Hope For Google Helpful Content Update Recovery?

Welcome back, everyone, to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!

As always, Spencer and Jared offer a quick overview of the most important news items affecting content creators, publishers, SEOs and entrepreneurs.

On this week’s podcast, they decide to lead with positivity, kicking things off with potentially good news for sites pummeled by the HCU. 

Recent comments from Danny Sullivan and John Mueller suggest that sites may see a recovery with the next core update, whenever that may be.

Should we believe them? Find out what Jared thinks about all of this. 

Also, Spencer has some very interesting insider details about this, so check out the episode to find out what he knows that may or may not affect you and your site!

Watch the Full Episode

Moving along, they talk about Google usage over time. 

Studies show that people are spending more time looking at search results compared with 5 years ago. So what does that mean exactly? Are people dissatisfied with the initial results, or are they more savvy? Or, is this a strategy from Google?

Spencer and Jared have a few theories about this. And Spencer shares some stats that are completely shocking to him. Tune in to hear it all.

The next news item is about the site The Wirecutter, which is owned by the NYT and has come to be an example to follow in affiliate marketing over the years. 

Spencer reveals how the site has seen its visibility decline following the HCU, potentially losing half of its traffic. 

According to Jared, they are seeing a very slight uptick recently, according to Ahrefs, which could be a sign of hope for others.

As for Shiny Object Shenanigans, Spencer goes first and talks about the challenge he announced last week where he’s trying to earn $1000 from a new Facebook page in one month.

He’s currently 10 days in and nowhere near $1000 in earnings, but he does highlight some positive results of his experiment so far.

How many followers does he have? What’s his ad spend so far? What interesting and potentially profitable advice does Jared offer him? Tune in to hear all the details!

When it’s Jared’s turn, he talks about a strategy he’s using to try to revive traffic to a site hit by the HCU with a newsletter and a Facebook page.

He also shares his stats and progress from the last 7 weeks: Facebook followers, ad spend, email subscribers, cost per lead, etc. 

He’s also working on a digital product that he wants to sell to his audience. What’s going well and what’s not? Check out the full episode to find out.

Then it’s time to discover some weird niche sites. Spencer shares Million Dollar Homepage, which was created by an entrepreneur in 2005 with the goal of selling pixels on the homepage to earn a million dollars. 

As it was an unusual idea at the time, the creator got some press coverage and was able to sell out all the pixels and he did, in fact, earn a million dollars. 

What happened after he reached his goal? How is his site doing now? What did he go on to create? And did his success streak continue or did it die? Check out the podcast to find out.

Jared then shares his site, US Beer Labels, a DR19 website created in 1999 by a guy who collects and trades vintage beer labels. It only ranks for 242 keywords and gets minimal traffic.

What’s Jared’s theory about this very niche website? What’s so fascinating about it and what can we learn from it?

And that concludes another episode of Niche Pursuits News. Thanks so much for tuning in! We hope you feel informed and inspired, like every week.

See you next Friday!

transcription

Spencer: Welcome back to another episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And Jared and I were just talking about, maybe there's a little bit of hope with some Google recoveries coming up. At least there's been a lot of talk in the SEO industry. And in particular from a couple of Google representatives that Uh, makes us believe that maybe there's potential for recovery with the next Google core update, uh, for those that maybe were hit with helpful content updates.

So we're going to talk about that, uh, in addition to a couple of other things that are happening within Google SEO, uh, and you know, that Entire industry. Um, but then in addition, Jared and I actually have a couple of really interesting updates. Um, some of us are doing more successful, uh, being more successful than others with their side projects.

But, uh, I am actually excited to talk about my Facebook page. Um, I talked about it a little bit last week. I'm going to talk about it a little bit more, uh, the progress that I've made. And then finally, we're going to talk about a couple of weird niche sites here at the end of the podcast. But first of all, Jared, I'm going to welcome you.

Welcome you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm 

Jared: doing very well. Uh, you know, the flip flop continues. I'm back in my home office, back in our usual space and, uh, good to be. I mean, I'm excited. I was telling you before we started recording, I mean, I feel like, uh, you know, a lot of the news hasn't been positive of late and, uh, You know, we're, we're reaching a bit, but this is a positive conversation we're about to have here.

It's about time. 

Spencer: Yeah. We're going to lead with positivity here in this podcast. That's right. So we need a little bit of that. And so, um, there has been a little bit of chatter. And so let me go ahead and, uh, share my screen here. Um, a few people have talked about this, but Marie Haines had an article. Um, Which here we go, uh, that's titled, there's still hope for September HCU impacted sites.

Okay. And so both Danny Sullivan and John Mueller have both made some comments on social media recently here within the last couple of weeks. That basically has said that, uh, sites that have been impacted by the HCU, the September HCU. And I've got a graph on the screen here that, you know, is pretty typical for sites that were hit really hard.

It's just this nosedive, um, that there's still hope that they might recover. And now I know that this has been a long ongoing thing that initially people thought, Oh, Maybe after a couple of weeks or a couple of, um, updates, right. That people would see this big recovery. Uh, but now we've got, uh, some, some additional, you know, comments that say, Hey, it might be the next core update.

We'll help even more. Right. Danny said, as. To the inevitable, but I've done all these things. When will I recover questions? I'd go back to what we said before. It might be the next core update will help as covered, you know, in a particular, uh, reference here. And so the actual tweet that, uh, is referred to, um, this is Danny Sullivan, Google search liaison.

Um, he basically says that, Hey, the helpful content system or update It is no longer a separate system. It's all part of the Google core algorithm. And so when they do core updates, core ranking updates, that's when you might see a recovery. And so we don't know exactly when the next core update will be.

But Danny mentions here that we do several. Of those updates during the year. So, uh, when did the last one finished Jared? Uh, end 

Jared: of April, early May, wasn't early May when it was the really 

Spencer: long one. Yeah. I think maybe it was early May. March core update finished in May. If I, yeah, 

Jared: the double Ms. 

Spencer: Yeah. And so, uh, it still is probably going to be at least a couple of months before another core update rolls out.

