Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Penalties Begin…

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast.

Like they always do, Spencer and Jared dive into the latest happenings in the SEO and content publisher space and break it all down into digestible pieces.

The first news item they cover is Google’s move to enforce site reputation abuse, also known as parasite SEO. Spencer explains how it works and how Google is enforcing its crackdown.

He also shares a tweet from Glen Allsopp with early insights into these measures. 

Watch Full Episode

Why did the company get a lot of flak for the rollout? Which brands tried to get ahead of the crackdown and what steps did they take? Which niche is Google targeting first? In what ways is this different from the Helpful Content Update? Listen to the episode to hear more.

In positive news, Spencer and Jared talk about a potential correction from the recent Google updates. 

Has your site seen a small uptick in traffic? What’s behind this correction?

Still talking about Google, it looks like the company’s market share has taken a dip, and Spencer shares some of the recent stats.

By how much did its share of the global market shrink in the last year?

Speaking of a declining market share, Google may see itself up against a new search engine, launched by OpenAI. Although it’s not official, rumors suggest that it’s in the works.

What would it look like? And how would it impact publishers? Listen to the episode for their thoughts.

In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer shares an experiment he’s doing with a small website trying to drive traffic from Reddit.

He talks briefly about some of the things he did to get that traffic and what he plans to do moving forward.

When it’s Jared’s turn, he talks briefly about his newsletter side hustle but goes into more detail on a YouTube side hustle he’s working on.

One of his channels has seen a boost in traffic thanks to the Amazon Influencer videos he uploaded there; in fact, it now has reached the threshold for monetization.

What exactly did Jared do? Tune in to find out.

As for Weird Niche Sites, Spencer goes first with James Bond Lifestyle, a DR57 website that provides exhaustive information about all things James Bond—clothing, accessories, gadgets, etc. 

It’s an interesting niche as the owner really taps into a dedicated fanbase.

According to Ahrefs, it gets 20k monthly organic visitors, and according to SimilarWeb, 200k. Spencer also takes a look at its keywords and its optimization opportunities and reveals if it was impacted by the HCU.

When it’s Jared’s turn, he reveals his weird site: This Is Why I’m Broke. 

He highlights some of the products sold through the website and talks about the impact of different updates on its traffic.

It currently gets 232k pageviews a month according to Ahrefs, a lot of which is branded traffic, and he and Spencer talk about why this site is doing well.

That concludes another episode of the podcast. We hope you feel like you’ve been caught up on the latest news and inspired with ideas for your own side hustles and niche sites.

Catch you next Friday!

transcription

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. Well, Google has started enforcing the site reputation abuse policy. They announced this. What was it? Jared Lake almost two months ago, two months ago 

Jared: during the 

Spencer: March core update. That's right. They gave people a heads up that may 5th was the date.

If you're using, uh, or allowing site reputation abuse, you're going to start getting penalized. So we're going to dig into what is happening, which sites are being hit, what types of sort of sub directories Are being impacted by this update and more. Uh, and then in addition, uh, we've got a couple of other news stories, kind of an unconfirmed Google update that a lot of people are seeing their traffic increase, so we'll dig into what that is.

Uh, and then also some updated numbers on, uh, Google. Search share market share overall are other sites like being duck, duck, go and other search engines starting to take over some of the market share. We'll dig into some of those numbers here. Uh, and then finally, there is some rumors and, um, well, we'll, we'll, uh, dig into exactly what that is, but it involves, uh, open AI and potentially their own search engine.

So, uh, stick around for all of that. And then of course, we're going to share a couple of side hustles that we're working on right now, as well as two weird niche sites, Jared, and I have both found a weird niche site that we're going to cover that, uh, hopefully is a little bit of fun and just inspires. So Jared, how are you doing today?

Jared: Good. It's going to be a fun episode. I mean, while, uh, all of us, maybe we're having our chips and guacamole on Cinco de Mayo, Google decided that was the day they were going to. Roll out this site reputation, uh, um, policy, which we'll get into, because there's some interesting stories about that. I saw your weird niche.

I just look at it for the first time. I've got to say, I'm not sure you and I are qualified to talk about this topic, but I'm looking forward to giving it our best shot. 

Spencer: You're right. I will 

Jared: definitely admit I'm not qualified. I'm just saying that my, I mean, my understanding of you and I is that this might not be the best suited topic for us to weigh in 

Spencer: on, but we'll do our best.

We'll just tease that I'm wearing like a 10 year old t shirt right now. Maybe I'm not qualified to talk about this site. Just so, okay, let's, um, let's talk about our top news story here. Uh, the Google, the Google has begun their enforcement of the site, site reputation abuse, uh, policy, as we mentioned, they announced this, which.

Boy, Google, it gets a lot of flack just for that. Hey, you give the big sites two months a heads up notice that you might start penalizing certain portions of their site. So let's, let's first just kind of define what this site reputation abuse is. Um, sort of the classic example, at least within, um, sort of our SEO community is Outlook India, right?

Um, but broader speaking, are these large sites with a lot of authority that have allowed guest posts or have allowed paid guest posts, um, of other people can come on and write any article that they want, right? And often these articles are highly valuable affiliate keywords, right? And so you can write on their website, this one article of yours, your guest post ranks quickly in Google, and you can make a bunch of money.

So it's sort of the parasite SEO update. So a lot of people have done this parasite SEO. Google has finally said, Hey, we're cracking down on this. We don't care if you're Forbes. If you're Outlook India, if you're CNN, if you're anybody, we are not going to allow you to sort of accept these quote unquote, low quality guest posts and rank them.

And so, uh, we now have a little bit of information about how they're enforcing this. Uh, it appears that initially it is all manual actions. So Danny Sullivan on Twitter has come out and said that right now they're only implementing manual actions. And then later it will be algorithmic and we don't know when that starts.

