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Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast, where Spencer and Jared report on all the latest news in SEO.
It was a busy week, so tune in to hear what’s new at Google and how changes there effect content creators and webmasters. Stay for the latest updates on their side hustles, and don’t miss the weird niche site discussion at the end.
The first news item is a big one. Based on a post on LinkedIn, there’s speculation that Google’s SGE might not be rolled out now, or maybe not even at all. That’s obviously great news for SEOs.
Watch the Full Episode
Spencer and Jared dissect this news item and try to understand what Google’s future plans are. Are there really going to be changes? What’s behind the gradual shift in the language they’re using? Listen to the episode to hear what they think is actually happening.
The conversation continues to revolve around Google, but the topic shifts to what’s going on behind the scenes there. Another LinkedIn post gives a bit of insight into the company, suggesting that the company has no real leadership and is plowing ahead with AI while slowly killing organic search.
Is Google really done innovating? Does the company need new leadership? Hear what Spencer and Jared have to say about the situation.
The next news item up for discussion is Google’s announcement that its contract with Appen has ended and it has cut thousands of search quality rater jobs.
Although there was confusion about whether or not Google was getting rid of all of its quality raters, the company confirmed that it’s simply cutting ties with Appen.
How did this news initially come to light? Spencer has the scoop!
The last news item today is that Sports Illustrated’s publisher has laid off most of its union staff. You might recall that SI was busted recently for using fake AI-generated personnel on its website and, as a result, the CEO got fired.
Want to hear more of the drama at SI and with AI and the world of publishing? Listen to the full episode!
In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer revisits a website he started about a year ago, the goal being to drive traffic from Facebook. His Facebook page has 45k likes, and he shared the strategy he’s using to get people to his site.
How’s it doing? Does it have potential? What happened when he applied to Mediavine? He shares some Facebook page metrics, including link clicks, and he fields several questions from Jared about his strategy.
Jared reveals a new and exciting side hustle he’s got in the works: a public speaking side hustle. He’s set a goal for the year to speak at 4 conferences, and he’s already got a few lined up. But what does he hope to earn or achieve from this new side hustle?
When it comes to Weird Niche Sites, Spencer goes first with Let’s Learn Slang, and he looks at a few of the articles and shares their stats from Ahrefs.
How could the site have established more topical relevance? And what do Spencer and Jared think of the About page?
Jared then shares his site: Easy Toilet Tips, the number one source for lavatory bias-free reviews.
The site has a ton of content but hasn’t put a lot of thought or effort into UX. Although it seems like an AI-generated website, Ahrefs reveals that it’s been around longer than that. Traffic peaked at one point, but it was devastated by the HCU.
And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast. We hope you’re feeling up-to-speed on all the latest SEO news and inspired by Spencer and Jared’s side hustles and general insight.
See you next Friday!
transcription
Spencer: Hey everyone, welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast today. We’re recording an episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And I have Jared with me. Jared, how are you doing today?
Jared: Good. We’re going to have to fly. We got a lot of stuff here. We had to chop a bunch just right before we started recording, and we still have a lot in the agenda.
Spencer: That’s right. There’s a lot of news to cover and a lot of juicy little bits here about Google. Uh, they always come up in the news. And so we got some fun. Things to share, uh, as far as that goes. Uh, but also I’m going to give an update on a side hustle that I don’t believe I’ve provided an update in, it feels like six months, so it’ll, it’ll be going back a ways people can dig into their memories and if they don’t, I’m going to provide the whole update here in just a second.
And then, uh, we’ve got a couple of weird niche sites. Um. You asked me if your site was weird enough to include and I agree that it is. I agree that it is. I think it’s the
Jared: first time I’ve ever asked you about a site ahead of the podcast. Yeah.
Spencer: And, and we can explain why, you know, there’s some, you know, it’s, it’s been a rocky road for this particular site.
And so we’ll chat about that, but I think it’s going to be a fun one. So, uh, so let’s dive into it. Um, first up is some Google news here. Um, somebody. Um, posted a nice sort of synopsis on LinkedIn. Let me share my screen here. Cause, uh, we’re going to just kind of share this post from LinkedIn. This is, uh, Nicole DeLeon.
Um, and she’s summarizing a lot of things recently. Google had a announcement of circle, which to be honest, I don’t know exactly what, what the circle is that they announced, but during this, they mentioned several things related to Google SGE. And so the overall headline here is that Google may be signaling that S.
G. E. isn’t happening anytime soon or at all. Right? And so that’s something that S. E. O. S. We would love for it to not happen. We would love Google to just be the standard organic results. We get more clicks to our websites. And so that’s What really is piquing my interest is, hey, is SGE not really going to happen?
And, uh, Nicole gives some, some evidence that that could be the case, that they’re kind of subtly announcing this. And so, uh, I’m gonna just read a few quotes that came from the same sort of press release, the same mention, uh, that Google had. In one, they said, but our goal is to make a I helpful for everyone, not just early adopters.
Right? And so you could read that to mean that, hey, it’s only being used by early adopters right now. Regular users aren’t really diving in and and using it a lot. You know, maybe they’re seeing some use in stats that say, Hey, this isn’t great. Then they also go on to mention that this week’s launch of AI powered insights for multi search is the result of testing we began last year to see how Gen AI can make search radically more helpful with SGE in search labs.
We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from people who’ve chosen to join this experiment and will continue to offer SGE in labs. As a test bed for bold new ideas, right? So, um, this may suggest that SGE isn’t as helpful for as many people as they hoped, right? That it’s really just sort of these early adopters, the AI, you know, frenzy in the early days.
But now it’s just going to remain. In search labs as a test bed, right, makes it sound like, Hey, they’re not rolling this out tomorrow. That is for sure. Uh, and then the final quote that Nicole pointed out here, as maybe evidence that S. G. E. is not happening anytime soon, is that, uh, quote, so moving forward as we continue to experiment and uncover which applications of gen A.
I. R. most helpful will introduce them into search more broadly, like we’re doing now with multi search results. Right. So they’re still looking for the right applications for Gen AI. Maybe it’s not search, right? Um, when they do find that, they’re just sort of saying, hey, of course, it’s a very positive spin.
But if you look at it through our eyes, maybe it is a positive thing that. Google’s not going to roll this out. So, what do you think of all this? Do you think there’s any weight behind these arguments?
Jared: I mean, I don’t think there’s anything strongly worded here about which direction they’re going. The biggest thing that stands out to me is this is a gradual shift in the language they’re using, right?
The, um, the the way they’re talking about it. I remember The only news podcast I’ve missed was while I was out on a road trip this past summer and you and Josh, uh, did the pot the news podcast and that was the week that you guys were featuring all the commentary from the Google CEO about how bullish they were, how the early testing was clear that this is the way of the future and the language that they were using the way they were describing generative AI compared to the way Way they’re describing generative AI.
