Welcome back to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!

This week Spencer Haws and guest host Brooks Conkle take on the latest news in the SEO space. They break down the biggest headlines, and then they share their latest side hustles to offer listeners a bit of inspiration. Lastly, they discuss some weird niche sites they’ve come across and the strategies they’re using.

They kick off the episode by talking about the November Core Update and how the rollout is coming to a close after about two weeks. They talk about the results people are seeing, mainly huge recoveries in traffic. Brooks talks about his own personal sites. 

Watch the Full Episode

What do the gains look like? And what perspective do they offer about diversification? Spencer shares some of the conclusions from the recent Creator Summit and the latest update. Do you agree with his perspective?

Then they move onto a new feature in Search Console called Recommendations, which shares ideas for improvement with website owners. You may or may not see any recommendations, and some may be more relevant than others, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

Lastly, they talk about how Google has updated its ad design policy for deceptive buttons in ads. Spencer gives a demo and explains the updated policy. Brooks shares his thoughts, and so does Spencer. 

What do you think about their theory? Listen to the episode to hear the full conversation.

Then they move into the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast. Spencer starts by talking about his experience over the last two years in the Amazon Influencer Program. 

His most recent move was to take his videos and put them on a new YouTube channel. He’s uploaded about 200 videos and shares the stats: 22k views over the last month. 

He shares his future plans for the channel in terms of monetization, and where else he plans to upload the videos. Brooks has done something similar and he shares his experience.

When it’s Brooks’ turn, he shares that he bought an email newsletter, inspired by the Niche Pursuits Community. 

He explains how he came across the newsletter, Remote Work Opportunities, how long it will take him to break even, and his main plans for future monetization and growth.

When it comes to their Weird Niche Sites, Spencer kicks off the segment with Drive Tanks and explains what the site is all about. He and Brooks discuss the offer on the website and the surprising amount of traffic it gets, considering it’s such a niche website. 

Brooks’ site, Take a Screenshot, is a Weird Niche Site that earns money from ads. It’s a very simple site but it’s doing surprisingly well. They discuss the keywords it’s ranking for and guess how much it might be making.

This website is proof that you could create a simple website in just a day and earn passively from it.

And that brings us to the end of another great episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! If you’re feeling informed and inspired, we certainly hope you’ll join us next Friday for more of the same.

Transcript

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And, uh, it’s a good one, I think, because the Google November core update is basically done rolling out. We don’t know exactly when that will end, but it’s pretty much at the end. We believe, and we’re seeing a lot of really positive updates.

Among small publisher websites. So we have a lot of examples that I’m going to share of sites that are seeing a big recovery in this Google November core update. So we’re going to start off with that really good news. And then we have a couple of other news stories, things that are happening here in the industry.

So, uh, but before we dive into all of that, I want to welcome Brooks onto the show. Brooks, how you doing today?

Brooks: Spencer. Good man. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. I’m glad to be here with you.

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, it’s good to have you back and we should acknowledge that Jared is not with us today. Uh, Jared has been like the consistent, you know, sometimes I’m on the show, sometimes you’re on the show, but Jared is almost always here, but he happens to be on a well deserved vacation.

Uh, he’s, uh, Assume enjoying himself away, uh, from the hustle and bustle here of the niche pursuits, uh, podcast. And, uh, so he’s on vacation, but he will be back. Uh, I believe next week is when he jumps back in and we’ll be right back on the show. So

Brooks: I wonder if he got nervous, like right around this time, just like naturally right now.

He’s like, Oh my gosh, I’m supposed to be recording right now. I wonder, he’s like, I feel like

Spencer: there’s something I should be doing right now. What is it? I’m, I’m missing something. Yeah. He’s been doing it, man. It’s the, the news episode has been like two years pretty much. Um, plus he does the weekly interviews.

So, uh, Again, kudos to Jared. Let’s not go too far on a tangent, but we miss you, Jared. Uh, but the show must go on. So, uh, our top news story that we have here today is that, uh, the November core update is essentially done rolling out. Google. Actually says on their official sort of timeline of when they roll out things that it should take about two weeks to finish rolling out.

Uh, and maybe I’ll share that you can see here. If you click on the November core update, it started November 11th. It says the rollout rollout may take up to two weeks to complete. We’re now, um, right at about two weeks tomorrow, I think we’ll be officially two weeks. So we think it’s pretty much done. Um, but, uh, What’s really interesting with this update is that we’re seeing some nice recoveries.

Uh, and this is just an article here on SE Roundtable about how the core update is kind of heating up. There’s a lot of activity here right at the end. And so I asked a few people on both Twitter and Facebook, and I actually ran across some other threads of people sharing their results. Thanks. And so I wanted to share some of those, um, here on Twitter.

Uh, we’ve got RC Williams that just shared a screenshot of his website. I mean, if you look at this recovery from when the November core update started here, I mean, just this massive increases traffic has doubled. Uh, just in the last two weeks. So, uh, that’s just one example. Um, there are other examples here.

Niche site lady kind of shared just what’s happening with one particular keyword of her. She’s tracked over time. Uh, and, uh, just really interesting to see that, Hey, in November, things are popping right back up. To the top of page one of Google, to the number one position.

Brooks: Nice.

Spencer: Uh, and, uh, then over on, uh, Facebook, somebody in the media vine group and following the media vine group is really interesting because these are a lot of the hands on publishers.

