Welcome to another great episode of Niche Pursuits News.

This week Jared is joined by his 201 Creative agency co-founder Kaitlin Cooper to unpack all of the latest developments from the week that may impact online publishers. And there was surprisingly a lot to go over.

They start by discussing the integration of ChatGPT and Bing, which is powered by Microsoft’s Prometheus and offers current results. Kaitlin highlights the composition feature in Bing, which allows for AI writing prompts, while Jared dives into the Expedia and Zapier plugins and their various, exciting use cases.

The conversation then turns to Google’s public acknowledgment of topical authority in the context of news sites but most certainly all kinds of sites. And they share some interesting takeaways you won’t want to miss.

They also discuss some of the unfortunate issues happening this month regarding video searches. A reported Google search bug has caused a drop in video traffic, and Google seems to now only show video thumbnails next to search results when the video is the main content of a page.

Google’s testing reportedly shows that the recent change in video thumbnails will have minimal impact on publishers, but there is still debate about the actual impact.

But in more hopeful news, Google Bard is now including relevant images in responses and highlighting the source of the image. Bard is emphasizing the importance of images in communicating ideas effectively. And as a reward, Bard is even sourcing smaller sites for queries that larger websites typically dominate in image search or regular web search.

This a potentially cool development if publishers can manage to improve their images for Bard.

Next up, they dive into their shiny object shenanigans. Jared shares an update on their newsletter where they’ve managed to surpass their goal of reaching 1,000 subscribers in 12 weeks. And they get into how it is they’re able to average 40-50{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} open rates and what their next goals may be.

Kaitlin shares how she’s transitioning her side hustle wedding photography business site Kaitlin Cooper into a content affiliate site, and discusses some issues that others may relate to.

As always, they close out the show by discussing a couple of fun and weird niche sites found.

Kaitlin shares Hold The Magic, which is certainly not your typical niche site. It’s a site created by a mom who wanted to give her daughter something other than money from the tooth fairy. The website sells tooth fairy gifts, has an influencer program, and they even set up booths at dental conferences.

Jared then shares his website which specializes in treehouse rentals. Treehouse Trippers is a site dedicated to finding good treehouses to rent for vacations. At first they debate what qualifies as a treehouse and whether some of the site’s offerings fit the bill. But then they praise the site’s targeted approach to SEO. The site does a good job of producing long-tail targeted content specific to certain states and types of vacations and monetized by offering affiliate links to online booking platforms.

But as always, it’s possible that these sites are leaving money on the table and so the hosts brainstorm some ways they could boost monetization.

Overall, it’s another great episode of Niche Pursuits News, covering a wide range of topics related to SEO and niche websites. So be sure to watch the full episode below!

Transcription

Jared: All right. Welcome back to another weekend, niche Pursuits News. My name is Jared Vain and I’m one of your hosts today. Today we’re joined by Caitlin Cam, welcome. 

Kaitlin: Hi, I am glad to be here. This is fun. 

Jared: It’s good to have you. It’s funny because, you know, normally it’s Spencer Night hosting The Weekly News Spencer’s out this week, and so when one of us is out, we tend to find another co-host.

Um, many won’t know you, but you are. Um, you’re my business partner and a co-founder at 2 0 1 Creative. So a lot of experience in the digital marketing and online world. But why don’t you give, uh, just listeners a little bit of background before we dive into this week’s topic. 

Kaitlin: Yeah. Well, so as you mentioned, I am your business partner.

Uh, we co-founded 2 0 1 Creative Together. Um, but our history goes back even further than that. Um, actually starting at your photography company. Um, I was an intern there back in college and got to learn just all of, um, you know, how to run a photography business and got to do all the editing for your studio at the time.

Uh, had a blast doing that. Um, and then after college realized, oh, okay, I need a real job now. And, uh, found out, hey, you actually own a, uh, photo editing company also in San Diego. And, um, found my way into that job and worked for, uh, your company there. Um, Under, I was like the QC manager and then, uh, or quality control manager, sorry, I still have all the, uh, the, the acronyms and everything.

But, uh, we then realized that, uh, that company needed a marketing department and you were heading that up and you asked me if I wanted to build that from the ground up with you. Um, fully realizing that I had zero marketing experience at all because I was an art major in college. So, uh, we took the leap together, uh, built the marketing team and, uh, grew that really well.

And, uh, once, you know, we both kind of left at different times, uh, there and then worked, um, building up 2 0 1 creative. And so now, now I’m here. 

Jared: You know, the best marketers are typically the ones that don’t come from a marketing background. That’s what I’ve found over the years. Um, yeah, you have a lot of experience over, especially a lot of the online processes and marketing efforts we’ve built over there.

With email marketing, process management, uh, instituting e um, uh, marketing measures, uh, at scale and stuff. So it’ll be great to have your perspective along on this. Um, Caitlin handles most of the operations at the agency that, that we run. So a lot of, uh, what we’ll talk about today in the news and other perspectives you have, it’ll be interesting to hear what, um, what you think coming from a specifically like operational focus.

So 

Kaitlin: yeah, I am, I’m excited for this. I’ve heard you and Spencer do this before. Uh, you know, full disclosure, I listened to a couple. I was a little nervous because I was like, man, you guys bring such good perspectives and insights and come at it from a different direction than I typically would. Um, but I’m, I’m excited to be here and kind of go through some of the, the news and, you know, what’s going on in SEO today.

Jared: Well, good. Let’s go ahead and dive in to our first news episode. Or, uh, first news event of the week. And, you know, every week we go through this where we gotta figure out how to share our screen. And, uh, so I’m gonna go ahead and bring that up here. And of course it always loads it out of order, but there it is.

Okay. I, I think I got it figured out. So the first news, uh, of the week, and probably one of the bigger ones is that chat, G P T and, um, and being Bing are integrated now with each other. And so, um, basically we’ve used, and this is big news, we’ll kind of go through it, but basically we’ve been using chat G p t in the chat G p T window.

You’ll go to the Open AI Chat G P T window. You’ll, you’ll, you’ll use that as a prompt. And then obviously, um, uh, Bing does incorporate some facet of chat G P T, but now the two are integrated together. And so, um, I think one thing to note is that Bing is powered by Microsoft’s Prometheus. And so what we’re starting to see now is current results in Bing, whereas that’s kind of one of the big knocks.

On chat. G p t was, it doesn’t have any data passed. I think it’s like September, 2021. Um, so I’m just gonna go ahead and read. If you’re watching on the, on the screen on YouTube, you can see it as well. But Bing Chat is a part of search while chat. G p T is an isolated interface. Um, and so the biggest difference between them is that Bing Chat is also powered by Microsoft’s Prometheus, which is a model that integrates b Bing search with the AI tool.

