Is Recovery From the Google HCU Possible? AI Challenge Update + Weird Niche Sites

Welcome back to another episode of The Niche Pursuits News podcast, where Spencer and Jared break down the latest and most relevant news for SEOs, content creators, and business owners.

They kick things off by talking about the Helpful Content Update, which was rolled out in September 2023.

There has been lots of chatter of late—in Twitter threads, in Facebook posts, and beyond— where people are looking for signs that recovery from the HCU is possible. 

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan explains a little bit about the helpful content classifier and how it works, although his explanation certainly gives rise to more questions. 

Watch the Full Episode

How does Spencer interpret his explanation? Does he think it’s possible to see a recovery in the short term? Have Jared and Spencer seen any sites make a full recovery? 

What interesting statistics does Jared reference in terms of HCU recoveries? If the classifier is constantly being updated and tweaked, what does that mean for content creators? 

Since no one can truly define what is and isn't helpful content, the big question remains: Is there hope? Listen to Spencer and Jared’s predictions.

The next order of business is the fact that web stories are no longer visible as Google is deprecating the carousel view of web stories in Discover.

What are the two takeaways from this brief news story?

And last but not least, Spencer and Jared talk about the recent news of an upcoming Google algorithm update.

Lots of people have noticed an uptick in traffic as well as volatility, and suspect there might be an update brewing. Have Spencer and Jared noticed anything going on with their sites or the sites they manage? 

Next up on the podcast is the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion. Spencer goes first, but instead of talking about one of his side hustles, he shares an update on the AI content competition underway on Niche Pursuits.

This competition was launched after the HCU and the goal is to grow a new site with AI content. He shares the 4-month leaderboard, and there’s no shortage of interesting things to talk about!

The person leading the pack is getting 24,000 organic visitors to his site with around 7 million articles, and after just 4 months, the top 10 people in the challenge are getting more than 1000 organic visitors per month, which is impressive considering these are fresh domains.

If you want to hear the backstory, check out the full episode and also the Niche Pursuits community.

When it's Jared's turn, he provides an update on his public speaking side hustle, reporting that he has reached out to more than 50 different conferences to see if he can speak. How many did you hear back from? And what did they say? 

He also gives an update on his Weekend Growth YouTube channel, which recently reached the thresholds for monetization. Jared shares his stats as well as some useful advice for YouTube content creators, and reports on how much he's earned to date from that channel. 

When it’s time to reveal their weird niche sites, Spencer goes first with Snow Day Calculator.  This site, which does have a social media following, allows users to calculate the number of snow days according to their zip code and type of school. It also offers predictions of future snow days. 

The DR42 site is monetized with display ads and has a relatively strong backlink profile, thanks to links from news outlets. As it's a seasonal site, the traffic spikes in winter but dies during the rest of the year. 

How much money might it be making during those peaks? And what other clever strategies are they using to earn money? Listen to the episode to find out what Spencer and Jared discover as they poke around.

Things take a morbid turn when Jared reveals his weird niche site, Aerial Ashes, a company that uses drones to scatter people’s ashes over land and sea in the UK.

The site, which is clearly for a local company, is a DR8 and is ranking for just 45 keywords, so it's difficult to say how successful it is. 

However, Jared makes a great point about this section of the podcast: Every day, people are executing on their business ideas and using their skill sets, passions, and hobbies to create something unique. And you can too!

Well, that brings us to the end of another interesting episode! join us next week for a look at all the latest news, and updates from the hosts, more weird niche sites and, above all, lots of inspiration.

transcription

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of This Week in Niche Pursuits News. And, uh, I've got Jared with me. We're going to talk about the SEO news that's going on. Uh, Jared, how you doing today? 

Jared: Very well. Very well. Happy Valentine's Day week to you and everyone listening. So hopefully everyone, uh, Took their, uh, he had took their, uh, significant other or, uh, it love interest, uh, on a, on a good time.

And, uh, you're, you're now ready to settle into a week of the news back to the SEO and the digital marketing news. 

Spencer: That's right. Today is Valentine's day. I know for listeners, you know, it already happened. So hopefully, uh, you were able to celebrate, but, uh, on Valentine's day, our love is to talk about.

Jared: That's right. First things first, we talk about SEO first and then, then, then move on to the significant others. 

Spencer: That's right. I'm going to take my wife out to lunch. So don't worry. That's that's booked next. Uh, but, uh, and then we also do have a couple of, uh, side hustle shenanigans, shiny object shenanigans that we're going to talk about, uh, as well.

And, uh, and then we have two weird niche sites. I feel like I need to redeem myself a little bit over last week. It was pretty weak. If you remember, um, do you get in trouble for that? This week is well, uh, a couple of readers, you know, kind of said, eh, you need a little bit of help. And I was fortunate that one reached out and gave me a little bit of help.

Uh, so kudos. Is that, is that part of your 

Jared: strategy to get more people chiming in and helping you, you kind of lay an egg. And so you get a lot of like, that seems like a covert strategy to get some new 

Spencer: niches. It's kind of like the sympathy vote, right? It's like, yeah, they feel bad enough. They're like here, here, here's a, get you a couple of weeks down the road.

So, so I do have a couple of, a couple of sites in the books now in, uh, the next up list. So, all right, with that, uh, let's jump into the news. Um, you know, the first story that we're gonna talk about, probably spend, uh, most of our time on today is just About the timing for recovery from the helpful content update.

Uh, so there was a Twitter thread where, uh, Danny Sullivan chimed in the Google search liaison. A lot of people, um, boy, not just in this Twitter thread that, you know, this, this article covers, but I've seen a lot of people talk about the helpful content update. It rolled out. And of course in September. And lots and lots of people are asking, have you seen anybody recover?

I have not seen anybody recover. And, um, so there's been a lot of Twitter threads, a lot of Facebook posts of, hey, is anybody seeing any recovery? Right? Uh, and so. Um, you know, Jared, I, I haven't really seen any big recoveries if I've seen anything. It's kind of like, uh, they had a big drop at the helpful content update and then, you know, they're at a new low and then their traffic has started to come up, but it's not reached their original levels yet.

That's the only type of recovery that I've seen, which is not a recovery. 

Jared: Looked at so many sites, whether a third party or whether people reaching out to our agency to kind of dive in and help them out. And same thing, you know, most sites have not moved at all. They've flattened out. I'd say most sites at this point have flattened out.

So the, the, the, the age rest of the world have caught up. The keyword trackers have caught up with where the current visibility is at. Yes. Some people who have made a lot of changes I've seen, like you said, like some gradual increases, but we're talking single percentiles, maybe. Get 12%, 15%, nothing that would signify a recovery.

