I’m excited to share another episode of “This Week in Niche Pursuits News”!

Jared and I cover the following topics during today’s podcast:

1. The March 2023 Google Core Update Finishes rolling out and I have poll results to share that show how many sites gained or lost traffic.
2. Elon Musk and 1,000 other tech leaders sign a pledge to pause AI developments for 6 months.
3. Adobe Launches Firefly
4. Google Launches About this Author and Perspectives
5. How Much Money Noah Kagan Makes on YouTube (and how much he spends).
6. Quick Update Spencer’s “Faceless” Youtube channel experiment
7. Jared continues to grow his Weekend Growth Newsletter. Join Jared’s Weekend Growth Newsletter here.
8. The incredibly weird niche site: CostcoHotdog.com
9. Another weird niche site: SendCatFacts.com

During the episode, we also meander into several other topics, including a couple of business ideas.

I hope you enjoy the show!

This episode is sponsored by: Search-Intelligence.co.uk

Watch the Episode

transcript

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits Podcast. I’m your host, Spencer Haws, and today, of course, I’m joined by Jared Bauman. Hey, hey, good to have you, Jared, as always, and we’re recording another episode of this Week in Niche Pursuits News. Uh, this has kind of become fun for me, uh, every week. I can look forward to this.

We talk about all the news in the industry. Um, I’m having a good time. It’s really 

Jared: fun to, um, yeah, I mean, we kind of stay up to date on a lot of this stuff already. I, I admit I have a little extra prep to make sure I don’t sound like an idiot, but it’s kind of fun just talking about, it’s almost like being by the water cooler to some degree, you know, talking about the week’s news.

Spencer: Yeah. And it’s fascinating. Each week I’m thinking, you know, are we gonna run out of news topics? Is they’re always gonna be something new, but, uh, . Inevitably there’s something big that’s happening. Um, I think it’s just a matter of being in this particular industry. Google’s always changing. AI is huge.

That’s always changing. And when you’re trying to run a business in that environment, there’s so many factors that come into play. And so there’s an endless amount of topics that, that we could cover today. Um, and we have a ton. We have a lot. We’re probably not going to get to all of them. Um, but what do you think?

Should we jump? 

Jared: Let’s do it. Let’s hit it. We got a, we got a lot of, uh, a lot of items, so as many as we can get through in the time we have. Let’s, let’s go. 

Spencer: Yeah, let’s do it. And, uh, so first up on the list is the March, 2023 Google Core update that finished rolling out, what day was it? Uh, two days ago. 

Jared: Uh, Monday or Tuesday.

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, just a couple of days ago. Um, that took about two weeks to fully roll out, and so people can now look at their, um, results. They can see. They increase in traffic, did they decrease in traffic, uh, to see how they’re doing Now, I took a, uh, a short poll on Twitter, which I will share, uh, here on the screen now, and it was really fascinating.

Uh, so these results just finished. Looks like we had a total of 201, uh, votes that that came in. And basically I asked how is your traffic looking after the, the rollout has finished and. The results show here that people that had a 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} plus increase in traffic was 22, almost 23{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of the respondents.

And then those that were, um, you know, less than that, zero to 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} increase, about 30{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}. And then one to 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} decrease is about 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, and then a 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} decrease or more in traffic was about 26.4{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of the people that responded. And so this gives us kind of a good segment of the marketplace. You know, people that certainly are building content sites, they’re in my audience and so they’re probably building, um, You know, affiliate websites monetize with display ads and affiliate links.

And when I look at these stats of this particular poll of my audience, almost exactly 50{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of people saw an increase in traffic from this Google update and 50{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} saw a decrease. And um, it’s pretty fascinating because I guess that’s the way a Google core update should work, is that, you know, when someone.

It kind of takes over your spot, right? You increase in traffic and they decrease, and so as a whole, it should balance out, right? 

Jared: There’s only 10 spots in the first, well, I can’t say that in Water Point. There’s only eight spots in the first page now, so , so someone has to move into them, and if someone moves into them, someone has to move out of them.

It does make sense. I. I also think it’s interesting that there were, you know, if we look at the number there, uh, 31{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} saw a large increase, right? Like 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} or higher, and only 26{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} saw a large decrease of 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} more. So it does feel a bit like the sentiment and, and this kind of matches. The general sentiment I’m seeing is it does feel like a lot of sites that maybe had previously gotten.

Maybe saw some recovery in this update. I’m not analyzing it, I’m just commenting from afar, but certainly the data you have would suggest that, I mean, almost a third of the people who respond to the survey were up pretty big. . 

Spencer: Yeah. And that is some of the chatter that I heard as well, is that this was a very volatile, a pretty big update that some people saw.

Huge increase. I think some people that were commenting on here said, uh, I had 150{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} increase and it’s still climbing, right? I don’t know how big their site is. Right. Are we talking that, you know, 10 more visitors a day? Um, or was their site already bigger? I don’t know that. But there was a lot of volatility from what I.

Some big, uh, declines in rankings, some big increases. Uh, for me. Um, my site, niche pursuits.com saw an increase of about 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}. Wow. Um, that’s very good. Which is awesome. Yeah. You know, I love to see your 

numbers. 

Jared: You know, your numbers are not 10 people a day. Right. Reference a 

Spencer: little more than that. A little bit more than that.

