Semrush Buys Search Engine Land! Google Search Falls Apart?
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Jared and guest host Morgan Overholt are back together this week to cover the latest news in SEO and beyond, to talk about progress with their respective side hustles, and to share some weird niche sites and discuss their strategies.
The first news item they discuss is the recent move by Semrush to acquire Search Engine Land and its sibling publications and what that potentially means for Search Engine Land which, to date, has been seen as a relatively unbiased journalist publication.
Morgan reveals a surprise when it comes to one of the part-owners of Search Engine Land and they talk about the scenario when Semrush acquired Backlinko a few years ago.
Do you agree with the tweet that Jared shares? How do you think this is going to play out? What do you think of their advice?
Watch the Full Episode
Moving along, they share a YouTube video by Mrwhostheboss about why Google Search results have declined in quality. With 20 million subscribers, this video has got 2.2 million views in the first few days.
Jared explains the main points of the video and Morgan talks about feeling vindicated and shares a theory about Googleโs strategy.
Do you agree that Search quality has declined? What do normal users, i.e. not content creators and small publishers, think about Google Search? Tune in to the episode to hear Jared and Morganโs thoughts.
The next topic they discuss is the fact that Google AI Overviews is not linking to sites hit by the Helpful Content Update.
What do you think about Lily Rayโs observations? And what did Glenn Gabe say about this theory?
Morgan shares a specific โshockingโ example and Jared talks about the disconnect.
Last in the news, Jared and Morgan speak briefly about the latest developments in the WordPress vs. WPEngine drama.
Is this going to change peopleโs use of WordPress? How will this affect general users? And how do they think itโs going to all pan out?
The next portion of the podcast is dedicated to Side Hustle Shenanigans, as always.
Jared talks about the Amazon Influencer Program and the โgood signโ he recently saw with this side hustle as we move into Q4. He also shares a recent strategy that seems to be working, and Morgan shared her experience earning passive income with the program as well.
When itโs Morganโs turn, she shares a book she recently published using content from her websites which were hit by the HCU.
She explains how she did it, how she feels about it, and how she did it.
When it comes to weird niches, Jared goes first with rcdb, a roller coaster database. He talks about the siteโs interlinking strategy, the homepage, and the traffic stats.
How is it performing? What types of keywords is it ranking for?
When itโs Morganโs turn, she shares Wait But Why, its surprising stats and its cult-like following. What does she discover about the brand and the content?
Even more surprising is what Morgan finds out about the DR79 siteโs monetization history and strategy. Tune in to hear all the details.
And thatโs a wrap!
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast! We hope you head into the weekend feeling informed about the news and inspired with your own side hustles and projects.
Transcript
Jared: All right. Welcome back to another week of niche pursuits news. My name is Jared Bauman and our big story today is all about SEMrush and an acquisition that they made that is, well, raising a few eyebrows. We've also got Google in the news, of course, and this week, a mainstream YouTuber Weighs in on the ever going topic of is Google search getting better or worse.
Um, another really interesting story that we're going to touch on. So there's this connection that's come out between Google's AI overviews and HCU hit sites. Uh, I think this one alone is worth sticking around just to hear more about it. We'll cover it quickly at the very least. And finally, with any time that we have remaining, we'll give you the latest on all that WordPress drama that Spencer and I started talking about last week.
That's a story that I don't think is going away anytime soon. Uh, speaking of not going away anytime soon. Happy to welcome back Morgan Overholt to the podcast today. Morgan, welcome.
Morgan: I love being described that way. You can't get rid of me.
Jared: You know, I, when I said it out loud, like this story won't go away.
So I just thought it was a good, a good intro and a good segue. Um, I'm excited to have you back on. And I have to say that I have not looked at all at your weird niche, no idea what it is, but I have looked at your side hustle. And I feel like every week I'm getting overshadowed, you're going to totally overshadow me again this week.
I got to up my side hustle game because you have a great side hustle to, to talk to us about today.
Morgan: Well, don't get too excited. I've made approximately 0 so far,
Jared: but
Morgan: I also
Jared: haven't launched it
Morgan: yet. So high hopes.
Jared: Sounds like so many of our side hustles, right? At least as of now. So
Morgan: look, we all started at 0.
That's how it starts.
Jared: That's how it always starts. It always starts with a big zero, and then hopefully it just grows to having a lot of zeros at the end of whatever number you put in front of it, but, um, stick around for side hustles, stick around for weird niches, we'll get to that, but we got a couple stories to get through today, we've got four actually we're gonna try to get through, that's a little bit more than normal, so let's dive in and get right to this first story of the day, and it is this SEMrush story, so, um, this one broke earlier this week, and, um, the, the story is that SEMrush has acquired Um, search engine land, uh, which is the publication that we actually quote quite a bit here.
I've got it on screen now. Um, so the leading SASS platform, SEMrush acquired search engine land, SMX, and all of our sibling publications. This is a story written by, uh, Danny, Danny Goodwin, who we've, um, featured many times before. Um, You know, basically this is the, one of the leading search engine, uh, uh, online publications.
We quote it constantly that and search engine journal are probably the two. I mean, I don't have readership numbers in front of me, but probably the two big ones when it comes to search engine news, publishing daily content, publishing content that we go to case studies, visibility reports, uh, interviews, all sorts of things.
Um, and basically SEMrush has acquired them. I'll go ahead and say this I'm going to share this, uh, the screen in front of me. Semrush is not new to the acquisitions game. Semrush has been acquiring brands for quite a while. Um, and it looks like, oh man, we're having problems with Riverside again today. Let me share the screen.
Um, so you guys can all see it, but basically Semrush No secret to the acquisition game. This is their, uh, I believe seventh acquisition. According to this article here, um, they've acquired, uh, right. Brand 24, uh, traffic think tank, uh, comp, uh, comp height. And then of course, I think the first one that kicked it off back in January of 2022 was back linko Brian Dean's company.
And the, I think the real crux of the story here as it relates to why it's in the news, yes, it's a big deal, yes, now SEMrush will be owning search engine, uh, search engine land, but I think the big story that everybody wants to talk about, and this is where Morgan, I'd like to kind of kick it off with you is, hey, um, Yeah.
Yeah. You know, we have this publication, this journalistic publication, this idea that journalism is unbiased and is not partial. And now it's owned by one of the major companies here. Um, and I think perhaps this tweet by Jackie Chow sums it up best. We're about to witness the greatest use of search and replace for AHRFs being replaced by SEMruch.
On search engine land, that might be an overreach. It might not be. I've got some things to say about that. But first Morgan, Semrush by search engine land. What are your thoughts?
Morgan: Well, so this is a bit of a rude awakening for me because I was out of town over the weekend and had a bit of a long weekend.
So I didn't really get back into everything until Tuesday. And of course, the first thing in my inbox and my DMs on Twitter. was the story. Like, that's, that's how I became aware of what was going on. Um, and without outing anybody, you know, because it was a slide into the DM, um, I will say several prominent bloggers, including some of the ones that we sometimes reference here on the podcast, um, were some of the people who had concerns about this.
Not all of them, just, you know, Um, but yeah, it was, I think there's a little bit of shock because we're not shock shock is not the right word. There's a little bit of frustration I would say in this, um, you know, search engine land, of course, as, uh, we all, I think now know, or most of us now know, partially owned by Denny Sullivan.
Jared: Um, good. Well, I was going to touch it or if I touch it, but we're going to touch on that. So let's get into
Morgan: Yeah, and that kind of seemed to be the layer that was, you know, seemed to be bugging most people as well as me, of course, you know, because, of course, that's, that's come into question in the past, right?