Um, and so, you know, I, I don’t know, have, while I load a couple more things here on the screen, have, have you played around at all with, um, with specifically with the AI chat features in Bing and this rela uh, this integration. 

Kaitlin: You know, I haven’t, I, well, one thing is you need Microsoft Edge to use it. As I was going to play around with it, I realized, okay, none of my, none of my devices have that.

Um, and so anyways, I didn’t quite get around to it, but I did a lot of research on it. And, um, I, I think it comes with a lot of interesting features that we don’t currently see yet in, uh, chat, G P T. Uh, something that really stood out to me specifically is within, um, Within Bing, it has this, uh, it’s called like the composition feature.

And what you can essentially do is it’s almost like, almost like an AI writing tool where you can pick the prompt you want. So you know, are you writing an email, are you writing a blog post? You can set how long you want it, and you can basically have it then create, you know, if you’re writing an email, you can have it right in an email tone and have it.

Spit out an email formatted, um, you know, uh, writing prompt. And so you can obviously with chat g p t write an email through it. You can, I know, you know, we’ve played around with writing blog posts, but it’s not as intuitive. You really have to know how to prompt it. Whereas with the composition feature from how I was seen it set up, it almost reminded me a little bit of uh, like a tool like Koala where you can really set parameters for how you want things to be written.

Um, what the tone you want to come out. And it’s a lot more intuitive and easier to use than it looks like it would be to get that same result from chat G P T. 

Jared: It’s interesting cuz I think that this becomes a lot more powerful as they all start to get integrated together. And that’s what we talked about a little bit a week or two ago on, on this podcast.

But like, you have to go to chat g PT to do certain things and like you talked about, you wanna get a blog post out of it. You have to go to chat G p t, you have to go here, you have to go there. You’re kind of bouncing around and now, I mean, being as is Microsoft’s making it so much easier to just do everything in one platform?

Um, I mean, I was playing around last week for example, with the Expedia, uh, plugin integration. And it’s just, it’s really, I mean, it’s pretty cool because, I mean, usually I’ll go to like a kayak or one of these websites and, and you’re dealing with their filters and you’re dealing with playing around with things.

And now you can basically just say, Hey, I’m looking for a flight on these days to this location. I don’t want to, um, have any, you know, I want it to be nonstop. I want it. And I mean, it just breaks it all down for you and stuff. And now with some of the different prompting things you talked about that you brought up that it’s able to do, you’re gonna get a lot more kind of current data and that can, that can be really great.

I, I, I as well with you, I, um, I did play around a little bit cause I have edge on one of my computers, but it’s not, um, it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t the computer I was using most of yesterday, so I didn’t get to play around with it much. 

Kaitlin: Yeah, well, and you know, just, uh, something else that I thought was, um, kind of fun and a little bit interesting, and this is kind of coming from like the content perspective because I know we’re always looking for ways to, how do we quickly analyze other articles, see what they’re talking about, and then as we’re writing our own or you know, for, uh, you know, our agency, like how can we make all those articles better than what’s currently out there?

And I love how, um, Bing is set up boards basically with it. It’s like, it’s in, um, The, like the browser. So you can be on an article and have bing right up next to it and it can analyze that page right then and there. And it will also show you like key takeaways from that actual article, like q and As, that you should be talking about key points that were found within it.

Um, the overall page topics, you know, I know like the a refs plugin, if you have that open, it can kind of show you like, here’s the outline of an article. And it sounds like Bing can kind of do things like that too. Plus it will also show you related articles to the one you’re currently in. So, I mean, that just gets my like real spinning for how can we use that to quickly pull key points, key topics from articles online, and then use that as we’re writing articles of our own or you know, for our clients.

Jared: This is why you run operations at our company, not me. Um, another example, and then we can kind of move on, cuz I thought this was pretty cool. Um, to piggyback off your example, uh, Zappier uh, shared this and I hadn’t thought about this example, but I wanna share it out loud cause I thought it was really cool.

It’s kind of buried down in the article. We’ll include as we always do, by the way, these articles in the show notes. So if you’re driving around, if you’re at the gym or however you kind of consume this, you can always come back if you wanna read these articles. But, um, yeah, Zapier in its article had a really cool concept.

It said, um, it talked about using multiple plug-ins in tandem with each other, which, how cool is this? So, uh, it, it, it said, for example, you can use, ask the AI for a recipe recommendation. Get an accurate count of calories using the Wolf Rum plugin, and then ask it to create a shopping list with the Insta, with the Instacart plugin.

And it kind of walks you through exactly how to do that. So, Um, it’s a bit like having a personal assistant, like they say there in so many ways. So it is fascinating to think, and I mean, we could do entire podcasts and certainly people talk about a lot about, Hey, where could this go for your website for what you’re doing with, you know, your content nowadays?

And obviously it’s also, you know, very, uh, interesting to think about if AI can do this, you know, how are we adding our own unique perspective to content going forward. We kind of had that debate a couple weeks ago and, um, since we could have it every week, we’ll, we’ll maybe table that debate this week.

I’m sure you actually, maybe not. Maybe you really do want to get into that debate, but, uh, I figure we’ll table that for this week. Yeah, 

Kaitlin: we can, I have thoughts, but we can, uh, let’s go ahead and dive 

Jared: into the next. Yeah, let’s dive into the next topic. We’ll go ahead and leave that one aside. Um, So here was an announcement by, uh, Google.

And, uh, it was, I think it got a lot of buzz in the, uh, in the, uh, in, in the, in the chat this week, uh, amongst people who are looking to, uh, to kind of validate some longstanding beliefs about topical authority. And so Google published on their developer page, their, uh, Google Search Central blog. They published a, uh, an article on Tuesday, May 23rd under the, uh, under the title of Understanding News Topic Authority.

So basically, this is to my knowledge and correct me if, if, if you know I’m wrong, but to my knowledge, it’s the first time Google has kind of publicly a, a addressed topical authority. It’s a concept we’ve been talking about in the SEO community for many years now. Um, old school SEOs will, will talk about how it was a thing a long time ago and has been a thing for a while, but I think it’s kind of come in vogue in the last couple years.

Um, as we’ve seen fairly clear evidence that topical authority is a thing, this idea that you kind of need to be proving to Google that you’re an expert on a certain topic, that you have, um, uh, like a well-rounded and substantiated authority on the topic. So we kind of know this cuz we see it play itself out and how content ranks, but they finally admitted it.