These are people making recipes in their own kitchen. These are small publishers that are actually creating the thing and then writing about it. And so the fact that some of their sites are starting to see a recovery, I think it’s a really, really small creator blogger. Uh, and so, you know, Pam here shares that, uh, her traffic, she’s basically saying, Hey, is this a fluke?

Uh, but my page views are, you know, rivaling what they did last year. And so I’m super surprised. She kind of goes on and a lot of people are saying, Hey, My page views are up. Um, Cheryl says, Hey, my page views are up 5 percent year over year. Um, again, that’s after the, um, the helpful content update, right?

Happened almost exactly a year ago. So her traffic is up from over a year ago and a revenue is up 50%. A lot of people chimed in and said, uh, that was the case for them. And, um, so people can read it that, and then there was just a couple other screenshots here is the, uh, niche pursuits, Facebook group, uh, somebody just sharing that since November 14th, their traffic is up 125 percent to 400 percent compared with last month.

So congrats, uh, to Lauren out there. So, um, I don’t know, Brooks, have you seen anything on your own sites, or have you just heard any other chatter? First of all,

Brooks: it’s great to have some good news out there, right? You know, people with like, people with traffic increases. Um, I did have a look at mine, like some websites I manage.

Uh, a few of them, no movement at all, but one of my sites has also increased in traffic. Um, so, you know, that’s obviously exciting. Admittedly, it is also a site that got hit pretty hard, so when you see a, a short, a short, uh, short term graph with a, a big spike in you, Rewind out to the long term view. It’s still, it’s still quite down, but I mean, you know, um, still exciting though, right.

To see, to see increase rather than decrease.

Spencer: Yeah. It’s like one of those things like, Hey, we’ll take it. Right. And a lot of people are echoing what you just said that, uh, when they zoom out, like their traffic’s still way down. Right. It’s still at 20 percent or whatever. Uh, from where their peak was with the helpful content update.

And so that is unfortunate, right? That not everyone’s traffic is all the way back to where it was. Uh, and so I think that’s probably the norm is that people’s traffic is still, if they were hit by the helpful content update, that their traffic is still lower, uh, than it was. But. A lot of people are just saying, Hey, I’ll take that extra bump of 25 percent or 50 percent or whatever it is.

Um, but then there are other cases of people that actually have seen a full recovery or close to a full recovery, uh, from the helpful content update.

Brooks: Yep. Yep. And, and one more thing I’ll say just related to it, that I feel like I’ve, I’ve seen sprinkled in the industry with this is that even though, uh, there’s an increase back in traffic, what, what I think has happened is I’ve seen a lot of people find additional ways and they’ve spent the last recent amount of time figuring out how else can I get traffic.

And I think that is super healthy for all website owners, brand owners to like, Force yourself to diversify. So to me, that’s like, that’s a, that’s a positive thing in this.

Spencer: Yeah, I think so. Anytime that you are sort of forced to change in your business, um, it actually can make your business stronger, right?

Whether it’s different revenue streams, different traffic sources, um, maybe just thinking about your business a lot differently, I know people have, uh, are diving more into Pinterest or into Facebook, uh, or other places or YouTube. Right. And, uh, at the end of the day, even though it’s painful, you’re, you’re Business hopefully will come out stronger, uh, at the end because of that.

But it is nice to see some signs of recovery. Um, I’ll maybe just share one final screenshot. This is somebody in the niche pursuits community. that kind of shared their Google search console. You can see just sort of this huge bump that they’ve actually seen since August. Uh, and then that has continued here.

If I share, uh, in November, it’s actually bumping up a little bit higher, but actually zoomed out, you can see back, you know, Hey, they are still a little bit lower from where they were. With the helpful content update, uh, but they’re getting close, right? They’ve recovered here. It looks like two thirds, maybe, um, of their traffic.

And so that’s a positive sign. So it’s just really interesting when I think about everything we’ve seen and heard with, uh, Publishers being invited to the creator conference. You know, 20 publishers actually went to Google campus and heard directly from the engineers. Danny Sullivan was there and said, Hey, we’re aware of what’s going on with you.

The small publishers were doing all that we can to make Google better. Uh, and essentially, they said, there’s not a problem with your website or with your content. You know, it’s a Google problem. Uh, and it’s This November core update, they said, Hey, is not going to address all the concerns that you’re bringing up.

And so the fact that people are seeing a recovery with the November core update, I think it’s kind of cool because Google hasn’t even really had a chance to take that feedback that they got from that creator conference. Uh, and apply that to their, their next update, which we don’t know when that’ll be, but maybe that’s March, you know, next year, maybe that will implement more of the changes anyways, I’m, I’m trying to be hopeful in all of this.

I know there’s a lot of people listening that are just like, I’m still not seeing anything. I’m down in the dumps and I give up on Google and I don’t blame you, but, uh, there are some signs of life among these small independent bloggers.

Brooks: And, and this podcast, Niche Pursuits, Jared has interviewed 10 percent of those people.

Uh, two, two of them have been in, uh, recent episodes. And it was interesting, like, I listened to both of those episodes. It was interesting to hear both of their viewpoints. Uh, that was really, it was really cool. I, I don’t know if anyone else will, uh, get, get interviewed as well or is on the docket. But that’s, it’s been super interesting to hear, hear those points of view and what they got from it.

Spencer: Do you ever get stuck in your business and wish you had someone you could turn to for solutions? Well, I think you should consider joining the Niche Pursuits community. You’ll get weekly calls with experts on growing a successful online business, and you’ll also get assigned a small mastermind group where you can solve your business problems As well as share your wins for a limited time.

