DOJ Tries to Break Up Google Chrome, Android, and Search Monopoly
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Spencer is back with Jared to host this weekโs episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast.
Like they always do, they discuss the major happenings related to SEO, small publishers, Google, and beyond, and it has been a very eventful week!
The big news is that the US Department of Justice has called for Google to be sanctioned as part of the landmark antitrust case. Since Google was ruled a monopoly due to its search dominance, it has come under serious fire from the government.
Spencer gives a bit of the backstory and then shares some of the potential resolutions, which include breaking off Google Chrome, the Android business, and making their search algorithm and data available to other companies.
They discuss the most severe scenario, and Jared talks about how this ruling might finally affect Googleโs long-term market share.ย
How has Google responded? And what do Spencer and Jared think will come of this situation? And what does this mean for other search competitors?
Watch the Full Episode
Moving along, they break down the WordPress and WP Engine drama, with Spencer explaining how the founder of WordPress spoke publicly about issues he had with the founder of WP Engine.
What are his main complaints? Do you agree with Spencerโs interpretation?
Jared describes the whole thing as โincestuous;โ Spencer says itโs โunprecedentedโ and โchildish.โ
Who and what is Automatic, and what is it demanding? Do you agree that the company is out of line? And what do you think about the 159 people who quit? Syed Balkhi Tweeted his opinion; where do you stand on this issue?
Moving along, they dive into their Side Hustle Shenanigans. Spencer goes first and talks about his Facebook page with 81k followers.
Last month it made $3600. He shares some stats for post reach and post engagement and talks about the strategies heโs using.
Spencer talks about how earnings fluctuate in general, so itโs hard to predict, but that they could potentially go up in Q4.
When itโs Jaredโs turn, he talks about his Medium side hustle. Heโs resharing his Weekend Growth newsletter on the platform, and heโs been busy studying the science behind it to better understand what does well and why.
He has posted some content in October and his views are already 3x higher and earnings are double compared with September.
When it comes to weird niche sites, Spencer shares Spaghetti Models, also known as Mikeโs Weather Page. He talks about how successful the page is, with 2.2 million followers on Facebook and thousands more across other platforms.
What surprising activity does Mike offer? What does Spencer discover about his traffic? And how much monthly traffic is he getting?
When itโs Jaredโs turn, first he references the weird niche site he shared last week, McBroken, and how he discovered from a post on Reddit how it was built, as well as more information about how the ice cream machines work (or donโt work, in this case) and how the data is collected.
Then he moves on to his weird niche sites for the week: Bridesmaid for Hire and Groomsman for Hire.
He talks in detail about the websites and some of the cool features, but what happens when he tries to hire a bridesmaid? And what does he discover about its traffic?
When it comes to the groomsman page, Jared shares his opinions about the homepage and then something surprising happens when he tries to click on the โpackagesโ option. How is the page performing?
Check out the full episode to hear all the details.
And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. We hope youโre feeling better informed and inspired by Spencer and Jaredโs side hustles and weird niche sites.
See you next week for more!
transcription
Spencer: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And I am your host, Spencer Hawes. I'm back after a few weeks. Uh, Jared's been holding down the fort here and doing a great job along with some co hosts, but the news does go on. Uh, and today is a big one because the justice department came out with a ruling that could potentially lead to the breakup of Google's businesses, their Chrome business, their Android business, and sharing a lot of search data.
With other businesses. So we're going to dig into that story, what that means, you know, kind of what the timeline looks like, that sort of thing. Uh, but also in other news, uh, WordPress. It's got a little bit of a drama going on here. Uh, the founder of wordpress. org, and then we've got for profit businesses that build a lot of things on top of WordPress.
And, uh, I'll just say that there's some drama. And so we're going to dig into what, what that drama is and how it might impact all of us here. Uh, and then, uh, we each have a, uh, a side hustle that we're going to share here. I've got an update on something that I've been working on for a long time, seeing really good success.
Actually, my biggest month ever for my, this particular side hustle. Uh, and then Jared, I know you got some updates as well. And then finally, we have two weird niche sites. We're going to each, uh, share a site that we found out in the wild. And, uh, yeah, just talk about, are they making money? Are they good ideas?
And just have some fun with it.
Jared: For the first time in Niche Pursuit's news history, we're going to be referencing back to a previous Weird Niche, and giving an update on that.
Spencer: That's exactly right, and uh, I'll just say it was one of the most fascinating Weird Niche sites that I've heard in a while. Sort of captured my imagination and attention, and so I'm actually really excited to hear the update and the more details, uh, on that.
So we will jump into that.
Jared: You're saying you listen to these when you're not around, when you're out gallivanting across the country, popping some headphones. I did indeed.
Spencer: I was actually traveling last week, I was at a business conference, and I did pop in some headphones at the airport, waiting for the airplane.
And I thought, why not? Let's see what Jared has to say. And, uh, He, he had a good weird niche site to share, uh,
Jared: Lots, lots to talk about this week. Lots of good, good news. So yeah, good to have you back.
Spencer: Yep. It is great to be back. Uh, good to be back in the seat. So, uh, here's just an article on NPR. org. This news is all over the place though.
Uh, justice department calls for sanctions against Google in landmark. Antitrust case. Now we've been covering this, right? Google was, um, essentially rolled a monopoly, right? For their search dominance and for all the other pieces that they have going on. Um, a lot of this comes down to some of these exclusive.
Agreements that Google had with companies like Apple and Samsung to essentially distribute, um, their search technology, you know, to kind of make these the, to, to make Google search the default search engine, uh, and a lot of other Google tools to kind of make the default. And of course, Google has Google Chrome, where we know that they are using a lot of click data and other user data to actually rank search results, um, that sort of click stream data.
And now they also have Android. And so all of these things working together, Google was kind of ruled a monopoly here, and I don't know how much we want to dive into this, but there was a 32 page filing by the judge. Um, and, uh, just. Boy, was it just yesterday or Tuesday evening? Just a couple of nights ago, uh, it basically came up with an update of, Hey, we are looking at some potential action.
And some of those potential actions included actually breaking off Google Chrome, breaking off the Android business and making sort of their search. Algorithm and a lot of their search data available to other companies. So that would be actually in essence, revealing the secret sauce that Google has behind their search engine and making it available to competitors.
So there, there's kind of a lot to this. And whether or not this will ever happen, right? It is an illegal proceeding. It's going to take probably multi multiple years to go through the court process. But Jared, I'll let you jump in at this point and share any thoughts that you have.
Jared: Yeah, I mean, from a high level, this is tracking back to the antitrust lawsuit that we've been talking about that really took place at the tail end of last year.
And then in August, we had the ruling come down. The federal judge sided with the Justice Department, but we didn't know Hey wins is gonna actually, uh, take the next steps. Well, these are the next steps are kind of filing what they want to happen. Um, I read a little deeper into the article, and it looks like the next steps.
