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Welcome to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast, where Spencer and Jared offer their thoughts on the latest news in SEO, Google and AI; talk about their side hustles; and share some funny and weird niche sites.
They kick things off by talking about the SearchGPT announcement. Spencer talks about how the tool looks like it will work and whether it will include links to sources.
They reference an article on Wired and talk about how SearchGPT’s initial search functionality would be limited, but what will it look like when and if it eventually expands?
What type of approach will SearchGPT eventually be based on? How does this impact publishers?
Tune in to hear Spencer and Jared’s initial thoughts on this bombshell news item!
Watch the Full Episode
Moving along, they talk about how Google is planning to scrap its plans to kill 3rd party cookies in Chrome. This news is quite shocking, as Google has been talking about killing those cookies since 2020. People have been preparing for it for years!
Why does Spencer think they made this decision? And what trend does Jared highlight and question? How’s this going to play out in other countries?
And what’s likely driving this decision by Google? Is this good or bad news for publishers?
Next up is more Google news. Google recently released its Q2 earnings and revealed some interesting data, such as growth in its search revenue.
Although the company beat some of its estimates, where did its projections fall short? And where does its stock price stand? What does Jared point out about CEO vs public perception? And does this performance suggest that there’s room for SearchGPT to get a piece of the pie?
Also, what’s the status of AI Overviews, according to Sundar Pichai?
It’s on to the Shiny Object Shenanigans, and Spencer kicks things off talking about his experience in the Facebook Performance Bonus Program.
After just 2 months, things are going very well. In the first month he earned slightly less than $3k and this month he expects to surpass that.
How often is he posting? How has his strategy changed? What does this mean for the niche website associated with the Facebook page?
For Jared, he talks about a side hustle within a side hustle: Creator Connections inside the Amazon Influencer Program.
He recently discovered higher-paying opportunities within the program. How did he find out about them and how do they work? And why did he and Spencer describe them as “free money?”
Check out the episode to hear all the details!
Spencer shares his weird niche site first when the time comes: Test My Thumbnail, which allows you to upload a sample of a thumbnail and see what it will look like alongside others on YouTube and tweak it accordingly.
The site offers lots of other features and functions, such as a/b testing thumbnails and YouTube revenue calculator.
What does the traffic look like? What do Spencer and Jared have to say about this site?
When it’s Jared’s turn, he goes pretty weird with Gift Wrap My Face which, as the name suggests, lets you print your fact on wrapping paper.
This DR27 site doesn’t get a lot of traffic and isn’t ranking for a lot of keywords, but what’s so interesting about it, according to Jared? What’s the story behind the brand?
Jared also checks back on a weird site that was featured previously. Find out how that site is doing!
And that takes us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!
Don’t forget to come back next week for some more insight, inspiration, and fun!
transcript
Spencer: Well, everyone, it just finally happened. Open AI has launched something called search GPT, a direct assault on Google search. Well, we’re going to talk about this. Jared and I, we literally just found out about this just a few minutes ago, uh, this announcement by OpenAI. They have something called SearchGPT.
It’s just a prototype search engine. You can only join the wait list right now. But we’re going to jump into what the demo looks like, what we think it means, how it might work, and the very limited information that we have right now. Uh, along with some other really interesting news stories, Google had their earnings report just come out earlier this week.
And so we’re going to talk about, we have, we have some hard numbers now on AI overviews and how Google’s performing overall. So we’re going to, we’re going to talk about that. Uh, but we’re also going to have what I’ll call some lighter topics as well. We’re going to talk about our side hustles like we always do.
And then we’re going to talk about a couple of weird niche sites. So having said all that, Jared, how are you today? It’s good to be back. You’re back in the hot seat. A little break. Yeah,
Jared: I am back. Yeah, you know, you picked a good week. Like you said, I was all prepped for our feature story. That is not the feature story anymore.
We’ve got a new one as of maybe eight minutes ago,
Spencer: right? Yep. This is fresh. So here we go. Here we go. Yeah, who
Jared: is that? Bill O’Reilly. Bill O’Reilly. He’s got that clip of him, that YouTube clip. You can go back and look. And he’s, they’re giving him a news desk, uh, reel to read. And he didn’t, he didn’t have it in time.
He’s like, you know what? We’ll just do it live. We’ll do it live. That that’s us right now. We’re just probably reading most of the article live to you and uh, giving you our first take.
Spencer: Well, we’re running with it. But as soon as we saw this headline, we knew we had to cover it because obviously we talk about Google search all the time, how it’s evolving, how it’s adding AI features.
But we’ve also been talking about open AI, and it seems like a natural progression and it’s official. It’s been publicly announced. Open AI, AI has something called search GPT announced today, just like two hours ago, I think, uh, and it’s in prototype. Um, I’ll share my screen so people can see. Basically all that we know about it, but it does appear to be a search prototype using AI features to help you get what it says fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.
I like that it put that its sources are needed there because you will see the first thing I noticed in sort of this video overview is that the queries do show actual hyperlinks. Thanks for watching. Or sources where you can click and go and find out more about that topic. And of course, as publishers and bloggers, we want that traffic.
So even if, um, open AI does take a bite of Google’s Apple, we want to know that, Hey, are we going to actually get some traffic? And, um, so there’s that little clue there that. Yes, OpenAI is going to provide sources. And so this video, again, on screen that you can see is about all we know, really how it might look or feel or interact.
Uh, we can only join the wait list, which I’m going to do as soon as we end, uh, this call here. Um, and yeah, so OpenAI basically saying, hey, this is a new way to search, get answers on the web with very little, you know, effort. You’re going to get accurate information, yada, yada, yada. And it kind of, you know, gives, gives all this information, right?
But we do have a little bit more to go on based on a, uh, wired article that we’re able to find here, right? Titled search GPT is open. AI is direct assault on Google. I mean, clearly, uh, Sam Altman and the, the people behind open AI, they are not afraid to follow the money trail. Right. They see how well Google is doing and they, they want a piece of that.
Uh, it looks like, and, um, Jared, you actually found, uh, as you were reading through this article, you kind of pointed out some one interesting aspect of how this. Operate the technology that they use. So do you want to kind of highlight that little piece there?
Jared: Yeah. I mean, I think this is fascinating because you think about open AI and you think about obviously how successful chat GPT has been, but yet when we look at the numbers, we look at the data behind it, that them incorporating it into the Bing search engine, like it hasn’t really made much of a dent in Google’s overall market share.
We’ve gone back and forth on that previously in the podcast for different reports there, but by and large. What will search GPT do when it’s up against this behemoth? I thought it was interesting. Wired called it out a number of times in this very short article. Their byline to the article is the company behind chat GPT is expanding into search and lean heavily on its relationship with publishers.
