demand are two completely different things.

And as I started getting involved with larger service companies, this became increasingly obvious.

I've watched companies go through major digital transformations and, in some cases, double their revenue.

But here's the crazy part.

You could walk into a service business doing $10 million or $20 million a year and ask what sounds like a very simple question:

“Where did your new customers come from?”

And suddenly things got complicated.

Where did all the customers actually come from?

Let's say the marketing report says Google Ads generated 83 leads last month.

Great.

Where are they?

Which ones became customers?

Which ones booked estimates?

Which ones actually bought something?

How much revenue did they generate?

What was the gross value of those jobs?

Were they profitable after advertising and marketing costs?

And were all 83 actually new customers?

Now take the website.

How many people called the phone number on the website?

How many submitted a form?

How many called through the company's Google Business Profile?

How many of those callers were completely new customers versus existing customers calling back about previous work?

What happened after the phone rang?

Did somebody answer?

Did the customer schedule?

Did somebody follow up?

Did an estimate go out?

Was it accepted?

And eventually:

Did the marketing actually generate profitable new business?

Those are completely different questions from:

“How many leads did we generate?”

And I became increasingly frustrated by how difficult it could be to answer them.

The attribution gap

This isn't necessarily because anybody is doing something wrong.

It's partly a structural problem with traditional marketing.

The advertising company manages the ads.

The SEO company works on the website.

Someone else manages the CRM.

The office staff answers the phones.

Sales handles estimates.

Operations completes the work.

Accounting knows what actually got paid.

And everybody has their own system.

So whose responsibility is it to connect the entire thing?

That's where things get fuzzy.

The agency says:

“We generated the lead.”

The business says:

“Okay... but did that lead become a customer?”

Marketing might not know.

Sales might not know where the lead originally came from.

The CRM might list it as "website."

Google Ads reports a conversion.

Analytics reports another conversion.

The office says the phone has been ringing.

Revenue is increasing.

Everybody feels like something is working.

But nobody can clearly draw the line:

Marketing Investment → New Customer → Closed Job → Revenue

I got tired of that.

And it became another problem I wanted Aha to solve.

So we built Aha Tracking.

There's a fundamental difference between the Aha model and a traditional marketing engagement.

With Aha Sites, we own and operate the digital property generating the opportunity.

If someone discovers one of our properties, calls the dedicated number on that property or submits its form, we can establish a much cleaner starting point for attribution:

That opportunity originated from the Aha property.

Now we can start following what happens next.

That's where Aha Tracking comes in.

Aha Tracking is the optional customer-management, communication, and attribution layer we're building around our digital properties.

Instead of stopping at:

“Here's your lead. Good luck.”

We can build a system around what happens afterward.

Someone calls your Aha Site.

A dedicated tracking number can identify the property that generated the call.

Call activity can be recorded in the system.

Depending on the configuration and applicable consent requirements, calls can be recorded or transcribed for quality and attribution purposes.

The customer record can be created automatically.

The source can stay attached to that customer.

And the opportunity can begin moving through a pipeline.

Someone submits a form.

Same idea.

The inquiry doesn't have to disappear into someone's email inbox.

It can create or update a contact.

Notify the appropriate person.

Trigger an immediate response.

Create an opportunity.

Assign a follow-up task.

Send a text.

Send an email.

And begin tracking what happens next.

Now instead of simply knowing:

Aha generated 37 leads.

We can start working toward something much more valuable:

37 inquiries

31 qualified opportunities

24 estimates

15 closed customers

$48,000 in attributed revenue

Those numbers are just an example of how the reporting works, not Aha performance claims, but that's the level of visibility I'm interested in building.

Because 37 leads doesn't tell me whether your marketing worked.

Revenue gets us much closer.

Profitability gets us closer still.

And then there's the next problem: what happens when it REALLY works?

This is something I don't think people talk about enough.

Growth creates operational problems.

Everyone wants more leads when they're getting five a month.

Then suddenly they're getting 20.

Then 30.

Then 50.