The Justice Department will provide more detailed proposals in November. Google will respond with their own suggestions in December, and then a new trial is set for next April. We might know by this time next year what what the actual ruling is. So it's a ways away, but it's also seems to be fairly Planned out whereas before we were talking like who knows at least now.
I feel like we have a good idea of Uh the fact that something's going to happen Probably by within the next 12 months and I think that that something is getting more and more severe as time You know kind of progresses
Spencer: right exactly and um, I will just share this Image here. Um, this is somebody just shared this on, on Twitter.
This is just a page from the filing that, you know, just came out a couple of days ago, and a couple of things were highlighted that Google might be required to do, uh, among other things, Google to make available in whole or through an API, the indexes, data feeds, and models used for Google search, including those used in AI assisted search features and Google search results features ads, including the underlying.
Ranking signals, especially on mobile. And then another sentence here, plaintiffs are considering remedies that would prohibit Google from using or retaining data that cannot be effectively shared with others on the basis of privacy concerns. So, I mean, this is probably the most severe. Type outcome and you know, probably somewhere in the middle.
I can't imagine that Google is just going to hand over all of these things. Um, like I said, sort of their secret sauce, the ranking signals all their data like they're just not going to probably hand that over. But this could be the most severe thing that the Justice Department is seeking as one of these remedies in the case.
Jared: I mean, the simplest one obviously would, well, not obviously, but the simplest one it seems would be to just not allow Google to be the default, uh, Chrome to be the default search engine on, you know, different browsers and, and, and mobile devices. Um, some of these obviously are more complicated. I think, obviously, the more, as we get into it, the more as, Probably listeners of the podcast are involved.
We're more interested in some of these more heavy handed potential solutions because these have the capability of affecting search going forward. And the fact that Google has over 90 percent market share, which we kind of keep having a study or a survey or something come out every six months. It tries to question that.
And we keep coming back to the fact that. Google's market share isn't really changing that much. And this might be the first thing to come in that might actually affect their long term market share in terms of search.
Spencer: Do you ever get stuck in your business and wish you had someone you could turn to for solutions?
Well, I think you should consider joining the niche pursuits community. You'll get weekly calls with experts on growing a successful online business, and you'll also get assigned a small mastermind group where you can solve your business problems. As well as share your wins for a limited time. I'll let you try out the niche pursuits community for just 1.
Go ahead and use coupon code podcast at checkout in order to get your first month for just 1. Again, that's coupon code podcast. Go to community. nichepursuits. com today and see what it's all about. And maybe I'll see you on our call next week. Thanks a lot. And, uh, of course, Google has responded to this.
Uh, they've issued a statement, uh, to this ruling here. So, uh, let me share this article here by Lee Ann Mulholland. She's the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs. Um, This official blog on Google DOJ is radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses and developers. So, of course, they take the opposite view where this is unfair.
This is, you know, going to hurt people. It's going not only our business, but consumers and other developers and other people, right? Google's just being the good guy here. They're not doing anything wrong. Um, And so I would, you know, encourage people to read this, but they really did hone on. Uh, at least she did, uh, Lee and Mulholland did sort of zero on sort of the risk of breaking off, you know, the Android business and the Chrome business and, and sort of the search technology.
They, she really focused on that. And she had just a few points here of, you know, Essentially why this is such a bad thing. And she put these in bold here where she says, forcing Google to share your search queries, clicks and results with competitors, risk your privacy and security. Okay. So again, Google's positioning themselves as the good guy.
We don't want to risk your privacy. You don't want to be put in that position. Right. Uh, and then the next point you're hampering Google's AI tools, risk holding back American innovation at a critical moment. Uh, and then splitting off Chrome or Android would break them and many other things, and she goes into how they've invested so much into Chrome and Android and, you know, it's fast, secure, it's free, all these great things, and you know, how it, it, it.
How and why should we continue to develop them if our technology is just kind of given to everybody? Um, boy, and then just a couple other points. Changes to the online advertising market would make online ads less valuable. Um, unreasonable restrictions on how Google promotes our search engine would create friction for consumers and harm businesses.
So, is this a big deal? Absolutely. This is a huge deal to get the VP of Regulatory Affairs to issue a blog post immediately. Um, after sort of this, um, opinion, um, what will come of it? It's going to be a long process. We'll see what happens. It's
Jared: better than the last PR statement they had to release. I don't remember exactly what that was about, but we talked about it on the podcast and it was pretty amusing at best to watch.
Yeah. Talk about that. At least this one has some, some interesting points, man. I thought there, I thought their point here, I'll just read one out loud. You know, I mean, we're, we're no Google apologists here, but you know, credit where credit's due. Uh, one of their lines is Google's innovative ad system has leveled the playing field for small businesses and publishers.
Small advertisers can reach customers the same way as large ones do, um, with no minimum ad spend, no upfront commitments. I mean, you know, Those are some fair points. They have really innovated ad technology to the point where we look 20 years ago and we look at how marketing happened. You know, it's definitely, they've changed the playing field in a lot of things is I think the big thing about the, this whole DOJ case is have they done it fairly, you know, or is it in a position that's now fair for all other businesses and all other parties.
So it seems like they're arguing about. Um, what they've done to get here, how much they've spent to get here, how helpful it is. And I think, you know, perhaps, uh, we're going to see which way the judge sides on that whole kind of deeper level argument. Right.
Spencer: And so if we put on sort of our, you know, imaginative hats here and just imagine what the future might look like.
I mean, worst case scenario where these businesses do get broken up and small competitors do get sort of the search algorithm of Google. You know, what does that mean exactly? Even, even that's a little bit hard to imagine, right? Um, does that mean that other people are going to start using DuckDuckGo or some other search engine more often?
I don't know, but it does potentially open up the playing field to other search competitors.
Jared: It's interesting to think about how much of Google's success is tied to their algorithm or to the user data they get or to the fact that they have both of those things locked down. Like how much of their algorithm needs all the user data they collect and how much of the user data they collect feeds because their algorithm has done so well over the years.
So, untangling it, Is interesting to think about and how much of a advantage that could give to others. It's very hard to kind of computate,
Spencer: right? And, um, you know, in their statement here, I mean, she really focused on the fact that, Hey, it's, it's a distribution. It's a search distribution contract issue, right?
Meaning, Hey, Apple had preference or, you know, Google had preference on Apple devices and some of these other contracts to, to get the Google search engine, you know, to be the default everywhere. She's saying, Hey, just. just focus on that. Um, but, but that is a huge deal, right? That Google has become the de facto search engine everywhere.
And even just changing that, um, is big, but Google is very worried impact
Jared: on their ad revenue. Right. I mean, immediately, right? Like, even if that's the only thing that changes from this case, that singular act, we talked about in the podcast, how much they spend and then how much they get in their ad budget.