Spencer: And so, a couple of the interesting tidbits that came, you know, several sort of Twitter threads is, um, First, that Danny Sullivan clarified that the Helpful Content Update, uh, classifier. I believe that's what he called it. Yeah. The classifier is always running to check if content is helpful, but it takes time to prove to Google that your efforts are longterm.

So, uh, the language is a little bit, uh, perhaps confusing. Uh, because on one, on one hand, uh, he says that, Hey, this helpful content update classifier, it's always running. So in theory, if you make changes. It runs again next week. You could, uh, improve, but then he also does say that you need to kind of prove to Google that your efforts are longterm.

And that's where the big question mark comes in. Uh, meaning that could be taken in a couple of ways, right? Uh, that you just need to show that. You've made these changes over some undefined period of time, months. I don't know what that is, or it could just mean, and I sort of think this way that enough of your content on your site is now helpful.

Right. So it's not just one or two articles, but it's, um, you know, a larger percentage of the articles on your site are maybe now considered helpful. Right. And so I don't know what that magic number is, but eventually when Google crawls, they say, Oh, you know, 75 percent of the content is now helpful on this site.

That's my number. Uh, don't take that, um, you know, right. I'm just throwing out an example, uh, that maybe it hits some sort of threshold, but then, okay, boom, right. Your site, that, that classifier is removed of like an unhelpful site. Uh, that's, that's a lot of what I got out of, of, of the, the Twitter threads.

Um, a couple of interesting ones, right? Morgan Overholt, uh, that, you know, we've, we've talked about here on the niche pursuits podcast. I know as a listener of the podcast, um, she sort of said that, Hey, um, within the thread, she said here that Danny told me personally that a site could recover within two weeks.

Of making changes and then Danny responds, uh, that he says, and I'll just read it. Um, I don't recall giving a specific timeframe like that. It would be unusual for me to do so because it's not what we say in our documentation. It's not something I've also said in post when people ask about this.

Apologies if I misspoke or perhaps confused this with something. Um, and he kind of goes on. He basically is saying, no, this is not going to be a short term recovery. That's what I take from this. Like, it's not going to happen with a couple of weeks. Uh, is that going to happen within a couple of months? I don't know, but here we are sitting five months.

Since the helpful content update, and we haven't seen any sites recover. So it, uh, it doesn't mean sites haven't recovered. It's just none that we've seen publicly here. So, um, that's, that's some of my thoughts, Jared. What do you think about this, uh, this whole story here? 

Jared: A lot to unpack. Um, you know, Morgan's tweet kind of blew up, you know, uh, and definitely gained a lot of notoriety.

I did talk with Morgan, you know, briefly about it. And, um, seems she had some pretty good reasons to believe originally that maybe it was only a couple of weeks that, uh, that Google had said. And I think that. You know, whether that's what was said or not, we've seen the right on the wall, like you said, five months in, and there hasn't been any recovery.

Um, Lily Ray had a great tweet that she published, and I, I really am glad someone kind of went to the data on this. Uh, she had 130 HCU hit sites that she was tracking, and she went back and checked. 129 of them have continued to lose visibility, with one of them gaining. 3 percent and so, um, and granted, she was quick to point out.

These are some of the hardest hit sites. Uh, she was quick to point out. I don't know if you know what has been done, right? Like it would make no sense for a site to recover if it hasn't done anything. Um, and so, but nonetheless, that would only speaks from a data perspective of the fact that sites haven't recovered and you're right, we're five months in.

I think it's healthy to remind everybody listening, like. When we talk about a classifier running in perpetuity versus maybe something else, what we're saying that something else is, is Google core updates, right? And typically, when you get hit by a core update, it's well established and well documented that it's going to take repairs and fixes.

And then a subsequent one, two or three core updates to see the recovery. You don't tend to see that recovery until another core update comes. And what we're seeing more and more nowadays is that Google is trying to bake some of these purpose driven updates into the algorithm rather than having them be a part of core updates, right?

We saw that with the product review update, then review update. Now we're not doing review updates anymore. They're just part of the algorithm. And we're kind of seeing the same, uh, language around the helpful content update, right? We had one last year. Well, sorry. We had one in 2022. We had another one in 2023, and now it's kind of continuously running.

The difference is we don't see it running to a point where anybody's recovering. So yeah. Anyways, a lot of thoughts there. Didn't really say anything impactful other than to just kind of recap a lot of what's been going on in the last couple of months. 

Spencer: Right. And I will read the second paragraph here of Danny's tweet.

Um, just for those curious. Uh, he says, A natural question some will have is how long it will take for a site to do better if it removes unhelpful content. Sites identified by this system may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly launched sites.

And existing ones as it determines that the unhelpful content hasn't returned in the long term, the classification will no longer apply. So I think there's some definitely some interesting tidbits there. It applies to both old sites and brand new sites that are launched. Google's looking at this, you know, using this classifier to continuously look at this.

Um, And it, yeah, it does seem that they've, uh, he's now using more language that, you know, you need to show that over the long term, uh, you're, you're providing this helpful content. So I find that interesting. Uh, there was another one. Uh, let's see. Yeah, it just kind of clarifies. Classifiers always running.

Um, it sees if you've reduced unhelpful content, the site might start performing better at any time. Maybe someone made a change to reduce this several months ago. The classifier is checking, checking, checking, uh, and basically says, Oh, I kind of think this is a long term change as the assessment shifts.

It's not like you have to wait until the next time the classifier itself might get updated. Uh, we do, we do update it from time to time to make it better, but sites that improve could see change independently of that. I think it's, 

Jared: I think it's helpful to identify there's kind of two things at play here.

And if you're listening and you haven't separated the two, it might be good to do so mentally. Like, yes, number one, we're looking for paths. To recovery, right? We're looking for people to say, I did a, B, C, D, E, and F and look what happened, I was able to recover. And we know that doesn't mean that if I do a, B, C, D, and E and F that that means I'll recover, but we're looking as SEOs as analytical minded.

People who like to follow a process. We're looking for some clues as to what's going to lead to recovery. But I think we're also just looking on a, on a completely different side of the coin. We're just looking for hope. Right? Like, I think that's the big question. Like, we're just looking for, is it possible?

And I think all of us for five months have been looking around saying like, Hey, I don't even need to know the process. I don't even need to know all the steps. Just show me sites that have recovered so I can kind of get that shot of motivation to then roll up my sleeves. And a lot of people are waiting on the sidelines until they see sites recover so they know it's possible.

