Welcome back, everyone, to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast, where we bring you the biggest headlines in the industry over the last week and a good dose of inspiration for your personal projects.

Jared and guest host Brooks Conkle kick things off talking about the couple who took on Google, costing the tech giant more than €2 billion. 

Jared offers an overview of the lengthy legal battle between Foundem and Google: how it started, what the issues are, how long it’s been going on, and the final resolution.

Watch the Full Episode

Do you agree with Brooks’ analysis? Do you also believe that the US is slower to react compared with Europe when it comes to these kinds of issues? Does this open the door to individual companies or people to sue Google?

Moving along, they discuss an article on how to get your brand to appear in ChatGPT, an approach that’s different from SEO.

The author shares several tips, like getting mentioned by contributing to high authority websites and inviting content creators and critics to write about your brand. 

In short, it’s a good deep dive that shows that making sure your brand is in the places where the LLMs pull from.

The final topic they discuss a study that was done that revealed that Google AI was inaccurate in 43% of finance-related searches. 

Jared provides the details of the study and its findings and Brooks talks about why this is a major problem. They also talk about YMYL niches, the rise of EEAT, and why personal finance is such a tricky topic.

Moving along, they share their Shiny Object Shenanigans, with Jared going first. He talks about his progress taking a food site that was killed by the HCU and a core update and reviving it through Pinterest. 

It’s currently earning more from ads after driving traffic from Pinterest than it ever was with Google traffic. He shares some of the strategies that have been working for him and what he did wrong and could have done better, and offers good advice for anyone starting a new side hustle.

When it’s Brooks’ turn, he talks about Local Media Crew, for local media influencers and local email newsletter creators to connect with one another and share ideas. 

This project allows him to monetize his community and connect with other entrepreneurs doing the same thing as him.

In the final segment of the podcast, they share their Weird Niche Sites.

Jared reveals Spottogame, an Australian site based on a popular book written by a fictional author named Spotty McSpotterson.

He talks about the website design, the e-commerce component, and looks at its stats in Ahrefs.

When it’s Brooks’ turn, he shares Omni Calculator, which is a hub for hundreds of calculators for every topic, from biology and personal finance to food and ecology.

The site has an estimated organic traffic of 7.6 million visitors a month, and they discuss the site’s monetization and other interesting characteristics.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. We hope you’re feeling informed about the latest news in the sector, and inspired not only by the hosts’ side hustles, but also by the weird niche sites they shared.

See you next week!

Transcript

Jared: All right. Welcome back to this week in niche pursuits news. My name is Jared Bauman. We’ve got several interesting stories to go through with you this week, starting with the story behind the story. You might’ve heard about that crazy, uh, big 2. 4 billion fine that the European union levied on Google.

Fairly recently, but today we’ve got the story of the couple and their website that was behind a lot of it So we’ll go into depth there and talk it through a lot of interesting parallels for site owners here in the u. s and other countries In other news we have a new article out by rand fishkin all about how you could increase your visibility In responses generated by ai it’s very interesting stuff that he goes into depth on And then finally, we’ve got a study that’s just been released showing that AI overviews in this one particular niche are factually incorrect almost 50 percent of the time.

Ah, we’ll get into that one. Uh, beyond that, stick around for side hustle updates and of course, some weird niche sites. And joining me today in the co host chair is Brooks Conkle. Brooks, how you doing?

Brooks: Jared good man. I’m ready to rock ready to chat.

Jared: Look at you. You’re all falled out You got your bright orange kind of dust what they call dusty orange shirt on you’re you’re you’re rocking the theme here

Brooks: I’m ready to go man.

It’s fall. It’s fall time. It’s halloween ish time. It’s trick or treat time. Um I’m ready to go.

Jared: It’s a true story. We are recording on Halloween afternoon evening. So if the doorbell rings over at Brooks’s place, we suspect it’s probably, uh, the first of many trick or treaters to come.

Brooks: That’s exactly right.

First round of trick or treaters,

Jared: but the news doesn’t stop, does it? So we got to go in and we’ve got to talk about the news today because it doesn’t stop for any holiday. Hey, first story here. It’s titled the couple who took on Google. And cost the tech giant 2 billion. Um, so wow, this is a really interesting one.

Um, many of you will have heard about this. Uh, but maybe not this, like what I’ve been calling the story behind the story. So let me kind of give an overview here. And then Brooks, I kind of want to get your thoughts on this. So this BBC report covers, um, the, I guess, so significantly long legal battle between, uh, Siobhan and Adam Raff, founders of the price comparison website, found them.

And obviously Google. Uh, so this conflict began when Foundom’s, uh, when Foundom launched in 2006. So this goes back quite a ways. Um, they, basically they were disrupted during their launch by a search penalty from Google that severely impacted its visibility and its revenue. Despite appeals to Google, the site remained buried in search results.

Which the couple suspected was due to anti competitive practices. So some parallels to what a lot of site owners have been talking about right now. Fast forward to 2017, these suspicions were validated when the European union or the EC ruled that Google had unfairly promoted its own comparison shopping service while demoting competitors.

So that resulted in that record 2. 4 billion fine. Google contested that decision for seven years, but ultimately lost its appeal in this year, 2024 as upheld by the European court of justice. So here’s kind of the crazy part. Found them had already closed by that they closed by 2016 due to the financial impact here So this couple is now pursuing civil damages against Google and that that that trial is scheduled for 2026 They believe Google’s practices still favor its own services a concern under ongoing investigation by the EC And this I guess really what we’re getting into is obviously we got the DOJ case But now we’ve got this case as well So we’re kind of trying to highlight and bring to these different cases that are being levied against Google and this case Could stand as a landmark decision in regulating big tech.

Not only the fine that was already levied in Europe, but then, um, you know, any future ones that, that they’re bringing to the table. I mean, it’s a big story. It’s obviously one that’s kind of 20 years in the making of sorts, uh, has a lot to do with what we’re talking about right now with the DOJ trial and other things.

Brooks, what are your thoughts on this?

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Brooks: So my, my first impression is when I read this article, uh, two, two immediate takeaways. One was that, wow, this is almost 20 years ago and people have been fighting the same battles with Google for a long time. Is like was my first takeaway like oh the problems we’re seeing are nowhere near new Um, so that’s takeaway number one takeaway Number two was if you’re gonna sue a giant tech company or whatever it takes a very long time to play out Any sort of decision so that was my second takeaway um Also, I guess I’ll say third, I was really interested.

I was like, did these people get money? Like, did they get part of this 2 billion? And the answer is no, they did not. And then, uh, so that’s in the future in a different case, apparently 2026. So yeah, that was my takeaway.

Jared: I don’t know. Where did the money go? I mean, where did the 2. 4 billion dollars go to? If it, if it took advantage of others, if it unfairly demoting competitors, shouldn’t the competitors have been the ones that got the money?

Brooks: That’s a, that’s a really good question. I’m like, legal fees? Uh, legal fees probably, probably, probably gonna eat up a giant majority of that. Uh, but no, that’s a really good point. Like, would they not get anything because their company doesn’t exist anymore? Or

Jared: Hey, maybe

Brooks: they did. I think

Jared: the point that we’re underlying is we don’t even know who got the money.

But the point is, Google did lose the lawsuit. They did lose their appeal. They did lose 2. 4 billion dollars and, um, I was going to try to do some math before the podcast, try to figure out how big of an impact that was. I mean, I don’t know. We can just leave it at that. 2. 4 billion is a lot of money, no matter who you are.