Uh, sorry, their ad revenue, like that would have a massive impact on their ad revenue, uh, which would impact so many other things that they're able to do with that revenue. So no matter what the case lands on, assuming some punishment is handed out, even the, what we're considering, maybe the lighter punishment still has far reaching implications for them.
Spencer: Yeah, well, maybe we'll leave it there for now. Uh, we will be revisiting this subject. I'm sure over the coming months and potentially years uh as this all plays out so As though that weren't enough drama for the day. Our next news story is I don't know, even more dramatic, uh, in a way here because, uh, so this is just a tech crunch story, but anywhere you get your tech news, you maybe have already read this and if not, I think you should read up on this.
Uh, this is just called the WordPress versus WP. Engine drama explained now in my own words, I'm going to do my best to kind of explain what is going on here. So, uh, Matt Mullenweg is the founder of wordpress. org, right? He is the creator of WordPress, the open source project that made WordPress free. For everyone.
Um, and he was recently at a WordCamp, which is a big conference for WordPress users. And on stage, he sort of went on the offensive against WP Engine and called them a cancer of WordPress and told people that they should not be using WP Engine and specifically WordPress. You know, had problems with the fact that they were called WP engine and felt like that sort of infringed on maybe, um, people understanding that, Hey, WP doesn't mean your WordPress engine.
Like it's you, you are not WordPress, right? Just meaning, Hey, people use you because they confuse you for the official foundation, the, you know, the WP, um, And he went through a whole list of, you know, ways he's been slided or the WP engine is, he's felt like his slide in the foundation. They don't contribute a lot of, as many free hours as they should.
Uh, and a big one, it seemed like, and we'll dive into this a little bit. It almost feels a little personal, uh, in a way, uh, because WP engine has become a huge business making 400 million a year. And it feels like. I hate to say it, but it feels like Matt is a little jealous of that business. And what complicates this is that Matt also founded a for profit arm, which is called Automatic.
So Automatic is a for profit business. That owns lots of WordPress businesses, including WordPress hosting, which I think is on wordpress. com is there for press for profit, um, WordPress hosting. And I don't know, but maybe wordpress. com isn't making 400 million a year. And Matt just feels a little jealous.
The WP engine is making 400 a year. And he's kind of like, we're WordPress. You're not WordPress and people should, you know, buy our products. Um, it's very convoluted because we have both the open source project of wordpress. org. We've got the for profit arm of automatic. Uh, and the, uh, the, the WordPress license.
Has never required that people contribute free hours to the wordpress. org project. Has never said that you can't be a for profit business. Uh, so it's very convoluted and boy, it goes way beyond what I've just mentioned, but that's kind of the tip of the iceberg.
Jared: Incestuous in a bit. Uh, is the word I keep coming back to, it's kind of a scandalous word to use, but it just, it does seem like at first glance, it's like, Oh, so you got this free open source software.
There's a company that doesn't really contribute much. Okay. They're rubbing, you know, they're rubbing a little bit. That that's a bummer. But then you get into the, uh, the complexities of the situations and you realize that there's so much more kind of under the surface here and you're right. I mean, that only skims the surface on what's progressed over the last probably two weeks, you and I talked off air, like, should we cover this last week?
And it was still progressing so rapidly that we actually camped on it. And I'm glad we did because of what's happened in just the last seven to eight days, that's developed outside of what you already shared.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, this article walks through some of that, right? Um, early on WP engine was actually banned, uh, from any customers that were on WP engine, no longer we're getting automatic updates to the WordPress plugins, Matt went in and said, Nope, if you're on WP engine, you're not getting automatic updates for wordpress.
org. So WP engine had to scramble and come up with a fix for that. Okay. Like this is unprecedented. Like never. Like, why, why would any web host be banned, like harming all their customers from getting us to
Jared: update? And this is late September. This is happening, I believe, so a week and a half ago, maybe.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly.
Um, let's see here. Oh, yes, the trademark issue. You know, there's been lawsuits, um, you know, wordpress. org filed a lawsuit against WP Engine. Say, hey, you're infringing on our trademark. There's been a countersuit and I don't know. Don't think that's going to go anywhere because WordPress actually came out and on Twitter at least and said, Hey, for all those people that use WP in your name, just rest assured that's not against our trademark, but they still have this lawsuit against WP engine for trademark infringement.
So I don't, I don't fully understand it, but here's this one just happened this week and this is crazy. So A lot of developers that have, imagine, you know, people that have a free, uh, WordPress plugin. There's hundreds of thousands of free WordPress plugins that live on, on wordpress. org. And so a lot of developers go there to update their plugins.
You know, they log in and they upload their pro uh, plugin. Well, if you go to wordpress. org and you try to log in, there is now a checkbox that says, I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially. And there's just a checkbox. And I assume if you don't check the box, you can't log in. Um, it just seems so juvenile, honestly.
Like what, how does this help anybody? Um, but this is, this is, um, where we are. Uh, there, there's this, this drama, this hatred between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine that they're adding check boxes. You can't even log in. Um, And there's been a lot of, uh, people getting banned from the official WordPress slack group.
These are developers that have been contributing to WordPress, their own hours for years and years that have sort of said about what I've just said that, Hey, this is kind of juvenile. Like we're just trying to help out. If you say anything that is like against WordPress or against Matt, you get banned from the slack group.
You like he's coming out guns a blazing. Doing all sorts of things. So
Jared: kind of crazy also, uh, less people working, uh, Go ahead. Well, just last week, um, right around the time last week's podcast came out. Um, uh, you know, obviously this is creating a stir if you work under this person, if he's banning people from You know left and right what's going to happen to your job?
So basically if I have the story correct mullenweg, uh, mullenweg offered his automatic employees a buyout package of 30, 000 or six months salary if they disagreed with This direction. Yeah. Um, gave him a deadline. And, uh, at the deadline, uh, eight and a half percent of automatic's workforce, 159 employees took the offer and left the company.
Um, and, uh, uh, a lot of them were from the WordPress division of that company. So, um, you could say that's not very many, you could say. That's kind of a lot. Uh, but you know, like. What we don't know is how many of this 159, like we're from the specific WordPress part of his division. Uh, but that's, that's a big deal.
You know, like 159 people just left in one day, that's got to have an impact on your company and your organization.
Spencer: Well that's big, you know, for the, um, you know, sort of the leader of the company to come out and say, Hey, if you don't agree with our direction, like you can just leave. Right? I'll pay you to leave.
I'll pay you to leave. And almost 10% of the organization left. Um, and you also have to wonder if there's a lot of another 10% of the organization that just sort of kept quiet as like, well, I'm getting paid really well. I don't wanna change a job. I disagree with him anyways, but I'm gonna stick around
Ah. So it's a big deal. So there's a lot of drama going on in the WordPress ecosystem. Uh, I will just briefly share one other article here that I found, um, just about an hour ago is kind of reading up on this. Uh, this is, uh, shared. Um, on hey. com, um, David Hanson is the creator of 37 signals and is the creator of Ruby on Rails.