Yeah, I 

Spencer: 100 percent agree with that. And that's what I'm hearing. And that's what I'm feeling from the community. Um, you know, I don't know if it provides any hope, but it's an interesting nugget here that Danny says, Hey, uh, we are still updating the helpful content update, meaning they're tweaking it, they're trying to make it better and their opinion, what that means.

We don't know, but I would say that that also provides perhaps some hope of like, there's so much. Outcry. There's so much, so many people commenting and saying, Hey, Danny, like our sites have tanked. We were doing all that we can to recover. Maybe he's taking that back to the Google team and say, Hey, here's a bunch of sites that actually appear to be helpful that were hit by the helpful content update.

Maybe let's tweak. Let's turn that dial on the, you know, the next helpful content update the changes that we make. Uh, and maybe we'll start to see some recovery at that point. Bye. But again, we haven't seen that now. And so it is definitely frustrating because, um, I know if you're like me and you have a site that has hundreds of articles, right, you don't know which of your articles are considered unhelpful.

Like, do you go in and update and change two, 300, 400 articles? Like that's an overwhelming task that nobody wants to do that. And I don't blame them. Right. Um, but it almost feels like at this point, like. That's kind of what you have to think about doing, uh, at least because you don't, it's not a page by page penalty.

It's just like your site was kind of demolished 

Jared: domain, domain level. And I think you said it best for those who missed the podcast where Spencer went on a nice rant. Um, we love the, we haven't gotten a good Spencer rant in a while, by the way. It's been, but this is a good one 

Spencer: brewing. 

Jared: You'll never know.

It's always good. Well, you were quick to point out, right? Like the HCU is a devastating update, but we had devastating updates in the past. Panda and penguin come to mind. Medic update comes to mind, but unlike those for the first time ever, the HCU was a devastating update where we really honestly don't have much of an idea about.

Are the factors, um, you know, we can use language all we want, but no one's really been able to point to any clear indicators of what helpful content is or isn't. Um, and I don't want to start an argument there, like there's been lots of examples shared about, Hey, this isn't a good user experience. Hey, this isn't up to date.

Hey, this isn't as helpful as it could be, and we can get into those semantics. But in the day, this update still five months later, leaves people scratching their heads about what the heck it really was targeting. 

Spencer: Right. Exactly. I I'll just maybe read one more, uh, quote here. Um, I don't know if it adds a whole lot, but here is, um, this is.

I don't know if it was a tweet. Oh, isn't this help document? I believe. Yeah, it says the this classifier process is entirely automated using a machine learning model. It works globally across all languages. It is not a manual action nor a spam action and instead is just one of many signals Google evaluates to rank content.

This means that some people first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well. Uh, if there are other signals identifying that people first content as helpful and relevant to a query to a specific query, uh, this signal is also weighted sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect.

So that's kind of just another interesting tidbit that right if you've got 100 articles and you go in and you update 50 of them to make them helpful, that could lessen. You know, it's sort of the penalty, if you will, on on your entire site, right? The more helpful the content you have, whatever that means, um, the less the penalty.

So again, we don't have all the answers of how to recover over this, but I think it's just interesting to talk about some specifics. You know, notably that, Hey, it isn't a short term recovery, right? It's not going to happen in a couple of weeks. It's going to be months of effort. And as soon as we start to see some sites that are recovering, I mean, guarantee that we're going to cover that here on the podcast.

The 

Jared: only thread of, of, of good news or hope I can find that is that if you're someone who's been listening, who's someone who is listening and has been making lots of updates. To your site post HCU, and you haven't seen the results, I suppose there's a little bit of comfort knowing that maybe it could take many, many months because if it only could take two weeks and you've been doing that for months, then the writing's on the wall there.

But if it takes several, several months, then maybe your reward is, is still to come again. Just trying to find a little bit of hope in 

Spencer: this. Yeah. No, we need some positivity. You know, I'm, I'm hopeful that, uh, you know, within call it the second quarter, right, uh, of this year, like we're going to start to see lots of, uh, recovery here in the next couple of months, but, and it can't 

Jared: be ignored.

How much Google has signaled. Danny has signaled like big, big, big updates 

Spencer: are coming, right? Right. And we're going to, we're going to chat maybe a little bit about that here in a second. Um, but first, uh, this other sort of news story that we're going to talk about here is, uh, Google drops web stories from images and carousel view and updates search feature.

Now it's a little bit convoluted, uh, exactly what's going on here. Uh, but web stories, I guess, used to appear in the images tab. This is a picture, uh, a screenshot of what it used to look like when you search for things, uh, in images. The web stories would show up in that right. I think this is an example of one here at the top here.

And now it's these are no longer showing in the images tab. Sometimes. Web stories will still show up in the, you know, the normal, you know, search. It may show up as an image. A carousel. Is that what they're saying? Uh, yes. Um, and, uh, but there, there's been a bunch of tweets, Glenn Gabe, Lily Ray. Uh, other people are jumping in and basically saying that it appears that, uh, well, Glenn put it best, perhaps the demise of web stories begins.

So he feels like this is a step where web stories are becoming less featured. They're no longer showing in the images tab. They sometimes show up in the main tab. And then I believe Lily Ray is saying, well, I'll read it. Google is finally deprecating the carousel view of web stories in. Discover. And I know she's talked about this a lot in Google Discover that there is just basically a lot of spammy web stories that are showing up and web stories are for people that don't know, are very different than just a normal article, right?

They're sort of a series of images that people kind of click through. It's a web story. People can look up the format, but it appears that they're showing up less in Google Discover. Uh, and so I guess Two things to take from this that I see is one, if you're doing a lot of web stories, you may want to reconsider that strategy or think about the long term viability of investing a lot of time and energy in web stories.

Right? Um, so maybe look at that. And then the second thing is that if web stories are now taking up less real estate in Google Discover, maybe that means there's more real estate now for traditional stories, you know, articles that maybe are written for Google Discover. And so maybe there's more opportunity there, uh, a little bit more, uh, Google Discover real estate for regular stories.

So, that's kind of what I take from this. Um, I don't know if you have anything to add here, Jared. 

Jared: Not a whole lot. I mean, I, I, you know, like, most people listening won't have done much with web stories. It feels like those who succeed with web stories are few and far between, and they've kind of cornered the market in how they do it.

