Google Responds to Controversial SEO Tweet, Reddit Blocking Google, and 2 Weird Niche Sites

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast! You definitely don’t want to miss this one as it’s packed with interesting insights and thoughts about events over the last week in SEO.

After Spencer talks briefly about his positive experience promoting Link Whisper at FinCon, he and Jared dive headfirst into the big news of the week: Spencer’s unexpectedly controversial post on X about how Google is slowly killing blogging. 

Much to his (and everyone’s) surprise, Danny Sullivan, from Google, responded to his post and offered a few helpful tips and takeaways from the HCU. This exchange generated a lot of debate about the topic—over 130 threads on Spencer’s original post. 

Watch the Full Episode

Spencer and Jared talk about the general confusion among site owners and content creators over the HCU and their efforts to understand what Google wants, and although Danny references this document to help people, people remain very confused and frustrated.

They also talk about the difference between the HCU and previous updates like Panda and Penguin, and encourage everyone to check out the original post on X.

Moving on, Spencer and Jared talk about the latest news about Reddit, as the platform is threatening to block Google. This decision hinges on Reddit’s ability to reach deals with generative AI companies to pay for its data.

What might happen to Reddit if it goes through with it? What would be the ripple effect? And what about the other 500+ companies that have already blocked their content from being scraped by AI? What would Spencer and Jared do if they ran Reddit? Tune in to hear them discuss the possibilities.

The next big news is that the DALL-E 3 image generator is available in ChatGPT and it’s free. With the right prompts, you can create whatever images you want. 

Spencer shares a few images he created using the tool, Jared talks about using it to successfully create YouTube thumbnails, and they discuss the quality of the images it creates.

As for Shiny Object Shenanigans, Spencer starts by talking about his most recent results with the Amazon Influencer Program. He shares that his videos are back in the carousel and his earnings are around $2k for the month. 

Although he’s finally cash flow positive with this side hustle, with 767 videos currently, what will the coming months hold in terms of earnings? Also, who’s making more at the moment, Spencer or Jared? Listen to the podcast to find out which host is in the lead.

Jared then talks about growing his Weekender Growth email list, which is now at 3k subscribers. 

He shares his challenges growing the YouTube channel, which has about 12 videos, +1k subscribers, and 2000 watch hours. He hopes to monetize it in the coming months, so stay tuned to see how that evolves!

As for weird niche sites, Spencer’s find of the week is the very colorful Sound Buttons World, which receives 575k visitors per month from organic search and has tons of sounds that users can download or link to. 

He and Jared look at the site’s exponential growth and discuss why that may be, and they look at the types of keywords the site is ranking for.

Jared shares his weird niche site, Day of the Week, which provides a lot of information about the days of the week, everything from the zodiac, birthstones, historical events, and more. 

This DR26 site ranks for 60k keywords, and Jared and Spencer are very surprised when they take a closer look at those keywords and at the type of ads running on the site. Listen to find out why!

And that brings us to the end of the latest episode of Niche Pursuits News! Hopefully, you’re feeling informed and inspired. Tune in next week when Spencer and Jared take on more SEO, digital marketing, and niche site creation news.

transcription

Spencer: ​Hey everyone, welcome to this week in Niche Pursuits news and, uh, boy, oh boy, Jared, we have got a week, don't we? We've got to come 

Jared: up with a new way to say this because this is what we kind of say every week, but this week we really mean it. Yeah, I 

Spencer: think I accidentally created some drama. Uh, I did not mean to do this.

And so, in fact, I created the news that we're going to talk about a little bit. Um, was not my intention. And so we're going to jump into, boy, uh, Google got a little excited on Twitter. There was quite the exchange here, uh, with a Twitter thread that I started. So we'll start there, uh, and a couple other news, um, items as well.

And then we're going to do our shiny objects, got some Amazon influencer stuff that we're going to chat about and other things. Uh, and then of course our weird niche sites. We've got a couple of good ones, uh, that we're going to chat about. 

Jared: Hey, before we get into the heavy stuff, uh, lighthearted, how is FinCon?

How'd your presentation go? Oh, that's 

Spencer: right. 

Jared: Yeah, FinCon was great. Tony was great. Tony was great to have on, but we did miss you last week. 

Spencer: Tony did a great job, um, but I was enjoying New Orleans, I was at FinCon, and, uh, I actually, we, we had a booth at the Expo for Link Whisper. I saw that. And so, it was a lot of fun having everybody come and chat with us, um, a lot of people knew who we were, of course, and used Link Whisper, and then, Uh, a lot of other people, we just got to answer a lot of SEO questions.

So time flew. Um, it w it was a lot of fun. And then I did, I presented the final day of FinCon and, uh, it went well. Uh, I kind of shared what I was doing to grow niche pursuits, um, and how well that's gone, some of the traffic increases I've seen. Um, so thank you for asking. I had a good time. Spencer, the booth, babe, the booth, babe.

Yeah, I bring them in, you know, I bring my whole team out there, get a few bloggers, you know, nothing, nothing like that to attract the 

Jared: crowds. I'm honestly just trying to keep it lighthearted. Cause it's going to get heavy really quickly. You poked the bear this week, so we've got a lot of stuff and. All joking aside, a lot of very interesting things from Google this week that we can get into thanks to your, um, kind of tweet and subsequent, you know, thereafters.

Spencer: Yeah, so, you know, I guess I was feeling salty or something a couple days ago. And, uh, I was just thinking about how long I've been blogging, you know. My blogging career and sort of how the blogging landscape has changed. And I wrote this out in a tweet. And, uh, to give people an idea, I mean, the title, I guess the first line is Google is slowly killing blogging.

Uh, and then I gave all of my reasons. Um, basically the idea behind the tweet is that, you know, back in the early days of traditional blogging and when I was starting, you would just blog about whatever you felt like off the cuff. Here's what I did today. Uh, here's what's interesting. Here's what unique perspective I have, right?

You wouldn't do any sort of keyword research or anything. You would just put it out there and see how the world responded. And, um, you know, we're kind of like. Uh, Pavlov's dogs in that we kind of follow the trail of where we get the rewards. And it's like you put something out there, yes you're writing, and you're going to notice the words I use here.

Yes, we're writing for humans, but when Google starts to send you a little traffic, you notice. You go, hmm, what did I do that all of a sudden my blog about XYZ subject got a little traffic? I like that. I'm going to do more of that. Oh, they like having a... keyword in the title. Oh, I'm gonna do that. Um, right.

And so before you know it, as bloggers, we've gone over time from just writing about whatever we want to making a keyword focused, making it do well in the search engines. Right? And then I sort of said, okay, uh, now Google is with the dial of the helpful content update. They've essentially said, well, if you have certain enough posts on your site that are deemed unhelpful, we might penalize your whole page.

After all. And so I sort of said, well, they're kind of killing traditional blogging. It used to be a fun place where you write about whatever you want, but now it's like, well, maybe you wrote something unhelpful. That was just what you felt like that day. And Google deemed it unhelpful. And now. Over time, if you do enough of that, maybe your whole site is deemed unhelpful and you get penalized.

And so, that was kind of my whole rant, if you will. Um, I didn't expect that, uh, Google would take notice, but, uh, they did. Um, it's 137 

Jared: comments at time of recording. 

Spencer: Yeah, it's got a thousand something likes 137 comments. Um, and, and the comments over a hundred thousand 

Jared: impressions, I think I saw. 

