Exploring opportunities: Zapier + Stripe + Airtable Integrations.
I'm thinking about building a new SAAS app: an airtable integration for the stripe users.
Finding a niche:
Before I start coding, I wanted to see if there is any decent searches for keywords related to what I will build. I need to figure out how I would bring any users to this app if I build it.
Started by exploring Zapier to see what integrations they have related to Stripe, and found the following zaps. Based on a few Stripe events, you can create a custom action on Airtable.
Zapier has a few custom templates for Stripe and Airtable.
Will be interesting to see how many keyword searches are there for these template related topics.
How these Zaps work is that when an event is triggered on Stripe you can create an action which either creates/updates/deletes information on Airtable. For example, one of the popular templates is to "Add new Stripe sales to Airtable". This means that when a new sale happens on Stripe, Zapier listens to that webhook, and then send a request to create a new record on Airtable. It can also work in reverse. For example, if a new customer record is entered on Airtable, Zapier listens to that webhooks and creates a new customer on Stripe.
Zapier has the following plans - and for the $69/month plan, a customer can create upto 2000 tasks (actions) per month. For creating more than 10,000 tasks, a customer will have to pay upwards of $129/month.
I then used Ahrefs to explore what pages related to Stripe is driving the most traffic to Zapier. It was quire disappointing to see not much search volume related to these keywords on Zapier. This could be either because Zapier is not targeting these keywords, because other keywords like "chatgpt", "ai" are much more popular, or because people are not searching for anything related to Stripe + Airtable on Google.
And this was confirmed by Ahrefs. The keywords related to Stripe and Airtable is as good as zero.
Hence, i'm going to drop building an Airtable integration for Stripe now as there is hardly any searches on Google. I may get a few installs from the Stripe App store, but one thing I learnt from building a Shopify app over the last year is to not only depend on the app store.
From this research, I did discover that Zapier is being used a lot, and they get a ton of traffic from Google.
The interesting part of this graph is that they increase their traffic grew from a few thousand visits to 2M visits from 2015 to March 2023, but from March 2023 to September 2023, they have grown from 2M to 6M+ visits. Wow. More than 4M+ visitors added in around 6 months.
Let's look at the number of keywords they are targeting before/after March 2023.
These are the stats:
- The total number of keywords targeted has increased by 56%
- The number of keywords in the top 3 has increased by 61%
- The no. of keywords between 4-10 has increased by 52%
- The no. of keywords on the second page has increased by 45%
- The no. of keywords on the 3rd, 4th and 5th page has increased by 52%
- The no. of keywords on 5th+ page has increased by 61%
I'm still a little confused as to which of these keywords actually drove the most traffic in the last 5-6 months, and unfortunately, I need a higher plan on Ahrefs to compare keywords between the two time periods. So, the challenge is this - we need to find out which of the pages and keywords improved the most in the last 6 months.
I'm going to start by looking at the top performing pages right now - and then use wayback archive to see if the page existed 6-12 months back. This way i'll know the new pages bringing in the most traffic to Zapier. Not the best, but a good way to figure the recent, high impact trending pages.
Below is a table of the top pages on Zapier, and I've highlighted the new pages that were added in the last 6 months:
| Page | % of traffic to Zapier website | Main keyword | Did it exist 12 months ago? |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-does-chatgpt-work/ | 12% | chatgpt | No |
| https://zapier.com | 7.2% | zapier | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-chatbot/ | 6.6% | ai chatbot | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-chatgpt/ | 6.3% | chatgpt | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-image-generator/ | 3.2% | ai generator | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-dall-e-2/ | 3% | dall-e | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-url-shorteners/ | 1.7% | shorten url | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-keyword-research-tool/ | 1.6% | keyword research tools | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-mass-delete-emails-gmail/ | 1.3% | delete all emails on gmail | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-writing-generator/ | 1.1% | ai writing | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-todo-list-apps/ | 1% | todo list | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/photoshop-alternatives-best-free-photo-editors/ | 1% | free photoshop | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/openai-playground/ | 1% | openai playground | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-midjourney/ | 0.9% | midjourney | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-calendar-apps/ | 0.9% | calendar | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/jasper-ai/ | 0.9% | jasper ai | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-note-taking-apps/ | 0.8% | note taking apps | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/free-project-management-software/ | 0.7% | project management tools | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-stable-diffusion/ | 0.7% | stable diffusion | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-digital-signature-apps/ | 0.7% | online document signing | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/ai-art-generator/ | 0.6% | best ai art generator | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-sms-app/ | 0.6% | best online sms | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-ecommerce-shopping-cart-software/ | 0.6% | e commerce websites | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-video-generator/ | 0.6% | ai generated video | No |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-time-tracking-apps/ | 0.5% | time tracking apps | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-mind-mapping-software/ | 0.5% | mind map tool | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/daily-routines/ | 0.5% | daily routine | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-appointment-scheduling-apps/ | 0.5% | scheduling app | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-free-invoice-software/ | 0.5% | free invoice software | Yes |
| https://zapier.com/blog/best-time-tracking-apps/ | 0.5% | time tracking apps | Yes |
Looking at this table it makes sense that the jump in traffic from 2M visits to 6M+ visits to the Zapier website was largely due to new pages which targets the highlighted keywords. Google trends confirms the same.
Which is the best opportunity for me:
I'm a solo developer and before jumping into a crowded but growing niche like "chatGPT", I need to do more research among all the pages above to see which of these keywords will be the easiest for me to rank.
I have to figure out these things for each of the opportunities above:
- Have I identified one big keyword related to people searching for help in this niche? Scale of 1-5, where 1 is yes, big keywords with lots of searches. Niche is something that is narrowed down from the trend keyword. E.g. "chat gpt", "ai" is the trend keyword - and "ai professional headshot" is the narrowed down niche keyword.
- Is there opportunity for me to create new content and will the content bring in traffic in 6 months? Scale of 1-5, where 1 is lots of opportunity for new content and preferred.
- Can I build something quick? Scale of 1-5, where 1 is fastest and preferred.
- Is the market big enough for another player? Scale of 1-5, where 1 big market and preferred.
As tempting as it is to build a chatGPT wrapper right now, I think answering these questions will give me a better idea on which niche to target. The lower the score, the better it is for me as a bootstrapped builder.
Going to spend a few days researching these trending topics from this angle to figure out what to build next.