Imagine stumbling upon a website that does just one simple thing—yet it rakes in nearly half a million dollars every single month. Sounds too good to be true, right? But it’s not. In fact, it’s a real example of how offering a free, helpful tool online can turn into a highly profitable business.
The website in question is FastDL.app, and its purpose couldn’t be more straightforward: it lets users download Instagram videos. That’s it. Paste the URL, and the tool does the rest. No flashy features, no complex setup—just pure functionality. And apparently, simplicity sells. This unassuming website draws in over 54 million visitors every month.
What makes this even more impressive is how it generates income. Since the service itself is free, the money doesn’t come from subscriptions or upsells. Instead, the site is monetized almost entirely through display ads. Every time someone visits, views a page, and interacts, the site earns money. Even with a conservative ad revenue estimate of just $2 per 1,000 page views—a low figure due to much of the traffic coming from countries like India and Pakistan—the numbers quickly stack up. With such high volume, this site is easily pulling in an estimated $458,000 monthly. And if the real ad rate is a bit higher, it could be making close to $1 million.
But it’s not just FastDL.app. There’s an entire category of websites built around free tools that quietly make huge profits month after month. Take Online-Stopwatch.com, for example. It provides a simple online stopwatch. You click to start, stop, or reset, and that’s the whole service. Yet, it pulls nearly 4 million visitors each month and averages over 7 page views per user. With ads displayed on each page, this seemingly basic tool brings in around $139,000 every month.
What’s especially interesting is that many of these sites could be built fairly quickly using basic coding skills or even AI tools. They don’t necessarily require a large team or complex infrastructure. That makes them not only profitable but also incredibly accessible for solo entrepreneurs.
Another example is CoinValueChecker.com, which functions more like a blog but includes a searchable tool that lets users check the value of old coins. Just enter a year, and it brings up related content and information. It’s not high-tech by any means, but it’s useful. That usefulness is enough to bring in nearly 875,000 visitors a month—and with ads in place, it generates well over $21,000 monthly, likely more when affiliate income is factored in.
Then there’s ZeroGPT.com, a website that detects whether text was written using AI. It offers a limited number of free checks, but also has a paid version for more in-depth analysis. Despite being relatively new, it already attracts over 50 million monthly visitors. Thanks to its highly relevant content and high-value traffic, this site could easily be pulling in more than $545,000 a month from ads alone—not counting its subscription revenue.
And these are just a few standout examples. Other simple yet highly successful tools include percentage calculators, YouTube thumbnail downloaders, and even browser-based photo editors. In one case, a Photoshop alternative created by a solo developer draws in millions of users and brings in over $200,000 per month—again, just from display ads.
What all of these have in common is that they provide something useful for free. There’s no sign-up wall, no hard sell—just utility. And that’s often enough. With strong SEO and consistent user interest, these tools build up massive traffic over time. Monetizing that traffic becomes as simple as embedding some code for ad networks.
So the question is: what kind of simple, helpful tool could you create? It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. In fact, the simpler the better—especially if it solves a real-world problem or saves time. Whether it’s a calculator, downloader, checker, or converter, the key is giving something away for free… and letting the traffic do the heavy lifting.
The takeaway? Free doesn’t mean worthless. Sometimes, offering something for nothing can be the most profitable move of all.
