Why is Google MANUALLY Deindexing So Many Sites? (And Other News)

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! Dig into the latest news in SEO, AI, and content creation with Jared and Spencer!

They kick off this week’s episode talking about Google’s March Core Update.

They talk specifically about scaled content abuse and how Google is going in and manually deindexing sites, sharing a study that looked at 79,000 websites on certain ad networks, of which 1146 were deindexed.

Could this be a scare tactic by Google? Is it doing this manually to save its crawl budget? What exactly is going on?

Google updated its quality rater guidelines to ensure that they ding those sites that don’t disclose which articles were written with AI, describing AI-generated articles as the lowest form of content when ti comes to EEAT.

Spencer offers some advice for content creators using AI and says that Google is going after sites with AI-generated content. He does make an important distinction, though. Tune in to hear what he says.

Then they discuss how Google put out an FAQ on “pure spam” manual action notices, but as Jared notices, there is one important thing missing from the post. What is it?

They then move on to a funny news item. John Mueller, one of Google’s Search Liaisons, saw his site get dropped from Google, although it was recently reindexed. It’s not clear why this happened or if it was a stunt, but it’s definitely news!

Spencer and Jared have some encouraging words for listeners about the core update overall, so listen to the episode to hear what they have to say.

Moving along, they announce Mediavine’s new program, Journey, for sites getting around 10k sessions per month. This is a great alternative for people with smaller sites to allow them to get monetized with Mediavine.

As this is a new program, Spencer and Jared have a lot of questions about it and about how it will run, and why it’s being launched now.

Things take a “nerdy” turn afterwards as Jared talks about how Google Search Console has rolled out the new core web vitals. What changes have been made, and what is INP all about?

Moving along, they share that Reddit has announced a new tool for business growth, allowing companies to spot trends, track mentions, monitor post performance, etc. 

The goal is to help brands promote themselves organically, and it could be a good platform to use as people consider diversifying away from Google. Tune in to listen to what Spencer and Jared think about this idea.

And the last item on the agenda is the news that the Associated Press has launched an e-commerce site with product reviews. 

What is so unsettling about this headline for Spencer? What do they say about presidential campaigns, blenders, and multivitamins?

As for Shiny Object Shenanigans, Spencer gives an update on his Amazon Influencer Program side hustle. He reports that his earnings are steady this month, at $1,600, with no major dips but also no major growth. Jared chimes in with his earnings this month, too!

He also talks about his new premium Niche Pursuits Community, for which he just did an expert call to talk about the program, sharing all of the juicy details about how he built this income stream. 

When it’s Jared’s turn, he talks about adding a new, professionally edited video and thumbnail to his Weekend Growth YouTube channel. 

He also talks about how he’s using SparkLoop to grow his newsletter subscriber list, and after spending +$200, he has acquired +200 subscribers. Tune in to hear all of the details and learn more.

As for their Weird Niche Sites, Spencer goes first and reveals Horse Name Ideas. This weird website has hundreds of categories as well as a name generator, and perhaps what’s most surprising is what he reveals when he looks at Ahrefs.

But when Spencer and Jared discuss the site owner’s photo, the About page, the mission statement, and the contact phone number, what happens? Listen to find out.

When it’s Jared’s turn, he shares Healthy Wage and even reads from its Wikipedia page. This DR60 site is only ranking for 3.6k keywords, but it does have social proof and is very popular.

How can the principles of this page be used by other site owners? Check out the episode to hear what they say.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast. See you all next week for another hour of inspiration and information from Spencer and Jared.

transcription

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And, uh, we do have a lot of news to cover. As we mentioned last week, we talked about for the most part, the. March core update from Google. We're going to cover what's going on right now, what we're seeing, a lot of sites getting de indexed and we're going to cover that in depth along with about a half dozen other stories that we're going to try and get to as well.

So there is a lot to cover. Uh, Jared, how you doing today? 

Jared: Yeah, very good. Um, you know, it, it felt like a week maybe going into it where we, you know, you might think tuning into the podcast, all we're talking about is the really big March core update that we, that they launched last week. And we'll definitely touch on that, but there's a whole plethora of other stories that are really interesting and need to get addressed as 

Spencer: well.

So. Yep, there definitely are. There's a lot of things changing happening in the industry. So exciting stuff. Stick around for that. Uh, and then as well, we've got a couple of, uh, shiny object shenanigans. Things we're working on the side that maybe are bringing in money, maybe not bringing in any money, but things we're experimenting with.

And, uh, we're going to share some of the results with you. And then, uh, mine is spending money. Yours is spending money. Exactly. That's why I want to 

Jared: clarify hustle shenanigan. You're used to probably 

Spencer: not making money. Well, we'll, we'll get to it. You know, it'll make you money. That's the idea, right? Spend a money, invest, make some money.

Uh, and then we're going to bring it home with our weird niche sites. And I will just give out ahead of time, a shout out to my audience, uh, Ian on Twitter, sorry, I don't have your last name available, but, uh, he gave me a list of niche ideas and, uh, I actually got a ton. I tweeted out looking for some help.

I'm good to go for the next few months, Jared. So, uh, this is one of those that I'm going to share. And it's a good one. Looking 

Jared: forward to it. So, 

Spencer: uh, having said that, uh, we are going to jump into our top story of the day. Um, as mentioned, Google rolled out the Google March core update. And as part of that, they updated a lot of their policies.

And in particular, as it relates to AI and spam and, uh, you know, do you remember exactly the policy? I mean, it was, it was 

Jared: definitely right here if you want. Yeah. It's called scaled content abuse policy. 

Spencer: Okay. What does that mean? 

Jared: Basically, uh, uh, targeting pages that are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value quote from Tucker.

Uh, which we referenced last week, the Google representative, the scaled content abuse search spam is an update to the old spammy auto generated policy that now goes beyond just spamming auto generated content. And it's now inclusive of any method of producing content at scale for the purpose of ranking in search.

Spencer: There it is. There it is. Thank you, man. You had that ready to go. And, uh, we did, we, we talked about that last week. And so when they updated that policy, you know, the core update's going to take effect and a lot of sites are going to start getting, um, impacted by that algorithmically, uh, but before that happens.

Google is going in and manually de indexing a lot of sites. And we did touch on that briefly last week, but now there's been a study by originality. ai, uh, and other, lots of other examples of sites that have indeed gotten this manual action in their Google search console, showing that their site has been completely de indexed.

And, uh, so this, uh, Study by originality. They looked at 79, 000 websites and they scraped, uh, essentially sites that were on Mediavine. And out of those 79, 000 websites that they, they scraped and crawled, they found that 1, 446 of those websites had a manual action applied to them. Uh, and, uh, later on, it shows that this is 1.