Spencer: Yeah.

115,000 impressions, uh, currently. And, um, so people can check that out. I'm gonna share it on the screen here. Um, but what is interesting and why this is news, not just because I wrote a tweet, they got a bunch of engagement, but because. The official Google search liaison did respond, uh, Danny Sullivan, uh, he works for Google and he's a long time blogger too, right?

And so he understands the history, but, uh, he provided some interesting, uh, tips or commentary on the helpful content update. So maybe there are some things that we can, can learn, right? So, uh, Danny Sullivan, the Google search liaison person, he responded that. You know, writing about something that's fun or personal update or whatever anyone wants to write about on their blog is not the issue.

We haven't said don't do that, nor do blogs have to somehow only be about one particular topic. He goes into E E A T. Um, and then here's kind of a couple of paragraphs that got people riled up. Unhelpful content is content that's generally written for search engine rankings and not for a human audience.

If your audience wants to know about what fun thing you did that day. And why you wrote it, that's helpful. Right away. Write about anything that you think human beings coming directly to your blog would like to hear about. That's all great. But if you wrote 20 fun things you can do today because your primary purpose is doing so that you wanted to rank well for fun things rather than this being something you'd typically write about, that can be a sign that you're producing unhelpful content.

It wasn't something you wrote for you. It wasn't something you wrote for your audience. It was something you wrote for search ranking purposes. And that often can align with... Unhelpful content. So, does that clarify things? No. Um, and it didn't clarify things for people in the comments either, right? Um, again, kind of back to my original argument, uh, in a way, was that, you know what, we as bloggers have discovered that let's say I want to write about side hustles.

Um, that I know my audience of niche pursuits. The humans that read niche pursuits enjoy the topic of side hustles, right? I will write an article about that subject because I want more humans to read it and interact with it. I also know because Google has trained me that, uh, the way to get more human readers, I know that humans are going to Google to type in side hustles or how to start a side hustle, right?

And so if I truly want to tap into my audience, I need to perform well on Google, right? And so it's this push and pull with Google that it's like, yes, I'm writing for humans, but I know the only way for humans to see that content. Is to have a do well in the search engines. And so, um, Danny Sullivan, the Google search liaison continued to kind of tie himself in knots a little bit, trying to tiptoe this line of you write for humans, not for search engines.

Um, maybe I'll just read a couple other 

Jared: little bits. Yeah. Read a few, read a few for sure. Cause I, I mean, I 137 of them, but reading some of the responses. Certainly are interesting news topics for us to dive into as it relates to what we've been talking about the last 

Spencer: month or so. And, and I should clarify, it's not just 137 comments, it's 137 threads.

Oh, good grief, I didn't realize that. So there's 137 threads on my original. One of those threads that you can see on my screen has 85 threads. Oh. Right, so it's just a rabbit hole that keeps going. I don't know how many comments. Probably over a thousand. Right? I sort of shut off Twitter and stopped reading, um, but I'm trying to read all of the Google search liaison responses to all the different threads.

Um, so, uh, uh, yeah, I read that one. And then Sean K here says genuine questions. Why are large sites like the New York Magazine, CNN, Tom's Guide, Forbes, Businesses? Insider not deemed unhelpful in the extreme when they write unrelated content, purely targeting search engines. Um, and he goes on to give some examples of they're targeting things like barbecue grills when they're a financial magazine, right?

Forbes is, for example, um, Danny responds with someone who runs a barbecue site is not going to have a problem or be deemed unhelpful for writing about barbecue pellets if they are doing that. Because it is indeed something they are writing primarily for people rather than I want to rank for barbecue pellet pellets again It's very confusing

Boy, I'm just trying to figure out what else to read here that is going to be the most useful, um, bloggers. Anyone should write about whatever they want, right? As long as they want, right? As short as they want, right? How they want, just write it in a way they want. Not everyone gets a trophy. Everyone gets a trophy.

Everyone gets a trophy. Just don't do it the way you think Google wants. Because we don't want people doing things for Google, we want people writing for other people because that's what will align them with our ranking system that are designed to reward this type of content. That's the heart of this document and he links to, uh, the...

Creating helpful, reliable, people first content. I do think that people should read this, and the other, um, links that Danny provided. This, this is a great document for understanding the helpful content update, having expertise. Et cetera. Okay. So I do think people should read that. Danny's provided some really, uh, valuable resources there.

Um, and we could go down the rabbit hole. Um, people then started sharing a lot of examples. Well, cause he 

Jared: asked for it. He did ask for examples. He did, you know, and I think that was another area that he and others get themselves in trouble when it comes to this because the serps are absolutely not reflective of the statements that he's been making, at least not, uh, not dramatically.

So right, like not 95 99 percent of the time. Are you seeing those kind of results? He's speaking of in the serps, 

Spencer: right? Exactly. And there's so many threads. I can't remember which thread that I saw. Uh, Um, but, uh, you know, there, there's a couple of times where I, he's tiptoeing a line and he can't give any concrete guidance.

He basically says, okay, don't write for search engines, write for humans. But then in other instances, he says, okay, SEO can be very helpful. And then he actually links. To, uh, articles on Google that say there's certain things you can do to your site to make Google crawl it better, to help Google find it better, and rank it better, and that you should do those things.

And in fact, one of those things, and again, I wish I could find the tweet live, but there's this many threads, um, that basically says, um, That when you write an article, you should be analyzing the other results, right? You should be looking at the first page of Google and seeing, are you providing helpful content basically compared to them?

So he's tiptoeing this line of right for humans, but then he's saying, go to the search engines, analyze what they've written and. Um, provide content that's either similar or different, right? Whatever fits your audience. And so, I don't know. I 

Jared: mean, I'm not trying to put a bow on all this, cause I think there's a lot in here.

I I'll say first off to echo what you said, if you're listening to the podcast, like. And you, a lot of people who come to this podcast, they've told me in messages and stuff like that, like they come and listen to this weekly news podcast. They don't have to go, you know, deep dive, they're busy or they like our, us sharing the most important news of them.

This is one of those where I'd recommend go to the show notes, grab the Twitter link and go read the different responses. It's impossible for us to sum up all the search liaison responses, but they're all very telling and indicative, like you said. Um, but not to try to put a bow on it, but like, to me, this.

And I, I don't mean this actually negatively, I mean this straight, um, uh, neutral. The towing the line and mis, mistowing, you know, not able to tow the line perfectly seems to perfectly sum up what this entire helpful content rollout has kind of seemed to be, both in the documentation of it, and in terms of what we're seeing in the SERPs.

We're seeing a lot of conflicting results in SERPs. I've had a lot of people reach out to me since the Helpful Content Update has been released. And everyone has the same question, Spencer, and it's always, Okay, okay, okay, yeah, I get that that's what they're trying to do. But why is that site ranking higher than me now?

And so there's just, I think that this entire interaction, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, almost sums up how the last month has been. There's a ton of confusion everywhere, including on what Google itself really is trying to get and trying to guide people on. 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. I think that's well said.

And that's a lot of where my frustration came from as well, is like, I'm just... Trying to, uh, make my website the best it can possibly be. And, um, things have evolved so much, right? And, uh, there is a lot of confusion and unfortunately, you know, Danny's in a tough spot here. Like I will totally give him credit for having a conversation.