And so any, uh, hits that sites have taken since May 5th in the last few days, uh, are all manual act manual actions. And we don't really have any publicly confirmed, you know, examples of sites specifically that were hit with manual actions. Uh, but what we do have are a. Um, some examples of people that have been paying attention in the industry, like, uh, Glenn Alsop, uh, here on Twitter.

Uh, he shared that, um, a lot of sites, uh, have removed. Or no indexed, uh, a lot of their sub directories for coupons. And so that's sort of some of the early insights that we've seen this graphic. Um, you know, he puts in a column here that a lot of these were hit, um, which makes it sound like maybe it was a manual action again.

I don't know. I haven't confirmed a lot of these. All that I do know is that certain sites like Fortune, GQ, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated have actually taken down their subdirectories for coupons. And then a lot of other these sites that are listed like USA Today, uh, Reuters, Daily Beast, Telegraph, uh, appears to have taken a hit, whether, again, that's a manual action or some other action.

Uh, the coupons are no longer, uh, performing quite as well for these sites. So, Jared, what's your take on all of this? 

Jared: Yeah, a couple details. Looks like, I joked about it, that it launched on May 5th. Uh, which was Sunday. So kind of a bit of an odd timing when they released that date two months ago. Turns out they actually didn't start until Monday, May 6th.

That really matters much, but Danny Sullivan confirmed that. So it's all the manual actions started rolling out on Monday of this week. Um, and then to your point, like we've got the manual actions that were being rolled out. I, I haven't seen, Exactly. If that's affected anyone specifically, but then you've got just this whole situation around who decided to be preemptive and take Google's advice seriously.

And who decided to wait it out and see what would happen. Um, Glenn surmised in that tweet you had up that, you know, and he even asked Google. I don't think he got a response. Hey. If a site were to leave some of this content up, assuming it got hit, would it spill over and affect other non, uh, I'll just use the term parasite SEO, uh, search terms that they rank for and no response there, but he surmised that it wouldn't.

And so to some degree, it's interesting. Almost from a brand analogy to like, look at which brands decided to get out ahead of things. Compare that to how they've acted in the past on these sorts of things, which brands decided to just sit it out and see if they actually got hit or not. And then of course, and then I'll, I'll take a pause, but, and then of course what we've been seeing the most movement on so far is.

Coupon related stuff, granted, parasite, SEO, site, reputation, abuse, all this, it extends well past that. I mean, we're seeing examples of this in every niche, but it seems to be the coupon niche that either is the easiest for Google to target, or it's the one they've decided to go after first and foremost, because that's where all the movements happening.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And maybe just one other sort of commentary note. I think it was Nate, Nate had key, uh, that he owns a travel blog. If I recall on Twitter, just made a really interesting comment about, um, just the difference between these updates, right? The March core update was not announced, uh, and we didn't really get any details specifically about, you know, how people could, uh, improve or do better, uh, versus, uh, this update, which.

Tends to hit larger brands that are given two months advance notice. Uh, and even if they were hit, as you mentioned, it's only going to hit that sub directory. It's not a site wide penalty, which is very different than like the helpful content update now, the March core update. It appears to be more of a site wide type penalty, right?

If you have enough content on your site that is deemed unhelpful, it's not just the unhelpful content that's hit. It's really a site wide thing. So again, kind of like a two faced thing that Google does here, even worse brands versus niche sites. 

Jared: Even worse. We're talking about an somewhat opinionated stance on if content is helpful or not versus a blatant.

Yeah. Disregard for Google's policies, right? Like it's not like they're like, you know, we just don't really like the fact that you're having coupon stuff on your website. So we'll give you too much notice just because we don't think that's very helpful. It's no, it's like black and white. Like you can't use your site for this.

You have too much to fix it. Oh. And if you didn't listen to us, don't worry about it. We'll just knock back the stuff that you did ignored us on versus a helpful content update, which is this very amalgamous. Idea of helpful content that no one's been able to define. And if you don't fit within our undefinable perspectives, we'll slam your entire site forever.

Spencer: Yeah. It's a tough pill to swallow, uh, for sure. If you're a small publisher. Um, so just one example, which really it, it, it's not specifically because this has happened over the last few months, but, uh, Outlook India is not the, um, traffic machine that it once was. Right. Um, You know, if you look back just a few months ago, it was getting over 10 million organic visitors a month.

Um, it's come down, you know, it's been hit in half, but, uh, this is sort of the example of, Hey, this is a site very well known for sort of site reputation abuse. Uh, they published tons of guest posts. So Google has been kind of apparently targeting this thing for a little bit, but now they're. I expect over the next couple of weeks going to be really cracking down hard on sites that are, that are doing this.

So 

Jared: it is interesting because we did talk, we've talked about this on the podcast before we both asked the question, like, how are they going to specifically crack down on this algorithmically? Um, aside from like just straight up going through all the big sites and tagging sub directories, um, for, uh, algorithmic, uh, penalization, if you want to call it that, like, how are they going to do this?

How are they going to actually. figure this out. It is interesting to me that we thought we were going to have that answer on May 5th and the reality is Whether it's because they haven't figured it out, but they're planning to roll out in stages or because they still don't have it figured out. 

Mm. 

Jared: Danny Sullivan said this week, he's like, yeah, we're just going to roll out the manual actions now.

The rest is the algorithmic stuff is still coming. 

Spencer: Yeah. So, um, we'll, we'll keep everybody posted as we see things. Right. As, as news comes out, if we see specific penalties. More specific movement. Uh, we will let people know. Um, let's see here. So, you know, let's maybe shift to semi good news here potentially, uh, for some people is there does appear to be an unconfirmed sort of Google update and, uh, I'm going to, I'm actually sharing my own tweet because I asked people, Hey, have you seen a bump in organic traffic since May 3rd?

And this was a response. Um, I'll give a hat tip to Glenn Gabe. He's the one that first sort of tipped me off to this, uh, and publicly at least stated that, uh, on May 3rd, it does appear that Google has pushed something out that has impacted a number of sites that were affected by the March. So if your site took a big hit in the March core update on May 3rd, since May 3rd, a lot of those are starting to see a little bit of a correction.