Whether or not it's even being 100 percent fair or providing the correct disclosures, and of course, for those listening, again, Denny Sullivan is the search liaison at Google, and so we are kind of, we already have been wondering, A, is there a fairness factor in play? Have they been, you know, have they had journalistic intrigues?
Integrity. Um, we have also wondered in the past if they provided the correct disclosures. We've also wondered in the past, are they playing by all the same rules that we are playing by, like, you know, with targeting certain keywords, you know, using certain strategies, parasite SEO, et cetera, et cetera.
Again, I'm not making accusations, just wondering. So sub those were some of the topics that were coming up when I was having these private conversations, uh, when the data's happened.
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Jared: You know, we've seen Semrush acquire Backlinko and then Ahrefs and Tim Sulu over there has made a big stink about it over the years about watching Ahrefs, links, recommendations, these sorts of things that were in Backlinko being changed.
And I suppose, if I remember correctly, and I don't have it in front of me because I would have had to go digging a couple years ago, but I suppose if memory serves me correct, the reason That was given on the street was, Hey, well, the recommendation, the recommendations have changed and it's no secret.
Like Ahrefs hasn't exactly been making a lot of friends in the SEO community of late anyways. So maybe that's true. Maybe that's possible. Maybe the backlinko brand as it were, was changing its perspective, but it sure felt like some Russians backlinko. So now backlinko refers some Russian backlinko takes up a lot of real estate space in the SERPs.
Now we're venturing into. Backlinko kind of more of a private, not necessarily a journalistic endeavor, but now we have search engine land. And so the topic of will the same thing happen in search engine land gets brought up and we also have what you brought up, which is that search engine land, a publication in the SEO space is.
Started and partially owned, we believe, by Danny Sullivan, I think he still owns part of it, who is an employee at Google, and now it's being sold to SEMrush, so I guess Danny's out of the equation, we assume, don't know, but now we have the latest complexities. It's complex, it's weird, it's tough to talk about before this happened, because of, I don't know, the Danny thing.
And now we've got the SEMrush connection, right?
Morgan: Yeah. And, and that's one thing that I personally would like to clear up. I mean, I'm not exactly sure what it would change for me from a technical standpoint, but I would like to know whether or not Danny still has some sort of ownership, um, post acquisition, you know, if he doesn't, I'm sure he got a very handsome payday, which.
Again, if I'm just being petty after everything that happened to us small bloggers because of what happened with Google, with the Google search team to our small publications, um, you know, seeing the person that perhaps we kind of turned to who we, I think a lot of us feel can't speak for everyone, but a lot of us feel as though it's not, uh, properly, um, acknowledging, I would guess.
Um, the difficult year that we've all had get such a giant win, but again, we don't know whether or not he did receive the payday or whether or not he's still involved in this. We've just not seen that information yet, so we have no clue. Um, but yeah, and, and I have to say, it does make me wonder, I mean, it's like the word that was being tossed around in mediums was like that the system feels corrupt is the word that was being tossed around because now we've already had search engine land this prominent publication that this podcast, every like.
Everybody references, like I was looking at today's show notes, you know, Jared, because like we always Jared always populates like our show notes with all these possible stories and like half of them are from search engine land. That's the irony of the situation. Right. So we're already having to wonder, like I said earlier about whether or not, you know, Google has kind of any kind of a, you know, any exactly what that stake is.
Um, and now we're wondering, okay, now what's. How is SEMrush going to play into all of this? Because let's be real, like SEMrush does not always recommend the exact thing, same things that Google wants. Like SEMrush is the same company that was churning out content optimize, I can't talk, content optimization tools that we now know and keyword research strategies that we now know were highly associated with those impacted by the helpful content update.
I don't know. It's just starting to become like. The question is, who can I trust? You know, that's hard.
Jared: It's hard for all of us not to bring our own personal afflictions into it. Kind of like you mentioned with your personal feelings about the HC, your personal feelings about Google's connection to it.
You know, I can bring in mind, like, I've, I've been published in search engine land. I have a relationship with Danny Goodwin specifically, and I like him. I think we all have a pretty strong affinity to Barry Schwartz. He's part of that. And so I personally like feeling these personal afflictions of that kind of positive nature towards these things.
And yet at the same time, we kind of have these questions about where the journalistic integrity has to go with this. And again, just to be clear, not saying any of these things are true. I just think, you know, journalistic integrity is always a topic to especially when you look at. Where journal, um, journalism goes and whatnot.
So it's, it's all questions worth asking answers that we don't certainly have access to, but I think that it's certainly the topic of the week and it would be remiss of us not to cover it because like you said, man, we talk about search engine land as a, As a journalism outlet, as a story outlet for this podcast, every single week, I feel like so.
Morgan: And I think we're just going to have to kind of, uh, see where things go, honestly, you know, of course, I saw some follow up tweets by search engine land, uh, right after this came out saying that they were still going to hold themselves to the highest integrity. You know, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt until I see otherwise for myself, even though I feel as though the first, uh, uh, Five minutes or so this podcast was certainly me being cynical, but I will give them that benefit of the doubt and we will see, but it is important for people just to keep in mind going forward.
Um, who actually owns this website, who has owned it in the past and just take everything with a grain of salt as you normally do seems to be the name of the game in SEO as of late, doesn't it? Well, everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Jared: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. You know, like, you know, there's, there's nothing, but, uh, there's definitely nothing.
Specifically negative of this, but everyone should just, you know, kind of keep their eyes wide open and hope for the best with the type of journalism we see going forward. And, um, you know, uh, uh, obviously SEMrush is a strong name, so it's better, I would say, than going to some company that was going to shelf it, or was going to, you know, put it out to pasture, or not going to continue to maintain it.
We do know in this article that we referenced Danny, uh, Barry, and the others, uh, that we know it, that search engine land staying on, staying around, so. So, uh, you know, hopefully all good things continue, like you said, you know, remain skeptical, not because you have to be, but just because we do have a different company that now owns search engine land.
And hopefully we continue to get great things out of them. Um, Got a couple more stories. We got to get to. So let's continue to move on. So in the next story, we're not going to play a YouTube video here. I'll tell you that much right now, but it is referencing a YouTube video. I feel like I did find a pretty good part of the video to screenshot was the first second.
So it's not like it was that hard. This video is by Mr. Who's the boss. Uh, Mr. Who's the Boss is not an SEO YouTuber, if we're just being candid and clear here. I'm not sure. I'll try to pull up some of the stuff he does touch on here in a little bit, but he does have nearing 20 million subscribers. And this video was published Friday.
Five days ago, and it's titled why Google search is falling apart. Now, within the first five days, it's garnered 2. 2 million views. And I've personally seen it referenced in a lot of places. Well, outside of my SEO circles, uh, 10, 644 comments at current time. And I think this is interesting because we talk on and off on this podcast about.
Is Google search failing? Is it doing worse year over year? Or is that just our opinion? We're so tied to the algorithms. We're so tied to what happens day in, day out that, you know, we have to ask ourselves the question sometimes like, are we just too involved? You know, and I always think about like my dad, who I know listens to this podcast and we talk about a lot of the stories week in, week out, like how is someone who's just a user of the internet feeling about Google these days?
Well, here's just a general user of the internet. And here are the things he points out. Um, yes, Google search has gotten worse. That's all cast out of the bag on that one. Um, but here's a couple of things he addresses in this, in this video. It is about a 17 minute video. Can't obviously go through it here in detail.
But from a high level, here's what he gets at. Uh, increased number of ads. So Google is now prioritizing sponsored content. Often placing multiple ads before each video. Any organic results, making it harder for users to find genuine answers. Uh, number two, lower quality organic results. So the organic results Google provides have declined in quality, especially for product searches.