Now we know that open AI has been going out and signing contracts with publishers with big publishers in order to license its information to train. It’s a, it’s model. And, uh, and that is interesting as we go deeper into this article and it talks about perhaps some of the things that search GPT will do to limit the hallucinations, the out of date nature of, of some of this stuff that we’ve seen when, with Google’s, uh, AI overviews.
So I think there’s a little bit more to unpack as it relates to search GPT is approach, not that Google’s and their AI overviews isn’t doing the same thing in their own way. But there’s certainly not just going about it the same that they did when they tried to implement a chat bot into being
Spencer: right.
Exactly. And so there’s, um, a couple of different aspects there that I’d like to tease out with what you kind of mentioned is that, hey, they are at least initially working with, um, Publishers that they already have a relationship. They have a licensing relationship with, um, some of those companies that it mentioned specifically are Vox Media, the Atlantic, News Corp, Financial Times that have all signed licensing agreements with Open AI, uh, this year.
So, It would appear that at least initially, uh, the search functionality of search GPT would be probably limited to these companies that it’s signed a licensing agreement with, right? And so I would suspect that the quality and breadth of the results is somewhat limited in a way, right? These are large companies and they have a lot of data and a lot of great information.
It’s a very small subset of the overall. Web. So at least initially, this does appear to be a prototype. They’re going to probably test this out with the limited number of, you know, uh, licensees that they have publishers that they’re getting information sort of from. And then I imagine they’ll expand from there.
And I don’t know what that will look like. Exactly. Maybe there’s opportunity for, you know, regular bloggers, um, To sort of join, right. Allow open AI to crawl your website for their search GPT. I don’t know exactly, you know, how that will work. Um, but it does also, let’s see here. Uh, and this gets very technical.
Jared: I was going to see who’s going to be the first person to use this phrase and sound really smart.
Spencer: Right. Uh, probably somebody else that we bring on the podcast, uh, is what will happen, but we can at least read what Wired Magazine says and sound intelligent, but it, it talks about a rag approach. Um, let’s see here.
Open AI search. GPT may use an approach to generative AI called retrieval augmented generation. That’s an industry standard, right? Uh, that it’s designed to lower the rate of hallucinations in chatbot answers. With a RAG approach, the AI tool references trusted information like a preferred news website.
While generating its output and links back to where the data originated. So in my very limited understanding of a rag approach, uh, which I have heard of in the past, I got lucky enough to hear an intelligent person speak on this at one point, uh, it, it essentially, and it’s, you know, my, my brain at least thinks of it this way, that you’ve basically got a database Trusted sources or limited resources that the I will have access to, right?
So it’s sort of a walled off, you know, um, yeah, database of where it can access information. So instead of going to the entire web, it’s just going to go to this, have this rag approach. Where it’s going to, uh, it’ll be limited on the number of resources that it queries essentially to get its output. So what
Jared: would I be remiss if I vastly oversimplified it and kind of thought about in the same way as the Google’s knowledge graph, you know?
Spencer: Yeah, right. No, I think that’s probably a good, Comparison, right? Is, uh, that Google sort of vetted and included trusted sources in its knowledge graph, right? Things that qualify to be included in the knowledge graph. And so, um, you know, some queries only get responses based on the knowledge graph, right?
Correct. And, uh, I think that’s a similar approach, probably at least initially from what we know, um, within this being released in the last couple of hours. That this search GPT prototype will probably be based on that. Um, that type of approach. So super fascinating developments for sure.
Jared: My question to you obviously is what we think this impacts.
On Google side of things in a short and a long term, but I’m curious, given the other stories we have to cover, do you want to talk about that now? Or do you want to talk about that after we touch on a few of these other stories? And I really am asking because we’re kind of making this agenda up as we go
Spencer: well, let’s think about it now, right?
I guess since since we’re on the subject, right? Like, um, I guess, how does this impact publishers, right? Is, um, really what we want to know at the end of the day. Um, and it, it, it’s hard to make projections about how it will impact traffic or how we optimize our websites or what we do differently. Um, we really don’t know, but it’s, it’s a fascinating.
Uh, development, I guess, as an aside, I’ll just say that, um, this isn’t the first time that somebody’s tried to compete with Google, but it’s the first time in a long time that I feel like. A new player, uh, has enough money and technology behind it to actually maybe make a serious run at it.
Jared: It feels like the first time that someone’s tried to compete with Google with a different model.
You know, I feel like we’ve had the Yahoos and the beings of the world come into play and just try to do what Google does, but do it better or
do it
Jared: bigger. Or do it broader. And this just feels like open AI is saying, we don’t believe Google that, you know, the future of search. We believe we do. We believe this is the future of search.
It’s a different model and we’re going to compete to steal what people use Google for and have them use search GPT for it instead.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Trying to take that different approach and it’s just going to be super fascinating. Um, hopefully I can join the wait list and, you know, get early access or something to kind of better understand how this all operates and how it functions.
Um, but, uh, at the end of the day, like AI has to be trained on. Models, it has to be trained on data. And so they need to get that data from somewhere. And at least at this point, it shows that, Hey, it’s providing links. To the relevant resources. And so hopefully as it grows, our blogs can be included in those relevant resources and we’re still getting traffic.
And so I don’t think any of us really care if our traffic is coming from Google or search GPT or wherever it’s coming from. We just want to make sure we’re still getting traffic to our websites.
Jared: Yeah. It continues to open up the can of worms that is, you know, um, copyright violations, antitrust lawsuits, like where government, where, you know, Large, big, uh, tech is going to land when it comes to the ability to, to, to do this kind of stuff.
I know we all have different opinions on that and I’ve heard people as wide ranging from one side of the, of the coin to the other, but this is just another iteration of the way that data and the way that content is being used, uh, to kind of circumvent. Uh, the publisher, perhaps, uh, perhaps not though, perhaps this could increase the amount of clicks over to a website.
We just don’t know the patterns of people on something brand new. Uh, there’s a lot of reason to be disappointed. There’s a lot, a lot of potential to be positively impacted. It’s just so hard to say. We don’t know. It’s, it’s a new model.
Spencer: Yeah, no, exactly. And, um, you know, this really does tie closely into what we were going to talk about anyways today.
I mean, we’re going to talk about privacy and data that, you know, individuals provide to search engines. And, um, because this is so relevant to that topic, you know, Google, um, just this week, Announced that I’m going to move here on to the next topic here is that Google announced that they are going to scrap their plans To kill the third party cookie, which is crazy Which is which is any other week would have been a
Jared: headliner.