Now I’ll put a caveat. They admitted that it’s a, that it’s a thing for news. Um, and so their whole article was about news sites. Now I’ll just go ahead and share my opinion. I think this is just further validating the fact that it does exist, not just in news, but beyond news. Um, a lot of people are saying, well, hey, it’s just about news.

But, uh, but basically, let me just read a couple highlights from it and then I’ll, I, I wanna get your opinion on it. Caitlin. Um, uh, how topic authority works, uh, well to better surface relevant expert and knowledgeable content. In search and news, Google developed a system called Topic Authority that. Helps determine which expert sources are helpful to someone’s newsy query.

That’s a direct quote. Newsy query in certain specialized topic areas including health, politics, or finance. Uh, topic how topic authority works. Number one, how notable a source is for a topic or location. Number two, influence and original reporting. And number three, source reputation. Alright, topical authority.

Does this change anything about how you feel about it? Do you feel validated now in your beliefs about topical authority? Do you think this extends beyond that? What do you think? 

Kaitlin: Yeah, well it’s, you know, it’s interesting, I was looking at this a little bit and um, on Twitter, I think it was on the, like Google search liaison account.

Like they shared, they’re like this, we’ve had this ranking system in place. For a while. We’ve used this for several years and we’re just now starting to share about it publicly. Um, because at first when the way that they worded this article, it, it sounded like it was this brand new thing that they were bringing forward.

Um, and other people in Twitter commented to, they’re like, well, why did you word it like this? Cuz it sounds like this brand new thing that you’re releasing where, and they were like, no, like we’ve had this, um, we’ve used this system. And because at first, uh, yeah, I was like, oh shoot. Like do we need to now rethink about even just in general, like E E A T and all these various efforts we’ve done to really try to show our expertise, you know, our authority, get Google’s trust.

And then when I read that they. Are really just now publicly sharing about it. Um, I actually don’t really think I would change too much about what we are doing as an organization or how we look at expertise, authority, all the E E A T factors. Um, I do think though, with them coming public about it and really sharing about it, it in my opinion just solidifies like, you have to be putting an effort regardless of if you’re a news site or you know, just a niche site.

Like these are things that are not going away and Google is now coming out saying like, Hey, this is important. And so you can’t not be doing these things at this point. That’s what I think. 

Jared: Yeah. News is notoriously tricky, right? When you think about it from an algorithm standpoint, like we can publish a piece of content and we can understand that it takes a long time for that content to rank, but the more authoritative we are, the quicker it will usually rank.

And that kind of lines up. You’re like, oh yeah, some people can publish an article and it ranks. Uh, in a day. Some people it takes six months. It, it has a lot to do with how much Google trusts your website, but news has to be reported in the minute, and Google doesn’t have time to kind of run through your article and, and make sure that it, you know, checks all the boxes, test it, see how the user metrics are, look at the bounce.

Like, I gotta kind Yep. Figure out what’s going on in real time with these, these news articles. So, yeah, I mean, to your point, this kind of feels like, um, you know, when you’re, you’re in your friend’s circle and you got two people and you’re like, boy, they sure seem like they’ve got a thing going. You know?

Um, and then you see ’em some more and you’re like, I, I’m, I don’t know. I’m not too good this, but I’m pretty sure they got a thing going. And then like a couple months later they make this big announcement, like they’re surprised in the world and they’re like, a couple. And you’re like, well, I knew that all along.

Now you just validate it for me. Yeah. 

Kaitlin: Yeah, that’s what this, uh, this feels like a lot. And you know, I don’t know if this is like strain, like too far, too deep, but like, I’d be curious, like within niche sites, you know, how you could create a niche site about like a specific location. You know, maybe it’s like San Diego beaches is your topic, and obviously that’s not a new site, but kind of with what they’ve shared about trying to provide a relevant in.

Relevant information based on your location. I would be kind of curious if sites that are more location specific in a, in a niche world would begin to rank higher because they are tied to a location and really serving the purpose of what somebody’s search intent is. So, one more thing I kind of thought was interesting or, uh, you know, maybe this is kind of going down a rabbit trail, but, uh, you know, Heather can be a kind of like niche websites that are more location based.

Say you’re, uh, doing like a San Diego beaches.com is your, your website, um, not a news site. Um, but it, it is more focused on location. And with this announcement, you know, they, uh, Google was talking about how they’re looking for notable sources from specific locations. So I would be curious if websites like that started.

Coming up higher in the ses because they are more of an expert on a specific location, and even if they are a smaller site, you know, do they end up ranking higher because of this or not? Again, I, I don’t have any data to say one way or another, but it’s just something I kind of thought of as I saw the, the announcement come through.

Jared: Yeah, it’s nice when Google says, be an authority and then, but the next question is, okay, well, you know, are you redefining what authority looks like, uh, or topical authority looks like? Or are you kind of just acknowledging what we all already know and mm-hmm. Anyways, well, there you have it. Topical authority in the news this week.

Um, hey, so let’s move on. We’ve got another fun one here. This is video. This has to do with video. Now, there’s a lot going on when it comes to video this week with, uh, with Google. Um, they, they certainly, uh, uh, had a couple of issues that really have transcended a couple weeks now. And so I kind of want to build this, I wanna build this thing up.

So there’s a couple things. They’re not necessarily related, but they’re all related to a video in general. So that’s what I wanted to bring ’em up here. So first we have unacknowledged Google search bug that caused a drop in video traffic between May 4th and May 17th. Um, so it’s caused sites to get less traffic to their video content.

Google’s confirmed this bug. It was not just a Google search console reporting bug, but a bug with actual search. Uh, so they shared a bug, caused a drop in video traffic from blah blah blah has been resolved. Um, uh, we, uh, this article asked if it was just reporting error. No, it wasn’t. Um, so. You know, if you publish a lot of video content, you might have seen a, a drop in the content and the traffic from it if you suspected it was just a bug.

Sounds like it’s more than that. It really was a drop in traffic. Now this kind of coincided in many ways with a lot of other drama that developed in the video world. And this ha is not specifically video traffic related. So I first caught up on this with Luke Jordan, who we’ve had on the podcast before, and he shared on May 21st on Twitter, he said, Google’s video thumbnails now only appear next to Google’s search results when the video is the main content of a page change.

And he shared an example from Google Search Consult. And um, let me now share the article, uh, that Google did end up publishing about this. Um, I am balancing a lot of screens here and this way I can actually read to you what they shared. So, Uh, this one is, uh, related to video being the main content to appear as a thumbnail.