Uh, it's been riddled with spam for the past couple of years, um, and so, It, it, it seemingly doesn't provide a ton of value to the user anyways, especially in other, with other formats like short form video and things that, you know, could, could have a little bit better of a place. Right. Um, as that's kind of come about, I mean, web stories is a very old product from Google and, uh, you know, it either needed to be updated or sunsetted and it, it appears more the latter, which I don't think is going to affect many people and hopefully we get a little bit more certain visibility back.

Spencer: Right, exactly. I know there are some people that, uh, have, that do a lot with web stories in particular to try and show up in Google Discover. Um, and we've had a 

Jared: few of them on the podcast over the years. You've had banner success with it. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, uh, it appears some tweaks are being made.

What that means long term, right? It sort of feels like, yeah, it's being sort of deprecated. It's being, uh, less and less focus is being put on it, uh, from Google's perspective anyways. So that brings us, I believe, to our last sort of story here and, uh, it appears that it's maybe a small one, but it could be a big one.

You know, it's one of those things we don't know. Uh, and so I'll share my screen here. Uh, Google search ranking algorithm update brewing. February 7th and 8th, right? Uh, so, uh, this is, you know, from a few days ago. Uh, but it does appear that a lot of people are saying, hey, they've noticed an uptick, uh, in traffic or a change in traffic.

At least the ones that they quoted most of it. Hey, my traffic is up. Uh, and then, uh, Barry also. Post some images of the Google tracking tools, the monitoring tools from SEMrush. It does appear that there's some sort of spike here in volatility and some of the other tools are showing that as well. Um, you know.

I wouldn't say that I've noticed anything in particular on my sites, but I'm only monitoring a couple of sites, and so I don't see the broader view necessarily until it has a much bigger impact right or until it's down the road. And as we know, if it really is a Google update, these things can take a couple of weeks to roll out.

And so we don't necessarily hear about it for a couple of weeks. So It's possible that we're right in the middle of one right now. 

Jared: Yeah. I had somebody reach out to me, uh, to our agency and, uh, uh, before this article came out, but, uh, about fluctuations, you know, the week prior in those date ranges, um, it definitely some, definitely some, some volatility for this site as we analyzed it, you know, definitely algorithmic volatility, some ups, some downs.

Um, some movements. So, uh, that was one website, you know, haven't seen a lot of movement across other websites that we manage. Uh, didn't get reached out to by anybody else, but definitely saw some movement with that one case. 

Spencer: Yeah. So, um, you know, check your site, see if there's been any volatility that started around the seventh or eighth.

Right. Um, and you can take a look at that and see, yeah, if it's due to this potential update. Um, so that's kind of the news that we have, uh, today that we wanted to touch on. But, uh, we've got more. You know, stick around. There's, there's more here. Uh, we've got our shiny object shenanigans that we're going to talk about.

And, uh, and then of course we're going to bring it home with our weird niche sites. A couple of fun ones, uh, to chat about. Um, maybe I'll go first here with my shiny object shenanigan. Uh, and this is a little bit different one because it's not necessarily something that I'm working on, but I thought it was interesting enough that, uh, I would share.

So, um, I started. An AI content challenge, uh, about four months ago. And, uh, so I now have four months results, uh, that people have shared. So I reached out to my listeners. So other people have been building these sites and these are not my sites. Uh, other people started oddly enough at the end of September, right after the helpful content update.

And that's why I do think that this is turning out to be an interesting case study, because what happens when you start a brand new site? After the helpful content update, you know, can you grow in Google traffic? Can you get, um, you know, can you achieve those rankings and grow? And so we kind of answer that question a little bit.

Uh, and so I have, yeah, the four month leaderboard. Um, I did a whole video on the two month leaderboard. I don't know if people watch that, uh, but the leaders currently are totally different than the leaders that were. At the two month mark. Uh, and so let me share. Yes, let me share my screen here, which was a little bit surprising to me, right?

Jared: I'm looking at some of the numbers here and wow. 

Spencer: So I have this spreadsheet, uh, shared up and there's, there's quite a bit to talk about. There is a lot 

Jared: to talk about. Seven million 

Spencer: articles. Yeah, let's maybe just talk about that straight out the bat. Okay, 

Jared: let's talk about that. Uh, by the way, what, what, what happened here?

Can we not report the exact number? Just approximately 7 million? 

Spencer: I'm guessing, uh, he didn't count, right? Fair play. Fair enough. Or maybe every day it 

Jared: changes. Does WordPress stop displaying the number at that point? 

Spencer: That's a great question. I need to ask him that. I've never seen a site that big. I've gotten to four figures, you know, the over a thousand article mark.

I've gotten to five. Uh, okay. Well, there you go. I've never gotten to the seven figure mark. Not my site, to be clear, but yeah. So, so Edward has. Apparently, roughly 7 million articles published, uh, but in the month of January, the last full month that we reported on, uh, he had 24, 000, uh, visitors to his site in that month and with almost 23, 000, um, of that coming from organic sources.

Right. So he definitely is ranking in Google getting traffic, you know, um, and, and he's the leader, right? With roughly 23, 000 organic visitors in January to a site that he started after the helpful content update. Um, so his story and he shared this, if people go to, you know, community. niche pursuits. com, they can go and they can click on the forum and, uh, these, these results are there and all of these participants that, um, That reported, they also gave a few details about what they've been doing.

And so, uh, he has taken a programmatic SEO approach where a lot of this is programmatic and then the articles are filled in with AI content. So he's, he is a programmer and so he's cobbled together a couple of things, data sources with, you know, AI that can then kind of flesh out this data with an article and he's just publishing in mass.

Um, to be honest, I did not think that someone doing that would be the winner. Uh, he's not yet the winner, but he's definitely in the lead. Um, the person in second place has about half as much traffic, about 10, 000 organic visitors in January, which is still great. Um, you know, Tanya. And she only has 228 articles that are AI generated.

Uh, she's in that recipes niche. Uh, she didn't share her website. Most people didn't share their website. Uh, and then Edward is also in third place. He started two sites. Uh, this one Uh, maybe he did is he's got more on the list. I was going to tell him that, but yeah. Um, you know, small site, only 5, 800 articles, a teeny little site, um, getting about 5, 000 visitors in January from, from organic sources.

Uh, and then in fourth place is Victoria. And for those that remember Victoria was, um, was. One of the, I think she ended up second, uh, overall after two months. And actually Jennifer down here was in first place after two months. She's now in ninth place. So, so there's been a lot of changes in who's getting more traffic, but, uh, I think overall it's just fascinating, you know, after four months that, uh, roughly 10 people here are getting more than a thousand visitors a month from organic sources.