Now somebody has to answer them.

Somebody has to follow up.

Somebody has to remember who asked for an estimate Tuesday.

Somebody has to follow up with the person who didn't answer.

Somebody has to know which customers need another service six months from now.

Somebody has to know which opportunities are still open.

And somebody eventually needs to answer:

“Did we actually make money?”

That's why I don't want Aha to simply become another lead company.

The lead is the beginning of the transaction, not the end of our responsibility.

This changes how we can expand into new markets, too.

One of my favorite parts of the Aha model is how we're approaching the value of the digital property itself.

Imagine you're a plumbing company and you want us to develop a new territory for you.

We acquire or develop a relevant property.

There's no meaningful traffic yet.

No lead history.

No demonstrated revenue.

I'm not interested in pretending that brand-new property is worth the same amount as an established Aha property generating consistent opportunities.

We want the value of the property to develop alongside the opportunity it creates.

That means a service provider can potentially get involved early at a relatively low initial lease cost while we put in the groundwork.

We develop the property.

We work on its search visibility.

We learn what the market responds to.

We can add advertising when appropriate.

We track what happens.

And as the property establishes real market value, its lease value can be reassessed at future renewal periods based on the opportunity it represents.

That gives the early service provider something I really like:

a head start.

You're not being asked to pay mature-property pricing for an asset that hasn't matured yet.

You're growing with it.

Now imagine doing that across an entire market.

This is where our Market Expansion packages start making a lot more sense.

Instead of acquiring one Aha property, a company might eventually operate across a portfolio:

Plumbing Property — Geneva

Water Heater Property — Geneva

Plumbing Property — St. Charles

Water Heater Property — St. Charles

Sewer Property — Batavia

Each one can have its own source tracking.

But all of the opportunities can feed into the same customer-management infrastructure.

One inbox.

One contact database.

One pipeline.

One automation system.

One attribution layer.

Suddenly handling 20–50 opportunities a month doesn't have to mean spreadsheets, missed calls, forgotten estimates, and five disconnected marketing dashboards.

The infrastructure is already there to help organize it.

And because Aha properties can begin at a lower cost while they're being developed, the business doesn't necessarily have to make an enormous upfront investment just to find out whether a new territory has potential.

Build the market.

Track the opportunity.

Manage the customer.

Measure the revenue.

Then decide where to invest more.

That's what I wanted Aha to solve.

I originally started Aha because I had spent years building digital assets for other businesses and eventually had the realization:

Why am I not building these assets for myself?

Then AI and modern web technology gave us the ability to research, develop, and manage those properties at a scale that would have been extremely difficult for a company our size just a few years ago.

But there was still one piece missing.

What happens after it works?

I've seen what happens when businesses suddenly start generating substantially more demand.

More leads don't automatically create a better business.

Sometimes they just create a bigger mess.

So if Aha is going to help create the opportunity, I want us to build the infrastructure that helps companies actually capture it, respond to it, understand it, and measure what it becomes.

Because at the end of the day, I don't want the conversation with an Aha customer to be:

“Look how many leads we generated.”

I want it to become:

“Here's where your customers came from. Here's what happened to them. Here's the revenue we can attribute to those opportunities. And here's where we should build next.”

That's Aha Tracking .

And for me, it solves one of the biggest problems I've encountered throughout my career in digital marketing:

Closing the gap between marketing activity and actual business growth.

We’ve Been Building With AI Since the Beginning. Now It’s Changing What We Can Build.

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:00:43 GMT

How Aha is Possible Today.

AI Is Going to Consolidate Marketing. I Don't Think That's Necessarily a Bad Thing.

I recently had a conversation with a founder in the retail space whose company does around $50 million a year.

We were talking about marketing, technology, and where all of this is heading, and he said something that stuck with me:

AI is going to consolidate marketing.

And in a lot of ways, I think he's right.

We're going to watch things that once required several different people, platforms, agencies, and workflows become increasingly connected.