So again, the bug was related to actual clicks from video search. This is not related to thumbnails. Okay. And we know that video has been increasing in the crps in the form of thumbnails a lot over the last couple years. And so this was announced, um, back in the mid-April, but I think, uh, maybe this week a lot of buzz was created around people discovering it.

So now a video, when a video isn’t the main content. Now Google won’t show it as a thumbnail. And according to Google’s testing, it shows that it will have a minimal impact on publishers. Now there’s a good amount of debate about how much impact it’s actually having. Uh, Luke and others, uh, we’re sharing that it’s gonna, you know, cost him tens of thousands of dollars because of the la the, the drop in clicks that are coming.

Um, uh, Lily Ray, who we’ve also had on the podcast, shared that the, that she actually dove into it. And while Google Search Console makes it look really bad, the pages themselves didn’t actually lose any traffic. Um, GSE is more just reporting, um, on the cerp appearance now. So anyways, there’s a lot going on around this.

You can go into your Google search console and see it, but if you just go click on performance and then video, you won’t see any of this. You have to have performance still be web, but then go set up a specific filter for appearance videos. Um, that was a mouthful. I was, uh, uh, I had to actually prepare in advance to share all that.

I’m not sure I did a great job, but did I make at least some reasonable amount of sense about what we’re dealing with in the video world and the news this week? 

Kaitlin: Yeah. Yeah, you definitely did. You know, uh, long story short, thumbnails, the little YouTube thumbnails. If you had a video in, um, your article, it may not show that thumbnail anymore.

If your video is not the main piece of content in the article, uh, brings up a lot of questions. Um, again, kind of for a me, it takes a video, the 

Jared: main piece of content in an article, because typically a video will never be the main piece of content in an article. At least not in my mind. That’s why it’s an article.

If it was just gonna be a video, then you just go put it on YouTube, right? 

Kaitlin: 100{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}. You know? And I also wonder how long does, like, what if you made a longer video in the article, is that going to stand a better chance of Google thinking? Okay, well this has a really long 15, 20 minute video, so we’re going to include that thumbnail.

Or I was reading people were saying maybe if you position the video higher in the article, then that’s what I was gonna say. 

Jared: You move it up higher, you now put it up where your, uh, you know, where your answer target used to be, maybe. Yep. 

Kaitlin: Or it maybe if you optimize your video schema better, then your thumbnail will also show up.

So there’s all these like different, you know, questions and Google’s very vague on what is and is not going to cause a thumbnail to show up anymore. 

Jared: I mean, I think the best way to look at it is, and I haven’t done this analysis, frankly, I’ve kind of hoping somebody else would for me, but I think the best way to maybe look at it is maybe go look at queries that are related to your website, see who is still showing up in video thumbnail, and then go analyze those pages and try to draw the correlations that exist between what Google is saying is, uh, makes video the main subject.

And then determine if you want to go to that extreme, to that length. I mean, Lilly Ray has a decent point in, uh, in that it’s probably important to analyze how much traffic this could be costing you. And is it, um, I remember when, and I think she referenced this, I might have gotten this from her, but I do remember when FAQ snippets were going through, um, their little run in GSC before they, um, broke them off into their own section basically.

And that was really, really ruining data in there because it was giving you all sorts of false positives and, and false negatives. So, you know, there’s an element that says, Hey, make sure that this isn’t just, um, much to do about nothing or very little. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I would think that if the best way for us to figure it out is just to kind of go analyze what’s going on in the SERP these days and try to try to create some correlations there.

Kaitlin: Yeah. You know, and something else when I saw this come out is I kind of thought just from like our, our agency perspective in working with clients, um, you know, we, we’ve been making a big effort, especially over the last year, to create more videos with clients and have them include videos in their articles.

And, uh, you know, I’m thinking, okay, well with this change in the ERPs, like, would this stop us now from wanting to add video or create video altogether, uh, for and with clients? Um, you know, and as I. Think about it, like, I don’t think so. Um, I think, yeah, it’s great if a thumbnail shows up, but there are so many other benefits of adding video to your articles and, you know, it increases all of your E E A T factors along with that.

You’re starting to build a YouTube channel and getting subscribers over there. Um, for monetization. If you’re monetizing your pages, it keeps people on your pages longer. So there are so many other benefits to video that, yeah, while this is a bummer, uh, I, I don’t think this would stop us from changing our video strategy, at least right now.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree. I mean, maybe on a client by client basis if somebody is really impacted, but I don’t think across the board it, it does change much so. Um, okay. Is I think this is our final news item of the, of the week. We got a lot of news this week. You came on a busy week. Um, let’s, this one is more on your camp too.

I’m gonna turn it over to you while I share my screen. And let’s talk about Google, Bard and, um, their new position on images. 

Kaitlin: Yeah. So, uh, this one I think is kind of fun. Um, but Bard is now including images in the, uh, responses when it is relevant. So if you, uh, put in a query that maybe images would be helpful for the results, Bard will place those in.

Uh, not only that will it include the image, but it will also show you the source of it, and you can click on it to then go to that source and see the article. Um, and their reasoning behind doing this, and I’ll just read what they said, but they basically said, images can help you communicate your ideas more effectively.

They can bring concepts to life, make recommendations more persuasive and enhance responses when you ask for visual information. So, you know, again, they’re starting to put images at the forefront, um, and showing images are very important. Now, I decided to do a little bit of just testing here. So I had Google Bard open and I just went with, um, the topic.

I just did landscaping ideas for my small backyard because I wanted to see just, hey, like what’s gonna pop up if, if you type something in like that. And so within Bard it came up with like seven or eight ideas, and each idea had an image associated with it, kind of like you see in the, uh, the screen you’re sharing here.

Um, mm-hmm. Which I, I was like, okay, that’s cool. It then got me thinking, um, if I type in that same query into Google, what’s gonna pop up? And for those images that were showing up in Bard, are those the websites that are then on page one of Google? And so I put in just because I’m thinking, I’m like, okay, you know, if, if somebody’s getting linked out to and borrowed and you click on it, like, is that a different, uh, source of traffic or are you also already on page one of Google?

And so anyways, it, um, Typed in that same query and in Bard the, their first idea that Bard shared was like, create a focal point in your backyard. And their example was using fire pits and they linked out to a site, it’s called like, bless my weeds.com. And that’s what the image was from on Google. When you search landscaping ideas for my small backyard, that website is nowhere to be found.

Jared: So, Hmm, interesting. 

Kaitlin: Yeah. And 

Jared: now I will say, did you image search as well? Did you, did you search image search? Or, or, or a web search? 