And so, um, about a 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} increase. And it’s not like I had been hit with any other updates or anything, it’s just this is just another sort of stair step up, uh, from my particular site. So Any, anything that you’re seeing personally on any sites you work with or your sites? Um, big increases or decreases?

Jared: Yeah. The site that I shared, um, I didn’t share the url, but that I documented the whole process of buying and then growing to around. nine or $10,000 a month. I shared that in a case study earlier this month actually. So that site was up 10{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, which, you know, nice gets, it, gets a good amount of traffic every day.

So 10{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} is pretty noticeable. Um, you know, it gets five, six, 7,000 page views a day, depending the day of the week. So that’s noticeable. Um, also really, really nice. I, I, I have to say, this one feels better than any of the rest of ’em. The site that I. That, um, really got nailed in the May, 2022 update, and I’ve talked about that one on Twitter a bit.

Um, and I’ve worked on it, you know, whenever I can, uh, here and there making improvements. Um, uh, but, you know, I, I haven’t devoted all of my time into to yeah, kind of cleaning it up and getting it better, but it, it kind of started rebounding for the first time in this update. So I looked and it was up about 15 or 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, depending how you look at it total.

So, excellent. You know, it’s really, yeah. Sometimes it’s really good if your site has been hit in previous. It’s really good if you didn’t decrease in the most recent update. You know, even just being flat is a. that, you know, you are making improvements sometimes. That’s the first step you have to take to then seen improvements in subsequent updates.

And so the last core update, this site happened to be flat and then this update, the site did get 15, 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} growth. So that’s kind of a, a personal win, uh, a little bit there. . 

Spencer: Yeah, I’d call that a personal win for sure. Um, you know, a lot of these updates, people start to. You know, say what caused the update.

You know, we, we’ve got the medic update, we’ve got E E A T, we’ve got all these things. It feels like this update, nobody’s really calling it anything or seeing any particular hit, um, of particular types of site. It wasn’t like, Targeting AI content or it wasn’t, you know, anything that boosted you? Um, at least from what I’ve seen so far, it’s kind of just a black box at this point.

Nobody really knows what is causing all this other than it comes back to fundamentals. I think, um, a lot of sites that have just done things properly and have maybe updated content and, um, kept a, a clean SEO strategy or seeing, uh, increases 

Jared: I person. was really moved by the interview we had with Kyle Roof back in early January, be um, and he laid out like some really clean and simple ways to show Google authority and expertise in some of these big topics.

Right. And so I had spent some time doing some of the things he laid out, um, whether or not that had an impact or not, you know, I’m not sure, obviously, like you said, there’s, there seem to be a lot of factors that go into these updates now. Um, you know, uh, definitely felt like that couldn’t have hurt in core updates like this in future ones.

And, and so again, shameless plug, but if you haven’t listened to that episode, it’s a really good episode that Kyle walks through and, um, kind of shares just a bunch of things you can do to show Google, you know, that you are an authority and that you are an expert in your space and, and make sure they understand that.

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. I think anytime you can implement those e e a. Um, you know, strategies that’s gonna just help your site overall. It’s not gonna hurt at all. So that is a great episode. People can go listen to that, uh, as well. So we’ve got a, a couple of other news items that, that recently just came out. Uh, people may have seen, I think it was just yesterday, that, uh, Elon Musk and many other top tech entrepreneurs and tech minds, um, they.

Essentially a, a pledge or an open letter saying we need to pause AI development. Um, basically open AI has made so many advancements with G P T four and other companies are now, um, producing these large, uh, language models. And, um, they’re, they’re trying to sort of one up each other. And it’s not just Elon Musk, it’s like a thousand, you know, sort of tech, um, leaders.

They’re saying, Hey, we need to pause development. We need to understand what are the repercussions of artificial intelligence. Uh, we need to see what are the repercussions for jobs in the marketplace. We talked about this on our podcast last week, right? There’s tons of jobs that AI is probably going to replace, and so they’re actually calling a pause of six months on development, um, so that we can better govern, better restrict, better monitor all the developments that that are going.

Jared: Yeah, I mean, it seems like this is closely connected to, uh, open AI announcing that you now can, um, that that plugins will be coming for chat, G P T. , uh, and you know, so that would give someone, like say Tesla or Twitter, the ability to work with chat g p t in a plugin environment or, you know, to create their own plugin so that it could, um, kind of harness the power of, of ai.

Right. So the, in many ways, like I, man, I feel like plugins came a lot faster than any of us were expecting. , you know, I think we were all pretty happy just to have API on the, on the table. I, I think I saw you actually got API access this week. I, I did get access this week. I have not yet. I got access to Bard super quick.

I got access to Bard before you, but I can’t seem to get the, uh, Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah. I still don’t have access to bar, I don’t think. No. 

Jared: Well, we, it was share accounts or something. You can have access with my client. I like it. But yeah, so a, um, API came, came, uh, pretty quick and I think we were all pretty happy with that.

And then now we have the capability for plugins and, I don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s I think encouraging to see large tech taking it very seriously. Right? Like the, the, the AI and what it, what it could mean. And I think if anything signals how disruptive it can be, it’s something like this coming out.

Right? 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. You know, on the other hand, I just. I don’t know that there’s any way they can control that. I mean, how are they gonna control really, I mean, entrepreneurs, developers, um, people that it’s kind of their life work already to make advancements in ai. I just, I don’t know how they’re going to.