9%. Uh, so close to 2%. Apparently of all websites on those ad networks that I mentioned have been de indexed and received this manual action. And so of course there's way more websites on the internet than this 1, 446 websites that got de indexed. But that gives you an idea of like close to almost 2 percent of websites, at least in this study, have received this manual action.

And so there appears to be this. Mass action by Google for this scaled content abuse. Right. And they are mostly, um, most of the sites looked at by originality. We're using artificial intelligence content on their site. And they got this, you know, lovely, pure gibberish or automatically generated gibberish that shows up in people's Google search console and their sites have been, uh, D index.

So really interesting study and just really interesting to see that Google is taking so much manual action. 

Jared: It's fascinating. I mean, we, I don't think have we ever seen a mass. De indexing like this. Um, certainly not in the six or seven years that I've been doing this professionally 

Spencer: I don't remember anything like this before.

No. 

Jared: Yeah, and I've been moonlighting this for even longer but um, You know, obviously with a ton of content getting published at scale by ai Google has to either index and crawl that, or kind of figure out what to index and what not to index so that they don't blow their server budget out the window, you know, I mean, we get into all that, but, um, I, I do, I am, you tweeted this week, so I'm just going to quote your tweet.

Like, uh, I liked it and I thought it was interesting. I didn't read any of the comments. I, uh, I just kind of glossed over it, but you know, It's interesting that Google feels the need to manually de index this type of content when the update they're releasing is supposed to take care of that. So, uh, anyways, just a very interesting high level topic.

I could argue both sides of that one, but I think that's a very interesting point you brought up. 

Spencer: Yeah, you know, I essentially said, Hey, if Google's algorithm is so good, why do they have to manually de index all these sites? Shouldn't the algorithm just take care of that? And, uh, apparently they're not quite at that stage, um, where they can do this automatically.

A couple of the arguments. Um, where it felt like a lot of people that Google was targeting, like SEO influencers or a lot of people that were very vocal on YouTube or Twitter or other places, uh, talking about using artificial intelligence, promoting those strategies. And so Google went in, potentially targeted their sites so that, uh, kind of you kill the message.

Right of using AI content. It's scary, right? All these people that were promoting this are getting d indexed. So boy. Oh boy I'm not gonna try that So it's a scare tactic potentially by Google I 

Jared: saw someone someone point out that there's some correlation to people that John Mueller has blocked on Twitter I mean, there's a lot of a lot of different insights about why and who got targeted for some of this, you know 

Spencer: You know, and we could, we could do a whole episode on who was targeted, you know, people that are very well known on, on YouTube and Twitter, their sites have been hit and they've, you know, publicly said, unfortunately, Hey, that their sites have been hit.

Um, so there could be some truth to that. I don't know, or maybe it's just, they got caught up in this mass de indexing because it does look a lot, like a lot of sites, uh, were hit. And a point that you kind of touched on is, you Maybe why Google is doing some of this manually is to save that crawl budget, right?

You know indexing all these pages if some of these sites have millions of pages It's like yeah, we could just lower the ranking our algorithm is gonna, you know, not send them any traffic But if we still have to crawl that right, maybe it makes sense to just de index the sites and right, you know Save, save millions of crawls or whatever it is.

So interesting topic to say, to say the least, there's, um, a couple of other angles that are related to this. Of course. Um, let's look at the, uh, quality rater guidelines because, uh, Google just updated the quality rater guidelines. Just within the last week, um, sort of the headline here is that sites using AI for some articles, but don't specify which is the lowest quality pages.

So specifically within their, um, guidelines here. I'm trying to find the exact quote here. Well, maybe I'll just go here. Um, okay. Here, the second bullet point where this is, you know, a screenshot of the quality Raider guidelines under the column of lowest quality justification. The sort of second bullet point here says, uh, the website terms of use states that some articles are generated by artificial intelligence and may have errors or be out of date.

There is no indication to which pages this statement applies. The information in this article is not trustworthy and is lowest E E. So if you have in your guidelines, Hey, that some of our articles we use artificial intelligence, you know, on one hand, you're trying to be forthcoming about that, but if you don't specify which articles and it looks like there might be some errors or things are out of date, the quality rate are supposed to say, Hey, this is the lowest EAT possible and sort of ding your site for that.

So, um, Pretty significant change. Pretty interesting. You 

Jared: know, we're kind of I don't want to create a trend out of something But I feel like there's some dots that are starting to get connected a couple weeks ago We saw brandon salt's site was in the the the twitter limelight with danny And a lot of that was around.

Hey, you updated some of your article, but not all of it and perhaps this article was Negatively impacted because yeah, you've done some updating but not Completely updated the article and I see a lot of similarities here where it's like, Hey, you went as far as to tell us that you're using AI, which seems like that's a positive thing and shows that the website, uh, you know, is, is taking responsibility for that.

But you didn't tell us which pages are using AI Stuff. And so it really is kind of creating this narrative about connecting the dots better than perhaps we've ever had to, to feel like we need to before. 

Spencer: Right. So if you are using artificial intelligence, apparently you need to be very clear about which pages, right?

Which specific articles, um, are, and, uh, you know, probably makes sense to have a human edit and read that. Make sure that you don't have this automatically generated jibberish, right? That, uh, Google is dinging a lot of sites for, um, you know, But I agree kind of One thing is very clear that was not clear a few months ago is that Google is coming after AI generated sites.

Yes. They may not be able to do that all automatically just yet, right? Maybe they, they can't detect, um, AI content to the ability that they want to be able to do that. Um, but they're changing their guidelines. Uh, they're making manual actions. It does all appear the core of it is primarily for artificial intelligence spam, and, and that's a big difference, right?

If you're publishing a few articles that you use AI to assist you and that you're editing a lot of that content, that's one thing. If you're. Pumping out a million articles. That's a whole different ballgame. 

Jared: Well, and remember, we have to and, and no one likes hearing this. As frustrating as heck when we hear it and then we look at the SERPs.

But a lot of what Google tells us is what they want their algorithm to be. Not necessarily what it is right now. . Exactly. We read this and we read anything. We read anything about the helpful content update or anyway, we read. We read it, then we go to the surface and we're like, what the heck can we get frustrated?

And it helps remember like a lot of this stuff is about what they want the algorithm to be, not necessarily. What it is now, although it could be what, what it is now, we don't necessarily know, but 

Spencer: exactly. So they're signaling pretty strong. What's going on, what they're changing. Um, and, uh, then, uh, related to this.

Right. They just put out an FAQ in their search console help, uh, section. They add, this is a brand new thing. Three days ago here that, uh, because a lot of people are being impacted by this, right? Uh, received a pure spam manual action notice. See what it means for your site and how to address it. So it tells you what a pure spam manual action is.