Spencer: Oh, yeah. Oh, this was going to be our big story uh for sure, um Because this is how long has this been talked about? I feel like it’s over 2020? 2020. Is it that
Jared: long? Yeah, it’s in one of these. I read a bunch of articles on it this week and it’s in one of those. So yeah, 2020! They kept kicking the can down the road.
It was getting kicked to 2025,
Spencer: right? Google. And to catch those people up, you know, the 10 second virgin version is that Google has basically been saying, Hey, uh, we’re going to no longer allow third party cookies, which advertisers use to kind of track, uh, uh, some information on users so they can better target users and that sort of thing.
And better ads can be served to individuals. Um, Google’s not going to kill those third party cookies anymore. And they’ve been talking about that since 2020, uh, that, Hey, it’s coming. A lot of people add platforms, Mediavine in particular, that we can talk about. They’ve been making major adjust adjustments to their platforms in preparation for this so that, um, RPMs and an ad payouts can be just as high as they have always been.
Uh, because as soon as you’re not able to. Understand the potential user on your website. As soon as advertisers can no longer understand that they’re not willing to pay as high a price, right? Um, if they happen to be targeting, you know, middle aged men like Jared and I that are interested in technology, for example, uh, they might pay a premium for that if they know we’re on their website, but if instead they just know.
Two people are on your website, but we don’t know anything about them. They’re not going to pay quite as much money. Right. And that’s what the third party cookie essentially would have gotten rid of. But Google, uh, you know, it all comes down to dollars and cents, uh, at the end of the day. Like as much as Google wants to say, Hey, we, we value privacy and there’s this big push for privacy.
It sounds like when push comes to shove that. Google’s advertisers wouldn’t have to pay as much money. And so maybe Google is going to make more money by not killing the third party cookie. That would be my hunch.
Jared: I don’t understand this and I understand it because as you, as you said, third party data means that advertisers will pay more and we’ll spend more money, which means Google makes more money and given it their entire.
Not entire, but a significant portion of their revenue comes from their ad platform. It’s massively important to Google, but why were they going to make the switch in the first place? If it was ever an option not to, because like you said, no one, not anyone has come out and said that advertisers will spend more money without third party cookies.
It’s all been gloom and doom and all the rhetoric has been how much gloom and doom is there? How big of a drop off will it be to your point? Mediavine, we’re going to go to great lengths to make the drop off. Not as bad all this Hullabaloo about it. And I’m just so curious, like if it could have been avoided in the first place, you can’t imagine a situation where Google wouldn’t have taken that.
Spencer: Well, I, I, you know, this is going back to 2020, but I have to think, and if memory serves correct, like it’s really been a PR move. Right. Like, I don’t know if that was the timing of, you know, Google antitrust lawsuit and other things.
Jared: Apple was making a big PR movement around this. Yeah, that probably was around that time.
Right. So, yeah,
Spencer: that sounds about right. You know, it, it really is a PR thing, you know, DuckDuckGo has been skyrocketing a number of users. And, you know, like you said, Apple made this big move. There’s been this big push publicly and even by governments to remove all this personal information. Information, you know, all this, this tracking information.
And so it feels like, okay, Google made these big announcements, uh, you know, four years ago, probably just be a PR move. Um, maybe at the time that you said, Oh yes, we’re going to definitely do it. And they really believed it. But now they’re not, they’re, they’re, they’re doing it about face. When push comes to shove maybe, uh, you know, the money’s more important than the PR at this point Uh, so that’s my quick take on it.
Jared: Well, we’ll get to it. But um, no doubt. Uh, generally speaking If you take a bit of a step back, which hold on folks, we’re going to be talking about Google stock price and how it relates to all of this. But if you take a step back and just look at the last, say 10 year trend, I mean, they certainly don’t need to be doing PR moves like this to help their stock price, because it’s.
Been doing nothing but going up into the right.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, that’s
Jared: right. That’s exactly right. Um, I’m curious how this will play out. I’m certainly curious about what plays out in countries that are more, uh, uh, focused on this type of stuff. Europe, uh, you know, we’ve seen that they’re constantly in the, in the, in the news over there for stuff like that.
I’m just so fascinated to see how this all plays out. But, but, but you’re right. It’s, it’s, it’s just a, it’s just a dollar’s decision at the end of the day. Right. I’m going to imagine someone weighed the complicated math out and said that the amount that we stand to gain from the ad revenue of third party cookies outweighs the litigious bills we’ll get for keeping them.
Right. Yeah.
Spencer: Maybe so. I can only speculate,
Jared: but. So, yep. We’re all
Spencer: seeing a play out live. We haven’t talked about
Jared: it, but as publishers, this is a win. No doubt. There’s no way around it. It’s a win for publishers. I mean, the RPMs will stay where they’re at. Google did say, by the way, we didn’t address it. They are going to be working on, maybe I should quote it here.
Uh, uh, this move suggests Google is trying to balance privacy concerns of the needs of the ad industry and its own business model. That’s a quote from Search Engine Land. What they’re saying, this is Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox wrote, we developed the Privacy Sandbox with the goal of finding innovative solutions that Meaningfully improve online privacy while preserving the ad supported internet.
Um, and so they’re, they’re going to continue to develop that. I, I think that’s maybe the point I should have just gotten to. I thought that quote was a little more impactful than it actually turned out to be. So this isn’t the end of it, but as it stands, the way third party cookies are designed, publishers are going to make more money on their RPMs this way.
Spencer: Yeah, you know, and and I love that point that you make. We should, we should try to always bring out the positive here is that, hey, it’s kind of business as usual in terms of ads on your website. And so if your site is monetized with ads, this is, this is a great announcement. This is like, okay, relief. We don’t have to worry about what might happen in 2025.
We appear to be good to go for the next, you know, for the foreseeable future. Um, and so that’s good news. That’s good news.
Jared: Well, that’s not the end of Google in the news. That’s not the end of our discussions around Google. And that’s not the end of, uh, uh, of that stock price conversation, is it?
Spencer: It is not the end.
In fact, uh, let’s go ahead and jump into it as, uh, briefly alluded to here that, uh, just earlier this week, Google announced their a quarter two, uh, earnings. And so anytime that that happens, The CEO of Google hops on a call, they announced their financials and they share a lot of results. And so we have a couple of sort of, uh, news stories to cover related to that.
But, um, basically the, the headline here that Google announced their earnings, the, their revenue grew by 14 percent in quarter two for a huge cut. The company is massive. Uh, so a 14 percent growth rate is. Tremendous. Um, and, uh, Google search revenue is up, uh, sorry, the Google search revenue is up 14{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, uh, their, their total earnings.