Kaitlin: I just did web search just because typically that’s how I would search for something still in Google. Um, I do use image search every now and then, but just I was, I just kind of wanted to compare, you know, if I was gonna ask this on Google, how would I ask it?

So, um, now I will say the, bless my Weeds article, it was about fire pits because the idea that Bard was showing was a fire pit idea. So it was linking out to an article that, bless my weeds, had about all these fire pit ideas. But anyways, you know, I, it made me realize like, okay, so. There could be some value here in putting an emphasis more on your images and really making an effort to have good, unique images.

Because clearly Bard is looking for them and it’s pulling things that Google isn’t and putting those in their answers that you can’t find necessarily on Google. So it just, I have so many ideas with that, but I thought that was a little bit interesting that they’re showing different things already.

Okay. So now you have the Google images. Yeah, 

Jared: I have Google images up and I don’t see, you know, bless my weeds or whatever. Um, is that the query you had? Landscape ideas for a small backyard or something like that? Yep. Yeah. 

Kaitlin: Yep, that’s exactly 

Jared: what I had. Yeah. So. I see a lot of the big players here in Image Search as well.

Better Homes and Gardens HGTV for Forbes, cuz of course the business magazine has, has a lot of, uh, value to add, obviously in that regard. Uh, sorry, I digress. Um, how’s the Spruce, um, uh, the, so the Bob Villa Bob Via, these are the ones, sunset Magazine, these are the big, these are the big ones. And yet what you’re saying is that for a query that a smaller website would have a very hard time ranking for whether in image search or regular web search, Bard pulled them in.

Mm-hmm. I mean, I don’t know, maybe they’re actually doubling down on their experience factor. Maybe they’re, they’re tweaking their algorithm in Bard. Um, it’s hard to. Hard to know, but if you are a web publisher out there, I agree with you. That’s a very, uh, a cool announcement, but certainly an interesting angle.

You and I both have a long history in the photo department in the photo world, so I know that that’s, uh, a particular interest to us. Yeah. 

Kaitlin: And I know we’ve lately been putting more of an effort into images, and then man, now I’m like, oh gosh, we need to just do a whole image project for every site, for every client because you, I, I, I think there’s a lot of potential here.

But, uh, anyways, I thought that was kind of a fun announcement. 

Jared: All right, well, we are well over time on our news section and, uh, great job. You brought your A game. Um, and, uh, thank you for, for adding all that value. I, uh, I, I have to transition us though to our next section of the news and you know, those regular listeners, uh, you’ll probably understand that kind of the three phases we walk through here on these Friday news specials.

But if you’re new. We talk about the week’s news, usually that’s at least a half, half to three quarters of what we talk about. But, uh, we do talk about shiny objects. We’re working on otherwise known as shiny objects, shenanigans. And then don’t, uh, uh, I feel like a news producer here. Don’t go anywhere cuz we still have our weird niche of the week.

And, uh, uh, that’s probably my favorite part of the week. So talk about my Thai guy sending cat facts, sleeping in airports, bear looking for treasure. It’s, uh, it’s great. But I digress. Let’s talk about shiny object syndrome. So I’m gonna go first and then I’m really curious here about yours. This is the 12th week since, um, I, we launched, uh, weekend growth and the newsletter.

And 12 weeks ago I basically said, um, uh, we weren’t doing this news, uh, we weren’t doing this podcast yet, but 12 weeks ago I started and said I’m gonna give myself 12 weeks or three months to reach a thousand subscribers on a brand new newsletter. Those who’ve been listening or heard me talk about this in and out every single week.

Well, as 12 weeks are up. So I thought I’d kind of put to rest this shiny object syndrome. Kind of talk about how it progressed. Caitlin, obviously you were very involved in all this because this was a, a company effort. So, um, you know, you could probably chime in on some of this, but, um, I, I was about to say, I pulled some stats.

No, I didn’t. You did. I asked you if you did some good stats here. Um, so I’m trying to take credit where it’s not due. But anyways, let’s just kind of recap what we did. So the goal was that a thousand subscribers. We are current, well, yesterday when, when you, when you shared this, we were at 1,287 subscribers.

Um, uh, let’s see, we sent 15,441 emails over the course of those 12 weeks. Um, that’s a lot. That, that seems a little higher. Yeah. Uh, than I, than I thought we were gonna get after 12 weeks. Um, There were 6,896 opens, and so that puts the open rate at 44.67{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} on average. Now, I will caveat the reason that send number is high and then the open number is lower, is because, and I think this was on your advice, um, uh, we basically would resend the email, uh, two or three days later to everyone who didn’t open the email and we change the subject line and resend that email.

And those always performed a lot worse because mm-hmm. People who didn’t open your first email are much more likely to not open your second email, although we would get like 20, 20 to 25{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} open rates on those second sends. Yeah. But typically that first send is getting like 50 to 60{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} open rate. 

Kaitlin: Yeah. Yeah.

We definitely saw lower open rates on, on those. Later emails that were sent out that were basically the resend of the first one. But, uh, you know, overall, just from a, uh, an email marketing perspective, uh, I’m very pleased with how this did, uh, having a 44{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} open rate on a really, a brand new, uh, you know, email platform that we’re working with here for weekend growth.

Uh, that’s a, that’s a very, uh, respectable open rate, I would say. And I, I think people are pretty engaged, at least from those numbers in, in what we’re doing, 

Jared: you know, and it wasn’t really a part of the initial kind of goal, but I, I thought I’d share a couple other numbers. Like in the process, we basically were taking the emails and we started publishing them back to weekend growth.com.

Back to the website. Mm-hmm. Like as a blog post. And, um, I mean, I’d say they’re mildly optimized. Like we at least took the email and like tried to come up with a couple of H two s out of it. But that’s about the extent of it. Like they are not optimized for search. I don’t even think we came up really with a keyword for most of them.

We just kind of published it as it is. But, um, uh, in the last 30 days, weekend growth.com has gotten 6,579 page views. Um, again, like given that it’s only a couple of month old website, um, 855 of those were from organic search. Um, it’s, um, it’s picked up some nice links. I didn’t, I I, I, I wonder if, even if you knew this, uh, did you know weekend growth is a DR 23?

Kaitlin: It, no. I feel like last time I checked it was like a DR. 12. Wow. 

Jared: I’m impressed. I feel like last time I checked was a DR two. I mean, um, and then we also started sharing some YouTube videos, um, and started a YouTube account. Mm-hmm. So that has 261 subscribers and, uh, last 30 days has 4,800 views on those videos.

