Alexis Bouchez

~ / research / r/InternetIsBeautiful: What Wins, What is Banned, and 50 Sites That Should Exist

r/InternetIsBeautiful: What Wins, What is Banned, and 50 Sites That Should Exist

A research note on the Reddit sub that has made more careers than most VC funds.

1. 1. Abstract

r/InternetIsBeautiful ("IIB") has 3.7M subscribers. A single hit there can drive 10M+ pageviews in 48 hours. It is the closest thing the open web has to a Product Hunt. Neal Agarwal of neal.fun built a $1M+ per year solo business by pointing his sites at IIB. The Pudding built a 10-person studio on a very similar pattern. Rashiq Zahid got his name in the NYT off McBroken.com.

But the rules changed in July 2024. AI content is now banned. Webgames (Wordle clones, quizzes, puzzles) are banned. Signup-gated sites are banned. Paid/freemium is banned. Business tools are banned. Articles are banned. What is left is a narrower, stranger space: single-purpose sites that work on mobile with no login, respond in 10 seconds, and have an "I just spent an hour on this" pattern.

This paper maps what wins on IIB in April 2026, profiles the creators who ship hit after hit, and proposes 50 specific sites that fit the current meta and that a single person could ship in a weekend.

2. 2. The top of the stack (verified, April 2026)

The current all-time top 50 on IIB, ranked by upvotes (all verified via the Reddit JSON API on April 14, 2026):

#SiteUpvotesOne-liner
1battleforthenet.com104.9k2017 net neutrality PSA, one-off political moment
2musclewiki.com71.4kClick a muscle, get exercises
3importyeti.com67.6kFind any company's supplier
4potustracker.us59kTrack what POTUS is doing
5justtherecipe.app48.5kStrip clutter from recipe sites
6quickdraw.withgoogle.com44.9kGoogle's doodle-guessing AI
7quiverquant.com44.6kExecutive private jet tracker
8neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems43.7kNeal Agarwal, 2022
98m46s.com41.9kGeorge Floyd time visualization
10mixedname.com41.2kBilingual baby names
11radio.garden39.8kGlobe of radio stations (2016)
12themarkup.org/blacklight36.6kTracker scanner
13nitter.net33kTwitter frontend
14sidewaysdictionary.com29.8kAnalogies for tech terms
15mcbroken.com28.8kMcDonald's ice cream machine tracker
16webkay.robinlinus.com28kWhat your browser leaks
17nobody.live27.5kTwitch streams with 0 viewers
18themusiclab.org26.4kHarvard tone-deaf test
19music-map.com25.7kLike this artist, try these
20myfridgefood.com25.3kRecipes from fridge contents
21bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk24.9k16,016 free BBC SFX
22typelit.io23.5kTouch-type entire novels
23conservethesound.de22kSounds of obsolete objects
24acapella-extractor.com21.3kIsolate vocals
25mycarmakesnoise.com20.8kLibrary of car noises
26mysterysear.ch20.4kSee what the previous person searched
27slideventura.com20.2kAce Ventura slide cam
28driveandlisten.herokuapp.com20kDrive in a city + local radio
29hacksplaining.com19.3kLearn security vulns
30mkorostoff.github.io/hundred-thousand-faces19kCOVID death toll visualized
31stumbled.cc18.9kStumbleUpon revival
32festivalmapper.com18.7kMusic festivals mapped
33merriam-webster.com/time-traveler18.6kFirst word used in your birth year
34everynoise.com18.5kGlenn McDonald, RIP as Spotify tool 2024
35touchpianist.com18.3kMash keys, play piano
36ruinmysearchhistory.com17.3kSearches that will ruin your feed
37thx.com/deepnote17.1kThe THX sound
38outrider.org/nuclear17.1kModern NUKEMAP alternative
39hyper-resolution.org/nightwatch17k717-gigapixel Rembrandt
40labs.500px.com17kSearch photos by sketch
41forgotify.com16.9kNever-played Spotify songs
42spend-elon-fortune.netlify.app16.7kSpend Elon's money
43thanaverage.xyz16.5kCompare yourself to the average
44fucknestle.art16.1kAvoid Nestlé products
45myscriptfont.com15.7kHandwriting to font
46pcottle.github.io/redditlook15.6kMake Reddit look like Outlook
47pointerpointer.com15.2kPoints to the point (2012)
48my80stv.com15.2kBrowse 80s TV
49vole.wtf/kilobytes-gambit15.2k1 KB chess engine
50thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com15.1kTimer that deletes the site