I actually don’t know what the growth is on that, but their search revenue is up 14 percent year over year. Their Google cloud computing exceeded 10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Jared: That’s just, I finally broke niche pursuits, uh, quarterly revenue.
Spencer: Yeah, right, right. Um, get rid of how, get rid of nine of those zeros.
I don’t know. Um, yeah, it’s just unfathomable. Um, how, how much a billion dollars is. Um, and that’s just, you know, one business unit of theirs, of course. And, um, they talk a lot. of, uh, the use of AI, their innovations, AI search, AI overviews, that’s talked about a lot that we’ll get into. Uh, but maybe just to bring your point home about the stock price, what was interesting is that even though they beat estimates on, you know, search and cloud computing, they actually missed their projections on YouTube.
And because of that, the stock price actually took a hit. And if I just, I’ve got their stock price pulled up here, you know, you can kind of see this dip here. You know, when the announcement happened here, you know, it’s down 6 percent over the last five days. And so even though they’re making a ton of money, You know, uh, wall street isn’t a hundred percent happy with them.
They’re a little bit disappointed because they missed one of their estimates on YouTube ad revenue. It wasn’t as high as wall street expected and hoped for. So their stock price is actually down. Does that pre pre present a buying opportunity? I don’t know. We’ll leave that up to listeners.
Jared: I’ll take you through 30 seconds on the conversation that Spencer and I were having prior to hitting record.
Easy. Quickly go over the agenda. We were looking over this, uh, this report you have on the screen in front of you and my initial thought is Spencer and I were talking about it was, well, the stock price clearly must have done well. I mean, look at this 14 percent up all this kind of stuff. We pulled it up.
We’re like, Oh, my gosh, the stock price went down and it was like it dropped 6{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}. Uh, since, uh, Monday or Tuesday, because they missed these earnings, which underscores how weird this world is where you can be up 14{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, but still not perform well as a stock price because of you missed earnings. And then it said, and it continued to drop after hours or on Thursday because of chat, uh, search GPTs.
And we’re like, wait, what? That’s how we actually found the search GPT story. So it’s such an interest. It all just ties back together, but it’s very fascinating that, um, Google can, and again, going all the way back to what do we talk about almost every single week? Like it is such a bizarre world for those of us who live so deeply entrenched in Google search ecosystem to just watch blunder after blunder to watch a search engine that pretty much by and large is agreed upon as in, you know, one of the worst places in terms of usability and user satisfaction and stuff in quite a long time.
And then see them absolutely skyrocketing in earnings and seeing their CEO tout how amazing everything is. And I’m not saying that I’m not saying one or, or the other isn’t accurate. It’s just so fascinating to see. What corporate America thinks, what the CEO things versus what all the users think and what everybody else is projecting as it relates to the search engine experience.
Spencer: Right. And so does that even provide more evidence that, Hey, there is wiggle room here for search GPT to come in and take some market share, right? As individual users, boots on the ground, as you say, we’re a little bit dissatisfied with how Google is operating. Um, does that provide, you know, An open space there for a competitor.
And so that’s kind of playing out here, maybe in the stock price a little bit, right, that it continues to maybe drop based on this, this news. So when people are listening to this podcast, when it goes live, which will be tomorrow, uh, for us, we can look at the stock price even further. And, uh, As a stock analyst, we can go, Hey, do, is it time to buy up some shares of Google?
Or is it really time to say, you know what, maybe there’s gonna be another player here and maybe it’s time to sell off some of those, uh, shares. Um, that’s not really where we usually take our show here, so we’ll maybe in the stock buying or selling discussion there. ’cause we are not financial. Uh uh. But is it any means past perform?
Jared: It does not, uh, indicate, uh, of the future gains, right? Yeah.
Spencer: But we
Jared: will
Spencer: get to,
Jared: uh, I will put one thing, let me put one thing in perspective to kind of switch that. You said specifically that the stock price was dropping because of missed earnings around YouTube ad revenue. Um, and so it’s interesting to hear them talk about the different segments of Google’s business, but also to put it in perspective, right?
Google’s cloud, for example, they highlighted surpassed 10 billion in quarterly revenue. Um, And I was like, that’s ridiculous. It’s amazing. I, but then I went, looked it up. Amazon AWS, by the way, is that over 25 billion per quarter in revenue, uh, which is a very similar type of service that they provide. So these numbers are shocking, but it also puts in perspective that there’s plenty of runway left for Google.
Or a search GPT to come in and take some market share. There’s plenty of runway there. And like you said, especially if they’re not putting out the best things since sliced bread that could give publishers hope that so much has is coming to change. Competition is good. Search GPT coming out, obviously seeing lots of runway here, seeing lots of growth, seeing people very interested from an investment standpoint.
There’s a lot of interesting threads to pull on this one.
Spencer: Yeah, and there is. And maybe one other thought that I’ll just add here that always is super fascinating to me is because of course we’re here at Niche Pursuits. I always love to find very small Niche products or ideas that I can build. And so when you see a massive company, that’s doing billions of dollars, uh, if you can find an idea that takes one little sliver of what a Google does, or some other large company does a very, very niche, you know, little idea and do it.
Better, uh, or differently or market it to, you know, a different crowd. I mean, what’s a million dollars, right? Come on, you can do a million dollars a year. No problem. I a market pool that size, all you need is a grain of sand. Just a grain of sand. But, uh, that, that is one way to, to find, uh, you know, That’s how entrepreneurs have been doing it for years and years and years.
It seems to take the gorilla that’s not doing so well anymore. And you,
Jared: yeah, you will love my weird niche then.
Spencer: Good, good. I usually do. So, uh, well let’s maybe finish up this discussion just to maybe read this brief quote. Um, Glenn Gabe here on Twitter provided a nice quote for us. So it makes it really easy.
This is a quote from the quarterly earnings call. Uh, Sundar Pichai talked about AI overviews specifically, uh, and so, of course, he’s very positive as always, but he says, we’re pleased to see the positive trends from our testing as we roll out AI overviews, including increases in search usage and increase user satisfaction with the results.
Uh, people who are looking for help with complex topics are engaging more and keep coming back for AI overviews. Overviews. Now there’s, you know, of course a lot to kind of unpack there. And we’ve talked about a lot in terms of AI overviews used to be in like 84 percent of queries and then it dropped to 15{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}.
And so there’s been a lot of sort of pullback. And so, yeah, even though Google says, uh, um, more, you know, we see positive trends in our testing wallets because. And a lot of the queries you’re pulling it back, uh, is, is probably part of that reason. And then the other part is, you know, give them the benefit of the doubt.