Um, this includes tactics like automatically generated content, cloaking, cloaking, scraping, content, et cetera. Um, why do manual actions exist? Uh, manual actions help Google combat spam and maintain. Manipulation attempts, um, tells you how to, you know, see that you have a manual action, except, but they're updating a lot of their guidelines 

Jared: here.

You want to know what I found the most interesting because it's pretty boilerplate article, right? Yeah. You want to know what I found the most interesting about this? Sure. To counter everything we've just said, this article does not mention AI once.

It insinuates it quite a bit, but it doesn't actually mention it once. 

Spencer: You're right. About as close as they get is with the word automatically generated. 

Jared: Correct. Yeah, but they don't imply that it's, you know, it could be programmatic, for example. 

Spencer: And, and that is a good point, actually, because part of their guidelines did sort of update that, Whether it's human generated or some combination or programmatically generated, it's, it's all of the above.

Now, if it's considered, you know, sort of, uh, mass produced spam type content, they're coming after it. 

Jared: You could read into that so much, a lot. It's like, you can produce junk as long as you don't produce a lot of it at any one time. 

Spencer: That's right. Um, 

Jared: not saying that's what they're saying, by the way. It was just kind of funny because it's like, we're going to kind of, and I get why they're doing it.

Right. Like it is, you know, we look for clear indicators and, and, and, and, uh, we're always looking for, for correlations and updates and stuff. And there's obviously a correlation between. Spam content and mass produced. So I, I get it, but it's just so easy to kind of poke the bear on. Yep. 

Spencer: A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Uh, speaking of poking the bear, uh, John Mu is, uh, you know, one of Google's sort of search liaisons, right. That, uh, often interfaces publicly, um, as it relates to Google updates and answers a lot of questions. Uh, for people, well, his site was de indexed. I have no idea like why this happened, but John's site also got de indexed.

So I don't know what to make of this. Uh, other than it's just hilarious, you know, the timing is. Um, whether he truly got caught up in this or he did something, um, I don't know, but his site is not indexed. It's 

Jared: now re indexed as of this morning. I didn't, I just saw headlines on it too. I mean, I saw people, did you, um, Yeah, I'm like you, he's a very whimsical character online anyways.

So you, you know, you don't really know whether this was kind of some stunt or whether it actually got caught up. I did see a lot of people referencing his robots. txt. Did you open that up 

Spencer: at all? I didn't open up the, oh my gosh, I've seen 

Jared: encyclopedias that are shorter than that. 

Spencer: Oh, is that right? Yeah.

That's all I saw is that it's quite unique and very unique. 

Jared: Yeah. I didn't read through, um, and I'm not an expert in that anyways, so I wouldn't have, you know, Gathering that nobody else already had, but yeah, I did, but I did open it just to take a look and I was like, oh my goodness, it's long. So 

Spencer: yeah, maybe this is just one of the, uh, the, the rumor meal type, uh, you know, news article here, just funny that his site got de indexed, but maybe he was just playing around and this is 

Jared: as close as you and I get to reporting gossip on the news podcast each week.

Right? 

Spencer: So we got to do it. Got to do it. Got to get the guy. So, um, but I, I mean, overall, I mean, that's, that's kind of our wrap up of, I would say that the March core and spam updates, um, there, I definitely have seen some sites that have been impacted. Yeah. Um, Site in particular, you know, I've got this AI site challenge going on that we're five months in, uh, one user did share that their site has been hit very hard, uh, by the March core update.

Uh, it's still indexed, but was hit very hard. Um, and so that's, that's one. Kind of two of the sites. There was one other that I had reported previously. So there's a couple of sites that look like they've been hit. I don't know the others, you know, maybe have been hit. I'll find out over the coming weeks.

Um, I've definitely seen some things posted on Twitter of sites that have been impacted. So there does appear to be a lot of volatility. But this thing is going to take another, what, three weeks to, to fully roll out. Yeah. It's two and a half wait and 

Jared: see. Yeah. And that's, that's the big, like, just encouragement for everyone.

Right. I mean, if you've been through core updates in the past, you know, I mean, it's almost a joke, like if I, I remember this joke being told a lot, even feeling this joke in, in updates of the past that when Google announces the update and the first round kind of rolls out and your site goes up, you get a little nervous because you're like, Oh, Oh, I know there's going to be more volatility and that, does that mean I'm going to go down later on and end up going down, you know?

So it's, it's almost a running joke, right? So if you're on the flip side of that and your site's gone down, never a good thing, but you know, this is a, was promised to be a volatile update, was promised to take twice as long as normal. And so we're all going to have to kind of steady ourselves and not take too much from each day, each week until we're done with the whole thing.

And we see where things settle up. 

Spencer: So be sure to keep tuning in here and go ahead and subscribe. Um, listen to the podcast cause we're going to be covering it each week for the next three weeks, probably. Uh, at least I imagine that's going to get going to be the lead story for each of these episodes for the next few weeks.

Uh, and so we will continue sharing results, uh, as we have them. So we do have a few other news stories that are quite fascinating, actually. Um, the first one that. I'll share here that I believe impacts probably quite a few listeners out there. You know, if you have a smaller site that you've wanted to get monetized, uh, and you wanted to go to like media vine, for example, uh, you couldn't do that until you had a site that had a hundred thousand visitors a month.

Well, media vine just announced this morning that they have something called journey. By Mediavine, and that's over at JourneyMV. com, where sites that are getting around 10, 000 sessions per month can now join this platform and, uh, with the insinuation that, hey, if you join this platform, you're going to get, hopefully, a Uh, similar ad rates as the premium Mediavine platform.

Now, whether or not that is the case, we don't know. It sounds like this platform is a little bit different. You're not directly in, I guess, I don't know exactly where your dashboard is going to be, but it does sound like this is going to be, um, Slightly separate from Mediavine. Um, 10, 000 sessions is all you need to do.

And you take to get approved. You simply install the grow a plugin by Mediavine and run it for a minimum of 30 days, and that's going to help them measure traffic and, uh, see. If you meet the qualifications to be able to run ads. So a very cool alternative for people that have small sites that are not at that a hundred thousand sessions per month market, you can now get monetized with journey by media buying.

Jared: So cool. I mean, like you said, there's, I have as many questions as I have answers here. I mean, are we getting the true media vine experience that has always led to Decent page speeds, uh, good ad displays, uh, uh, great RPMs, you know, good customer service, all the things media vines kind of known for technology.

That's, that's cutting edge. Uh, you know, I would in perfect world, they basically just whether they repackaged under this journey or they, they, it's all like, hopefully we're just getting all that, those good things we got with media vine at a lower page view level right now. And I think just to clarify, I think the old minimum for.

000, um, and I think Raptive was 100, 000, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Either way, this substantially lowers it to the point where I mean, 10, 000 is very doable for a website in less than a year, you know, present circumstances, notwithstanding. 