Um, but I think to your point, like it’s good perspective, like this, this isn’t new news. It’s 20 years, almost 20 years old now. And I think another thing I took away from it is, it’s like, you know, um, these folks are fighting the good fight. They really did believe that this was something that was unfair and they really led the charge behind a lot of what the European Union or European Commission, sorry, came down on.

And it’s interesting because people, you know, jokingly talk about, hey, could there be lawsuits for some of the different things that Google has been doing? And it kind of highlights the DOJ trial. Like, I don’t know, maybe just the U. S. is a little bit slower. We’ve seen the U. S. be slower in a lot of situations, right?

We had Um, uh, GDPR and we’ve had, uh, uh, AI, uh, you know, different fines or different levies or different programs that are put into place in Europe and we’re, we’re slower behind them here in the U. S. Like, I just, I wonder if the DOJ trial is almost a catch up for what we’re looking at here with this case that, you know, the BBC is all about this Siobhan Adam Raff, but really so many website owners, um, getting wrapped up in this, uh, this, this big loss by Google.

Brooks: Very, very possible. That’s a good point that we seem to move slower than, than Europe. Yeah, uh, the EU tends to like, yeah, head, be, be, be out on the forefront of these items, uh, faster than us, for sure.

Jared: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was just at, speaking at a conference, DMLA, Digital, um, Digital Media Licensing Association, and without going too much into detail about, uh, A whole sub industry that a lot of people listening, you know, aren’t involved in, but it’s really in the digital media licensing, right?

So like photographers, image owners, licensing and stuff, but same conversations there where Europe is quicker to react to some licensing lawsuits and challenges than we are in the U. S. And a lot of the conversation there was about the way the U. S. is following suit there. So it just feels very similar to that, like DOJ, uh, European commission.

And so, so Why feature this story? Why talk about this? A couple of things, like you said, it’s a slow moving battle and this battle, the DOJ is levying, um, and I’m not an attorney, so I don’t know how cross, how cross, how similar they are, how much they have crossover, but, um, it does take a while, but we are seeing that happen over here in the U.

S. And I think maybe encouraging is the fact that ultimately, Ultimately, much came of this over in Europe, and perhaps ultimately much can come of that here in the U. S. as well, as long as you hang on long enough to be around, which unfortunately, this story didn’t have that happy ending to it.

Brooks: Yeah, maybe they’ll get a big payout in a couple years.

Uh, hopefully that trial does not take another, whatever, number of years, um, you know, for that case to ensue. Interesting that you’re The civil trial.

Jared: Because you’re right, the civil trial, I mean, I don’t want to open a can of worms, but I mean, I It’s interesting. It says in this article, quote, the rafts are also pursuing a civil damages claim against Google, which is due to begin the first half of 2026.

Uh, but when, or if a final victory comes to the couple, it will likely be a pyrrhic one. I don’t even know how to pronounce that word. They were forced to close found them in 2016. So, you know, I don’t know, does this open the door for individual companies, individual businesses, individual people to sue Google for, you know, egregious actions that were I mean, in essence, we’re looking at a situation where.

The European Commission said, you did this. It was harmful to your competitors, which then opens the door for individual competitors to go back and, and sue. Again, we’re not lawyers. We don’t know, but are we starting to see the beginnings of that in Europe, which then preclude the beginnings of that here in the U S it’s, it’s, it’s very fascinating, interesting from a high, high, high level.

Time will tell.

Brooks: Time will tell. Yeah.

Jared: So much of this, time will tell. Uh, in the meantime, speaking of time, let’s move on to this next story, which also is very interesting, but on a much more practical level, I’ll say. I think this, this European Commission, you know, expose is one thing. This is a lot more practical.

tactical for people listening. And this is by Spark Toro. So Ran Fishkin came out with his article last week. It’s titled, how can my brand appear in answers from chat, GPT, perplexity, Gemini, and other AI slash LLM tools. Um, and basically he goes through a fairly long article, um, exploring how brands can do just that increase their visibility.

in responses that are generated by AI and other large language models. And I think, you know, it’s been a lot of people’s minds, right? Like, Hey, if, um, if search GPT, uh, if people are going to go to chat, GPT, if all the claw and all these models are coming out, like how do we make sure our brand shows up in there?

And so he went in and started to explore that. I mean, he kind of found sets a foundation, unlike traditional SEO, which relies heavily on backlinks. In keyword use, LLMs operate based on the frequency and context of word associations found in their training data, and so mentions of your brand or content In relevant contexts around the web are crucial for appearing in these llm generated answers Um, you know, we’re not gonna go through the whole story here because it’s long It’s a transcript basically of a video about a 10 minute video Um, I think i’ll highlight maybe one of my takeaways.

I’d like to hear some of your takeaways Um, I think he was very tactical. He said, secure mentions. So make, get your brand mentioned by contributing to high authority websites, collaborating with publications and inviting critics or content creators to experience and write about your brand. And so it’s, it’s almost different.

Like we’ve almost built websites based on reacting and responding to other people’s products and other people’s stuff, how to do this, how to do that. And he was almost advising from a high level to almost invite the opposite of that, get your brand mentioned in as many places as possible. What were some of your takeaways from this?

Brooks: Uh, so I read through the article and my takeaway was this sounds a lot to me, like big, high level strategic SEO, um, in, in the new age of what I, what I like to call web optimization. I mean, you’re just optimizing for the web at the end of the day, like collaborate with high authority brands. Like get mentions in those.

Okay. Uh, so maybe it’s not links. And he, he mentions that in the article. He’s like, I’m not talking about, you know, links per se, like backlinks, but still getting brand mentions. Uh, I would have to imagine even make sense for SEO. And then obviously if you’re mentioned, If you’re mentioning brands or big brands or you’re on a list, I would have to imagine there’s a chance of someone Googling your brand more, which is basically like all about building brand.

Um, it was kind of my takeaway is like, there’s nothing crazy different. You still have to do work and collaborate with authority sites, talk to them. Network with them, get them to work with you. Uh, so to me, like that’s actually the harder piece, I think even of like SEO. So it’s kind of like one in the, one in the same, in that sense.

Jared: Yeah, I think you, Rand, echoed a lot of what you’re saying, like, in many ways, it is harder where it certainly is, uh, different, right? He, he actually, in the article here I have up right here, he kind of goes into an example when I search for fine dining restaurants in Seattle. Canless is the first result.

Altura is the second. Here’s what I would do if you’re attempting to get into these results. Um, and he kind of goes through, you know, this idea of, I would look at all the places on the web that talk about fine dining and restaurants in Seattle. Uh, fine dining and restaurants and Seattle, uh, and he kind of shows you exactly how to do that.

Um, he talks about how, you know, Hey, here’s, um, here’s something mentioned in eater Seattle. He’s like, yeah, that’s going to be hard to get up. It’s a long PR process and a pitch process, but is it worthwhile? Yes, but there’s other ways to go about it. He then gives you an example of how he’s asking, um, uh, chat GPT for what’s used in the, in the training data.

He asked it for a scoring system. It’s really interesting. It’s a good deep dive and a good read. I think that. Maybe if anything, it helps underscore that to your point, high level. It’s the same process. Again, very, very high level, but there are nuances that are significantly different now. And getting mentioned in there is different tactically, even if from a high level theoretical, it really just is about making sure your brand is in the places these LLMs pull from.

That’s kind of what we’re talking about.