So can you rank in Google with AI content? Yes. Can you get, you know, traffic to a new site with AI content? Yes. They're kind of proving that, um, they're taking different approaches. Um, you know, a site that is only four months old is still a brand new website. Yeah. So the fact that they're ranking on Google and getting a thousand visitors, uh, in a month, I would call that really good for a brand new site.

Things are going to start getting very interesting in months five and six and beyond. Right? Um, I'm this particular artificial, uh, intelligence content challenge ends after six months. I'm going to kind of crown a winner at the six month mark and say, Hey, you know, you won, here's, you know, your prize, congrats.

Uh, but hopefully they go on and continue to do well. And I think. Between six and 12 months is really where we're going to weed out. Who's going to be successful, uh, with their site or not. Uh, but just tons of interesting data. Um, if people want to check that out again, go to community. nichepursuits. com.

Um, but yeah, I'm just fascinated a that they are getting, uh, traffic from Google, but be how much, uh, the results have changed. The leaderboard has changed here, uh, quite a bit. We've got new leaders, others have kind of dropped down a little bit and, uh, yeah, just kind of fun to watch. Thought I would, uh, share that even though it's not my side hustle, right?

It is something that I'm kind of leading and very involved. Well, 

Jared: at a 7 million articles or so in 24, 000. 100 in traffic last month, uh, each article for, uh, Edward, um, average 0. 003 page views 

Spencer: per month. Interesting. Interesting. So, uh, I wonder how many articles are actually getting traffic. Maybe that should be my next question for him.

It's probably 

Jared: a hundred, right? Or a couple hundred that are getting some traffic, usually just following the way these things normally work. I think it is pretty interesting, um, bouncing down to the person in fifth place, Tom Saxon. He's the first one or the highest ranking one to share his website. I was kind of poking around here while you were talking it through.

And I mean, there's a lot of things he's doing to make it, you know, go above and beyond the most classic bare minimum AI site that, that you can think of. So that's a fun one that people can go look through. 

Spencer: Yeah, look at that. I'm sharing the screen here now. CoffeeRoasterFinder. com And yeah, he's got an interactive map.

Jared: I went into one of his recent guides and he's pulling in Instagram feeds from different, um, coffee roasters. He's, um, he's, you know, creating custom thumbnails and graphics and embedded maps. So it's certainly going beyond just what you might imagine out of an AI site. 

Spencer: Yeah, this is one, um, that I know I've looked at in the past and you can tell, uh, that he's putting in quite a bit of effort.

Jared: Not sure about Ben Ferguson there. Ben Ferguson looks a little AI, but 

Spencer: could be a mid journey author there. Um, but yeah, 

Jared: it's an AI 

Spencer: site. That's what it's supposed to be. That's right. You know? Um, so, uh, lots of interesting results, you know, there was, um, like 60 something people that reported, you know, about 10 ish, actually more than that.

There's a couple of dozen sites that. Um, are actually shared that you can go and look at their sites and dig into. And so, yeah, people could have fun with that. They, everyone has access to that spreadsheet. You can see as we're recording this live, right, there's another five or six people on this spreadsheet that are also looking at this.

Um, so you can check it out and yeah, see if you can learn anything from that. So a couple more months, this challenge will be going on and then I will be sharing the final results that. 

Jared: Now, one question for you. You probably addressed this in the beginning, but remind me, were you allowed to use an age domain for this, or did you have to use a fresh 

Spencer: domain?

This, you needed to use a fresh domain. 

Jared: Okay, good. That makes the results a little easier to kind of get your mind around. 

Spencer: Yep. Compare didn't want any big, you know, strong backlink profiles. Everybody started with a fresh domain after that. They're welcome to, you know, uh, build links, buy links, do whatever they want, but they needed to start at the same spot.

Jared: Can you be building links right now while you're building content? Sure. 

Spencer: Sure. Yeah, 

Jared: absolutely. Fun to see, you know, we can see how many articles people have published, but it'd be fun to see how many links each of these sites have. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yep. Could dive into that data even further and whoever wins, maybe the top couple of people, right?

I'll be asking a lot more information on terms of strategies, right? Was there a link building strategy? What additional things did you do besides just publishing the AI content? And hopefully there'll be some things we can learn from, uh, from that. 

Jared: And remind me you're giving away a million 

Spencer: dollars to the winner million dollars, uh, minus about you know, nine point Anyways, i'm giving away.

Uh I actually i'm giving some money away twenty five hundred dollars to the 

Jared: winner. I was just off by a couple zeros 

Spencer: Couple zeros, right? Not a seven figure. It's real money. That's real money Yeah, so that's why I want to talk about it because I want to get as much value out of this as I can um, hopefully it's worth twenty five hundred dollars of my you know time to To kind of do this Speaking of side 

Jared: hustles, that's more than you or I earned on the Amazon influencer program in January.

Spencer: That is true. That is true. Uh, I was under 2, 000 in January. You released, 

Jared: I, I was, I was teasing it, but you did release your Amazon influencer year in recap video this week. And so people haven't seen that. Obviously you've heard us talk about influencer program quite a bit in 2023 and you're I'll, I'll, I'll share it for you.

Your video is now live. 

Spencer: It is live. Yep. Just released a couple of days ago. And so I share, uh, yeah, not only my last year numbers, but my January numbers and all my expenses, um, how I outsourced it, how I hired people, um, how much I paid them, all sorts of things. Um, Anyways, I could go on a lot of tangents, uh, on this, but maybe we'll let you jump into a kind of, kind of what you have to share here today, uh, Jared.

Jared: Yeah, so, um, I've been talking about how, uh, I've just been waiting for the day on a podcast where my side hustles aren't going very well, and maybe today is the day that we need to have a bit of a reckoning. So, um, but you know, that's how it goes, right? So I talked, uh, In January about how I want to speak at four conferences this year.

Um, I was already speaking at one that's the affiliate gathering in May last week. I was able to share that. I secured a spot to be speaking at TBEX, a travel conference in July. And I had put together a list to reach out to of conferences. I reached out to 51 conferences and guess how many I've heard back 

Spencer: from.

Well, I already know the answer. 

Jared: Zero. You could have guessed it by how I teamed it. So everybody is just waiting in line to have me speak at their conference. Let me tell you, um, just, yeah. Yeah. So, um, that's okay. I expect it. That's the way it goes sometimes. Yeah. That is the way it goes sometimes. So, so many things to learn from there.