Spencer: Uh, it's on my to do list to add one of my smaller sites, uh, to this.

So I'm going to, I'm going to give it a, I'm going to give it a whirl and maybe I'll let everybody know how that goes. Uh, there was one other thing I was going to mention about this. Oh, that it's a, it's a self serve platform. So it's not the premium experience that Mediavine provides. Okay. There you go.

Yeah, when you get invited into Mediavine, they hold your hand, they set up all the ads for you, they do it for you. Uh, Journey is a self serve platform. Okay. Um, and so there is a little bit of a difference there. But still, great way to get in and monetize your site besides AdSense or Ezoic or something like that.

Jared: Now, do you think a lot of this was prompted by the downturn? In traffic that a lot of media vine sites, uh, have and the type of site that they typically attract, you know, do you think they needed to do this? Or was this always on their roadmap to kind of move down market and help a wider array of, of websites?

I'm 

Spencer: not sure we'll ever know, but the timing would be probably about right. Figuring if they really acted quick, because I imagine this does take months to get into place. Right. Yeah, um, but if they did see the helpful content update in mid September and by early October and decided, Hey, we're going to do this.

Could be, could be, that's a potentially a astute observation there, Jared. Um, well, 

Jared: either way, good to see a company, not saying that they overtly said this, but kind of come alongside and give a good platform for a lot of. You know, bloggers who are in that traffic range where they just aren't able to get into the 50, 000 or whatever, we never verified it, whatever that minimum used to be, you know, like hopefully giving a lot of bloggers, like you just mentioned with your site, uh, a new monetization opportunity.

In a world where right now, many of them are losing monetization paths and opportunities. 

Spencer: Yep, absolutely. So, um, now we're going to get a little bit more nerdy, I guess. Um, I can share the news, uh, but Jared, I think you're going to have to fill us in, fill us in on all the gaps here, what this means exactly.

So, um, Google search console. Has rolled out, uh, the, their new core web vitals is now officially has a new member as they say, uh, I N P or interaction to next paint replaces FID. Um, and this was announced and I remember talking about this. We talked about this in January on this show here. Um, and, uh, you can.

Uh, go look at your Google search console, right? For INP. It's been there. It says since, since last June, but now it actually. It's official. It's part of core web vitals. Um, why don't you remind us all what interaction the next paint, uh, is and how does anyways. Anything actionable you're willing to share.

Jared: Yep. It's a nice, uh, uh, acronym soup there, isn't it? I N P replaces F I D. I feel like, uh, we're in the military right now. Um, the, uh, yeah, I mean, you're right. We've been reporting on it in our site audits for a while now, you know, anticipating that it's coming broad strokes. I N P just basically is designed to offer a much more comprehensive look at responsiveness from your website.

I think about when you. Um, or on someone's website and you click a button, how long does it take for the page to respond to that click? Now, previously FID was just addressing the initial load time of the site, whereas INP addresses every time you interact with the site. And so it's just a broader way to look at responsiveness and kind of, you know, cover the entire journey of the user rather than just that initial load time.

And so that's really in a nutshell, hopefully I'm not oversimplifying it, but that's really what INP is meant to be and why they retired FID as a result of it. 

Spencer: Yeah, no, great explanation. I understood that. I feel like I'm smarter having listened to that. Uh, so you got me here for that. I know you're really pulling your weight here today, Jared.

So I appreciate it. 

Jared: Just wait until the end. I'm sure I'll find a way to follow my face. 

Spencer: Yeah. When we get to weird niche site, a little bit interesting. Um, so yeah, I guess the takeaway is just be aware of your hosting, be aware of your load times on. Your entire site, not just how loaded initially, you know, or how fast it loads initially, but you know, when they interact with you, it's all in your search 

Jared: console data, right?

So like, um, you can go check on it. Um, and actually see, I know that, uh, uh, yeah, we see a lot of websites that have, have these, have, um, have IMP challenges, so it's very well might be something your site has going against you that maybe you haven't paid attention to yet. Yep, 

Spencer: very good. So we wanted to bring that up since it's official now.

Um, another interesting story that uh, how are we looking here? We're doing all right. So we'll we'll roll through these next couple of news stories here. 

Jared: We are doing all right Look at that. Okay, we're coming up on time, but I thought we'd go over today for sure 

Spencer: Yeah, well, the day's not over yet, Jerry. So, uh, this story is about Reddit and Reddit.

It's always interesting. We always want to talk about Reddit, uh, as it relates to search. Um, so Reddit introduced. A new toolkit for business growth. Reddit pro is here and I haven't used it, but they've got, you know, some, uh, images, it's basically a way where brands, businesses, you as a business owner can go in and you can monitor, do a lot of things like.

Trend spotting, um, mentions, community interaction, the performance of your posts, uh, get a lot of data. It's like a data dashboard for everything happening on Reddit for, for you. And, um, you know, what's working for you. So it specifically talks a lot about, um, the organic engagement on Reddit, right? So it may be a compliment to your community.

Reddit ads, or as a means of standalone organic engagement. And so I do just find it interesting that, Hey, they've now got this great, uh, tool set that you can use with the idea being that, Hey, they want businesses and brands to get more organic reach, it's always this like. Kind of taboo subject on Reddit because you can get banned very easily if you promote your own products, but here, Reddit themselves are coming out with tools so that brands can promote themselves in a more organic way and make sure that they're performing well.

And so, um, with Google the way it is and. We as website owners and business owners, always wondering what Google is going to do next. We sometimes look for other places where we can get traffic or get our brand awareness. Maybe Reddit is one of those places. Reddit now has the tools to help you do that.

Jared: Um, in the, uh, if you go to the article and you had it up there for a, for a little while there, when they were showing the visual, uh, I guess it must be, and that trend spotter looks so cool. Um, there are so many cool features that this could have for you as a business. Um, I'm very excited to check it out.

Like you said, I haven't had a chance to check it out, but some of the things they're showing in that trend spotter view is are just amazing, right? Because red, it's really like, we're not getting up to the minute date. Like it's, it's long been this case when we use keyword. Research tools. Like we're getting old data, you know, we're getting old data and we're not getting current data.

And so much of this is about, you know, trendspotting like right now, what's happening, what's going on right now with your brand, your topics, your industry, all these sorts of things and stuff. So it's really very intriguing. Yeah, I 

Spencer: agree. Um, As we know, Reddit is growing massively in traffic. Uh, and so if done right, Reddit is a great platform that we haven't talked a lot about, uh, really in terms of strategy of how you could use Reddit.

Um, and so I do think that there's a lot of opportunity there for brands to grow and businesses to grow. So just thought we'd mentioned that, that Reddit's, uh, providing some tools to do that. Was there, um, Did it give like a, uh, a price or is it a free and a beta period? Or 

Jared: I didn't see a price. I saw that it's available to businesses via existing or new Reddit accounts.