So, um, anyways, I mean, yeah, so I’m gonna have to find a new shiny object to share starting next week, I think, cuz that was kind of that 12 week sprint there. But, um, I thought I’d just share the kind of recap and going forward, I’ll probably just share periodic updates on here as we go. I will say we haven’t really come up with a good plan going forward.

Um, it was always about those first 12 weeks and then reevaluating. Mm-hmm. And I, I haven’t had a chance to, to reevaluate. So maybe with a cup of coffee tomorrow I’ll, um, I’ll sit down and think some more about it. We’ll bounce some ideas off each other. But anyways, that’s, uh, that’s my update. What’s, uh, what’s going on in Caitlin’s shiny object world.

Kaitlin: So I will, I will admit this was. Near impossible to come up with. Um, mostly because every shiny object I’m working on is an idea you had and you want me to execute it and go, I think Weekend Growth Newsletter is a great example. Like you had this great idea, somebody needed to execute it, so I became the person to execute.

Um, 

Jared: so yeah, there’s an element of truth there. There was an element of truth there. It’s, 

Kaitlin: and don’t get me wrong, I love it. I think that’s why we work so well together. Um, but when you’re like, oh yeah, come up with like some like pastime thing you’re working on, I’m like, I do not have anything. Um, and so I’ll admit you kind of sparked the idea for mine and I was like, oh, I do actually have something.

Um, so, uh, my, I have. I guess going back a little bit how I mentioned that you and I worked together. Um, I interned at your photography studio way back in college and that kind of sparked me to start up my own photography business. Wedding photography business. And so started that up kind of at the end of college and I’ve been really running it ever since, uh, probably February, March-ish of this year.

So I had a wedding photography business. Um, my husband and I, we moved from San Diego to Tennessee. And in moving in and planning to move, I realized like I am not going to continue shooting weddings out there, get a whole new clientele referral base. That’s a lot of work. So, um, In, in kind of thinking through things, talking Jared with you, uh, it was kinda like, well, why not turn that into an affiliate site and take, you know, the, the knowledge that I have in the photography world?

And wow, those ads look awful. And anyways, take 

Jared: watch watching on YouTube. If you’re not, um, uh, we’ll share the URL for it. Sorry. 

Kaitlin: Yeah, I realize not everybody’s seeing it on screen, but basically I’m now in the process of converting this from a, uh, a photography website where people can book me to shoot their weddings into an affiliate website where I share advice and tips for brides and grooms as they’re planning or getting engaged and basically going through the whole wedding journey.

And I thought that that would be a good transition. Yeah. Just from shooting. Hundreds of weddings and having that expertise and also getting married in the last couple of years and really understanding what couples are going through these days, um, I thought I could bring kind of a, a unique perspective.

So it’s very much a work in progress. There’s a lot of things on there that are still focused on the, um, the business side. Um, and I need to transition all of those things out and replace it more with, hey, this is, you know, an educational site and not something where you can book me to shoot your wedding anymore.

Jared: That’s so interesting. So yeah, taking a website that was a service-based website and transition it to what is a content marketing, uh, content affiliate website. Um, I mean, it, it feels exactly like what a lot of people do with age domains, right? Um, like, you know, you’ll pick up an age domain. It used to be for a local business about whatever, and then you kind of build a content site out of it that stays within the same lane.

Um, so in theory I think it should work. Great. Um, how so? Is it making any money? Is it, uh, you know, where are you at in that whole process of kind of transitioning it like you talked about? 

Kaitlin: Yeah, so, um, if you’re watching on screen, you saw there were ads. So I’m on Ezoic. I need to talk to them about fixing where the ads are showing up and what they look like.

Um, but I am on Ezoic and then I’m also, um, on Amazon Associates. So I checked, um, a couple of days ago, and I will be completely honest, I have put no effort into this site, probably in the last, at least three or four months. Um, I did update my about page, um, just to share with people like what I’m doing now, but other than that, uh, you know, I wrote articles.

Here and there last year, got those monetized. But other than that, I’ve done very, very little. So again, if I had time, if I wasn’t working on all of Jared’s shiny objects, shiny objects, I could spend more time on this. Um, but no, so anyways, um, I, I make anywhere between like 25 and 50 bucks on Amazon, which is very, very little.

But I also have done nothing in the last few months. Also, if you look on a refs, uh, it is like a roller coaster. Um, I’ve gotten hit with updates and it’s, so, it’s just all over the map. So I’m actually surprised it’s making anything right now, to be honest. 

Jared: Um, yeah, I mean that makes sense. Like that’s one of those things where probably until you fully transition the site, Google is just gonna be pretty confused by what tech’s going on.

And even, yeah, even once you do, you know, it’s gonna take some time in theory for Google to kind of say, this is no longer a local business. That services photography. This is a website that helps people make decisions about photography. So Yeah. Yeah, you probably, you know, it makes sense. 

Kaitlin: So, so yeah. You know, it’s, it’s making a little bit, but, oh 

Jared: yeah, I was just saying this.

I think it’s great. I think, um, you know, you just gotta carve, I mean, moving didn’t help either, to be clear. It’s not just me and all my ideas. It’s true. Moving across the country probably killed some of the available time for that project as well. But I’ll take the, uh, I’ll take the hit. It’s fine. I, I, I tend to agree.

Uh, um, well, good. I, you know, if we have you back on, we’ll want to hear some updates. So let this be a good charge for you to, um, start working now. So, you know, the next time you, you hop back into a news episode, you can report some, some big things. 

Kaitlin: Yeah, that’s a good point. This is, this is my sign to go.

Jared: So it’s, um, it is that time for us to transition into, um, into weird niches now. Uh, this is, uh, this has always been a favorite of mine. I feel like this one’s growing in popularity. I’m starting to see people, um, talking about, uh, the, the different weird niches we’re, uh, we’re, uh, we’re coming up with. And I think that in general, it’s, it’s been pretty fun to try to find these.

So I will say at the outset, cause we don’t really talk about it much. Sometimes these things are hard to find. So again, just a reminder, if you have any weird ditches you’ve run across, please don’t hesitate to email them to me and not Spencer, so I can No, I’m just kidding. Feel free to send them, share them, uh, in comments or anything like that.

And we’ll find a way to, uh, to, to bring them about. Uh, I’m gonna go ahead and start actually with yours. I’m gonna bring yours up on the screen here and let’s go ahead and talk about it. It is, uh, well, I’ll let you go ahead and, and talk about it actually. 

Kaitlin: Okay. Um, so this is hold the magic.com. And this is all about the tooth fairy.