We don't know the exact timing, right. But it, it is something like three to four times a year. Um, that they do have these core updates happening. So, um, and John Mueller also said something, you know, fairly similar in that, Hey, look for the next core update. Um, why does this give you hope? Why should a website owners, you know, sort of listen to the Google search liaison when it feels like they've been wrong so often.

Jared: Because they're directly addressing it, that's unlike them. Normally they dodge. Normally they give very, uh, almost innuendo in their response. They'll say something like, well, you know, when the, the reason that you could take hope from this is because they're getting direct questions about helpful content, update, hit sites, and the fact that none of her covered.

And they're directly addressing it. Uh, here's John Mueller and his, um, tweet, which you just scrolled past there, but 

Spencer: yeah, 

Jared: I can't make any promises, but, and here's the quote that I would, I kind of pulled the team working on this is explicitly evaluating how sites can and will improve in search for the next update by on this.

I believe he's talking about sites that could update from the HCU. It would, and then quote to John, It would be great to show more users the content that folks have worked hard on and where sites have taken helpfulness to heart. That sounds like someone who's speaking. In a way that wants sites to recover and wants to have examples of it, and they have a team that is working on it.

That's why you could find hope in this. We haven't heard that language used yet. We've used, heard very different language. Now, to those of us who've heard language from Google like Danny and John for almost a year now, and it hasn't turned out to be true, there's that as well, and we can get into that.

But, but certainly from a hope standpoint, those are the things I would say you could hope on. 

Spencer: And I do know that behind the scenes and I can't share everything that I know. Uh, although I don't know anything, you know, a little insider, all right. All right. I simply know that, um, certain people have emailed Danny directly and gotten responses from him.

And I've seen some of those responses. Um, and so I won't. Share who these individuals are, but I know that Danny and others are taking very specific things to the search team and is definitely working with both, you know, bloggers and the search team to try and, um, improve things. And Danny has agreed with.

The people that have been communicating with them, that these are issues. Your sites should be doing better in certain circumstances. Right. Uh, and so I do feel like they're looking at this problem more directly and that with all of the backlash, uh, that Google has received all the, all the way from the PR nightmare with the AI overviews to, uh, wall street journal articles and Lots of other articles that we've talked about sort of negative PR surrounding Google results are not great.

You know, we've got to append Reddit and that sort of thing. Um, Google, they want to get this right and there's so many small publishers and other people like us that are bringing up that, Hey, there's a lot of search results that are just not great after the helpful content update. I think they want to take that back and they want to improve the search results 

Jared: to your point I mean the the number of pr disasters they've had in their hands in the last 18 to 24 months I mean, you didn't mention the antitrust lawsuit You didn't mention the fact the studies that google that usage of google is down.

I mean, there's so many problems the botched gemini launch, um Having to pull that back because of uh racial innuendos and things I mean, there's so much of a pr nightmare and we know that this type of content You Helping small publishers succeed has always been a great PR play for them. That's why you did a YouTube video on even the fact that they've used this in their PR in years past to highlight the small publishers that they love and then destroyed.

It's a good PR move for them, but they can't seem to get their algorithm in line with what they're hoping for. 

Spencer: Right. So, um, I do, I do, Have reason to believe that there is hope. You know, we can't guarantee anything, but for what I'm seeing publicly and what I've seen, like I said, a couple of emails, uh, privately that don't reveal any big thing other than they are working on this, they're aware of issues.

They are taking it to the search team. And you would hope that somebody over there is listening. They're going to make actual changes. Um, I do believe that there's hope. So, um, 

Jared: well, and I don't think anybody expects. For every site to recover like certainly we understand there are definitely some sites that deserve to be hit hard From the helpful content update.

There are some sites that used to rank That were not helpful. And so a reset of some sort, isn't what people are frustrated about. People are frustrated that not one single site has recovered. And that makes it punitive. That doesn't make it, uh, uh, an update that's targeting helpful versus unhelpful content.

It makes it a completely punitive and overreach of what they're targeting. 

Spencer: Right, exactly. And, and the hammer that came down with this helpful content update was severe in terms of penalizing entire sites. And that is a big piece of it that I feel like could be rolled back instead of just penalizing entire site, penalize the individual article, right?

D rank that one article that you feel isn't as helpful. This has played out very explicitly when a lot of sites that were hit with the awful content update. If you do a site search, if you put. Whatever your site is. com plus a key phrase. You know, you want to find a result specifically on this website.

That's not pulling up in Google, right? Like that is people are looking for your site plus whatever it is, right? If I were to type, um, niche pursuits. com plus make money online, right? Like I clearly want to read an article on niche pursuits. com about making money online. Google. Is not niche pursuits wasn't hit, but for example, if it was hit, that result would not show up anywhere in the top two pages, right?

And so something like that. 

Jared: Quote air purifier. 

Spencer: Yes, exactly. 

Jared: And not that that site was de indexed, but to, to your analogy and to use a story, that's been a URL that's been taught touted quite a bit, right? 

Spencer: Exactly. So, uh, those are, there's a lot of the things surrounding this update. A lot of discussion. Uh, so hopefully we'll see an update in a couple of months and we'll see some actual recoveries.

But I do feel like there's a little bit of hope as Marie Haynes here says. That uh, there's still hope for september hcu impacted sites. So I agree 

Jared: one year anniversary. What do you think september 2024? 

Spencer: Why not sooner sooner than that would be better But 

Jared: if nothing else right, let me put this to you this way spencer if you had a site that was creamed by the hcu And you got wind through all your little contacts.

Apparently you have that in September of 2024, there were going to be reversals coming. Would you dive headlong into improving that site right now? Or would you say, nah, I don't buy it. I'm going to wait it out and see what happens. I'm going to wait for a sign of something recovering before I put any time into that side of mine.

Spencer: You know, I, I would put some time in to try and recover things, right? Like depending on the size and scale of the site, that's a monumental job. Maybe it's just pieces of the site. Uh, but I would, I would put effort into it if I felt like an update was imminent, that would actually roll back some of the helpful content update.

Jared: Because fair or unfair, I think all of us, for the most part, could look at our sites and we know of things we could do to improve them. Interesting thought. 

Spencer: Yeah. All right. Well, that that's our hopeful news story of the day. Um, that's it. That's it. You know, um, this next story that we'll cover is, is kind of related in a way.