Make this, you know, come to a reality. Right. And, and I guess that’s why it’s an open letter. They’re trying to, you know, perhaps get government involved and other powers that be, I suppose, involved. But I just don’t know how you stop entrepreneurs from creating better and better technology. It, 

Jared: it’s also interesting that, and it might just be the PR side of things, but it’s so interesting to see Elon Musk on the front side.

Simply because I’ve always felt like he’s been on the front end of this kind of stuff with Tesla’s self-driving cars. I mean, that is probably one of all of our first introductions really to, whoa, a computer can do this, you know, at least in the last couple of years. So it, it, it seems in, it’s very interesting to see him on the front lines of that.

Spencer: Yeah, I, I agree. Um, you know, I, I, he, he’s definitely always been on the front lines, um, of it. And, um, I guess he’s just very aware of the, the potential hazards of ai. And so he, he’s being very cautious. Uh, and it’s not, again, it’s not just him, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, a a thousand people that have signed this open letter to kind of pause AI development.

So we’ll see what. Again. Uh, for better or worse, I don’t think there’s a way that they can effectively stop developments of artificial intelligence. But this is gonna be a topic that I’m sure we’re gonna keep talking about probably every week for the foreseeable future because it does impact bloggers, content site creators, and just entrepreneurs in general.

So much. Um, I don’t think I’ve talked to anybody that their business has not been impacted in some way by. Right. Whether they’re using it to write articles or other tools to just speed up processes and procedures, I think all of us are at least dabbling with, with these tools at this point. 

Jared: I couldn’t agree more.

I mean, it’s, um, I think it’s gonna be something that we talk about probably every week on this app podcast episode for, for the foresee. Foreseeable future. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, um, there’s been another, uh, news topic that you brought up about, uh, Adobe. They launched something called, uh, Firefly ai, I believe.

Um, so I’m gonna let you cover that one. I’m gonna share, um, sort of the article here that we’re looking at. 

Jared: Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s almost not news anymore when a a, a company, a software company kind of announces, uh, that they’re incorporating ai. I saw a funny meme going around, um, where somebody was basically saying like, you don’t need to send a press release that you’ve incorporated AI into what you’re doing.

We, we know by now, right? But nonetheless, this is probably a pretty big one because, Adobe’s now making it possible for like anybody from marketers to social media, uh, folks to designers, to basically use text prompting to generate everything from social media, uh, banners and posts to, uh, uh, graphic designs, um, uh, you know, even affecting the way that they alter images.

Uh, so not available for commercial use yet, which I think is. It’s interesting almost, you know, putting their toe in, in the, dipping their toe in the water of, of, of wanting to pause a bit on some of the commercial ramifications. But, um, that’s what they’ve said is only for beta. So, so this is beta and uh, you know, I think that you would have access to it through Creative Cloud, which is where obviously you can get Photoshop and Lightroom and all that.

Um, and I also, from what I saw basically, um, it’s not trainable yet, so it does sound like that’s something that they’re gonna be working toward. . I haven’t played around with it, but as someone with a photography background, this in particular caught my eye. You know, we talk a lot about how chat G P T four can be used to create blog content or written content, but a lot of people are still kind of curious how to create, um, you know, graphic content with ai.

Well, this is probably, uh, another of many steps in the right direction with, um, with how people can. 

Spencer: Yeah, and it looks like, you know, they also are gonna get into 3D modeling, right? So, you know, it’s sort of text prompt, 3D modeling features in the future. Um, a lot of other, you know, photorealistic images.

Um, so. , just so many powerful tools that are, that are coming out, uh, so quickly. And I guess one that maybe, maybe it’s already there. Um, maybe Microsoft is already doing this, but, uh, I’m looking forward to, you know, just having entire, uh, PowerPoint presentations created, right? Basically just can prompt, uh, the tool may, maybe it’s a written article, and then say, oh, and by the way, create a really great, you know, webinar presentation or, You know, presentation that’s got all the graphics and everything just, just done.

I’m sure that, uh, you know, companies are already working on that or maybe it’s already done. You know, Microsoft, I think I, I saw something about them potentially implementing, um, some of these things in, in PowerPoint itself. 

Jared: It’s funny to hear you talk about that. I mentioned on the podcast a couple weeks ago about just how long it takes to put together a case study, which is why I don’t do them very often.

Um, and boy, I mean, the results are all there. All the data’s there. It’s just sitting down and trying to bring it all together and then create some graphics to, to visually showcase what, what happened over the course of time or, or taking some of the concepts that you did over 12 months and putting it into a visual, like, yeah, all that stuff is so time consuming and difficult, but yet so helpful for.

I really hope there’s someone or somehow puts something together that can help you with that process. . 

Spencer: Yeah. You know, maybe this is a product I product idea, but, um, I can give it a perfect example of something I’m doing right now. So I’m about to, I’m, I’m invited to be on somebody’s office hours where I kind of.

Can present something, you know, to, to their, um, people that have purchased their course essentially. And so, uh, I’m basically going to present my case study that I did four an inch pursuits where I published a thousand blog posts in a year. I created a whole YouTube video about it, right. I spent a lot of time creating this YouTube video, and I just thought, you know what?