I’ll let you try out the niche pursuits community for just 1. Go ahead and use coupon code podcast at checkout in order to get your first month for just 1. Again, that’s coupon code podcast. Go to community dot niche pursuits. com today and see what it’s all about. And maybe I’ll see you on our call next week.

Thanks a lot. Yeah. Lots going on in the, in the Google world. Um, that’s sort of the latest, um, you know, it, it, it’s very possible that by the time we release this podcast episode that, uh, the November core update will be completely done, but, um, so this isn’t an official, like, here’s what happened, but here’s what’s happening.

We think it’s basically done. Right now the signs are positive, uh, for a lot of website owners. And so, uh, we’ll just take that as a good sign. Um, you know, our, our next story here is that Google actually just recently rolled out something in Google search console called recommendations. So directly within people’s Google search console platform, they can log in and they can get recommendations for improvement.

Uh, right, right there. And so here on a search engine round table, uh, you know, here’s this article. It’s been written up on every sort of search engine news website. But, uh, here’s just a couple of screenshots of what you might see. Uh, basically it just gives you this, This idea or this, uh, light bulb icon for, Hey, if they’ve got some recommendations for your website, it’s going to display it right there on your homepage and you can see that, right?

For example, uh, a page recently got fewer clicks than usual, and it gives a specific URL that’s down and you can click on it. Investigate that further, um, or I got more clicks than usual. Uh, and then actually this next recommendation here, uh, I got this on my Google search console, which I thought was kind of interesting because I don’t sell any products directly.

So I actually may, maybe a bad recommendation, but, uh, if. You’re an e commerce website, or you do actually sell products on your website. It, the recommendation is, Hey, display your three products on the shopping tab. Um, and maybe that’s something I need to look into further. I don’t know. Can an affiliate of a product list something on a shopping tab?

I don’t know. I don’t have a shopping tab, uh, on my website, but it somehow found, you know, some products that I have reviewed and recommended and said, Hey, Here’s an idea. So, um, but it’ll, it’ll give, um, ideas for issues that maybe need to be fixed some of the opportunities like we just went over and then configuration, something that you could make your work even easier.

So, um, if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend people go out there and log into their Google search console. See if there’s any recommendations there to figure out if they can improve their website. Uh, have you had a chance to log in or notice any recommendations on your site?

Brooks: Yeah. After, after, uh, you sent that article to, to have a look at, I, I hopped in and I see one, I see one right now and I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting.

I’m not sure how long this has been live. Do you have any idea? Like, I think it’s only been a couple of days. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. I was wondering if I just hadn’t scrolled down and seen this, you know, recommendations or, uh, whatever, but yeah, it’s right there on the homepage. Yeah. Now, uh, a few of the sites don’t have any recommendations so that you’re not necessarily going to have recommendations.

But but yeah, uh, it’s very interesting. Yeah, it helps you like like for this one. It’s it’s showing a it’s pointing out a Page that’s performing a little bit better. And so it’s like saying hey, you know dig in and look at this and I yeah That’s really interesting data. If you don’t find that yourself, it’s very helpful for them to point that out to you

Spencer: Yeah, so I imagine that this will maybe expand and get a little bit smarter, right over time from what I understand This was rolled out on some test websites Maybe bigger publishers a number of weeks ago, and they’ve kind of been testing it But I believe it was just the beginning of this week that they rolled it out to everybody and like you pointed out It doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will have any recommendations your site just you know, for whatever reason it just doesn’t have any recommendations um But when Google does find some recommendations, it, you know, everybody should have access to that.

So since it’s news, we thought we would point it out. It’s something new. Um, okay. And then our final news topic before we move on to our side hustles and then our weird niche sites here, which are a couple of my favorite segments of the show is, uh, Google has updated their ad design policy for deceptive buttons.

In ads, so, uh, let me share this tab. This is um, It’s kind of interesting. I’d really be curious to hear your take on this brooks, uh, because uh, Barry schwartz wrote up this article and he shared some examples, right? We’ve all seen websites like this where you go and maybe you’re trying to download something uh, and then Uh, you get this big old button that says start now.

It looked, you know, it’s a big green button that looks like, Hey, it’s a download button, but really it’s an ad. Right. And so if you click that big start now button, um, you know, somebody, the website is making money, but somebody else is paying, you know, for that ad. So, um, but really the download button you really want is down here at the bottom where it says download file as a zip, right?

It’s anyways, um, Google is updating their policy to basically say, if you have missed Leading ad designs, um, that that’s no longer allowed your Google ads will no longer run. Um, but they do say, Hey, we’re going to give you, um, we’ll give you a warning. In other words, we’re not going to shut down your account without a prior warning.

Right? So if you happen to not follow this new policy, we’re going to give you a warning. You have seven days, you know, then we’ll, Take action. Google will take action against your account, either suspend it or, you know, shut it down. Um, I don’t know, maybe, maybe I’ll ask your thoughts before I share my sort of hot take on this.

Brooks: Well, my, my initial thought was like, wait a minute. Why is this still an issue in 2024? Like what, like what, why is it taking them this long to have this policy? Uh, this giant company. I mean, that was one of my thoughts. My second thought was like, yeah. Thank, thank goodness, because I have inadvertently clicked on these all the time, on websites just like that, and it’s not that I’m, it’s not that I’m like, not smart, I’m just, you’re just being hasty, and you see it, and then, you know, if you’re in a rush, then you click, and then you’re like, oh great, like, now what, like, now what’s about to happen, or whatever, yeah, I, I appreciate this rule, but I, I’m surprised, I’m surprised, is it.