Uh, this is a survey that was done. Um, That's posted here on search engine land about people and their Google usage, how they're using Google over time. Do they see better results? Are they visiting multiple websites? Um, how valuable are they finding the results is essentially kind of, you know, what they were coming to here.

Um, and, uh, So, uh, it says, uh, their conclusion is basically a majority of Americans are spending more time searching for services online today than five years ago, and they're frustrated about it according to a new survey. So, um, looking through more search results, Let me rephrase this. Respondents were asked which part of the process of searching for services online was most frustrating to them.

And the top three were looking through more search results, coming up with the right search term and visiting multiple websites, right? Um, A majority of respondents said they look through more search results compared to five years ago, 54 percent said they're spending, looking at more results, um, 27 percent are saying they're looking at less search results, 20 percent about the same.

So I, I would call that, you know, significant 54 percent are spending more time. And what this tells me is that, Hey, if they have to spend more time looking at search results, they're clearly not happy with the first result that they're getting. on Google. And so they're going to multiple websites. Um, they're looking at Comparing different websites and, uh, that could be sort of an, um, you know, a response to how well our Google search results people are having to look more.

So maybe Google is declining in quality, right? That's one conclusion to this type of survey. Uh, another conclusion could be that people are just more savvy now. Maybe they're more savvy searchers and they realize, Hey, I actually want to get answers from multiple, uh, websites. I want, I want to see multiple search results and be able to compare.

Um, what are your thoughts on some of the survey results? 

Jared: There's so much in this. It really, it doesn't, it doesn't hit you when you first read it, but when you start digging into it, kind of like you did, there's so much in it. Um, I thought Danny Goodwin, who wrote this article here, said it. Really? Well, users have increasingly frustrated.

Users have been increasingly frustrated by Google search quality. And this is further confirmation. We're not imagining it, which we've talked about despite Google telling us that people love AI overviews and search results. And here's the Google told us search usage is increasing due to AI overviews.

And remember that's what they've been touting. Like, we people love this stuff, but is that because they're researching more deeply or because they just can't find the doggone right answers? Right, exactly. This goes back to that bounce rate argument. I, I have this conversation with a lot of clients, like, you gotta look at the page intent because it's very common if you have enough, uh, a, a a, a bottom of the funnel buyer conversion focus page, that the bounce rate's gonna be high because we will get to the page and they get what they want.

Um, and then they leave to make the purchase, like an affiliate article doesn't mean that the page is poorly performing. Whereas if you have maybe an informational article where you want people to take. Further steps inside of your website. It's very different. Um, and then we have wrapped into this. So this idea that search results very well could be worse, which is why it's, the results are showing the way they are.

But then you have the fact that we all know that the more time people spend on Google, i. e. the more people are bouncing back to the SERPs, the more money they make from ads. 

Spencer: Mm hmm. They sure do. And, 

Jared: uh, how can you separate that? Like, how can you separate that if I make the results a little worse and I have 93, whatever it is, percent market share.

So. You're probably not going anywhere else. And unless I do something really stupid, if I make the results a little worse, we make 10 percent more in ad revenue. 

Spencer: And I feel like that's something that we talked about. Wasn't there a, a leaked document from the DOJ case? I feel like the DOJ case, the head of search, um, at one point that basically said, what you just said is like, Hey, how can we get people to search more on Google and Maybe it's to clutter results, make them not quite as good to have more things show up right to have them keep coming back for more is a way to get more display of ads 

Jared: to your point.

I wish I had in front of me. I don't think we're really surmising much. I think that did get come out 6 to 9 months ago in that D. O. J. Case that there's some connection there, right? And you know, It makes sense. You know, what's harder at this point to cram another ad into that SERP result. I mean, they've crammed every ad they can find in there.

I don't know where they find more space for more ads. Well, what's the most likely way to get your revenue up is increase the number of search results. 

Spencer: Yeah. So, um, yeah, it sounds kind of fishy, but, uh, One other thing that I found a little bit surprising here is a low PPC ad relevance. So only 12 percent of respondents said search ads were relevant to them, which is kind of surprising.

They're searching for that specific thing, right? Um, more respondents said they encounter more relevant ads on six other channels. Television being number one, 41%. That is. Shocking to me. It seems like television is the place you would see the least relevant ads of all places. Who did they survey? 

Jared: A bunch of 80 year olds here?

I mean, I agree with you. Exactly. Yeah. 

Spencer: So, uh They're the only 

Jared: ones who had time to take this survey, you know? I don't know. I'm with you, like I don't even watch much tv and I don't know anyone in my generation that watches much tv And when I get ad results, they're always just a complete mess 

Spencer: Yeah, you know or even if it's through streaming services, right whether it's hulu or netflix, you know, or some other sometimes ad supported show like it's It's a general ad, right?

Like it's a, it's a Geico or a tide or a 

Jared: prescription medication. I don't actually really need 

Spencer: that does tend to come up, uh, as well, that, uh, is not relevant, but, uh, apparently these respondents are saying television is more relevant than 

Jared: it's because they're not even going to Google anymore. Maybe, I don't know.

Spencer: They're apparently they are on Instagram and Tik TOK, right? They get more relevant ads there as well. So. Okay. I, I just think it's really interesting, but the headline here that 54 percent of people look through more search results versus five years ago provides a lot of thought provoking questions. A lot of what we brought up here already in terms of, does that mean search results are getting worse?

Does that mean searchers are getting more savvy? What does this all mean? We don't know exactly other than, um, the respondents to this survey did specifically say that they are frustrated. And that's why they're searching more and looking at more websites. So, um, just sort of another one of sort of those interesting things to think about as we talk about this industry as a whole, 

Jared: it's another good reminder.

If you're in marketing that what did Mark Twain say lies, lies, and statistics. Something like you can always take a stat and kind of make it work to your advantage or work to tell a story. And it's interesting when you come at. It's a headline like that, like you said, like there's so many different ways to slice and dice it.

It's hard to know what this really means, but uh, it's, it's fascinating nonetheless. 

Spencer: Yeah, absolutely. And so, um, maybe the last news story that we'll cover here, it feels like a little bit of a continuation of some things that we've already known, but it's a big name. 

Jared: I found some hope in this story, Spencer.

I haven't even told you about this yet. 