They are getting better probably in improving their technology. Um, one line then the last
Jared: as, Oh, sorry, I might steal your thunder here.
Spencer: No, please do.
Jared: One line to point out, point out about that. Cause I think it’s interesting. We talk about ads as it relates to AI overviews for a while and just surmising about it.
One line out of this article, AI overviews contribute to better user experience and open new advertising opportunities. Not sure about the better user experience, but apparently their data says it does, but open new advertising opportunities is the second half of that statement. Google will start testing search and shopping ads within AI overviews labeled as sponsored.
Interesting. We’ve talked about how they’re going to pull that off relevant to the query and information in the overview.
So that was revealed in this call there. And so we know now that ads are coming. They’re coming in the AI overview box. They will be relevant and they will be labeled. If you’re not watching on YouTube, I have a, you know, a very suggestive face of, okay, I can’t wait to see this come out.
Spencer: Yep. We’ll, we’ll see what it looks like.
Um, So Google’s continuing to talk about AI overviews and they’re going to probably start talking about it even more if that’s possible now that search GPT is coming out, you’re going to probably see this sort of head to head of like, Hey, our AI overviews are all you need. Keep using Google. Don’t worry about this search GPT thing.
Uh, that’s happening over there. Oh man. Did we get through all the news stories?
Jared: No, but I think we’re going to have to stop there. We got through. All the important
Spencer: ones. I think we did. Let’s, uh, let’s leave it there. Um. That was good. That was literally on the fly. That was pretty much on the fly.
Jared: People are understanding if we, uh, bounced around a little bit.
Spencer: Yeah, but genuine reactions from us because we’re just learning about this stuff too. Literally just happened a couple hours ago. Search GPT. Let’s go ahead and move on to our shiny object shenanigans. And, uh, I will be happy to, to go first. I’m going to just give a quick overview of my Facebook page that got accepted to the bonus program.
Um, less than 2 months ago at this point, just a little less than 2 months ago and kind of provide an update on how that’s going. Things continue to go really well and I’m excited about it. Uh, in the very first month as I shared here, the Earnings were just shy of 3, 000 from the Facebook bonus program itself, uh, which is way beyond what I expected that it would do.
Um, I thought maybe you’d do a few hundred dollars. So to do like a few thousand dollars, uh, super happy with, uh, and this month. Looks like it’s on track to do even more than that.
Jared: All right.
Spencer: So, um, I don’t have it pulled up right here, but the earnings are roughly 2, 500 right now. And, um, it, it doesn’t, the month doesn’t.
Sync up with the calendar month. Like it’s, it’s the day you got accepted to the Facebook bonus program, which is so mine will go through the fourth of next month. So I’ve got about 10 days left in this particular month on the Facebook bonus program. So that’ll give you an idea. I’m hoping. To, to clock in the month
Jared: at 50, maybe, maybe if you get an extra little bump, maybe you’ll hit 4, 000.
Spencer: Exactly. That’s, that’s what I’m hoping for is like, Hey, can we crank up to, uh, you know, 4, 000 for the month? I think we could get close. We should be in that 3, 500 to 4, 000 range, uh, for the month. We continue to just post, uh, 15 times a day. And, uh, just within the last two weeks, I’ve become less concerned with trying to send traffic to my own website.
Uh, in the past we would do like three posts a day that would be links to the website so that we can get traffic to the website, make money from ads. Um, but now honestly, the Facebook bonus program is making more money than the website is making.
Oh yeah.
Spencer: And so I sort of said. Hey, let’s, uh, even scale back posting links to our website.
So now we’re at like maybe one time a day, posting a link to our website. And 14 times a day is just Facebook posts. We’re just trying to get engagement. Uh, and that appears to be working well. We’re keeping people on Facebook. I think that’s what they want. Uh, the audience is engaged and, um, yeah, I’m just pleasantly surprised here in the second month.
Full month of the Facebook bonus program. It’s going really, really well. And, uh, Kind of, it’s a shiny object right now, for sure. I mean, I’m enjoying it
Jared: to make 3, 000 off of traffic to your website. If we just kind of use ballpark RPMs, you’d have to drive a hundred thousand to 150, 000 page views.
Spencer: Yes.
Jared: And that’s a lot of page views from Facebook.
And you, I think what I’m trying to say is I think the bonus program, you’re exactly right. It sounds like the RPM, if we can use that, that analogy is, is much higher when you have. Comparative metrics of the time and effort you put in and the return that you get,
Spencer: right? Yeah, it’s uh, I I agree. I mean it it really is hard to drive traffic from somebody else’s platform To your website and you can do it, you know I’ve had some months where i’ve gotten 50 visitors to my website, but but even that right was Or less.
I mean, yeah, it was less than half, uh, for sure. Um, you know, I, I happen to be in a low paying niche. I’m just in a very kind of obscure niche that I’m in. Um, and, uh, but the, the amount of engagement that I’m getting on my Facebook page is, is, is huge, right? Millions and millions and millions of views every month on the content that we’re posting.
And, uh, it’s just kind of fun. It’s just kind of fun to log in, check my stats and, uh, you know, See the people are really engaging with it.
Jared: Well, I’m very excited to continue to hear about this. And for those of you listening, we have an upcoming interview all about the Facebook bonus program.
Spencer: We do indeed.
I believe that’s coming out next week. Oh, is it next week? It is next week. Well, there we go. Time to tease it. Wow. Perfect time to tease it. Yep. Coming out next Wednesday.
Jared: For folks that wonder, I just record them and they, they go into the abyss of niche pursuits. And I’m as surprised as you are when they come out.
Spencer: That’s right. Oh yeah. Oftentimes you record a couple of months in advance. You’re like, Oh yeah, I, I did record that interview. I forget
Jared: about them, but just, you know, you, you, you kind of get into a different flow. So that’s great. That’s a good one. So people should, if you like these updates from Spencer, definitely tune in, uh, next, next Wednesday.
Spencer: Absolutely. So, so there you go. That’s, that’s my quick update. It’s going really well,
Jared: man. That’s inspiring. Um, mine is going to be about something new, Spencer. It’s not really a new side hustle. Okay. It’s, it’s really speaking of niching down, it’s like a side hustle inside of my side hustle. Okay. Okay. I I’m trying to, uh, and it’s gonna be very high level and just open ended because I literally just did it yesterday.
Have you ever heard of creator connections inside the Amazon Influencer program? I believe that I have. Yeah? Ring a bell? I’ve, I’ve heard of it. I’ve had a number of people tell me I should be doing it. Um, and, uh, I’ve had a number of people tell me that I should be doing a lot of things with my Amazon Influencer videos that I make.