Like, um, is it my pitch? Is it my angle? Uh, not really knowing what I'm doing. Did I come in with too much information, too little information? Am I going to the wrong person? Am I too late? So many things to think about, right? So I, I definitely want to, um. Give it a couple more days to see if people respond, um, cause it could just be caught up in, in, you know, people's never ending email, but not going well so far.

So we'll have to, uh, you know, 

Spencer: I think you're being a little bit hard on yourself, you know, taking action, uh, and sending out 57 emails. I would call that a win, right? Like you made progress, you made progress and you didn't get 57 knows. It's just, you haven't heard back, uh, from a lot of 

Jared: I have gotten zero no's.

Spencer: Yeah. Okay. So, so nobody's declined you, uh, uh, but nobody's, you know, immediately responded either. 

Jared: Yeah. It feels like going out, which I never did any of this, but it feels like, you know, being in your twenties and going out to a bar and asking 57 girls out and none of them even look at you. Kind of like, I don't know, it doesn't feel like I'm winning, but I guess I'm not 

Spencer: losing.

You know, I'm going to make a prediction that you will get responses, uh, before we record. I don't know if I'll say you'll get a yes by then, but I think you'll be in discussions with multiple people, uh, after 57, uh, emails within a week. Okay. 

Jared: Okay. Well, uh, the other thing Keeping it positive. You're the positive one now.

Um, the other thing I shared a couple weeks ago that, um, I was approved on the weekend growth YouTube channel for monetization. I shared my stats last week, um, about the path to, uh, 1000 subscribers, 4000 watch hours. Uh, I broke the subscriber count a while back. We're kind of approaching 3000 subscribers, but just hit the 4000 watch hours that you need.

Um, and believe it or not, like it takes like. You get the watch hours, but for those of you, maybe this is just me, but I, I, this seemed pretty normal. Like you get the watch hours, but like Google's monetization tracker takes like a week or two to catch up. And so it says, if you look at your analytics that you have 4, 000 watch hours, but then you go to hit monetization and it says you have like 3, 978 watch hours and it stays there for a couple of days.

And then finally it broke 4, 000 in the monetization tab. And then I had to wait for Google to approve the monetization and stuff. So one tip for those of you who aren't aware, thankfully, I knew this going in, but just reminder, have AdSense set up and approved prior to you doing this, because you have to have a linked AdSense account that's separate from.

Getting YouTube monetization. So if you're at, you know, if you're getting close, set up AdSense now, if you don't already have it set up, um, I had it set up for our business accounts we run and for our websites, we run through our business account. But, um, ended up setting up a different one for, for weekend growth.

So got that all set up. I'm pleased to share though that I monetized. And after the first day of monetization, I have earned five cents. 

Spencer: Whoa, a whole nickel, 

Jared: huh? Yep. Yep. Um, yeah, a whole nickel. So obviously early days, uh, obviously not indicative of what I will be earning, but I am very curious. And I think by next week I can share some initial numbers on maybe what some RPMs are.

On how much, you know, on a day, a video, uh, or a set of videos like this, because I think it's very reasonable for someone starting a YouTube account to hit 18 videos in the first, you know, 10 or 11 months. That's, I didn't do very many, right? That's how many videos I published to get myself to this number.

And then we'll have to see, you know, how many views I get per month and the RPMs that this pays. So we'll happy to share that next week. 

Spencer: And have you turned monetization on for all the videos? Yep. All videos. 

Jared: Okay. Mid roll ads, the whole nine yards. 

Spencer: Yeah, just, uh, see what happens. So, uh, yeah, 5 cents, you know, that's probably like a partial day or, you know, whatever.

Um, and I'm sure it will get better. Like, I don't, I don't remember. I'm, I'm trying to think back when I monetized my faceless YouTube channel. I think it, I, it probably takes a little bit of time for it to figure out. Um, you know, which audience it's going to show your ads to, or, you know, which ads it's going to show on your videos and find, find the right calculation.

So yeah, maybe next week or whenever you're comfortable, you know, you can give us an update, uh, on that. It would be interesting to hear. RPMs, how much you're earning. Um, and so anybody starting a new site can, can consider that. I mean, 

Jared: you know, just for context, I'm looking at my stats here right now on my phone, a mobile device.

The mobile app, I, I got about, about 5, 000 views in the last 28 days, about, well, not about 408 watch hours in the last 28 days, you know, so we'll see. It's like, look, let's be clear. It's not going to be earth shattering revenue, but we'll be able to take 5, 000 views, 400 watch hours, and kind of compare that up against what the earnings are and just kind of, you know, 

Spencer: share that.

Yeah, no, I think people are fascinated. People are always interested in hearing, um, what other people are earning, whether that's, you know, because they have a channel already and they want to compare or they're thinking about starting a YouTube channel and they just want to know what's available out there.

So, 

Jared: um, I'll be interested to compare it up against my other YouTube channel that I started with a niche site of ours, you know, and I'm not, In those videos or anything. And, you know, but I shared about, I started in 2020 and 2021, haven't really touched it much sense, but that has over 10, 000 subscribers and gets.

Uh, quite a bit more in terms of monthly views still to this day, but the RPMs are pretty bad. They're like 5, you know, or so, so they're not great. You're not, I'm not making much money on that one, but I hear the RPMs can be a lot higher depending on the niches you're in. So, and we've seen that with other accounts, so.

Spencer: Yep, I definitely think it'll be higher in this, uh, particular niche for yeah, you were saying that so 

Jared: good hopefully more than five 

Spencer: cents I think so. I think so, but we'll see Um, well, let's move on to our weird niche sites Um, you know, I don't want to dredge up, you know Things from last week, but, uh, I'll just simply say, you know, don't listen to that episode and, you know, think you're going to hear a great weird niche site for me, you know, I 

Jared: don't even remember what site you shared.

I just remember those bad a week later. I can't remember what it was, but I just remember it was pretty bad. 

Spencer: Good, good. Maybe I'm not going to even bring it up. It's fine. Even bring it up. It's one of those you look at for one second and that's all there is like it's done. Um, I can't remember now 

Jared: anything.

Spencer: So this one is a little bit better. It's a step up. I don't think I could do any worse. Uh, I will simply say that, uh, I had a couple of, uh, listeners reach out to me and say, Hey, you know, it seems like you might need a little help here with finding a weird new site. Uh, so here you go. They threw me a bone.

Uh, so this one today is from a reader. Um, I think it's kind of cool. It's kind of interesting. I'd never heard of this, uh, before. And so without further ado, uh, the weird niche site is snow day calculator. com snow day calculator. com and that's it. Um, they've got 20, 000 followers on Facebook. I know when I went to their Twitter account, uh, they've got, um.