It would be nice if I could just take the URL of the YouTube video. Yeah. Give it to ai. Create a PowerPoint presentation based on this. All the images, all the slides, everything is already there in the video, but it’s gonna take me several hours to go back and make it look pretty in a PowerPoint, uh, presentation.

Exact same stuff. But I don’t wanna just hit play on a video, right? I wanna go through the slides and talk about it and interact with the people that are on the live call and right. Um, but that would save me hours. And so, um, if that’s not already out there, which it might be, I would not be surprised if something is like that.

Uh, maybe a listener can create that and let me know and I’ll use it. Um, that’d be great. 

Jared: That’s the challenge with, with these weekly news podcasts is, you know, people do watch. and listen to them down the road. And so, you know, some of this, some of this stuff might already be created by the time, uh, people, people tune in, but boy, that would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?

I mean, I, I don’t, I don’t present and speak as much as I used to, but I used to give 50 presentations a year and, uh, that would’ve been amazing to have . 

Spencer: Exactly. I almost need a full-time, you know, person just creating these presentations for you. Uh, or, you know, you just work really long hours. Little, little both.

Yep. Little bit of both, probably. All right. So we’ve got one more. Uh, Google actually did come out with something new, I believe it’s called, uh, perspectives or about this author. And, uh, Jared, I’m gonna let you kind of take the lead on this one. 

Jared: Yeah. So apparently I’ve been testing this since August of 2022.

Um, I think it incorporates several things, but the thing that really caught up caught my. Um, is, and, and again, I don’t know if it’s part of perspectives or if it’s just was made in the same announcement as perspectives, but the about this result and about this author, um, the about the result feature is, is, has been around for a little while.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played around with it. It’s when you’re in search and let’s say you search like maybe go to Google. Um, uh, actually, if I could have you go to Google right now and just type niche pursuits. So don’t actually go to your website. Bring up the result that would show up with niche pursuits.

Um, you know, if you’re listening or you, you wanna do this at home, you can see the three dots that appear next to the result and it will tell you, um, let’s see. Yeah, there’s three dots. Those three little dots. There you go. So you can dive in and kind of see what Google. Kind of thinks about, um, where the information is coming from that they’re gathering, um, and how Google determined what would be useful for the query and what wouldn’t be useful for the query.

And so I’ve tapped into this a bit, and you can kind of get going back to E E A T and where Google thinks you’re relevant and where they don’t for your website and where they’re pulling that information from, you can start to see presumably some of this is from the knowledge panel, presumably some of this is from prolific search.

Uh, like a Wikipedia, maybe a media mention, but they’re gonna start doing this now in what they’re calling, um, about this author and about this page. So it’s not really just about this result now, it’s about this author. And again, as we really dive into these topics of E E A T and trying to authenticate and um, and and whatnot.

So I’ll just read really quickly what Google said. Uh, or what’s been said about it now, when people tap in the three dots, readers are able to find more information about the background and experience of the voices that are surfaced on Google search. Um, and so yeah, authorship probably matters a bit more now.

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. And they give a couple of, uh, other examples here that I guess is, is, um, you know, perspectives. What’s it, it, it sounds like they, this announcement, they essentially rolled out three things all at once, right? Yeah. The about this result, the perspectives and about this author, um, which the perspectives looks like it’s kind of under news results, right?

You get individual perspectives from different authors, right? And I assume. I’m looking at my screen here for people watching, but you know, you can click on these three dots and it’ll tell you more about that author. Very similar to what we just did on niche pursuits, you know, about this result. . Um, yeah, so it’s, it’s just they’re really putting an emphasis on authority, on authorship, on um, sort of how well this individual author is known on the internet.

Um, and so I think that just comes back to the fact that, hey, if you’re a real person writing real articles, um, that’s gonna help a lot because if all of your content is produced by ai, you, it’s gonna be difficult to go create that LinkedIn page, that Facebook profile, that Twitter account, you know, all these other things that you just kind of do naturally.

As a real human right, you know, it’s not like I purposely created all these entities for Spencer Haws four niche pursuits. It’s just in a matter of doing business, right? I open a Twitter account. Those things just happen. It’s 

Jared: interesting to see. They say that Perspectives Carousel will appear below top.

And top stories is already a bit of a carousel. Yeah. Um, so it has the right, has a sentiment of, again, crowding the organic search results out even more. I, I, I have to say, that’s one thing that I’m a little bit like, Ooh, I’m a little wary about that. 

Spencer: Yeah, it is. And I’m sure it only impacts certain results, right?

More newsworthy top stories, right? Things that are, um, fresh. Uh, so if, if you write about those subjects, right? This is something you definitely wanna keep your eye on. Um, if you write. More about evergreen stuff, um, maybe this won’t impact those search results quite as much, but it’s always something you want to keep your eyes on whenever the surfs are impacted and that landscape changes, you want to know what’s going on.

Yeah. 

Jared: Yeah, a hundred percent agree. 

Spencer: Very good. Um, boy, we, we had a ton of news topics that, that we jotted down. I think we only covered about half of them. Um, so maybe we’ll move on to sort of the next segment of our show, if you’re okay with that, 

Jared: Jared. Yeah, I agree. I think, I think in, in the name of time, I think we covered some of the really big ones.

Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. Um, so. Now we’re gonna move on to the segment that I call now. That’s impressive. This is where we share a story that we just found interesting, something, uh, a success story or somebody that shared their numbers of their business that we can dive into and see what they’re doing. Uh, that is interesting.