Yeah. Being willing to interact. Yeah. Yeah. Showing up to the conversation. I'm 

Jared: sure he wasn't like, Oh, good. I got this whole thing dialed in, man. Let's go. I got this one 

Spencer: unlocked there. And the other thing that's tough is like, he, he's not on the engineering team. And even the people that are on the engineering team don't, maybe from what I've heard, don't know all the ranking factors, right?

They've said it. There's so many. Yeah, they've said it. 

Jared: Machine learning has made it so even when they put a piece of code out into the wild, there's a machine learning component that begins to, we'll say, take on a mind of its own, right? Like, develop its own. 

Spencer: I agree. And so he's in a tough spot because he can't say this is the way to make your website perform better other than right for humans, right?

It's a vague response, but that's about the best he can do. And I guess what maybe we can tease out of that is that they're looking at human interaction, perhaps time on page, right? Are they actually viewing more than one page on your site? Um, are they engaging with your website? Um, and so, yes, it's right for humans, but also you can kind of measure that, right?

Try to make it in a way so that people stick around longer, they read more than one article. Um, they're getting value, they join your email list, right? They come back, they search for your brand name. All of these things are signals that, you know, perhaps, um, humans are enjoying the content that you're publishing on your website.

Jared: I'm going to give a hot take on this. Um, I could be totally wrong, but it almost feels like maybe the last 10 years that you historically chronicle, chronicalized, chronicalized, chronicled, this chronicled that you chronicled. Well, it seemed like the recipe that you're summarizing was write and get traffic from Google and then build a brand from that audience.

And if I were reading between the lines, having a hot take, it feels like Google has gotten very frustrated with the results that their algorithm has put out there. And they're basically flipping that script and saying, go get a brand on your own. And once we see that you have non Google traffic, we'll start to reward you with Google traffic at that point.

Yeah. 

Spencer: Oh, man. I, I think those are all, um, I, I agree with all of that, right? These are all things that I would encourage people to do. We're not out here, um, just trying to make a quick buck, right? At this point, I mean... Like, I've been saying this for the last decade, right? You, you do need to be building a real brand.

A real niche site that gets real human readers, people that are involved, um, with that content. So if this helps us up, up the game a little bit, then that's good. Um... And 

Jared: it will, and every time one of these comes out, you know, the silver lining for people who haven't been around for a seismic shift like this is it does filter out a lot of people.

Um, doesn't make it easier, by the way. I'm not trying to imply that, but there's, you know, whenever there's a big shakeup or a shift, like, there's other things that happen that, that do, um, make it more advantageous if you do go all in on it. 

Spencer: Right. Exactly. 

Jared: And... Let me ask you a question. You know, since we're, since we're speaking of your history lesson that you kind of gave Twitter and, you know, it's a good question to ask.

You've, you were in the thick of Panda and Penguin. Um, I don't think the Medic Update has many impacts on you. That's another kind of milestone type of shift in the way Google did search, I feel like. I feel like if we look back over the last ten plus years, we've got Panda, we've got Penguin, we've got Medic Update.

And now I think we've got HCU here. The last month and feeling what's changed and feeling the stress, the trepidation, the confusion, the frustration in the industry of the last month. Can you put it on this, on a, on a, um, can you put it in perspective up against how things felt from Panda and Penguin? Did it feel like this?

Did it feel this was, like, how does it relate? 

Spencer: It feels as big as Panda and Penguin, for sure. Which decimated your business 

Jared: in many ways. 

Spencer: Yeah, Panda and Penguin... Um, they crushed, you know, the way I built niche websites. And we're, again, we're talking over a decade ago. This is like 2012. 

Jared: That's why the ferret site's no longer around.

Spencer: Unfortunately, you know, one of my favorites, the, the fleece ferret hammocks. Right. I was making a solid 50 bucks a month on that thing. Um, anyway, sorry. So it feels as big, but here's the difference. We understood exactly what the panda and penguin update. We're all about. We knew it was links. We knew it was, you know, having content, thin content, you know, exact match domains, keyword stuffing, right?

And when, when we looked at it, we go, all right, you got us Google. We, we knew that really wasn't great content. Anyways, we truly were building for search engines over a decade ago. Yeah, you knew it was junk. I knew it, I knew it was junk and I was trying to gain the system. And they crushed that model. And so ever since then, I've sort of been preaching this.

All right, we got to up our game. We got to build real businesses. Yeah, you swore off 

Jared: PBNs, you know, and right? Like, 

Spencer: absolutely. And so here's the difference with this one. We don't know what this update is all about. We don't know what helpful content means. And we can't get Google to point to any specific examples and say that's unhelpful and that is helpful.

Uh, and that. It's, it's a mystery update. We don't know exactly what it is. Um, because I am seeing tons of people out there, tons of bloggers. And again, I've said this before, but my hat's off to like these recipe bloggers or craft bloggers or food bloggers, they not only are in the kitchen, creating the recipes.

Taking pictures and doing everything firsthand, but then they write all of that up, right? They're spending hours and hours, you know, creating this original content and some of them have been decimated, right? And so they're not trying to game search engines. They're out there creating great content. And some of that, we don't know why that has disappeared from the search engines.

Other than You know, Danny's giving us this response of, well, create content for humans. Uh, and then somewhere in this thread, another one of his responses to a question of, well, can you point us to good content at least? Can you show us a good example? And his comment was basically, well, look at, look at what's ranking right now on Google.

That's what we currently deem as helpful content. It's like, well, okay, that's not. That's not helpful, uh, to us either, right, because when we view, okay, this, this blog got decimated and this one didn't, they often look the same, or often the one that got decimated looks better. 

Jared: I have a quick story to tell.

I thought of this last night as I was trying to think through how we were going to talk about some of these topics today. Freshman year of college, I was at UCSD, I took a undergrad poly sci class. Wrote my first paper, turned it in, got a C. Flip through the paper, you know, cause they put the, they put the grade right in the front there.

Right. It's like a big C it's in red, you know, red pen. And I'm like, Oh, that's not good. Scrolling through it, get to the back. Nothing. All it says is C. So I go see my TA, right. The teacher's assistant. I'm like, Hey, why did I get a C? And he like kind of scrolls through. He's like, Oh yeah, I remember this one.

Just wasn't very good. It's like, okay. Okay. Um, well, what wasn't very good? They just didn't land. Just wasn't good. It's like, okay, what can I do to improve? He's like, just make it better.

And I, by the way. I didn't be a poly, I wasn't a poly sci major. That was a landmark day where I, I went on to do math and economics. As one plus one equals two every time. And twice on Sunday. 

Spencer: That's right. A lot less ambiguity. 

Jared: And again, I was truly there. I was like, okay, cool. So I didn't do a good job. All right.

So what was wrong? Just wasn't good enough. Okay. All right. Well, what can I do to improve it? How would we, we'll take it from that angle. You know, don't tell me what's wrong. Just tell me what I can make better. Yeah, just didn't land. Just wasn't good enough. 

Spencer: Ouch. You know, and that's what, that's exactly what it feels like.

It's exactly right. It's like, well, you probably didn't write the content for humans. You 

Jared: were writing for SEO, weren't you? You were writing for SEO. Shame on you. And it's like, well, sort of, not really. I actually really wanted. This content to help people and I did want it to get seen so I used a keyword, but that doesn't mean that the content isn't inherently helpful because it has a keyword in it, you know, I think that's the, and so, yeah, here we are again, 

Spencer: right?