It’s not already a rule. Those are my thoughts. Yeah.

Spencer: No, I, I, I agree. And that was sort of my, uh, hot take here is that, Hey, it’s Google that has created this rule. I mean, they’re trying to phrase it like, Oh, we’re, you know, uh, we finally caught all these people, you know, taking advantage of this ability to create these buttons and we’re, we’re cracking down on them.

Well, no, people have been doing this since whenever Google AdWords started in 2003 or four or whatever it was. Um, um, And I suspect Google hasn’t shut it down because they make a lot of money, uh, from these ads. I mean, these ads have a really high click through rate, right? Um, these buttons, I mean, that’s the highest possible, probably ad type is the accidental click.

Um, and so it’s kind of like somebody needs from the New York times needs to do a deep dive of like, how much Money small businesses have wasted, um, on accidental clicks because, you know, Google does allow these sort of misleading ads and has for, you know, almost two decades, uh, at this point. So it is funny that it’s like, Oh, Google.

Okay. All right. We’re going to update our policies as though it was the creator of the ad that was the shady one. It’s like, no, Google always allowed this approved it. And, uh, but Hey, kudos. It’s great. It should have been cracked down, you know, 15 years ago. So.

Brooks: Right, right. Second best time is now. Today,

Spencer: I guess.

Second best time is now. Always. So, uh, we’ll see, we’ll see what happens there. You know, the marketers are smart, um, or at least they’re always gonna be trying different things, right? So I imagine people out there gonna, like, oh, well, I got seven days. You know, I, I’m going to get a warning first. So I’m going to keep running these ads until I really get that warning.

And then when I get that warning, I’m going to try a different ad and see where toe the line, right? Like, okay, I can’t do a button that looks like that, but can I do a button that looks like this? So it’s going to be, you know, an ongoing battle I’m sure. For sure. And so. We’ll see how tough Google really is on all those people spending millions of dollars, you know.

That’s a good point. If they want to say no to money, it’s making the money. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. The money. So, um, all right. So, uh, so that, that’s kind of our, our news topics. Um, if you will, and maybe we should have opened the show with just saying happy Thanksgiving. If you’re in the U S right. This episode is going to come out the day after Thanksgiving.

Uh, and if If you’re not in the U S like it’s, uh, I guess it’ll be black Friday, uh, by the time that this episode rolls out. So happy black Friday. Hopefully people are out, uh, shopping and getting all kinds of deals. Uh, you know, I’ve got a deal running for link whisper. Hopefully people are out buying that.

Um, but we’re going to talk about. Our side hustles. Uh, now one of my, one of my favorite, uh, sort of topics on the show. And, you know, Brooks, I have been doing the Amazon influencer program now, uh, since the beginning of, uh, it’s been almost two years. It’s been almost two years. Okay. Uh, basically what it, what, what it comes down to, um, January, 2023, I guess is, is kind of when I started.

essentially. And, uh, I have like a thousand videos that are up and, uh, recorded. Um, I I’ve really just let it sit mostly for the bulk of this year. Um, you know, the, in the first few months of this year, I uploaded a few videos and then I kind of just pumped the brakes on it and did other things. But what I actually want to talk about is all those assets, those 1000 videos that I have, I decided a few months ago, like why not use these on YouTube, uh, or other platforms as well as just Amazon.

And so I’ve now taken about 200 of those videos that I recorded for the Amazon influencer program. And I’ve put them on a new YouTube channel. Uh, where I’m just uploading these one or two minute product reviews. They’re all very random. One video might be reviewing, you know, like a hard drive. Another one might be reviewing shampoo.

Another one might be reviewing some kitchen product. Like it’s, they’re all over the board. Uh, but I just uploaded it to this YouTube, uh, channel and, uh, I have some results to share. So, uh, let me actually share my analytics. Uh, for this YouTube channel, which, uh, yeah, here it is. So I, this channel has just about 22, 000 views in the last 28 days.

Uh, and that may not seem like a ton, but I’d call that a pretty decent little channel, uh, just based on. Videos that I wasn’t using otherwise. Um, and again, this is about 200 videos. I have another 800 to go So i’ve got another 800 videos that need to be uploaded to this channel If all the videos do just as well, right that will like 4x this number like this channel may be getting close to 100 000 views Every month, uh, and then I can actually monetize And make some money directly on youtube once I get You enough subscribers, which, uh, this channel only has 63 subscribers right now.

I need a thousand to get monetized, but I could do some things with shorts or something else to try to get, uh, subscribers up quicker. Uh, but I actually may be able to monetize the channel with display ads, um, over time. And so that would be goal number one, um, one or two, my, my other route to monetize is that in every video just within the YouTube description.

I basically have one sentence. This is, Hey, if you want to go buy this product on Amazon, here it is. And I have my affiliate link. And so I can’t see the people are starting to click that affiliate link. I don’t have a report that, you know, shares exactly how much I’ve made directly from YouTube, but I am making a little bit.

Um, so it’s more like the early stages. It’s exciting. And like, there’s potential here. So I’m, I’m, uh, excited to get the next 800 videos up, get it, get it rocking and rolling, uh, and then after that, like, I don’t know why I don’t just. Put them on Instagram and put them on maybe a Facebook, you know, as Facebook reels, um, maybe TikTok, right?

So there’s three or four other platforms. I could take these thousand videos that I have, dust them off and just put them on a new platform and see what I can do.