What surprised me during the research: classics like Globle, Wordle, Deep Sea, Password Game, Infinite Craft, Scale of the Universe, Window Swap, Submarine Cable Map, and Akinator are not in the current top 50. They existed, some blew up elsewhere, but most are now disallowed under the 2024 rules (webgames, specifically). Many of the "all time great IIB sites" you remember from 2015 to 2019 would get insta-removed today.

3. 3. Recent hits (past 12 months, April 2025 to April 2026)

Top posts from the last 12 months, ranked by upvotes:

  1. epstein.lasearch.app (16.4k): 1.4M Epstein files searchable.
  2. jmail.world (10.8k): Gmail clone loaded with Epstein's inbox.
  3. namitjain.com/tools/url-lengthener (6.5k): A URL shortener, but it makes URLs longer. Anti-utility joke.
  4. webdesignmuseum.org (5.5k): 2005 to 2010 web design nostalgia.
  5. downdetectorsdowndetector.com (2.6k): A DownDetector for DownDetector. Meta joke.
  6. mrmathblog.com (1.6k): Free math education with real depth.
  7. tacocents.com (1.2k): Taco Bell combo cost optimizer.
  8. stopcitingai.com (1.2k): Anti-AI-citation advocacy page.
  9. tas360.au (1.1k): 50 Tasmania 360 tours.
  10. skipcut.com (1.1k): YouTube ad skipper.
  11. weather.com/retro (1.1k): Weather Channel retro cam.
  12. xikipedia.org (1k): Doomscroll Wikipedia.
  13. mybreedmatch.com (972): Dog breed matcher.
  14. didtigerwoodscrashhiscartoday.com (956): Single-joke site.
  15. seekingblue.org (930): Wikipedia articles rendered on 3D Earth.
  16. aeris.edbn.me (898): Altitude-colored flight tracker.
  17. stillhere.stunl.io (824): Dog grief memorial.
  18. sheets.works/data-viz/dead-google (800): Killed by Google visualized.
  19. tuesdaynightmovienight.com/quiza (797): Cats (2019) recommendation engine (joke).
  20. howpoorami.org (738): Poverty comparison.
  21. phishyurl.com (729): Generate malicious-looking (but harmless) links.
  22. hirox-europe.com/pearl-earring (687): Vermeer gigapixel zoom.
  23. doomsday.march1studios.com (664): Failed apocalypse predictions, graphed.
  24. forty.news (566): News on a 40-year delay.
  25. scratchoffhub.com (561): Real scratch-off ticket odds.
  26. cosmic-odometer (561): How far you have traveled in space since birth.
  27. buyvsrent.org (545): Simple rent-vs-buy slider.
  28. floor796.com (541): Interactive GIF world.
  29. deflock.me (536): Flock surveillance camera map.
  30. drawafish.com (526): Draw a fish, watch it swim in the shared aquarium.
  31. q-3.eu (516): 12k radio stations, modern Radio Garden.

4. 4. The rules (as of April 2026)

This is the part most first-time submitters miss. Pulled from the mod-maintained rules:

  1. No aggregations/collections. No link lists.
  2. Not unique. No "X but for Y," no "another Pomodoro/notes/todo app."
  3. No webgames. No quizzes, puzzles, Wordle-likes, Globle-likes, Travle-likes.
  4. No articles/videos/static or animated images. No blog posts, no LinkedIn posts, no galleries.
  5. No stores/demos/paid. No freemium. No "pro tier."
  6. No signup/email/webcam required. Must work anonymously on first load.
  7. No extensions/downloads. Web only.
  8. No politics. (Current-events piggybacks are tolerated if factual/archival, intolerant if partisan.)
  9. No AI-generated content OR AI-driven functionality. Added July 2024. Kills GPT wrappers, AI chatbots, "AI does the thing" sites, unless AI is genuinely required.
  10. 90/10 self-promotion. New accounts posting just their own site get shadowbanned.
  11. No business tools. No job boards, no SEO, no Product Hunt-style launchpads.