But yeah, it's, it's so frustrating. Yeah, exactly. Because you see the current search engine results and they are clearly targeting keywords. They're clearly doing all the best practices for, for SEO that we talk about. Um, and so, yeah, maybe again, jump into some of these other metrics. Thanks. Time on page, building a brand, all of these other things is just our best guess.

But, uh, this feels as seismic as Panda and Penguin, just so much less certain. We, we still have a lot of 

Jared: questions. We're 23 minutes in and we have given you no real tangible takes on where to go. Yeah. But you know what, sometimes that's how the news is. 

Spencer: That's sometimes how the news is. I would recommend you read my Twitter thread, not because it's my Twitter thread, but because Google responded a lot, and I do appreciate Danny jumping in and having that conversation.

And Danny, if you're listening, you are welcome to come on the podcast anytime. We would love to chat. Uh, we, we are a friendly group here, uh, and, and we'd love to just have an open dialogue about what websites can do to, uh, be better. 

Jared: Yeah, I, I want to echo that, like, there's bad apples, by the way, there still are, like, that's, this is not a defense of those, like, this is a defense of the people who are the recipe bloggers who are seriously like, I'm just trying to give.

My audience, what they want. I have seen based on the traffic and the response to the traffic that it seems to be what they want. Like, I just want to know what the playbook looks like. Like that's who we'd love to talk to Danny about, right? Like that's the voice we'd like to bring to the table. Um, this isn't a pitch for Danny to join, but in general, like that's kind of what we're trying to champion in the last 20 minutes or 

Spencer: so.

Yeah, absolutely. So, although if 

Jared: Danny does want to come on, you know, that'd 

Spencer: be great. Doors open. Yeah, come on. Would we join? 

Jared: I, I, I'm sorry. I want a seat at the table on that one. So, yeah, 

Spencer: I think we'd 

Jared: all, I mean, you can pull rank on it, but I'd like to at least have a seat in the table there. You're, 

Spencer: you're there.

You're welcome to be there. So, uh, man. Okay. That, that was a lot. Um, please read the Twitter thread if you want more details, because, honestly, I barely scratched the surface of, of what, uh, he said there. And I don't want to misconstrue, construe anything that, that Google said or Danny said. Um, so please, um, in, in order to have a balanced approach, read, read the, uh, source material there.

So, okay. Uh, now this next news story is actually interesting because, uh, it kind of dovetails into my, my tweet a little bit. Yes, it does. Uh, that I didn't kind of mention the second half of my tweet was kind of like, I, I was complaining that, okay, now your Google's no longer, uh, ranking some of our sites because they deem our, our content isn't helpful, but they are ranking Reddit.

Uh, and, and Reddit is a large corporation. Now they're getting all the search traffic and Reddit is completely made up of individuals writing off the cuff comments, unique, just thoughts or comments, sometimes good, sometimes bad things that bloggers used to do. Uh, and, um. We also know that a big reason they did the helpful content update was because of a big article written in, I don't know if it was the New York times or where it was, but a, a journalist that had a poor experience with the Atlantic.

Thank you. 2022, the Atlantic. 

Jared: I feel like it was summer, 2022. Yeah. Landmark article, landmark 

Spencer: article that definitely was an impetus for the helpful content update, in my opinion. I don't know if that's been said publicly by Google, but, uh, the journalist found all the articles. Unhelpful, that word was used, and he found himself going to Reddit or appending Reddit to his search queries to find the information that he wanted.

Okay, and so, anyways, you 

Jared: resurfaced that one again, it's ironic you mentioned it, she just shared it and it was a poignant reshare, you know, like, it's a great article to read. 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And so it feels like a lot of this is in reaction to that original article to kind of clean up the PR of, Oh boy, we had a lot of pushback.

Now we're ranking Reddit better. We don't want people to have to go to Google and type in plus Reddit. I just want to find it right. Uh, now, so, in the last few days, 

Jared: you would think, just to further set the stage, you would think Reddit would be sitting over there right now and just going like, man, don't touch a thing.

Like, this is the holy grail of, we, if you see any of their graphs, I mean, we shared their graph. It was off the literal chart in terms of how much traffic they are now getting as a result of this shift. Right. So with that in mind, 

Spencer: you would think, yeah, keep sending that traffic, baby Google, we love you.

Right? That's how I would 

Jared: be. That's how I would be. I'd be sending care packages to Danny every day. 

Spencer: Not so much. Apparently, uh, Reddit has said, Okay, this article, Reddit can survive without search. Company reportedly threatens to block Google. So, uh, now this is still rumors. You know, we don't know if this will actually ever happen.

Uh, but according to the Washington Post, Reddit might cut off Google and force users to log into Reddit. Uh, itself, which they've taken back. They're not going to require users on Reddit to log in. Um, but it's all in response to if, uh, Reddit can't reach deals with generative AI companies to pay for its data, right?

So that's, that's the impetus of all this. And Google is a big AI company. They are chewing up all kinds of data to try and change, uh, train their AI models, right? Um, Reddit says nothing's currently changing. Um, okay, let's go the publication. Uh, okay. The publication now writes that if Reddit can't get AI to play ball, the company may block Google and Bing's search crawlers, which means Reddit posts wouldn't show up in search results.

Reddit can survive without search, said the post's anonymous source. And Reddit isn't denying that it might block crawlers in terms of crawlers. We don't have anything to share on the topic at this point. Reddit said, um, they're just clarifying that nothing is changing, but apparently there is this source saying that, Hey, they might block it.

Um, yeah, that, that kind of is the gist of the article. 

Jared: Um, we're getting to a point where it feels like, um, like a domino is about to be pushed and it could create a domino effect. Like, just spiral out with me a little bit here, not saying any of this is going to happen, but if Reddit were to block Google, not only would it, um, not only would it be a massive statement in terms of a large online publication, first time ever signaling that we don't want your search traffic.

But it would also completely undermine everything. Google's trying to do in helpful content update to begin with. So it'd be a double whammy. And it would create ripples, both those things, just the blocking of Google, but also the statement it would do for Google from what it's trying to do in search in general.

It would completely ripple out. 

Spencer: It would have a massive ripple effect, you're right. It would have an effect on us, right? Are we going to start getting more traffic from Google? Because they would have to reverse all this. From my 

Jared: selfish standpoint, please block away so we can start getting that result back that I used to get when I thought my content 

Spencer: was helpful.

Yeah, it would be a beautiful thing. Um, but it is quite ironic that it's like, uh, Google had this PR nightmare. Everybody goes to Reddit instead of Google. Yeah. And so Google sends Reddit more love. Oh, Reddit. You're so You know, um, users of Google, look, we're, we're ranking Reddit first. So now you can say Google's a good thing.

And then Reddit says, eh, we don't need you Google. We're just not even going to be in your search results at all. 

Jared: Well, and this article goes on to share the Washington Post report wasn't just focused on Reddit. It's about more than 535 news organizations have opted, it's about how more than 535 news organizations have opted to block their content from being scraped.

Like companies like, uh, OpenAI. And obviously that's not Google, but it's a statement piece about using content, and no doubt Google has been, um, using our content to train their, uh, AI models, um, and so, you know, it's, it is a larger statement, it's a huge statement, and it does have to do with, uh, the increasing amount of credit Google takes for the content that other people or other platforms are giving to them.

Spencer: Exactly. So, um... It's, it's huge potential news, right? We're, we're at rumor stage here, but I just find it very interesting that we've got these juggernauts now potentially in back rooms doing deals, trying to keep each other happy. We got Reddit fighting it's, it's Google and Google pleading with Reddit to stick around and um, and, and the whole AI data mix thrown in just for 

Jared: fun.