And, uh, he has a few different, well, that's not a good, but he has a few different, uh, graphs showing some of those sites that are improving. And so in my tweet, um, you know, Carl Broadbent says, yep, small, but something. Um, and several other people, uh, were saying, Hey, I've got a 20 percent increase, a 10 percent increase.

Um, you know, a lot of other people just saying, yeah, uh, an improvement is happening. And I will just say that, uh, you know, one of my own sites, um, did see it was impacted a little bit by the March core update is now seeing a correction. Um, and so that's, I noticed that. Uh, and so maybe that's some good news people.

If you're out there. Look at your sites, look at your traffic over the last few days. There may be some sort of correction. Whether or not this has anything to do with the site reputation abuse policy, which it probably doesn't. Um, we don't know exactly where it's coming from because Google has not said anything publicly.

Jared: Yeah. You had put this in our show notes. So I, um, just spent a little time digging. I, one, one, one client of ours saw a definite upturn during this, but other than that, not much to report. Of course, I I've said this before, like most of our. The vast majority of our clients weren't really affected by the March core update, except in a positive way.

So, um, so not really, uh, in the content website space, but I'm super curious to see that, you know, you saw a bump in, in one of your websites. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. And, um, we'll see if it gets any, any bigger, like if it lasts any longer, right, if there's any public, uh, announcement. Or notification or Danny Sullivan mentions anything, uh, so we can know exactly what's going on, but it definitely appears that something has changed over the last.

Four or five days in a good way. So that's our positive, uh, Google news for the day. There we go. Uh, it's always good. We should try to be a little more positive on this show. Jared, uh, got to work hard. Now I know, I 

Jared: know when I, when I walk by the news, when my in laws have it on, why it's always negative, you know, I mean, 

Spencer: yeah, it's easy to report on the, on the, uh, more depressing news.

Um, so. Speaking of, uh, sort of maybe depressing for Google is that, uh, Google's market share does appear to have taken a dip in the search engine market a little bit. Um, this is something that I don't remember if we ended up mentioning this on the podcast, but there was, we did. Okay. Well, 

Jared: so, um, Just a little history.

Thomas brought it up the week you were out and then we covered the story briefly the following week, but it was just a brief flyby. 

Spencer: That's right. That's right. So, um, so we had talked about here that Google was losing some market share. There's been some updated numbers that make it appear that maybe it's not quite as drastic as was initially reported.

Uh, but those revised numbers still do show that there has been a decrease in market share for Google, right? For the search engine, Google, um, Let's see here for us search market share in April. Oh, that's what they were showing. Okay. Let's just look at the revised data. Here's the revised stats for April in the U S uh, Google fell to 86.

58 percent down from 86. 94%, uh, in March. percent year over year. Well, that's like not even like a movement in one month, right? Um, let's see. There's, there was some better stats here, uh, in terms of year over year. I thought there 

Jared: is some year over 

Spencer: year stats. Here we go. Uh, If you're seeing them actually, maybe you can 

Jared: point those out.

Uh, Bing had a marginal increase of, from 8. 04 percent to 8. 24%. So not a big increase. Um, and then, uh, Google had a drop from 86. 94 to 86. 58. And while I think Thomas would be quick to point out, if I revert back a couple of weeks ago, that those are still massive numbers when you're talking about the billions of searches that happened on it, you know, but.

Compared to the data that was being presented a couple of weeks ago, and the mistake that was made in the way the data was reported by stat counter. It's not nearly as, I mean, nowhere near as dramatic or drastic as it once was. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, okay. Globally, those were some of the numbers that I was looking at.

Yeah. 

Jared: I think you wanted to reference, I was giving you time to find it though. Cause I knew you wanted it. Yeah, 

Spencer: there we go. Uh, this one's, uh, maybe a little more interesting. You know, Google has this, uh, A 90. 91 search market share globally, according to stat counter. Um, and this is down from 91. 38. So not a full percentage, uh, in March and down for, from, uh, 92.

82 percent year over year. So that actually is down about 2 percent year over year. Um. Which is, uh, which is quite a bit. And if you look at, uh, where they were in May of last year, their highest point 93. 11 percent down now to about 90. 91. So too little over 2%, not quite 3%. Um, but Microsoft Bing is at 3.64% up from 2.76%.

Jared: Uh, and I, I think that's worth pausing on. So that's the one number in here that I think is really interesting. That's an increase year over year, globally speaking from Microsoft. Bing of 32%. 

Spencer: That's true. 

Jared: Yeah. So I know percentages always get a little funky. Right? But really? Mm-Hmm. , when you go from 2.76 to 3.64, that's an increase of 32%, which is.

Substantial when you're looking again, across billions of searches, 

Spencer: billions of searches. Exactly. So the exactly the fact that, um, Google's down a couple of percent being is up, you know, or percent, you know, of taking the entire market share, uh, and among the other search engines, they're kind of taking some of that.

So it's, uh, it's interesting to see. Uh, and then I guess we have some news related to this. I mean, is Google's potentially got a new competitor entering the field here, Jared. Thank goodness. And, uh, will they take some market share and, uh, is it even going to be a search engine? So, uh, we don't know a lot about this.

Uh, but I'll go ahead and share. There is a report that open AI to launch a search engine. And, uh, again, nothing officially has been announced, but some people have been, um, doing some investigating, or at least just noticed within the code that, uh, I believe it's search dot, uh, search. chatGPT. com has been registered.

I don't even know if that mentions that in this article, but I know I saw that. I 

Jared: think it does. 

Spencer: Um, yeah, so that that domain has been sort of registered. They can see it in the code. Oh, here it is. Yes. Search dot chat. GPT dot com has been registered. So the question is. Will open AI launch its own search engine.