Okay. Um, I didn't, I've got to imagine it's paid. 

Spencer: Yeah, I mean, with the word like pro, you would think that it's, uh, that it is a paid tool. So people have to check that out, but it's not, no, uh, no, it says, uh, we're thrilled to announce reddit pro a free suite of tools. Well, 

Jared: there you have it. I shouldn't make assumptions.

Look at that. It 

Spencer: is indeed free. Oh my goodness. So, um, go check it out. Yeah. Um, okay. Uh, There's one other story here that we could cover, or we could just move on to our, uh, shiny object shenanigans. What do you think, uh, your call, your call, you, 

Jared: you, you love, you really love this one, so at least mention it.

Cause you did comment before we started that you love 

Spencer: this one. Let's do it. Let's do it. It's, I think it's a good story. Uh, so the associated press has, uh, well, let's read the headline AP launches e commerce site with. So the Associated Press, yes, the Associated Press, um, is launching an e commerce site called AP Byline powered by Taboola.

So as I understand it, uh, Taboola, which is, an ad platform. They're now a publicly traded company, which I didn't realize they went public in 2021. Um, they are partnering with AP, um, AP byline and they, Taboola is from what I understand, um, providing a lot of the content. And the ability to monetize that content, of course.

Um, okay, here it is. The content, which includes product reviews, will be created by a team at Taboola that will work closely with the AP to adhere to its standards and editorial style. Now, the reason I find this Somewhat ironic, a little bit funny, if you will, is that the Associated Press has always been all about the story, the journalism, the importance of getting things right.

Uh, and that often doesn't jive well with doing product reviews, right. Um, or trying to make money from your journalism. And so it, uh, it hearkens a little bit to companies like Forbes. Or, uh, or CNET or others, um, that. It looks like the AP is getting in the affiliate game, writing product reviews. 

Jared: I told you before we hit record, it's, it's, I mean, the best way I can think of to describe this is a Forbes 2.

0 Forbes 

Spencer: 2. 0. Yeah. That's, that's a little bit what it feels like this. Uh, it looks like it's maybe on a completely different website, right? I saw that. AP byline, uh, is what it is, but, uh, it's the, It's the Associated Press trying to dip into that honeypot, right? That's what it feels like is, well, we've got this whole journalism thing going on, but boy, there's a whole lot of money over here.

Let's Let's become affiliates on the internet. Um, so there you go. We'll follow this one. Uh, maybe another, uh, company that we can kind of pick on like Forbes and others. Uh, that that's the story. So 

Jared: much I could say, but with, yeah, we're out with time and everyone already probably knows everything we'd say.

So we'll just leave it there and you guys can, uh, you guys can think all the same things that we would say. 

Spencer: Yeah. Leave some comments. You know, what do you guys think about the associated press getting into the e commerce product review world? Um, I imagine you have a lot of the same 

Jared: thoughts. I mean, I know when I need a blender review, them and Forbes are, you know, I wasn't getting enough from Forbes.

So now that the AP will review it, I'm, I'm, I'm there. 

Spencer: Yeah, I mean the AP is so good at covering presidential campaigns. 

Jared: Why would they not be able to cover blenders? 

Spencer: Yeah, what, what blender do I need? And when I need a 

Jared: good multivitamin, AP to the rescue. 

Spencer: Exactly. See, we're on the same wavelength here, Jared.

You thought you were going to keep quiet. 

Jared: I was trying, I was really trying. Uh, 

Spencer: very good. Okay. Well, it's time to move on to our shiny object shenanigans here. And, uh, so mine is pretty short and sweet. Uh, just another quick update on my Amazon influencer, uh, accounts, uh, business. I did, I just did a call with the niche pursuits community.

I did a live call with my community on Monday. Uh, it was like an hour long call where I shared my actual account. I showed my videos. Shared my screen so people could see my current earnings, uh, and everything. And I shared all my strategies and everything. A lot of the things that I've talked about here, but they got a lot more in terms of the actual account, the backend dashboard that shows I showed my highest viewed videos, my highest earning, you know, products.

Um, I didn't hold 

Jared: the one that went viral over, uh, the holiday season. I did. And I was I was, I felt privileged that I was one of the few that knew that now, now everyone 

Spencer: knows. Nope. Everybody in the community knows. In the community, fair enough, you're right. I did. So if you want to know my highest selling product that probably, I don't remember the amount of commissions, but it was like 30, 40 percent came from like one 

Jared: product.

I don't remember either, but it was a lot of money. You earned four figures from that. I know that. Oh 

Spencer: yeah, yeah. I earned probably two, Yeah, two, maybe 3, 000 just from essentially this one product or group of products. And so I shared that, uh, recorded the call. So if anybody joins the niche pursuits community today, they can go watch that call.

Um, and, uh, As a teaser this coming week on next Thursday, Jared, you're going to be doing a call with the niche pursuits community and be sharing a lot of the details of your Amazon influencer account. 

Jared: I didn't listen to your call live. I think I had a meeting or something at the time, but I listened to it when you sent out the recording, uh, partly because I wanted to hear it, but partly because I just didn't want to show up and give the exact same presentation next week.

So, uh, if you, if you listen to the, the, the, the one hour with the Spencer this week on influencers, just know that mine will be very different, but still about my journey on the influencer program and sharing a lot more than I've, you know, had time to share here and whatnot. So it's gonna be really fun.

Um, and again, I, I think I mentioned this week or two ago, my influencer earnings are on the rise over the last couple of weeks. So I'm a little bit more reinvigorated by it. So it's a good time 

Spencer: to talk about it. I'm excited to see, um, what your results look like next week, whatever you're willing to share there.

Because, uh, it sounds like, yes, you, I don't know what some of your videos have gotten picked up or something because I'm still seeing, I'm steady. Are you? Nothing down. Nothing really up. Uh, but for whatever reason, it looks like some of your videos are taking off. 

Jared: I am trending towards my Q4 numbers.

That's impressive. No joke. And I'm like, I haven't even done a video in two months. Yeah, 

Spencer: it's very, but so yeah, to give my official update, you know, I should say that, uh, I just looked before the call here, I'm right at about 1, 600 in earnings over the last 30 days. So it, you know, fluctuates between 40 to 70 a day ish.

Um, just kind of depending on the day and it's been. Uh, which is also really cool because I haven't uploaded any videos in since I think January, 

Jared: uh, I am at, I checked this morning. I'm at 900 in the past seven days. Wow. So that's nearing a 4, 000 a month. If that trends out, right? 

Spencer: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jared: And it could be like that for about two weeks now.