Just a quick question. I, I, I know we're already, we're already up against time here, but like. I mean, do you think in the, in the closed door meetings that Reddit has, like, are they thinking people are appending Reddit to the end of a search? Why don't we just own that traffic? And make our own ad platform.

Like we just shared how Google made 147 billion a couple of years ago off ads. And right now Reddit isn't getting that ad revenue. And they're like, we already own the search query. That's the whole thing. They put Reddit on the end of the, they append Google searches with that. I mean, I wonder if that's what they're thinking.

Spencer: Yeah. And it's maybe not a bad thought. You know, if I were the CEO sitting in there, I don't even know if this would have crossed my mind, but if this was like an option, right, uh, it would be, I would be something like, you know, it would be really interesting to see how much traffic we get. If we shut off Google, will more people come to Reddit?

Users increase, I would measure all that. New user growth, number of page views, right? Because you're certainly capturing that. And they already do have ads on Reddit, of course. And so, what's the ad revenue, uh, increase? Uh, and then it's one of those things you could try out for a couple of months. See what happens, and if it goes well, you'd stick to it permanently.

If it doesn't, yeah, Google will let you index this again. Given what 

Jared: they think of them in the Helpful Content Update, they'd probably welcome them back with open arms. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, I have a whole other Twitter thread brewing, um, you know, related to all of this. I've had the topic written down for a few days.

You're becoming 

Jared: the, uh, you're becoming the hot take. Hot. Take 

Spencer: Spencer here. I guess so. You know, I'm just speaking my mind. This is how I do it. Hot. Take haw. That's what we're gonna call you. Hot. Take haw. Ooh, I like it. . You need to Yeah. Write that one 

Jared: down. Very good. 

Spencer: So, uh, that, that's our Reddit story. Uh, the final one here is that, uh, 

Jared: this one, this final one probably would've taken the headlines a couple months ago in in our news.

Uh, our news podcast nowadays, man, it hardly even makes a list, but it is news. 

Spencer: It is news indeed. And actually, depending on, you know, if you use open AI, Chad, GPT it's, it's big news, right? So Dolly three. image generator now accessible in chat GPT plus, uh, and so if you are using chat GPT plus, which, which I am, uh, you can log in directly and you can generate images based on text prompts, right?

And of course, mid journey and other tools have been around for a long time that you've been able to do, you know, contextual prompts to get an image. Uh, but it's interesting because it's directly in chat GPT. I've already been paying for ChatGPT, so now I get this thing for free. Yep. Right? Uh, and, uh, I've generated a few images with it, uh, already, and I was gonna try and see if we could do some here, uh, on the, on the fly.

Uh, looks like, uh, OpenAI is, is, uh, getting overwhelmed or something. It's not working, uh, at the moment. Um, so I can't do any live. Uh, images, was there any images in this article? No, that's the bizarre thing. I don't think there was. Um, I can share, actually, here's a fun one, um, from my article yesterday. I 

Jared: knew that was created, yeah, 

Spencer: I could tell.

Yep, the, all of these images, let me, uh, share this. And this is, this is my article that I just wrote about, um, anyways, what we just talked about. I created all of these images using, um, Dolly 3, right? So I basically asked Chad GPT to write Google and Twitter fighting each other. You know, with, in a futuristic way.

Uh, and this, it came out pretty good, I thought. Um, so there's that image. And then, uh, I have three or four more others. Right? And again, I just, this was all one prompt, I think. I did two different prompts. But it usually spits out four images per prompt. Uh, you could probably ask it to do more. But I think by default it does like four, uh, images.

Right, here's another one. A little karate with a bunch of people sitting around a... I don't know, some modern dojo, I guess. Um, and then, uh, one more. Uh, there you go. Kind of a more cartoon style. I think I said something about having a bunch of bloggers sitting around watching them fight. So these are all bloggers, I guess.

Is that what we look like? That's what we look like, all on our phones and tablets. That's me in the front there with the camera. There you are. Yeah, I like it. Um, and then, I don't know, they're playing like... Baseball or something in the background. There's a ball flying in the back. I don't know what's going on there.

Uh, but these are all like one or two sentence, um, you know, prompts that I gave it. Uh, so kinda cool. If, if people are using ChatGPT, I definitely recommend going to check it out. Uh, it's included. Um, any other thoughts on that one? I 

Jared: mean, I used it to create some YouTube thumbnails that were pretty passable and that's an area that I don't, you know, normally I'd send that off to a designer and stuff.

Um, uh, certainly not going to replace like an expert there, but, uh, I also probably didn't have a very good prompt for it, you know, I just think in general, like if you go to chat GPT plus or chat GPT four, and you just do the dropdown, like they really have been adding a lot of features to the, to your abilities and your capabilities there.

And, um, in terms of what they allow you to do, both in terms of the plugins, in terms of. Uh, now Dolly 3 and being able to, to work with that. So it's really, it's really, uh, it's really impressive, I have to say. Oh, there you have it on screen. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, I shared, uh, some here on screen. I didn't have a way to, you know, make it bigger.

Ooh, inside our agenda, wow. Yeah, yeah, this, people are seeing the inside scoop, you know. I won't scroll up or down, so they don't see what else is happening in the Google Doc. Here, here it is actually pretty good images. 

Jared: Yeah. What'd you think? Yeah. So I, you know, for those listening, I prompted a chat GPT to create a thumbnail for an upcoming YouTube video that I will probably be making about Amazon influencer program.

And the fact that I said, I'm making more this month than previous months. Teaser alert for what's coming up next. And I'm very excited to see what black Friday earnings will be. And I just kind of gave him 

Spencer: some ideas. It's only two sentences, right? It's not very complicated, and um, Which one would you pick?

Uh, which one catches my eye the most? I'm thinking the guy top left. Yeah, 

Jared: one in four were kind of the winners for me, and, and, and, you know. 

Spencer: Like the Black Friday circled, and anyways, you know, you could tweak it, make it even better, but that's the one that pops out real quick. I agree. All are good. So, um, awesome.

Yeah, a lot of cool things happening with image generation. So that's just another tool people can play with. Okay. Um, we're going to jump into our, uh, side hustle shenanigans now. And, uh, as you mentioned, Amazon influencer is on both our minds actually. Uh, so I'm going to share some of my results, uh, that I've had just recently with the Amazon influencer program.

Uh, things have been looking a little bit better. Uh, some of the clicks are starting to come back. It looks like. Uh, the videos are back in sort of the lower carousel for the Amazon, um, product pages. And so clicks are increasing. Um, I am now up to just over 2, 000 in earnings in the last 30 days. So I finally came back up above that I had hit it at one point in July or August and then clicks went down and now that now they're back so I'm, I'm climbing over 2, 000.

And so I am curious to see what happens for the rest of the fourth quarter November and December I expect maybe will be double that that would be awesome as we get closer to Black Friday I think that could be the case. Um, so currently I have 767 videos. Up and still have people continuing to create videos.

Uh, the quantity has maybe Declined over the last couple of weeks. Um, so, but they're still creating videos. And then, uh, the last, you know, I guess big update that I want to share is that it is now cashflow positive, meaning I'm spending less per month on videos than I'm making. So I'm spending less than 2, 000 a month, uh, creating videos.