And so, um, , a lot of people listening will know who Noah Kagan is. Uh, he’s the founder of AppSumo, uh OK dork.com. Very well known. And recently on Twitter, uh, he just shared some of the income numbers for his YouTube channel, and I found this very interesting because he was just, was very much an open book.

And so if I click on this image, he basically says this is the revenue that his channel. Okay, dork. Made on YouTube over the last 12 months. So one year. Uh, , it says, uh, his channel got 97 million views in the last 365 days, so it’s a big channel. Um, he’s gained 329,000 subscribers in the last 12 months, and he is made an estimated 189,000 in revenue directly from YouTube.

So these are gonna be YouTube ads, right? The pre-roll, mid-roll ads. Uh, and so I, it’s just very interesting, um, to see how open he is being with his numbers. He basically just posted his analytics. . Uh, so there’s two sides to this, uh, coin that I wanna point out is one, Noah Kagan has done an amazing job growing his YouTube channel over the last 12 months, right?

To gain over 300,000 subscribers in 12 months is amazing. And I’ve seen some of his, his videos. I think a lot of people listening to this have probably seen a lot of his videos. He’s putting out great content. He’s doing a lot of onsite interviews. Um, and a lot of tips for businesses and small business owners.

Um, on the other hand, I mean, $189,000 in revenue is, is great, but somebody asked him, Hey, how much do you spend, um, to actually. produce the videos to run the channel list. This first comment here that he has on Twitter, and he was right up front, he responded, said, you know what? I, it cost me about $350,000 a year, uh, to, to run and grow this channel.

He’s got a full-time producer, video editor, he’s got travel expenses, he’s got part-time writers, thumbnail designer, uh, Schwartz editor, right? And then of course, his time. And so he’s losing. You know, over a hundred thousand dollars every year, or at, at least in the last 365 days, uh, to run this YouTube channel.

So what are your thoughts on this? 

Jared: Well, he goes on to say that it doesn’t include sponsorships and other things. And so I think first off, you know, yes, it’s so fun. I think first off, I’ll dovetail into that. So I, I jumped ahead, . I get excited to talk numbers. First off, it’s really cool to. More of a large scale channel.

Um, and to see ’em so open, I mean, you we’re not used to seeing numbers, like, um, a hundred million views. We’re not used to seeing, you know, uh, two and a half million hours of watch time. So it’s really cool to see. him, share that. And it’s, it’s fun to see. Um, but I think it continues to back the sentiment that most people talk about, which is, um, YouTube advertising RPMs are very, very low, especially compared to what we’re used to as content writers and bloggers.

Um, you know, it’s not uncommon, especially if you’re in like certain niches to see one, two, $3 RPMs. Um, you know, five to $10 from what I understand is much more average. I didn’t do the RPM math on his, it’s such, such large num, large numbers. I’d be worried I’d get it wrong, but, um mm-hmm. , you know, you kind of have to find other ways to monetize a YouTube channel beyond just throwing some ads up.

Um, Still, what a compelling number of subscribers he’s gotten. And I mean, even just to look at the 200,000 as an offset for the 350,000 he’s spent. And then what other ways is he monetizing? Obviously he’s driving a lot of people to other products that he’s affiliated with and so Right. Um, you have to imagine he’s coming out very profitable when you do the large scale math.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And, and you’re right, he also mentions that, hey, um, the revenue doesn’t include brand sponsorships. Um, and, but he’s more focused there. He says We’re transitioning to promoting their own products versus external products. Right. And so we all know he does AppSumo. Yep. He’s got, um, his own Send Fox.

I think, uh, he’s got this monthly one K, uh, He’s got several products that he’s got his hands in. And so it’s, it’s fascinating that, uh, basically if, if you start a YouTube channel and your sole goal is to make money from the ad sense revenue or just the ad revenue or maybe even the brand sponsorships, you’re probably not gonna make a ton of money.

Yeah. Uh, unless it goes crazy viral, you become the next Mr. Beast. But you can do really well if you have your own products, right? He doesn’t share how much he’s doing, but I’m sure that because he now has this media platform on YouTube, uh, and he can drive that traffic and sales to his own products, it’s quite profitable and very worth the investment that he’s making, uh, into the channel.

I, 

Jared: yeah, I mean, I would, I would think he wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t, but nonetheless, um, it’s, uh, it brings up a, a larger question that I’m. Uh, find myself in these conversations with the businesses that, that I work with. Um, whether it’s, you know, consulting, but usually just in the nature of doing SEO and marketing work for them, which is, Hey, how do my efforts on my blog end up actually having an adding value to my overall business?

How does this social media posting when we don’t make direct revenue from it, how does it have value to my business? And so learning how to understand how all the different facets of. Uh, marketing channels work together is a challenge, especially in today’s world with so many different cha uh, channels.

But, um, but it’s a good lesson in what Noah’s doing here to just make sure that you understand how all the factors make money. We’ve had this conversation offline before Spencer, I mean, uh, with, with Nish pursuits and all the different things that you have your hands in, but you’ve talked about how.

Getting here helps some of your products and, and li whisper, uh, just by being more visible here and there. And so, you know, it all kind of ties together and learning how to think about it that way is important as a business 

Spencer: owner. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I may just call an audible here, Jared. Uh, maybe we’ll skip the second, um, success story that we were gonna share.

