Marketing · Do this yourself

Send local businesses ready websites they edit from a spreadsheet.

How it makes money: Charge local businesses $29/mo for a ready website they edit from a spreadsheet.

Agent setup: Intermediate · Connects several tools (Vercel) with payments and simple data. How we rate this

💰 u/everestchris: ~$500/day (self-reported, r/passive_income) ~$500/day (self-reported, r/passive_income)

🔥 16 posts this week · 15 likes

Based on u/everestchris on Reddit (opens in new tab)

Where this came from (Reddit)

Local owners hate being trapped by agencies that charge for every small website change.

The threads (in our words)

Reddit blocks automated reads, so we couldn’t record upvote or comment counts. Revenue figures are the poster’s own claim (self-reported), not verified. The business below is our own design inspired by these threads.

Who it’s for

Plumbers, cleaners, dentists and other local businesses.

Adapt it to your industry

  • Start with one niche or customer type, then expand.
  • Ask your first 10 customers what they would pay before you build more.
  • Keep a human check on anything sent in a customer’s name.

Step by step

  1. Build a site template that reads its content from a Google Sheet.
  2. Have an agent make a sample site from each business’s public info.
  3. Email the owner a link to their preview, following cold-email laws (CAN-SPAM, GDPR).
  4. Charge a small monthly fee by Stripe to keep it live.
  5. Owners edit hours and prices in the sheet; no agency needed.
  6. Check deliverability and replies weekly.

Ready-to-copy prompt

Here is a local business’s public info: [paste]. Write the homepage text: headline, 3 services, about, hours and a call to action.

Start with AI

Opens the AI with this guide and the prompt filled in.

Open in ChatGPT (opens in new tab)Open in Claude (opens in new tab)Open in Grok (opens in new tab)
Time
2–6 weeks for a first versionOur estimate

Your autonomous stack

Autonomy: Agents draft, schedule and report on content for each client. Your part: Weekly: skim the queue and client reports (about 1 hour).

Every layer an agent-run business needs, in order. Prices are public list prices, checked Oct 16, 2026.

  1. Agent (the brain): Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot runs the business day to day: writes, answers, decides small things and reports to you. Claude Code or Codex are alternatives.
  2. Build and hosting: Vercel hosting (opens in new tab) (Hobby free · Pro $20/mo). The product or service your customers use.
  3. Payments: Stripe payments (opens in new tab) (No monthly fee · 2.9% + 30¢ per card payment). Automatic checkout and receipts. Other options: PayPal Checkout (3.49% + 49¢) or Lemon Squeezy (5% + 50¢, handles sales tax).
  4. Customer acquisition: Buffer (scheduled X posts) (opens in new tab) (Free plan (3 channels, 10 queued posts each) · Essentials $5/mo per channel, billed yearly), beehiiv newsletter (opens in new tab) (Free up to 2,500 subscribers), Instantly (cold email) (opens in new tab) (Growth $47/mo). Agent-written SEO pages, scheduled X posts and a weekly newsletter, plus cold email to businesses that follow CAN-SPAM/GDPR (real sender, opt-out link, no bought consumer lists).
  5. Delivery: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). A Grok Bot routine delivers the product or result as soon as someone pays.
  6. Support: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot answers the support inbox; anything unclear is flagged for you.
  7. Monitoring and schedule: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot scheduled routines run each day: send, check for failures, alert you if something breaks.
  8. Analytics: Google Analytics (opens in new tab) (Free). Tracks visits, signups and sales so the agent can report what works.
  9. Human checkpoint: Weekly: skim the queue and client reports (about 1 hour).
  10. Price: charge $29 per business (monthly website plan). Offer the first 3 customers a founding price for honest feedback.
Monthly cost$77–$102/monthFree tiers → paid plans of the tools above. Card fees come out of each sale.
What you could earn · EstimateEstimate: 60 businesses × $29 = $1,740/moOur estimate, not a fact or a promise. It’s simple math if you land these customers at this price.
Details: source, numbers and tags

What they did

Agents build a sample site for each business; owners pay to keep it and edit it from Google Sheets. We designed this business from real Reddit threads; it is an idea for you to build, not a description of the posters’ businesses.

How it went

Found on Reddit in r/passive_income (1 thread). Upvote and comment counts weren’t retrievable, so none are shown. On X, 16 posts matched our search for this idea in the 7 days to 2026-10-16.

Worth knowing

Send few, relevant emails with an easy opt-out; never spam.

Difficulty
BeginnerOur rating
Time to build
Not reportedOur estimate
Monthly cost
Not reported
Revenue
~$500/day (self-reported, r/passive_income)Self-reported: The founder’s own claim; not verified by us
Engagement
No public countThe source shows no number
X buzz
18.3 · 16 posts in 7 days15 likes, 4 reposts, 4 replies, 0 quotes on 7 top posts · fetched Oct 16, 2026 · query: ("website" OR "websites") ("local businesses" OR "small businesses") (agency OR "google sheet" OR outdated) (cheap OR monthly OR edit) -is:retweet lang:en

Posted · Added Oct 16, 2026

Original builder recipe

  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  1. Build a site template that reads its content from a Google Sheet.
  2. Have an agent make a sample site from each business’s public info.
  3. Email the owner a link to their preview, following cold-email laws (CAN-SPAM, GDPR).
  4. Charge a small monthly fee by Stripe to keep it live.
  5. Owners edit hours and prices in the sheet; no agency needed.
  6. Check deliverability and replies weekly.

Tags

Read the original

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