The algorithm seems to prioritize paid content. And even when organic results are shown, they don't often match the user intent. That's an interesting observation. And then number three, SEO manipulation. The rise of SEO tactics has led to low quality content being designed to rank in searches. Reference last week's content, uh, uh, last week's and the week before about Forbes and how that content come to play, um, article stuff with keywords, affiliate links and outdated or irrelevant.
Product lists. So, you know, he kind of closes by mentioning just these concerns about Google's future direction as they integrate AI into search results, which will dovetail nicely into our next story. Um, Hey, so here's a prominent non SEO focused YouTuber. That's basically saying it ain't working. Google.
Morgan: You know, I know when I'm. It's going to be a frog in my throat. I don't want to get too off topic here either, but I want to say this is like the second time a prominent public, what I would consider to be a public figure has released when these videos in recent time. Um, of course this is a much bigger name than even the last, the first was Adam Conover on a video called people ruin the internet, which has over 600, 000 views.
The guy from Adam ruins everything. So now what'd you say this one is that now 2 million as of today, um,
Jared: And by the time this podcast comes out, it's going to be higher, you know, 2. 5, maybe it's going to grow.
Morgan: Yeah. And with our following we 4 million by the time that they hear our podcast, right?
Jared: Well said.
Thank you. You're exactly right.
Morgan: But no, it is, it's very like gratify vindicating. That's the word i'm looking for. It's very vindicating Because at times this whole process has kind of made me as a blogger who's lost a lot because of the changing SERPs I feel a little gaslighted at times, like, Oh, it was just me with really terrible content, a really terrible website.
Really. Everyone hates me. No one loves me.
Jared: Yeah, exactly.
Morgan: So it's good to kind of like see other people be like, yeah, you know, Google's not doing a good job. You know, there were also a couple of really interesting points, um, that he kind of raised and questions that he raised. I don't know if you kind of, um, this one sparked your interest as much as it did me, but when he was talking about the results page and how, like, for example, the example he uses, he was looking for a ultra slim mini fridge, right?
So he was typing in like, A slim mini fridge into the search to see what pop up all the sponsored shopping listings were like, humongous and exactly what he was looking for. Right? These are paying people who are paying for that position, you know, retail in mind, then under it, the SERPs were. Wrong. They, they didn't have anything to do with being a slim, mini fridge.
Like some of them had, you know, many fridge examples, but they were all like fat and the thing, and it just didn't match the integrity at all. And he basically asked the question or poses the question, is this Google eighth grade, A giant tech company, not getting it right or playing dumb to drive more clicks and more engagement to the people who are paying Google directly.
I thought that was an interesting question.
Jared: He's asking questions we've asked, but also, I mean, straight up questions are pulled from the DOJ trial, right? Um, and, and how the search team works. With or not with the ad team. And, you know, I mean, Spencer and I surmised one time on the podcast, again, just surmised just for clarity, but surmised like, Hey, ads load on the SERPs, the more people bounce back to the SERPs, the more people stay in the SERPs, the more ads get loaded, the more clicks get happening through ads.
And, you know, it's, it's, it's, this is why they're in the DOJ, right? Like the. inextricable connection between the ad and the search team, the degradation of search. Now, as it relates to the broad media, there's a broad general public, perhaps me. He doesn't represent everyone, of course, but this is a very prominent YouTuber.
I can't think of one more prominent. Um, that's kind of gone out and said exactly what you're saying. Like, Hey, what's going on? The SERPs just doesn't look good these days. It's not helpful anymore. Ironically, as we've focused on helpfulness,
Morgan: yeah, I mean, and we know that search engine has changed, right?
And I personally started seeing a lot of that with the helpful content update. Um, now you can look at, look for specific things and you're really not getting those specifics in the SERPs. And I think that some of that. Was done. If I was just again, guessing myself, right? Like, I don't know, but I'm guessing some of that was done to combat the AI problem, uh, people writing for a very, very specific long term, long tail, uh, low competition keywords and that sort of thing.
But in doing so, I do think it is compromised the integrity of the SERPs. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's almost like to try to save themselves. They're just shooting themselves. It's just, it's just not. It doesn't seem to be the solution. I do wonder where this is going in the future as the public starts to notice.
Uh, like you said earlier, you know, is it going to impact the average everyday user? My dad thinks Google is the internet, right? You know, I think, I don't think he's alone in that. I think if you told him you could change your browser on your phone, he'd be like, what's a browser. So I don't, I don't think this is a good impact, like the vast majority of the population.
But I do think those of us. Hey, we're a bit more tech savvy and those of us who know there are other options out there and I'll, you know, not to like, it's not coming, you know, or not to hit an upcoming podcast. We're also seeing other, uh, you know, people bring other things to market like search GPT.
We're not going to get into that into this today's show, but we're going to have more options. And I'll tell you this much, even if Google isn't afraid. Or we might not be around to see the end of Google as we know it. I certainly think Google could be in a better position than what they are right now.
Personally.
Jared: Well, you mentioned AI, and it's hard not to look at some of the bad search results or the trending search results, almost tied to when AI started becoming more prominent, you know, like JatGPT hit the market. Obviously we had AI before that, but I'd say mainstream AI hit the market when JatGPT came out, that was November of 2022.
And then, you know, the SERPs started to get. To be a mess in 2023 and obviously something relevant to everybody listening is the September 2023 helpful content update which is again designed ironically to make things more helpful. We haven't really seen that play itself out. We're over a year removed from the helpful content update.
We got people going out and saying, Hey, Google's search isn't very helpful anymore. Um, I think it's a good segue into our next story, uh, because it does have to do with AI overviews. It does have to do with AI and how Google's handling it. And it does have to do with the helpful content updates. So here is a story.
Is it a story? Let's see. I got to find the right tab. Yes, it is. Um, Morgan, you'll be. Whether pleased or just to, to note, this is from search engine round table, not search engine round table, so we are getting plenty of diversity here in our news outlets today, starting this new trend that we must follow, or maybe not, but anyways, Google AI overviews, not linking to sites hit by the helpful content update.
This is interesting. Um, now I'm going to just cherry pick a couple of things that we know here, but basically. Uh, or that are in the article that we know Google's AI overviews seem to not show citations or link to sites that were hit by the helpful content update and probably core updates. Even when you ask the AI overview directly about that site.
And even if that site is ranking well for that query in the traditional Google search results. A bit of a mouthful there, but basically let me kind of read on. To be clear, we know that AI overviews are directly impacted by core updates. And we know the helpful content update is now part of the core update process.
So Lily Ray noted on Twitter or X, when you type, who is XYZ site and insert, you know, your site affected by the HCU there, the Google AI overview results seem to not include links to that site. Just a bunch of other sites that talk about the site. She added that the site can rank well, or even be in the first position of the traditional search results, but has zero links in the AI overview.
Lily Ray added, seems like there's some kind of filter in place to prevent HCU hit sites from being linked to in here. Uh, and then Glen Gabe kind of went and added into it. There's something to this. Just checked a bunch of HCU hit sites. Even ones that had bounced back a bit with the August core update.
He's referenced the one in 2024 and they didn't show up in AI overviews for their own brand and site. So, guy, this is weird. Um, I don't even want to get too far into thinking about the why behind it, but just to say like, wow, this HCU hit, uh, tag that we've talked about, I know it's not a tag, but almost like a tag, right?
Almost like a filter, like you're unable to do anything once your site has been classified this way. But we now see another example of where that. filter or that tag applies and it's in AI overviews. It's crazy.