So you could say, Oh, that's just seven. It was kind of a half month worth of that trend now. So I, you know, we've seen, uh, The volatility and we've reported on the volatility. So I'm not waving the magic 4, 000 a month flag at this point, but just kind of commenting like, man, you expected that going into Q4, right?

We expected that holiday sales season to be big. I didn't expect. Early March to have anything along those lines, especially when I've pulled back a bit and put my efforts towards some other things. So, right. 

Spencer: Yeah, they might just be testing different video placements and some of yours got, you know, put in there.

Um, whatever it is, but uh, I like I'm I'm pleasantly, um, I wouldn't say surprised, but I'm happy with, uh, the results. After not, I, we're in the same boat. Neither of us have really put it much effort in since the end of the year and to be getting, you know, 1500 to maybe 2, 000 a month. And at this point it's all profit for me.

Uh, super happy with this. So who knows, maybe in a couple of months I'll decide, gosh, I should reinvest and do a bunch more videos. Um, if people do want to see my call that I did on Monday, just go to community. nichepursuits. com and you can join the community there. There's a lot more going on in the community than just those calls calls.

Uh, we have a very active discord channel, um, where people are asking lots of questions related to SEO, uh, Amazon associates, uh, Pinterest, Google discover. Uh, Facebook, anything related to really kind of what I call niche publishing. Um, we're talking about it over there. And so we're happy to see you in the community.

Um, people can join that, but, uh, Jared, let's give you a few minutes here to talk about your. Shiny object that you have going on. Well, 

Jared: I've been, uh, talking about YouTube and I've been talking about the weekend growth email list. I did publish a new YouTube video today. Uh, so time of recording that's Thursday.

So, um, next week I'll, I'll touch on if, you know, kind of the, the, the earnings from my YouTube channel went up because I finally have published the video since getting monetized. Um, so. Uh, up until this point, we've talked about my donut earnings and they've been pretty pitiful, but I also haven't been publishing videos.

So. Uh, I put together what I think is a pretty good video. Um, I did, I got it edited. I got the first few minutes edited by someone. Finally. And I got a professional thumbnail done. So I actually paid someone to do a thumbnail. So I'm, you know, trying to give it a little bit more of a go here. So, uh, hopefully people like it.

I look really edited in the thumbnail. It's kind of like you actually, it looks a lot like you cause yours are really edited too. 

Spencer: Yeah. They like make me, I don't know, different. I 

Jared: look kind of like bionic or something. 

Spencer: Bionic. Yeah. 

Jared: Something's going on. I got the Spencer Haas look going for me 

Spencer: too. I'm like, I might have to talk to my editor about it.

You know, 

Jared: same thing. But anyway, so that's live. So next week we'll talk and see if that helped earnings at all. We'll kind of compare some notes on views and earnings and see if that changes anything. But this week, Is a continuation of last week. Last week I talked about how I was paying, uh, to advertise the weekend growth newsletter in an attempt to get more subscribers.

And I was using the spark loop, uh, software tool that connects with convert kit and many other email platforms that I've come to realize. And I just kicked that off. We had a couple, um, so it's. I'll share the results first and then we'll talk about some of the things about it. Uh, to date, uh, I've spent 290 and I have gotten 207 new subscribers.

So um, that is just over a dollar per 

Spencer: subscriber. And I've got your image, uh, that you said was okay to share. So I think I got that up here. Yep. There you go. It's 

Jared: on the screen there. So you can see the graph from SparkLoop. Um, and you can see now they say projected. And again, this is, I talked about this a bit last week, but because they go through a process where they have to validate that they meet the criteria that I set, right.

And you can set your own criteria, like, You could be crazy about it and make it really difficult for some, a subscriber to, to, to get paid on and stay in your program. You can make it really open ended. Um, and so over the period of time that I've designated for that evaluation to happen, that's what's happening right now.

And so, uh, I don't really know where that's going to land. I was talking with Caitlin about it this morning, that projected spend versus the actual spend, because I. Agreed to pay, I think, up to 2 per new subscriber. So, um, so anyways, there'll probably be some latitude there. Um, I will say convert kit makes it, and they say this, our representative at spark, we've kind of said this, like convert kit makes it a little difficult.

Because, uh, their parameters are a little bit more restrictive. And so I wanted to do it just on a couple of clicks in terms of like how many, uh, sorry, a couple opens in terms of how many opens these new subscribers had done. I was hoping to maybe do like, Hey, could they open like two or three emails in my first month?

And that, that's a pretty good subscriber. Right. And, um, basically that, that isn't available. So Caitlin and our spark loop person came with a pretty good Work around to give them like a seasoning period of a week or two, and then evaluate if they open any emails in like their third week, basically, in a nutshell.

I hope I explained that right. Caitlin, I asked her to prep me on exactly how it was. And, and they agreed that was the right work around. So a couple of things to say like spark loop, super helpful, really helpful, like we have a, uh, a direct point of contact there who works through it with us. There are some complications in setting it up and get it going, but I love that because I, overall, I love that they're paying so much care.

To making sure that you get quality subscribers that are a good fit for your audience. And we'll see, I'll report on that and we'll see how they do. But so far I'm really impressed with how it's going. 

Spencer: Yeah, that's really good. When I see that you're spending whatever that is, a dollar 50 ish. Something like that per subscriber.

Um, I think that's really good. And that's just, is that in the last seven days? Um, I know you have the whole month selected, but it's just the last week, right? Yeah, it 

Jared: just went on. Uh, I think, I don't even, I think it went on Friday in the end. I think it actually got turned on Friday. So this is Friday to what, what are we on Thursday here?

So yeah, maybe six, seven 

Spencer: days. Yeah, that's really good. So, um, so it doesn't appear that there's really a shortage of leads that you could get there. Right. Um, is it, do you put like a daily maximum ad spend or a weekly maximum monthly? A monthly. 

Jared: Okay, a monthly. So I think I put 2000. Okay. Um, and so it definitely underspent in the first month.

It probably by that math could have spent around up to 500. But then again, maybe this was like 5. 5 days worth, right? And so maybe 300 in 5. 5 days is getting close to that 500 mark. That would be 500. Okay. 2000 divided by four kind of thing, you know, i'm doing some round numbers here, but it's not that far off I guess is what i'm getting at.

Spencer: Yeah, and in theory, I mean these subscribers should be pretty good because you're targeting specific like um, yeah lists or You have to accept people to promote you, right? Is that kind of how it works? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 

Jared: you kind of I I can see the different Other newsletters that are referring me and they're all very much in line with the topics I talk about.

You know, I have a, a marketing newsletter. I have an AI newsletter. I have an SEO newsletter, uh, that's referring and stuff. So there's a bunch of different newsletters that are referring and they're all in the same kind of general category. 

Spencer: No, this is good. Um, 

Jared: one final thing to point out there, if you look in the bottom right, Spencer, look at the device breakdown of the new subscribers and where they're coming from.