Research. Data analysis. SEO. Content architecture. Website development. Advertising. Reporting. AI is going to touch all of it.

The knee-jerk reaction is to assume that's a bad thing.

I don't necessarily think it is.

It depends entirely on what we decide to replace with AI, and what we don't.

At Aha, We Are Anti-AI slop.

I've been working with AI since ChatGPT first became publicly available, and ironically, the more I've used it, the more opinionated I've become about where I don't want it.

I don't want every company's social media filled with obviously AI-generated graphics.

I don't want a local business replacing photographs of its actual people with fake employees who don't exist.

I don't want every company video to feature some synthetic spokesperson standing in an imaginary office.

And when I need customer service, I'd still rather talk to an actual person than fight my way through an AI agent pretending to understand why I'm annoyed.

There are places where real matters .

Real people.

Real photography.

Real video.

Real customer interactions.

Real projects.

Real expertise.

Real branding.

AI should help a company communicate those things, not replace them with synthetic versions because it's cheaper.

But behind the scenes?

That's where I think AI changes everything.

And that's a huge part of what we're building with Aha Sites.

When ChatGPT became publicly available, I was one of those people who immediately realized this wasn't just another piece of software.

I started using it. A lot...

Not because I thought AI was going to magically build businesses or replace the work I had spent years learning how to do. I was interested in something else:

What happens when someone who already understands websites, SEO, advertising, and local markets gets access to technology that can dramatically accelerate the work?

We've been experimenting with that question ever since.

And Aha Sites is probably the best example yet of where I think this is all heading.

AI Didn't Replace What We Know. It Made It Scalable.

Before Aha, I've worked with, consulted for, and built websites for more than 40 service businesses. That experience matters.

AI doesn't inherently know which services actually make money for a plumbing company. It doesn't know which pages I'd prioritize in a competitive local market. It doesn't automatically understand whether a keyword represents someone researching a problem or someone ready to spend thousands of dollars fixing one.

Those are things you learn from actually doing the work.

What has changed is how quickly we can turn that knowledge into infrastructure.

We're now developing workflows that use multiple AI systems at different stages of the process.

We can research a market.

Analyze competitors.

Evaluate search opportunities.

Organize keyword and SEO data.

Research services and customer intent.

Identify potential content gaps.

Develop site architecture.

Build structured instructions and prompts around what we've learned.

And then feed that information into the Aha Sites Web Builder Platform , where we can rapidly turn that research into an actual digital property.

The underlying platform we're building Aha on now supports AI-assisted generation of entire sites, individual pages and sections, while also supporting contextual content generation, metadata, image alt text, and programmatic site creation through APIs.

That's a massive change from how I was building websites just a few years ago.

We're Building a Website Factory. Not an AI Content Factory.

There's an important distinction here.

Our goal isn't to push a button and publish 10,000 garbage AI websites.

I think the internet has enough of those.

The opportunity I see is combining human strategy + real market data + AI research + structured workflows + professional web infrastructure.

Think about a plumber who comes to Aha and says:

“I want to grow water heater replacement in these six Chicago suburbs.”

Historically, developing six individual digital properties properly could require an enormous amount of repetitive work.

With the system we're developing, we can approach that completely differently.

Research the six markets simultaneously.

Compare search behavior.

Identify the services worth targeting.

Analyze competing websites and SERPs.

Develop the appropriate site architecture.

Build structured prompts based on that research.

Deploy the foundation through our web platform.

Then have a human actually review, edit, optimize and maintain what gets published.

AI accelerates the process. It doesn't eliminate the process.

And that's what has me so excited.

Things That Used to Take Weeks Can Start Happening in Days.

We're reaching a point where the limiting factor isn't necessarily how quickly someone can physically drag sections onto a website anymore.

The limiting factor becomes:

Can you identify the right opportunity?

Can you structure the right information?

Can you build the right strategy?

Can you evaluate what the machines produce?

And can you actually get the finished property to perform?

That's a completely different skill set.