Mods frequently sticky a post titled "[SUB NEWS] Generic and Repetitive Site Submissions." If your site looks like something that has been posted before, it gets removed within an hour.

5. 5. Winning patterns (April 2026)

Ten patterns working right now. Each has at least 3 verified hits in the past 18 months.

5.1 Current-events piggybacks

Somebody scraped a newly released big database, wrapped it in a search UI, posted it to IIB. Top of the year 2025 to 2026: Epstein files search (#1, 16.4k), Epstein Gmail clone (#2, 10.8k). Also the Killed by Google dataviz (#18, 800). 2020 had its own: McBroken (ice cream machine tracker during COVID peak), Outrider NUKEMAP (during North Korea scare). The newsworthy dataset is the product. You ship a 2-page site over a weekend.

5.2 Anti-utility jokes / punchline URLs

"I made a URL shortener but it makes URLs longer." "I made a DownDetector for DownDetector." "I made a site where you can generate phishy-looking (but harmless) links." Winners: url-lengthener (6.5k), downdetectorsdowndetector (2.6k), phishyurl (729), fucknestle.art (16.1k), thiswebsitewillselfdestruct (15.1k). The joke is the site. Domain is the punchline.

5.3 Nostalgia / Web 1.0 revival

Web Design Museum (5.5k), Retro Weather Channel (1.1k), 80s TV browser (15.2k), Conserve the Sound (22k), BBC sound archive (24.9k), Merriam Webster Time Traveler (18.6k). Hit pattern: pull something from the pre-2010 archive, make it interactive, add a simple modern UI.

5.4 Real-time counters tied to current pains

Potus Tracker (59k), Quiver Quant private jet tracker (44.6k), Aeris flight tracker (898), Doomsday clock (664), Cosmic Odometer (561), Forty News (566). Must update in real time and the number must mean something emotionally.

5.5 Scraped-database search

Epstein files (16.4k), Epstein Gmail (10.8k), mrmathblog.com (1.6k), MuscleWiki (71.4k, scraped exercise database), ImportYeti (67.6k, scraped bills of lading), Mixed Name (41.2k, scraped name frequencies). Find a big dataset, scrape it, make it searchable with a beautiful UI, post.

5.6 Physical-world-as-interface

Radio Garden (39.8k, spin globe, hear radio), Drive and Listen (20k, drive a city), Festival Mapper (18.7k), Deflock (536, camera map), Tas360 (1.1k, Tasmania 360 tours), q-3.eu (516, global radio). A live or archival link to specific points on Earth. Pick a location, get immediate audiovisual feedback.

5.7 Gigapixel / zoomable impossible images

Nightwatch 717-gigapixel (17k), Hirox Pearl Earring (687). Niche category but consistently hits. You do not need to own the photo; museums publish gigapixel versions.

5.8 Emotional / single-purpose

Stillhere (824, dog grief memorial), Drawafish (526, shared aquarium). Sites where you contribute one small thing and see everybody else's contributions.

5.9 Meta-internet jokes

DownDetector for DownDetector, Reddit Look Like Outlook (15.6k), This Website Will Self Destruct (15.1k), Cats 2019 quiz recommendation (797), thanaverage.xyz (16.5k). The joke is about internet culture itself.

5.10 Data-viz one-pagers

100,000 Faces for COVID (19k), Sheets.works Killed by Google (800), HowPoorAmI (738), BuyVsRent slider (545), 8 minutes 46 seconds (41.9k). One chart, one question, one answer.

6. 6. Who ships these

A small number of creators dominate. Studying them pays off.

Neal Agarwal (neal.fun). Sole creator, dropped out of CS undergrad. Estimated $1M to $3M/year from baked-in brand sponsorships (Omaze, others) plus The Grid newsletter sponsors. Ships 3 to 6 major projects per year. Big ones: Password Game (June 2023), Stimulation Clicker (December 2024), Infinite Craft (February 2024, peaked at 10M+ DAU), Absurd Trolley Problems (2022, 43.7k on IIB), Deep Sea, Spend Bill Gates' Money (2016 original). Stack: p5.js, vanilla JS, hand-crafted HTML. No frameworks. His sites load in under 500ms because they are static.