Oh, 

Spencer: wow. 190 you're coming from mobile. So most of them are coming from their phone. 

Jared: Yeah. Isn't that fascinating? That is. I don't know if that's unique or if just most people read newsletters on their phone. I just was a little taken aback by that. Wow. That's, that's 

Spencer: 90%. Yeah. I mean, we, we do know that more, more traffic from Google, you know, is coming to mobile devices, but 90 percent is, Pretty high, right?

Uh, interesting. I guess that's where people are reading their newsletters. 

Jared: Well, that's why you come to the Niche for Seuss podcast. We just put it all up there. That's right. It's very interesting though. Anyways, I'm glad people hopefully got, uh, I mean, newsletters are certainly a topic right now. With, um, You know, alternative sources of revenue and stuff.

And as we said at the beginning, this isn't a revenue generator. I'm spending money. But like you said, the obviously the idea is that that your newsletter should generate money for you long term and there's a variety of ways to get people in your newsletter, but apparently paying in an advertising fashion is looking to be a very viable one so far.

Spencer: Yeah, no, that's good. And then you can, I mean, the idea is to generate this whole flywheel process, right? Where you pay for the subscribers, you know that your subscriber is hopefully worth more than 2 per subscriber with that extra profit, you get more subscribers, right? And just tell me I 

Jared: haven't piqued your interest for niche pursuits.

Spencer: You've definitely piqued my interest, uh, for Niche Pursuits. I can just see it in your eyes. Right. So, uh, I just need to calculate the value of each subscriber and figure out what my budget should be. That's essentially the name of the game. So we'll maybe talk later. So, uh, very good. Let's save some time for our weird niche sites.

We finally made it to the weird niche sites. And, um, again, I do want to thank, uh, Ian on Twitter and, uh, just a shout out to everybody that, uh, responded to my, to my tweet. Last minute tweet here. I was this morning, a few hours ago, I was looking at my list and I was like, man, these are just, I have some year, but we, we could do better.

And so, uh, I, I found some, uh, I've got a, like I said, a, a nice backlog here. Uh, but today, uh, is man. I don't know. I enjoy this one. We'll see how it turns out if I can explain it. Uh, well, there's not a lot to explain, but there's a lot of little details that make it interesting. So having with all that preface, uh, the weird niche site that I have today is horse name ideas.

com. So that's the entire website is helping you name your horse. Uh, there are lists. Of lots of different types of horse, right? Thoroughbred race horses, uh, all black horse names, scary horse names, uh, brown and black horse names, bay horse names. Anyways, there's a lot as I scroll through here. Short horse names, I imagine long horse names.

There's got to be hundreds of categories here of different types of horse names. Uh, which is just funny in and of itself. I didn't know that was such a big deal to figure out the name of your horse, but I imagine if you spend that much money on an animal. Like it's maybe it's a big deal. Uh, but they also have a horse name generator here.

You can just go in here, hit generate name. And, uh, you got who've hearted Johnson introverted Ivy thunderbolt, uh, tank tanker, uh, trembling Tara shaky silo and on and on, and you can just hit generate again and you get mini Marvel Sterling Spence. Oh, look at that. Got a Spence reference. Uh, and, uh, all, all sorts of good names here.

Right. Um, let me show some of the good things and then let me show some of the bad things. Uh, so we've got, if we go over to Ahrefs, what is really interesting. This site appears to have gotten a huge boost in the March core update. The traffic has gone from like 7, 500. At the end of February to now over 15, 000.

So the traffic has doubled and that last week, 

Jared: it's going to take a while to catch up to the full extent of, I mean, that's, they're not done crawling everything yet. 

Spencer: Exactly. So whatever this site is doing, like. Google is loving it, uh, at this point. Now it's not like a ton of traffic, 15, 000 visitors a month.

I guess that gets you into the new journey by Mediavine. You can get approved for your traffic there, but you know, it's a DR of 1. 4. Um, and, uh, well, let's look at the keywords because that's always fun. Um, I imagine they're going to be horse names. Uh, yeah. Black horse names, name for black horses, unique horse names, paint horse names.

All horse names. Apparently there is a lot of traffic around horse names. This is such a, a weird niche. Uh, like I said, now let's, let's maybe look at some of the bad, uh, well, let's find out. So, okay. My name is Reggie and I'm obsessed with horses. Let's something just seems odd about this picture of Reggie.

Uh, so if I. I don't know, Jared. Look at this picture. Does this look like a real person to you? 

Jared: I mean, again, we've featured many AI generated images on the podcast on this segment of the podcast of late, and this might be even one of the more egregious ones. 

Spencer: This looks very AI generated, just something about the stare and the stubble.

Uh, I'm pretty sure it's an AI generated, uh, image. That 

Jared: is, uh, I mean, I, I, you know, I keep the stubble going, right. You know, and, um, that's, uh, that, that's, uh, that's a good trim he's got there. 

Spencer: It's a, it's a, it's a good trim. Now they're about, about us page. 

Jared: That's what I'm on right now. The about us 

Spencer: page right now.

It's all pretty generic. You know, they love horse names and yada, yada, yada, different categories. It doesn't really say anything about the site owner other than he loves horses. Oh, no, 

Jared: you're missing. Um, what they, they have a mission statement. Okay. Well, can I read that? Can I read the, uh, horse name ideas, mission statement, please do a horse name ideas operates on the fundamental principle of simplicity.

We get you the horse names that you need, and then you can name your horse and move on with your day. 

Spencer: It's such a hassle and they've simplified it all. 

Jared: I mean, it's like they found a, you know, a cure for the modern cold. 

Spencer: That's exactly right. And, uh, I love this line at horse name ideas. com. We take pride in providing quality customer service, customer service, and taking extra steps to ensure that each individual's experience is unique and tailored just for them.

So they're bending over backwards. You know, they guarantee it. Try it. 

Jared: Give us a try today. We guarantee, 

Spencer: you know, it was, I took it a step further. I'm like down here. I see a phone number. Oh, come on. You called it. I'm like, come on. Is this real? So 

Jared: we're going to call it live on the podcast. 

Spencer: I already called it, you know, I call, I called the phone number and it's, you know, it gives you the error message of like this phone number does not exist essentially.

Right? So it's not a real phone number. I'm guessing that Reggie isn't a real guy. Reggie, if you're real, go ahead and reach out and I'll apologize. Uh, live on the podcast, 

Jared: more than doubled in the Google, uh, Marge corrupting 

Spencer: exactly, exactly. But this website is crushing it. On, on Ahrefs, so 

Jared: helpful content right here, my friend, 

Spencer: helpful content.

You want an example of helpful content, go to horse name, ideas. com. I think it's a fun website. I mean, on one hand, it's like clearly like it's yeah. You know, uh, on the other hand, like, Hey, if people are searching for how to name a paint horse, well, this is a good website. It's going to give you a lot of ideas.