And that's relevant because Ruby on Rails is an open source software. And so from his standpoint, he sort of shares, hey, Automatic is doing open source dirty, is the title of his article. Basically just saying he completely disagrees with the way that Matt is doing this. He says, hey, Ruby on Rails is an open source, just like WordPress is open source.
I don't come after businesses that are successful because they were built on Ruby on Rails. It's just wrong when you have an open source. You know, software, um, or platform that that's what it is. You know, that for profit businesses are going to be built on that. And I guess the other thing we didn't specifically mention is that, you know, about a week ago, automatic is demanding 8 percent of WP engines revenues because they're not giving back enough to the WordPress ecosystem.
So it's not just that Matt is sort of. Angry about it. He's actually saying, Hey, you need to pay me that 8 percent of 400 million a year. Why exactly? Because they're so successful. I don't know. But, um, so, uh, from, from another open source creator. He's chimed in and basically said, Hey, what automatic is doing is, is dirty.
Jared: It is. I mean, let your yeses be yes and your nose be nose. If it's open source, then it's open source. If you want to have rules around it, put your rules in place. If you want to adjudicate people and like go around policing the internet, because all of the nuance or the unspoken obligations you feel are there.
Well, then now we're just getting into, you know, that's how relationships work, but that doesn't make it fair or right. And it's difficult, um, for a business. to then have a for profit arm that operates in the same space and then try to play police like this. It just, it really does tangle things up and, you know, um, it's not doing anyone any good, probably including, um, Automatic, to be honest with you.
Spencer: Yeah, no, I, I would not think so. Uh, one, one final thing that I will just share on this, You know, I've been thinking actually about Syed Balki. He is a large, uh, he owns a large portfolio of WordPress plugins and WordPress businesses. I'm just thinking like, what is he thinking? He owns all these businesses that are reliant on WordPress.
And he tweeted today, basically saying, Hey, or yesterday, it looks like, no, I'm not leaving WordPress. For him to just have to say that, like it's a big enough drama in, in sort of this arena that he has to come out and say, no, I'm not leaving WordPress. I believe in the amazing WordPress community. I believe that open source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.
We need to stick together, continue building cool things. Right. So he's sticking around, you know, he's in this business. And, uh, you know, that I would imagine behind the scenes, he's all hopes that this resolves amicably. So that we can get back to business as usual. And so hopefully that's the case.
Hopefully we don't have to keep covering the story, but, uh, my suspicions are that there could be some continued drama in future weeks and months.
Jared: Yeah. This probably gets a little worse before it gets better. Right?
Spencer: Hmm. Yeah.
Jared: Got all your marks.
Spencer: Yeah. And I don't want to make any predictions, but there could be a few predictions of different things that could happen.
We'll just kind of leave it at that and see how it all plays out.
Well, very good. Uh, should we move on to our uh, side hustles? Was that enough drama for one day?
Jared: Boy, I'll tell you, I got my fill. I don't, I, I think that, uh, we've had a lot of different dramatic stories we've covered over the last, what, a year and a half now of doing this. I think that one might be, you know, Perhaps the most petty in the world of drama, but that is a, that's the real life happening right now.
Uh, with, I'm guessing almost every listener who has a, a website probably has a WordPress website somewhere in the closet. I mean, it's just crazy how, uh, we're talking about stuff like this, but it has an impact in many ways on all of us in, in this small ecosystem that we live in. So.
Spencer: Yeah, big impact. Uh, for sure.
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Head over to lakewhisper. com and use coupon code podcast to get 15 off. Let's move on to something maybe a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun here is, uh, you know, I've been working on. This side hustle project for almost two years now. We need to really look at the start date, but, uh, I've had a Facebook page that, um, I've, I've covered a number of times, you know, here on, on the podcast, but it originally started as sort of a side project with my two oldest children as a summer project, I guess probably was two summers ago, not this summer, but the previous summer.
So anyways, year and a half, whatever it is. Um, To build a Facebook page and a website related to that page. And it could be something they could work on. And while they worked on it for like. And then they abandoned it and I have picked up the pieces and tried to turn it into something. And it has turned into something.
I now have a Facebook page with 81, 000 followers. And last month it made its most money ever from the Facebook performance bonus program. It made a 3, 600 all from the Facebook bonus program. It actually made a couple hundred dollars more with, uh, Ads, uh, as well, but, uh, 3, 600 from the Facebook bonus program.
And, uh, I have a screenshot of just some stats I thought I could share. So people could kind of see. You know what I'm doing in terms of engagement, impressions and that sort of thing. So here is my page overview. Uh, over the last 28 days, you can see that almost 10 million post reach 9. 9 million post reach and post engagement 1.
8. 1 million, uh, new page likes new page followers, almost 7, 000 new page followers. Um, but it's, it's a very interactive page. There are people reacting over 300, 000 people reacting, you know, a like button or a love or whatever, almost 90, 000 comments. Uh, so it's, it's still moving along. It's still doing well.
And it's one of these fun things that I think I've shared also that. I've pretty much outsourced this whole page. It is not me in there creating content, uh, for the page. I have somebody that is managing it now at this point. I've just trained her to do it. And so she's in there posting, you know, 10 to 15 times a day, different things.
And at this point we are starting to repost old content that did well, you know, a few months ago, we're reposting it and it's doing well again. So now we have almost like this library of content. That we can start reposting time and time again, uh, and hopefully keep generating numbers like this.
Jared: I mean, that's that's a that's a really good amount of money to make from a project I mean, you've you've called your kids up right and been like, hey, look what you're missing out on, right?
Like yeah, this this could be paying your
Spencer: yeah paying all your bills and then some but they didn't stick with
Jared: it Is the growth just from? You know, the compounding efforts or did you guys make any changes from the last time you told us? I feel like it was making like a thousand or 1, 500 a month from the bonus program.
Last time we might've talked about it. But like now we're triple that, you know, so like, have you done anything different that's cracked the nut there? Or is it just more of the same and it's just kind of compounding? It's a little,
Spencer: it's kind of just more of the same. We're, we're constantly testing like new types of content, whether it's, you know, images with a caption on it, or it's just straight status posts or other things, but we've kind of hit on a formula that we think is working.
Um, and. Really? It's just that the page fluctuates, the earnings fluctuate some months. It's 1, 500 a month. Uh, my highest month was just at, or maybe just under 3000. Previously there's maybe 2, 900 a couple of months ago. And then like, you know, a month ago it was like. 15, 16, 1, 700. And now it's back at 3, 600 this month might be back down at 1, 500.