Uh, I believe I’ve had someone like you tell me I need to be posting on YouTube. And you’re probably right. I’ve had people tell me, Jared, are you doing creator connections? Why aren’t you? So anyways, I haven’t given it a ton of, of mind, but I got an email this week. I was just pulling up the email cause I want to make sure to accurately quote from David.
Um, and, uh, he was like, you know, Hey, what are you doing? And I’m like, give him the same answer. Like, I don’t have time. And he’s like, No, any, we had an email exchange about the creator connections. And so what it is basically to put it in a high level nutshell, and I’m just learning about it, so many listeners will probably understand it way better than me and would be able to describe it better.
But for the general layman, like myself, greater connections is really the, the brand creating influencer opportunities and incentivizing those opportunities with additional bonuses. In the form of higher commissions. And so let’s say that I were to make an Amazon influencer video about this mug, and the standard commission on that for onsite payout would be, I don’t know, 2{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, maybe 4{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, something of that range.
Well, the brand that makes this mug might say, Hey, influencers, we, um, want you to promote it and, uh, and, and actually incentivize you to make videos and all that kind of stuff. And so we’re gonna be offering 10{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749} or 15{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749} or 20{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749} on this said mug and. You, um, you have to get invited to creator connections. I don’t know much about who gets invited and not, but I happen to have been invited apparently.
And so I have access to it. So I went in there and this was fascinating. This is what Dave was telling me. He’s like, Jared, you probably already have a bunch of opportunities that make a ton of sense. And lo and behold, he was right. I own 10 or 11 products. Uh, brands inside of creator connections were, uh, had opportunities for.
So I basically yesterday, um, took advantage of it. I won’t go into all the details about how to do that, but basically you just have to kind of line all the things up, uh, with the product that you own and the videos you made and that sort of thing and submitted for them. And, um, now those products when purchased will make me a significantly higher.
Percentage on the commissions.
Spencer: Can I clarify that? So did you say you already had videos on those products or you created new videos? So I already had videos on those products. I read
Jared: through what the brand, some brands are really detailed in what they want and some are not. And the ones that weren’t, I was able to just use the videos.
I already had a few of them. They had different criteria. I think I could have used the same video, because I think it’s just recommendations, but I didn’t know. So I just, you know, these are quick for me. So I made a couple new videos yesterday, uh, that followed more of what the brand wanted for a couple of these.
I think I only did a couple though. So most of them, my video already fit what the brand was looking for. It’s like free
Spencer: money right there. It’s like free money right there. That’s, uh, super fascinating. I had heard of, uh, brand connections and I did get approved because I know I had logged in at one point and looked at all of this.
Uh, and apparently like you, I just. Didn’t do anything with that information. Um, yeah. So
Jared: David says it’s adding an extra 10 percent or so to his earnings. So it’s not life changing, but he’s also from what it sounds like taking a similar approach where he’s just kind of going after the low hanging fruit, you know?
Um, uh, I have a lot more to learn. I kind of plan on learning about it. Uh, it’s one of those things where like, it took me an hour or two to kind of figure out how to operate in it. And then once I figured it out, it was really quick and easy. But, you know, it took me an hour or two to kind of, to kind of figure it out.
So I want to look into it more, make sure that I kind of understand it fully, see if there’s other opportunities inside of creator connections to take advantage of. But, um, you know, you’re already doing the content, you’re already making the videos and it’s just one more opportunity for people to look into inside of this really amazing Amazon influencer program.
Spencer: Yeah. I mean, double or triple your commissions on certain products, like. It does seem like a no brainer. And you know, here I am scolding myself for like not doing it. Um, sometimes there is low hanging opportunities. Like it kind of is owed to the good old days of Amazon associates where you could earn commissions of eight and a half percent or whatever it was, you know, if you get to the top tier, um, that here is the opportunity on some of those products, it sounds like, Hey, here you can make 10 percent commissions.
If you. Um, make a video on our product
Jared: higher. I mean, higher, like some of them are upwards of 20{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}. Wow. And of course you get into like conversion rates and you get into all that stuff, right. And which videos are actually performing well. And I’m sure there’s the devils in the details of course. But, um, I mean, It’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s like you mentioned.
It’s very interesting to see how Amazon is incentivizing people themselves. And I would say that the influencer program that we talk about with shoppable videos is really incentivized by Amazon. Um, I don’t actually know who pays those commissions for influencer. Is, did they pass it onto the brand or, or not?
I’m not even really sure, but I mean, I’m looking here. And there’s commissions of, uh, 10{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, uh, 15{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, 18{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}. Here’s a 33{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749} one. Wow. Um, that, that’s being offered. Uh, so I mean, like there’s some high, can you imagine making 33{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749} every single time you sell something on Amazon?
Yeah,
Spencer: that’d be huge. Yeah. I’m in here.
Right? Um, do you know if that only applies to, uh, influencer videos or shoppable videos, or, uh, if you’re, you know, an Amazon associate, can you still put a link on your website and get that higher commission?
Jared: Yeah. So they give you, uh, they give you an Amazon associates link.
Spencer: They do.
Jared: Yeah. So, uh, because I think they want you publishing it on your social accounts or, and they want you driving traffic to this promotion any way you can.
So, uh, yeah, I mean, again, early days for me. So if you’re listening, you’re like, Jared, I know I want to preface like Jared just figured this out 24 hours ago, but
Spencer: yeah, that’s fine. I’m learning here too. So that’s what we do here. Right.
Jared: That’s what we do. We just talk about side hustle stuff. Sometimes we’re really knowledgeable about it.
Sometimes we’re really just experimenting.
Spencer: Every once in a while we land on something. That’s interesting though, right? Yeah, true. It takes a year, but after a year we hit on one or two good ideas.
Jared: Um, so thank you David. Good thought. Uh, people have told me in the past, by the way, but he just kind of wouldn’t give up on it.
I got, I’m looking here, I got 18 emails back and forth to them over the last week or so, . So he just got into my mbox. Well, good. Did a good job to him
for,
Jared: uh, yeah. Driving a home for you. So anyways, we’ll see. I’ll keep people posted. Maybe this will be a big dud. Please do. You know, but it’s a couple hours and it was content that I already knew and for the most part in many ways had already made and
Spencer: yeah, we’ll, we’ll see how it goes.
I like it. Yeah. I would be really curious to, to find out, um, maybe it’ll get me to, you know, get into gear and do, do some of that on my own. The Amazon
Jared: influencer program. Hopefully the gift that just keeps on giving. Hopefully.
Spencer: Yeah. Uh, very good. Well, it’s, uh, it’s that time Jared. It’s time to move on to our weird niche sites and, um, you know, I feel like I should go first because I, I don’t know what your website is, but I did read the domain.