The Pudding (pudding.cool). Team of ~10 (Russell Goldenberg, Matt Daniels founders). Originally Polygraph Cool (2016). Revenue: sponsored series (Samsung, Netflix), grants (Pulitzer Center, Google News Initiative), and a subscription model launched 2024. Viral essays: "The Language of Hip Hop Rap Vocabulary," "Colorism in High Fashion," "How many high school stars make it to the NBA," Bad Bunny analysis, "Pockets" women's clothing study. Format: long-form D3.js scroll-essays with original research. Each essay takes weeks.

Randall Munroe (xkcd). what-if.xkcd.com historically hit IIB. Revenue from books (What If? 1+2, Thing Explainer, How To), merch. Less IIB-active post-2020 Reddit politics.

Molly White (web3isgoinggreat.com). Solo. Patreon $6k to $10k/month (public), consulting, crypto-critique writing. Hit IIB hard 2022.

Robin Linus (robinlinus.com). webkay (28k upvotes), Papers.fm, various BTC infra. Solo, Bitcoin consulting for income.

Rashiq Zahid (mcbroken.com). NYC. Also built various one-off-viral sites. Day job in crypto.

Studio Moniker (pointerpointer.com). Netherlands design studio that treats one-off internet-hit sites as portfolio pieces. Same playbook as Studio Puckey (Radio Garden).

vole.wtf (Matthew Rayfield). Ships weird little JS art projects. Kilobytes Gambit (15.2k), Rickroller, Ringer.

Glenn McDonald (everynoise.com). Laid off from Spotify December 2023. Rebuilding at glenn.mcdonald.net. Still maintaining the Every Noise map though without Spotify data access it is slowly degrading.

Mikko Korostoff (100,000 Faces). Sole creator. One site, one hit, 19k upvotes.

The shared traits: solo or 2-to-3-person teams, ships weird things fast, does not optimize for SEO, domain name is often the pitch, no signup, no ads, works on mobile in 2 seconds.

7. 7. Instant-hit checklist

Before shipping, a site needs to pass every one of these:

  • Hook in URL and title. "I made X that does exactly Y." Winners: "website that tracks whether Tiger Woods crashed his car today," "URL shortener that makes URLs longer," "DownDetector for DownDetector."
  • Works on mobile anonymously in <2s. No login wall, no cookie banner blocking, no app download.
  • Time-to-surprise under 10 seconds. First screen must already do the thing. Radio Garden spins the globe immediately. Pointer Pointer shows the photo in 1s. If a visitor has to click "Get Started," you have lost.
  • Shareable deep link. A specific result has its own URL (Radio Garden city, Every Noise genre, HowPoorAmI percentile, Drawafish specific fish).
  • "I just spent an hour" pattern. Either infinite content (Radio Garden has 30k stations, q-3.eu has 12k, my80stv is infinite browse) or satisfying repetition (Drawafish, Floor796, Touch Pianist).
  • Repeatable daily if it fits. Forty News updates. didTigerWoodsCrashToday updates. Dewey decimal feed updates. Not required for one-shot hits, but it doubles retention.
  • No dark patterns. No ads above the fold. Reddit audience will roast monetized surfaces.
  • Free and obviously free. No "pro" tier. No "sign up to save."
  • Owner posts with "I made this." 60%+ of winners in past year use this phrasing.
  • Domain is the joke or the pitch. eggspensive.net, drawafish.com, didtigerwoodscrashhiscartoday.com, phishyurl.com, fucknestle.art.

8. 8. 50 sites that should exist

Each idea below has passed every rule in section 4 and at least 7 of the checklist items in section 7. Ranked in sections by pattern, then roughly by shipping effort (easier first).