Morgan: Yeah. I mean, this is one of those times that I still say, I still call it a classifier, even though some people speculate that the classifier is no more because I mean, and if it's not a classifier, they were literally just arguing over terms here because there is clearly, as you said, Something that's preventing these sites from popping up.
So the exact example that was provided, at least in this article, there were a few examples, but in this article that we're referencing was travel lemming. And they asked Google surfs, what is travel lemming? And the answer came back. Travel lemming is a free online travel blog founded by Nate, but the reference materials here are not travel blogs.
They're third party sources or not, not travel living. They're third party sources that are talking about. About travel living, so travel living in these AI overviews, isn't even allowed to speak for themselves, which is pretty shocking. I mean, I do understand like, okay, if I put my side, my brain inside, like the mind of a Google, like search team person, which just is a scary place to be anymore.
But like, I do think that they would have a hard time justifying. Citing an HCU site while at simultaneously taking that site more or less out of the search engines results page entirely, right? I think that would personally be, again, I'm no lawyer, like, you know, a hairy territory to be like, Oh, you're not good enough to be on a results page, but we will cite you and cherry pick your information for our AI overviews.
So this might be, uh. To them, sort of a safe way to go was kind of my initial like, I wasn't surprised by this. It felt like more of a safe move by Google, but stupid. Can I use the word stupid on the podcast? I think it's stupid.
Jared: It's interesting. The most interesting thing to me is exactly what you talked about, but I just have such a different perspective on it.
Also. If your algorithm says this is the number one result for it, then why does your AI overviews refuse to cite it? That would only seem to help substantiate and improve your AI overviews. Your AI overviews is tied in some fashion, we assume to the organic results and to what Google's algorithm pulls for the organic results.
So if something is number one, number two, number three, if something is on the first page, it's good enough. Google believes to be a relevant result, result, dare I say, why would it be excluded from the overviews? And to your point, it has to do with this HCU classifier, this overreach. I'm using that term, obviously it's my opinion, but I mean, If it's good enough for Google to use it on their SERPs, why would it not be good enough for them to reference in their AI overviews?
It doesn't make sense. It only promotes a disconnect between what they're saying about the HCU and what's actually happening.
Morgan: Like, and to be clear here, y'all, I said, I don't, Just because like, I'm not surprised doesn't mean I like it, right? Like they should absolutely, travel living should be allowed to speak for themselves and these AI overviews.
But then again, Jared, I've also seen a lot of bloggers, including those hit by the HCU who say they don't want to. Google touching their websites. They don't want them to be scraped by AI, you know, and even as someone who, like a lot of my sites are wrapped up monetized, like they're kind of discouraging letting, you know, Google's AI crawlers, like crawl our websites right now.
So there might be some of that at play too. Um, so I'm not really sure that everybody else would share my opinion on this particular topic. Like personally, I'm, I'm kind of begrudgingly at this point where I'm like, all right, AI is here to stay. I'd rather just play nice with it. I took the very unpopular opinion because I tweeted this out and I got a lot of heat for this actually, that I took the, the do not crawls off of my websites.
I'm like, Hey, I crawl me. We're good. I'm done. I'm just going to figure it out. We're going to like find a way to be happy together. And a lot of people said, no, you got to fight the revolution. You know, you got to stand strong. You can't let them steal from us. And I, I totally feel that way. I totally get it, but I also have to find this happy medium of like trying to embrace AI at the same time.
So. Jared, I'm not even sure that like a hundred percent of people listening even want to be cited in the AI for me. Like I need any traffic I can get right now. Right. But like, I'm not sure everyone shares my opinion. It's picking between two
Jared: bads. You know, like that's really what we're at the day. It's like picking between two bad outcomes that don't suit your business model or suit your objectives.
And you just got to pick which bad option you want. It's um, it's frustrating. Right. Um, I agree with you. Shout out to Lily. I know. Could this really
Morgan: for this? Like that is really solid.
Jared: Yeah, it is interesting. It's one of those things where I don't know. I've only imagined you kind of discover it once and you're like.
Well, that's interesting. But then you kind of like, well, I'll look at a few more and you're like, wait a second. Like, oh my gosh, this is so bizarre. Uh, okay. I got to move on. We have one more topic. We got a couple minutes, so let's just fly through it really quickly. I mean, you know. We're turning into uh into the celebrity gossip corner of the industry here if we're not careful So we'll just touch on it really quickly, but wordpress.
Hey, it's kind of is a celebrity gossip of the week So let's make sure that we at least wade into it. What's going on this week. We brought you the story last week and um Hey, what do we know? Uh, this story hasn't gone away. We don't think it's going to go away for a while. So, uh, I guess the high level cliff notes of this week is in latest move, uh, against word, uh, WP engine WordPress takes control of the ACF plugin or the advanced custom plugin.
Um, you know, basically, hey, we got this ongoing dispute if you've been living under a rock, maybe a reference last week, we kind of went through it in detail, but we got Matt Mullenweg against WP Engine. And this week, he basically, um, announced that WordPress has forked the ACF plugin, rebranding it as secure custom fields.
This move was prompted by. And I'm just reading, uh, I believe security concerns and a desire to remove commercial plugin, which WP Engine had been managing, um, WP Engine expressed frustration, claiming that the plugin was taken away without their consent, uh, setting a concerning precedent for the WordPress community, um, and, uh, Mullenweg, uh, WordPress defined it, uh, defended the decision, excuse me, citing their plugin guidelines, which allows such actions for public safety.
Um, yeah, it's just more of the same. It's just more, uh, drama. Um, you know, on the side of Mullenweg, he believes that WP Engine is not contributing enough to what is going on in the WordPress repository. Uh, you know, I mean, you can have those feelings, but overreach would be. An understated approach to what he's doing.
This is just the latest in that like we said this isn't going away I mean, I think the big question We'll just get your opinion on this because this is kind of the thing that I think has been going around like every with Everything that happens each time the question gets asked like is this going to change?
WordPress from being the dominant solution. And is this going to restructure open source web as we know it, or is it going to be annoying and for the general user though, not a big deal.
Morgan: Without having any stats. Um, I can tell you most people just from what I've seen, everyone's talking about it. It's like the latest telenovela, you know, like it's all very fascinating to watch, but will this really move the needle?
I'm not so sure. Uh, I think the, the best explanation I heard was over the weekend. I, I was telling Jared before the podcast, I attended a, uh, like a board game conference of sorts. And it attracts a certain sort of, um, geeky, uh, kind of person. And so like half of the room, we're all Yeah, it's weird. Right?
So half of us were all like in the tech world in some way. And the general consensus there was very much just, uh, this is just a bunch of egos and it'll just fizzle out eventually and go back to normal. So I, I'm not too worried about it long term, but then again, you know, I also was really excited about the helpful content update before that came out.
So like, don't, don't look at me to predict the future.
Jared: Or you're, you're not helping. You're not helping our podcast ratings here. When you tell people, this is just nothing more than just a brief little spat, you know, like, uh, you gotta feed the ratings here. You know, we're in, we're in the news business now.
I'm not sure if you heard.
Morgan: Oh yeah. Sorry about that. Okay. Let me get my comment, put my commentator hat back on.
Jared: Nevermind. I kid. I kid. Yeah, no, I mean, going back to that question about is Google or Google resorts worse, like what does the general public think? And here we've been saying for years, Google results are worse.
And. It would seem the general public's just catching up, if at all. I mean, to your point, like, I don't know, maybe, um, maybe nobody cares. We'll have to see on that one. Um, yeah, well, let's leave it aside. I I'm sure next time you're back, we'll still have WordPress drama. I don't think it is going away anytime soon.