Uh, and so I get a pocket, some of that change and I guess pay off some of the investment I made in earlier months. 

Jared: You are making more than me in the last 30 days, which, yeah, high five. I know a little bit of a broadside, uh, hit there. I didn't see 

Spencer: that one coming. Oh man. Party poppers. 

Jared: I felt like I was really far ahead of you there for, but you're, you're beating me in the last 30 day average.

I just had to pull it up while you were talking. Oh 

Spencer: man, that makes, that made my day right there. I'm gonna have the best weekend ever. 

Jared: I, uh, I'm at 1, 813 past 30 days. But things are also looking up for me, but I am not over the 2, 000 mark. 

Spencer: Okay, interesting, interesting. And I can see how many videos you have.

Jared: I am beating you on videos, I see in our agenda here. Uh, 887 videos at this point. So, definitely slowed down the last couple weeks as well. It's been a, it's been a slog, you know, certainly since I think it was about mid September that things dropped off a cliff. We, we think it's carousel related, like the carousel just disappeared, right?

So, um, I'm not even entirely sure where we were earning the small amounts we were earning. They must have been somewhere else that we just didn't really see very much, uh, or know about. But, um, yeah, they've reappeared, what, maybe, I'm gonna guess eight or nine days ago, because I think I did mention last week in the podcast that there were early signs of all those clicks returning.

And that has substantiated and carried through for the last week or so. Uh, let's see. So on my end, I mean, I don't want to hijack if you had anything else on yours. I am behind 

Spencer: it. Take it away. That's uh, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's great. That's 

Jared: kind of a bummer. I'm at 88. So I'm going to try to get to a thousand videos before the end of the year.

Ooh, good goal. So what's that? 113. And I've got two months and change to do it. I think I, I mean, I can do that. Yeah, very doable. I can definitely do that. And, um, I'm just wondering, I don't know where I'm going to find the time to try to front load it. I would want to front load it before Black Friday. But I, we're so busy at the agency that I think it's going to be a more measured approach to, to get in there by the end 

Spencer: of the year.

No, that's good. It, it's still, it's still intriguing. I, like we've always said, I'm very interested to see what happens over fourth quarter, right. That, that could just make up a huge chunk of, uh, sort of investment. 

Jared: Right. It, it really will be where this kind of, you know, separates the men from the boys, whatever you wanna call it.

Like, whatever an analogy you wanna use. Like, for me, that's what it, it's a bit all hinging on like, is. And even if Q4 didn't perform great, it's still a great side hustle, but Q4 has the capability still, even with all the fluctuations, to make this an amazing side hustle for the amount of time and money it takes.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of cool. Cause both of us started, I mean, you started way after I did, but you know, we've both started this year, right? And so you kind of figure, Hey, in six or eight months or however long, you know, we've really been putting time into it, both making a couple thousand bucks a month of a little side hustle that we're not really putting much time into once we get the videos created.

That's the 

Jared: thing, like to think about, you know, all the stuff that, and I don't know if it would have a big impact or not, but we don't put much time. I don't study any of the analytics. I don't. Do any research before I make a video to figure out if it's an attractive one to go after or not? We don't buy products to actually, you know, like we're really Doing almost the bare bones in terms of what's possible with the platform.

Well, I thought I would also share about my, um, my weekend growth side. Also, that was the original side hustle I was sharing about when we started this news podcast. Many people might forget at this point because it's been so much Amazon influencer since then. I, I think the first three months was all, all about, um, the first few months we were doing this was all about getting, um, the email list to a thousand.

People, a thousand subscribers, but I was also blogging with the content that I would publish on email. I was committed to making, um, YouTube videos as, as well. And it's really been a while since I kind of circled in on that. That was all once again, started this year. It was started around March of 2023.

So we're looking at maybe what, seven, eight months ago. Um, And, uh, just thought I'd give an update on where it's at, so, uh, I have been able to send out one email per week, and many weeks, two or three, uh, every week but one. I did take a week off for my summer holiday and I didn't get it scheduled in time.

But besides that, I've stayed true to that commitment. Um, uh, I now am at just over 3, 000 subscribers on the email channel. Um, and so gone from, um, you know, about 1, 000 when I was last reporting and updating to now over 3, 000. 

Spencer: Wow. Uh huh. That's a nice jump. 

Jared: It's a pretty good jump. I mean, you know, you look around and you feel like so many other people are doing so much better with their email newsletter growth, and that's fair.

They are, but still at the same time, given the amount of effort I put into actual growth, like, not bad. So, you know. Overall, pretty happy with that. Now the YouTube channel, like I've shared a lot and YouTube videos are hard. I don't, you'd think I'd be better at it given that I host this podcast. I'm on, I talk on camera all the time, but it's just so different, you know, like we're so we're live it's interview style.

YouTube's such a different animal. So I have gotten a whopping 12 videos live. Okay. 

Spencer: So got to start 

Jared: somewhere. I, I wouldn't say that's exactly, uh, you know, uh, killing it, but, um, uh, the YouTube channel does have 1, 728 subscribers. Um, and so it has cracked that kind of 1, 000 subscriber mark that a lot of us kind of pin on the wall as our first milestone.

Um, and then really the only other big one that you have left that you have to hit is the total watch hours. Um, again, just in terms of milestones that a lot of us look for, you need 4, 000 watch hours and 1, 000 subscribers to be able to put ads in your videos and start making money on that. Um, and I'm halfway there, so I'm at 2, 094 of the 4, 000 needed.

Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a classic. If people just want to hear a brief rundown, like two videos account for the vast majority of it. The other 10 or, you know, okay. Like people just don't get much traffic, but, um, you know, one of the videos, most popular video has like 386 likes and 92 comments. Another one has 359 likes, 38 comments.

What's your most 

Spencer: popular video. The most 

Jared: popular video is the one on topical authority that I released just last month. I think, um, that's the most popular. The second most popular one is a like. And now, uh, like a tutorial on how I use low fruits, keyword research tool. Oh, cool. So those are the two, the rest of them, you know, don't get much, but yeah, 27, 099 views on the channel since started.

So nothing big, you know, but again, we talk about these side hustles and I just, I like to share like, Hey, here's what, this is truly a side hustle for me. This is where it's at, but I mean, I would imagine it'll be monetizable within the next couple of months, you know, if I've gotten that many watch hours in the first six months of it being around, I would think, you know, maybe another three, four or five months, try to get out a couple of videos.

But, um, yeah, there's an update. Weekend growth, influencer, looking good as we head into November overall, you know, pretty encouraged. 

Spencer: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's nice for people to hear what it's like to kind of grow a YouTube channel step by step or any other side hustle. Right? Um, just to kind of see, Hey, it's a little bit of a grind.

Nobody like puts out five videos and they just all skyrocket. Not usually. I'm sure people can find examples where that has happened, but for the most part, you know, you kind of start with, Hey, we're just trying to put out some good content, seeing what sticks, seeing what does well and iterating on that process.

And Hey, with, 29, 000, 27, 000, uh, views, right? Uh, since you created the channel. I mean, you're, you're hitting some people. You've got, um, almost a couple thousand subscribers now. So it is working, right? You just need to dial in more with what is currently working. Maybe do more of it, right? But I, I think people love hearing the updates.

Just kind of the pro, progress in the early days. And 

Jared: one thing, just to put it as an aside, like, I'm... I'm pretty sure that, um, starting a YouTube channel for online marketers with that being the content focus is about the hardest channel to start. It's incredibly competitive because everybody who's doing it kind of knows a thing or two about creating content.