Spencer: Yes, I continue with the theme. So I have some hope here. Very good. So hold on to that because we've got a big name, the wire cutter, which is now owned by the New York times, of course, that, you know, affiliate marketers have looked to the wire cutter for years as like, this is an example of a high quality website.

They do great hands on reviews. They provide. published this great content and Google historically has ranked them very, very well. Um, however, Glenn Gabe just shared a tweet here, uh, just a couple of days ago that had some, some graphs that show that since essentially the helpful content update, the visibility of the wire cutter has been decreasing sort of just month after month.

Um, you know, September of 2023 now here to, um, you know, we're in June 2024, I mean, the visibility is dropped by like something like 50%. Um, based on, you know, what I'm seeing here, just based on this tweet. So there's been big drops in the, uh, SERPs, right. Um, And there's a lot of, you know, updates that have been related to this, you know, the Google review update system core updates.

So all of this is apparently impacted. What used to be looked at this very high quality, um, type website. So what's your positive spin on this one? 

Jared: It's really interesting. When you look at the, um, screenshots that Glenn Gabe provided, the visibility index, uh, in the last month in particular has continued to plummet.

You know, we see these plummets from September with the HCU. We saw another plummet around December. We know there was a, one of many core updates that time. Then we get into the March core update, which really hit sites around April, early April, we've, we see in trends and then you see this plummet in June.

But ironically, if you go over to the AH refs chart, you see a very different tail, and if you pull that back out, and I actually went to wire cutter in age refs and looked further, you can see that it's starting to actually pick up in the first two weeks of June. Uh, this screenshot was taken, uh, maybe a week ago.

Maybe a little less. And so if you actually look at it in today, it's definitely on the uptick age reps to suggest that their organic traffic has actually gone up by about over 10 percent by, uh, in the last two weeks. And if you go look at the keyword changes from today, uh, versus say a month ago, they are picking up a lot of number one keywords that used to be a spot six, seven, and eight, four for very affiliate focused terms.

Like I have right up here, they've gone from number seven to number one for hiking boots. Um, number four, number two for pressure washer, number three to number one for best electric toothbrush. And the list goes on. So. You know, again, nowhere near recovery, 10 percent recovery, given that they've lost, I don't know, arguably about half their, their, their affiliate traffic over the last year is, is, is nothing, but still perhaps signs of hope.

Spencer: Very interesting. I was going to try and pull it up real quick while you're talking, but I didn't get there. So, uh, we'll just have to take your word for it, but, um, that is good. I mean, that's a sign of hope. Anytime you actually see what appears to be a sort of a reversal, um, after a big dip. 

Jared: A content site, uh, increasing in rankings and obtaining number one rankings for affiliate style, uh, keywords would be welcome news to all of us, even if it is the wire cutter, which we know is downright impossible to beat.

Right, 

Spencer: right. So, um, so there you go. I mean, that's one. To kind of keep your eyes on. This is like I said, a website that a lot of people have looked to affiliate marketers have looked to over the years of sort of an example of how to do it right and how to do it properly. And so if we can see some sort of uptick or change, you know, increased traffic, getting new number one rankings like that.

That's great news for all of us because we at least have something we can emulate and try and, you know, follow and hopefully see similar results with our own websites. So that's why we wanted to kind of share at least, at least this story, um, is to kind of, Hey, this has been a leader in the industry.

What's happening to them. What can we do different? 

Jared: Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, certainly we all have, um, uh, a lot of us listening. We'll have different, you know, product review websites or play an affiliate marketer, these sorts of things. But to your point, when you look at the wire cutter, they've always been kind of the penultimate in terms of a company that does it right.

And they're also tied in with a big, they're also intricately tied in with the New York times, which is not, uh, uh, a product review website. And so it's always been interesting to see them hit. And if you look back historically, they actually weren't hit that badly by this helpful content update. It was actually this year's March core update that really, really sealed the deal over that really pushed, pushed them down.

Much more. And so just continue this theme of like, man, no one's safe. Even being hosted on a domain that stands for the most trusted news website in the world. Can't make your content safe. We know it's good content, but it's even hosted on a domain. It's not really an affiliate domain, but anyways, um, hopefully we're starting to see signs.

Yeah, 

Spencer: exactly. So we'll keep everybody posted on that as well. Um, that pretty much wraps up our new segment, uh, of today's podcast, but we do have a couple other segments that we hope you'll stick around for, uh, as usual, we have our shiny object shenanigans. A couple of side projects that we're working on.

And so I'll kick it off with what I'm working on. This is a continuation of what I talked about, uh, last week a little bit. Um, you know, kind of on a whim last week, I shared that I decided to start a brand new Facebook page and try and see if I can make a thousand dollars from this Facebook page. Within 30 days.

And, uh, as of today, I'm officially 10 days in to this project. Uh, I'm nowhere near a thousand dollars in earnings, but I have gotten a lot of traction in terms of new followers and I'm learning quite a bit. And so, um, I'll just share my screen that gives my latest update from today, uh, that I just published.

Give some of the stats because I've got, uh, that attached there is, uh, okay. So current number of Facebook followers, this is as of last night. Now I'm over currently right now, I'm actually just over 3000, uh, Facebook followers, my current earnings. I'll talk about this 7 and 83 cents. My current expenses about 300 bucks, right?

So my expenses come down to me, um, running ad campaigns to try and get page followers. And my goal has been to try and get page likes or page followers for five cent a like or less. But unfortunately, all of my ads have been at about 10 cents. It's kind of what I'm averaging overall is about 10 cents. Um, a like, which is, I'll put that as like, okay.

Uh, but I would like to cut that. Costs in half. So I'm still testing out ad campaigns. Um, I've been testing out a lot of different, um, post types. So the goal again is I post stuff on my Facebook page. I try to get a lot of interaction. And then every once in a while I post something that actually links to my website and when they go to my website, I make money from display ads.

Jared: Right. And, 

Spencer: uh, So I've, I've gotten some clicks right to my website. Uh, if we take a look at this image here, 

Jared: I've got 

Spencer: a total of 630 link clicks and, um, it's, it's not a perfect. Analytics, but it's close, right? About 630 people have come over and, uh, that leads to the 7 and 83 cents in display ad revenue to the best.