I suppose maybe it could be, who knows? It's just, uh, it's the, the, it's the story that keeps on giving. We'll, we'll leave it at that.
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Jared: Um, Hey, we're talking side hustles. Uh, like I said, I don't like having to go first year because I have seen your side hustle, uh, prior to this, but I will say that, uh, such is life.
And, uh, you know, we move on. Um, My side hustle is today, an update on Amazon influencer. Um, you know, it is Q4 now it is middle of October. Um, and, and, you know, we say Q4 is a good time for Amazon influencer, but really what we're saying is like mid November to like mid December, like maybe third week of December, it's when people are buying.
Stuff for the season of giving, but also like the season of discounts. So I say it kind of goes both ways, right? And Amazon being the largest e commerce brand gets a lion's share of those purchases. So I'm prepping for Q4 now. I got a Q4 under my belt last year with my first year on the Amazon Influencer Program.
So just a couple updates. First off, looking back at September, Um, ended up at, uh, last time I talked about it, we were just about to finish out the month, but ended up at just under 3, 000. So a couple of bucks under 3, 000 for September. Um, and so, you know, not one of my better months this year, but looking back on it last year, September was one of my better months last year.
Um, October though, interestingly enough, is already off to a really good start. So we had, Prime deal days. I think I'm saying that right. They do this now every year for a couple of years. Now we're in the beginning of October. And so I had a couple of 250. 275 days as a result of that, you could argue that it's not a big deal because most of the time sales leading up to those days are a little lower.
So you could argue it's a bit of a wash, maybe a little bit of a bump. Yesterday, some random Wednesday in October, I had my first 300 day of the Q4 season. Um, and for me, that's great. I mean, obviously if I could have 300 days, every 300 days, every day, I'd, I'd be You know, be making over 9, 000 a month in the program, uh, back down to like 125, 140 a day.
But it's just kind of that sign of what's to come. It's such a good reminder. You know, I mean, that's a 10th of what I earned in all of September. I've already had a couple 250 days. I had a 300 day yesterday. So we're really kicking off October really, really well. And hopefully that builds into the next season.
So what did I do? If you follow me on Twitter, I did post about this. I got down, actually I got it down a couple weeks ago, but I started filming all the Christmas stuff. So, um, Christmas wreaths, uh, Christmas garland, uh, children's Christmas books. This is all the stuff I've been focusing on this week. I got 11 videos done on Monday.
I have another 12 or 13 to do. Um, uh, later this week and, uh, uh, so I'm recording all my Christmas videos in anticipation of Christmas. I'm probably a few weeks behind if I'm being honest. And then my final little fun, fun little update. And um, uh, I don't want to share it yet cause I'm sharing it in my email, uh, my weekend growth email, uh, tomorrow.
I don't know if you heard about this, but I took 18 months of data. from my first 18 months in the program. And I uploaded it into chat GPT IO, the one that is built to, to, to reason and work with mathematical equations. And I asked it to predict how much it thinks I'm going to make in the 30 day period of Q4 following black Friday.
And it gave me a number that I, at first I was like, I am not going to make that much. Then I asked it to tell me how it got arrived at its path. And It makes a ton of sense. And if I make this much, I will be really stoked.
Morgan: Okay. Interesting. I would love to know that number.
Jared: Let's just say it's just shy of like, it's in, it's, it's nearing 10, 000.
Morgan: Oh, I
Jared: know it's
Morgan: exciting,
Jared: you know, it's, it's not 10, it's not even nine, but like, it's up there. I, I still think I'm not going to come in that high, but all the math makes sense. And so it's really interesting to see, but, um, it's funny because, and I'll just finish on this and you ask me any questions you want, but I just got done telling you about how encouraged I am about the first few weeks of October.
Obviously I've been very encouraged by last year's Q4 results. And so then I'm. You know, pooh pawing the predictions that, when you look at the math, look like they make sense, but to me feel like there's no way. So I'm almost talking myself out of it without really actually listening to the sentiments I've had going into Q4.
So it's weird. I keep going back and forth, going like, this is no way it's going to work out. Oh my goodness. What if it did work out, but it again goes back to what I've said in September and before, like doing the prep for Q4, I've got to stay focused. It's my busy season at my agency. We're absolutely slammed with work, but I have to try to find the time to make these videos and try to make sure I put my best foot forward because there's so much opportunity on the table.
Morgan: Also follow up question, uh, is your house now decorated for Christmas?
Jared: No,
Morgan: since you had, since you had to film all this stuff, did you just like take it out, put it up, put it back in the box?
Jared: I thought about it. My wife is so, uh, yeah, she loves decorating for each season. So it is full fall around here.
There's orange and pumpkin and jazz everywhere. I could never get a Christmas thing up, but there are stacks of boxes out in the garage about Christmas. I don't think I'm going to put them back up in the attic to be honest with you. I think I'm just gonna leave them in the corner of the garage and we'll just deal with it for a month or two until we put Christmas up.
Morgan: Yeah, that would be me. I've not pulled that stuff out twice.
Jared: It was upside the Christmas tree up in early October and slightly annoying knowing that I was going to take it right back down to be honest with you.
Morgan: So you, you really did the whole tree, you put the whole thing up, decorated it and put it back, take it back down?
I ain't doing that. No way. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right.
Christmas came early this year,
Jared: just knowing that we're going to put it up and put it back down again. But I mean, maybe I could have taken out of the garage fully, fully built and set up. I didn't think about that. But yeah, no, it's Christmas. It's not Christmas early yet. It's just get down to Christmas stuff early is really the only season we have.
So.
Morgan: The kids are all excited and confused. .
Jared: I know, right? No, we didn't. We didn't put the music on yet. There's no, there's no way to make an Amazon influencer video about the Christmas music, so we're not quite all the way in yet.
Morgan: The friends would come over and be like, oh, you guys celebrate Christmas early.
No, my daddy's an Amazon influencer. ,
Jared: there are no, I be Christmas lights up year round. You know, you wouldn't be the first.
Morgan: No, I know. Yeah. I mean, it's fine. Honestly, that's really exciting though. And again, it's a reminder for me to kind of get my butt in gear, you know, cause I've not been filming a lot lately.
Um, and I am excited for what the future holds. You know, I think that seeing that Q3 slump, like we talked about last time I was on totally normal. I see that as well, even in, um, retail related affiliate sales. Key four is usually humongous. So I'm super excited to see what Amazon influencer holds. But I mean, I'm still seeing like decent.
I mean, I'm making like even my worst month on Amazon influencer. I made like 500 bucks. And again, I barely even have 250 videos on there. And like the last few videos that I made were just kind of, you know, we used to be testing stuff that I knew probably wouldn't get a good return, like trying to do like some cheap products, like vertical videos, that kind of stuff, just to like see what would work.
So I've not even been doing it highly strategically and still making 500 in passive income a month. So yeah, I'm really excited to see what Q4 holds for you and how accurate that, uh, the AI is.
Jared: I'll share the number. Uh, it's fun to tease it a bit, but, and we'll see. I mean, who knows, like you said, you weren't right about the HCU.
I could be totally off AI. I could be totally off on this prediction, but it is fun to talk about. I don't know. Fun to see fun to do that investment. It's a good time to be on Amazon influencer just because of the e commerce buying patterns with that out of the way. What have you got for us on your side hustle?
Morgan: Well, I wrote a book. So on the visual podcast, I'm showing off my book right now. Now this is actually just the author copy. Biswet has like a little, it's got like a little gray stripe around it. So it's not for resale, but on the podcast, uh, about a month and a half ago, I think now on this podcast, I talked about as a blogger that was hit by the helpful content update and had a lot of my content basically like de ranked from Google.