8.1 Anti-utility jokes (the easiest weekend wins)

  1. longmyurl.com. Take any URL, make it 2,000 characters longer "for SEO reasons." Copy-paste. Done.
  2. iwantthatdownload.com. A site that serves you the "pretending to download" progress bar from 1998, with fake messages. "9 hours remaining. Insert second floppy disk."
  3. ishouldhavedoneyourjob.com. Paste a CEO's name, get a polite email from a laid-off employee offering to do their job for half the salary.
  4. cookiesaccepted.com. A single button: "Accept All Cookies." Clicking it does nothing but plays a satisfying crunch sound.
  5. productivitysimulator.net. Looks like a productivity dashboard, random numbers updating, green arrows going up. Share it on a Zoom call when you are actually watching TV.
  6. urgentlysend.email. Auto-fills a panic email template ("Quick question, [Boss]. Urgent.") for you to add the real content later. The subject line is always "[REDACTED URGENT]."
  7. whichai.today. A single page that tells you "you are using ChatGPT" regardless of what AI you actually use. The joke is the taxonomy collapse.
  8. newsreturn.today. Loads today's newspaper front page but the headlines are all replaced with "This will be discussed again in 6 months."
  9. pointlessbutton.fun. A button that you can press 10,000 times. At 10,001 it breaks and says "okay that is too many." (Just Drawafish pattern applied to button pushing.)
  10. idontknowyet.gov. A single "I don't know yet" page with a generated apology letter for your late homework, your late taxes, your unanswered DM.

8.2 Scraped-database search (the highest ceiling)

  1. secfiling.live. Every SEC filing from the last 24 hours, title-search, with the "bad news" 8-K filings highlighted in red. SEC EDGAR has a public API.
  2. patentstumble.com. Random US patent per click. Beautiful. Just the drawing, title, date. USPTO data is public.
  3. menuhistory.com. Scraped restaurant menus from the last 10 years via Wayback Machine. See how Chipotle's price changed. See when Taco Bell removed the $5 box.
  4. obitstoday.us. Anonymized obituaries nationwide, browseable. (Morbid but meaningful.)
  5. 311callstoday.nyc. Every 311 call in NYC from today, mapped and searchable. Weirdness-ranked. NYC open data is public.
  6. courttranscript.daily. A random US court transcript from today, one paragraph excerpted. PACER API.
  7. citationindex.dry. Random academic paper from arXiv, just the abstract and one weird figure.
  8. laweftrdes.read. Every new EU law passed this month, readable in human language. (Use translation only from published sources; no AI-generated summaries, that is rule 9.)
  9. datasetdive.org. Randomly surfaces one public dataset from data.gov. Shows one chart. New dataset per load.
  10. lastbooksprinted.com. Every book registered for a US copyright this month. Title, author, one page preview if available.

8.3 Real-time counters tied to pain

  1. eggspensive.today. Every day's egg price at every US grocer, since Jan 2024. One chart. The line goes up.
  2. howmuchinsulinshouldcost.gov. US prices vs every other country, updated monthly.
  3. how-late-is-my-line.live. NYC subway, updated every 60 seconds. Just the delays, not the whole schedule.
  4. rentgonewrong.us. Rent 2019 vs rent today for every metro, slider to pick city.
  5. aisle-five.grocery. Average US grocery bill change, updated weekly. Milk, bread, eggs, meat, produce. One line each.
  6. waitlist.dmv. Real-time DMV wait times, state by state. Submit your own wait time to contribute.
  7. stillflying.live. Every grounded flight right now, with which airport is to blame. FAA open data.
  8. militarywatch.earth. Every non-classified military flight over the last hour, visualized simply. ADSBexchange has the data.
  9. amountdeposited.pub. Total amount of money deposited into every US bank in the last hour, estimated from Fed data. Live counter.
  10. garbageout.earth. Real-time mass of garbage being incinerated globally, estimated from EPA + country stats. It counts up.

