How 3 "Set-and-Forget" Websites Earn Me ~$2,000 a Month

In 2023, the same week I launched the website my Rank to Earn course is built around, I quietly launched three more sites on the side — simple one-page funnel sites, the exact kind I teach in my entry-level One Pager course. I barely touched them again. Three years later, they earn me between $1,800 and $2,000 a month, from what adds up to maybe a single month of work spread across three years. Here's the honest breakdown of how.

By Eugene Madondo · Founder, Rank to Earn

The experiment: three sites, launched and left alone

I've told the story of a big, investor-funded project before. This one is the opposite — and honestly, it's the story I'm more proud of. Back in 2023 I set up three simple one-page funnel sites on the side and then, more or less, walked away. No daily grind, no constant tinkering. I wanted to see what these little sites could become if I gave them the right start and let time do the heavy lifting. (I've embedded my full video walkthrough of these exact sites above — this is the written version.)

The whole setup took about two hours

Here's the part people struggle to believe. I designed each one-pager off a WordPress template, built a handful of cheap, easy backlinks so Google and Bing would index them and hand them a little authority — and then I closed the laptop. No AI mass-production, no fancy tools, no daily grind. Just about two hours per site, then walk away.

These days I don't even buy templates — I build my own with Claude. I wrote up exactly how in my guide on building your own WordPress templates with Claude. The only thing I did after launch was watch. Each site was wired up to Google Analytics and Search Console, so the moment one started gaining traction, I'd know — and that traction would be my cue to put in a little more effort.

How a two-hour site became a three-year asset

When a site showed signs of life, I fed it a little more. Here's how that played out:

Some people spend money on premium backlinks at this stage to push authority and rankings harder. I didn't — these were side projects and I wasn't trying to spend big. Patience did most of the work for free.

Where they stand today

Two of the three sites now make around $1,500 a month each (about R25,000). The third does $300–500 a month. Combined, that's roughly $1,800–2,000 every month — from sites I've put maybe one month of total work into across three years.

About half of that ~$1,200 went on translation. Everything else is evergreen content that keeps earning whether I show up or not. And because these sites have real traffic and revenue, they're assets — I could sell them tomorrow. They have genuine value.

"But this sounds expensive…"

It really isn't. You can start hosting for as little as $2.99 a month on Hostinger, run multiple sites on the same plan, and usually get a free domain thrown in. All in, you're looking at roughly $200 (about R3,300) per site for an entire year — hosting, domain, the lot. That's the full price of admission to build something that could pay you for years. If you've never set one up before, here's my step-by-step guide to setting up your first WordPress site.

The Hostinger link above is an affiliate link — if you sign up through it I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Want to build these yourself?

These three sites aren't some special trick — they're the exact one-page funnel sites I teach in my entry-level course. If you want the step-by-step version of what you just read, this is where to start.

The takeaway

Three sites. Two hours to start, about a month of work spread over three years, roughly $1,200 spent total — now $1,800–2,000 a month and 160,000 visits. That's not magic. It's patience plus a little know-how. And it's exactly what the One Pager course teaches you to do.

Get the One-Pager Strategy → Set up your first site