Brooks: Yep. Yeah, exactly. So I guess, yeah, hopefully I made that clear. Like, it’s not exactly, obviously it’s not the same thing, but, but at that big picture level, You are doing like, of course you want to collaborate with large brands, right? So that, that makes sense for the LLM.

If you’re doing SEO, of course you want to do the same thing. Like you also want to get mentioned in that article. You would prefer a link, right? You want to link for sure back to your website. Um, and maybe you can still get that link, but you know, the link potentially will help you in this, in this scenario as well.

So it’s, again, it’s kind of looking at it. A web optimization, you know, frame of view and not maybe just, you know, very, very tactical and slicing it up into, into small pieces. Yeah, it was great. Great article.

Jared: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I mean, I will tell you, I could nerd out in this article for quite a long time.

I could spend the whole hour talking about this. Bartman wants to reach out to Rand and have him come on the podcast. On a Wednesday session and just talk about that. Cool. Because maybe I will do that. Yeah, it’s it’s a really good read. Um, he, it’s very practical. You know, a lot of the articles we feature on a Friday, a lot of the news topics are a little bit more esoteric.

Like the first one, maybe the third one we’re gonna get into, this one’s super tactical, so we’ll include a link in the show notes. Um, I, I think that it’s worth the read. For anyone doing SEO, anybody listening who wants to make sure their brand appears in these models and is curious about exactly how to do that.

Um, hey, let’s jump into our third topic. This is a little bit, I guess it’s kind of all Google in the news. Oh, this one wasn’t really Google specific, I guess. But the first and the third ones are. This is, uh, this is an article that, uh, well, I mean, you know, how many weeks can go by before we go back to talking about AI overviews, right?

So we had first, uh, the botched launch of this. We then had, um, uh, as a part of the botched launch, we had. Issues when it comes to, uh, you know, glue on pizza. We had issues with it representing things wrong. Well, here’s an interesting story that, uh, a study, uh, that was done by the College Investor and Robert Farrington.

Uh, he’s over at the collegeinvestor. com. It’s titled Google AI inaccurate in 43 percent of finance related searches. And this was released mid month, middle to end of the month here in October. Boy, that’s a large number, by the way. 43 percent of finance related searches. Um, basically, he starts the article by saying, Google AI overviews are misleading or inaccurate in 43 percent of finance related searches, according to our study.

Um, this is really harming Americans finances. It’s especially bad when it comes to tax and financial aid related queries. He kind of talks about how he’s, Over the years they’ve seen inaccurate financial advice, but when it comes to search They’re used to historically that’s been a way for users to find the correct information until now And he kind of goes into depth basically on Here are the key issues he’s talking.

So he kind of identifies how they labeled the incorrect answers three ways either misleading missing key information or flat out incorrect. Um, and so then he kind of segues into it. He says that out of the hundred results they looked at, 57 were correct and 43 were inaccurate for one of those three reasons.

12 of them were completely incorrect and the 31 others were either misleading or missing key information. So then he broke it down a bit. Where do they tend to get it right? They tend to get it right for basic one on one level finance questions, such as what is or how to, um, they get it wrong. They struggle with anything that has nuance.

And then he goes on to point out, which is most of personal finance. Um, it, that’s a bit harsh, but most of the incorrect answers involve navigating more complex talk, tax topics, investing topics, student loan topics. Um, uh, he said he was surprised by how accurate they seemed to be on recent trending topics, which I would agree with.

He said Google did not respond to when they reached out for comment, but has commented previously on this topic to Business Insider, where they said, quote, vast majority of AI overviews provide high quality information. So 43 percent with a lot of nuance behind it, as you would expect from any sort of finance person, that’s a shockingly high number.

Brooks: It’s yeah, it’s pretty wild. So, uh, Robert, Robert’s a legit guy. He, I think he writes for Forbes as well. He actually, um, I, I was just actually at an event, um, with him and I actually majored in personal finance. So this is like, uh, this is, this is a near and dear, not sorry, not personal finance finance. I majored in finance.

This is a, this is a, um,

Jared: you personally majored in finance. Yeah, exactly.

Brooks: I personally did major major in finance. Um, yeah. And apparently if you’re in the industry, you have to say finance. Um, I don’t, I say finance. I’m not in the industry. So, uh, but this is a problem. Um, Like, so, so I read this article, this one’s a problem.

I, none of the, none of the info before, if I’m honest, bothered me. I was kind of like, I don’t care about glue on pizza or stones or whatever. And how many, I didn’t care. Cause I was like, obviously this is, that’s common sense. Like you’re just trying to trick the AI here.

Jared: Right. And that was one of the arguments, like that was one of the arguments Google use, like are inaccuracies are for queries that people don’t actually search for.

That was kind of what they went back on. So.

Brooks: Right, right. So if they’re giving AI results for this type of stuff, and so Robert’s been one of the people that I’ve kind of been following on the student loan stuff, because the student loan stuff is kind of a fiasco, because there’s changes, there’s hold up, there’s court, this is what you have to do.

There’s like real decisions and things, you know, decisions for people to make. It’s, it is affecting their lives. And so if an AI answer is going to give you information and it’s not correct, and someone takes that, just, you know, whatever. They see it, they Okay, this is what Google says and it’s absolutely not correct and it affects your life in you know in a big way Yeah, um, that’s not good.

And the fact is we have a personal finance like a financial literacy problem in the US already Yeah, that’s a separate topic, but something I’m kind of passionate about and I know Robert is as well That’s a problem. So you have people that already don’t maybe understand certain concepts That are going to take an answer and kind of follow some, you know, follow some guidelines.

Um, that’s not good to get more than, I don’t know what percent would be right. Maybe more than 0 percent is not good for personal finance information, but 43 percent obviously is, is way off and way high. So.

Jared: There’s good delves into the YMYL topic. Right. And we long surmised before AI overviews was released.

Remember before that was SGE search generative experience. We surmised like there’s gotta be a different, filtering process we’ll call it, whatever, whatever word you want to use, right? There’s got to be something, a different approach to YMYL, your money, your life, your money. That’s the M part of YMYL.

It’s half of YMYL, your money. Um, maybe we should call it personal money. Uh, sorry, bad joke. Uh, your money, your, your life queries would have to be treated differently by AI overviews. Would it not? But it. Would appear that if it is, it’s more inaccurate than other factors of AI overviews or other segments or other niches and to your point, like finance is one of those topics that people want to Google and not have to dive into and not have to research because they kind of want the answer.

It’s a small segment of the population that kind of wants to deep dive it. And so it’s even more egregious when we’re talking about people’s money because it’s something that’s so highly personal. It’s very, very personal. Interesting that Google thinks they can give an AI overview for something that is, as Robert pointed out, so nuanced.

You know, every question has nuance to it because it’s so based on personal, uh, and your personal situation. And then that their answer is inaccurate, wrong, or misleading 43 percent of the time. So there’s so many things going there.

Brooks: Okay, and not to play the other side of the coin and defend Google necessarily, but I guess in theory, if there is no AI overview, um, there could also be websites with incorrect information as well.

So I will, I will throw that caveat out there, is that it doesn’t guarantee that if it was just websites, that all of that information is going to be 100 percent correct either. Um, Yeah, but,

Jared: but Google supposedly solved that with EEAT. When it comes to why and why all topics, they supposedly solve this by saying, when it comes to why and why all topics, we are going to be very, very honed in on making sure that every result has strong expertise, strong experience.

I mean, I’ve seen supposedly solve this cause we all know that’s a hot dumpster fire mess as well, but they supposedly in their world solve that problem. So they could just rely on their organic search results to deliver definitive, clear answers that are truthful in theory.