My traffic is like. 90 percent down, uh, on both of my big websites, I thought, all right, what's another way, because I genuinely feel, especially on my freelancer website, as I talk about sometimes on this podcast, uh, that I have content that is actively helping other people and people are always asking me for advice on the freelancing topic.
So I decided maybe the best way to actually get this out there. Was to put what I had already written, um, into an actual book. Now y'all, I will tell you, this was a bit of an undertaking, but what I did is I took every, yeah, I mean, honestly, I, I thought I, I kind of, uh, I underestimated it to be totally honest with you, but I really, it's kind of amazing when you start putting it together.
Like basically what I did is I took. All of the top articles that I had, most popular articles that were really working before my site was more or less deranked. I made an outline. I did use chat GPT to sort of help me reword things a little bit to make them sound a little bit more book like to have better segues, better intros, you know, taking out any acknowledgement of being on a website or on a blog, that kind of stuff.
Reformatted it. I mean, guys, I mean, I don't know how many people listen to the visual version of this podcast, but. Showing off his book, it ended up being almost 200 pages long. Now I do have some workbook here. It's a real book.
Jared: It's, it's a real book. It's like a
Morgan: real book. I mean, there's like a ton of stuff in here and it's wild to me seeing this in print and also thinking about how accidentally over the years.
I, without even meaning to, I did write a book from just having a website, which is pretty cool. Now, before y'all get too excited, Oh, and I should say that I was, this is now currently live and published on Amazon KDP. I don't know if you want to click on the link and show everybody, but it is currently live.
Yeah. I'm so used to not sharing
Jared: things on our side hustle section. I do. I have a link here. Here it is.
Morgan: So this was just like released, I think, a couple of days ago and available. I've not even announced it on my Twitter yet. So y'all can buy it. Um, I've not made any money since this is literally the first time I have spoken about it on this podcast.
So, you know, we'll see how it goes. I can't say how effective this is going to be. Um, But I will say it is, it is so far very satisfying and also very exciting. I mean, just to physically hold like what I've been working on for the last three years, like in my hand and see a fruit of my labor. Um, there's just, I can't really describe the feeling, honestly.
It's, it's such a good feeling and it's such a hopeful feeling. And it just makes me feel like, well, you know, after the helpful content update hit my website, I just felt like all that work was just for nothing. It was all for not. And now I have this tinge of hope that maybe that's not true. Maybe it's, it's still very valuable.
Maybe it's more valuable this way than it ever has been. I have a real physical product now, Jared.
Jared: Well, we talk about. Hey, like for all the people whose sites have been hit by the helpful content update, like there's so many different ways to, I don't want to say reuse, But I think repurpose is probably the best broad term to describe what you kind of did here.
Um, and by the way, I've never met anyone who wrote a book and said it was easy. They always say, they always say it's harder than it sounds and harder than it looks.
Morgan: Oh, and by the way, just free plug, it's called 10 day Upwork jumpstart guide. It is also a workbook. So it has like form fields and stuff.
Anyway, it's mostly about how to get started freelancing on Upwork. Um, I, uh, last time I was on the podcast announced, I just crossed the earned 700, 000 threshold on the website. So, um, and even cooler when I announced I was going to write the book, one of my Upwork friends, Evan Fisher just reaches out. He goes, Hey, can I write your forward?
I'm like, yes. I didn't expect that. He's made two, he's made 2 million on Upwork. So you've got like, you know, 2. 7 million of advice right here in this book. It's pretty exciting. Um, and it was also exciting to see even just talking about doing it, the excitement that that generated. So hopefully that will translate in sales.
I mean, if it doesn't, you know, it's fine. At least I experimented with it. I'll definitely report back though in future podcasts for sure.
Jared: Well, everybody take 10 seconds and help Morgan satisfy the Amazon algorithm by going and typing the book name and Morgan's name into Amazon. At least we can do, if you're not going to buy it.
It's okay, but at least we can go type 10 day Upwork Jumpstart Guide, Megan, uh, Morgan Overholt.
Morgan: Morgan. Don't type in Megan. Morgan.
Jared: Morgan. Don't type that. Type Morgan. My goodness. Um, into, into, uh, Amazon and, uh, and then if, you know, we'll let Amazon's amazing conversion metrics at that point, hopefully help get you some sales.
Morgan: Aw, thank you. Yeah, I'll let y'all know how it works.
Jared: One question. Can I ask one question about it? Because this is the thing that I've always been asking about. Did you self publish or did you find a publisher to kind of help you with it?
Morgan: Oh, this is all print on demand through Amazon's KDP program. So these books are literally just printed as they're needed.
So Amazon will take a cut. I can't read the exact percentages, but it's honestly not that bad. Um, like in fact, if I want author copies, which I do plan on like ordering a handful of myself and then also selling them directly from my website. So I'm going to do that. I don't want to hold like a lot of inventory, but I'll hold a little bit cause I also want to, you know, sell them directly too, but yeah, you can still make like a decent commission off of this.
So,
yeah.
Morgan: So, and that way I don't get stuck with a bunch of inventory, you know, it's not like a big risk for me. The biggest risk is my time. Cause I don't have like a lot of actual money into this, you know, nobody
Jared: really
Morgan: into this just time. So yeah.
Jared: Just time and time you have for the most part already spent for the website.
So exactly. Hey, congratulations. I mean, you know, it's amazing You're uh, you are really doing something tangible with your uh, your content from the helpful content update that got nailed Which is a very apropos topic here. So, um to weird niches Uh, like I said, I have not even looked at yours. So I, I, I'm, I've just clicked on it, booted up, but I, this might be the first time I've never even looked at it.
So we will get that, um, just in the moment. Uh, mine though, I'll go ahead and share mine to start off with here. Got a lot of tabs. Let me get it up. Uh, mine is, uh, let's see, what's the domain name? I know the title is the, uh, rcdb.
com. I'll say it again. It's a short one. R C D B. This is the roller coaster database. And yes, uh, that, that's kind of what it is. It's, uh, in classic niche pursuits, weird niche vein, definitely a site that looks like it was made a while ago. Um, you know, not gonna, not gonna win any awards for design, but again, not a bad site actually kind of has a little bit of, uh, I don't wanna say like Wikipedia, but it's, it's, it's.
Lot of internal linking and it's almost it's his directory. So it has a lot of the same things and it The home page is just a random roller coaster from around the world And basically this database has I don't know if it's documented every roller coaster in the world But it's documented a heck of a lot of them If you go if you go down a little bit, it has latest editions.
And so I mean it's getting updated It was updated yesterday with a roller coaster in Poland, uh, the day before with a roller coaster in Spain, earlier this week with a roller coaster in Brazil, uh, it's got videos. I don't know if you can. Yeah, I think it's a video of you going on the roller coaster. So maybe people video themselves going on the roller coaster and upload it here.
Um, if you go up here. They have reports, so you can click on a report and you can get a report about, um, roller coasters all over the world. Um, it's their statuses, if they're up, if they're down, the type, like steel or wood, um, if they're sit down, suspended. Uh, you can go to, let's see, where is it? They have, oh my goodness, where is it?
Uh, Oh, about this site. Um, I went here to learn about the site. I learned nothing about the site, but I did learn that they list every single photographer, I think by name. Uh, so if you're watching the screen, there's a list of hundreds of photographers. Um, might be a good way to get, they don't link to you, but they do, they do mention your name.
This is
Morgan: like the credits for a Marvel movie. Yes, it is. This is a very long credit screen.