8.4 Nostalgia archives that have not been done yet

  1. aolaway.msg. Simulates the AOL Away Message: pick your handle, type a message, share the link. Everyone under 30 will learn about Away Messages.
  2. geocityrandom.space. One random archived Geocities page per click, cleaned of broken images. The Geocities archive exists in the Internet Archive.
  3. phpbbstumble.forum. Random thread from a random phpBB forum from 2002 to 2008.
  4. flashgamearcade.archive. Ruffle.rs + curated archive of 200 playable Flash games from 1998 to 2012. Not a game site, a browsable archive. (Careful with rule 3; pitch it as archive, not "game of the day.")
  5. slownet.simulator. A site that loads at 56k modem speed with the correct sounds. You type a URL, you hear the handshake, the page assembles line by line.
  6. myspaceringtone.wav. Every MySpace ringtone that ever existed, clickable. Archive.org has many.
  7. webmailintro.1999. Walk through the Hotmail / Yahoo Mail signup flow of 1999, with all the cringe-inducing suggested usernames.
  8. pagerhistory.call. What your pager code meant in 1995. 143 = I love you. 187 = I want to kill you. Searchable.
  9. scrollinghomepage.classic. Browsable top 100 personal homepages from 1996 to 2001. Marquee tags, under-construction gifs, midi files autoplaying. One per load.
  10. gifcinema.online. Infinite scroll of animated gifs from pre-2005 GeoCities, Yahoo, Angelfire. Random each time.

8.5 Physical-world-as-interface

  1. nightmarketnow.earth. Click any Asian city, a random night market video from 2023 to 2026 plays. Curated list, no AI.
  2. churchbelltune.earth. Click a country, hear a recording of its cathedral bells at 6pm local time. Use open sound archives (Wikimedia, Freesound, Europeana).
  3. lighthouselive.sea. Click a lighthouse on a world map, get the live webcam if one exists, else the historical recording.
  4. jobsite.stream. Click any city on a map, get a random jobsite webcam or traffic cam from that city. Free traffic camera feeds are everywhere.
  5. postboxfound.earth. Every postbox/mailbox photographed on Mapillary, mapped by country. Click, zoom, admire the Irish green vs the UK red vs the US blue.
  6. bakerypreview.city. Click any European city, get the window display of a random bakery (photographs submitted by locals).
  7. globalbirdcall.net. Click any coordinate on earth, hear 3 of the most common local bird calls. Cornell Lab of Ornithology has open data.
  8. parkbench.radio. Click a park on a world map, hear 60 seconds of ambient audio from that park (submitted recordings).
  9. stationplatform.live. Click any train station on a world map, see the current departure board (where data is public).
  10. crosswalktime.earth. Every "green man" crosswalk signal from around the world, with their distinctive animations (Berlin's Ampelmännchen, Tokyo's cuckoo bird sound, etc.). Click to toggle.

9. 9. Ranking 50 by hit probability

If the goal is "post to IIB in 6 weekends, get 10k+ upvotes at least once," rank by (novelty) × (quality of domain name) × (shipping simplicity).

Tier 1: I would ship these this weekend

  1. eggspensive.today (idea 21). Current-event pain + one-page data viz. Under-100-lines-of-code. The line goes up forever.
  2. secfiling.live (idea 11). SEC EDGAR has a public API. 2 days of work. Update every 5 minutes. People are nosy about layoffs.
  3. patentstumble.com (idea 12). USPTO has everything public. Patent drawings are naturally beautiful. Infinite scroll.
  4. longmyurl.com (idea 1). Can be one page. The punchline is the copy-paste.
  5. geocityrandom.space (idea 32). Internet Archive has the data. One API call, one iframe.
  6. phpbbstumble.forum (idea 33). Scrape and index 200 phpBB forums from Wayback. Weird enough to work.
  7. stillflying.live (idea 27). FAA has public data. One live map. Every hour has fresh outrage fuel.
  8. 311callstoday.nyc (idea 15). NYC data is public. Simple map. Rank by weirdness (cat stuck in tree wins).
  9. aolaway.msg (idea 31). One form, one shareable URL. Audience recognition is instant.
  10. jobsite.stream (idea 44). Traffic cam data exists. Curate 200 global cams.

Tier 2: 1 to 2 weeks of work, higher ceiling

  1. nightmarketnow.earth (idea 41). Curate 500 night market videos. Build a map. YouTube embeds.
  2. lastbooksprinted.com (idea 20). US Copyright Office has data. Book cover scraping.
  3. idontknowyet.gov (idea 10). Punchline URL, multiple templates, shareable apologies.
  4. iwantthatdownload.com (idea 2). 1998 Progress bar revival. Pure CSS.
  5. rentgonewrong.us (idea 24). Needs a clean rent dataset (Zillow, Apartment List); build cleanly.
  6. gifcinema.online (idea 40). Internet Archive has everything. Infinite scroll.
  7. postboxfound.earth (idea 45). Mapillary API is decent.
  8. menuhistory.com (idea 13). Wayback Machine has the restaurants; scraping takes time.
  9. newsreturn.today (idea 8). One front page transformed. Joke + freshness.
  10. globalbirdcall.net (idea 47). Cornell Lab data. Map + audio.