Brooks: Yeah, good point. And I would, um, Yeah, and and now it’s interesting obviously like Reddit’s gonna be up there so obviously in a forum you’re gonna have all kinds of information too and different differing people’s Opinions and thoughts and and and and whatnot so

Jared: Is this one of those if you can’t beat him join him?

Brooks: Maybe maybe maybe that’s my point there. Yeah, but just I I just think I do think if you’re gonna give a top of the serp answer From your giant multi billion dollar tech company that you might want to do a little better than 60 percent correct. I guess

Jared: you could say from Google side, like, Oh, well, people know it’s an AI overview, right?

They know it’s AI generated. Like they know that if it’s called, if it’s about personal finance, I’m learning personal finance, you should do your own research, right? You should, first off, I think a lot of people outside of our little world don’t really realize. Much about AI overviews. Second off word AI, the buzzword AI that AI is now is so kind of overused that people are saturated to it.

And they’re there. So I, you know, I got to imagine a lot of people are, are honestly just paying attention to what it says and not worrying about anything else. You know?

Brooks: I think so too. Um, I’ve never, uh, I’ve noticed myself kind of, kind of related, but just, uh, on searches, you know, just skimming multiple things if I need a short answer and just kind of.

Just skimming highlighted answers and saying, Oh, okay. And just getting a consensus on something, maybe not even, I need an exact answer, but okay. That matches up. I see, like, I see three highlights in the SERP and that’s an interesting way that I’m kind of, you know, I don’t know if that’s newer for me as a, as a searcher or if I’ve always done that.

I honestly don’t know.

Jared: That’s a cat. I would love to explore that. That’s a whole nother topic. I do understand where you’re coming from on that. I feel you on that. I do have one more question. Who’s this Robert guy? Cause here’s a funny story. I was getting the agenda ready today. And I was, I was talking with Spencer about some other stuff.

And I was like, Oh, Hey man, we got a couple of topics today on the agenda. Like, do you think we should go this one or this one? And he popped in and he’s like, definitely. You know, like this, like that. He’s like, but I replaced that. I had the search engine journal story for this. And he’s like, no, no, you got to give Robert’s story.

The one with the credit. And I’m like, so now you’re telling this Robert guy. It seems like everybody knows Robert. It seems like he’s a really good guy. So props to Robert. A lot of shout outs here for you on the podcast. It sounds like

Brooks: shout out to Robert. Yeah. Well, so I met him at a, um, I met him at a, uh, at an event called FinCon.

FinCon.

Jared: Cause it’s down in your area.

Brooks: Yeah, that may be where maybe Spencer’s met him there too. Uh, he went to one

Jared: maybe a year or two ago if I, if memory serves me correct. Yeah,

Brooks: I, it was, uh, last year for sure. It like, I, I met Spencer last year at, uh, at, at FinCon, but I know Rob, Robert’s like a long time, uh, thing, Connor, and he’s had this brand a long time and he is a.

He’s a smart cookie in the world of, in the world of money and personal finance. So

Jared: got to get him on. We’ll get him on, man. I’m just making a long list of podcast guests here. This is great.

Brooks: Yeah.

Jared: Uh, okay. That about does it for us today. Um, I will touch, I will touch just for those of you who are listening, who are like, you guys did not talk about it.

I know. So there was a, I just got to mention it. There was a major Google publishers event this week, earlier in the week. And let me just tell you a niche pursuits listeners that We have so much content on that coming up over the course of the next couple weeks that we didn’t even bother touching on it in the news because of the amount of content we’re gonna be bringing you.

We’re gonna be bringing you interviews from people who are inside that event.

Brooks: Nice.

Jared: Specialized, hour long interviews with several people who are inside that event. We’re going to interview them, we’re going to hear what they had to say, we’re going to get their insights, their takeaways. So if you want to hear about that event we didn’t talk about today because it warranted so much more than what we have time for, we will be publishing starting very soon on that.

I mean very soon, perhaps as early as next week. So stay tuned for upcoming episodes of Niche Pursuits Podcast because we will be talking about that. And that is about as much as I’ve ever teased future episodes, I think, ever on the podcast before.

Brooks: You got me, man. You got me. I’m ready to listen. I just heard, I’m not going to say whatever this dad is, I just heard literally on a Niche Pursuits call earlier, someone teased and mentioned something about the amount of coding at Google.

That might be that they have AI assisted with their company coding. Apparently it was mentioned on their earnings call. I don’t know. I just heard that today for the first time. You may already know about that, but I found that very interesting what I heard earlier, so.

Jared: I just put together the agenda for the first interview and let me tell you, there’s some juicy topics we’re going to get into.

Oh, I’m so excited,

Brooks: man. I’m so excited. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. So

Jared: no, we didn’t talk about today. The reason is because we only allocate about a half hour for each week’s news on the podcast here on Fridays. And we’ve got hours of content on that coming up. So we’ll talk about it. Don’t worry. Love it.

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Jared: Uh, Hey, let’s transition. Let’s talk about our, um, about our side hustles. Um, I will go. First, let me switch screens here. Today, I’m talking about, um, talk about that Pinterest account. Those of you who haven’t been following along or have been following along.

Basically, I took a website that was creamed by the helpful content update. And then the subsequent March core update, by the time the March core update was done with it, it ranked for less than a hundred keywords and was getting a trickle of traffic. This site used was, is monetized on raptive. It was earning at its peak about 2, 000 a month.

It’s a niche site in the food space. And in. I think early summer probably June started pinning to Pinterest with it. Obviously a good Pinterest field, you know, food does very well on Pinterest. And we got that account to grow to the point where by August we had earned about 650, if memory serves me correct, from, um, from Raptive.

And in September, We came in just a couple of dollars shy of 2, 000 in the month of September. And it was ironically a couple of dollars more than the highest earnings it had ever gotten before. So in essence, we were able to kind of completely flip the, uh, the, the, the conversation and now it’s earning more than ever used to from Google traffic through Pinterest traffic.

So I haven’t talked about that though, in about a month. Um, and so we kind of had that initial, uh, success. And, uh, uh, that’s kind of out of the gate. Like the account was getting seasoned. The account was doing well. The account was off to the, off to the races, but there’s some things that we started doing to the account since then.

And so throughout the month of October, I just kind of thought I’d walk through what we were doing because you know, the first couple of months, typically for a Pinterest account, you’re just pinning a lot in trying to learn where, um, Like, where, where your account performs well, right? Like, hey, which types of pins do well?

Which types of pin designs do well? Which types of topics in my niche do well? And then you’re, you know, you want to double down on the stuff that’s doing well and stop doing the stuff that isn’t doing well. You want to, hey, is there a correlation in color schemes, in pin designs, in calls to action that’s working?

The more you can correlate, the more you want to double down on that. So, one thing is that, um, we had ended up with, because this is a Pinterest account that was around before, We hadn’t pinned to it much, but it was around before. So we finally went back and kind of cleaned things up. So we deleted a lot of irrelevant boards and a lot of irrelevant pins.

Um, again, at the time, two, three years ago, we were kind of pinning stuff that was kind of related, but now with a very honed in strategy, we were deleting a lot of those kind of irrelevant pins, or at least pins that now we thought were irrelevant. Um, every board. Got a description. So many of the boards are missing descriptions.