Now, I think that’s the biggest shift to me is that it’s gotten moved to a very passive, we’ll see, wait and see approach, lots of testing, just going to follow the way that people tell us to go. One of our many things we’re working on, whereas last summer at the peak of it, I mean, you had the CEO coming out and giving.
A broadcast message about how this is definitively where we are headed. Right,
Spencer: right, exactly. You know, they, they have their big road show. They’re on stage, they’ve got the crowds there. And you know, that was right in the middle of again, the AI frenzy, right? Early last year, I’m looking it
Jared: up six months ago, almost to the day of our recording right now.
Spencer: Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and so it is interesting that the language is shifted at any time. There is, you know, minor nuances in what Google is sharing publicly, right? That could mean big things happening behind the scenes, right? What it all means exactly. We don’t know, but I tend to agree with Nicole that this feels like some small hints that it’s at least not ready to roll out anytime soon.
You know, they don’t come out and say that. But if they’re still testing, you know, they’re kind of seeing the early adopters are using it, but kind of insinuating the general public isn’t right. I think we have a long time as SEOs, uh, before anything like this comes out. If at all.
Jared: I mean, we started to see early signs of this, if I remember correctly, last month or the month prior, there used to be an SGE, a banner that said this is in beta until December, 2023, implying that in December, 2023, they would be launching it.
Live right out of beta and then magically that disappeared and we didn’t launch sge. It just disappeared almost implying like You know, let’s go ahead and remove those dates. Let’s not put ourselves under the pressure of having to release sge So this seems to just be another continuation of some of the language shifting that we’re seeing around sge
Spencer: Now that’s a good point and here we are at the end of january.
So we’re already a month past that Sort of first date that they said, uh, so we’ll keep our eyes on it. Um You know, some of this, some of the language, right, that they have as a corporation, um, and there was a particular line here, just how, you know, they’re still experimenting, things like that. Kind of leads me to think what’s going on behind the scenes at the company.
You know, who’s working on this, who’s trying to grow it. Um, and that’s actually our next story here is a little bit about what’s happening behind the scenes at Google. Um, you don’t often hear from. Employees, uh, you know, senior developers that are working at Google come out publicly and say something that might be considered negative.
But that is what we have here today. Um, so this is her name is Diane. She’s a staff software engineer at Google. And she had a very lengthy LinkedIn post and, uh, she says, my hot take, Google does not have one single visionary leader, not a one. Um, and she basically goes on to see that the executive team is not driving anything innovative anymore.
I mean, Google used to be known as this company that was extremely innovative. Her looking on, on the inside. She’s not seeing it. There’s no real leadership. Uh, it feels like people are kind of resting and waiting and trying, um, to see what’s, what’s going to happen to the business. Um, She says, uh, right now all of these boring, glassy eyed leaders are trying to point in a vague direction, AI, while at the same time killing their golden goose.
Um, given that they have no real vision of their own, they really need their subordinates to come up with cool stuff. I really like that line of like, Hey, it sounds like, Hey, within the company, they’re all looking forward to, Hey, AI is the next big thing. Let’s do something with that. But there’s no clear vision about what to do with AI, which is what we just talked about.
They tried something and maybe that’s not going to work SGE and all the while. Killing their golden goose, golden goose, of course, being organic search results, their ad platform that, you know, their ads. Um, and so it’s kind of crazy that somebody on the inside, a software engineer is coming out and saying, Hey, Google’s kind of screwing up.
There’s no real leader here. Um, she even goes to on to kind of say the work environment is, um. Not that great. She says, sort of quote other employees saying, well, I guess I’ll just do the job until they fire me. Right? They’re all kind of got these golden handcuffs or, you know, they’ve got this cushy job.
They’re just kind of going to do their job until somebody fires them. It doesn’t sound like a real exciting to place a place to work anymore.
Jared: Sounds more like Dunder Mifflin than it does.
Spencer: A little bit Dunder Mifflin ask. Yeah. Uh, she says Google really was a magical place. Not very long ago. And for some reason, executives are cashing out their human capital at the very moment.
It seems to me like they really need it. So boy, uh, a lot to kind of chew on there. Yeah. Great stuff. Right. How is she still employed? I don’t know. Maybe she won’t be in another week. I keep
Jared: expecting to open up the LinkedIn to get ready for this and expected to say like independent consultant for technology companies,
Spencer: open to hiring opportunities.
Jared: Um, I mean, good for her. Like, uh, I, I mean, it’s sort of echoes a lot of this stuff we’ve been feeling for the last year or so, you know, I mean, uh, obviously we don’t have any inside insights, but, um, she goes on later in the comments to share, uh, articles that, uh, basically in essence, like in the situation she shared to previous, uh, large failures of organizations such as Boeing.
Such as Nokia and I believe one or two more. Uh, yeah, I don’t know. It’s not showing up for you, Spencer. It was in the comments that she shared that I saw. Obviously, we all get a little bit of a different LinkedIn look, I guess. Yeah.
Spencer: I see one of the comments here and there may be just buried in here.
There’s some more
Jared: nested or whatever. Yeah. Anyways, the point being that she’s really, what I got from those articles she shared in, in kind of glancing through those is she’s, she’s likening this not just to a. Temporary issue, perhaps spurned on by AI or, or some, you know, lack of leadership perhaps. But she’s really likening this to the fates that Boeing and Nokia, I mean, Nokia, if you can remember back in the day before, a lot of our listeners were probably even of age, was a huge, uh, technology company that just absolutely blew it.
Uh, and no one even hears about Nochi anymore. You know, so she’s, she’s not just kind of. regaling of a, uh, of a difficult time at Google, but it feels to me like really likening this to a future for
Spencer: Google. Yeah. And it’s, it’s a story that, um, I guess in the book, it’s called the innovators dilemma, right?
Right. Um, kind of tells this overarching story of companies that mature a lot, right? Often companies. Usually companies are started with some revolutionary idea or technology, which is the case for Google. And then they, you know, they are very, very successful. And over time, and it’s a different timeline for all companies, they become this huge massive corporation where it becomes, uh, such a big gamble to try something new and different and innovative rather than to just stay the course.
Yep. And so it kind of feels like. Maybe Google is at this mature stage where they’ve got these, you know, these suits that are, you know, just trying to manage the company rather than innovate. And, um, it’s, it’s two sides of one coin because they feel like they need to innovate and they feel like AI is it what, you know, according to Diane, like nobody really knows as an employee, what they’re supposed to do.