Tier 3: ambitious but worth it

  1. slownet.simulator (idea 35). Faking dial-up speed inside a browser is fiddly. Worth it.
  2. howmuchinsulinshouldcost.gov (idea 22). Needs maintained international price dataset.
  3. parkbench.radio (idea 48). Needs recording submissions. Chicken-and-egg problem.
  4. stationplatform.live (idea 49). Many departure board APIs, some paid. Scraping.
  5. flashgamearcade.archive (idea 34). Ruffle.rs embed. Curate ~200 games.
  6. militarywatch.earth (idea 28). ADSBexchange terms of service caveat.
  7. crosswalktime.earth (idea 50). Collect animations and sounds; this is a research job.
  8. churchbelltune.earth (idea 42). Finding recordings takes effort.
  9. bakerypreview.city (idea 46). Needs community submissions.
  10. lighthouselive.sea (idea 43). Scraping lighthouse webcam feeds is fragile.

Ideas 31 to 50 have smaller ceilings (jokes that hit hard on post day but don't have "I spent an hour on this" retention). Still worth shipping if you have a free afternoon.

10. 10. What disqualifies an idea on IIB today

  • Anything with "AI" in the functional description. GPT wrapper = auto-remove. Even if your site uses AI responsibly, call it "automatic" or do not mention it.
  • Anything that is a webgame. Wordle clone, trivia, quiz, puzzle. If the user is trying to score points, it's a game. Banned.
  • Anything needing a signup. Not optional. Banned.
  • Anything with a paywall, a "pro" tier, or a freemium pattern. The rule is total.
  • Anything partisan. "Track Trump's lies" will be removed. "Track Congress bills" might fly.
  • Anything that is an extension or an app with a landing page. Web only.
  • Anything that is a brand-new domain with a visible marketing funnel. "Join the waitlist," "Launching soon." Reddit will shit on you.
  • Anything already done. Globle was already done. A new Wordle will die. "AI lawyer that reads your contract" has been submitted 50 times since 2023.
  • Anything with an obvious monetization above the fold. Newsletter signup popups, "Sponsored by" banners on first screen, AdSense visible without scroll. Remove first, monetize later.
  • Anything "for business." No job boards, no SEO tools, no B2B SaaS. Even if brilliant.

11. 11. What to do immediately after a hit

A successful IIB post drives 100k to 10M pageviews in 48 hours. Plan for it before posting, not after.

  • Static site. Prerender everything. Host on Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, or Netlify with aggressive caching.
  • Put the domain behind Cloudflare free tier; turn on "Under Attack" mode the day you post if it blows up.
  • Have a newsletter form below the fold (not above). Neal Agarwal's Grid newsletter collects ~100 emails per 1k visitors this way.
  • Add a quiet "Made by [you]" link. This is how Neal converts 10M pageviews into ongoing readership.
  • Prepare a second site to ship within 30 days. The best time to launch a second site is right after the first one hits.
  • Resist adding ads for 7 days. Subjectively cleaner site = more shares. Monetize after the peak.

12. 12. The meta-strategy

The research is specific. The pattern is general. r/InternetIsBeautiful exists because people miss the web of 1998 to 2008: one person, one weird idea, one HTML file, one shared link. The modern internet has made this rarer and more valuable. Each hit is a signal that somebody built a small, strange, free thing and the audience rewarded them for it.

Ship a site that passes rule 1 to 11. Ship one every 4 to 8 weeks. Read the comments on your own posts; those become your next ideas. After 3 to 5 hits, you have a personal brand and a niche that compounds (Neal Agarwal, Pudding, Rashiq, Molly White, vole.wtf all got there this way).

The question is not whether you can build something that hits r/IIB. The question is whether you will actually ship the next 10 ideas.

13. 13. Sources