Brooks: Heck yeah. No, that’s really exciting. Uh, do you, do you definitely think you’ll, you’ll upload the remainder? Remaining 800 like is there any reason why you wouldn’t at this point?

Do you think I don’t I don’t see any reason Why I wouldn’t okay. Okay.

Spencer: Yeah,

Brooks: do you is there any additional? Editing at all or you’re just taking the same video file from the Amazon influencer and you’re uploading to YouTube, right? And then just putting 100 percent the same file

Spencer: just reuploading. Yep.

Brooks: Yeah Um, I’m asking you these questions cause I actually did the same thing. Uh, I, I don’t have a thousand videos for Amazon influencer. I have like a couple of hundred, but I think I’ve uploaded about a hundred. Um, I don’t know how many views my channel has. Like, I’m not sure, but, um, but, but yeah, have made some Amazon, have made some sales through the affiliate link.

So like, um, that, that I’m excited to see. Where it goes when you upload the remaining 800, it’s very surprising to see the long tail, like, I guess the long tail keyword searches people are doing in Google and then the video pops up, I think is what’s happening. Either they’re doing it straight in YouTube or in, or in Google.

Um, and you know, if it’s an obscure product, it’s interesting cause there’s obviously not going to be a lot of content about it. So, um, right. Yeah. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see the update after you get the all 800, like all 1000 videos rolling on this channel. That’s going to be so cool.

Spencer: Yeah, I agree.

And that you’re exactly right. I mean, it’s a long tail approach, right? Because of the specific product name or, you know, variation of the product or whatever it is, there’s just not a lot of videos on this product. Uh, but it also really meets the demand, right? That, that somebody is looking for it. Maybe 10 seconds to figure out, should I really buy this brand or this brand?

Brooks: Yeah.

Spencer: Right. And they don’t want a big, long review, um, of the product. They don’t want a 10 minute video, right? A one minute, two minute video that just like shows the product and use might just answer the exact question they had and off they go and they buy it. And so I really love the long tail approach of it.

Brooks: On those other platforms, say like Instagram or TikTok or whatever, do you, would the same concept, I’m not as familiar with those platforms, so like, would you be able to link to the Amazon affiliate program on those, or, I feel like those are a little bit different, like harder to link out, or is that, is that not the case?

Yeah,

Spencer: um, They, they maybe are a little bit, um, you can, you can link out. I believe on Tik TOK would be just fine. Instagram, I know has some instances where you can’t quite link out. It may not actually be clickable, right? But they might have to copy and paste. Uh, so you can do that. Um, but it, it just opens up a whole new Avenue of.

Well, one reason why this got me thinking is because I actually saw another Amazon influencer that’s doing just that, and they had quite a large, uh, Instagram following. They had like a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And it’s really just that, like, they’re just pretty much taking their videos, uh, and putting it up there.

And so it may or may not lead to a lot of affiliate commissions directly on some of these videos. Uh, but it may build up an audience where you can do some interesting things.

Brooks: Yeah.

Spencer: Good point. Good point. Yeah. So. Yeah. That’s cool, man. It’s pretty hands off. You know, I’ve got a VA that I’m putting in place to just go upload all these videos.

And I may have him just do the same on Instagram and TikTok and just kind of see where it goes. Yeah. Exciting.

Brooks: Super

Spencer: cool. Yeah. Hey everyone, Spencer here, founder of Niche Pursuits. So, you probably know the importance of building internal links so your site can perform well in Google. Today I want to share how Link Whisper can help you add outbound internal links to your articles.

As you draft your article in WordPress, Link Whisper scans your site identifying the best internal link opportunities. It then recommends the perfect anchor text and link to add. With just a click, your content is updated with new internal links. No more expensive tools or tedious manual site searches.

Link Whisper does the heavy lifting right inside the WordPress editor. Say goodbye to the hassle of internal linking. With Link Whisper, you can focus on what you do best. Creating great content. Use the coupon code PODCAST today and get 15 off. Elevate your website’s internal linking with Link Whisper now.

Building smart internal links just got easier. Go to linkwhisper. com today and be sure to use coupon code PODCAST to get 15 off.

So, uh, what are you working on, Brooks? What do you got?

Brooks: Uh, so because, because of you guys, it’s y’all’s fault. It’s the, uh, in a good way, the Niche Pursuits community. Uh, we have, we have an email, we have an email like newsletter cohort kind of going on. So we’re talking about it and we’re sharing goals and we’re like, okay, how are we gonna grow?

You know, what do we want to do? What are your goals? And uh, well, I, I was like, it’d be cool to buy an email newsletter. And so, well, I bought an email newsletter. Um, so I did it. Yeah, so I was asked in the community, uh, they were like, cool, how did you find it? Like what platform did you find the newsletter on?

I was like, nah, it was, uh, it kind of found me. It was, it was kind of, uh, it was kind of like cold outreach to me, but, but within, within another Slack group that I’m in. So it wasn’t like, it wasn’t completely like random. Complete random person on the internet. Um, right, but it, but it kind of was, um, and so I, I purchased this newsletter that is It’s tangentially like related to what I talk about.

So like, you know, Brooks Conkle, like I talk about money making ideas and things that I’m doing and building a newsletter and online, you know, business income streams. This newsletter is more based around like remote work opportunities. Uh, in most of the audience is not even us based, uh, per se. Um, it, you know, I came to find out when I, when I, when I, when I bought the newsletter.