And I’m pretty sure you’re going to blow mine out of the water here. Uh, so I’m happy to go first. I read your home strong.
Jared: We have two types of sites. We ended up doing the weird niche, weird ways you make money, but not weird topics and then just weird topics. Yours is the former minds, the latter here. So mine will be funnier.
I’m sure yours is more profitable.
Spencer: It could be, you know, I, um, I’m Um, just in my day to day, you know, running a business online, I run across websites every once in a while that are like kind of just obscure and just very, very niche, very small, uh, very unique ideas. And so that fits into my category of weird here.
Although again, you know, when I share this, it’s not going to blow people’s minds, but, uh, you know, people that are publishing on YouTube and using YouTube, there’s so many tools. That can help you optimize your, uh, YouTube videos, do keyword research, optimize your thumbnails, et cetera. This one that I’m going to share is, uh, testmythumbnails.
com and we’ll talk about the entire website, what it does, but clearly the main feature, you can see the above the fold here, it allows you to upload a sample of a thumbnail. And so I’m going to do that here live. Uh, I just uploaded the last, uh, podcast interview that we did, but basically it allows, it allows you to view what your thumbnail will look like alongside a bunch of other thumbnails on YouTube to give you an idea of like, okay, does my thumbnail actually stand out?
Does this look good? Is this just like a total dud because, um, you know, mine’s up in the top left corner. And all these others are from really big YouTubers, most of them, and those are the types of thumbnails that kind of do well. And so when I look at it, it might give me an idea of like, Oh, you know, I might want to tweak this or use different colors or use different font or something like that.
But it also allows you to kind of preview. Um, uh, your title. So if I type in a title over here, uh, I forgot what this one was called. Something like, um,
Jared: let’s see. I make six figures selling shirts online to thin men.
Spencer: Yeah. Well, I didn’t type that in, but I’m just, yeah. But, uh, you know, you can type in your title and see what that might look like.
Um, so I, I’ve used this, uh, again, just to kind of, because I’ll often get a couple of samples of a thumbnail back from my designer and I can’t really decide. But when I pop it into a tool like this, I’ll go like, Oh, you know what? This one is like way better. Based on what I’m seeing on YouTube, right? Cause it’s all about the click.
You want to see, have something that stands out a little bit when somebody comes to the YouTube homepage and sees your, your video. Um, now the website overall, it does a whole lot more, right? You can go pro, um, which offers, you know, some premium features for either 12 or 22 a month, right? Where you can do test unlimited thumbnail ideas.
Um, and you can AB test thumbnails. Now that’s actually. Pretty cool, right? Um, I use a different, um, uh, service to do this, but I do believe in actually live testing your thumbnails. It basically will allow you to show your thumbnail for an hour and then rotate in another one an hour later. And after, you know, 24 hours or a week or however long you want to test, it’ll say, Hey, this is the clear winner.
It’s a higher click through rate. So that’s a premium feature. And there’s a few other premium features that it, that it does have, but I, I like that it’s got this, uh, free. A tool, right. To, to preview your thumbnail live on YouTube. Um, I pulled up some of the stats so that we can at least see that you can see that, uh, according to a trust, right.
It just started getting traffic kind of at the. Um, and now it’s getting about 12, 000 organic visitors a month. And according to similar web test, my thumbnails. com got just over 300, 000 visitors in the last three months. So it’s getting, you know, a little over a hundred thousand visitors a month, which is a pretty solid.
And we don’t know what their conversion rate is, but if it’s, you know, one or 2{5d3ddbe771dfd7baccbc708ede1f8581564c9b62644010c5b52d123c48304749}, like they’re probably starting to build up a nice customer base and building a nice little business. So anyways, just kind of a fun little niche product idea, niche website idea that I actually use.
Jared: Yeah. You know, they have something really cool at the bottom there.
I didn’t have time to really play around with it, but I’ve always wondered about that. It’s in their footer. It says YouTube revenue calculator. And, um, uh, again, like just trying to kind of play around with it here, but you can basically plug in your, um, I guess a YouTube thumb, a YouTube URL, and, uh, it will somehow calculate your RPM.
I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tool out there that does that. You should plug something in, but that’s not, that’s interesting. Yeah.
Spencer: That is interesting. So if I, if I, uh, pop in a URL here, try to do it on the fly, I got a biscuit beast video here. Uh, did that the search? Oh, it did. It did pull it in.
It did. Uh, views, whatever that is. Good grief. Is that making
Jared: three quarters of a million dollars every day is what it’s saying.
Spencer: Daily net is
Jared: nine, three,
Spencer: almost a million dollars a day. Are you serious? That can’t be right.
That can’t be right. I mean, I know he makes a
Spencer: ton of money. I’m a 10.
Jared: Yeah, probably a little high.
That is, I usually see five to seven,
Spencer: even a five.
Jared: Yeah,
Spencer: that’s wow.
Jared: That’s a half million dollars a day. Wow. Do you think he, well, I mean, I guess it’s just math. It’s just
math.
Spencer: What are we doing here, Jared?
Jared: I was going to say, my gosh, I knew he made a lot of money, but I’d never thought about in that perspective.
That’s just one video. That’s just one video. That is
Spencer: just one day. That’s just one day. It could be a little high, you know, I’m not sure. A little? I mean, even if it’s a lot high. He’s doing pretty well. He’s doing pretty well. So, anyways, I can see us quickly getting sidetracked. Uh, MrBeast is making a lot of money.
Don’t put one of my videos in there, that’s why I’m Right. Right. You’d be lucky if there’s a dollar, you know? Yeah. Per day on my video. Oh, that’s cool.
Okay. Sorry. I did kind of derail the
Jared: original intent of the website.
Spencer: But it, it does have some cool free tools, um, which I’m a big fan of. If you can build like a free tool, a niche tool, uh, that can bring in a lot of free traffic and get you customers or, you know, get you ad revenue, whatever you’re looking for.
So.
Jared: So I have to admit the first. 90 seconds or so, I was about to bust you because I’m constantly worried I’m going to do this. And a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago now, probably you did talk about a different YouTube weird niche. I did. It was ones that allow you to kind of see what your thumbnail, what the thumbnail of a YouTube URL is.
And I thought, In your vacation haze, you were making the first time we would have ever made this mistake on the podcast, but you and I are always worried about is, are we going to accidentally repeat a niche, a weird niche site that we did, but then
I realized it was different. So I did. Okay. But that day will come most likely.