What do we know about this Jared? 

Jared: Well, for starters, if you're listening to this, this podcast comes out on a Friday. So you're probably listening to it. Most of you over the weekend there was, um, there is after recording, but before this podcast gets released, there is a, um, An event that OpenAI is hosting on May 9th.

So Thursday at 10 a. m. local time. And there might be more information that comes out during then, but that notwithstanding, all we're working off of is what's been registered and what's been filed. But of course, why would it not mean something like that? Like, why would you register search dot if you're not at least planning on going to market with some sort of.

Beta of something I would imagine. 

Spencer: Yeah. It's really interesting. And, uh, I did read a quote from Sam Altman. I don't have a pulled up, but it essentially is insinuated that they are thinking about search that Google has been a big player in sort of organizing the world's information for a long time. And his.

Quote was essentially saying maybe there's a different way to think about search, right? They've been doing it one way for a long time. Maybe there's a different approach. He didn't say specifically that, hey, we're going to tackle that problem. But when you put, Hey, they're, they've got this announcement, they've just registered, you know, this domain and, and sort of that quote, it's like, well, it seems like maybe there's something going on here that, uh, whether we call it a search engine or how it exactly works, um, We don't know, but, uh, it, it could be an interesting competitor to enter the marketplace for sure.

Jared: And just to read a quote, um, that's in this article, uh, analytics India magazine covered this topic and wrote quote, open AI is likely to announce a new search engine soon revealed Jimmy apples stating the company is looking to host an event this month, tentatively May 9th. 2024 at 10 a. m. Uh, and Barry Schwartz goes, that's a very specific date and time.

Uh, and, um, you know, he, Barry Schwartz went on to suspect that whatever open AI launches in terms of a search platform, it will be very different than Google. Um, and it makes sense, right? You probably would suspect that it would be, uh, like a different user experience, more focused on the conversational search that you do with a chat GPT.

And that being is kind of started to, to, to work through. And I mean, it would be very interesting to just see. You know, Google's conventional search, which we've talked about how kind of broken it is and how people feel about it. Uh, not saying that people love maybe the open AI experience. It hasn't taken off to the degree that maybe a lot of people surmised it would, but still just seem like in an even playing field over time, which one people gravitate towards.

Spencer: Right. And the big question, of course, for us as site creators is Well, are they going to send any traffic to our websites? Is there going to be any links? Are they going to reference our work, our websites? Uh, you know, if open AI does launch a search engine, how will that look and how will that impact us?

So we will, uh, talk about it next week if it's a big announcement. Um, and, uh, you know, we'll have more to cover in the future. So that's pretty much it for the news. I believe. Uh, I don't think I missed anything there. Uh, and, uh, so if not, we're going to move on now to kind of our side hustles, our projects that we're working on the side, just a couple of things that, uh, we have going on that, uh, may or may not be making much money just yet projects that are fun that, uh, we're trying to grow and see what we can do, um, yeah, with, with a couple of side businesses.

Sounds good. So, um, I shared, uh, I feel like I'm sharing a couple of, of tweets here of my own. Uh, not that I really share all that great, uh, of information on Twitter all the time, but, uh, here's just where I happened to upload a screenshot. And so I thought this would be the easiest place to share, but I have my website that, um, this is my website where I've been trying to post a lot of on the Facebook and get traffic from Facebook.

Uh, a few, I was going to say weeks, but actually it's been at least a couple of months. We've been trying to get more traffic.

Jared: Well, Spencer, I think you muted yourself. 

Spencer: Thank you for that. That's the second time it's ever 

Jared: happened. 

Spencer: Yeah. Whenever I adjust my microphone here, we'll move on. But, um, he said a couple of reasons. Yes. A couple of weeks ago, uh, it was, you know, a couple of months ago really is when we started to, um, start, start, start to implement, um, sort of this strategy on Reddit.

But, uh, the reason we started doing this is because I noticed that some of my competitors were getting traffic. Uh, and specifically I saw at least what one competitor was doing is that they created their very own subreddit and they were posting articles and then they were ranking on Google and getting traffic from those subreddits.

Now, I didn't take that approach. But here you can see our, some of our results, um, nearly 10, 000 visitors out of the 16, 000 visitors we got over the last, I think it's 28 days is this screenshot. So it's not, you know, this is a small website. Uh, it's still just a little side hustle, but, uh, most of the traffic came from Reddit over the last 28 days.

You know, they categorize it in a few different. Ways here, but it's all just from Reddit. And this came from either comments we've made, um, you know, or starting our own, uh, thread in Reddit. Uh, I will simply just say that this is not easy, uh, because Reddit. Is very strict about links getting posted comments.

Um, I have somebody helping me out and I will just say a couple of their accounts have been banned, uh, you know, for not doing things properly. You have to tread very lightly, uh, on Reddit. And so it's taken a couple of weeks to kind of build up the reputation of a specific account, right. To show that, Hey, this account has history of comments, that sort of thing.

And then also finding the right. Subreddits that do allow you to leave a link or, you know, have a comment is semi, you know, promotional, if you will. Uh, and so it's taken a long time to figure that out. Um, but it has resulted in, like I said, about 10, 000 visitors in the last 28 days. So that's just something that's kind of exciting that we've been doing.

Um, as I have more and as we figure out which strategies are working better, um, I'll, I'll share more and maybe even do a video and, uh, kind of explain. How we're making this work, but that's where I'm at. Kind of just an interesting new little side project. Hey, we're starting to crack this Reddit traffic thing.

Jared: Well, first off, I don't think there's many listening that would poop on 10, 000 sessions per month from anywhere right now. Um, right. Even if you haven't been say hit by an update in the past six to nine months, 10, 000 sessions is real. I mean, right there, we've talked about this article or this news story.

I don't make a weeks ago where that that's enough to qualify you for media vines, a new program, you know, so I wouldn't poop pod the traction. Um, sure. It's not life changing, but question for you, I remember you talking about that. Like why, why not go the route of starting your own sub Reddit as it were?