I don't know. Uh, that's kind of the fickle nature of Facebook. Unfortunately, as you do have to post new content every day and you just don't know which day or week or month that content's going to take off. And when it won't, I feel like we're having more wins now consistently because we're kind of honing on in on what the audience likes a little bit better, but.
This is the biggest month, uh, by far, and we're going to just keep, keep trying to publish that content that works. So,
Jared: man, well, that's amazing. And I mean, I don't know what niche you're in, but everything seems to do better in Q4. I'm curious to see if this kind of does better in Q4. You know, we just, I should, we should pull it up.
I'm, I'm, I'm actually guessing on this, but I'm pretty confident. Like people spend more time on Facebook during the holidays. Um, then they do other times of the year. And so I would imagine that there's at least a lot of reason to believe your earnings could continue to go up in the holiday season.
Spencer: That would make a lot of sense, you know, and if nothing else, we know that ad rates are higher.
So I don't know if that translates to Facebook paying out more in their bonus program, but it would make sense that each visitor is a little bit more valuable on Facebook. So I'll, I'll share the numbers over the Q4. So cool.
Jared: Very exciting. Well, good. Mine, um, my side hustle is not nearly as exciting. I, uh, I shared my exciting news last week, which is the recovering of earnings for a niche site that got destroyed in the HCU.
Destroyed again, the March core update, but now I've got the earnings back to above their previous high, um, through Pinterest traffic. So that site earned just under 2, 000 in September. That was my fun news. Um, I shared about this in August coming on the back of, um, the interview we'd had with Thomas Smith on medium.
And I talked about how, Hey, I'm going to start making a go of just kind of resharing my weekly newsletter, uh, from weekend growth on medium. And I started doing that. Now keep in mind, I got a backlog of about. 75 to 100 emails I've already sent out from Weekend Growth. And then I send a new one out every week.
So not only could I just take the one I share or the email from the week that we have and publish it on Medium, but I could also go back and kind of reshare a lot of these old emails. So, What, what I didn't realize is that there's a, there's a real science to medium and it's got a little bit more in terms of variables and how you do it than I realized.
And to be honest with you, September, I've got some good news by the way at the end of all this, but I'm sharing all this with people who maybe also started. On the medium bandwagon after that interview, cause I know it was a pretty exciting interview. Uh, here's some things I've had to learn. I'll say the hard way or had to kind of come into my own.
No knowing throughout the process about medium. Cause a lot of different ways to earn money or other facets on medium. So, um, long story short, I did not publish a whole lot in September, but I tried a lot of things and I feel like I'm getting my feet back underneath me. So here's the variables. And you might not even be aware of this, Spencer.
I was actually reading an internal linking article this morning on Medium. So we should talk. You should, uh, Yeah. We should get you, uh, get you on Medium with, uh, some of this, uh, link whisper stuff. But, so, first, you can publish your article, and you can publish it straight to your account, straight to your page, and it goes live.
Or you can try to get that. In a publication, there's publications that kind of organize people's articles and we'll publish them under there. So imagine it's kind of like, Hey, if you wrote an article, you could publish it, your website, or you could submit it to like the New York times. Right. And then maybe they'd feature it as like an op ed then you can monetize it.
In other words, gate it. So only medium members can see it. And thus you'll earn from the partner program like ads, or you can leave it ungated and hope that it ranks over time and people find it. And then maybe they click on your affiliate link, you know, because we see medium articles ranking in Google all the time.
Right. And then there's a third component where you can try to get your article boosted. Right. Through the publication. And that's that new program that Thomas talked about that kind of supercharges your earnings and your visibility. And I was like, Oh, cool. Lots of opportunities. This is great. Well, the reality is I've gotten very overwhelmed trying to figure out what I'm going to do with each article.
I'm like, do I post this behind the paywall or not behind the paywall? Do I submit this to a publication? And do I not? And by the way, I've submitted them to publications. They're like, yeah, it's not good enough. We don't want it. You're like, now what do I do? Do I publish it? Or I try another publication and stuff.
So I did not publish much in the end of September, but I learned a lot. And the good news is I, I kind of have my strategy now. So I've kind of come up with like a check and balance, like a, a question and answer thing. I was like, if this, then that type of thing for every article I have. So I kind of come out of the gate and know what to do.
And so, um, I've published a couple of articles in October and I'm happy to report that we're only nine days into October and my number of article views are up three times over the whole month of September. My earnings are double. In the first nine days of October that they were all of September and, um, uh, and, and number of people reading my articles has gone up four times already since the month of September.
So if you're listening and you're doing medium and you're like, Oh, I have been struggling with a lot of that. Um. Come up with a system. That's what I'd recommend. Cause now that I have a system, it's we're nine days in October and it's totally working. I'm getting way better now. And I've published not that much content.
I just have a better process and approach to it now.
Spencer: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, just as you were explaining all the different options, I was trying to think in my head, yeah, when do you decide to put it behind, you know, the paywall or submit it to a publication or just publish it and hope it does well.
So, um, that's a lot to think about and a lot to figure out. Yeah.
Jared: It is a lot to think about, you know, and I think, um, you know, there's a lot that has to do with your goals, you know, cause you could also use Thomas talked about other ways to use medium, like to get, you know, to get backlinks, to get features, to get interviews, to build your brand, to build your email list.
I mean, these are all, I haven't gotten into all those things yet. So it's this great platform that has a lot of upsides and there are a lot of ways to, to, to win on it. So I love about it. And I'm basically repurposing content I've already written anyway. So it's really a win win, but As we know, more options creates a lot more decisions that need to be made, which can do what it did to me, create, like kind of stop you from progressing.
Spencer: Yeah, but it sounds like you figured that out. You're having a great October compared to September. So, um, yeah, keep us posted. We'll, we'll want to hear how, uh, October
Jared: ends
Spencer: up.
Jared: I'll keep you posted. I mean, I earned over a hundred dollars the first week of medium. I didn't earn, I didn't earn a hundred dollars in all of September.
Wow September was not good, but October should eclipse what I earned in August now that I have a better system for it And but what we'll all definitely report that but um, yeah other than that, I I think um You know, I have made some videos for Amazon influencer Spencer. I don't know if you're gearing up for q4 I know Um, so, um, I, I have not taken my foot off, off the gas on Influencer.
Um, I'm not, I'm not as heavy footed as I was last year, but I'm still making those videos.
Spencer: Alright, you got some new stuff in the house? Are you, um, visiting neighbors?
Jared: No, just the new stuff. Still getting through all the stuff from back to school and all that kind of stuff. Um, I really should be getting, you know, anything new we bought from Christmas down.
Um, I did get a box down, but I haven't opened it yet. But, um, I am, I, I am gonna continue making some videos about the stuff people are gonna buy in Q4. It was interesting to see, they just got done with their Prime Deals day or, You know, whatever. And I just popped over to look at it and to see what was on sale.