I don't quite have the report for Facebook traffic, you know, sectioned off in media vine. It has to be one of your top five traffic refers. Um, And you have 

Jared: about the three hours to go figure out how to find it in Google analytics for. 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's, this is pretty close. I call it an estimate because it's not perfect.

Right. But it's either way, it's nowhere near the thousand dollars in earnings. So, uh, but that's okay. Jared, um, I'm not going to quit. Uh, you know, I'm just at the point now where I'm building up the page. Um, you know, by the end of the month, it's going to be five, somewhere between five and 10, 000 followers.

And hopefully I've landed on different post types that perform really, really well. I do feel like in the last couple of days, I've actually figured out a couple of post types that are getting a lot more engagement and comments. Um, I have one now up that's probably just about 100 likes and something like 40 comments on it, right?

And so for a brand new page, less than 10 days old with really not that many followers, like that's pretty good. And so I feel like I'm learning some things that will work now. That's, I need to figure out how to convert engagement to website visitors. And that's it. You know, I'm still working on that.

Jared: Well, I mean, we keep referencing this upcoming interview with Andy Skraga that's going to get released, but uh, I don't have my notes in front of me, but Andy would, would say on the podcast coming up that you do want to spend the first couple of months in a perfect world building engagement before you start trying to get people off the Facebook page and over to your website.

Yeah, yeah. In a perfect world. He's right and, uh, 

Spencer: that, that's, um, 

Jared: Which it looks like you've broken up good engagement. A hundred. I think you said interactions and this thing is 10 days old. I mean, that's positive news. That's good. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. So, like I said, I feel like I can build a page with a lot of engagement.

I'm landing on things that work well in this particular niche. Um, and if I fail, if I don't make a thousand dollars, like I don't feel that bad, this is a self imposed challenge. I'm not trying to prove anything to the world. I'm not a Facebook guru. I'm not an expert here. So if I fail and everybody thinks, Oh, you're no good at Facebook.

It's like, well, I. Never said I was good at Facebook. I just thought I'd do this challenge. So, um, so it's okay. But if I end up at the end of this with a page following of close to 10, 000 people that is very engaged, and I only made 50 bucks, like. I'm, I'm cool with that, but I like having that goal, that carrot to dangle out in front of me to keep me working hard every single day, uh, to have something to work towards now, uh, in a future podcast, I'll dive deeper into this, but.

I could see myself getting this page to a point where it gets accepted to the Facebook bonus program, and then it can actually make money directly from the Facebook page itself, and that could get really, really interesting. Um, I do have another Facebook page that was accepted, uh, just over a week ago to the Facebook bonus program, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the earnings there.

Um, I'll maybe share that, you know, next week, share the type of earnings that I'm making on that, uh, page. But I could see that translating to this particular project as well. 

Jared: And a question here, because I was going to go down this road, this rabbit trail, then I realized, you know, there's, there's really two types of Facebook, you know, I talked about this, my newsletter yesterday, which we'll go into here in a second on my side also, but there's Facebook organic, and then there's Facebook paid.

And are you, you're paying for followers. But things, things to me that I think of that could help you drive a thousand dollars of earnings this month are, uh, click arbitrage, um, adds to specific higher RPM pages, which really is click arbitrage and then adds to affiliate products or because those are going to typically be a higher pain per visitor.

Then an ad, like an ad is going to pay you 30 bucks per thousand visitors. So you've got to get a lot, but can, what about driving some targeted paid Facebook traffic to affiliate products on your, on your website here? Is that, is that okay? Is that something you want, you would want to try or click arbitrage, just trying to get that ad revenue, but on really high RPM pages for less.

Earning less than earning more than you're spending on the on the clicks. 

Spencer: Oh, I like it jared That's that's a good idea. You know, that wouldn't be breaking any of my rules Your only rule 

Jared: is I don't remember what your only rule was 

Spencer: I really didn't have any I don't think you had any come to think of it.

Yeah, i'm making it up as I go Uh, that's a good idea. I actually know somebody believe it or not that has a profitable facebook arbitrage Page I do too. I do too 

Jared: Yeah, I mentioned it yesterday in my newsletter and I got a couple of emails from people who said I'm doing that very successfully right now.

Matter of fact, one person, this is so interesting. They, they use it, they didn't even tell me how profitable they were, but they use it to drive traffic to get their ad revenue up to where they get into Mediavine premium. Or pro as they call it. So you get a higher payout. Uh, smart. 

Spencer: So there's a lot of ways to skin that cat there, but I like this.

I'm going to try this basically to clarify for, for people listening. I think this is what they're doing is you take one of your Facebook posts and then you boost it, right? You boost that post. You could run an ad for it too, but same concept. Yeah. So you can do, you can do both basically. Yeah. So I'm paying people to look at my Facebook post essentially.

And in that post is of course a link to my website and you hope that, Hey, I spent 10 bucks to get a thousand visitors. Yeah. Whatever it is, you know, to look at this thing and I make 20 bucks on my website. I'm going to try it. Mark, you should right here. And 

Jared: if you're in media vine, you can go and look at your highest RPM pages.

Um, you know, and so you can kind of see the ones that per visitor tend to get the most amount of money for media. And by the way, it's very widely disparaging in terms of like there's pages on your site to get 10 X, 20 X, the RPMs than other pages. And many of them get two to three X, the average RPM of your website.

Spencer: I like it. I'm going to do that. We could talk about this a whole hour, but, uh, I'll report back in a week. How's that sound for podcast listeners? They can check that out. And as you said, it's pretty easy. You just kind of click boost, you know? Yeah. Yeah. For the most part. So why not? Um, so if people want to follow along more closely with this project that I'm doing for, you know, for the next 20 days, but I imagine I'll do this longer, uh, they can join the niche pursuits and see my website.

Exactly. They can see the Facebook page and they can see the website. They can see my ads, whatever you want. Join the niche pursuits community. It is a premium community. Uh, but you just go over to community dot niche pursuits dot com. Uh, we've got a couple other people that are just starting new Facebook pages and working on it.

And actually some people that are very successful have shared their own sort of ad campaigns that work really well for them. And so a lot of exchanging of ideas over in the community. Join us over there. If you want to see everything that I'm working on in real time. 