And it's not a very large audience when you look at other audience segments, you know, so I would say that you could probably do a lot better if you went into, you know, basket weaving or, uh, you know, uh, cell phone, iPhone reviews or, you know, whatever it is, 

Spencer: Loving, you know, 

Jared: Ferret, uh, 

Spencer: ferret tips. Ferret tips would actually probably do really well.

I bet ferret tips would do really well. You know, as funny as it is, that may be my next channel to start. We'll see. I just keep teasing 

Jared: it, hoping you'll do something with it. 

Spencer: That would be great. If I show up next time, I got a couple ferrets and go, You know what, you know, I may just go down this path. Um, you never know, you never know.

Hey, Niche Site 

Jared: Project 

Spencer: 5. Here we come, back to the ferrets. You heard it here first. It all comes full circle. Um, okay. Well, you 

Jared: could, you could say, uh, sorry, one last, you could have the tagline, Ferret first content.

Oh, 

Spencer: Jared, you're full of it today. I, you know. 

Jared: That's a good one. Not all of us can be hot take ha's, but some of us, you know, 

Spencer: bring the puns here. Joke book coming out, you know, for Christmas. With Niche Pursuit's joke book, we got Jared One Liner's coming. This is good stuff. Don't quit your day job, folks.

Jared: Don't quit your day job. 

Spencer: That one got me. That one got me. Uh, okay. So, from a weird niches, right? From a weird joke into weird niches. Ah, here we are. There's a good one. Good transition. Yes, we're going to talk about weird niche sites now. Uh, now that we've kind of gotten off the beaten path, as it is anyways.

We're going to just go further into the weeds. Why not? So, uh, I have a really good one that, uh, I did source from somebody else. Once again, uh, somebody passed this along and, uh, this is a site that, uh, is getting nearly 575, 000 visitors a month from organic search, according to Ahrefs. Okay. Uh, and so without further ado, that website is.

Let's time the screen share at the exact moment. Uh, I share it. Uh, of course, if you see an ad, it is soundbuttonsworld. com Soundbuttonsworld. com. That is a lot of 

Jared: color that just hit my eyeballs. It is 

Spencer: a lot of color, so I hope you're awake. So, unfortunately, I think if I hit all these buttons only I hear all the sounds.

Jared: No, I got that one. That was loud. You did hear it. 

Spencer: I did. It was very loud. Okay, uh, well here comes another loud one.

Beep. We don't care. Swag like Ohio. Uh, bruh. Uh, lower tape. I, I don't know what A lot of these are a lull button, right? They're all sound effects, all different buttons that you can link to or you can download. Right? And I imagine you can like. Import into your website, um, or probably other places. I don't know if you can do it on social media.

Um, but there's all kinds of different sound effects. Uh, I, I don't know what this trends is trending sound buttons. Okay. These are the ones that are swag like Ohio flag, like Ohio, you know? Uh, yeah. Rick roll. Uh, why are you running? Anyways, I don't know what all of these are, but there are many, many. Sound buttons, sound effects, and they even have a blog, right?

That look like, you know, they're, um, let's see, man, you have a lot of, this is interesting ways to make money with memes, how memes have changed the world. So I guess they get a lot of stuff from memes. Why are there not more sound 

Jared: effects? It's all meme stuff there and humor related. 

Spencer: Why laughter is the best medicine.

Health benefits of humor. Okay, I see what they're doing. A tangential audience, right? And then they're hoping, Oh, you learned about why humor was good. Now install this funny button on your 

Jared: website. This, uh, sorry. That content strategizer feels a lot like when I get, like, a new client who, you know, dabbled in blogging and they're like, you know, they, they sell water bottles and you go to their website and they're like, you know.

Uh, just like the most random, like, you know, like why waterfalls from the sky and rain and you're like, you're, you're not a meteorology website and they're like, well, it's related to water. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a little off the beaten path. It's a loose connection. It's a loose connection for sure. It looks like they've got an app, right?

So you can carry around and just, you know, tap the button on your phone. I'm sure that could come in handy, uh, quite a bit. So let's, let's show the AHS, um,

Screenshotsoundbuttonsworld. com Again, it looks like this traffic has just taken off. Uh, so I don't know if it really is brand new, or if there was some redirect. That looks 

Jared: like a merge that happened right there. A merge? I mean... That looks exactly like the screenshot our friends Kevin Espiritu and Jason Wilson shared when they merged two massive sites together recently.

Spencer: Yeah, it does. It's just like a jump, right? This month, even. It looks like. Like a week or two ago. A week or two ago, just more than doubled, or almost doubled. But it does look like, you know, since the beginning of the year, they've grown steadily. Right. And then all of a sudden this massive jump, I didn't do all the research.

So somebody wants to do the research out there, you know, on the podcast and get into all the reasons why, you know, feel free to hit me up and let me know, but, uh, it's very possible that this really isn't a DR eight site. That's getting, you know. Almost 600, 000 visitors a month from organic search. Uh, you know, maybe it's, uh, got, got some bigger, um, website behind it or something, but, uh, types of keywords that it's ranking for.

They're all sound related, sound button, soundboard, meme, soundboard, meme sounds, funny sounds, uh, funny soundboard and on and on and on. So I 

Jared: did check this week. I'm not logged out of age refs. Of course, the week I'm not sharing my screen, but. Um, I did check, Ahrefs has no redirects pointing to it, so it would not appear to be associated with, uh, with that.

Spencer: Interesting. So, that's 

Jared: a, I mean, I hate to say, but that must be October core update, right? 

Spencer: Hmm, yeah. So, if you're looking for, uh, helpful content, right, here, here's what it looks like. Yeah, the UX and 

Jared: UI on this site is 

Spencer: just... It looks old school, you know, but it looks like the website was created this year, right?

Um, anyways, it's super interesting, um, kind of a fun, weird niche off the beaten path. I never would have thought of just having buttons on a website that make sound. Could get that much traffic. 

Jared: I mean, my first thought was, you know, speaking of YouTube, you know, like a lot of people are looking for sound effects to add to their YouTube videos, you know, some of those could be used there, you know, and there's a lot of people making content for Tik and these video platforms where, you know, little sound bites could be really effective.

Spencer: Yeah, no, exactly. So, um, I'm just looking at all the different sounds here. So I've got nothing else to add to this, Jared. What kind of weird niche site do you got to bring to the table today? Well, 

Jared: let me ask you, Spencer. Was this site given, was this one of the many websites that was given to you by our listeners that they seem to pass on to you here?

Yeah, 

Spencer: they really like me a lot out there. 

Jared: Someone had sympathy on me. Someone had sympathy on me. And somebody threw me a bone and sent me one. And I just want to say thank you. I appreciate it. It was getting lonely trying to find these every week while Spencer's just cherry picking these awesome ideas from everyone.

So, this one's from a listener. You know who you are. Um, it's a fun one. So, as you're bringing it up here on the screen, it is, um, it is dayoftheweek. org.

Um, so, we've had, we've had sites kind of like this on the podcast before. I'm trying to think. Um, uh, I'm trying to think what it was that you brought one that was somewhat like this, I think. Um, I don't remember what it was. But dayoftheweek. org is a bit like what you think it is. It, it, it doesn't tell you, it tells you obviously what the day of the week is, but it, it really gives you like a lot of the background behind it.

