How Piotr Turned Copycats Into a $5K/Month Boilerplate Business

Meet Piotr Kulpinski.

Piotr Kulpinski is 37 years old and from Kraków, Poland. He has been programming for over 15 years, starting in college while studying computer science. After a few years at a software house, he quit to go freelance.

Piotr always craved more freedom. Launching Dirstarter provided some of that freedom for him.

My first online income came from a WordPress theme for directory websites that I built with a co-founder. That experience shaped everything that followed. Since then, I've bounced between freelance work, failed SaaS attempts, and side projects. Some worked, most didn't.

The one that really took off was OpenAlternative, a directory of open source alternatives to proprietary software. I built it in 48 hours back in 2024, it went viral with 100K visitors in the first week, and eventually grew to over $6,500/month in revenue.

That directory became the foundation for my next product.

Dirstarter is a Next.js boilerplate for building profitable directory websites. It's the exact codebase I use to run OpenAlternative and my other directories, packaged up and sold as a premium template.

It includes everything you need to launch a monetized directory from day one:

The idea is simple: instead of spending months building payment flows and admin panels, you can launch in days and focus on content and marketing.

Here's the thing about OpenAlternative: it kept getting copied. The clean, simple design that users loved also made it trivially easy to clone. I'd see knockoffs on Reddit almost every week. Same layout, same concept, different name.

At first, it frustrated me. Then I realized something: code is not the moat anymore. With AI tools making development faster than ever, anyone can replicate a website in days. Fighting copycats was a losing battle.

So I flipped the script. If people were going to copy me anyway, why not make it easier for them and make some money in the process?

I decided to package my codebase into a sellable boilerplate.

Since Dirstarter was based on an already-working product, the MVP came together fast.

It took 2 days to clean up the codebase. I stripped out everything specific to OpenAlternative: repository details, comparison pages, and all the programmatic SEO stuff built specifically for open source software. What remained was the core directory functionality.

Then 5 more days for the landing page. The hardest part was actually writing the documentation, but AI helped me tremendously with that.

Total time: one week from decision to sellable product.

Dirstarter went live in February 2025.

The first sales came surprisingly easy.

I didn't do a big launch. I just added a small "Built with Dirstarter" link on OpenAlternative, and sales started flowing on day one. It was like people had been waiting for it.

For months, people had been asking about my tech stack. "How did you build OpenAlternative?" "What tools do you use?" "Would you ever share the code?" When I finally offered it as a product, there was already pent-up demand.

Pricing evolution:

The first 20-30 customers came almost entirely from OpenAlternative traffic. No marketing needed, just existing demand I didn't know was there.

Getting the first customers was easy. Widening the funnel beyond OpenAlternative was the real challenge.

I tried many channels. Most of them failed:

Reddit
I was hesitant to promote aggressively because I didn't want to be labeled as "the boilerplate guy." The few posts I made received very low engagement. This post on r/directorymakers is a good example. It basically flopped.

Paid blog posts
Didn't move the needle.

Directory submissions
Listed Dirstarter on various startup directories. Minimal results.

The problem was that my target audience (indie hackers and developers wanting to build directories) is pretty niche. Generic marketing channels just didn't reach them effectively.

Two things ended up driving sustainable growth:

Affiliate marketing
I set up a 30% commission for affiliates. Yes, that's a big cut. But affiliates who are well compensated actually promote your product. I invested time building a partner network, reaching out to newsletter writers and indie hackers with relevant audiences.

Now affiliates do the marketing for me. I only pay when they drive a sale. Best ROI channel I've found.

I use Affonso as the affiliate system provider. I considered building my own, but decided it wasn't worth it.

SEO (slow but steady)
I started investing in content. Blog posts targeting keywords like "directory boilerplate," "Next.js directory template," comparisons with competitors. It's a long game, but traffic is slowly picking up.

It took roughly 6 months to hit 100 customers, around August 2025.

The first month or two were strong thanks to OpenAlternative traffic and pent-up demand. Then growth slowed as I exhausted that initial audience. Months 3-5 were slower, relying on occasional X posts and early affiliate sales.

Once the affiliate network started gaining momentum and SEO began contributing, sales picked up again.

Some directories people have built with Dirstarter:

Full showcase at dirstarter.com/showcase

Your existing projects can become new products
I didn't plan to sell a boilerplate. It emerged from something I was already running. If people keep asking how you built something, that's a signal.

Code is not the moat
If your business depends on people not being able to copy you, you don't have a business. I stopped fighting copycats and started selling to them instead.

Initial demand can be deceiving
The first sales came easy because of existing audience. The real work was finding channels beyond that. Don't mistake early traction for product-market fit with a broader market.

Most marketing channels will fail
Reddit flopped. Paid posts flopped. Directory submissions flopped. You just need to find the one or two things that work for your specific audience.

Affiliate marketing works if you're generous
30% commission sounds painful, but it aligns incentives. Affiliates who make real money actually promote your product.

Piotr’s Products

See you next time.

Thanks,
Jakob Jelling

I’m on X. Come out and play.