Jared: Well, um, I'm telling a little Facebook today too.

I actually sent out a, um, uh, an exhaustive email yesterday to my list. All 

Spencer: that email, if 

Jared: you read it, you probably had to have about 20 minutes, but it was just shy of 3000 words. And it was outlining this new project I'm doing. And basically the first seven weeks I've been doing it. So if you're not on my email list, it's weekend growth.

com. A little shout out, but you get this kind of content. I'll just go over a high level of it. But again, I went through every jot and tittle on every 3000 words of it, of this new project that I've talked about in the side hustle segment here over the week. So again, just to kind of put in perspective, seven weeks ago started, um, an email newsletter and subsequent Facebook page to revive.

Traffic and earnings to an HCU hit website of mine. Um, I built an email newsletter for the, um, existing content, and then I've been using Facebook ads to gain email subscribers. I'm also building page followers to that Facebook page, similar to you, um, through ads, uh, I'm using convert kit for managing email lists and I'm using, um, I'm going to start using AI.

To create future content to publish on this site. So some metrics on where it's at now, that Facebook page I talked about, I'm just ahead of you, Spencer. I've had a headstart. I've had seven weeks. I'm at 3, 700 followers. Nice. Um, but I'm spending about four to 5 cents per like. And again, that does tend to make sense.

If you're following along, the slower you go, you tend to pay a little bit less per action as it were. And so I'm at about four or 5 cents a like you're at about 10 cents a like or follower kind of same thing. Um, I'm now at like 3, 300 email subscribers. Uh, and I've been able to get that to about 0. 54 per lead on average, but because I started around a dollar a lead, I, you know, and you do the trend line, I'm actually down to about 0.

34 a lead right now. Um, so I'm very impressed with that. Um, And then now we're, we have a funnel that, you know, over 3, 000 people are. And so what it really comes down to right now is about testing different types of emails, seeing which types of emails work, seeing which types of content work best, because the goal is to drive people over to the website.

And get them on the website because that's where I earned the ad revenue model just like you talked about Um, yeah, and then a couple updates that are coming soon Um, we have weekly meetings about it. Um, I have you know, we have uh, Ryan, who you know on the 201 creative team He's helping us build out and it's almost done all the content's done.

We're just getting to design now Which is a digital product that we're gonna sell Um, inside the email list. And we're going to test out pricing. Um, and we're going to insert that in hopefully next week. So we'll start testing if people want to, you know, buy that. Um, and then I did experiment a little bit with the ad arbitrage we talked about for your site right now.

And I got, I got mixed results, so nothing really to report on that. But I, it's on my mind. Why I suggested it to you is because. Um, it's, uh, it's something that I tried, nothing successful yet, but it's on my mind to try to dial in and refine going forward. 

Spencer: Yeah. No, that's good. So, I mean, that's, that's huge.

It's been seven weeks. You have 3, 300 email subscribers in less than two months. 

Jared: Yep. I had zero to start with. That's incredible. And just over 2, 000 in total on it. So about 1, 800 on the new leads and about 200 and change on the followers. 

Spencer: Why would you say you've been able to get the cost to come down from over a dollar a lead now to really close to 30 cents a lead?

Uh, two reasons. 

Jared: Um, testing. You know, I've, I've gone through, I sent in the newsletter yesterday. I sent out a screenshot of all the different ad campaigns I've tried and shut down at all the different ad campaigns that are still live. And I, I didn't count, but it's somewhere between 15 and 20 different campaigns that I've tried.

And so like, if you think you're going to launch an ad campaign and that's that, and the price will just go down, that's not why the price is going down, testing different formats, different calls to action. Different, um, sequences, different, you know, target demographics and audience sets and all that. So that, that you just find some that work.

It's, it's a bit shocking. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Jared: Just test and improve. Right. I was sharing this with a couple of colleagues, uh, in one, in one, it was the exact same copy, but it was an orange background for the graphic versus a blue background for the graphic. And one outperformed the other by 10 X. Wow. I know. Wow. I let it run for a week.

It's not like it was just a day. And I, you know, just had a weird set of, it was a week and it looked at it. I'm like, oh my goodness. 

Spencer: And these are all lead ads like Facebook lead ads. Is that correct? All lead ads. Yes. All happening. All the opt in. Everything is right within the Facebook. 

Jared: And typically you'll get a cheaper conversion on a lead ad.

Some would argue that because it's easier, The quality of the lead isn't as good, like making them take more action is actually better. Some would argue that I, I don't have a bone to pick either way. I'm just kind of like, Hey, cheaper leads. Let's see if we can make it work on cheaper leads. And if we can't, then we'll try something different, you know?

Spencer: Yeah. Ooh, very good. So within the next week, did you say you'll have a product actually? God, I hope so. That's the idea. 

Jared: I hope so. Yeah. Either way next week, it'll be early days to report on its action. Um, now one area I am struggling. So you and I are having almost opposite problems in many ways, but I am not getting great engagement on my Facebook page from an organic standpoint.

Now again, I'm using ads to drive people straight to be a subscriber, but I'm also building up followers. With the intent of also driving organic Facebook traffic to the website. That's a secondary goal at this point. Whereas with your site, I say it's a primary goal right now. You're getting engagement, but no clicks.

I'm not even really getting much engagement now. I've only focused on doing it for the, uh, for about a week or two. Now I was really focused on dialing in the ad sets and all that recently have started to turn into posting content regularly, try to get organic. Organic just engagement. And then someday we'll convert that into clicks, but yeah, I'm only about a weekend on that.

So the result's not great so far, but it's only been a week. 

Spencer: And your, um, engagement type post, like without any links, like, I know, I don't think I posted 

Jared: one link to the site just means. Uh, kind of like you talked about, like, kind of like what you shared in your status post with like backgrounds and all that kind of stuff.

So, so anyways, I'll be sharing about the trial of the air on the weekend growth newsletter that goes out every week and I'll keep people updated here. But that's kind of my challenge next is to try to get better engagement on Facebook and then just see how we can make money on this digital product with those 3000 plus subscribers and growing.

Spencer: I love it. It's good. It's inspiring. It's good to see you trying new things, you know, taking some action and throwing something at the wall. Like I say, see if it sticks 

Jared: now, Spencer, I 

Spencer: have to ask you. 