Um, but my goal because of the platform it’s on, I can run, I can run ads on it natively on the platform. And I think, uh, with my, of course it’s business and nothing is ever like guaranteed, but, but I think with my napkin math, I think I can maybe break even in like nine months. Um, which I was pumped about.

I was like, man, if, if, if I could potentially break even in less than a year, then I’m, I’m all about it. Um, But what I think I also can do that I’m, I’m, that to me is like the how can I add more layers of interest, you know, interesting things to it is like is, is use affiliate programs within the newsletter.

Um, but I can also, I also want to push people back to me and, and my brand. So like maybe back to my personal newsletter. And maybe back to my personal YouTube content where I can like embed that in this newsletter. Um, so it’s kind of like having a standalone, it’s, it’s like a standalone brand that maybe I can even sell it in the future, but in the meantime, I’ll get to market myself.

Like while I’m generating revenue. Uh, Does that sound like a good idea? Like I’m thinking this is going to work. I mean, based on, based on what I’m seeing so far.

Spencer: Yeah, no, that sounds like a great idea. And are you okay if I share, uh, what the website is and everything, like share it on the screen here. Yeah, that’s, that’s totally fine.

Yeah. So it’s a, like you said, it’s remote work, uh, opportunities here, remote dash opportunity. beehive. com if people want to check it out. Um, but yeah. Uh, so it’s a newsletter. I think it’s a really good idea. I, I didn’t even think about that. Hey, you could use this newsletter, hopefully as a profitable standalone business, right?

You said in nine months, hopefully you’ve got ads and affiliate play. Everything’s in place that it’s just profitable, but the gravy on top is, Hey, if you can get a certain percentage of the followers from this newsletter over to your main brand, right, that helps grow your, your main business even more as well.

So it’s kind of like the, the flywheel approach, right? There’s a lot of different ways you can think about that, but this is almost like a flywheel on its own. That’s profitable. Uh, do you plan on like spending money to get more, uh, subscribers on remote work opportunities or is it just growing organically on its own?

I’m

Brooks: not sure yet what my, if, If, and how I want to grow it, uh, it’s almost like I want to see it kind of play out and like, like, let me give it three or four months and just see kind of what happens with, with content. And, uh, so in fact, it’ll probably, the list will probably prune itself a little bit every three or four months.

Right. People will probably unsubscribe or whatever, but, um, surprisingly there’s, there’s some like Twitter referrals and then also a little bit, uh, over time, I think I’ll even get some growth via SEO, uh, ironically via even this, um, Like the, the, the way this works, but yeah, I’m not sure if I’m going to spin to grow.

I think I’d rather, uh, maybe buy another smaller newsletter. So actually if anyone’s out there and has a small newsletter, um, I don’t know, like reach out to me cause I think it can make sense to have multiple smaller brands that are filtering back into mine. Um, But maybe, never say never, like, like maybe I’ll run ads and grow it just like the previous owner was doing.

Like that’s actually how he grew this newsletter was mainly through like Twitter ads and I think Tik Tok ads as well.

Spencer: And maybe, maybe walk us through the, the generic math. You don’t have to give like exact numbers, but like, how did you come up with, Hey, I think this is going to be profitable in nine months.

Like, what are you looking at? How you’re going to make money and expenses.

Brooks: So you’re asking, you’re asking how I did the, how I did the kind of calculations to figure out on, uh, on, on my end. And so, yeah, he, he showed me the ads, you know, that they had run. And that was part of what he showed me. Like, Hey, look, like this is, this is, you know, what it, what it made these last couple of months from, from the ad revenue, um, I just kind of extrapolated that out and said, okay, maybe I can at least continue similar.

And then I negotiated a price for the newsletter based on that and just made it, made it work for me. Um, and it,

Spencer: yeah.

Brooks: And then, yeah, just PayPal them some cash or, or, or we actually did it in stages. Um, like, You know, we didn’t, it wasn’t a huge purchase. So we didn’t use like escrow or anything like that.

Um, but, but what we did, and if anyone wants to use this as tips, if you buy something that’s smaller and it’s not like a massive purchase, like we did it in stages. I was like, Hey, look, I’ll send you X number of dollars. You send me access to the, this account, then Y number of dollars. Then you give me the social accounts and then I’ll send you the, you know, final payment once it’s all.

And so that’s how we did it. It was just in like three. But, um, but yeah, I, I, yeah, I feel, I feel pretty good. And like definitely less than a year. Um, yeah,

Spencer: and so it makes money with, um, both like, uh, affiliate links and like display ads managed all through beehive.

Brooks: That, so that, what you’re looking at right there, the 80 currencies, that is an, yeah, that is an ad from Beehive.

Uh, and so that is the only way he was making money previously. Um, and so I’m trying to layer in on top of that affiliate stuff and then also drive people back to me personally.

Spencer: Yeah. That’s smart. That’s cool, man. I’m excited to see where you’re able to take it. So maybe, uh, yeah, give us an update here in, I don’t know, a few months or whenever.

Um, sounds good. Be cool to see her, see how it goes. So very good. Um, I don’t know anything else. I don’t know if I cut you off on anything else you wanted to say about this. Um, you were just saying, hey, you may actually buy other niche newsletters. Yeah,

Brooks: exactly. I mean, I’m open. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’m open to look at, I’m open to look at other ones.

I’m not, I’m not necessarily hunting hard. I’m not like out there grinding looking for newsletters. But yeah, I mean, I’m like, I’m definitely open to look at opportunities because I understand how this platform works pretty well. And so, um, if I feel that I can make it work, then I’m game to try, you know?

Awesome.