The Google executives are kind of expecting the employees to come with this great innovation and well. You know, that’s usually not the way things go. Um, and so I, I don’t know. Um, other than, yeah, it’s just fascinating to watch, especially given. I think it was last week or the week before the, like the title of the podcast here is.
Is Google getting worse? Like, is Google search results getting worse? We’ve talked a lot about that. It’s like, well, is it because of this culture and cultural environment environment of non innovation happening at Google that their search results are just Lagging.
Jared: I’m sure Google would hate me to make a comparison to Apple, but not drawing too many comparisons.
But certainly Apple went through this phase and they brought back in Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs came back to a company that was fledgling and completely turned it around almost to Diane’s Point. Came in with a strong leadership and a clear direction of where he wanted the company to go. And they turned towards, uh, a lot of the famous products that we now know and love.
And actually many of that have been, that led them to the famous products we now know and love that have been sunsetted because they’ve been innovating upon innovating upon innovating.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly. It’s like they need a big grand visionary to come in and truly guide this ship. And you know, the current CEO is, is great.
I’m sure, but you know, we’re just hearing some grumblings here from an employee, what this all means. Well, you know, I don’t
Jared: know. We like to talk about all the problems and the drama and obviously we, we feel very strongly about the search results right now and what’s been happening to search the last couple of years, but we’ve said it before.
It’s worth saying again, like I don’t envy their position right now between AI, between spam, between antitrust, between, there’s a lot going on over there that they got to figure out. So I don’t envy it. Glad it’s not me, but they’re not, they’re not doing a good job with it.
Spencer: Clearly from the inside, if you got, you know, software engineers complaining and this LinkedIn post is quite popular, a lot of people chimed in and agreed.
There’s something going on, uh, on the inside there. So, uh, we’ll move on to this next one. It’s, uh, sort of just a quick hit here that it’s interesting of note. It ended up not being quite as big as a story as it, as it initially seemed. Um, but here it is on search engine land, Google to cut thousands of search quality Raider jobs after dropping contract with Appen.
And so we all know that Google hires humans to do these, uh, these quality ratings, they look at websites and they have a, you know, a big quality Raider guidelines doc that people can and should look at to sort of specify, Hey, is this website, does it look authoritative? Does it look professional? Does it meet all of these other quality guidelines that Google has given us?
They have farmed that out to a third party, which was Appen. Uh, does it say how many employees or. Yeah, it does here. Um, 16, 000, uh, Google contracted Appen for a couple of thousand raters. Google has written, it has about 16, 000 overall quality raters. So, um, Appen, you know, employed a significant number of quality raters, but, uh, and so the rumblings was like, Oh, are they getting rid of, you know, human quality raters?
Well, a Google spokesperson responded to this article and said, no, that’s not the case. Uh, they said, uh, the quality Raider work contracted with Appen will be moved to other suppliers away from Appen. So, um, and quote, I guess I’ll say, uh, our decision to end the contract was made as part of our ongoing effort to evaluate and adjust many of our suppliers, partnerships across the alphabet.
To ensure our vendors operations are as efficient as possible.
Jared: Yes, it’s tough. I mean, even the article itself says, I mean, we know that they’ve kind of said, hey, we’re going to just shift that elsewhere. But then there’s also reports in here that AI is starting to replace what the quality. Raiders were doing Don Anderson.
I’ll quote out of the article. Donna Anderson, one of our brightest contributors here, speculated these changes would happen months ago. And now with many from the Google ads team being laid off and replaced with AI Google following a similar playbook for assessing quality makes sense and. You know, I mean, when I first read this story and didn’t know that they were rehiring these positions, I thought, well, duh, we have suspected for a while that our, the human quality raters are there to train the large language model, right?
Um, they’re there to train the machine learning to identify patterns and prompt those, uh, with enough regularity that then the machine can do it itself. So, you know, I mean, it, it’s, I guess, not the right on the wall for quality raters, but. Could be a bit of an ominous, uh, sort of foreboding of what could come.
Spencer: Yeah. You know what my favorite part of this story is, actually? Uh, is that, uh, Cyrus, um, Shepard is the one that kind of broke this story. And I don’t know if you know this, but the reason he found out first, or the reason he broke this story, is because he is Quality Raider. He’s, he’s hired by Appen. He works for them on the side to, to rate websites.
And so he got an email that sort of shared this big announcement that, you know, their contract is ending and all that. And so then of course he took to Twitter and shared it with everyone. And that’s what broke this story here for search engine land. So that’s just my favorite part. I
Jared: agree. And I hope Cyrus is, uh, I mean, I’ve, I’ve loved having Cyrus as a quality Raider.
So I hope he, uh, I don’t know if he’s obviously he’s with happens. I hope he gets picked up by one of the other ones. Cause man, what are we going to do without Cyrus telling us about all these little
Spencer: things? Exactly. I know gotta have the inside scoop. I’m sure he’s working on that right now, uh, as we speak.
So, um, all right now the final story for the day is kind of a follow up to one that we talked about a long time ago. Um, you know, we have talked about. Sports illustrated in the past. Now we saw this headline, um, sports illustrated publisher lays off most of its staff. Um, does it give a percentage, uh, here, or is it just say.
Like of, of what staff, uh, all of its guild represented staff. Uh,
Jared: this article for the record, very confusing. Just so you know, like it is very confusing.
Spencer: How can they lay off their entire staff? There must be right. Um, are they out of business now? Anyways. I don’t know other than there’s a huge shake up with the staff.
They, you know, had to let um, You know, they’ve had to let people go and uh, this has
Jared: happened I thought I saw somewhere it’s all but I haven’t seen that right now. So let’s uh, hold that i’m gonna try to find that
Spencer: I’ll just read the first paragraph here because it does reference the word all it says the future of sports illustrated was uncertain friday after the publisher of the iconic magazine and website laid off most or probably all of its guild represented staff so guild represented Maybe it’s just the, the union, right?
So maybe it’s just, it’s union staff. So maybe there’s, I don’t know what percentage is non union staff. So I don’t think they give that percent, uh, in here. Um, and so, yeah, there’s been big shakeups. There’s a lot of tech layoffs, other things going on. But, uh, what was really interesting, maybe I’ll let you jump in Jared, cause you’re the one that spotted this, that kind of made this story much more interesting.
Jared: You weren’t interested in it until this, until I pointed this out
Spencer: to you. Exactly. Yeah,
Jared: the, uh, buried down in the bottom and I missed this. So if this was news and I just missed it, I apologize. Spencer, you missed it as well. So I don’t know if it really got, uh, talked about a couple, I think it was just a couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago.