9, 400 followers. Uh, so people are following and using this calculator and if you haven't guessed what it does, uh, yet, it's exactly what it sounds like you enter your zip code, right? And, uh, number, I assume this is number of snow days you've had this year, you know, type of school, public school. Calculate.

And then it tells you, okay, prediction there. Oh, on Thursday, apparently there's a 40 percent chance that there could be a snow day. I actually didn't realize this. Oh, I need to look at my weather. Um, and and confirm this. But apparently we might be getting some snow on tomorrow. Uh, but I guess this just tells you, hey, there's a 40 Um, for, for schools, right?

This is a big deal, Jared. I know you would not understand this at all. Like, but it snows in certain places and people try to go to school when there's snow on the ground. 

Jared: Um, can't just drive through it. Is that what they make chains for? 

Spencer: You know, it's sometimes yes, sometimes no, but, uh, depending on how much snow there is, they, they shut down school because it takes several hours.

Wait, you're telling me they can't go to 

Jared: school because of just a little bit of precipitation falling out of the sky. 

Spencer: Well, sometimes a little bit can be like a foot, right? 

Jared: It all depends. What is this white fluffy stuff you speak of? 

Spencer: I'm sure in California they would cancel it like if it touched the ground.

Yes. They'd probably just cancel school. They've 

Jared: canceled school here for rain to be clear. Just to be clear. 

Spencer: It's pretty bad. Um. You know, it takes a few hours to clear the roads, and so they'll just cancel school. Now, this is like a holiday for kids, of course. They love it. Parents, um, it kind of depends. Do you want your kids to be at home all day or not?

Um, maybe as a holiday. So, anyways, but this is just, I mean, it's basically a calculator. It's a tool. Um, it's a one page website. Uh, it's monetized here with display ads. You know, they've got a few different display ads here. But people are definitely following it. on Twitter, on Facebook. I assume that they post, um, you know, kind of, Hey, I don't know what they're posting on social media.

Something about Groundhog Day, uh, recently. But, uh, so the question is, how much traffic does this site get? Does it get any traffic? Um, It, uh, it gets, well, let me, um, let me share my AA trust before I get to traffic. I'm already on this screen. I was looking at how many backlinks, uh, it, it has because it had a fairly high DR and so it gets a lot of links from sites, you know, like Fox eight or other news, um, websites.

You know, Detroit, um, there was some good ones in here. There was the Boston globe. Uh, and, uh, yeah, bostonglobe. com anyway, some, some, some great sites that are linking to this, um, That, uh, it has pretty good, uh, domain rating, 42, 42 domain rating. And you can just see here, probably not surprised that the traffic just spikes.

Like, look at this January, 2023 over 1. 2 million. Visitors to that site. I don't know why it hasn't happened this year. I don't know if the tools are just behind or if it is no longer ranking, right? But you can see normally in the winter, it's just getting a ton of traffic for a few months. And then it kind of just dies out during the summer when nobody's looking at whether or not it's going to snow.

Um, so it, uh, is probably just a fun little side project. I don't imagine it makes much money except for two to three months out of the year. If it's getting a million visitors a month, right? Okay, you're making 10, 000 a month for But then you're making nothing for the rest of the year. So, 

Jared: you know, it's interesting.

Um, it's a little hard to navigate to, but if you go back to the site on the right hand side, and that those gray tabs that pop out there, uh, you can go to, uh, apps. So they have an app for both iPhone and Android. But I think most interestingly to me is, um, the services. I think that. This is interesting. Um, first off you can get texts from them.

Okay. That's cool. There you go. Second off, get paid to sell ad space. So there, I can't imagine this works well, but they're basically saying, if you go out there and act as our sales agent, we'll give you a 35 percent of each ad you help sell. 

Spencer: That's funny though. That's their second thing. Yeah. Um, okay. 

Jared: And then the fourth one down.

I think this is interesting, advertise on the prediction page of the snow day calculator and and they're right, get super local advertisements targeted by the user's zip 

Spencer: code. That's smart. Yeah, that 

Jared: is smart, right? Um, and then not to be missed, not on this page. And I don't even know where I found it.

Maybe it's back on the homepage on the calculator. I don't even know where I found it, but I found their store. They have a store that you can buy from. Have you seen this? 

Spencer: Mm mm. I 

Jared: have not. Okay, let me see if I can slide it over here. Oops. Uh, hold on. I'm gonna slide it to you in the agenda so you can see it.

Um, I think it's interesting. Uh, you can buy, uh, leggings, a hoodie, a knitted beanie, warm clothes, branded products. Uh, what's that thing where you, the snow globe, where you take it and it snows and everything? 

Spencer: Oh, wow. They have an entire shop. Yeah. They got a shop. I showed up now. Um, 

Jared: maybe WooCommerce.

Actually. 

Spencer: I don't know. I mean, why not? They're. Yeah. So, so the person behind this is doing their best to monetize and try to really are right off of those few months of like, okay, boom, we've got a million people coming here. Let's sell a few hats and gloves. 

Jared: I mean, and again, I would say no one's buying this stuff, but then again, I would say, why would anybody follow it on social media?

You know, like who knows, 

Spencer: right? Yeah, I mean, it's a, it becomes a bigger deal in certain places. Like we get, we get a couple of snow days a year, other places. It's like probably much more frequent. Um, so I mean, 

Jared: it looks like it's not like tchotchkes, right? Like that, that, that hoodie looks decent. You know, it looks like some, I'd see someone wear, I don't know, you know, and they're probably just doing, you know, uh, a drop ship type model.

Right. So, you know, making a little bit of money, but they're probably not. I, I doubt someone has a, you know, 2, 500 winter hats in their garage and they're shipping them out each time somebody orders them. 

Spencer: Right. Not as many followers on, uh, on Instagram, but, uh, so thank you to the person that shared this site with me.

I think it's a very interesting little weird niche site, kind of off the beaten path that, uh, yeah, they're probably making a little bit of money here and there. And, uh, just a unique idea. I mean, we've had a lot of calculator sites that we've talked about. Um, there's lots of niche calculator ideas and this is one I had never thought of, but, uh, clearly it's serving a need at least at a certain time of year.

Jared: And to your point, I mean, even if at the bare minimum, they're still probably making five figures at least one month out of the year. 

Spencer: Yeah, 

Jared: exactly. Not a bad little check when no one's buying stuff on Amazon and no one, you know, like a lot of us, our lowest earning months for our websites and digital products and all that is in January.

Like, man. Yeah, 

Spencer: no, it's 

Jared: great. My weird niche is less fun and definitely more morbid.