Uh, just because I, I wanna dive into some of these weird niche sites, , that we’ve got. Do you feel like our 

Jared: weird niche sites are some of the most popular? 

Spencer: They might be more interesting. Yeah. Um, and so, , if that’s okay with you. Mm-hmm. , maybe, maybe we’ll go on to, we’ll do our short shiny object, uh, discussion that we always do, and then we’ll move in to kind of the, a couple of weird niche sites that we got here.

Uh, so I’ll just give a quick update on my, uh, YouTube channel, my faceless YouTube channel, uh, that I’ve been working on. And I just pulled up the stats. Uh, I don’t remember exactly how many subscribers I had shared that it had last week, five or 600 I. Yeah, it was right around 600 ish, something like that.

Um, it’s now at 923 subscribers. Ah, you’re almost at a thousand. So by next week Yeah, it will. I mean, it should be at a thousand subscribers. And then it will be very interesting because then I can finally say, okay, we’re gonna monetize this channel. Let’s see what the RPMs look. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?

We can actually start doing some predictions on a, can this business actually make some money? Um, and so, uh, that’s basically my quick report is, hey, we’re still cranking out videos. Uh, it’s still growing 923 subscribers. We’ve been doing a lot of shorts, uh, recently, um, as a strategy to increase the number of subscribers and that appears to be working.

Um, so I’m excited about that. Um, and, uh, yeah, that’s, that, that’s pretty much it for my, um, brief update. Just let people know, hey, it’s still growing, still working on it. Um, and it’s just a fun channel to look at and, uh, see what’s happening. 

Jared: I think a lot of people are interested. It, I got, I got several tweets about it, um, or dms about it throughout the week, , and people ask me, yeah, I’m like, ah, you, I know as much as you do.

I just listened to Spencer’s updates. But I think it’s really struck a chord. I think a lot of people are interested in this, so I’m excited to see what happens when you start to monetize it, and we can see it in its next. 

Spencer: Yeah, and I guess what’s interesting is that we literally just went from the Noah Kagan YouTube channel, saying, Hey, he’s not making much money except he has other products to promote to me saying, oh, I’ve got this channel that I’m hoping makes money without any products to promote.

Um, so, uh, a little bit ironic that, uh, you know, I’m doing that. So having said that, I’ve never expected this channel’s going to. Make me extremely wealthy. It’s, it’s a fun side project, right? If we can get it to making a couple thousand bucks a month and it’s profitable, like that’s gonna be a huge win. So we’ll see what 

Jared: happens.

Different model to some degree, you know, using YouTube for different purposes, I 

Spencer: suppose. Yeah. Yep. Definitely a shiny object. So, uh, Jared, what are you working on? 

Jared: Uh, continuing with one email a week, um, uh, on weekend growth. This one went really well, kind of struck a bit of a chord. Um, and, uh, I kind of went through a, the whole process, uh, that is lengthy and complicated.

It probably shouldn’t be, but, uh, this week’s emo is all about how to set up, um, rank math. Obviously you can choose any of these SEO plugins, but how to set it up. Uh, a lot of these e e t signals, uh, making sure your schema is set up right, not just doing the default schema, getting about page schema, author schema, contact schema, all this stuff.

And it should be easy, but it’s, I found it’s not in having to work through it the last couple months, but, um, I, um, I, I, I talked last week and this week I was able, over the last seven days, um, found a couple of different video editing options and I’m testing that and I made my first video nice, uh, about the very same, uh, topic that I emailed out last week.

So the last week was about kind of SEO factors that I’m paying attention to. So, recorded all the video. Uh, which by the way, it’s a lot easier to do podcast interviews than it is to like, record videos of yourself. I’ll just say that I thought. Yep. And, um, so they’re over with some different editing. I’m testing a couple different editing options and we’ll see about how those come back next week and, and see about starting to now take these emails and putting them into video form as well.

Having them edited and then putting them on a, uh, YouTube channel. So that’s, that’s where that’s at. It was, uh, a fun next step. Not easy I have to admit, but, um, uh, you know, it’s the first time doing that. So why would it. 

Spencer: Right. Yep. You gotta figure it all out. But, uh, that’s fascinating. That’s great. Um, I feel like we’re kind of, uh, getting the whole story of this business, cuz you kind of launched the newsletter about two, three weeks ago.

Maybe a little bit before then, but Yeah, I think we’re, we talked about it. Um, you know, each week on the show. And so we sort of get to see the evolution of now you’re creating these videos, we talked about that last week. Now you’ve actually created the videos. Um, and then you’re gonna create your YouTube channel, right?

And, and get ’em up there. Um, you know, it doesn’t sound like these videos are gonna be something that go viral, right? I don’t think so. But uh, they are something. People that are in the industry that wanna set up rank math, want to do these other things that you’re talking about in your newsletter, uh, will find valuable.

So. Awesome. It’s, 

Jared: uh, well it’s, it’s like you said, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks. That’s kind of the nature of these shiny objects. We get to have a little fun and see what works and try to learn along. Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. So should we do it? Should we get to the weird niche sites?