Jared: You know, if you believe in having your name mentioned all over the web, then this is a good way to get it. I would think we've got, I love this, but I saw this name. I had to call it JC, Jason Pennypacker. That is the coolest name ever.
Um, if I go over to the AH refs graph, I mean, I have to say, I thought this site was so niche, like there's no way it's going to be getting that much traffic. You know, I. Um, sites so many, um, I referenced so many sites on here, but if you go to Ahrefs, it is a DR 60 ranking for 46, 000 keywords, uh, and 50, 000 organic searches per month.
And it's just trucked along. Look at this. This is the last year. All those Google updates. It's right where it was last year. Um, if I click in. How we look at the keywords, um, you know, it's, it's ranking for like all these rollercoaster names. So falcons flight, um, it ranks number five for the search term rollercoaster, which is a 67, 000 a month search term.
Um, here's one that smart Phoenix rising bush gardens. It's not number one for that. Um, most of its rankings are at the bottom of page one or below. Um, so, you know, it could probably do a lot better if it updated. I think perhaps the most. Ironic thing to me about it or, and something we see a lot on, on, on these weird niches, it's not monetized.
Like there's no monetization that I can tell. And so I think that, um, I mean, I don't know how much traffic they're actually getting, probably more than the, uh, 60, 000 that, uh, 50, 000 that age trust predicted, but, uh, you know, they certainly can be making a little bit of money if they put ads on here. I think a lot of people wouldn't mind those ads at all.
Morgan: Uh, yeah, I would think so. Yeah. So I do wonder how they're making money. It's really interesting, but I mean, it seems pretty accurate. So, um, Yeah. So I actually just looked up on the website of roller coaster that I'm familiar with because y'all know I'm from Tennessee. So I looked up a lightning rod.
Let's start lightening rod from Dollywood. And I mean, it's, and I looked this up specifically because lightning rod is a notoriously, uh, is it ever changing coaster? They basically launched it years ago and had a lot of downtime because it's just like, so technologically advanced that they're constantly having to like, change it and fix it and swap out the track and swap out components.
And so it even changes classifications over time. So I wanted to see how accurate this was because I knew it would be a challenge, but the description of it actually seems to be keeping up with Those challenges, like it's calling it a hybrid. It talks about the construction. It talks about, um, the, the, it says chain lift heel, which it did not used to be like literally last season.
It was a watch and now it's chain lift. So, I mean, this is very like up to date. Uh, surprisingly so, I am surprised though that people are like this organically, um, searching for roller coasters this way. As somebody who literally runs a travel blog that focuses pretty heavily on Dollywood, I don't often see a lot of queries come in about specific roller coasters.
So the amount of traffic here does surprise me, but I suppose, you know, take a lot of small pieces, put them together as a whole and yeah, we're getting some traffic here.
Jared: I feel like YouTube makes more sense for some of these search terms, but maybe a lot of people just do these searches in Google. Maybe they're looking to understand, like, do I want to go on that rollercoaster?
Do I want to go to that amusement park? Is it suitable for my kids? Is it I'm with you? Like I've never searched a rollercoaster ever in my life. I have in front of me. This is cool, too. This is like a world. Report of roller coasters. It's like, I don't know how they get all this data, but apparently China has 1, 848 roller coasters, which I believe that means accounts for 28 percent of the roller coaster population or number of roller coasters.
They give us the country population, uh, 1. 4 billion people, basically. So we have the density of roller coasters. They even came with their own metric. I think they came up with this cause I've never heard it before. Roller coasters per million people, the RCMP data point. And, uh, Morgan cared it well, it's on screen.
So, uh. I can sort by the most roller coaster, uh, the most roller coasters per million people, and you might be shocked to find that that is in Andorra, the country of Andorra, uh, and it beats out every other country by a margin of four to one.
Morgan: That is never a metric I've used in my entire life. Maybe I should start.
Roller coasters for people.
Jared: Rollercoaster is primarily because of the RCMP, uh, uh, uh, number. Maybe
Morgan: I should move there. I mean, I, I'm actually a bit of a rollercoaster fiend to be honest with you guys. So I'm kind of into this, like, you know, but I need to move to one of those high concentration cities.
Jared: You did mention it.
I'll, I'll kind of close on this. Although, You're the second time that we've kind of had some, I don't know if you heard last week, uh, we, we talked about, uh, or maybe it was two weeks ago, two weeks ago, we talked about McBroken and, uh, Thomas actually went down to his local McDonald's to see if it was actually accurate.
This week, we've got you testing the accuracy of a website against, um, a roller coaster, you know, very well. So I appreciate it. We're getting better and better at these weird niches with, with, with you guys coming on board. But I mentioned it was kind of Wikipedia esque, but you kind of touched on it. Like.
It's not that it looks like Wikipedia, but it's, it, it looks like the moderators or the editors, like it looks very updated very frequently. It looks like it's the only way I can describe it. It's probably a passionate group of people that really care about roller coasters.
Morgan: This has to be a lot of manual pull too, because I don't know of like another online database where they're getting this information.
And that's just like a lot to keep up with. That's an impressive amount. I mean, again, with, with my example, I mean, anybody local to like East Tennessee knows exactly how many changes that rollercoaster I referenced has gone through over the years. Like it is constantly under construction and constantly being swapped out and the fact that they have the most accurate information, pretty surprising.
I'm impressed.
Jared: All right. Well, there you have it. I think, you know, it seems like a good site. Throw some ads on. Make a little money, but, uh, what am I?
Morgan: Let's go.
Jared: All right. What have you got for us, Morgan?
Morgan: All right. Speaking of Atlas websites. All right. Mine's a little bit different this week, y'all, because this is not an obscure blog.
Oh, wait, I actually pulled, I have another one prepared. So that was my backup. I'm so sorry. That one is just, Oh, that one's funny. My backup, my backup was going to be unlucky, uh, unlucky search, but which is just gives you the last position of the Google searches or the first, but I felt like I couldn't really say much about that and had no monetization.
So I switched.
Jared: All right. So the new one. Okay. Hold on. I got it now. I got it up. Hold on. And there you go. All right.
Morgan: All right. The new one is called wait, but why. com now, this is like I said, not an obscure blog, it is actually quite a famous blog. Um, but I didn't know about it before yesterday. And I think there's a really interesting and important lesson to be learned here from what they have done, which is why I wanted to feature it on today's podcast.
Also quick shout out to my new friend, Rohan, who said he wanted credit for giving me this idea because I pulled a Jared and I phoned a friend on this one. So thank you so much, Rohan for this one. Always a good little cheat when you ask your friends to start doing your homework for you. Love it. Anyway, this site guys, you'll be very interested to learn.
40 authority score according to SEMrush, 640, in organic traffic from Google, but 1 million monthly readers total. All right. So not getting the majority traffic from Google and almost all the traffic. According to Simrush, this is does that this site receives from Google is branded to either the brand name or the author.
Think about that. Over 40, 000 clicks a month. Just people searching for this brand and this author name. We've been talking a lot lately about the importance of building a brand online. We know. from what we have seen with the Google algorithms, the importance that they place Google places on branding in the SERPs.
If you want to be positioned, if you want to be featured, this site doesn't even care about SEO outside of their brand. None of their articles feature any kind of SEO terms. Like if you read some of their, their titles here, Like, like the most recent article says why I lugged my 27 pound toddler to a rocket launch.
He has titles here that are just like four words. Here's a title, a short history of my last six years. That's the kind of stuff he's writing. And the more I went down the rabbit hole here, the more interesting the site became. It's only a three person team. This site was founded in 2013 by Tin Urban and Andrew Feen.