I was also shared this by a listener and, uh, I have to say that when I went to it, I was like, Okay. All right. It's good. It's good. Don't get me wrong. But, um, when you pull it up, the, uh, it's quite the visual impact, if you know what I mean. So, uh, the site that I'm sharing, the site that I'm sharing today is aerialashes.

co. uk. And if you're watching on screen, you are seeing live video footage of drones dropping ashes.

Spencer: Drone, aerial ashes. Yep. 

Jared: Arielashes. co. uk. So this website is a business. It's a business site for, I imagine, someone in the UK who, uh, scatters ashes by drones. And as they say, choosing to scatter ashes by drone offers an innovative means of cleanly and sensitively saying your final farewells over your choice of beautiful and memorable locations across the UK over land or sea.

And you know, it's a local business website. Someone has built a website out of this. Um, uh, the pricing is, uh, 975 euros, uh, no pounds, 975 pounds. Um, and you can do simultaneous ash scattering for an additional 540 pounds. Everything's operated by a media drone trained, licensed, insured, um, including photographs and video clips, um, for an additional fee.

And, uh, I mean, by all accounts, this is a, this is a local business. 

Spencer: No, this is really interesting. I mean, you know, it is obviously, uh, like you said, morbid, right. Um, but it's, I mean, it's a need, right. They, they found a need here. Right. Um, people of course have loved ones that have passed and have the ashes.

And, uh, many, you know, I think it's. Been a tradition for a long time, right? Is to scatter their ashes in some place that's memorable. Um, you know, to kind of pay your final respects and this allows them to go over wherever it may be right over a body of water that they couldn't get to otherwise, or some other more remote location.

Uh, that, you know, is, uh, kind of a cool service that they offer. 

Jared: Yeah, I think the morbid part isn't the scattering of the ashes, just so you gotta watch, you know, they need to visually display what it is they do, right? Like, that's, you know, it's a drone, it's, they gotta display it. I think that's the only part that can be a little bit, you're like, Oh, there it is, okay, there goes someone, you know?

Spencer: Yep, there it is. 

Jared: They gotta show what they do, you know, and stuff, so, um, I agree with you, like, what a cool idea, because You know, drones can get to places far easier, far cheaper, and far better than conventional means of scattering ashes could in the past. It's such an interesting concept, and certainly for an operator who knows how to fly drones, it's probably a fairly simple process they can charge a good amount of money for.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. I mean, they're a drone desk professional operator, some sort of certification, right? And so, um, yeah, just finding a niche within the drone operation space. Um, I actually know somebody personally that takes a lot of pictures over farmland for farmers, right? That, you know, they need to kind of document different things.

Um, this is just, yeah, another niche, right? Of operating a drone. So kind of a cool idea, but I guess, do we have any more data on this site in terms of like, do we know if it's doing well or anything like that? 

Jared: Well, there's not a lot of data to really go into. Unfortunately. I think they could use a little bit of SEO help perhaps.

Um, or maybe just some, some time on their SEO. So, you know, some of the numbers that they're DR eight, right. And again. Just to be clear, if you're out there trying to rank your content website, like ranking for local business queries, you don't need to be a DR 50, you know, you can do just fine as a DR 8. I, we work with a lot of local businesses, uh, at my agency that are DR 8s and doing quite well, but this one isn't.

This one is only ranking for about 45 keywords. And if you go look at it, The only term they're ranking in the top 10 for is their own brand name, which you'd expect that I guess they looks like now they rank number nine for a blog post, but most of the UK keywords that would be. Synonymous with maybe a business query like scattering ashes or ash scattering their ranking on page two or page three or page four, so not going to get much traffic from that.

Um, and according to Ahrefs, they don't get much traffic for it, so. 

Spencer: So, I guess you already answered this question. I was going to ask, you know, if they're not ranking for anything, how in the world did you find them? But I guess a reader kind of put you on to this one. Um, I wonder how they found it. Let me 

Jared: see if they shared with me.

They shared it with me on Twitter. By the way, shameless plug, I'm always open to good weird niches if you want to share them with me instead of Spencer. As you heard, Spencer has a couple in the queue, so you know. Uh, let's see here. Uh, here we go. Is this it? Yes. He just said, hey, I found a good random niche site and I thought I would share it with you with a smiley face and a laughter.

So. 

Spencer: There you go. You know, it's Shout 

Jared: out to Mark. 

Spencer: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mark. It's a good one. Yeah, it's just I love having an army of people now that because I run across some weird niche sites You know every now and again, but yeah, if there's a couple thousand people helping us out that hey We're 

Jared: we're a year in on this Spencer.

I mean at some point the well is gonna run dry on our own So it's a it's a it's a community effort, you know, it takes a village, right? 

Spencer: That's what it takes a village to keep this podcast running. So awesome. There you go. Just 

Jared: on that note, like again, and we, I know I always tend to go back to it, but I just find this segment to be inspiring.

Like, I mean, how many people know how to run a drone, have a drone and could do this in their local community, you know? And I just think it's so cool to see people taking business action out of these ideas that I never would have thought about, you know, like Yours was a, uh, a calculator site that combined weather and number of snow days called out by the school, right?

Com combining two things, right? Are there huge weather websites you can't compete with? Yes. But can you find a different niche? Can you niche down on it and find a different angle? And this person has taken drones and, uh, ash scattering and combined it into a business. It's just really inspiring to think about all the different things that we can all do with our skill sets, our passions, our hobbies, our expertises.

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. Um, I think there's so many different permutations of business ideas or website ideas and combining it, you know, with, with something else. Like you said, to kind of niche down to kind of have a very specific thing that you offer or that your website is about. There's so many thousands of ideas and it's a matter of, you know, maybe sitting down and just, Latching onto one of those and doing it.

And so hopefully some of these ideas, even though, you know, you're not going to probably go out and start a snow day calculator might trigger an idea in some other field or some other way that you could start a little business. So I agree, Jared, it's, it's inspiring. So if 

Jared: I were to start a website in the vein of yours from last week, I could just start a website that says, will it be a snow day in San Diego, California day?

And the answer would always just say. 

Spencer: Yeah, and, and, and less, there's that one day, you know, every 20 years, but, uh, all right, let's forget about that one. I couldn't help it. All right. We better quit now. Um, so thank you everybody so much for listening to the podcast today. I hope you've enjoyed the SEO news, the shiny object shenanigans, the weird niche sites.

Uh, it's been a pleasure and I hope you have a great weekend. Bye everyone.

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