Why go this route versus that? I'm just curious. 

Spencer: Yeah, well, right now, um, I would say it's just that we're learning Reddit. Um, and in the future, now that I'm seeing some results here, like, I agree. I, I see no reason not to just start our own subreddit and, and, and do that. So that may be the next step here.

The next evolution of what we're doing is let's just start our own subreddit and Google appears to love Reddit. So why don't we just, um, start our own, see if we can rank in Google, maybe even get some traction directly on Reddit with comments and users and traffic that way. But if Google ranks it as well, maybe try that.

Jared: You could do both, right? Yeah. The approach you're taking now, which is not the subreddit approach, but the more comment URL link, click here, that kind of approach and your own subreddit approach, I would, I would imagine. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. And so, uh, I think in the future we'll try that. Yeah. So definitely good point.

So that's, that's kind of my update. Um, just kind of interesting, fascinating, um, something that we're trying learning and it's got a little bit of traction, so we're going to keep doubling down on it. 

Jared: Good. Well, well done. Um, uh, let's see, uh, for, for, for me on my side, I say I got, got a lot of emails, uh, last week about the newsletter topics that I discussed.

Um, so I sent out more details this week in my weekend growth email. My newsletter email, which got even more questions and I Spencer for the first time ever, I think I teased that we're going to be interviewing someone. The podcast coming up about this. I mentioned this last week on the podcast and I teased it email again and I got a bunch of people saying, who are you going to interview?

Um, I've got questions for them and stuff. So anyways, this newsletter topic seems to have struck a chord, um, with a, with a bunch of people, which is going to be fun. We do have A really cool guest coming up. Um, don't hold your breath. It's a couple of weeks away that I have the interview scheduled for. And then obviously it usually takes us a couple of weeks to get ready to go, but we're going to be talking more about this newsletter topic.

My newsletter is humming along. Newsletter number two, um, we're about to crack 200 leads, um, now, so nothing big, keeping it very small. It's been a busy week, so I haven't been able to put a ton of time into it, but I, so I thought I'd share something else that might be interesting for people. Definitely along the side hustle shenanigans, uh, angle many, many months ago, I talked about how, um, I started a YouTube account for one of my niche websites.

And, um, uh, it was about a year later. Just, and all I did was take those about 15 or 20 videos and I embedded them in relevant articles on my website and a year or so later it had cracked the 500 subscriber mark where it was able to qualify for certain monetization features on YouTube, but we all know that the one we're all targeting is that 1000 subscriber.

And 4000 watch hour metric, because that's what allows us to put ads on there, which through AdSense, we can get a kind of a monthly check. Well, for all intents and purposes, I'd forgotten about this YouTube account since then and hadn't done anything since then. And I got an email from YouTube this week that we had cracked the 1000 subscriber mark.

And there's some interesting things to point out here. Um, so that site, that website has gotten hit heavily by the HCU. As so many of us have had our, you know, content websites or niche sites hit. And a lot of the traffic, a good portion of the traffic to the YouTube videos was from them being embedded on my website.

And so I didn't really think this YouTube account was going to go anywhere because it was already getting only a certain number of views per month. Surely that would get cut because of the traffic to this website got cut. But in reality, what has happened since the HCU is that. This, the average monthly views has doubled.

How did that happen? So, um, here's how it happened. I had to go back and look, uh, prior to the HCU, this account was averaging 11, 000 views, video views per month since the HCU. It is getting 22, 000 views per month. So almost a literal doubling. And I thought, wow, that is so weird. Well, it turns out the smoking gun has nothing to do with the HCU.

It just happens that I did something around the same time as the HCU. So the account has a total of 78 videos on it. Here's the kicker. 54 of them are Amazon influencer videos that also worked for this. Exact YouTube account. And when I finished doing the Amazon influencer videos last summer, I realized they'd work well for this YouTube account.

And I uploaded them. The biggest batch was uploaded at the end of August, 2023, which is why it looks so similar to the HCU coming out in the middle of September. And then I uploaded another smaller batch of Amazon influencer videos to this YouTube account in November of 2023. Okay. And that's where the Forex scene.

Of video views has come from because what has happened is in reality, the amount of views from the embedded content has gone down dramatically, but the amount of views that has come from YouTube now, as a result of uploading these Amazon influencer videos has four X, the amount of traffic from embedding, which is equal to doubling of traffic and allowed the account to not only increase the amount of.

Views it gets every month by twice, but also qualify for monetization. 

Spencer: Wow. So really it's all just YouTube. All of these new videos that, uh, you uploaded are just doing well on, on YouTube itself. And so all the referral, uh, views and everything is all internal. It's not really related to. The website 

Jared: embeds totally.

And again, there's a couple of fun little points here. First off, YouTube is one of those fun platforms that if you get some videos that have an evergreen component to them, they can just go and go and go. I've talked before about one of my other, I've only started two YouTube accounts for two niche sites.

Both of them to this day still get a lot of views. My other one gets 20 to 40, 000 views per month. I haven't uploaded a video to it in two years. Uh, this one, I only uploaded Amazon influencer videos to it in the last Year and a half to two years and it's getting 20 to 25, 000 views per month. Both send me monthly checks through AdSense.

Not much. This one will probably now send me what a hundred to 150 a month at those kinds of video views, but it is interesting. And it's also another, another, um, Vote of confidence for the Amazon influencer program, because you can use those videos. It's so funny. Just two weeks ago, you were like, I'm going to start uploading my Amazon influencer videos to a YouTube account.

I'm like, why bother? Turns out I had, and I forgot. You had already done it. I just hadn't created a new one. I just cherry picked the ones that apply to this channel and I uploaded them and I'd already done it and I forgot about it. 

Spencer: Wow. That is super interesting that, uh, they're getting all those views because again, these videos are like one to three minutes, typically.