Jared: I'll tease this by saying that we are featuring a very horse centric focused podcast coming up and I just checked the schedule while you were Talking there. It's not this upcoming week, but it's in a week and a half. Yes. 

Spencer: Yeah. It 

Jared: ties to the news podcast, doesn't it? It does. 

Spencer: Indeed. We are 

Jared: interviewing our first website owner who started as a feature on the weird niche segment.

Spencer: It's not with Reggie. 

Jared: No, but it's like full circle. So, you know, it's the real point is you could have your site just like horse name ideas end up in the weird niche section and then end up being interviewed in the niche pursuits podcast. 

Spencer: And be doing quite well with your, your business. I will say, 

Jared: yeah, I've already done the interview and it's, I've, it was fascinating.

Spencer: Absolutely. So stick around for that. Yeah. About in a week and a half. So, all right. We've got about five minutes to cover your, it's all I'm going to 

Jared: need. So, um, my site is really, I'll just say interesting. It's healthy wage. com and, um, it is a weight loss challenge and cash prize site. Uh, now they have a Wikipedia page, so I'll just read you what Wikipedia says about them.

A healthy wage is a for profit health and wellness company. That provides weight loss and fitness challenges with cash prizes noted for pushing public discussion on health incentive issues and for launching programs that use various combinations of cash prizes, financial commitment, social motivation, and positive peer pressure to achieve weight loss and fitness results at both the corporate and consumer levels.

Spencer: Yeah, that sounds like a good mission, you know, good strategy. So, 

Jared: it looks like a pretty big site when you first glance at it, and when you go to look at the metrics there in Ahrefs, it's a DR60, but it only ranks for 3, 600 keywords, and um, now it is getting an estimated 30, 000 organic traffic from that, but um, but not many keywords going for it there.

Um, yeah. Now, funny story about how I found this site, Spencer. I, um, you, you had your own path to finding a weird niche this week. I also had my own path. So this is the problem with us having done this for now, I think over a year actually, Spencer, I think this is our Shoot, we should look this up. I think this is our one year anniversary this 

Spencer: week.

It might be. I think it was in March. We're terrible at this. It's a wonder our wives stay with us. We'll celebrate next week. 

Jared: Let's just see if we can. Exactly. Um, I think these are, but anyways, you do these for a year and you start running into weird niches and you're like, you're having these flashbacks, like, have I done this weird niche yet?

And I wasn't sure about one of the ones I found, not this one, a different one. And so what I did was I went to, I was trying to verify it. I'm like, I don't want to go back and watch every podcast episode, 52 of these. So I went to niche pursuits. com. And then put the domain name in of the website. I was hoping to feature thinking maybe it would come up in the podcast, uh, page you create and it didn't.

But what did come up is a niche proceeds. com article on something like 45 weird niches you can go into. So I hijacked this from your very article. 

Spencer: So you apparently read my website more than I do. Yes. 

Jared: You have an affiliate program with this website for the record. Yes, 

Spencer: it took me. I knew that this website sounded familiar.

I'm like, I've heard of this site before. And sure enough, I do have affiliate links to healthy wage on niche pursuits dot com. 

Jared: I mean, they have, um, a lot of social proof, right? They've got Preston P who won 3000 and lost over 160. Um, they've got some big names here. Jillian Michaels, obviously a big fitness name is there.

Um, they've got a lot of eat going there. I see on the homepage, I've got a lot of, uh, Journal of American Medical Association things going. Um, uh, it's clearly a very popular. Uh, website. I did see poking on HRS. There's a lot of other, uh, websites or companies that are kind of doing the same sort of thing.

So they got a lot of competition. This is clearly a thing. They have an affiliate program, which you are an affiliate for. They're, um, they're brought into the corporate level, right? Like I didn't do a ton of research, but they're kind of brought in and, and businesses are harnessing this as another thing that they add as a corporate benefit of sorts.

So what an interesting concept. I mean, we talk about. Creating a challenge, a calculator, a contest, but something like that. And they've gone so big with this, with this concept. There's so much we could learn for our individual brands and websites that we're running. 

Spencer: Yeah. I mean, I really do like the concept.

I mean, it's all about how can you motivate people and weight loss, of course, is always a Big topic of discussion. Everybody has their new year's goals. They always want to lose some weight and, um, being able to get paid to do that. And knowing the other end of it, right. Is the sort of social aspect of like, if you join this challenge, you know, that people are going to be following along and Hey, you could win some money, healthy wage.

I, I love the concept. It would be interesting to know like how much money they're making, but I bet they're doing decent, even though maybe they're not getting a ton of organic traffic. If enough affiliates and other referral traffic is happening, it's, it's probably doing all right. 

Jared: Well spencer, I know you're making a ton of money off your affiliate program with them So, I mean I can only imagine what some of the fitness people are doing.

Yeah, 

Spencer: I tried to look that up I Not seeing a lot of conversions, uh, but it's, it's on the fly here. So, you 

Jared: know, I'm one of your clicks. I'm one of your clicks. You didn't convert. So 

Spencer: maybe later, right? I, Oh man, I need to, you know, go, go visit niche pursuits. com slash healthy wage. I'm sure that's what my affiliate link is.

So maybe we'll get some conversions from the podcast here. Hey, 

Jared: one more final little update. I just saw this. It popped up. Uh, Thomas Smith tweeted both of us and he said, you'll be glad to know that Costco hotdog. com has survived the March, 2024 update. Whoa, nice. Harkening back to another weird niche that we've surfaced.

One of the originals. Like that's. I think that was one of the first ones we ever did. One of the first ones. Was that yours or mine? I can't remember at this 

Spencer: point. I'll take, I'll take credit for it. I don't even know. Um, Costco hotdog. com. Anyways. Anyways, people go visit, oh man, that is a good looking website.

Um. You know. 

Jared: I have to say, still 1. 50, I had one a couple weeks ago. 

Spencer: Yeah, we've got, you know, we've got 10 seconds. There we go. People that are watching can remember, here's what the greatest hot dog ever, you know, the Costco 

Jared: hot dog. Oh, it's so good. It's so bad. It's 

Spencer: good. Good. Oh yeah. And they got the high, I remember that.

I remember that. Okay. Well, thank you everybody for listening, uh, to the podcast, uh, letting us talk about our weird niche sites that we found. Appreciate everybody giving us shout outs, giving us some ideas that really you guys are the heartbeat. Of the community here without you, we wouldn't find all of these sites.

So we appreciate that very much. Uh, a lot of news, the March Google core update is happening. Stick around for next week. We'll talk more about that, but, uh, really appreciate you listening in and thank you so much. See you guys 

Jared: again next week.

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