And it's just such a good reminder. Like what is all this stuff they have? It's all, um, home stuff and electronics. And if I remember back to my Q4 last year, that's all the stuff that people were buying in Q4. So I really need to do is really make sure I have a video about all the electronics that we have and all the home stuff we have and stuff.
So.
Spencer: Yeah, yeah, there, there's a lot of opportunity there for people that want to, that want to hustle. I think it's, it's, it's a great side hustle. Maybe one of the best side hustles we've covered, you know, in our year and a half of doing this. Um, I, I still think there's a lot of opportunity if somebody wants to jump in and is willing to spend an hour a day.
Like you can really get some great traction if you're doing that. So that's cool. I wish I could say that I was doing the same, but, uh. Right now I have not made any new videos on amazon influencer.
Jared: It's okay for you At some point we got to hear how your q4 goes
Spencer: Totally
Jared: without publishing a lot of new content throughout the year, you know I mean, I don't I don't know how much you have but I get the sense You haven't published a whole lot of videos this year.
It'll be fascinating to see like hey, what does q4 look like? With with a truly passive account.
Spencer: Yeah, like a year of not publishing anything. So yeah, yeah, we'll do it We'll we'll do it. We'll share it all so um Very good. Well, we've gotten through a lot, but I feel like we're about to hit on some really good things here with our weird niche sites.
I know we teased early on, Jared's got like, essentially like three, uh, weird niche sites he's gonna share here. He's got, he's got kind of a package deal they go to together, and then we got an update on, uh, the old one. So I guess we'll, that'll be the big bang. We'll share you, uh, for the end there. So, um, I'll jump in with mine, and And, uh, just, just be ready.
I'm about to share. Okay. Yeah. I was just trying to warn you, uh, if you, I'm about to share my screen. So put your shades on real quick. Um, so this is, uh, Mike's weather page. The website is spaghetti models. Dot com and there's a lot of color. There's two different, three different shades of blue, at least on here.
Um, so it's kind of like four columns. There's kind of a lot going on with the colors, maybe they match and then there's like this bright red and there's, you know, all these little, um, ads in the sidebar that look like they could have been ads from the late nineties or something, right? So, um, I, the design itself.
Yeah, you know, maybe a little bit to be desired, but maybe that's on purpose. I don't know. Uh, but what did, I guess, let me explain what it is first of all, and this is very relevant actually for, for today. It is a serious subject, right? So spaghetti models, uh, that phrase is used for all the different paths that a hurricane or tornado might take, right?
So a model sort of models out. All these different spaghetti paths that, um, a hurricane might take, right? So you can kind of see, are you potentially in the path of this hurricane? And so that is the main thing that, um, this spaghetti models. com covers is live coverage of. Hurricanes and tornadoes and today, um, it's hurricane, uh, Milton, I think, is that right?
That is, is, uh, over Florida right now. Um, and so this is something that people are looking at today to get their updates, but it's crazy how Successful this site is, um, the Facebook page has 2. 2 million followers. I went over to his Twitter account and there was like a couple hundred thousand followers there.
I went to his YouTube channel. There's like 175, 000, uh, subscribers there. And he does a daily, I'll just click this video. Um, he kind of does a daily, Video of what's happening, you know, the, the most current news. So today, you know, it's hurricane Milton is coming over, uh, Florida. So he's covering that. He talks about it and it's like a really long, uh, a really long video, 112, 000 subscribers, uh, is what he has.
Right. So he covers, of course, it doesn't show me the time I got to skip the ad, but it's like an hour long and he does live chat like every day, uh, every day. And, um, one other thing that was really interesting, and I don't know how this all fits in, but, uh, where did I see this? Uh, you can go on a cruise with Mike, here it is, one of his little ads, come cruise with the Weather Family, you, I don't, Again, I don't know exactly what it is, but you, oh, let me share this tab.
Uh, but you can go on this and cruise with Mike here. You can meet and greet, you know, go on a cruise with Mike and his family and the Mike's weather page team and hang out on the cruise. Like there you go. It's got a hurricane conference at sea, uh, group photos, swag bags. So this is like, he's got a real fan base.
I mean, enough that people are going on cruises with the guy. Cause he's like so popular, I guess. Um, and this is all powered by Furman us power outage tracker map apparently. So that's the technology he is using. Um, there's, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of other sort of tropical weather updates and satellites and technology pages that he's referencing.
It looks like. Um, obviously there's a lot of ads on the website, so that's how he's making money. And I did, so I went ahead and I pulled up a couple of things. You won't be shocked to hear is I pull up Ahrefs that it's very seasonal. You know, hurricane season, tons of people are searching for his page when it's not hurricane season, not very much traffic.
Look at that.
Spencer: So he's getting, depending on the month, right, 500. To maybe up to a million searches a month, right? And in peak season, if you will, uh, and then other months, like almost nothing. Uh, and then if we look at similar web, uh, this gives a rough estimate. Um, I had heard somewhere else on Twitter where I saw this, which my screen isn't working.
There we go. Um, then he's getting up to like 3 million visitors a month. Uh, you know, during peak season. So, uh, actually this is, boy, that's weekly. Right there. Wow. So actually he's showing 5. 3 similar web is showing 5. 3 million visitors in September Uh, which I totally believe it and this month may maybe even more right because there's some big hurricanes.
Obviously we had Uh helene that just hit You know, very unfortunate. Then say September
Jared: traffic is probably up from Helene, and then two weeks later we have Milton. I mean Yep. But to your point, I mean, hurricane season is what, July through October. So he's got other stuff on here though. I'm, I'm looking at him an earthquake map.
You know, we're in a, i, I live in a heavy earthquake area. He's got an earthquake map, he's got a drought map, he's got a lot of stuff. You know, he's kind of added stuff to be, uh, be more than just, uh, hurricanes. Yep,
Spencer: he has, but it seems like this is must be what he's really known for. I think he might live in Florida.
Um, I didn't do a ton of research on his background, but from what I gathered, I think that's probably how he started. This is, Hey, he lives in Florida. So he's, was always tracking this. So he's, I mean, I think he's really a hobbyist weatherman, right. That is just turned his passion into this sort of business, this website.
And he's become like this central hub for people to get their daily news about. Hurricane's or whatever the weather event is.
Jared: Well, and I mean, I will admit that the design is incredibly overwhelming if you're not watching on, uh, uh, if you're not watching on YouTube and I do, um, it feels so under monetized mainly because of the design.
You feel like you'd be making so much more money, um, with a different design at the same time. While I was very overwhelmed when I first saw it, I actually, I, I think after five minutes was this side. It's, it's really cool. You know, it's a cool site. You can get lost in this site for 30, 40 minutes easily without realizing it.