They were there, they had pins in them, but we went through and now every board has a really robust, kind of keyword rich description. And then for the first time at the beginning of the month, um, first two weeks of the month, we, we really went through a deep evaluation of what was working. And so now we have a whole new round of topics to focus on basically, um, kind of based on what worked.

So that initial success that got us to 2, 000 a month. We looked back at it. It’s the 80, 20 rule. It’s like, you know, two or three of the subtopics we were talking about were leading to most 80, 70, 80 percent of the results. So we started doubling down on those. Um, we started pinning as well for seasonal topics, food, Christmas, holidays, Thanksgiving, you know, all these holidays are coming up.

So we started paying for that. Honestly, if, if I’m being honest, we probably should have done that in September. Uh, but. You know, it is what it is. It’s a side hustle. So we got to it in mid October. So I started paying about all that holiday stuff as it relates to what we’re doing. And then we expanded the type of pin design we were using.

So we were only pinning one type of pin design, just one type. And it was just like an image pin. So it’s just like, here’s an image. Go, go, go click on it to go learn more. And so now we started, you know, doing collages and kind of a bunch of different types of pin designs as well.

Brooks: Um, how did you, how did you decide to do additional designs?

Was that something that based on research or you just wanted to try some, try some additional stuff?

Jared: Honestly, it was a bandwidth thing. We should have been doing different types of designs from the beginning, but to get it off the ground, we prioritize the number of pins we were doing a day. With one type of design, rather than like trying to do everything.

Um, I mean you get it, like you start a new project, you’re like, Is this gonna go anywhere? Like, is this even gonna be worth all the time we’re gonna invest just to see if it goes somewhere? So it’s almost one of those things where it’s like, This is the simplest way forward, let’s do it. Oh, it’s working!

Okay, now we can put in the time and the money and the energy to expand the type of designs we’re doing.

Brooks: 100 percent agree. 100 percent agree. I mean, that’s actually smart for any, any listener that’s attempting a side hustle. It’s like, just get going, take some action, see if you can get some traction, is kind of what you’re, it’s kind of what you’re saying.

If you can’t, then either you gotta stop or you gotta change something, and it sounds like you got traction, and then you’re like, cool, now I’m gonna Spread out my fingers and branch into some different, you know, uh, ideas with the, with the hustle. That’s great. And

Jared: you could, you could say like, well, maybe if you didn’t get traction on this, it’s because you weren’t doing multiple types of designs.

But I think to some degree, it’s like, you don’t need to have like the ultimate success. You just need to see threads that it’s working and you need to kind of figure out what are things like. I don’t need to do 25 different types of designs to see if this idea works. I need to pin about this idea, this website, this brand, this concept of the informational content I have.

And as long as it goes somewhere, then you could start to expand. But you do want to see a little bit. Otherwise, you know, you can be a victim of like, building something really big and having it go nowhere. And you put all this time and energy into it, you know.

Brooks: Exactly. Time, energy, and potentially, potentially a lot of money.

Potentially a lot of money. So,

Jared: I mean, and you know, so to be clear, like, uh, September almost broke 2000. Um, growth in October for this site has been pretty flat. It’s just kind of leveled off. I wish it was still going up. Um, it’s kind of leveled off. Um, we have some new pins that are starting to perform really well.

Some of those initial pins that caught fire, And like August are starting to trail off. So, you know, earnings are still up over September, but not by much. Um, I’m really excited about November and December because that’s when like the RPMs go up and just yeah Traffic in this space goes up because everyone’s eating more

Brooks: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah makes sense holiday holiday food, man. Yeah. Yeah,

Jared: it seems like the right time to kind of really put effort towards this and stuff Yeah, that’s my update on Pinterest It’s less of a ooh look at how successful it is and more of like we kind of dug our heels in and did some of the dirty work in October That we’d been putting off because we wanted to see if this idea was even going to work.

So here we are four or five months in. Kind of dug our heels in, put in some of the dirty work this month. I’m hoping to report in future months that it’s going to pay off.

Brooks: It’s really exciting though. Cause this is the same site that you basically, it got slammed and you could have, um, I mean, you could have said, uh, I’m done, but instead you, you said, well, no, like let’s, let’s figure out different ways to get traffic.

And so that’s, I mean, That’s really inspiring, uh, to, I mean, that’s exciting. Is this the first brand or site you’ve had that’s, that’s gotten a lot of Pinterest traffic? Or have you had any other, any other site that also has it? I mean,

Jared: back in 2018, 19, and 20.

Brooks: I

Jared: had several sites that got a lot of Pinterest traffic.

Got it.

Brooks: Got it.

Jared: Well, I mean a lot over a hundred thousand pages a month. Um, per site, you know, and then Pinterest changed their algorithm. And I never, after that, I never bothered switching the way I did things. I was like, you know, SEO at that time, 2020 was like so much different. I’ll say easier. Yep.

Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jared: It was just easier to be like, let’s just focus on that, you know, and now here we are paying the price for it. But.

Brooks: You know, I heard of the, this, this pre Pinterest. I wasn’t involved on Pinterest at all. Then I I’ve never gotten a lot of traffic from Pinterest. I mean, we, we do some, I don’t spend a lot of energy.

It’s just like one of our platforms, but that kind of goes to my thoughts on, uh, platforms change, they evolve and they may come back around. Like it’s a supply and demand thing. It’s like, and like, I think when you really start looking at the long term horizon of business. You start realizing that, that like, Hey, just because something stops working, it doesn’t mean something else isn’t going to work or it’s not going to, again, at some point they may need that supply to feed, to feed their audience or whatever they’re doing as a business, because they’re trying to figure out how to grow.

And so, yeah, it’s, um, that’s like a newer revelation for me. I think like for me in the online world, in this last year, it’s like really looking at everything in a big picture like that and just seeing how it all kind of works together.

Jared: I mean, look at Facebook 10 years ago, Facebook was so easy to get organic traffic on.

And while it’s totally different today than it was 10 years ago, it definitely went through a period where it was a lot of us walked away from Facebook, but now so many people are succeeding with Facebook. I’ll be it very differently, right? Like look at the bonus program, Spencer sharing his success about that.

Look at the different ways to use Facebook now, but. Many would argue Facebook is as easy or easier than it was 10 years ago, but it did go through a trough. It did go through a trough where organic traffic was zero and it was impossible to earn any sort of money unless you were spending money through their kind of boosting organic ad, sorry, or ad platform.

Right? So to your point. We’re kind of in that Renaissance era with Facebook as well.

Brooks: And with Facebook, you see, you’re kind of seeing an evolution of their business as well. And the way the feed works, the way the algorithm is working, it’s feeding you content from pages and profiles that you may not be connected to.

That wasn’t like that previously with Facebook. And so that’s an interesting thing. And that’s a part of the reason why I think, you know, Facebook is paying creators and doing that because it’s like, Hey, if you’re creating great content, then we want to be able to push it out. In a ton of other people’s feeds.

And so like, that’s the evolution of business in these platforms. That’s, that’s just really interesting to me. Yeah.

Jared: Well, I’ll keep reporting back. I’m hoping great numbers for November, December knock on wood. That was, that was not a trick or treater knocking on your door. That was me knocking on wood. I’m getting ready to time so you can get back to handing that candy out.

What niche site do you, uh, niche site? What, um, we’ll get to weird niches folks. What side hustle do you have for us today?

Brooks: Yeah, so I had talked about this. I think maybe I talked about the idea of this before. I was like, well, I guess I’m gonna put this together. So, uh, it’s, it’s, It’s called the local media crew.