So be
Jared: ready for it. I’d like to think I keep a repository of this, but we’re like 75 news episodes in. And I didn’t. So, yeah. So, all right. All right. What do you got? My weird niche, like I said, is more down the funny rat. Um, I believe, uh, this was, yeah, this was shared with me. Um, you know, who’s become my goldmine of weird niches while we’re on it.
Uh, I get, I get like two a week from, uh, from Tony Hill now. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So this is another one. Yeah, that’s my secret source. So he I don’t know where he finds all these but he shared this one with me It’s been around a while gift wrap my face. com Again, talk about an exact match my
Spencer: face.
Jared: Yep.
That’s what it does uh it takes your face or your kid’s face or your wife’s face or whatever you want and you can make Not just gift wrap anymore. You can make, um, socks and gift tags and all sorts of stuff out of this. Um, yeah. Uh, so it’s, it’s an e comm, uh, play as you can imagine. Uh, in terms of how it’s doing well.
It’s a DR27, um, and it, uh, it, it, uh, I got logged out of Ahrefs, doggone it, that’s a bummer. Here, I got it. But not much traffic. I can tell you that much. It’s not much traffic. So yeah, it ranks for 716 keywords, just over a thousand, uh, organic visits per month. Not exactly killing it in the organic search.
And here’s what’s interesting about it. I thought, ah, yeah, you know, niche, niche, niche type idea, really weird idea, like not getting much traffic. It should be doing a lot better. It’s been mentioned in the likes of Bustle, ABC News, Bloomberg, and it was even featured On Oprah. Wow. Yeah, this was featured on Oprah.
So, um, you know, it’s not like, uh, they don’t have a good, a good amount of press happening. So you just feel like they should be doing so much better in search. Um, I gave you the link there. If you go to their story, uh, you can, uh, you can kind of look at their backstory. Basically, uh, just over 10 years ago, they started, they kind of outlined a boy named, Um, Ariel found himself scrambling last minute to buy something thoughtful for his girlfriend’s birthday.
Came up with this, figured it out, put it together. When his girlfriend received the gift, her reaction couldn’t have been better. She thought it was hilarious, um, and found it to be the best gift she’d ever received. Uh, they ended up getting married. So basically if you get your girlfriend this, you’ll get married to her.
It’s, it’s, uh, that’s what they’re trying to tell you. That’s right. But, um, Anyway, it’s been featured all over the place. Uh, uh, some months later, uh, Oprah chose gift wrap my face as a featured product on our exclusive. Oh, list. Um, it was acquired in 2021 Spencer. Oh, really? Yeah. And it was required by a rather large brand build ahead.
com. Is that like bobbleheads? Yeah, basically. And this build ahead, uh, has gone and kind of acquired a bunch. They’ve acquired, uh, build ahead is their original product, but cardboard cutouts, uh, paw prints, HQ sticker, my face, like they’ve gone out and acquired all these weird brands and they’re now a part of this larger brand family.
So. You feel like maybe they’re doing some decent sales off organic search traffic, you know, instead of, uh, from other channels because they’re kind of a part of this larger brand,
Spencer: right? That’s, uh, exactly what I would think here. And I was going to try and pull up similar web if I could.
I don’t
Spencer: know.
This, well, I’ll share it since, you know, uh, but it doesn’t show that it’s getting very much traffic, but it could be wrong. I mean, it shows less than 5, 000 visitors in the last three months. I mean, maybe it’s, it’s one of those interesting things. Like when
Jared: you take a step, a snapshot back, you take a step back and look at a snapshot.
Like here is someone who took a very weird idea, built an e comm store out of it. And then went on to sell it seven years later and get acquired. Right, man. We ought to get this person on the podcast. I mean, what a cool story.
Spencer: Yeah, it’s an awesome story. I, I love ideas like this that are just super unique, you know, kind of funny, kind of quirky, but you can actually build a business out of it.
Get mentioned by Oprah, right? Like that’s just. Once in a lifetime opportunity. Um, so yeah, talk about, talk about, uh, weird. I think you nailed it. Like I said, yours is definitely on the weird side of things compared to what, what I shared. Um, so props to, to Tony for finding this and, you know,
Jared: Hey,
Spencer: I’m not done,
Jared: Spencer.
Okay. We need to check back on the weirdest niche site ever. It’s been one month. I know what you’re talking about. It’s in our agenda. All you gotta do is boot up that link there. We are talking about onemillioncheckboxes. com. If you missed this episode, it was one month ago. It was the end of June that we aired this.
And I boldly claimed that this is the weirdest niche site ever. And Spencer was skeptical, but ended up agreeing. And the goal of this website was to get one million check boxes. And it’s done. We checked every box.
Spencer: But you can still play alone, if you’d like. Yes. So, I can’t do anything? Like, on the main website?
Jared: No. No, you can’t.
Spencer: I wonder why, why they would have done that.
Jared: Although, Spencer, it looks like you were playing in your spare time. It shows up there, you’ve checked 86 boxes. Were you, uh? Well,
Spencer: I think I did that all on the podcast, honestly. I’m pretty sure. I don’t think I ever came back to this. I think I checked 86 boxes.
Somebody watch that and, you know, fact check me on that. Um, I can play alone. Yeah, I think you
Jared: clicked on and it gave you like a new version of it, basically. And so now you can play by yourself.
Spencer: See, look, I’m already up to here. I’ll get to a hundred and call it good. So now I’m at a hundred check. How’d you get
Jared: to a hundred?
Cause I only see
Spencer: like 10. No, I just checked 14 boxes. Oh, you had
Jared: 86. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. It added. Okay.
Aren’t you a math major or something? I’m just offering intuitive at this time of the day.
Spencer: Um, so, uh, Fascinating. Um, Yeah, too many questions to ask about this.
Jared: I, I, I don’t have the guy’s Twitter handle up in front of us.
I do remember that we were complaining about how he only had like 3, 000 followers. He’s jumped to like 000 followers. So
Spencer: there you go. I’m
Jared: not sure where he went with it. I’m not sure what came of it. But, uh, The weird niche, uh, project that this was is complete. And the social experiment, I suppose, is done.
Spencer: Yeah, and uh, I don’t know if he made any money from it. I know you could donate to him. Maybe you got some donations. But, uh, maybe it’ll spur a new idea and now he’s got a larger fan base. So his next idea will just be even bigger. So there you have it. Well, very good. Uh, we we’ve covered the news. We’ve covered our side projects, the weird niches.
Um, thank you everyone so much. For sticking around, following along and listening in to this week in niche pursuits news and, um, Jared, thank you. Of course, for helping out here. Really appreciate it.
Jared: We’ll see you again. Uh, same place, same time next week. Thank you everyone.