Our web infrastructure is increasingly built for this kind of workflow. Sites can be created programmatically from structured business information, design requirements, and custom instructions, while reusable components, centralized content, and global design systems make maintaining a portfolio substantially different from manually maintaining dozens of disconnected websites.

That's particularly important for Aha because we're not trying to build one website.

We're building a portfolio of digital properties.

If we eventually operate hundreds or thousands of properties across different services, cities, and industries, we need technology that allows us to manage that portfolio intelligently.

That's where AI starts becoming much more interesting to me than simply asking ChatGPT or Claude to write a blog post.

And We're Still Early.

What's crazy is that the technology keeps moving.

The platform underneath Aha now supports conversational AI that can create and modify pages, update content and collections, and even generate custom website functionality. There are also integrations designed to let external AI tools interact with the web platform.

So we're experimenting.

We're figuring out which AI platform is best for which job.

One may be better for research.

Another may help us analyze large amounts of information.

Another may help structure a content architecture.

Another can help us turn all of that information into structured instructions.

And our web platform becomes the production environment where that work becomes an actual property.

The goal isn't AI-generated websites.

The goal is:

AI-assisted digital property development.

And I think we're only beginning to understand what's possible.

And for you nerds out there like me...

If you're the person who read all of that and thought:

“Yeah, yeah, AI is cool. But what is actually underneath these websites?”

This part is for you.

Because this is one of my favorite parts of what we're building.

The Aha Sites Web Builder Platform isn't some server sitting underneath my desk that I'm praying doesn't catch fire.

The underlying website infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and includes cloud hosting, automatic backups, DDoS mitigation, encryption, and access controls.

Every published property receives SSL protection without us having to go buy and manually maintain certificates for every domain. The infrastructure supports HTTPS/TLS encryption in transit and AES-256 protection for data at rest.

There is also a global CDN for static assets, responsive delivery across devices, automatic PageSpeed optimization and site backups that allow previous versions to be restored.

And this gets even more interesting from an SEO perspective.

The platform handles a lot of technical infrastructure that we'd otherwise have to repeatedly engineer ourselves, including server-side rendering, canonical tags, redirects, predictable HTML structure, SSL and other search-friendly fundamentals.

The security layer isn't something we're duct-taping together with 17 WordPress plugins either.

The underlying platform has completed a SOC 2 Type II examination and is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified , while incorporating automated vulnerability scanning, continuous patching and penetration testing into its security program.

And that's where this starts getting kind of ridiculous in a good way.

A few years ago, if I told you I wanted to:

Research 50 local markets → analyze the search opportunity → develop individual site architectures → generate the initial infrastructure → deploy them onto AWS-backed hosting → automatically provision SSL → distribute assets through a CDN → centrally manage the sites → optimize them → track their performance → continuously improve the portfolio...

...I would have needed either a substantial development team or a concerning amount of caffeine.

Now?

We're building the workflows to actually do it.

And that's the part of AI that gets me excited.

It isn't that the computer suddenly knows more about my business than I do.

It's that technology is removing barriers between an idea and our ability to actually build it.

Things I would have considered impractical for a company our size only a few years ago are becoming possible.

And Aha Sites is our attempt to find out just how far we can take that.

After building websites and doing SEO for 40+ service businesses, I decided to start owning the assets I was building

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:00:41 GMT

The Idea Behind Aha Sites

I've spent the last 8 years building websites, running Google Ads, doing SEO, and consulting for 40+ service businesses.

Plumbers, tree companies, contractors, auto services, and other local businesses.

And somewhere along the way, I had an “aha” moment.

I'm pretty damn good at getting local service websites found.

I've learned how different service categories behave in Google Ads, what companies are willing to pay for leads, how bidding changes from one market to another, how much a water heater lead might be worth compared with a larger tree-removal or restoration job, and increasingly, how to get websites showing up not only in traditional Google SERPs but in AI search experiences like Gemini.

But there's something about the traditional agency model I've started to dislike.

You build a client a great website. You spend months improving their SEO. Rankings start moving. The website starts doing what you built it to do. And eventually, the amount of work required changes.