So local media crew. com. Uh, I put the site together because I was like, well,

Jared: we’ve seen this site. Cause I remember this picture I have up on the screen right now.

Brooks: Oh, okay. Cool. Cool. Okay. Then I had the site launch. I can’t think about any other time I would

Jared: have seen it. So yeah, I think we, maybe you had just launched it.

Brooks: So I think I had just made the site. Yeah. And I, um, so the goal wasn’t to turn this into a side hustle, but what’s happened is is like over a few years I had kind of collected people that are in the similar space to me that like have a local, a local media company, or they have a local newsletter for their city.

And it’s like, it’s cool to network with those people. It’s important. Right. And so I’ve been doing that and I kind of just been like collecting contacts and I had them in a spreadsheet and this and that. Um, And so Andrew, my buddy, like me, I talked to him the most and I said, Hey, Hey, like, like, let’s just like, maybe we can get all these people in one spot.

And, uh, so we didn’t really know if it would, I’m going to put air quotes, like work, even though, you know, the goal isn’t to like launch some big brand, but what’s happened is we now have, it’s like almost, it’s like close to 20 people that are daily. Yeah. Like 20 folks that are in there daily and like sharing information and ideas every day.

Um, I’ve had my brand, my local brand for almost a dozen years. And I have like me, I have tons of new ideas. To try from other people that are doing cool things in their communities Um, and and i’m kind of getting some money for people to come in right, which is great Um, like because I mean, I guess I could do it for free, but I just don’t I just have this I don’t think people value something that’s just completely, uh completely for free And so i’m like cool if you’re you know, if if people If you’re serious about this and like pay for this community.

Um, I, I mean obviously I’m a little biased ’cause I helped start it, but I’m like, oh my gosh. It’s, uh, it’s been really great. It’s been really fun and lemme tell you what it is. So maybe this gives people, uh, if, if you don’t have any sort of local brand, it is a, it is, we’re using discord, like literally Discord is our product.

So think about what community, maybe whatever it is, maybe that spurs ideas from, you know, for other folks, but we’re literally like they pay to access a group of people that are doing the same thing as them. And I think that’s like, uh, I didn’t know if it would work or not, but it’s going to work. And like, maybe, maybe we’ll actually do some outreach to, to other people as well, but I’m kind of loving the, the small organic.

Like feel of the group, to be honest. So,

Jared: well, you’re monetizing community, you know, a model nowadays that, that people are doing. I mean, I guess my question is I, if I remember what you say here, you know, we’re two Alabama boys who run local media brands, but is this like an Alabama thing or is it like a nationwide thing that’s focused on local?

Whatever it is, it’s focused on local.

Brooks: Yeah. So we have a few international, I think, uh, yeah, I think a few folks international. There’s somebody on the West coast and like Oregon, uh, someone’s in Tennessee, someone’s in New Mexico. Yeah. So it just, so Andrew and I just happened to meet and he happened to be six hours from me.

Um, question, do you think I need to make that more clear on our site?

Jared: In your opinion? Yes, I do. I, if you’re asking me, I think the above the fold is really good. It’s all about learn from other local creators, operate a local blog. Like there’s nothing in there, but then it goes into you guys being from Alabama, launching a local media crew.

And so then I was like, Oh, you know, we’ve got the Huntsville Explorer. We’ve got the mobile rundown. I know both those are cities in Alabama. Shoot me. This is an Alabama thing. So maybe just a little more got it.

Brooks: No. Yeah. Appreciate that. Sorry. Sorry listeners for the side step of getting feedback from Jared there.

No, thanks so much.

Jared: All good. So 20 members, they’re paying per month. And the goal is to increase that or to keep it at 20 or, yeah, I’m just curious. Like I remember last time you were on, you’re like, I don’t know if anyone’s going to sign up for this.

Brooks: Exactly. I’m happy to increase. So we actually, we had a less expensive price and we actually increased it.

And so we have two different options. One is like somebody can pay out, but I think it’s a hundred bucks or 97 or whatever for the year. Um, Or, or we did this thing where they could pay quarterly and actually a lot of people are paying 29 bucks for like quarterly for three months. I think I totally get it.

People want to hop in and be like, Hey, like what’s this about? I would have to, I would have to imagine they’re going to stay in. I mean, I I’m, I’m blown away. Right. So, um, but I think I’m happy for it to grow, but I also, if I’m honest, This wasn’t an intended, uh, business or side hustle. I just said, Hey, cool.

Let’s just see if this works. I love the, I love the size of the community. I’m happy for it to grow. I think if we try to, um, grow on purpose, I think we’ll have to be very intentional about doing other things and not just letting conversation happen. So I don’t know if I want that headache or not. I may just see what happens and see who kind of floats in over time.

I’m not sure.

Jared: Well, to your point and almost interestingly, interestingly, like I know for myself, I pop it in the niche pursuits community, but I also have other little communities I hang out in. And if you can, you know, I get lots of advice from it, but it’s like, you can kind of almost commit to creating some structure around it and then exchange earn some income from it.

You know, like that’s pretty compelling, you know, that’s a, that’s a pretty compelling model. People love community and they love environments where they can share about stuff and learn about stuff that isn’t necessarily available to everyone. Right. Because to your point, Like if it’s free, it’s almost lowers its value instantaneously.

But as soon as you’re paying, you almost always are willing to give more and learn more.

Brooks: Actually, funny that you’re saying that. Let me, so I, I had started collecting people a few years ago and put, and I started a Facebook group, just as a place to house these people and say like, hey guys, you know, you guys are all similar.

Y’all can connect. But no real conversation ever happened. I mean, it really came from it and it was a free group. And now there’s this, it’s a paid group. Now, yeah, the platform’s different. It’s discord and some people are having to learn discord, but it’s, there’s daily daily chatter. Uh, and I guess there’s, you know, obviously different channels and stuff in discord.

So like. There’s daily talk, daily good ideas, daily people landing ad deals and stuff and people getting excited for other people. And it’s, it’s cool. It’s a, and yeah, and, and it’s not, you’re right. To your point, it’s not free.

Jared: I used to, um, for my last business, my editing company, we did, um, we’d go out and do workshops on the road and I’d go to a lot of them.

I’d host a lot of them. We get people from the area to speak and, you know, gather people in community and stuff. I used to do them for free. Right. Cause it was just all about kind of, you know, an evening of learning in our industry, in our niche, obviously with my company being behind it all, we got a lot of exposure.

Everybody won. The problem was you get a lot of people and it would vary, but you get a lot of people would say, Oh yeah, I want to be there and sign up a month out, but it’s, it wouldn’t come free. What do you have to lose? So at the very tail end of doing these, I started doing something very interesting.

I, I charged you 20. To sign up to come with the promise. I’d hand you a 20 bill if you showed up.

Brooks: That’s awesome 20 bucks back at the door basically. Oh, that’s brilliant, man. All you gotta do is show

Jared: up and Yeah, our our tenants In terms of percent of people who signed up to showed up skyrocketed above 90%, whereas before that it was in the 40 to 50 percent range.

Brooks: It’s brilliant. Oh man. I, I, yeah, I’m, I’m making a note of that. I’m not sure the next time I’ll use it, but it

Jared: reminded me of it.

Brooks: So I thought

Jared: I’d share it.

Brooks: That’s great, man. Uh, so good.

Jared: Awesome. Well, that’s encouraging. I can’t, I can’t, I can imagine a lot of people can think about that. And again, even if yours isn’t local to Alabama, but my initial thought when I was questioning it was like, I wonder in San Diego if I could just get a group of business owners in San Diego together to talk about, San Diego, you know, they got these, they’ve got these little, uh, B and I, what is it?