Jared: Because you're a, you're now you're a member of that niche pursuits community. Are you not? I am indeed. I am a member.

There are some great tips in there. One of the tips that I got was to change out in terms of adjusting these ad units frequently was from Andrew in the community. That's where that came from. And, you know, he was really encouraging about it. You got to change everything out constantly and try to try all sorts of different things to get these different results.

And that's really what started that path of going from like a dollar per lead down to the, you know, 30 cent mark or whatnot. So, you know, you ought to jump over there and. You know, ask some questions. There's a lot of discussions going on. There is. Yeah. There's a lot of people doing this, which is why it's so fun.

I agree. I find myself over there at least once or twice a day, just checking in and seeing what other people are sharing about results and stuff like that. Awesome. No, 

Spencer: very good. Hope to see more people there. Um, so let's, let's do our couple of weird niche sites, uh, here. Now I'm going to share one that you've probably heard of.

I feel like it's a classic. It's one that. Um, a lot of people have heard of it's old, but it's still around. It still exists, and we've never talked about it on the podcast. And I think that maybe it'll spark an idea for people, hopefully. Um, but the website, the weird niche site that I'm going to share here is million dollar homepage.

com. Uh, so this is a website that if I share, just put your blinders on. I mean, it's just, I mean, it's, you know, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on here, but, um, the initial idea. Created by a person. I forgot his name off the top of my head. Um, I should probably look that up. It is, uh, Alex two in 2005.

Uh, he created this website as a way to fund his college is the way he built it. He says, I'm going to sell a million pixels on this essentially thousand by thousand pixel homepage, and that's going to, Be a million dollars. I'm going to make a million dollars and you get, you can add. So we went out to businesses and say, Hey, you can be one of the, you can buy a minimum of 10 by 10 pixels square, which is, you know, really small, uh, or you can buy more and that will give you ad space.

And you can see there's all these things, you know, free hosting, uh, copy DVDs, download movies, um, cheap CDs, web hosting, you know, there's a lot of things, there's the hundreds, maybe. Thousands of businesses that have all, uh, advertised on this website, but because he, it was such a unique idea at the time, and he got some press coverage within less than a year, he had sold out every pixel and made his million dollars.

On this website. Uh, now we'll look at where this website is now in a second, but I think the story is actually kind of interesting. He decided after creating this website and making a million dollars, he ended up dropping out of school. To not go to college. That's exactly what happened. I just noticed this.

There's a big host skater, uh, logo here. Look at that. Uh, so that business still exists, but he took some money. He started up another business that I'm not sure how successful that other business did. But then in 2012, he, with a partner, he launched calm. Now calm is a like meditation app or, uh, and, and yeah, it's an app that People sleep, right?

Either music or quotes or soothing voices or sounds or whatever. And that has been extremely successful. I think, uh, over on their Wikipedia page, it even said, uh, yeah, in 2017, they've done, they did 22 million in revenue. Uh, and I don't know if they've given any updated numbers. Other than they're still doing extremely well in November of 2022.

Calm had 4 million paid subscribers. So, uh, he went on, he took the money, the education, the whatever, uh, the clout from the million dollar webpage. And he parlayed that now into an extremely successful career. But, uh, this niche website, it's funny because. A lot of these businesses no longer exist. Oh, yeah.

Uh, so a lot of these links now go to dead websites, but I found one at least. HostGator is there that I didn't see before. Every time you look, you see different ones. Um, and, um, there is Waldo. I'm afraid to click on this. That's the only problem here is, uh, I click on it. Oh, it is actually going to go there.

Maybe, maybe I won't do that, but there's, um. I see Yahoo. I see eBay. 

Jared: I see some sites. Yeah. Yeah. I do like, um, you know, Spencer, right there in your screen in the upper left, there's a nice big heart. And when you hover over it, it just says, this is the biggest heart on this page. Yeah. There you go. I don't click on it.

Cause that doesn't look like a good site to click on. I, 

Spencer: yeah, I'm, I, I don't want to click on a lot of these exactly, but a lot of them are dead links no longer exist, but. What is also fascinating is if we go over to ahrefs this still gets like, uh 10 000 organic visitors a month here. We are almost 20 years later.

It's still getting or is it organic clicks and again? It's mostly clicks Coming from people just searching for a million dollar webpage. They're just kind of looking up the history of that. That's the only thing they could possibly rank for. And then, uh, if I go to a similar web, uh, you can see that, uh, in the last three months, it's gotten about 250, 000 visitors.

Uh, not that that matters, right? He made his million dollars and isn't making a dime more after that. He's not selling any more pixels. Uh, but it's still getting, you know, 50 to a hundred thousand visitors each and every month, all these years later. So kind of just a fascinating story. Uh, one that I, you know, I knew about maybe even back in 2005.

I don't know when it first came out, I kind of heard about it, but, um, just kind of a cool story, somebody that made a million bucks with just a single So there you go. 

Jared: You know, it's rare that we get to, um, usually on these weird niches, we are always trying to figure out the monetization path and the way to grow it, right?

It's rare that the monetization path has been solved and gotten paid before the website even went live. Yeah, 

Spencer: exactly. Thought of the monetization first. Talk about getting paid first in life. Yeah. So probably a lot you could learn from this particular website, but it does make you think, I mean, 

Jared: this.

Conceptually feels more like just, you know, the person who sold pet rocks, like just somehow figured out how to convince the tulip craze from Europe. I mean, it just feels like that and more power to him. Yeah. 

Spencer: Why not? He, uh, had a great idea and he capitalized on it. Made a million dollars. So 

Jared: he knows what he's doing.

He also started a very successful app following guy, not exactly a one hit wonder sort of scenario here. Totally. 

Spencer: Very good. When did you say this all happened? Uh, 2005. Yeah, it looks about that time period. Yeah. 

Jared: A lot of green and purple in there. Yeah, a lot of good looking pixels. A lot of good looking pixels.

Well, um, my site has been around for equally as long, Spencer, my weird niche. Wow. Probably not quite as compelling of a story. Depends on who you talk to, I suppose. Does not have quite the, uh, traffic that yours has either. Uh, shifting gears, our, my weird niche this week is usbeerlabels. com. And, uh, well, 

Spencer: as 

Jared: you would imagine, this is not a very, uh, mysterious URL.