You know, they're just on a very specific, um, product. And maybe that's why they're getting traffic is because it's, it's just very laser focused on this very specific product. And if somebody types it in, you're one of the few videos that shows up probably. 

Jared: And again, with Amazon influencer videos, you can't.

Call them to take action. So people who are very strategic about it will make a video that at the end says, and I've included a link in the notes to go ahead and buy this product. I've given you a link to just go straight to Amazon and get it. And then they'll edit that out before they edit just that part out before they submit to Amazon.

That is the most strategic way and the way to increase your affiliate sales. I'm not doing that, but for the sake of what we're talking about today, it doesn't really matter because. What I'm evaluating this by is the number of views the video got, but if you want to increase your affiliate sales with that as well, you can actually have people.

Probably a small portion of them actually go from your video to Amazon and earn affiliate commissions from that as well. 

Spencer: Yeah, that is, uh, that's awesome. There's, uh, as you said, I have been working on this on my own. You're right. I've been trying to upload some videos. I'll provide another update, uh, in a future podcast of what I'm doing, but.

I do like this sort of second vote here for the Amazon influencer program. You can have this other revenue stream on YouTube that you can use the same, uh, videos to do that. Um, and yeah, again, and I'll just put 

Jared: the, I'll point this out. I just want to throw this at you too, to hear what you think about, but Because what you're doing and I'm super curious to hear how it goes and I'll probably do it as well as taking all your videos, which are, by the way, topically speaking about everything under the sun, 

you 

Jared: got a paddle board in one video and then like a coffee grinder in the next video.

And then you've got like a, a t shirt in this video. And then you move on to like, you know, an electronic charging cable. Right. And, and you're YouTube account versus this approach was to cherry pick. The ones that I'll apply to a super sub niche and then put them all onto that specific niche where This YouTube account has kind of built up a small, but, but a followership around that niche.

Right. And so it's interesting to see how YouTube handles these different types of accounts. And I wonder if there's a case we made where you make like 10 YouTube accounts out of your, if you have a thousand influencer videos, you make, but a hundred of them in your home, your home review, YouTube account, put another hundred of them in your outdoor review account.

Um, I doubt I'll have time to try that, but it would be interesting to see that versus just dumping all thousand videos on one YouTube account. 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. If anybody has done that, um, let us know. It would be interesting. Uh, we'd love to chat with you, right? Maybe come on the podcast and chat about it.

So, all right. Um, you know, what's, what's interesting is, uh, with the Amazon influencer program, you know, After you and I did a video in the niche pursuits community for that, we've had a lot of people starting to take action. Um, within the niche pursuits community, we have kind of a whole subgroup now of Amazon influencers, uh, that they just started brand new.

Um, and I've, I've seen people starting to get their results in, uh, you know, One person just hit their first, you know, $100, uh, in earnings on the Amazon Influencer Program. Uh, another person, I think it was $137 they made in their very first month, uh, which is great, uh, because it just goes from there. If I look at my stats, my first month was like 50 bucks and then it was, yeah, a couple hundred, and then it was like.

Starts to get serious. Yeah. It starts to get, you know, very serious around holiday season. Um, and so, um, I'll just give another call to action there. If people want to kind of join a group of people involved in the Amazon influencer program, they can join the niche pursuits community. They just go over to community.

nichepursuits. com. You can watch the hour long video calls that Jared and I did, um, on our businesses. But also there's a ton of people in the discord chat that are starting brand new. Um, they're doing breakout sessions, breakout calls to talk about Amazon influencer specifically on their own now, kind of smaller mastermind groups.

So a lot of cool things happening there just, uh, in the niche pursuits community. So if people want to check that out. 

Jared: Accountability to I saw someone else say that they hit their goal. Just I think they posted this yesterday. I was in there this morning of 100 videos in their first 30 days in the program.

They actually said it took me 31 days. So technically I didn't hit the goal, but we were all like, no, you the point is to get 100 videos up as fast as you can and accountability, right? Like you got to show up and you put it somewhere publicly and there's a little group of people that can help keep you accountable to whatever your goal ends up being.

Spencer: Awesome. Yep. I love seeing some of the, uh, some of the results that are already happening there, uh, in the community. So, okay, let's move on to our weird niche sites. Um, I have a weird niche site that, uh, came from a huge list of sites that was recommended to me. Uh, by niche pursuits readers. And as Jared pointed out, you know, maybe we are not the ones that, uh, could have created this website.

At least I have a button up 

Jared: on the day, you know? 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And, uh, I just realized I don't actually even have the website, uh, pulled up. Here we go. Um, so I can share it on my screen, but this one's interesting because I mean, it's based on. a series of movies, right? And sort of the lifestyle that takes place, uh, within these movies.

So what, you know, movie or book or whatever, however, James Bond started. What is that? Well, it's the James bond lifestyle. com. So James bond lifestyle. com is. All about the clothing, accessories, gadgets, vehicles, food, drinks, travel, the locations of where the movies were filmed, the clothes that are worn, the gadgets that are used, the vehicles, um, everything.

It's, uh, it's just really interesting that it's so focused on this James Bond lifestyle. And the more I looked at it, Like the more there is like this, there's a YouTube channel. Uh, there's an active Instagram following, which if I pull that up, uh, 72, 000 followers, uh, on Instagram, right. There's a Facebook page.

I think it has even more on Facebook. Yeah. 137, 000 followers. On Facebook. And you can see that, you know, he's very active here on Facebook. Just, you know, today, or sorry, a couple of days ago, he posted launching a James Bond rocket. Um, uh, so here's Brosnan. Yeah. Pierce Brosnan, you know what he wore, um, sunglasses that I'm sure somebody wore here.

Um, so I never would have thought of doing something like this. Let's, let's be honest. This 

Jared: is 

Spencer: brilliant. From a business 

Jared: standpoint, it's brilliant. And then also from an appeal standpoint, it's brilliant. 