I 

Jared: do like that we do this last because I do feel like it’s, it’s, uh, the anti, I enjoy this part probably the most, I suppose, but it’s, it’s so fun to, uh, I can I ask you, I put you on the spot, like what’s your process to find these? Do they just come to you or do you feel like, I mean, do you have an idea that you run with, like, where do you come up with yours?

Because I always love, I always love seeing what you’re gonna come up with every. . 

Spencer: So I’ll just say this week I lucked out. It fell into my lap. Okay? Somebody a, a couple of weeks ago I had tweeted out, Hey, does anybody know of any weird niche sites? And so I got some that way. And then that was a couple of weeks ago, but just a couple days ago, somebody finally responded to that and say, Hey, are you still looking for weird niche sites?

And that’s where we got today’s. Um, but other than that, yeah. I’m just always keeping an eye out. Right. Doing research. I’m in a hfs and you start clicking around and you Yeah, you, you just run across some things. Okay. So, uh, this one today, um, I, I’m just enjoying this one, uh, thoroughly. So I’m gonna share my screen here so people can see it.

But, uh, again, this is somebody on Twitter, reached out to me and, uh, said, go to costco hotdog.com. Costco hotdog.com. There’s a whole website dedicated to the Costco hotdog, and in fact, I love the title of their site here. The Greatest Hotdog Ever. And then their subtitle is an Ode to the Costco hotdog. 

Jared: I mean, there’s lore around the Costco hotdog.

There really is. It’s not just a hotdog.

Spencer: Okay. I don’t know what happened. 

Jared: Uh, on my end. It seemed to kick you off before it kicked your screen share off. 

Spencer: Interesting. Now I’m really worried if we, if we got the 

Jared: whole thing. Well, it says, it says it’s still recording on my end. Oh, it is recording. It 

Spencer: says it’s still recording. Okay. Uh, I’m kind of curious if it, yeah, if 

Jared: it dumped it and we should start, um,

I mean, I wonder if it was that website. Oh, I saw it spinning, trying to load an ad. 

Spencer: I don’t know what it was. Um, should I log in and see if 

Jared: maybe, can you log in from like another browser and, um, yes. I don’t know. I don’t, I’m 

Spencer: in a different browser tab 

Jared: should show you, I would imagine. Okay. 

Spencer: It looks like.

Um, there is a recording from today in here.

Let’s finish up the recording. I think it’s, I think it’s there 

Jared: been a rough week. . 

Spencer: Yeah. Riverside. I don’t know. I, I was loving it and now it’s like, I don’t know. Yeah. I, so where do I start here? Yeah, we’ll keep going. Um, 

Jared: I mean, I, I just said the hotdog has like a lo uh, I don’t remember what I said something about.

Oh yeah, lore, like there’s a lure to the wake. Could kind of pick up there. You had just talked about the heading and the subheading. 

Spencer: Yeah. Should I, um, let me see if I can re-share. Let’s try re-sharing and,

Yeah, it’s got that loading, not seeing any errors. Okay. Says it’s still recording on my end. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s just, uh, jump into it. I’ll assume I got most of what I said. You could pick 

Jared: up at the title. Yeah. Sounds good. Maybe. Yeah, 

Spencer: that’s a good spot. All right. We had a, a, a slight issue with the recording.

We think, we’re not sure where it cut off, but we are talking about, um, costco hotdog.com. Um, I love the title. It’s called The Greatest Hotdog Ever, and Ode to the Costco Hotdog. I mean, it just fascinates me that there’s entire websites dedicated to. Things as simple as the Costco hotdog. Um, you know, they’ve got haiku’s written here.

Uh, they’ve got, um, everything you can find in the Costco food court. Right. Uh, which I actually think, um, a lot of the traffic that they’re getting is coming to kind of the Costco food court search terms. Um, I looked this. , uh, in, uh, AA TRFs to see how much traffic the site is getting, and it says that it’s getting 60,000 visitors a month from organic sources.

Gosh. So from Google it’s getting, you know, at least 60,000 visitors a month, meaning the site itself is probably getting over a hundred thousand visitors a month. Mm-hmm. . . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Um, and it’s displayed with Mon uh, it, it, it’s monetized with display ads and so it’s, you know, it’s making some money, you know, maybe it’s making a couple thousand bucks a month, 1500, um, I don’t know.

So just kind of a hilarious website that actually is making some money. I also think 

Jared: it’s interesting cuz it’s not just a hot dog. I mean it’s a hot dog and. I don’t know. I, I don’t find it to be a very special hotdog, but it’s, it’s a wonderful hotdog that I and my family enjoy, you know, quite a bit. But there is like a lore about the Costco hotdog, right?

The fact that, you know, if you’re, if you’re not living in the states, you might not have had one. Um, but there’s this co, this hotdog got released in the food court, I don’t know, 20 plus years ago. And the CEO and founder. , I mean, literally made it his mission to never, he’s publicly shared. He never wants that price to go up a dime.

So it’s never moved up in 20 years. We know what inflation’s like these days. I mean, they’re practically giving you the hotdog compared to what it was when they first came out with it. So there’s. This lure and mystique about the Costco hotdog to some degree, and someone capitalized on that, you know? 

Spencer: Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. It, it is kind of fascinating to think about the Costco business model, right? They’ve got this lost leader in the hotdog that you get right at the front of the store, right? You come in, it’s like, well, should we get lunch? Yeah, let’s go to Costco. It’s a buck 50, right? Um, and so you come at the front of the store and then at the back of the store they’ve, they’ve got the rotisserie chicken.