We talked about how a, uh, Sports Illustrated got caught. Using complete AI personas, fake personas, fake people. They don’t exist. It was all generated by AI and they were in the, they were in the news for it. At the bottom of this article, it says in December. So promptly the arena group, the brand behind.
them. Oh, I got to pop up, of course. Hang on. The Arena Group fired Sports Illustrated CEO Ross Levinson after an embarrassing debacle in which Sports Illustrated was caught publishing stories of fake author names and profile photos generated by artificial intelligence. So, I mean, man, the CEO gets canned for that episode we talked about a couple weeks ago on the podcast.
Ironically, he’s getting canned. Uh, as follow through on trying to use AI, presumably to save costs with their staffing and several weeks later, because they miss a payment to the group that they’ve licensed their publishing rights to, that publishing company now has to lay off their entire staff that works on Sports Illustrated.
It’s this weird, vicious, full circle sort of situation.
Spencer: Wow. It’s crazy. Yeah. I mean, the world of Publishing is just fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, it’s all these companies try to use it. Sports illustrated, tried to use it secretly, right? Tried to slip it under the cover and not tell anybody it was AI. And while that costs the CEO is job here, which I just found out about today, even though it happened in December.
Um, and so it is. Uh, very interesting to see the chain of events from going trying to use a I getting fired. Now they’ve got more expenses and they’re laying off their staff. Um, so
Jared: today’s news also highlighted something just very interesting. Like we, we know this exists, but I don’t really stop and think about it.
Like first we had a story about how Google has quality raters, but really Google doesn’t, they hire it out to happen a different third party company. Sports illustrated has writers, right? They’re a magazine, but really they actually sold the rights or. Gave the rights to a group called, um, uh, The Arena Group, who actually hires the writers and publishes the content.
It’s just so interesting though, the layers upon layers. We look at it, we’re like, oh, Sports Illustrated. They’re like, well, no, we actually have a company that does that, and they, it’s such and so, so forth and so on. It’s just so, so complicated. Yeah,
Spencer: it is. Um, there’s maybe not quite as many sort of staff writers, you know, as, as there used to be, you know, it’s just very common to kind of outsource some of that.
So, oh, man, very fascinating stuff. That’s the news, I guess, uh, for the week. I mean, there’s a lot to sort of comment on. And so if you have comments, leave them in, um, you know, the YouTube comment section or find us on Twitter or anything like that. We’d love to hear your thoughts on some of these stories.
Um, so, Bye. Bye. Next up, we’re going to chat about our side hustles, things that we have going on the side. That’s not our main business, you know, things that we’re just kind of excited about. So maybe I’ll kick things off with mine. This is something that I shared again. I don’t remember six months ago, eight months ago.
I don’t remember the last time that I talked about
Jared: this. You have talked about it. You have
Spencer: talked about it. I have indeed. I know that. Uh, but I started a website. You know, it’s, I think it’s less than a year, but call it a year, uh, old that the main purpose, the main goal is to get as much traffic from Facebook as possible.
You know? So I’ve heard of a lot of people that are publishing, you know, on Facebook, uh, and getting a ton of traffic. You get a couple of posts that go viral in your Facebook page and your Facebook group, and you can get a lot of visitors to your website. And so this is something that I’ve been experimenting now.
Um, Like I said, about a year maybe. Um, and so I’ve grown the Facebook page and I should clarify it’s a page, not a group. Um, I have a Facebook page that is now about 45, 000 followers. Uh, and I ran a likes campaign to get a lot of these, you know, page likes, just the Facebook ad, uh, campaign manager, right?
You can get five to 10 cent likes if you do it right. Uh, and then we will publish a short story and these are more news. Viral type subjects. These are not SEO written articles at all. I’m not trying to rank in Google. We’ll write a short story. Maybe it’s 500 words. And then we take that link from the website.
We go over to our Facebook page. We write a sentence or two like, Oh, check out this weird thing, whatever it is. And we paste the link directly in the post. And then the group It comments and interacts and hopefully goes over and clicks. Um, so it’s, it’s going okay. Uh, it’s nothing, uh, it’s not my full time business yet.
It’s going, um, let’s just say, I’m going to keep my day job for now. Um, but the potential is there, like I, I do feel like if somebody put all their time and attention into this or more time and attention than I am, right. Even if you’re an hour to a day, like you could see some pretty significant results.
And so I did take a screenshot, actually, of a lot of the Facebook metrics that doesn’t show my Facebook page. I’m not going to share that here. So let me share my screen. And it’s just a screenshot that I took of kind of in the Facebook manager. It gives a page overview for the last 28 days. So post reach 410, 000 quite a bit post engagement, 50, 000.
Uh, and a new page likes 3, 600 new page followers, 3, 800 and it gives some other things, 3, 300 comments, but yes, the link clicks is the, is the magic number. That’s the one we’re looking for is we want as many link clicks as possible. And so I can see link clicks is 13, 432. So I’ve driven. You know, that many visitors from my Facebook page to the website.
That’s, that’s decent, right? That’s not bad. Uh, but that’s pretty much all the traffic of the website, right? Like I don’t have any other strategy of getting traffic. This is purely a Facebook play. Um, so like I said, I’m not quitting my day job yet. You know, some months I’ll make a couple hundred dollars when I’m only getting, you know, 10 or 15, 000 visitors.
That’s not a couple hundred dollars. Right. Um, so. Let me see if there’s anything else that I I want to mention. Um, yeah, I’ve pretty much outsourced it all. That’s just kind of what I do. Um, so I’ve got somebody that publishes one or two very short articles a day. They share it in the Facebook group. The Facebook group is, you know, it’s active, right?
There’s 3300 comments in 28 days, right? So that’s 10 to 15 comments every day, right? Uh, and it’s a fun group. I like kind of following along, but I don’t do much, most of the work. Um, I should probably dive in and really figure out how to do it better, you know, hit on some strategies to make these go a little bit more viral.
Look at other examples. I haven’t done all that yet, but I’ve got some nice traction right now.
Jared: So a couple of questions, if you don’t mind. Please yeah, I even correct yourself and forgive me if I missed it. You said group and page at different points Do you have both or do you
Spencer: have I do not have a group?
This is only a page. Okay Facebook page Yes, so it’s a page. Why not a group? Yes because a group As I understand it, um, two reasons. One is you can’t do a likes campaign to a group. So it makes a lot harder to grow that. Um, I can grow a page just by paying money, right? Five to 10 cents a likes. The second one is I believe in a group.
You’re you’re links. Uh, Here, here’s the reason is in a group, it is a private group typically, uh, and your links don’t get as much reach. So when it’s a public page, people can share it with their friends. They can comment on it and it might show up in somebody else’s feed because they commented on it. It can get a little bit more traction, right?
Is my understanding. And I, this is how I’ve seen other people that have much bigger pages. Uh, this is how they do it. So I kind of just followed their example.