So a little bit of backstory on this website is it was created by a mom and her daughter had lost her first tooth when she was like six years old, and she wanted to give her daughter something other than money. Uh, one because her daughter didn’t care about money. And two, her daughter was really into like the whole leprechaun ferries.

And so she was like, it doesn’t make sense to say it’s coming from a tooth fairy, um, because money doesn’t exist in these magical worlds. So she wanted to give her daughter something that would come from like fairies or a magical land. And her daughter loved it. She then did it for her son and like her 13 nieces and nephews.

And they just all loved the idea of getting all these different little tokens from fairies. And she started building this website. And so now you can see it’s, um, it’s like a DR 14, I think it gets about 5,000, uh, visits a month. Has about 3000 keywords on the website. But really what she does and how I am seeing that she makes money is she just sells these tooth fairy gifts, um, very popular.

She has like these gift sets with three gifts for like 29 95, and those seem to kind of be like her popular items that she sells. And, uh, the other way I think she’s making money is she has an influencer program so people can sign up to be influencers share on social media, um, because they do have, they have a, a decent social media following.

Um, I think they have like four and a half thousand Instagram followers. They’ve started a YouTube channel. They’re on TikTok now. So they’re definitely playing the social media route too, to get more followers and aka get more sales and find ways to include influencers to also share about these gifts that they’re selling for kids, for losing their teeth.

Jared: I also see that they’re covertly, so I couldn’t find the menu, anything about their blog. And I’m like, are they building content around this? Or is this literally just a shop, you know, a, a storefront. Mm-hmm. But lo and behold, deeper, we dive here on the homepage. They are publishing content on, um, when my child can brush and floss.

So definitely like taking this idea of tooth topical authority and really running with it. Mm-hmm. 

Kaitlin: Yeah. Yeah. There, it took me a while too to find the blog, but from what I could see, I don’t think they are, uh, monetizing the blog, like through ads at least that I could see. I probably should have gone into like, inspect element a little more to see if they had anything, but there’s no ads that popped up when I was searching through it.

So 

Jared: I feel like, yeah. It looks like they’re pretty much just you. Mm-hmm. Either using a drive to their own product links is what it looks 

Kaitlin: like. Yeah. So I, they could probably make a little bit more money though. 

Jared: Oh yeah. We also have, what is this? Is this a, uh, a printable, a chart? Printable, 

Kaitlin: yeah. Look at that.

So, yeah, they have like fun little downloads. Uh, they have accounts you can clearly like log in to and create an account. I don’t know if they have more on the backend for people who are like members or, you know, have an account with them. Um, They, I also found out, uh, that they go to dentistry conferences and so there’s like, um, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry Conference coming up, um, I think in a couple of weeks.

And so they have a booth there. And so they’re encouraging people to like come and visit their booth, and I’m assuming that they must sell them on something, um, because otherwise why would you pay to have a booth at a, at one of these conferences other than for maybe awareness. But, uh, that could be another way too, that they’re, maybe they’re trying to connect with dentists and somehow get integrated into like dentist offices.

I don’t know. But, uh, it’s, uh, 

Jared: that’s interesting actually. If that’s, if that’s, if that’s where they’re going with it. I mean, I mean, I, I suppose I don’t really think of the dentist and losing teeth, tooth fairy type stuff related, even though obviously they, they are in many ways. That’s, Hmm, that’s very interesting.

Kaitlin: Yeah. So I don’t know. It doesn’t look like they’re making money, like the standard, like niche website, uh, way, you know, with ads. And they’re not, from what I could see, like selling Amazon products, it looks like they’re only selling things, uh, that they’re creating or it’s coming from them. So, uh, you know, but yeah, all about the Tooth Fairy.

Jared: I mean, they’re, they’ve got a lot going if you’re, if you’re talking about how they have a website. Mm-hmm. We saw a blog. You said they’re active on social. They clearly have their own shop with a lot of different products from what we saw. Um, they’re networking with other dentists. They, they had, we saw like a lead generation downloadable, a printable.

If you wanna download a printable, you can and you gotta get their email, um, give ’em your email and then get on the list. So they’re doing a lot of the things that we would encourage, like a brand to do. Right. Um, more than just, hey, throw up, um, An affiliate, uh, link and call today. So, um, yeah, that’s a good find.

I, I would be so curious to hear how much they’re making. You know, you have no idea how much their product sales are doing. I mean, it could be thousands, it could be tens of thousands. It could be, it could be they could be making six figures a month. I mean, it’s just still hard to say. I mean, I guess yeah, with a website that’s, you know, the, with the kind of organic traffic they get it, it would have to become, if they were making a lot, it’d have to come from more social and direct traffic then, because you’re probably not making a ton off of that kind of organic traffic, but hard to say.

Yeah, 

Kaitlin: they, I will say is a final thing. They had a decent backlink profile and looking at them through a trs, um, picked up by some bigger news, uh, type, uh, websites. They also had tons of Pinterest links, so clearly they’re going also getting traction on Pinterest. And, you know, some bigger news sites are picking up probably, cuz it is a very unique niche to be in.

So, uh, that could also be helping to drive traffic in sales. 

Jared: Well, very good. Let’s, um, let’s hit up my weird niche. Now, I will say that this one, normally when, when I find a website in a weird niche, it’s the only website in the weird niche. That’s kind of what makes it weird. Like my Thai guy is, to my knowledge, the only guy blogging exclusively about his journey with my ties, for example.

But what’s interesting about this is that I actually found quite a few websites that were focused on this topic. I just kind of picked one of them, and that is Treehouse trips. So this is a website, it’s treehouse trippers.com, and it is 100{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} dedicated to finding a good treehouse to rent for a vacation.

I love this. I don’t know about you. I, to my knowledge, I’ve never stayed a treehouse before on vacation, and I can assure you that I’ve never actively looked for a treehouse to stay in on vacation. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I thought about a tree house was when I was. 10. But this is proof that there’s an entire niche all around, uh, treehouses.

Um, now, uh, th this website in particular is, well, let’s first lemme share some of the stats of it. I, I don’t, I’m not able to bring h reps up right now. Logged me out and I can’t get logged in while we’re, if you we’re watching me look off camera for a little while, I was trying to get myself logged back in and I 

Kaitlin: think I have the basic 

Jared: stats.

I don’t capture Sure. The address on. Oh yeah. Good. Yeah, I luckily we did document ’em ahead of time. So it’s a, it’s a DR. 15. Um, we’ve got, uh, about 12,000 keywords that it ranks for. Um, it, it is getting, um, 12,000 organic searches, uh, a month in terms of traffic. That’s age refs. So it’s probably under reporting, probably getting more than that now.