Spencer: Very cool. Well, uh, let’s go on to our weird niche sites. And I will simply just say that, boy, you were put under pressure on this one. Because, uh, you did your job and you found a weird niche site. Uh, but then I told you last minute, Hey, I think we’ve covered your weird niche site and, uh, you, you pulled through, you found another one, thankfully.

Uh, so good job. You actually found two, but we’re going to just talk about one. Uh, cause we did talk about the other one. Uh, it’s probably been a year. So, um, that’s the thing. I, it’s happened a couple of times where people are starting to find the same weird niche site that we talked about previously. But I’ve got one that I don’t believe we’ve talked about, uh, previously.

And this is like, I don’t know, I call it like a weird niche business cause it’s just really unique. Um, and interesting. Um, I’ll just share it. It’s drive tanks. com. That’s it drive tanks. com. It’s exactly what you think it would be. Um, you know, if you want to drive a tank, there’s a place in Texas, you can go to drive a real tank and shoot the real guns on the tanks.

Uh, and, uh, just to have the time of your life, you know, blow up something, drive it around, have a good time. Uh, and, uh, And what’s interesting about this business, cause I’ve actually been thinking about not this business, but just businesses where if you can buy the thing, or if you can own the equipment, like you’re in business, right?

Like that’s pretty much all you need is the thing, right? In this case, it’s the tank. If you have a tank. Like you’re in business, right? And there’s a lot of other examples, like really big pieces of machinery or equipment. Like you don’t really have to do a ton of marketing. Like you’re the guy with the thing.

Like people are going to just come pay to use it or write it or test it out Like because it’s just this unique thing, right? Um, so maybe i’ll have some other ideas that like explain what i’m talking about But in this case like it’s very clear like hey if you have tanks people are going to pay you to drive a tank and so Um, they have prices up here Uh, I don’t know if you’ve looked at the prices already brooks, but how much do you think?

It would cost to drive a tank You

Brooks: I have not looked. I’m guessing it’s, I’m guessing it’s not cheap. I’m, I’m, I was kind of wondering if you got the Halls family vacation, uh, family vacation going, uh, going to drive tanks, uh, out in Texas soon. Uh, I say, I say it’s a 700 bucks. That would be a

Spencer: smoking deal.

Their prices, uh, are, it depends on the tank, but I mean, we’re talking 1, 800. 3, 000. Okay. There is a ride, ride the tank for 950. I, I don’t know.

Brooks: You’re not getting to roll over a car though. That’s for sure. Not in that package. No.

Spencer: No. Uh, and I think the cheaper ones are like driven by somebody else. Right?

Yeah. Um, like, yeah, if you want to drive and shoot the tank, the Russian T 34 tank, that’s 3, 500. Wow. And you get one round. 3, 500. Uh, one round on the main gun. Um, single car crush, 1, 450. Oh, it’s a steal. That’s a bargain, man. Hey, you know what? Actually, here we go. Drive the tank course, 700 bucks. There is an option.

So it just depends on the tank. Apparently these must be a little bit smaller. So you’re, you’re right in the ballpark. Uh, but if you want like the, the massive. You know, huge tank. I, it’s cost you three grand. Um, you can, boy, you can stay on the, on the tank, uh, lot, I guess. I don’t know what you call it, but, uh, you can buy a tank.

Um, you can own a tank. There you go. Tanks and vehicles for sale, um, price upon request. manufacturing 1987. Um, but kind of just a really cool business. I know this is out of the realm of, Hey, it’s not a digital business. You can’t just build the website and, uh, you know, make money. I know that’s how a lot of the, the ones that we talk about.

Um, but it’s just like such a cool business that I thought I had to share. So, uh, but in terms of traffic of the website, For like such a niche little business, it gets like almost 18, 000 visitors a month, uh, according to similar web. Um, so my guess is that they’re, they’re booked out, like probably they probably do really well booking out their tanks.

If you got that many people coming to your website every month, I mean, book out a couple of tanks, you know, every weekend, you got a pretty nice little business, um, just, just in that. But, um, I don’t know. We haven’t booked the Haas family vacation yet. But, uh, I could see this being like a cool business retreat or, you know, you take the team out and y’all go drive a tank and shoot something.

Brooks: The niche pursuits team, man, you guys are going to be rolling over cars, shooting, uh, Russian tanks or whatever that was.

Spencer: There you go. Maybe our next podcast episode, we’ll record from location there in Texas. Uh, there you go. There you go. Um, so I have no estimate on like how much money they’re making. Um, but, uh, they, they probably do pretty well and they’re, they’re actually pretty active on social media.

Um, I think they had quite a large, um, Facebook following here. Yeah, I mean, it’s not crazy. You know, they got 18, 000 likes and they’re active on other social media. Um, so yeah, they do a good job of digital marketing and making it pretty well known that their business, Hey, if you want to drive a tank. This is the place

Brooks: that’s actually like what you just showed me like you I wouldn’t imagine the person that owned some tanks would have that type of Online presence like what you just read that that photo on Facebook was incredible like that the gun shooting So either they they’re really good at it or they have a really good marketing agency that’s working with them But I’d like I’m pretty impressed by those photos for that type of that type of company Yeah.

Spencer: No, exactly. Pretty cool. Um, smart. And I, they probably have a big, uh, upsell at the end, right? After you drive the tank. Hey, if you want the photo and video package. Oh yeah. It’s a couple hundred dollars more. And of course you’re going to buy it because when else are you going to drive a tank? Exactly. Um, Right, so yeah, they’ve got some cool cool pictures.