Jared: So let’s say that you wanted to get this to grow forex, meaning you’re going to get 50, 000 clicks and maybe qualify for like a media vine, which would put this site into a really cool spot, right?
If you wanted to forex the traffic, and I’m just being very presumptuous here, but. Would you say quadruple the amount of, uh, followers to the page or would you quadruple the amount of posts that you’re sharing to the page? And again, I’m just being very facetious, but I’m just curious, maybe what you’ve, maybe what you’ve learned based on what you’ve seen so far and how you might apply that going forward in that scenario.
I would
Spencer: first before I did either of those try to analyze which posts are going viral and how we could do a better job because right now our hit rate is pretty low, right? It’s I don’t have a percentage, but 5 percent of our posts, you know, kind of go viral getting 1000 clicks or whatever. So I would really dig in.
And I know there’s some tools or other ways you can analyze other pages in a similar niche and see what they’ve posted over the past year and maybe try to make some of that my own and post very similar things. So that’s what I would do is try to take it from a 5 percent hit rate to a 10 percent hit rate and then I would.
I would probably do both. I would post more content and I would, I would throw the page, but yes, all of the above, all of the above. Uh, but probably posting more content would be what I, I would do first to answer your question directly because you can post a lot, like we’re only doing maybe two to three times a day.
You could easily do 10 times a day. And if you have. Viral potential posts like Facebook will find that audience for you,
Jared: right? And are they like current events or could you recycle some posts like share them again? 28 days later with a different headline and a different image
Spencer: That’s something that we I just talked about with my freelance person just last week Is like we need to start sharing our things that went viral Six months ago or two months ago, most, uh, 50 percent of these, we could probably reshare and be just fine.
Yeah. Kind of evergreen stuff. So I mean, that would be a great way to go about it by
Jared: the math you shared. I mean, you spent between 2, to get the audience. Um, you know, obviously there’s some costs with having the articles published every day and all that, but certainly. It hasn’t reached a tipping point yet, but you can start to see the signs of what it looks like to get to that tipping point where this is a very profitable endeavor.
I would say
Spencer: it could be. It could be. I’m not there yet again. I just need to take some time to, you know, set up some better processes and procedures. But I have seen you maybe have as well that a lot of people are starting to to Um, move away from Google and trying to figure out alternative traffic sources.
And Facebook has done really well. I mean, some, some pages are getting millions of visitors, uh, a month. Um, in fact, we talked with, uh, Kurt Schmidt that his Facebook page. Um, with, uh, inside the magic is, is massive, right? Um, and there’s lots of other examples that, uh, this can do well. I, I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I’m at 13, 000 clicks, you know, in the last, last month, I think my highest month ever was a 50, 000 visitor month.
I just hit that mark. I applied to many Mediavine, but they wanted to see more consistency. So I need to do that for a few months. What’s wrong with them? What’s going on? Uh, so, so, uh, once, once I can get in a Mediavine though, like the, the income will triple probably at least.
Jared: It’s funny. I had a, I literally had a consulting call this morning with someone whose website via organic traffic is doing well, but at about 25, 000 pages.
And one of the things they shared is that I just want to get on a Mediavine. What’s the, what do you think is the fastest way for me to get on Mediavine? What I told them as well. I think the fastest way is to take all your content and start sharing this on Facebook and perhaps other platforms like Pinterest, um, uh, you know, and see what it does.
And if you start to see the breadcrumbs there, then maybe lean into that cause you have a lot of good content and it’s ripe for a platform like a Facebook and some of these successes like what you’re having.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s just, it takes time, right? You got to either do it yourself or have somebody in place that’s doing it.
And, um, but it’s like, like, it’s legit, like, it’s very possible. Like I wouldn’t tell anybody, nah, don’t try Facebook. Like you can make it work. It just, it is work. So that’s what
Jared: we have to do. These side hustles, you know, Spencer, if you’ve got to spend more than 20 minutes a week on it, you know, it’s just, is it worth it?
Spencer: That’s usually out of my league, right? That’s when I just, you know, open my wallet and say, well, I’ll pay somebody else to do it for me. Find
Jared: someone else to do it. Exactly. Hey, that’s how businesses are built.
Spencer: That’s right. Hey, if it’s a, if it’s a real business, I can afford to have an employee, right?
That’s right.
Jared: That’s right. Just got to get a podcast on that coming out soon. Oh, nice. I don’t think you’ve
Spencer: heard that one yet. I look forward to listening to that. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, Jared, uh, what side hustle do you have? I’m actually really curious to hear.
Jared: So 2024, uh, you know, I, I feel like I can’t keep, uh, cycling back to these, uh, uh, these old ones necessarily.
Although obviously there’s, uh, many side hustles in the works that will continue. I’ll continue to update on, um, Amazon influencer, uh, uh, uh, my, my weekend growth, I guess, brand at this point. Can you believe it? It’s actually like a brand. We got a YouTube channel. We got a, a newsletter and, um, uh, it generates revenue every month.
So consistently now it’s like a little engine. So lots to talk about there, but. I’ve been thinking a lot throughout the month of January about, um, about what, uh, what side hustle wanted, I wanted to put my focus into. And so, um, a new one for me this year, a new one that I’m going to share publicly. Uh, always scary to share publicly, but I did that with the Weekend Growth brand and it went well.
I did that with the Amazon Influencer Program and it went well. I keep saying I’m going to have a flop publicly here, so maybe this is the one. But, um, I am going to dive and dip my toe into the world of public speaking in 2024.
Spencer: Nice. That’s exciting. This is
Jared: nothing new for me. It’s new in that I haven’t done any of this in five or six years, but I used to speak publicly quite a bit.
Um, used to, I, man, I went on a national tour one year. Um, and stuff, I’d speak at conferences, whether it’s Um, keynotes or, uh, you know, whatever they want to, you know, the one hour, like kind of focus sessions, um, uh, on tours, uh, on, on large platforms. And so, yeah, 2024, I’m going to set a goal. Of trying to to speak at at four different places and for the lack of a better term, we’ll say conferences, um, and I’m not putting many goals outside of that in place, but I want to start getting back into that.
I feel like it’s something that I really enjoyed when I did it. Um, it was something that I felt like, um, I’m a decent communicator, so I think I did an okay job at it. Um, and I think my agency is at a point now where I It would be about more than just speaking, but there would also be a lot of value that I could get from speaking and then the connections I could build up through that and the different things that come out of, you know, kind of being at these events and that sort of thing.
And so I’m put on the wall for four events in 2024. Don’t know where I’m going to find those. Don’t know. I’m going to do that, but I’ve done it before, and so I’m going to start, uh,
Spencer: start going after that. Yeah, so that’s my first question is here. We’re at the end of January, and if you want to speak at four events, you probably need to start, you know, locking in some of those, uh, conferences.