Business network institute or something like that. Like they got these and they’re very successful models, right? You’ve got that model in front of you. And, uh, but there’s so many different ways to form community. You can make it like you did around a focus, a local, uh, a local focus, or you can make it about the location and variations of that.

So anyways, hopefully inspiring for a lot of people listening. Well, Uh, from one inspiring topic to the next are weird niches, honestly, not always inspiring, but usually pretty inspiring. I hope you can always take something inspirational from it. Um, I will go first. This one is, uh, this took a little bit of a learning curve for me.

I’ll be honest. This was shared to me by a listener. Thank you. When they first shared it, I was like, uh, what is this? I guess I have that reaction a lot, but if you’re from Australia, you will recognize what I put up on the on the screen instantly. And if you’re not from Australia, my hunch is you’re just like me.

What the heck? The website is spottogame. com. au Now, this is a website dedicated to the game of Spotto. Uh, if you’re wondering what it is, let me give you a little overview here. Okay, so I had to go and look this up. So the site promotes a book called Spotto the Great Australian Car Game. That book is written by the fictional professor Spotty McSpotterson, which is kind of a light hearted exploration of Spotto’s culture.

And I’m like, well, what the heck is Spado? Well, basically Spado, and forgive me if you’re Australian and I butcher this of some degree, but it’s like, it’s a car game you play where like you’re going in the car and it’s kind of like I spy, I think, but there’s all sorts of variations of it. And it’s like a car game that you play.

Um, and so. It’s grown beyond this website has grown beyond just that. They’ve got a book, right? By spotty McSpartacin. So understanding the great Australian game of spotter requires deep thought analysis. I can’t tell if it’s, um, kind of like a joke, like, uh, uh, uh, a funny book, or if it’s like serious, um, it says join the movement.

So they sell gear. Okay. So you can buy this spot out gear. And obviously it’s very yellow themed. It has something to do with the color yellow. Again, If you’re from Australia, I apologize. I probably should have done more homework on this, but I mean, it’s a cool website, right? Like it’s got cars flying all over the place.

It’s got animation everywhere. It’s so clean and simple. It’s really engaging. And then they have the Spotto gear. So, um, uh, you can, uh, is this the book or is this the game? Um, I think it’s the book 20 bucks and then some different, uh, shirts you can buy actually a lot of shirts you could buy. Punch buggy is dead.

Uh, that must be an Australian term. That looks like a, uh, a VW beetle. Um, and then, so you got all of this, then you got the blog. Oh, right. So that’s the blog. And, uh, you can kind of ask a question. I don’t have a lot of content here. Uh, it’s been published in a while, but it’s all by Dr. McSpotterson. Uh, and then they got free stuff and you can go in and learn the rules of spotto and, um, and all that kind of stuff.

So, uh, the traditional rules and the variations and. I didn’t read that. So I probably should have FAQ. Um, just really quickly. I get it.

Brooks: Yeah, exactly. I was, I was looking there. So I think, I think, I think it’s replacing punch bug. So when you saw a bug, I guess, cause there’s no more bugs on the road. So you can’t like, you can’t punch bug.

That’s my guess why they’re replacing it. So it’s, you see a yellow car, you shout Spado, you punch the arm of the person near you. So you used to say punch bug, but now my guess is this game exists because There aren’t any bugs, like, except for new ones. Uh, I wonder if that’s a reason. Anyways, that’s my guess.

You are right.

Jared: Number one, I’m looking at the rules here. Number one, you’re traveling with a friend or two. Number two, you see a yellow car. Number three, you shout spot out. Number four, you lightly punch the arm of the person nearest to you. All good. And then there’s like, variations of the game and stuff.

So you’re exactly right.

Brooks: Yeah, man, I think it’s replacing the, uh, I think it’s replacing Punchbug. That’s why, that’s why when you said earlier, Punchbug is out. I was like, wait a minute. I think I have an idea what this game is about. See, I never

Jared: played that game as a kid. I played I Spy. Oh. I never played Punchbug, so, man.

Oh, my arms,

Brooks: my arms still hurts, man, from my older sister. Yeah. That’s why we had

Jared: you on today, Brooks. I needed you to help bring, so really, I, I didn’t know what this yellow, this yellow game was. I didn’t know what Punchbug is great. 30 years

Brooks: later, man. 30 years later, my arms still sore. Five

Jared: minutes into this.

We know what this game is about now, thankfully. Um, so hrefs it’s, uh, It’s not doing very well. I’d say there’s a brand new website. Uh, yeah, perhaps I didn’t look it up, but it got its first keyword in on June 22nd, 2024, or I guess it’s first estimated traffic. Yeah. Same thing for keywords though. So it’s got 28 total keywords, but it’s a brand new website.

Right. Um, and so it ranks. Ah, man, we’re, yeah, we’re nowhere near page one for anything, but yeah, you’re right. Spotto rules, Spotto car game. I mean, it’s within earshot. Look, it’s a, you know, sitting on page two or so. Um, so yeah, maybe, maybe we’ll get there one day. It’s brand new. Um, I,

Brooks: after this podcast episode, I was just about

Jared: to take credit.

We’re going to be, it’s a, I think we’re going to be its first backlink. Here in the niche pursuits podcast. And I don’t know if you’ve checked recently, uh, Brooks, but we’re not a bad, uh, we’re not a bad DR when it comes to backlinks. So

Brooks: pretty solid. Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. Pretty fun. So there’s someone who’s basically taken a game.

It sounds like did they, I don’t think they created it. It sounds like they had a fun with it and they made a full website and book and, uh, and kind of brand around it. Probably not making much looks brand new, but super interesting taking an existing game or a variation of a game. That’s what we don’t know.

Did they make the game Spado out of Punch, Punch what? Punch Bug?

Brooks: Punch, yeah, Punch Bug. That’s my guess. That’s my guess. Yeah.

Jared: So I guess the question is, did they make the game and create a whole brand around it? Or did they take a game that was already there and create a brand around it? Either way, pretty good idea.

Yeah.

Brooks: Don’t know. Yeah.

Jared: All right over to you.

Brooks: Uh, I’ll tell you who is making a lot of money from their website Is I didn’t know this until I looked I was like, holy smokes is omnicalculator. com Uh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re like another calculator website a little calculator tool, whatever Whatever man.

No, we’re talking about like literally hundreds and hundreds of Of calculators on this website, uh, started from a guy. I think that did start with just like his own little calculator tool. And then this thing is like grown and expanded. They have a whole team. I mean, we’re talking if you need some. Yeah, exactly.

All kinds of features from all those. Yeah. So I’m assuming that’s true. I know tons of websites may actually put that. But I think these guys are definitely actually featured there. Um, Belt, something about belt sizes, uh, music, chord transposing, I saw biology, personal finance, of course, uh, chemistry. Cat, cat, pregnancy calculators.

I saw a dog crate size calculator, a livestock fence, measuring calculator, like literally calculators for everything. Um, and then when I glanced at the traffic, do you have a trust pulled up? I’m curious. Like what, what your tool says?

Jared: Oh, I had you. If you don’t,

Brooks: yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me just switch

Jared: screens here again.

This used to be a lot easier folks until they took away that capability, but I will have gotten good at it here. So let’s pull it up. Uh, you’ll be blown away by the way. This is insane.

Brooks: Uh, so what does that say? 7.