Spencer: Yeah, no, absolutely. So it's a cool niche. I mean, it's, uh, he's found a way to sort of, um, monetize his passion. Uh, it does show here that it was born in 2004. So he's been doing this for 20 years.
Jared: Oh, he got some of the big ones in from, um, 2004 so you probably let's see that means he missed katrina. No, did he get katrina?
I think 2005 I think yeah You start this side of your end you get katrina you get one in one in a hundred year storm and
Spencer: bam You're off to the races. That's very possible It'd be interesting to kind of look at that and it's very possible that I mean Pun intended that put them on the map, you know, of like, Hey, this is, this is what we do.
And, uh, we're off to the races. Give you a month off. You still got those podcast puns. Do my best. So, um, maybe that'll inspire somebody, but follow Mike if nothing else, go over to spaghetti models, check them out. Hey, we still got another couple of weeks
Jared: of a hurricane season here. So, you know, So
Spencer: I hope I saved enough time for you, Jared.
I know you got a lot to cover. So, uh,
Jared: how about you? I'm uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit the clock hard here with my, uh, my weird niche segment. I'll tell ya. Um, okay. Let's see. Order of operations. Let's quickly touch on last week and my weird niche from last week. Um, my weird niche from last week was, uh, was, was a website that, um, basically tells you If McDonald's ice cream machines are broken.
Um, and so, um, Thomas was hosting last week with me and it's, it's a hilarious website. It's a pretty well done website. There we go. We got it up on screen right here, but broken. com. And we were surmising, like, how is this, um, how's this done? I got an update for you. A lot of people messaged me with a lot of different articles.
Apparently it's widely publicized to some degree how this is done. And, um, it is exactly how Thomas suggested. I don't know if he looked ahead. It doesn't sound like he did. It sounds like Thomas is just brilliant. But basically when you go to order, uh, when you go to order an ice cream cone, if it's the machine is not working, then you can't order it.
And this is accessible via the API. And so this guy came out in a Reddit post and shared exactly how he built this site. And he walks you through basically right there. It is right there. Um, a lot of techie code. He says it's pretty simple. Um, you know, uh, as a matter of fact, he kind of alludes like the most complicated thing he had to do is basically put in something that looks up your IP address.
So it can actually localize the map for you. Okay. Um, and then, but if you go look, uh, I think this is interesting, uh, at the, uh, the Y, the Y combinator, um, article, uh, it has a comment here from someone who worked at a McDonald's and he kind of validates that these things fall apart all the time. Um, he goes into detail about it and how it takes, when they go out of service.
Um, machine goes out of service and slowly heats everything up, then cools everything back down to a freezing temperature to serve. This process takes four to five hours. But if you set the clock wrong, the machine will go into its cycle at some super inconvenient time. There's other triggers. Anyways.
It's he's like they do break a lot and sometimes it's because of these reasons it kind of outlines it and then he goes on to say, I don't know how this guy gets this data and there's an edit to his comment that says, Oh, he's using the public ordering site to scrape it. Um, and, and he surmises there's actually a connection from the equipment to the McCloud, as he calls it.
I don't know if that's an internal term for McDonald's kind of API world, but cloud. Maybe so. Makes sense. The cloud, the McCloud. Yeah. Um, anyways. How cool is that? What a cool weird niche and then now we kind of get to see the underpinnings of it.
Spencer: Yeah, I thought I was seeing the same thing in last week's segment.
I'm like, how in the world do they source all this data? And then Thomas mentions his idea of, Hey, you know, when you order and ice cream's not available in the app, you know, that's probably how they're sourcing all the data and sure enough, that's like he nailed it right out of the gate, but you've got the evidence, the proof from the founder of McBroken.
com. To verify that's indeed how they do it. I still think that's a lot of API calls, but. Wow. This is, this is cool. I'm going to use it next time we want to go out to ice cream. Make sure we, then all the Wendy's pop up. Next time you want to find a Wendy's, either one. I could have sworn you were going to say, uh, that this website was actually created by Wendy's.
You know, that would be like just the ultimate. You know, like corporate sort of hack, you know? Yeah. But it doesn't sound like it's just going back to
Jared: pettiness and our topic of pettiness on Right. . So, well this is not my weird niche. This is just, I felt like spending a couple minutes, uh, checking back. So if you didn't hear last week's episode, it's a good, just go back and at least listen to that part if you want to know more about this.
Um, but uh, but yeah, this is kind of a fun update. My weird niche is a double weird niche. First time I think I've ever done that too. What a weird week. It's a weird week of weird niches and weird updates to weird niches. I've got a double whammy here for you. Uh, and so we're going to talk about both of them.
Uh, and uh, You know, there's only so much time I had to dig into each of these Uh, you know with all the other stuff we have going on So i'm also going to do a little surmising here, but the websites the weird niches are brides made for hire. com and Take a wild guess, groomsmenforhire. com. And um, I don't know, apparently it's a thing.
Apparently, so I stumbled upon these because this week I released, um, a guide, uh, to Weekend Growth audience, about hundred and whatever it is, 53 side hustles. I've been jotting down side hustles as I've seen them for the last two and a half years. A lot of them from seeing stuff on this podcast, just put them in my Evernote doc.
And I saw this a while back. And I put it down and I think it's hilarious because I was a wedding photographer for a decade. So I think this is hilarious. We've talked about other weird for hire things. I think we've done paparazzi for hire as one of our weird niches, but it would seem that you can hire a groomsman or a bridesmaid.
Now the bridesmaid, we'll start there. The bridesmaid website, uh, they're both weird in their own ways. The bridesmaid website looks far more legit. When you get to it, you have it up on the screen. It looks like a website. It says established in 2014. It's got featured on Fox and you know, all these different places.
Here's the funny thing about it, Spencer, try to hire someone
to try to hire packages. Maybe if you want to get a package there, right, that would be where the price, right? I could never get to a point where I could actually hire a bridesmaid where I could actually see how much it costs, where I could actually book it. I don't know if this is the greatest ruse, but I could never, or maybe I missed it, but I could never actually figure out how to figure out how much it costs or how to figure out how to actually book someone to come to my wedding.
Spencer: Give it a try. Oh, wait, that's a vow generator. Oh, that's
Jared: a vow generator. That's really cool, by the way. This is cool. They have all these other cool little prompts and things here. You can write your speech, your best man speech, your bridesmaid speech. You can have a vow generator. Um, uh, but yeah, they, they, they, they, uh, I don't really, there you go.
Hire a bridesmaid or hire us. How do you hire them? I couldn't figure out how to hire someone. Here you are back in that loop again.
Spencer: Hire us.
Apply for a job. I guess you have to just contact them? I guess you have to just contact
Jared: them, yeah. Even though there's a big button that says packages, and that's all I wanted to see. So, um, uh, yeah. Interesting. Hard to say. You can sign up for their email list. You can sign up for their email list. But if you go to the footer, Spencer, this is interesting.