Uh, do you have any in the works? Are you, are you ready to make any announcements for anything or nothing locked in yet? I
Jared: will be speaking at the affiliate gathering, which is Carl Broadbent’s, um, conference in May that will be in the U. K. I have another one in the works that should get announced in the coming weeks that I’ve been working on this month.
Um, a larger one. Actually, I’m really excited about this one. It’s a larger conference, you know, um, and I have that that would if those both were, you know, affiliate gathering is live now. And if The second one goes live and everything gets ironed out. That would be two out of the four. And I have no idea where the other two are coming
Spencer: from.
Yeah. Oh, that’s exciting though, that you’ve got a couple in the works already. And, um, you know, I’m confident that especially now with the podcast here, you’ve been doing it for a couple of years, basically, uh, that if you’d put the word out that you’re looking to speak publicly, like, I don’t think you’re going to have problems finding a couple more spots.
Jared: And that’s the thing about this. And again, a bit, another big encouragement, like. I don’t anticipate making a dollar from the actual speaking. Now, I have gotten paid as a speaker many times in the past, but I haven’t done it in a while. So I don’t expect to command a fee, a speaking fee. Those do exist.
They happen all the time. But I don’t expect it to be that. But again, like looking at things for the long term benefit rather than maybe just the immediate paycheck. And I do think that expanding my network, meeting people. Putting myself out there talking about something in my business, whatever it is that I get chosen to speak on, those things will have long ranging impacts.
And so that’s kind of the long term goal there. Yes. Speak at four events, but really evaluate this over the course of several years and the effects of that.
Spencer: And obviously it’s, it’s sort of a tried and true method, right? I mean, it’s another level of content marketing. Um, we talk about different phases, right?
You got blogging that. You know, it can build a connection, but video builds an even better connection. Podcasting builds a much deeper connection because people are listening to you, but if they can listen, watch and see you in person and shake your hand, right? Like that’s the best way, um, to, to build a relationship so that people trust you.
Jared: I mean, it’s true. Obviously we swung, uh, out of in person stuff ever since COVID, you know, and it’s come back in different fits and spurts, of course, but I just reminded like the power of being in person. And obviously our jobs are very much behind a computer screen. Um, and that, that’s all well and good.
Like, I love that. Like I, I used to travel so much for work and I. Hardly have to travel anymore and I’m here with my kids and my family and I, I can do stuff and be a part of soccer practice and all the things I like about being home, but there’s something powerful about being in person with people and, and, and, and going further than just an online, uh, call on a zoom or, or whatever it is.
You know,
Spencer: did you go to any conferences last year?
Jared: Uh, no, I can’t think of any.
Spencer: Do you remember when the last conference is that you went to I, have you gone to something after Covid? Yes.
Jared: I keyed a conference in November of 2022. Okay. So it’s been, I spoke at a conference in October of 2022. And then I don’t think I did anything in 2023, actually.
Spencer: Yeah, okay. So it’s been a good, you know, year and a couple months. Yeah,
Jared: it’s been a little while. It’s been a little while. Yeah, you’re our conference, you’re our conference goer of the two of us here. I feel like there was a period where every other week you were gone at a conference and we were doing the podcast with someone else.
There,
Spencer: there was a back to back conference. Yeah, last May and June where I was at a couple. Yeah, I’m in FinCon.
Jared: FinCon in October and
Spencer: FinCon, Uhhuh, . And uh, that was another back Toback. I did FinCon and then there was Rhodium weekend. It was uh, like end of September, early October, something like that. You’re right, yeah.
I did kind of, uh, double up twice, so, um, well cool. I’m excited to, uh, hear how that goes. Uh, lemme ask you, ‘
Jared: cause you have spoken at different events. What’s been the biggest. I guess it’s hard to evaluate, but just off the cuff, what’s been the biggest benefit for you from speaking at events over the years?
Hmm, you know, like, uh, you know, i’m guessing it’s not like oh I get a lot of email subscribers from it I’m guessing it’s not something so tangible, you know,
Spencer: no not not really. Um, I think it is just building Better personal relationships. Um, I’ve had a lot of people that have reached out to me privately after I’ve spoken at events and we’ll just, you know, Thank me of course for speaking, but then, you know, we’ve hopped on calls and I’ve met some really, really interesting people that I’m glad that.
They reached out to me because they’ve got awesome businesses now that I’m familiar with. So it really is a great way to build the network. Um, all of the tangible benefits are a little bit harder to track. Like I’m sure some people like bought Link Whisperer or subscribe to my YouTube channel or, you know, listen to the podcast now.
Um, but those are harder to quantify.
Jared: I know we’ve got a lot of good podcast guests because I get emails like, Hey, Spencer, I met Spencer at this conference. We talked for 10 minutes and he thought my story would be really cool. I’m like, cool. Exactly.
Spencer: Exactly. Yeah. And you can get a lot of that just by going to a conference.
But when you speak like. Yeah, they, they just, it becomes inbound, right? They, they come to you. Um, and so, so I look forward to, um, yeah, hearing where you speak and, um, you can share how it goes on the, on the podcast here. I’m sure you’ll kind of fill us in throughout the next few months. How your goal goals.
Jared: Yep. I will keep you guys posted. It’s one of the many side hustles I’ll be reporting on, on this podcast here and there.
Spencer: Very good. Well. Let’s jump into our weird niche sites. We teased, um, your weird niche site, uh, a little bit earlier on that. It was kind of, um, yeah, just an interesting one, but I’m going to start with mine here.
So, uh, I found this, it was through Twitter. Um, somebody just commented, they didn’t like say, Hey, share this. It was just totally, you know, something else I was like, this would make a good weird niche site. And, uh, so my site here is. Uh, let’s learn slang dot com. Now, let me share my screen here. Um, you know, beautiful website.
Um, learn the slang before you travel. So it’s like, hey, let’s learn, um, like here’s one that’s just showing up, right? You know, British. Uh, a hundred British slang words for hello. So if you’re traveling to the UK, which I guess you are, Jared, right here, speaking there, you know, um, all right. Uh, hello. And it would say, apparently they got, you know, a hundred, uh, examples.
A up. I’ve never heard of that one. Uh, well, hi. Oi. Uh, anyways, I won’t read all of
Jared: them. What’s that show? The, uh, Ted Lasso. That’s the guy who always goes, Oi! Roy!
Spencer: No, his other name’s Cheerio. There you go. Uh, Cheerio, hello and goodbye. Good day. G’day. G’day. G’day. G’day. Uh, so there, uh, tons of, tons of different, you know, sort of slangs for different, I was reading, what was the other one that I was reading that was pretty good?