Um, anyways interesting business.

Brooks: It’s cool What do you got high end high end sales? Mine is mine is as online as online can get so yeah It is an online website, and it’s got it’s got dashes in the in the URL which You might think, might not work, but in this case, it does work. It’s also a org, not a com, which is interesting.

So in the whole world of domaining, so it’s take a screenshot. org And it teaches you to do just that. It teaches you to take a screenshot. And it looks like it’s ad supported. And I didn’t get to do a ton of research on this website, but I think it gets a good bit of traffic, so I think it does make some, I think it does make some cash, but you can choose, you can choose if you’re Android or iOS or Windows.

I actually would find this useful there, there, you know, if you don’t do it all the time, like if you actually don’t take screenshots all the time, this is, it’s pretty, pretty darn helpful to like walk you through and show you how to do it. I think it’s, I think it’s kind of cool.

Spencer: Yeah. It’s really interesting.

I like that. They have, they have the tabs here, right? If you’re in Chrome, uh, Linux, Android, iOS, right? So they, you know, they’ve updated it for mobile. Uh, I don’t know how old this website is. But I imagine it’s been around for a long time. Um, it doesn’t give a date on their about us page, but, uh, it looks like it’s, uh, a German website, at least that’s the address.

Um, but yeah, totally ad supported, right? And it’s simple. I mean, it’s like one sort of like tab per, per operating system for how to take a screenshot and that’s pretty much it. Right. That’s it. And, uh, I did pull up a couple of, um, uh, tools here. I’ve got a Ahrefs pulled up because it does do surprisingly well, uh, in search, it gets 192, 000.

Organic visitors per month. Uh, I mean, that’s a lot.

Brooks: That is a lot. DR 76 too. Like the domain rating is pretty high. It’s pretty, pretty wild.

Spencer: Yeah. So, I mean, they’re getting the links from probably a lot of large publications. I imagine if we were to guess their keywords, it’s going to be how to take a screenshot.

There you go. How to screenshot on windows, how to take a screenshot on windows. Um, screenshot on Mac. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, all those variations, it just does really well for those keywords. Uh, and then on similar web, it shows that, uh, yeah, it’s getting over 200, 000 visitors per month.

And with, it does show the majority of that is organic search, uh, or there’s also a lot of, uh, direct traffic. So, I don’t know, if you were to guess how much money do you think this website’s making, Brooks?

Brooks: Uh, definitely thousands, I would think. Yeah,

Spencer: that

Brooks: was, that was very general, general answer, but thousands, yeah,

Spencer: uh, I think, yeah, I think so.

I mean, these tools, I mean, you never know. I mean, they might be getting as much as half a million visitors a month, or they might be only getting a hundred thousand visitors. It’s somewhere in between there. Right. And so, yeah, they’re probably making easy three, four or 5, 000 a month, but it could be as much as 10, 000 a month.

I, I, I don’t know, um, just depending on how much traffic they’re getting. But Pretty simple. I mean, it’s like a website that could be created in a day.

Brooks: Yeah, it would be interesting to see like how long ago it was created. And then it, I’m guessing it was like a set and forget type thing. And then just over time, this is what’s happened.

I mean, cause it’s not like, it’s not like they’re creating blog content. I’m not sure if they did anything strategically to get like links to it or something like that. You know, it’s hard to, it’s hard to know without like really. Really diving in and I guess dissecting or whatever. Um,

Spencer: yeah, I agree. I mean, it’s certainly at least older than 2015.

That’s as far back as the AHRF’s grasp graph goes. Um, so it’s been around a long time.

Brooks: I love seeing a simple concept that has a lot of traffic. That’s making thousands of dollars a month, potentially. Like I, I just, I don’t know. That just excites me every time. That’s why I like this segment on the, uh, on the, on the show, on the podcast.

I think it’s pretty cool.

Spencer: Yeah. It’s like, what idea is there out there that you could create in one day or in a weekend? These don’t have to be complex ideas, right? Is there some unique idea or unique angle or simple tool, something that has a little bit of utility that’s only. A few pages of a website and you might have a winner on your hands.

Um, now obviously if you’re going to go this route of trying to just rank in Google, that’s going to take some time, right? There’s some established players. I wouldn’t build a, take a screenshot, you know, one. org. Uh, I wouldn’t copy this website, but maybe there’s some other little idea. Maybe it’s some new thing that’s out there that you can build to support.

Um, but, uh, yeah, that’s the idea is just inspire some people and give them some ideas and hopefully they come up with something that is, uh, that it’s useful.

Brooks: Exactly. Exactly.

Spencer: Awesome. Good man. We did it. We, uh, went through the news. We did our side hustles. We got the weird niche sites. Um, we did it all and nothing broke too much here without Jared here to watch everything.

Um, so thank you everybody so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Uh, we’ll be back at it next week. And thank you, Brooke, so much for helping to co host today. You got it. Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend. 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 wanna 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. We hold weekly calls live with experts where you can ask questions. These experts share tips on Amazon Influencer.

Google Discover, building email newsletters, getting traffic from Facebook and other strategies to grow your online business. You’ll also be assigned a mastermind group of four or five other people in a similar stage in business as you dive deep into your business issues and get your problem solved. If you use coupon code podcast at checkout, you’ll get your first month for just 1.

Go ahead and give it a try. Come join me, Jared, and lots of other digital entrepreneurs. Inside my private group at community. nichepursuits. com and be sure to use coupon code podcast. I’ll see you on the inside.