Spencer: Yeah. Cause you've got this dedicated fan base that you can just tap into of like, Hey, I love James Bond.

And apparently some people like really love it. Right. Uh, that, uh, they want to come in here and buy the clothes and buy the gear. And they can say, Oh, you know, I've got the watch that was, you know, in so and so James Bond movie, did you know that? Um, and you know, they've got spy gadgets. Uh, here, uh, that you can check out.

So as you can imagine, right, there's a lot of, um, sort of product review articles on this website, and you can go and buy it, you know, through their affiliate link, whether that's eBay, Amazon, or wherever, maybe, uh, it is sold. And I did go over to the YouTube channel. It's got a fairly active YouTube channel where he's reviewing different products.

It looks like he gets a lot of products from, uh, He's sort of like an influencer, right? Hey, we've got this James Bond theme sort of thing, or here's a watch that was used, can you review this? Um, and so I will also just share here some of the traffic stats. So James bond lifestyle. com, according to a trefs is getting about 20, 000 visitors a month, uh, which is not bad organically.

It's getting, you know, sort of organically, uh, that much traffic. And if we look at the keywords, you know, John James Bond style, James clothing, James Bond outfits, um, specter ring, you know, Anyways, uh, a lot of the types of keywords that you might expect it would rank for. Um, and then according to SimilarWeb, the total amount of monthly visitors is closer to about 200, 000, uh, visitors per month is how much it's getting.

So a decent website, um, The bulk or the highest country is the UK, which is maybe not surprising, but the U S is short behind there. But organic search, according to similar web is the highest, um, then direct traffic and social are second and third. Um, so yeah, I, I think it's a fun website, sort of a fun niche.

Which apparently, I mean, the, the more you think about it, like all the food that's eaten, all the locations that, you know, have been traveled to throughout the movies, like this is really broad. Cause there's been how many movies now at this point, 30, 30, 30. Yeah. 

Jared: I, 

Spencer: there's a lot, the 

Jared: entire thing. Oh, really?

Spencer: Yeah. It took us like six months to get through it. Like going back to the like sixties, seventies, whatever. The 

Jared: original. We started with the original ones and worked our way through all of them. Um, we did it with, uh, some friends, you know, so it was, yeah, it was, uh, uh, I w I wouldn't say I walked away like a raving fan, but we really enjoyed the whole series and it's long.

There've been six or seven different bonds throughout the years. And, um, you know, yeah. 

Spencer: So, so, so much gear and, um, other things that they can review. So kind of a cool, cool niche, I think. So, 

Jared: so the site has been around according to the about page, October, 2005, we're approaching 20 years with this site founded by, uh, forgive me if I pronounce the name wrong, Remert von Brom.

Um, and, uh, uh, I, I will say if you look at the homepage, I think. That every article on the site is listed on the homepage. Uh, if you go back to, I don't know where the, yeah, it's um, it's, it's very It has not gotten an update in a while. A refresh. Um, it's got, you know, all 

Spencer: these recently added, right? 

Jared: Yeah. Go down there and here we go.

And there we go. Now we're off to the 

Spencer: races. Here we go. Hundreds, hundreds listed on the homepage, 

Jared: according to HRS. There's about 2600 pages, I would hope or wish it was the site was doing better with organic traffic with that many pages, that kind of site history, um, dr 57, I feel like 20, 000 page views is really falling short, but still, if you look at the traffic, it seems from a quick glance while you had it up on screen unaffected.

For the most part by the HCU or some of these other core updates. Um, and so, um, uh, you know, probably what is it with you and I featuring sites of late that have these very thin, um, uh, designs that aren't very mobily responsive, man. I feel like we just got a new. Fast theme, a new site redesign here. Quick little, you know, theme, uh, uh, redo.

We might be able to really improve those user metrics. 

Spencer: Yep. I agree. Mobile's where it's at. So, um, a good site. So, uh, I, I think it's fun. Maybe it inspires people to kind of look at, um, what niches they pick, right? You don't have to pick just like. A niche based on a product category, right? Maybe it's more of a theme or a feel, right?

Like the James Bond lifestyle. 

Jared: Well, my, um, my weird niche is weird. Justin it's name, uh, I'd imagine that, uh, contrary to many of the sites I've featured prior this one, you might've heard of, I'd imagine most of the listeners have probably heard of it. The site is, this is why I'm broke. com. Um, and. As the site hints at, it's probably a site featuring all the different ways that you can proverbially waste your money.

Um, and the homepage, uh, does not let you down on that. Um, can I say some of these things out loud? You can say some of them out loud. Yeah, I gotta figure out which ones I want to talk about. Um, There's everything from, yeah, boy, that's a lot. I can't talk about, uh, modern glass, cereal bowls, deep thumb saver, massage tool, maybe us who sit behind a desk a lot would really benefit from that.

Um, here's a good book ways to tell employees they're stupid. Um, 7 and 97 cents. Um, uh, a non lethal salt self defense gun. Um, Uh, a hidden door kit, if you've always wanted to make a hidden door at your house, which I have to say, I've always thought would be really cool. It's only 149? Yeah, 

Spencer: you know? Okay, I'm gonna add that to my cart.

Jared: I was gonna say, well look at that, it's gotten over 11, 000 saves, so clearly it's a popular one. Um, a taco holder. Uh, I can't say that one out loud. Nevermind. I thought taco was good, but then I'll have to pass. I'll just stop saying things out loud lest I get myself in trouble. We got, we got a couple of stairs slides 

Spencer: for kids.

Jared: Yeah, definitely be careful opening at work. Um, cheese printer. That's pretty good. Um, I think, uh, I think what's interesting about this type of niche and that's why I wanted to, to feature it is that it inherently. Out of the gate right away makes sense for product reviews and affiliate links. You know, it's all themed around this idea of weird, of this is why I'm broke, wasting money, spending money on things, but it's a very product focused type of angle and I don't want to say that they have gotten off scot free in terms of updates because they haven't.