They had another one on here, but, um, what I found is that a lot of their website is not necessarily about this. Like, you know, they’ve got funny quotes, they’ve got rhyming words, they’ve got weird words. Um. And all sorts of things that are related to just language in general, but there is a lot of like slang.
Oh, let’s look at this Canadian slang. Uh, that, that should be a good one. Uh, I have not vetted this previously, so let’s see. Oh, I gotta click the read more button, of course, uh, to get that. Uh, beauty. Uh. Beauty doesn’t just necessarily refer to someone’s level of attractiveness in Canada. In fact, it is often used to refer to someone or something that’s high quality.
Okay. I think she’s a beauty. Yeah. Got a biff. He biffed it. To mess up. Yeah, he biffed up. Uh, blockhead. With an H. Bog Trotter. I don’t know what a bog trotter is. That’s a new one. New Hellsville, New Brunswick is a bog trotter. Wow. Uh, didn’t know that. Well, there’s, there’s a lot here. We’re not going to go through all of them, but let’s just take a look at, uh, obviously you can see ads everywhere.
It’s a content play, um, a lot of words and they have done. Pretty well, historically in AHS, um, at their peak, if you can see the screen here, nearly 800, 000 organic searches or organic visitors per month, but they took a big dip, you guessed it right around September, 2023 with the helpful content update, they’re now down to, um, 163, 000.
Organic visitors a month. They got hit really, really hard, right? That’s down five X. Something like that. Um, but they’re still ranking for some things. If we look at the organic keywords. Uh, Rihanna nickname, caveman names, Spanish words that start with C H, Spartan names, funny character names, and the list goes
Jared: on and on.
Yeah, and funny five letter words. Yeah. You know, I saw like 11, you know, 111 words that are 11, uh, Whatever, I’ve been characters long, you know, I saw a lot of that,
Spencer: so kind of fascinating to see all the different combinations of words you can put together. There’s so many search terms that like, we’ve just given some of these.
They’re trying to hit on all of those. Um, I kind of wonder if they just stuck with slang, if they’d have a little bit better topical authority, right? And instead of broadening to like, Hey, here’s caveman names or, um, Yeah. Spartan names or whatever weird five letter words. They’ve kind of broadened. Maybe too much.
That would be my only maybe thing I’d point out about this website
Jared: They’re about page wax is poetical though about slang. I don’t know if I could read a couple paragraphs from there Uh, there’s there there about page Um, you know as it says here in a lot lot they have in the about page, but of course no exploration of language would be complete without a foray into the vibrant realm of slang words and idioms.
Slang is the beating heart of a language, revealing the ever evolving nature of human expression. Unravel the hidden meanings, cultural references, and peculiarities behind slang words and idioms from different regions and time periods, from casual conversations to pop cultural references. You’ll be immersed in the vibrant tapestry of linguistic creativity.
Spencer: Wow. That’s deep. That is poetic, isn’t it?
Jared: I was going to say, boy, that’s a, that’s the best rendition of slang I think I’ve ever heard.
Spencer: That’s right. Almost makes you wonder if.
Jared: I was about to say, if that doesn’t have AI all over it, I don’t know what does.
Spencer: Notice anyways, um, there’s, I mean, it’s got a picture of Gabriel Cruz, the lead editor of the exciting website. Is that a real picture? That’s, I don’t know, I don’t know, and there’s not much about Gabriel Cruz on this page other than he’s been captivated by the unique ways in which people express themselves.
That is 100
Jared: percent someone went to mid journey and said, give me a business casual look of a somebody named Gabriel Cruz. It
Spencer: really, it really does. I mean, the more I look at the whiskers and the hairline, something, something feels, it’s the uncanny valley, right?
Jared: Exactly. Trust me, as somebody who used to be a professional photographer, the uncanny shine that happens in that photo is not very natural to achieve.
Spencer: Busted. Oh, busted. Let’s learn slang. We gotcha. I don’t know.
Jared: Maybe I’m wrong. You know, I, I, I hate to, uh, insinuate, but, uh, I don’t know, it has all the signs. If
Spencer: I were a betting man, I’d, I’d go all in on, on this being
Jared: AI. I mean, monetized by Mediavine, what did you say the traffic was at its peak? Yeah,
Spencer: almost 800, 000 organic visitors.
I mean, even if it
Jared: was a, uh, you know, uh, a smash and grab job per se, like that’s a good month right there, right?
Spencer: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, um, yeah, just going back. I mean, the site, yeah, it looked like beginning of 2022 is when the site came out. So it was pre AI. It did really well.
Jared: Yeah. Well, I wonder if it was pre AI.
And, um, had a lot of actual slang and then AI came in and like, let’s just go wide and deep on this. And then look at that spike right around the time that chat GPT was coming to prominence. Very interesting. Right. And then, and then we might see a second site that looks a little bit like that graph right there coming up next.
And then bam. Yeah. I don’t know. Again, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I guess our job on here is to be a little bit presumptuous as we talk about things we have absolutely no history on. And
Spencer: I just, I just realized I slipped up. I was sharing the wrong screen. I may have revealed your, your weird niche site accidentally.
Uh, I was showing the AA Traps tab for your site, uh,
Jared: for a second here. Oh, that was mine? Well, I just said it looks ironically similar to the one in the back.
Spencer: It looks very similar, very similar. Yours
Jared: has a little bit more of a, of an introductory tale to it
Spencer: or, uh, you know, well, the cat’s out of the bag now, I guess we better just share, share, share your site.
Uh, this
Jared: is a good test for how many listeners at this point, we’re actually paying close enough attention that they found it, you know, obviously
Spencer: people are rewinding rewatching that improves the algorithm. We get people to rewatch. So there you
Jared: go. We should do more Easter eggs, a little more of these little slip ups, you know, It’s like, uh, what is it, in movies, when people go back and find all the glitches, you know?
Spencer: Yeah, that’s right.
Jared: Yeah. Oh, enough about that. So my site, um, is, uh, I mean, easy toilet tips. com and it is, um, well, it is a site about toilet tips, you know, uh, I’d say that a site on specifically focused on toilets is, is weird enough, but I did want to. Uh, message you and say, you know, you want to talk about toilet topics here on the podcast?
Are you sure we want to go that direction? Yeah, we haven’t, uh, reduced ourselves to, you know, being 12 year old boys yet. Uh, and apparently today’s the day we do that.
Spencer: There’s, there’s a lot of, uh, you know. Tips to be had related to the toilet.
Jared: Well, 1, 245 pages worth apparently, uh, obviously if you’re watching on screen, you can see that this site lacks any sign of stylistic or user, um, uh, experience, uh, uh, factors.