It talks about the history of the day, um, it goes into Zodiac, birthstone, historical events that have happened, who was born on this day. I mean, I have to admit it's kind of fun to get lost in, you know? Um, it's got a lot of like... I don't want to, we're going to start just using this. Like in 

Spencer: 1984, on October 26th, Baby Faye receives a heart transplant from a baboon.

Baby Faye? 

Jared: Baby 

Spencer: who? Baby Faye. That's all it says. It's just a one sentence. Okay. 

Jared: So, um, you can look up your, uh, you can look up your, sorry, I have to call it out. If I'm a little distracted, there is a bee buzzing around my office right now. I don't know how it got in here, but... 

Spencer: Well, good luck. 

Jared: Um, it's getting closer and closer.

It likes my light, my ring light here. So, um, if I yelp in pain, that's why. Um, uh, Speaking of AHRefs, Um, so some of the fun facts, I thought, I think this is interesting. I kind of want to get your take on this. So, um, it's only a DR26, which I guess compared to your DR8 from before is quite a bit more. It ranks for about 60, 000 keywords, but super interesting the keywords that it ranks for.

Uh, it literally ranks for like days, days and years. And I'm blown away by the search volume. Look at the search volume for some random day and time.

Spencer: Yeah, um. You've got, 

Jared: I think the number one keyword they rank. Yeah, look at this. This is what they're, so they're making individual pages for every single day of every single year. Um, and you know, uh, I, I, I just think that's fascinating. Now, so what I did is I had a little fun here. Um, according to Ahrefs, which of course, you know, we, they get their data from a lot of sources.

But, do you want to know what the most searched day of the year is? According to Ahrefs, in terms of search volume? Yes, I do. Uh, it would be April 17th. 

Spencer: April 17th. I, 

Jared: I, I don't know why, but that is according to Ahrefs. That has a search volume of 40, 000 searches. A, um, 40, 000 searches a month. And then the second most searched...

Is March 14th, which happens to be my daughter's birthday, and that's 39, 000 searches a month. 

Spencer: Wow. With no year appended, just March 14th. People are typing that day in. So, the 

Jared: most, according to Ahrefs, the most searched date with year is June 1st, 2023. 

Spencer: There it is. Yeah. I think I'm sharing that. Yeah. Yeah.

You got it right there. June, June 1st, 2023. And if we go to the, you know, you can go to the 

Jared: page. They should say on the page, what happened that day? Maybe something happened. 

Spencer: Um, I'm sure it did. If you're trying to learn Japanese in this day of the week is Japanese is Mokka. You'll be, 

Jared: you kind of still went under there.

You're exactly right. So my next thing was going to be on the monetization. Um, and they're really playing up this whole language thing. Like I, I wouldn't have made the connection between day of the week and learn how to speak Japanese, but all their kind of, uh, seemingly affiliate offers or private ads have to do with, uh, language.

So like learning language, learning Spanish, 

Spencer: why, why would they do 

Jared: that? It's either they're onto something and they're really smart and they know what they're doing, or they're completely missing the mark and they're trying to force an affiliate offer that has nothing to do, and they're probably making nothing off of it.

It's probably one of the two. 

Spencer: Yeah, you know, they got sponsored by links, right? Uh, interesting. WordFinder. cafe It looks like an affiliate link. Yeah, it does look like an 

Jared: affiliate 

Spencer: link, you're exactly right. Sponsored, right? You know, whatever that is. 

Jared: Um, you know, so clearly a, uh, what would you say, a programmatic play here?

Or is somebody writing content about all this? Or what do you think is behind all this? It's certainly some degree of 

Spencer: programmatic. It's gotta be programmatic, that would be my thought. Where are they getting all 

Jared: this data from? I think 

Spencer: that's fascinating. That's what I don't know. Yeah. Right? Is, is how are they getting all of that data?

Cause it's 

Jared: not just a, like a, a, a repository of data feeds, right? It's, it's got like, stuff, it's got text written about it and stuff like that, you know? 

Spencer: I mean, can you go, literally go to any year? Like, let's go to 932, right? Like, something, like, have they really... Oh, okay. Not a... Oh, it needs to be a four digit number.

Okay, go like, one thousand thirty two. Yeah, thirty two. Oh, now it's gonna make me put a, a day, right? February 4th. Oh my gosh! There it is! So they've clearly done it for over a thousand years, uh, you know, every day of the year. It's a programmatic play. Doesn't look like much happened that day. Right, I mean it, a lot of it would be pretty simple.

I could see how all of this, right, can be programmatic, right, if you were born. That's all, yeah. You know, you're 991 years old now. Uh, Gregorian versus Old Julian. Okay, so they just have some basic things for these really old dates. There were some other dates. There were some history items. 

Jared: Right? That had history items.

Yeah, they're gotta be yanking from some history repository. And we've had history sites featured in the weird niche before. Is it, you know, I mean, there's gotta be some... Archive sort of history sort of thing, you know? Yeah. 

Spencer: So at some point they're pulling in from some archive. I'm just trying to see, yeah, even back to 2020, it doesn't quite have it.

So, um, but it had it for 2023, right? I think that was the days. 

Jared: We were looking at 2021. I saw, I saw a bunch for 2021. 

Spencer: Oh, okay. Well, let's just put 2022 and, uh, Hmm. No. Nope, try another date for anniversaries, birthdays. So, so, they don't have it for all of them. Um... 

Jared: It had it for my birthday, which, uh, I don't want to share live on the air because...

No one needs to hear that, you know, you know, it was back in the eighties. Let's put it the early eighties. Let's put it that way. 

Spencer: Uh, so anyways, we could, we could probably play with this all day to figure out what's going on here, but I, I think it's a cool site. I mean, it's clearly mostly monetized with ads.

Yeah, I'm sure that's most of their money, uh, is coming from. And then they must have some significant, uh, days. Yeah. Some of the days that actually have historical events, you know, those are in the sidebar that you can quickly. Oh, those are 

Jared: recently viewed. I was going to bring that up. Recently viewed dates.

Why would I care what other people are viewing? 

Spencer: Yeah, um, I don't know. So bizarre. But it's working. I want to click on it. Yeah. To see why they're viewing it. Um, whew, cool. This is a cool website. That's cool, right? Yeah. Yeah, just fascinating. Like, I still am just so fascinated by all these just quirky little areas of the web you can go into and build a website and maybe make some money.

Um, I would say good find, Jared, but uh, you were given that one on the silver platter. I was. Full credit to you. And I was given mine. Um, you know, so at this point, people are just giving us these weird sites, and we do appreciate it very much. And we'll take it. We will take it. All day long. Uh, so, we've gone over an hour, Jared.

I think we should wrap it up. Yeah, it's been a long 

Jared: one. We're not good at this. This has been good. Yeah, um, we've spent so many episodes of the last month to two months to three months looking at like real data analysis type stuff in terms of helpful content update, very data driven AI type stuff. Today was definitely much more of a kind of ephemeral like walk into what's going on right now in that world.

So it was probably a good, you know, counterbalance. 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. Hopefully people enjoyed it. Um, if they want to follow along, of course, go over to niche pursuits. com. Join the newsletter. I'm sending out emails, you know, a couple of times a week. And, uh, yeah, I hope you just stick around and, uh, listen to the next episode.

If you enjoyed it, leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast. We appreciate that. Other than that, thank you everybody. And you have a great weekend. Have a great 

Jared: weekend. Bye bye.

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