Of note, it, it did used to be at, uh, at 40,000, so it has taken a hit here and a couple of algorithm updates. But, um, a couple of things. They’re, they’re doing really well. So first off, you know, looking on screen here, we’re looking at the 17 best Treehouses in Missouri for a romantic cabin getaway. Now that is a long tail search query right there.

Wow. Uh, That’s, uh, yeah, we’re not just talking about treehouses, we’re talking about the best treehouses specifically in the state of Missouri, and specifically for a romantic cabin that’s in a treehouse. Um, but as you, as you read this, like it’s not, um, it’s not like a programmatic play like you might expect, um, uh, or if it is, they’re doing a killer job at it.

Because that was maybe my first thought was if you’re producing this long tail of key of, uh, content, like you’ve gotta be doing it programmatically, right? Where basically all the text is about the same, but you’re just bringing in stats about Missouri specifically. Mm-hmm. But it really does appear to be written specifically for that query.

Um, they have a very nice graphic here that looks like it’s a, it’s a pinnable image. Um, and then to me, what’s most interesting about this is that they are linking out to various, um, booking agents and they are obviously using affiliate links for that. And so we’ll see here, we have a booking.com link. I know booking.com is fairly lucrative.

Um, here we have, um, a TripAdvisor link. I don’t know, that does not appear to be a, uh, affiliate link. I also saw affiliate links to V R B O. I looked up that that’s, that’s paying about a 2{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} commission, which doesn’t sound great, but if someone books a thousand dollars getaway weekend, you know, that’s, uh, that’s 20 bucks.

So that’s not terrible. Um, I’ll stop talking. What are your thoughts on treehouses in general and this website? 

Kaitlin: I mean, treehouses in general? Uh, I, I do remember growing up, uh, my dad built my brother and I a treehouse and we loved it. Um, and I will say actually, uh, in the last year, we’ve had a couple of friends who have specifically gone on vacation.

To stay in tree houses. So I don’t know if it’s like this. Okay. Like new trend. Am I too old for this? You see? Maybe you, maybe you’re too old. But, you know, um, it, it does seem as more lately, I’ve heard more and more people wanting to stay in tree houses. And I will admit, I have actually looked, um, at various vacations, like, oh, it would be cool to stay in a treehouse.

And so I’ve done my fair share of research too on like, cool treehouses to stay in. Um, so I, I find this, so 

Jared: I have, um, I, go ahead. I have, uh, uh, the Tennessee up, uh, you just, you said you guys just moved to Tennessee. So here we have the FIF 15 incredible Treehouse rentals in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Have you been to Gatlin Gatlinburg yet?

Kaitlin: Yes, actually, it’s about an hour away from where we 

Jared: live. Well, it looks beautiful now. I’d like to say that. As I scan through these pictures here on the screen, and again, if you’re not watching, no problem, we’ll include a link for this in the, in the notes, you can go look. But as I’m scanning away here, like these, this does not hit me as a treehouse as much as these are houses that have trees around them.

Um, am I am my old age? Am I missing what a treehouse is nowadays? 

Kaitlin: Uh, no. And I will say my friends who have stayed in tree houses, they’re legit, like in the trees. So I, I would agree with you. These are houses that maybe are built surrounded by trees or maybe there’s a tree incorporated like on the side of it.

But these are not your, your classic 

Jared: treehouse. Well, you know, I mean, to their credit, you know, maybe, um, I mean, I, I even though you say that your friends, um, uh, have many friends have been looking for tree houses. I, I, I can’t imagine there’s dozens of tree houses to pick from. In Gatlinburg, Tennessee. So, you know, I, I feel like it’s okay that they might be stretching what a treehouse is a little bit.

Um, but, um, man, I’d be, I’d be fascinated to, I mean, that’s not bad traffic that they’re getting organically. Mm-hmm. Uh, didn’t see if they had any search traffic or anything else, but, um, uh, clearly they, they’re doing a good job. Like really narrowing down and taking what people are searching for. Like, man, I want a tree house, romantic getaway in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

And, um, and then they’re, they’re targeting that. And then, uh, uh, you know, assuming that somebody clicks on a link and books through them, they’re probably making not bad. And again, I, I saw a bunch of these, uh, there’s a bunch of people building websites all about tree houses. Um, so clearly it’s a thing. 

Kaitlin: It it’s, it’s, it’s popular, I’m telling you.

Yeah. I mean, uh, kudos to them for building a whole site around it. I would be curious, I if they are taking more of an automated approach to writing all that content and. You know, they could probably, if they’re not, like they should start trying to source like unique images for their website and reaching out to people who have stayed in these tree houses to get more of the unique images.

I’m just thinking of like all the things we talked about today and like so many little things that they could do or create little videos and it’s like a tour of these tree houses or actually going and staying in them and trying to monetize their site more. But yeah, I, I, I, I think the site is pretty cool and it looks like they’re doing pretty good.

I’d be curious how much they’re currently making on it, 

Jared: huh? Yeah, you’re right. Talk about full circle, that that website almost blended so many of the news items we talked about between. Barred an image search between topical authority, between, um, uh, some of your research with, uh, with, with chat G P T or I think this was my research chat, G p t and booking, uh, Expedia, man.

So full circle there. So, well, Caitlin, great job. Thanks for joining on this week in the news. I hope you enjoyed it. I know that you typically don’t love to get on, uh, on podcasts very often, so I’m glad I was able to twist your arm into coming on this one today. 

Kaitlin: Yeah, you know, normally, uh, you’re the face and you know, I’m the operations, so it’s weird to be, you know, on camera doing this, but this was fun.

Thanks for inviting me. I, uh, I had a 

Jared: lot of fun here. Good, good. Well, um, until we see you again next time on the podcast, I’m sure I’ll talk to you later today on some meeting that we’re in. But, uh, thanks for joining this week in news. You guys, we love doing these. They are fun to not only talk about what’s going on in the news, This week, but also share some shiny objects and some weird niches.

And again, especially on the shiny object and weird niche side, really is a way to kind of encourage, motivate, give you ideas, keep the wheels spinning. Um, if you’re not signed up for the newsletter, you can go to niche pursuits.com/newsletter. Um, and, uh, you know, we have this podcast on Fridays, but we also have the weekly podcast with the interviews that go out on, goes out on Wednesday.

And just a ton of other valuable content that gets shared in that email. So make sure you get signed up. But um, until next time, everyone, have a great weekend. 

Kaitlin: Bye.