Jared: 9 million keywords for an estimated organic search traffic per month of 7. 6 million.

Brooks: Holy smokes.

Yeah. Uh, that’s a nice,

Jared: that’s a nice little business. Um, By the way, these guys, when all the wrestlers were getting crushed by the March core update, they went from an estimated organic traffic of 5. 5 million up to a peak of 7. 7 million. And they’ve kind of hung there the whole time. So

Brooks: interesting in

Jared: that March core update.

Brooks: So I wonder if that means OmniCalculator is like a brand of calculators and other calculator tools that were maybe getting some ranking, uh, you know, fell off during that time, right? Smaller brands that had some, they had some organic search or whatever. Uh, these guys apparently have like consolidated, uh, all this stuff, which is crazy.

Jared: Their number two, this’ll, this’ll get you excited or disappointed, Brux, I’m not sure which one, but their number two ranked page on their site is a margin calculator in. Finance. Mmm.

Brooks: Mmm. So excited about that. I’m so excited. Hey, I’m, I’m happy for them, man. Uh, I’d have to imagine they’re making a good bit of cash.

I saw, I saw ads for sure, once you click through and into the calculators.

Jared: Yeah, let’s go back.

Brooks: Um, I didn’t, but interesting enough on the site, I didn’t see ads until you click into the calculators. I was about to say. That’s probably really, really well done, uh, web experience. If you think about it, like there’s no, yeah, there’s no ads until you get in there, which makes me wonder if people go straight into these landing pages from, you know, from Google or whatever, right.

For whatever calculator they’re searching for. They probably land straight on the calculator. Yeah. I

Jared: think it’s also interesting. Like, look at this. I just happened to navigate to the coffee calculator and you’re right. There’s ads everywhere, right? We’ve got a top ad above the fold. There’s no menu here on the site.

Which is. Interesting. Is it covering the menu or is there literally no menu or no, this is the menu. Interesting. Yeah. That’s a very interesting menu. So it, it looked to me like an ad now we’ll stand corrected, but they got a, they got a top banner ad. They’ve got a left sidebar ad. They’ve got a, you know, a sticky, uh, right sidebar footer video ad.

This is a interesting couple of things like coffee calculator. Created by, uh, Luca Zebrowska, MD, PhD candidate, reviewed by Anna, um, Skepenik, PhD, and Alex Ruiz. We got, I mean, that, that’s a lot for a calculator, right? Like talk about bringing in the EEAT.

Brooks: Yeah, you know, I saw that right before we started recording and it kind of made me wonder, I was like, what is the process?

I, no, I didn’t dig in and say like, Okay, how do you get your calculator approved or do those people work with the company? Did this did this company buy up tools like by many small websites? Maybe they’ve maybe they’ve sucked up like other sites and uh acquisitions I don’t know. Maybe they have the ability to do all of that though if they want to I mean they literally have a Pretty sizable business here.

This is not a, you know, simple, small niche website. That’s for sure.

Jared: Right? Like this is crazy. I mean, I will say that I’m finding their calculator a little hard to use here. It’s just. Spinning. Here we go. Okay. Interesting. Wow. That’s fascinating. So I’m, I’m over here on the right hand side, if you’re listening.

And I, it said, what type of drink do you have for coffee? Right. And I mean, they must have a list of a thousand different kinds of coffee. Uh, Panera bread, coffee, Pete’s brewed coffee, Pete’s cafe, Americano, Pete’s cafe, latte, Pete’s cafe, mocha. Like you can just, I mean, it’s a, it’s a, it’s more than the usual calculators we’re looking at, which are just a couple of buttons and fields.

Right?

Brooks: Yeah. That’s a lot. Actually. That was kind of overwhelming.

Jared: I know. I was like, man, if you got a brand down in the S or T’s like you got to scroll for a while.

Brooks: Yeah. Maybe, maybe if you know what you’re doing, you can just, you know, Type it in. No, no, no. You can’t. It’s all, it’s only a dropdown, isn’t it?

It’s just a dropdown.

Jared: I mean, what if, and

Brooks: it,

Jared: it, it’s loading slow for me. That could be because I’m streaming. So, you know, we’ll, we’ll get them to benefit out in there, but to your point, and then there’s another ad that I didn’t even mention before that hadn’t loaded yet, so there’s a lot of ads on here.

Yeah.

Brooks: They just made a, it made like a dollar from this, from all these ads, just on this one page here. Uh, they did most, they did most.

Jared: Wow. And so, yeah, you know, again, that’s a significant amount of traffic. I, you know, it’s funny because. I know why I recognize them and it’s because on a previous podcast we were looking at a calculator site that someone had brought a weird niche site and they were, I remember seeing that they were beating out Omni Calculator for a lot of their certain specific search terms.

I wonder if to your point that was before that March Corrupt date and I wonder if a lot of them dropped back but we’re kind of looking at some of the competitors they were up against.

Brooks: Yeah, it’s a good question. Are they still outranking them because they apparently shot up in uh, in March. So, yeah,

Jared: DR81.

Oh, so

Brooks: crazy. Yeah.

Jared: Going back to your point, they probably were featured in all those big publications if they’re, if they’re a DR 81. Yep. Yep. Ah, it’s a good find, man. There’s a calculator for everything. I think that’s interesting. I see myself diving deep into their keywords and trying to see if I can find any, uh, any gaps.

Uh, not that I’ll do anything with it, but that’s what my mind immediately goes to as an SEO.

Brooks: What are they missing? Yeah. What, what’s the, Oh, I love it. I love it. It’s great. I love having that mind like that. That’s thinking, thinking, okay, what are they missing? What’s this big, not, not, I can’t do it. Cause this is a big brand, but like, nah, man, what are the, what are they missing that I can capitalize on?

Oh, that’s awesome.

Jared: That’s cool. Look at the gaps. Hey Brooks, our hour flew by. Thank you for joining us again. That was fun. You brought some great stuff. Good side hustle. Um, I can’t wait to hear the next update. I mean, you basically launched the website. I think it was that morning, last time you were on.

You’re up to 20 people joining your community now. Like I can’t wait to hear the next update on that.

Brooks: Well, great. Now that you’re saying that maybe I’ll actually do some outreach so I can try, so I can try to grow instead of just let it happen.

Jared: I’ve said, I’m enjoying the route

Brooks: though.

Jared: Yeah. I’m enjoying it.

I’ve said many times in this podcast, like there is a bit of a, a bit of a drive that you get because you have to talk about your side hustle every week. And you’re like, I don’t want to show up with nothing, you know, like, so I got to work a little bit this week on my side. Also, whereas maybe you would have taken the week off or maybe like it.

So hosting has its benefits too. You know, I’m just here to tell you,

Brooks: you have to face the next

Jared: time you got to have some progress,

Brooks: a good, a good, a good kick in the pants, man. Good digital kick in the pants. Uh, Hey, thanks everybody

Jared: for joining us here on the podcast. We hope you enjoyed it again. As I tease, stay tuned.

We got a lot of stuff to talk about as it relates to publishers. It’s really, it’s that big Google conference coming up. We’ll be addressing that I’m sure in future news episodes, but also in future interviews we have on the Wednesday edition to the podcast until then, though, have a great weekend. Thank you for joining us.

Spencer: Hey there. Thanks so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Did you know that Jared and I are members of a private group called the niche pursuits community. And today I want to share with you how you can join for just 1. The niche pursuits community is a private members area for niche online publishers to mastermind and grow their businesses together.

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