Hey Time Billionaire — Aadit here.

Today’s issue covers:

• 10 legal websites that should be illegal

• A $90k/mo business built over a weekend

• What’s the Decoy Effect and why does everyone use it?

Now, let’s jump in ↓

10 legal websites that should be illegal

Before we get into the websites, here’s a lame joke:

But what is it?

It’s basically a list of unknown (yet ultra valuable) websites. Free Photoshop alternatives, free high quality stock images etc. You get the gist, right?

I’ve seen a lot of people make lists like this. Not all do so well. So I asked the creator to share their thoughts.

Previously you enjoyed reading about the behind-the-scenes of Val Katayev making $10m+ in the first year of his business.

This time I’m bringing you Zain‘s

Okay now onto the websites. These are my favorite picks:

1. TinyWOW: Get free versions of tools you usually pay for (Photoshop etc.)

2. Removebg: the background editor you wish was embedded on your mac.

3. Convertio: convert any format into another format for free.

Check all the websites out below:

How Dharmesh built a $90k/mo side hustle

If you don’t know Dharmesh — he’s a baller. He’s the co-founder of Hubspot (worth $17B and publicly traded).

In his free time, he spun up WordPlay.com in 24 hours. It’s a game just like Wordle.com but better (you can play multiple times a day and share challenges with your friends).

Over the past, 4 months, it has had over 10m+ website visits (a lot for a new game!)

And if he turns on Google Ad Sense on the website, it could make $90k/mo. But the legend himself has turned ads off (again — baller move).

Anyway, I’d attribute the success of WordPlay to 3 factors:

1. Great product. Dharmesh already validated the idea of this game by seeing the success of Wordle (it was becoming increasingly popular). So the game already did well. He then improved it and launched his own.

2. Distribution. Dharmesh has 1m followers on LinkedIn. Another couple hundred thousand on Twitter. He has a good network. The initial push for the game was not hard to get. And it was free (through social). PS. If you have a slick product or game and want to drive traffic, let me know. I can most probably help out (internet audience = 200k+).

3. Built-in distribution. You can get your followers to play a game once. For them to come back, Dharmesh built the “challenge” system. Inside the game, you can challenge your friends. Now suddenly the game becomes even more addicting due to its competitiveness.

He also made a video about why WordPlay is better than Wordle. And that video itself has 130k+ views. Smart marketing.

You can listen to Dharmesh talking about his newest side-hustle here.

What's the Decoy Effect?

Decoy Effect may not be known by all but it’s popular in everyday purchasing.

Apple uses the Decoy Effect. Starbucks uses the Decoy Effect. Even subscription services like The Economist use the Decoy Effect.

Here’s the entire business tactic in one picture:

What do you get from this?

The “medium” option is the decoy.

The medium option is there to drive more sales of the largest option.

The large, $7.00, popcorn seems cheaper when it’s only a mere $0.50 more expensive than the medium option.

Pretty smart tactic.

I learnt about the Decoy Effect and other smart psychological marketing tactics from Abhishek Shah’s newsletter — Psychology of Marketing.

He has a backlog of amazing case studies but recently niched down further into Psychology because that’s what he knows best (smart move imo!)

Check out his newsletter here.

That’s it for this week.

See you next Tuesday — Aadit

PS. Here are a couple things you'll love:

My Best threads

Favorite Twitter tools

Audience-building course for founders