It is a site that is all about beer labels. As this gentleman says, Thor, I began collecting old beer labels in 1982 and started this website in 1999. Wow. My beer label inventory. I didn't know those three words went together. My beer label inventory is one of the largest in the world. I'm always buying, selling, and trading vintage beer labels.

You can contact me about your beer labels by clicking the sell beer labels tab, the top of this page. Uh, this website looks like it was made in 1999, I might add. Mm hmm. Um Walked down memory lane. Quite. We have quite the walk down memory lane today, don't we? Um, uh, I did a little domain search on it. The domain seems to have been registered in 2004, so don't know the discrepancy.

These were early days of the internet, so maybe it was before you even registered domains, you know? You just kind of sent a pigeon carrier to get your domain registered or something in 1999. I'm not really sure. Um Mm hmm. Uh, if we talk about metrics and kind of how it's doing, you know, um, uh, it's, it's a DR 19.

It hasn't picked up a lot of, a lot of links over the years. Uh, it ranks for a, a collective 242 keywords. And I can basically say that it gets a traceable amount of traffic. Uh, your screen, it's dropped 10 keywords since I prepared for this. It's now down to 232 and the traffic is a whopping 29 visitors per month.

Um, when you look at it though, it does rank number three for vintage beer labels. So, you know, it does have first page rankings. Um, just not a lot of traffic searching. Yeah, let's, let's be honest here. Um, they do have some info content. So, um, I was looking at this page here, uh, pre prohibition, uh, beer labels.

Uh, this is about maybe a hundred words. That's about what info content looked like back in the day that you had to write to rank it. It takes a few more words nowadays to rank, might want to add a header or two. Um, uh, so, you know, I don't think this would be the go to resource on pre prohibition beer labels.

Um, I'm having a lot of fun in general. Okay. So, um, one more fun thing. If you go to that FAQ page, Spencer, um, the guy promises that he's just redesigned the entire website. This page and others will be updated shortly. I think you'll be surprised. Uh, he says, um, so I'm not sure if this is the updated website.

If it is, I think he missed his decade. Um, my hunch is he just never actually pushed publish on that update. 

Spencer: Never got around to actually updating the, uh, redesign. 

Jared: Now, all joking aside, we featured sites like this before, and I'm trying to, I'm racking my brain, but this is not the first time we featured this off the wall.

What was it? We've done a 20. Um, and a James Bond niche, and uh, like really off the wall kind of stuff that actually has passionate collectors. Remember that we had like the, saw like the, the Star Wars Legos or something, remember that? 

Spencer: And then the, the, the, the 20's era vintage clothes, or style. Yeah, 

Jared: yeah, and these people we didn't know how successful they were, but they had monetization paths and a lot of it was focused around the buying and selling of this collector's stuff, this vintage stuff.

And so I got really excited because in the footer, there's a link, uh, and I'm trying to find which one it was to an Etsy, not an Etsy store, an eBay store. Um, and lo and behold, I go and I click on it and I'm so disappointed because the eBay store, Jimmy G T's. Is no longer around 

Spencer: and there it is the store was not found.

Jared: So, it sounds like it's an idea that could have had traction and was built out and never kind of got lift off never went, you know, got halfway there, but never finished going all the way there. Um, you have on set on the pay on screen. He does have products for sale here, but with no traffic, it would have been great if he could have relied on eBay to help him out with some of this.

Spencer: Yeah. And like, I, I'm a little confused, right? Like, are these actual labels from actual bottles or are they reprints? I guess it, I mean, it, I think it's a label. I think it really is. You know, it gives a condition light bend bottom left. Yeah. So just a super niche, narrow collectors. That's from 1933 

Jared: right there.

Spencer: Yeah. Or I guess 1940s, he says. I mean, that's fascinating. Yeah. I mean, if I was into this sort of thing, you know, uh, so many, it is fascinating to see what people are interested in collecting, collecting. You know, just what sparks their passion, what gets them excited? Somebody loves us beer labels to your point.

Jared: Like prior to doing side hustles, sorry, prior to doing weird niches, like we've been doing for a year and a half now, I would have been like, There's no market for this, but if there's anything that we've learned from doing this over and over again, is that wherever there's a passion, there's a community and wherever there's a community, there's a group of people who are willing to get out their wallets and, you know, pay for, 

Spencer: for, for more of that, you know, maybe he's only getting one visitor a day.

Uh, but, you know, out of those 30 people in a month, maybe a couple of them want to buy an actual beer label. So it's not, you know, Significant amount of money, but maybe it fuels his passion. Every once in a while, he sells a label, he buys a label, and it's just a fun little side hobby. 

Jared: It does cross my mind once in a while.

You know, I mean, yeah, this isn't the biggest podcast in the world, Spencer, but I do know the numbers. We do get a decent number of listeners each week. I wonder if Looking at the metrics on this website. I don't think the guy gets a lot of daily visits. I wonder if this podcast comes out, he's off doing his thing.

And all of a sudden it's like, what the heck happened to my website today? It's just, I had yeah, 

Spencer: maybe so. Well, everybody go visit us beer labels. What is it? Is it? Yeah. usbeerlabels. com. Yeah, go, go check it out. Um, very good. Well, um, good find. Like I say, we, we always are just finding more stuff. And like, as I know, we have to record these podcasts every week.

Like I am taking note now when I actually go visit a weird niche site. Uh, and so I actually have found like two or three in the last week or so. I was like, Oh, that would actually make a, that is a weird niche site. Oh, so you're 

Jared: saying you're going to actually, uh, contribute some of your own now? I'm, I'm trying again.

I had a kid. You got to reinvesting your sabbatical. You had your sabbatical from finding weird niches. You've been re inspired. 

Spencer: I'm back. I'll have some Spencer originals coming up soon. So good. Good. Well, very good. Thank you everybody for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Appreciate your time.

Hopefully you've enjoyed it. Maybe gotten inspired a little bit or learned something. Just thanks you so much for listening 

Jared: or hope. Maybe you were given hope. Hope Springs eternal. We'll see you next week.

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