Sure, there are always optimizations, new content, new markets, conversion improvements, advertising, etc. But I realized I don't want to spend the next 10 years of my life constantly finding more client fulfillment work just so I can continue billing hours or retainers.

Why wasn't I building some of these assets for myself?

That became Aha Sites.

The concept isn't completely new. People in the SEO world will recognize elements of “rank and rent.” But I'm approaching it differently.

I've started building a portfolio of domains around specific services and geographic markets. Aha owns the digital property, develops it, builds its search presence, and makes that property available to an exclusive service provider in that market.

And rather than pretending every brand-new domain is immediately some incredibly valuable lead-generation asset, I'm trying to let the value of each property develop with the property.

A newer property might initially have a relatively small monthly lease/hosting cost while we're doing the groundwork. Then we measure what happens.

Does it rank?

Does it generate traffic?

Does it generate calls and forms?

What are those opportunities worth?

As a property develops actual traffic and lead-generation history, we can reevaluate what that digital property is worth at renewal.

That part of the model is really important to me.

I want the economics to be tied to the actual asset we're building.

So before really launching this, I decided to test the concept on my own dime.

I bought and developed GenevaWaterHeaterService.com, targeting water heater services in Geneva, Illinois. And it worked.

I was able to get the property ranking prominently in Google for targeted searches, including a #1 result I've documented, and I started seeing the site surface in Gemini/AI search results as well.

Then I wanted to know whether the same property could work as a paid acquisition asset.

I've managed Google Ads for service businesses before, so this wasn't my first time dealing with bidding, service-specific CPLs or local search campaigns.

I put roughly $500 of my own money aside to test paid acquisition on the property.

Early in the test, we generated a lead at roughly $20 CPA.

That's obviously one lead, not enough data for me to claim that I've discovered some magical $20-lead machine. But that's exactly why I'm testing these properties myself before making bigger claims about them.

And that's when the whole concept really clicked for me.

Instead of:

Client hires me → I build asset → I rank asset → client owns asset → I repeat forever

What if I build a portfolio?

Aha buys the property → Aha develops it → Aha gets it found → a service provider leases the market → Aha continues improving the asset.

Now we're taking it live.

I'm buying domains across different home-service categories and markets, but I don't want to blindly build 1,000 websites and hope someone wants them.

I want the service providers themselves to help determine where we go next. If a plumber comes to me and says: “I want Naperville, Geneva, St. Charles, Wheaton, and Batavia.” Great.

Let's look at those markets, the services you actually want, search behavior, advertising economics, the domains we already own, and what territories make sense to develop.

We're also building larger “market takeover” packages where a company can potentially secure multiple service-specific properties across a territory rather than leasing one website.

And eventually there is another layer to all of this.

Because I've spent years running advertising and working inside these businesses, I don't just want to dump a form submission into someone's email and call it a “lead.”

We're building optional tracking around the properties so eventually we can understand:

Traffic → Call/Form → Qualified Lead → Estimate → Closed Job → Revenue

That's where I think this gets really interesting.

If a property eventually generates $100,000 in attributable business for a service company, that's a fundamentally different asset from a domain I registered three weeks ago.

The value should reflect that, so yes, there's some rank-and-rent DNA here. But what I'm trying to build feels more like a portfolio of digital real estate for service businesses, where the properties are developed, leased exclusively, measured, advertised when appropriate, and valued according to what they actually become.

I'm pretty dialed in on this right now because it's combining basically everything I've learned from building sites, SEO, paid search, and consulting for service businesses, except now I'm building assets instead of only selling fulfillment.

We're at the point now where I'm looking for our first group of exclusive service providers, as well as companies that want to tell us what territories they would want developed specifically for them.

I'm curious what other people in home services, SEO, paid search, or lead gen think about the model.

If you owned a service company, would you rather have someone pitch you another SEO retainer, or have the opportunity to become the exclusive provider behind a digital property that's already being developed for the exact service and market you want?