The Story
Jacky Chou did not plan to build a portfolio of internet businesses. He planned to be an engineer. Then he scored dead last in a midterm with over 300 students, and something clicked: this was not his path.
He went home, searched for ways to earn online, and started pulling threads. That search led him into SEO and affiliate marketing - and eventually into building and running a set of businesses that now collectively generate over $3M a year.
Today, Jacky runs Indexsy, an SEO agency, alongside a growing cluster of SaaS tools: LocalRank.so, Trackings.ai, IndexChex, RankTack, and others. He also operates a short-term rental in Lisbon and publicly shares monthly revenue across the entire portfolio. In March, that number was $246.8k.
What makes Jacky's approach worth studying is not just the revenue - it is the architecture behind it. The agency funds the SaaS tools. YouTube drives trust and sign-ups more efficiently than any other channel. Public revenue tracking generates inbound. Each piece reinforces the others.
None of it happened fast. But the compounding is now impossible to ignore.
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Key Insights
The portfolio model is underrated - especially when the pieces talk to each other
Jacky runs his agency and SaaS products not as separate businesses but as a single ecosystem. The agency generates reliable cash flow that funds SaaS development without the need for outside investment. The audiences across both reinforce each other. The SaaS cluster has been growing toward revenue parity with the agency - which is exactly where Jacky wants it to go.
YouTube is not just a content channel - it is a high-intent distribution engine
Jacky is unambiguous about this: YouTube is his highest-leverage channel, by a wide margin. A video with a few hundred views routinely drives more product sign-ups than posts with tens of thousands of impressions on other platforms. The reason is intent. Someone watching a specific product walkthrough on YouTube is much closer to making a decision than someone passively scrolling a feed. Long shelf life, high search intent, and compounding traffic make it genuinely different from every other channel.
Public revenue tracking is a trust engine - not just a vanity exercise
Posting monthly revenue breakdowns across the whole portfolio has become one of Jacky's most durable growth levers. It builds credibility with other operators. It generates a steady flow of inbound leads for both the agency and the SaaS tools. And it attracts potential hires and partners who already understand what he is building. Transparency, done consistently, compounds into authority.
Launching an MVP fast and validating with a real audience changes everything
Jacky and his co-founder Peter Wang built the first version of LocalRank.so in a week. Because Jacky had been publishing daily YouTube videos for over two years, they already had an audience when they launched. The result: nearly $20k MRR out of the gate. That is not luck - it is what two years of consistent audience-building looks like when it converts.
Authentic, specific video content outperforms polished generic content every time
Jacky's content philosophy is straightforward: document, do not perform. His build-in-public playlist is exactly that - no script, no production crew, just an honest record of what is happening in the business week to week. He also emphasises specificity over breadth. People scroll past 'How to grow a SaaS.' They stop for 'How I grew LocalRank from $0 to $X using this exact webinar funnel.' Real numbers and real screenshots in specific contexts cut through in ways that broad advice never does.
Google updates are a business risk - not an abstract concern
Jacky has been hit by algorithm updates more than once. When your business runs on SEO — both the agency side and the content side — those updates hit revenue directly. His takeaway: take chips off the table when things are working well. Do not assume a good run will continue indefinitely. Build some resilience before you need it.
How the Distribution Stack Works
YouTube first. The primary channel, consistently prioritised above everything else. High intent, long shelf life, best conversion to sign-ups.
Public revenue tracking. Monthly breakdowns posted across social media. Builds trust, generates inbound, attracts the right people.
SEO on their own products. Long-form and programmatic content targeting relevant keywords. Slow to build, but compounds meaningfully over time.
Webinar funnel for LocalRank. A product demo doubled as a webinar, with a Skool community (Local Rank Academy) as the conversion vehicle.
Reddit and short-form. Smaller channels but worth maintaining. Manages a related subreddit and produces short-form content for Instagram.
Jacky does not rely on paid acquisition. The entire flywheel is organic — and the channels reinforce each other.
What You Should Do Now
If you are already running a service business, look at it as a platform. Agency or freelance cash flow can fund a product you build alongside it. Jacky used Indexsy to fund his entire SaaS cluster without outside capital. That model is available to more people than realise it.
Start your YouTube channel now - even if it is not ready. Jacky is explicit: the first 50 videos are practice. View counts at that stage are a bad scorecard. You are learning to talk on camera, finding your voice, and figuring out what your audience actually cares about. The only way to get through that stage is to publish through it.
Find one number worth sharing publicly. You do not have to post full revenue breakdowns. But pick something real - a milestone, a user count, a before-and-after metric - and start sharing it consistently. Public progress builds the kind of trust that advertising cannot buy.
Go specific, not broad, with your content. Stop trying to cover wide topics. The more specific the video, the post, the case study - the more it stands out. Real numbers, real screenshots, real outcomes. That is what gets shared and remembered.
Do not wait to start building software. Jacky's biggest regret is waiting too long on SaaS. If you have a service business and an audience, you likely already have enough signal to validate a product. Recurring revenue from software behaves fundamentally differently from project-based income. Starting earlier changes the compounding math significantly.
Surround yourself with operators at a similar stage. Jacky co-built Advise.so partly for this reason — a community where you can drop a real question and get real feedback from people running actual businesses. That quality of input is hard to find and worth seeking out deliberately.
You can follow Jacky at jackychou.com, on YouTube, and on X and LinkedIn. He also runs a newsletter at marketingletter.com where he shares build-in-public updates, revenue breakdowns, and marketing playbooks.
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