Um, they seem to have gotten hit, not by the helpful content update, but by the October core update. And they've lost over half their traffic since then. So I'm not saying that this generic product review focused website model is a good one, but it is interesting that topically speaking, they are all relevant to the idea of why you're broke.

You're wasting money on dumb stuff. 

Spencer: Yep. Yep. Uh, it's, I mean, it's a fun category, right? We've, we've covered a lot of weird niche sites and often it's just are weird in with one product or one sort of category. This site is just saying, hey, here's just a bunch of weird, fun, interesting products that you can buy.

And we're going to just cover all of those, right? Like this is caught my eye and this is why I'm spending extra money today that I didn't think I was going to spend. 

Jared: They do well in the, um, in the, the Crocs category, some of their highest ranking content is for dog Crocs, cowboy boot Crocs, um, uh, moonwalker shoes.

Um, uh, and then some less and clearly they broadened out because I'm looking at other stuff they rank for. And it's, uh, they're like bed fans, um, cool rugs for your bedroom, um, uh, uh, gifts for men over 60. So maybe that's part of the reason why they're not quite as, uh, uh, loved by Google these days. Maybe they've broadened outside of, uh, More of the weird topics to just, Hey, here's some great 18th birthday gift ideas, which by the way, they rank, um, on the second page of Google for, which is kind of where Google puts product reviews to, to die.

So interesting. I'd have to study it more, you know, and see, they certainly have a ton of content. They've over 30, 000 pages. Um, if you are wondering, they are getting about 232, 000 organic page views per month, according to H refs. That's down from about 4, Previous high of over 500, 000 last summer. Um, so there's still doing pretty well.

Uh, uh, and here's the other one more fascinating. I'll point out. They get a ton of branded traffic. Yeah, they get a ton of branded traffic. And that speaks to the volume of the power of this site. Having been around for, for quite a while and, and, and being very popular. DR 71, they got a ton of backlinks, you know.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And, uh, I was trying to scroll down to the footer, but I don't think I'm ever going to get there. Uh, more articles just keep popping up. So, um, I was going to try and see if they had like a, um, you know, a YouTube account or, uh, other social media. Cause I can imagine they would do well on social, right.

If they're sharing a lot of just really interesting things. So if you're wondering why I 

Jared: didn't mention it, it's because I like, you never really found it and just kind of gave up after a while. 

Spencer: It just keeps going. Yeah. Um, But yeah, it seems like potentially they could be making a lot of money because it's very product focused.

And if you get, you know, interesting products that just get shared and kind of go viral, um, right. A lot of people click through, they buy something on Amazon, they get cookied and they buy something else. So, uh, because of the nature of the business, I actually suspect that they would be doing quite well.

Jared: You know, we featured a couple months ago, uh, that weird candle site. Remember that? 

Spencer: Oh, 

Jared: yeah. 

Spencer: I never 

Jared: reported back. My wife got a huge kick out of it because I had it up while I was researching it, I think, at the kitchen table or something. She happened to see it and I was like, oh, I'm talking about the podcast.

And we bought our neighbor a bacon flavored, uh, candle. Went over very well. Is that 

Spencer: right? 

Jared: Yeah. Hey! There you go. So, you know, to your point, like that was a site that was just basically if I remember correctly, like just a straight Shopify store, a DR five, like not getting much traffic. But if you kind of crack the code on weird stuff to buy like that, uh, what was that, that, that, uh, the, the secret door, I mean, I had 11, 000 shares, like, but that was no cheap product.

It was 150 bucks, you know, like the, that's a good, you get some good commissions on that backed by a really popular DR 71 site. Like I would imagine even though the site has gotten hit, Of late, like they're still making very good money. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And so, um, if anybody wants to dig into the numbers and let us know, you know, I would suspect that they could be doing well on social media, which may be the impact to their Google traffic is like, eh, whatever, most of our traffic, a little blip on the radar, other sources anyways.

So, um, a cool site, a weird site. Um, and, uh, maybe can inspire people to. Figure out different product categories that they could cover, right. That's kind of different or weird or, um, just outside the norm like this. So, uh, good, good, fine. Thanks Jared. 

Jared: My pleasure. No, my pleasure. You know, sometimes I, um, well, we'll just, we'll just call it, call a spade a spade.

I had to dip into the Spencer Haas list today to get that one. 

Spencer: Yeah, I was waiting for you to confess. Uh, you know, it, it was a public list, you know, it was a public list. Anybody can access. And I'm getting on a plane here in a few 

Jared: hours. So I was a little 

Spencer: tight on time this week. Yep. Jared is, uh, I'm speaking at a conference.

Jared: Actually, you know what's interesting, Spencer? I just realized this. We usually release the podcast at 9 a. m. Pacific ish on Friday mornings. And that, I haven't done my UK conversion math, but that's right around the time I'm speaking in the UK, so. Is that right? Yeah, I'll, uh, maybe I'll end my talk by teasing this podcast, this, uh, this news episode.

There you go. As a good dog. And if you want to hear me talk more, go listen to the podcast. If you'll be at the Affiliate Gathering in the UK, make sure to stop by and say hi. I'll be. You know, Spencer, I don't have a Niche Pursuit shirt. You gotta send me some schwag here so I can rep the brand when I'm out here, you know?

Spencer: Oh 

Jared: man, I don't know if shipping will make it to the UK in time. I don't think so. I don't have a 201 Creative shirt either, so I'm not gonna be repping any brand. Yeah. I won't be repping the James Bond lifestyle either. I definitely won't be repping that either. 

Spencer: Don't have your Rolex with you. Okay. Um, well, very good.

Thank you everybody so much for joining us here on the podcast. And we've covered the news. We've covered our side hustles. We've covered the weird niche sites and, uh, Jared, we wish you best of luck in your travels. 

Jared: We'll see you guys next week.

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