Right that are like five bucks or something like that. They’re super cheap, right? Yep. They should be like 10 bucks. So everybody goes for their chicken in the back of the store, right? And of course, on the way you walk past all the other bulk items, it’s why not? Let’s buy this, you know, year supply of ketchup or whatever.

Um, so Costco business model, I love it. And, and I love even more that somebody has, uh, built a very weird niche site dedicated to the Costco hotdog. They’re 

Jared: committed. That’s some, that’s some wallpaper back. 

Spencer: That’s some good stuff. Absolutely. So, uh, no ideas. Perhaps too small start, start to think unique. Um, maybe you can build yourself the next Costco hotdog, uh, niche website.

Um, so you’ve got one weird one that, uh, we’ll finish off with. So why don’t you introduce the niche site that you found Jared. 

Jared: This is a bizarre one. I’ve gotta be honest with you, I didn’t really even understand it at first. It’s, um, send cat fax.com. Um, so at first blush, it’s a site about cat fax, but, um, what you do is you can sign yourself or as they strongly e.

A friend or someone you don’t like up to receive, cat faxed and they send out cat fax and like look, you’re looking at it. If you’re on the YouTube channel right now, you enter some poor sucker’s phone number. In their 

Spencer: cell number, they’re gonna send you a text message. . Yeah. You start 

Jared: sending them cat fax and you can also do sloth facts.

Um, 

Spencer: apparently. Okay, this is. This is very random. Yeah. Yeah. , you think you want cat facts, but no, I decided I wanted Trump facts today. Yep. You can pick the frequency. Why those three options? Yeah. I don’t 

Jared: know. I don’t understand. I mean, you can, uh, it, it’s, it’s, it’s not much of a website. It’s a DR five, but there’s a couple, it gets kind of more interesting as you go.

Like, um, uh, if, uh, if you look around, it’s been around since 2015. , um, it, uh, it doesn’t rank for much, so there’s not really much value in, in pulling up, um, uh, the ah, drafts on it. But I think what is really interesting is that the website was actually put up for sale on Flip a back in, uh, April of 2017. So if we go back and we look at that listing there, we actually get to learn a little bit more about what it was doing at that time.

Now, I don’t know what it’s doing now. It’s, you know, five years later. , this website was generating over $3,000 per month from sales with, that’s about insane, right? I mean, can you, 7,231 unique visits per month and at 8.2 conversion rate, um, wow. Uh, and, and it got 20,000 page views. Uh, and so this site was put up for 50 grand.

I, I don’t, I didn’t see how much it actually sold. But, um, I, I, you never would think that a random site like this that doesn’t even have any clear path to monetization and is so random and is a DR. Five and isn’t getting much organic traffic, would generate over $3,000 a month. Um, from sales? 

Spencer: Yeah. I, I don’t know if this site is a joke.

Uh, is it serious, like the person that created it? Um, I, I don’t, I mean, I have to think that they’ve got a great sense of humor. Obviously this is, I mean, hilarious. Uh, but the fact that people are actually spending money, Um, because as it showed on the homepage, it costs $8, uh, to sign up, uh, to send these cat facts to somebody, right?

So I think it’s an just an $8 joke. You do, you send, I mean, you can send somebody 30 facts every day, right? Um, or, okay, no one a day. I see what it’s saying. So 30, basically you can do 30 days in a row for $8. , um, , 

Jared: I mean, but that conversion, if that conversion rate is, is 8.2{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, that’s phenomenal. It is. I mean, 8.2, almost one in 10 people who hit this homepage end up putting their credit card in for eight bucks and sending cat facts to people.

Spencer: Well, if half the videos on the internet always come back to cat videos, you just gotta think there’s this huge market that people wanna know about. Cat Hack, right? Oh man, man, 

Jared: we, uh, seems, seems logical. Three grand a month right 

Spencer: there. Man. Uh, boy, that, that is interesting. Um, yeah, that could spark some ideas, right?

You could literally pick any sub niche of any topic, right? People that love burritos, right? I don’t know, think of anything that people love and are involved with and start sending people facts on that subject. Maybe you got yourself a, a niche business. Well, I mean, clearly 

Jared: if you nailed, um, the model, like you could duplicate that across so many different genres, you know?

Yeah. 

Spencer: So I, I love it. I think we knocked it outta the park with the, the weird niche sites today. These are, these are two of my favorite, I think of all it’s 

Jared: gonna be harder and harder to up ourselves. So, you know, I mean, I feel like. Tab and cat fax and for you, I mean, we got Costco and so we got a lot of really good ones that are fun and we’re gonna have to keep looking for some good ones in in the coming week.

Spencer: Yep. So if people are listening in, help us out because we might run out of resources ourself. Please email, tweet, whatever. Uh, let us know what weird niche site you have or have run across. We’d, we’d love to share that on the show. Um, and then also we’ll just wrap up here. Uh, people that wanna follow along and get more content just like this.

I do have a newsletter. You can go to niche pursuits.com/newsletter where I send out emails three times. Where you can get updated on news content, other weird niche sites that I run across, uh, throughout the week as well. So, Jared, thanks for joining me on the show. Of course. It’s been a lot of fun.

Jared: Everybody have a great weekend and we’ll see you back next week.