If you go to the footer, um, they have a very active, like, there you go, instant adventures. You can go, they're like, they were posted on Instagram today. So people like send in their kind of wedding questions, and they'll kind of crowdsource answers for you. So, um, uh, anyways, I see you clicked on it. It's not the screen right there, but if you click and go look on the Instagram side of things, you can kind of see like, Oh, there you go.
Yeah. Dear one 800 bridesmaid. I don't want to go there. So anyways, um, I don't know. What do you think about this, this site? Then we'll get on the groomsmen one.
Spencer: I mean, it seems interesting. I mean, I, it seems like they have a whole range of services that they potentially offer. But like you said, I don't know how to actually do that.
Um, are you actually ordering bridesmaids or do they just write speeches for you? Like it's maybe a little confusing because I don't like you, I don't see a way to actually buy something.
Jared: I was just curious how much it would be and how much like, okay. Like if you're, I don't know, single and kind of just moved to a city, great way to meet people, great way to make money, have a fun night out.
I don't know. It seemed interesting. That's true. A cool side hustle, I guess. You're right. Right. Like you could just be, you know, well, yeah, during the week I'm a, I'm a programmer. And then on Saturdays I'm a bride, I'm a bridesmaid for hire. Yeah. Yeah. Make a cool 300 bucks, you know. Why not? Um, I forgot to mention, if you could pull up the Ahrefs graph, uh, for this, I thought it was interesting.
This site has experienced explosive growth in the last six months. Is that right? Look at that. Whoa, look at that. Yeah.
Spencer: You're
Jared: right. I don't know what they're doing, but I mean, what is it, 5X in the last couple months?
Spencer: Yeah, since, uh, looks like probably right around the August core update is when it really started to see a big uptick.
Jared: I mean, like, a tremendous uptick if you're looking, like, Reddit esque, if you will.
Spencer: From, you know, ten ish, uh, a thousand organics a month to now as much as forty to fifty thousand. Right? Unbelievable. Organics a month?
Jared: Yeah.
Spencer: So yeah.
Jared: 4 to 5x just like that. That's phenomenal. So, so now I'll take you to groomsmenforhire.
com. Now at first I thought, oh, uh, same URL type of string, like probably owned by the same person. I don't think so. Totally different design. Totally different approach. Totally different everything. Yeah. groomsmenforhire. com. Right? Like you got up on the screen now and it, um, uh, it's a very poorly done homepage.
It looks like a stock photo that got cut off on the right hand side. Like it, like got stuck in the developer. Like it was a piece of film. It's got like a very, you know, 1940s feel to it. Not in a good way either. Um, there's a picture down at the bottom. That's our groomsmen pro. And it's this awkward, you know, like picture Matt skinny.
Yeah, really skinny. So head over to the about page. You know, you're like, cool. At least I'll learn about them. So meet the team. Well, there isn't much of a team. It's just Matt and, uh, yeah. And it goes on. How about Matt? Co founded Caroline moves to help bring the market a hassle free approach to property management.
I'm not really sure if what's going on with the groomsmen for higher world, but he's a property manager. Didn't learn anything about Grimsman though. Um, So again, they have the illustrious packages up there for you to click. And uh, Spencer, if you want it in the menu, just go click packages and we can go learn how much it costs.
Uh, I don't think I can click it unless there's something wrong with it. It's not clickable.
Spencer: Are you serious? What is What's wrong with these people?
Jared: How odd is it that if I made for hire and Groomsman for hire, you cannot actually figure out the packages, but for very different reasons. One sends you on an endless loop throughout their website, the other doesn't even make the link clickable.
Spencer: What?
Jared: He's like, why is my business not working? I know, seriously. Broken link. You say that jokingly, I have had clients come and they're like, I don't know why I don't get any contacts. I'm like, well, when you click on your contact page, it says 404. What?
Spencer: Yeah, it's like they never tried it out. So I can contact him, oh actually shoot him an email, it looks like it's not even a contact Yeah, it boots up an email there, right?
But no packages that I don't wear up. What a website. The home link doesn't work, like I can't get back to the home page.
Jared: If you go to the Ahrefs graph, um, this one is not doing quite as well as Bridesmaids. Not doing quite as well. Or higher. You're right. Thanks for a total of 59 keywords. Uh, I guess the good thing they have going for them is over the last couple of years they have been relatively flat in terms of traffic.
They haven't lost much traffic.
Spencer: It's pretty much groomsmen for hire is like the only keyword in variations thereof. Which that does give search traffic.
Jared: It does.
Spencer: I mean, you know. You got an exact match domain and that's, that's about it it looks like. That's why. Uh, anyways, so I mean, so
Jared: is there a
Spencer: business
Jared: model even there?
Like, yes, people do this, right? So first off, go get grooms, men for hire. com didn't check if it's available. This is grooms man singular. You could get grooms, men for hire. com. And if you put up a little bit better of an effort than this, which would, Not be hard within an hour. You could probably website is better than this and you could probably use that EMD to get pretty close to these rankings.
And now you just got to figure out how to fulfill groomsmen across the country, which sounds like a huge challenge. Right.
Spencer: Huge challenge. And, uh, how often are people looking for that sort of service that I guess they're searching for it on Google. So there's some sort of demand there.
Jared: I mean, I'm trying to think, like, if you're searching for groomsmen for hire, maybe you could just, like, build location pages, and then, um, sell lead gen to brides.
com, or, I, I don't know, I, I, yeah, doesn't seem like a great idea, but,
Spencer: but it's an idea, it is an idea, and that's the thing, is, we're just here to give you guys, the listeners, a nugget of an idea, Hopefully something we said along here in our ramblings, talking about groomsmen or bridesmaids for hire, maybe triggered an idea.
And, and if it did, then we did our job. So just let us know if, uh, if we did that.
Jared: I, I, I don't think it'd be hard to rank for these terms, though. Especially not the groomsmen for hire. Like, I, I, I think we got a, a nailed on case here for how to get that, a website ranking pretty quickly for that. The problem is how to monetize.
Spencer: Yeah,
Jared: exactly.
Spencer: What's the business model? So, if you figure that out, there you go. Go ahead and pursue that. So, Jared, wow. Uh, good finds on those. Not one, but two weird niche sites, and I like the update on last week's. Weird niche site. So nice job.
Jared: It's good to have you back. We um, uh, uh, We missed you, but apparently the world continues, especially the google world continues to operate in your stead So we've got plenty of news to talk about but um, what a week a lot of stories to follow
Spencer: Yep.
A lot of good stuff. It's good to be back. Um, and, uh, yeah, we'll be back next week. It may or may not be me, but Jared, I'm sure you'll be here. The niche pursuits podcast will continue rolling on. So appreciate everybody listening in and thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Hey there. Thanks so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast.
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