Hope I'm saying that last one right. It covers an eclectic variety of topics, including artificial intelligence, outer space, procrastination. But the underlying theme here is all long form content. We're talking like 10, 000 words per article in some cases. It's practically its own mini book and illustrations that are just crude stick figures.
That he, that Tim Urban, um, has basically become known for over the years. His monetization, even more fascinating. Y'all hold on. He tried AdWords years ago when he was at the height of this to see what would happen, make good money, decided they were ugly, removed them, took them off. He has no ads on this website.
Uh huh. Could you imagine? I don't, I don't, I don't have the nerve for that, but all right. Instead, he decided that he, I know he decided that instead he just wanted to create content that was so good that it would create a cult like following. And it seems from what I've been able to discern on the internet, that's exactly what he's done.
His monetization. I was able to do a little bit of, you know, scoping this out. I went down to such a wormhole. I was almost, I was listening to the podcast. So like I went down to giant wormhole, I apologize. So he has 5, 700 Patreon subscribers.
Jared: Yep.
Morgan: He sells merch and he also does public
Jared: speaking. Yep. I had the
Morgan: merch up earlier.
Jared: Yep.
Morgan: He also has books and a YouTube channel. If you want to know how he makes most of his money though, even with 5, 700 Patreon subscribers, he said on a good year, his public speaking alone, public speaking gigs that he gets from the notoriety of just his blog posts are usually more than what he earns with Patreon and merch combined.
He's a public speaking is basically his main source of income because of this blog. In fact, one of his most notable public speaking gigs was a TED talk back in 2016, which garnered over 66 million views and is considered to be the third most watched TED talk in history. Really? Tim Urban, Tim Urban says it takes him up to 60 hours to write some of his blog posts.
Yo, that was my reaction to that. And he says that his key blogger metric, he calls this a key blogger metric, is how to, he said, let me quote this, how much people like it when you're in their brain. He said in the scale he uses when he thinks about writing anything, this, this, how much people like it when you're in their brain scale goes from uh to meh.
To mildly positive, to strongly positive, to obsessed. And he says it's the obsessed level that he tries to get to. Because he says the difference between strongly positive and obsessed. And obsessed is a 10 times return versus a 100 times return. I'm just fascinated by this entire story, Jared. I mean, I might be the last person on the internet to find this website.
Cause apparently this is like a massive cult following situation. I just wasn't aware of, but to me, it really kind of got the wheels turning. When you talk about not worrying about Google, not worrying about keywords and just creating that fan following. You know, that cult like following and a brand for yourself.
Jared: I have it up in Ahrefs here and it's a DR 79, right? I don't know why backlinks couldn't load, but that is a powerful site. It is only getting 20, 000 organic searches per month. I mean, for a DR 79, that is way below what you would hope and expect. But to your point, I mean, we talk about how traffic from Google with just ads on it, or even just affiliate offers, or even just selling mugs is one thing.
But if you can. Move that revenue up, up, up the chain, right? Which is what he's done with public speaking and all the other things he's doing. Well, then those metrics don't matter as long as he's converting it. It sounds like that's exactly what he's doing. He's got a lot of different ways. He's also got an email list.
Um, I'll, I'll go back to that. He's got an email list here. See, I think it said over 600, 000 people are on his email list is what it said. Um, and so one of
Morgan: his books was, uh, one of his books was endorsed by Elon Musk. Apparently.
Jared: Yeah. Here you go. Join 601, 000 other humans and have new posts emailed to you.
So he's not really running a newsletter. He's just basically sending you his email or his content. It sounds like. Um, yeah, boy, this is a guy's built a brand, uh, in and of itself. Yeah.
Morgan: It's also interesting to see that Ahrefs and SEMrush had completely different data on that because it had like double the domain authority than half the traffic.
So I am curious which one is a little bit more accurate about that. But again, it doesn't matter because for him, that's just all branded traffic. Like he, it's just like, ah, keywords, whatever, who needs those. I'm just going to write whatever I feel like.
Jared: Yeah. I'm just going to do
Morgan: me.
Jared: It's fascinating because it's, it's, it's like, you know, a lot of it, he does rank for some kind of, I'm looking here, the wait, but why life calendar life in weeks, which is, you know, a lot about his calendar and stuff.
But, um, uh, uh, I've heard of this website before. Um, I've heard of people buying the life in weeks kind of thing to hang up in their house and stuff. As a matter of fact, somebody I met. Um, at the ConvertKit conference I went to earlier this year, uh, had that and featured that and talked about that. Um, so I've heard of it before.
It's a great weird niche because this is weird. It's very bizarre, right?
Morgan: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's very weird. I mean, like, again, you should, you guys, if you just saw the topics he's writing about, it seems to be pretty much whatever strikes a balance. I mean, he's funny though. I was reading his articles. I mean, he's basically like a blogging comedian and I haven't really seen this in a while.
Like genuine, just funny, long form content that somebody just poured their heart and soul into. And it's just a genuinely entertaining read. So yeah, it kind of gives me, you know, hope and it makes me kind of think about things a little bit. You know, there is literally a world out there for traditional blogging that doesn't involve ads, that doesn't involve Google search.
He's just out there being awesome and enjoying himself. And he even said in one of the interviews I was listening to earlier today that he doesn't even want to get that big. He says, he's just happy being a small team and just, just making enough money. And, and because he gets to, gets to keep what he loves, actually what he loves instead of turning it into too much of a, you know, a business.
So yeah, it was just like, so pure. I don't know. Just like, so, you know, I just wanted to bring something like pure heartfelt to the podcast today. Cleansing for your soul, some of the listeners. Yeah. Like something just to think about, you know? And I realized like all these people with like review sites and stuff, you might not be able to find that cult following.
I totally get it. But for some of us, I do think that maybe we could probably pivot just a little bit to, you know, have more of that following to write more of what we feel like versus worrying about Google. I'm just saying,
Jared: well, and you learned a valuable lesson on the niche pursuits podcast, Morgan, which is that there's no shame in taking help from others.
So I'm glad to see that you're starting to expand your horizons. It's good to get that first one out of the way. Now you'll just be accepting any weird niche that anybody has to offer you going forward. I'm sure of it.
Morgan: Please sign into my DMs. It was far easier having someone else do my homework this week.
Thanks.
Jared: It does make it easier. My, my business partner, Caitlin actually gave me the rollercoaster site. She said her husband loves this site. Hi.
Morgan: Oh, okay.
Jared: I didn't. I learned from the master. I didn't find it. I didn't find it. Thank goodness, because it was a busy day. Uh, speaking of busy, that hour flew by.
Morgan, thanks again for joining us. Um, uh, we'll be back again next week, guys. Same place, same time. But in the meantime, enjoy your weekend. Thanks for joining us.
Morgan: Thank you so much. Always a blessed.
Spencer: Hey there. Thanks so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Did you know that Jared and I are members of a private group called the niche pursuits community.
And today I want to share with you how you can join for just 1. The niche pursuits community is a private members area for niche online publishers. To mastermind and grow their businesses together. We hold weekly calls live with experts where you can ask questions. These experts share tips on Amazon influencer, Google discover, building email newsletters, getting traffic from Facebook.
And other strategies to grow your online business. You'll also be assigned a mastermind group of four or five other people in a similar stage in business as you dive deep into your business issues and get your problem solved. If you use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get your first month for just 1.
Go ahead and give it a try. Come join me, Jared, and lots of other digital entrepreneurs. Inside my private group at community. nichepursuits. com and be sure to use coupon code podcast. I'll see you on the inside.
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