It is a, uh, uh, a homepage that. Is 994 pages deep. It only features what three or four posts before moving you on to the next homepage screen. Um, and, uh, uh, it, it, it, it’s no imagery. Um, no, uh, uh, many, many articles being published in the same day. Uh, nothing has been published in. A year from today, uh, and when I take it over to Ahrefs, as I alluded to, there are 1, 245 pages.
All you have to do is click in, and again, our language site from earlier makes this, this site, sorry, makes our language site from earlier look like Shakespeare. Yeah, this is as a I generated crank it out as I, you know, as you see, right, it is, um, uh, you know, one of the articles, uh, is, uh, I’ll read it out loud really quickly.
Apparently I’m in a reading out loud kind of motif today. It’s why do soft closed toilet seats stop working? And, uh, you know, The introduction is, is captivating and riveting. My soft close toilet seat stopped working. Please, how do I fix it? That’s the question almost every owner of toilets with soft close mechanisms asks at one point or another during the equipment’s lifetime.
The invention of the soft closing toilet has proven revolutionary. It’s quieter than the conventional toilet seat, making things cleaner and safer. I didn’t know quiet made things cleaner anyways, especially in environments where small children are present and it goes on and on.
Spencer: It’s fascinating. Who knew there was so much to write about now before you actually say anything
Jared: before you actually say anything that the cat’s out of the bag.
You want to share the AHS screen, screen, grab a track
Spencer: there. Let’s, let’s put it up permanently here for a, for a minute or two. Uh,
Jared: here it is. You’ve already seen this. I mean. So, I don’t, I don’t want to be too, it clearly had origins before AI came out, right? Or maybe not, maybe this was a Jasper play, right?
Like I don’t know, like this content’s so bad, uh, I didn’t go back and look at some of this stuff from early on, but I mean, it’s clear that they, um. They grew the traffic quite a bit. I mean quite a bit. Um, they grew the traffic to, uh, maybe 2000 page views a month. And then, I mean, the site isn’t de indexed, but it, it, it, it ranks for one keyword.
It might as well be. It ranks for one keyword.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I look at organic traffic. It just shows zero, zero, zero over the last several weeks, right?
Jared: This is, uh, I mean, part of me is glad that Google’s algorithm and its current state of really being not great as we’ve talked about, at least got this one right, right?
This is just awful. And if I were actually maybe a plumber who was putting out really high quality. Tips on, you know, some of these toilet questions. I’d be pretty frustrated if this was ranking above me. Yeah, totally. You know, but, uh, but yeah, they, uh, I don’t even think that they got the smash and grab, uh, earnings that we saw from the, uh, the earlier site.
It’s monetized on Ezoic at a peak of 2, 000 page views a month. I mean, what are we talking, 60 bucks?
Spencer: Yeah, maybe. Uh, so Um, here we can compare, uh, about pages, right? We’ve got the about page on Easy Toilet Tips. This is not as well written, or at least not as long, right? It’s like three or four sentences here.
Um, and no pictures, no pictures of, uh, of the author. All we know is that there’s a Daniel, first name only, that appears to have written all the articles, uh, on the website. And,
Jared: uh I like their tagline there, Spencer. Sorry I interrupted you. Uh, Easy Toilet Tips, the number one source for lavatory bias free reviews.
That’s a mouthful.
Spencer: Yeah, yeah, the number one source for lavatory bias free reviews. Uh, yeah, makes, kind of makes you wonder if this was English as a first language, uh, founder. I don’t know. I don’t know. Just But, uh, you know, maybe they went to fiber, maybe they didn’t to get this logo. Um, but, but that’s pretty much it.
They got a logo and then like, uh, how many thousands of articles?
Jared: I mean, right. A stock WordPress theme out of the, out of the box. Right. Yeah. I mean, for those, for those of you who aren’t like who don’t, you know, uh, or maybe this is your first AI, completely AI driven site. You seem like that chart we saw on a H refs is.
Very typical of many AI driven sites, right? They will come out of the gate growing traffic and due to the sheer number of. Um, uh, pages that get published and hopefully, you know, if you’re doing it right, you’re making them semantically related. You’re doing some internal linking due to all those factors, like you can see these growth curves, but so common to see them just one day fall off the proverbial cliff like this.
This does have a lot of the earmarks of what some of them look like.
Spencer: Yeah, no, it does. So it’s a, it’s a fascinating site. Maybe on that note, um, I will tease actually just a YouTube video that I have coming out on Monday, uh, that is all about this, uh, AI content generation. That is about a competition that I held people trying to grow an existing website using AI content.
The challenge was to, um, see how much you could grow your current website by adding some AI content. And how much traffic would that generate? And so I have the results to share. It’s been 90 days. And so if you want to watch that YouTube video, it comes out on Monday and a couple of days. It’s a good one.
So don’t want to Harkins back,
Jared: but didn’t you have one of your side hustle shenanigans? Wasn’t it a completely AI driven site that I think had a similar ending to the one we just saw?
Spencer: Boy, oh boy. Yeah, that, uh, was something I was gonna never mention again, so thanks for bringing that up, Jared.
Jared: Well, I could have said that that looks like the graph from your faceless YouTube channel, but that would have just been taking it too personal.
Spencer: All right, I’m gonna just quit, and, uh, you know, drop the mic now, and, uh, We’ll, we’ll cut this out, um, but yes, my faceless YouTube channel tanked, my AI website tanked, Um, half of what I do just, you know.
Jared: We appreciate you putting yourself out there.
Spencer: No, it’s, it’s fun. No, it’s, it’s all fun. And that’s, that’s why I share my stuff.
So you don’t have to make the same mistakes that I repeat over and over again. So, um, so I don’t know where we go from here other than I think we’re done here. Um, I appreciate everybody listening in. If you do want to watch my YouTube video coming out on Monday. Go over to niche pursuits, YouTube channel.
And, uh, as always, uh, if you want to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, uh, go over to the new niche pursuits, podcast, YouTube channel. Yes. We forgot to give an update on that.
Jared: Didn’t we, we hit, we didn’t, we almost hit a thousand. We didn’t quite hit a thousand though. I checked like two days ago.
Spencer: We did not hit a thousand.
But we did pretty well. We did pretty well. We’re getting real close to 800 I think. Um, I mean, I was going to try and find it real
Jared: quick. You know what they say, shoot for the moon and if you miss you land amongst the stars. Spencer, you know? Yeah,
Spencer: we’re real close to 800 here. But, uh, hey. First full week. I can’t complain.
800 subscribers. Not bad
Jared: at all. It’s not bad. But if you haven’t subscribed, please do so we can, uh, we can kind of inch closer to that, that, that, that magic thousand.
Spencer: Yeah. Yep. And that’s where, of course, this episode will be. So if you’re listening on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Other than that, thank you everybody for listening and I hope you have a great weekend.
Jared: Have a great weekend, everyone.