Only 36% of Google Searches Go to Websites: New Zero Click Report

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast! As always, Spencer and Jared break down the latest news about Google, SEO, AI, and beyond for listeners.

They kick things off this week by diving into a zero-click search study by Rand Fishkin on SparkToro, talking about where clicks go and the difference in what happens after someone in America clicks vs. someone in Europe.

What percentage of clicks go to organic search? Where do 1 in 3 clicks go? What do Spencer and Jared think of these statistics? 

How do the stats differ in Europe? And is Google really losing in search? Check out the episode for the full scoop.

Watch the Full Episode

After the spam update finished rolling out at the end of last week, someone reported seeing a slight recovery. 

The author of the report is seeing almost a 50% rebound in traffic on her affiliate marketing website since March 2024, and she details the 4 main steps she’s taken since her traffic tanked, which included disavowing spammy backlinks and upping her internal linking game.

What do Spencer and Jared think about her story? And how exactly has her site been impacted by all of the changes they made?

Moving along, they talk about Google Search Console’s data freeze which, at the time they recorded the podcast, was 87 hours long. 

What does this mean? Is an update coming? Has Google confirmed it? Tune in to find out what Spencer and Jared think.

It’s then time for Shiny Object Shenanigans and, as usual, Spencer goes first with an exciting update about his first 30 days in the Facebook Bonus Program. 

How much has he earned so far? How many followers does his Facebook page have? And how many posts have gone viral? Check out the episode to see all the recent stats and hear his plans for growth.

When it’s Jared’s turn, he reveals that he bought a newsletter! The Slice, which is geared towards solopreneurs, seemed like the perfect fit.

How much revenue is it generating? How many subscribers does it have? What kind of open rates was it getting? Jared shares his monetization plans and his thoughts on growing an existing newsletter.

When it’s Weird Niche Website time, Spencer shares a site that’s doing really well. In fact, year-to-date it’s earned 4 million GBP. Car Mats is an ecommerce site that’s gone very niche as it focuses on a single car part: floor mats.

The site was created in 2020, and the creator’s goal is to make 10 million GBP this year. Spencer pulls up the stats on Ahrefs. How much traffic is it getting? And what can we take away from this site?

When it’s Jared’s turn, he reveals Keybr, a weird and quirky site that offers typing tests and helps you improve your typing skills. 

Spencer decided to take the test live, for Niche Pursuits listeners. How does it all turn out?

This DR67 site ranking for 13k keywords with 450k monthly organic visitors. How is it monetized?

And once again, that brings us to the end of the episode. We hope you’re feeling informed and inspired and that you’ll tune in again next week when Spencer and Jared tackle the news, talk about their side hustles, and share the weird niche sites they’ve discovered.

transcription

Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of this week in niche pursuits news. And today we’re going to be talking about zero clicks from Google. How many searches do people actually do on Google that results in no clicks to organic results? And has that changed over time? And how has AI overviews impacted that?

And how has the European union, uh, legislation that’s recently passed Impacted all of that. There’s been a huge study by spark Toro, and we’re going to dive into this data because it’s really, really interesting for us as publishers, because we want to know the trends. Are we getting more clicks? We getting less clicks.

Is there anything we can do about it? So there’s a lot of data to dig into here today. Uh, and then we do have a couple of other, uh, interesting news stories, including one of a possible recovery from the March Google core update. Uh, and so we’ll look at that, but then. Uh, further down the line here, we’re going to talk about a couple of shiny object shenanigans.

And Jared and I were just sort of commiserating here before the podcast that boy, it feels like we’ve got side hassle after side hustle, and now we’ve got maybe too many to juggle. Uh, so, so we’ll dig into that, but some good results. Uh, and Jared has a big announcement, I guess, if you follow his newsletter, you got this announcement already.

But, uh, big moves happening by Jared here. And then finally, we’re gonna wrap it all up with two weird niche sites. So, stick around for that. So, Jared, welcome to the show. How you doing? 

Jared: Good, good. I was telling you before we started recording, it’s a holiday weekend here in the United States. I feel like everybody’s already on holiday, but us, we are here.

We’re making sure the news still happens. It’s the end of the day. Had to fit it in. Can’t miss an episode. People gotta have stuff to listen to while they’re, uh, watching fireworks and, uh, eating hot dogs by the pool. 

Spencer: That’s right, you know, make sure the kids are having fun and then push play on the podcast and enjoy some, uh, some time with, uh, Jared and I.

So hopefully, uh, Instead of playing those good old American tunes, you know, for your family barbecue, maybe put it on the podcast, see if your family likes it. That’s exactly right. Hey, you never know, we might, uh, gain another follower or two if somebody does that. Ugh. So, but let’s jump into the news because, uh, there was a very big study done by spark Toro.

So our, our friend Rand Fishkin over there, uh, he’s been jumping a lot more into the SEO world again, uh, here with, you know, the Google leaks and now here with. Uh, this 2024 zero click search study. Um, a lot of really interesting findings. And so we’re going to just let people follow along. I’m going to share my screen here.

Uh, but I’m going to basically just click on this big graph, which I believe you can now see that sort of full screen size. Uh, here that there’s just a lot of data. They dug into this. They have data partners that they work with. It’s click stream data. If people want to look at that, they can read the full article over at SparkToro, uh, to do that, but he broke it down into the U S versus Europeans.

What happens? When somebody in the U S does a Google search, did they actually click on any results? And the reason that he split this up is because there was a big legislation that was not in favor of Google. Um, that basically, um, yeah, some additional legislation that Google needed to be more open about, you know, what they’re doing with search results and that sort of thing.

And so, How’s that changed? Uh, anything is part of the reason for the comparison here. So here’s what it says. The conclusion of the study is that in 2024, when Americans search on Google 41. 5 percent do does end up in a click. So we’ll just leave it there for now. We’ll dig into the three options, but it does end up in a result in a click, right?

37. 1%. They don’t do anything that the search ends. They search something. And they don’t have a follow up search. Uh, they don’t click on any results, meaning they must have found their answer. Right. They just look at a summary. They look at an AI overview, whatever it is, a snippet. They’ve got what they wanted.

Okay. Uh, and then 21. 4%. Of the time they do another search, a follow up search. How does this compare in the, um, EU, right? In European search, not a huge difference, right? We’re talking like fractions of a percent, um, actually less clicks. Uh, europeans, right? 41. 5 percent of the U. S. Down to 40. 3%. So a little more than 1 percent actually click on a result.

A little bit more. 37. 4%. So 0. 3 percent more. Uh, Europeans do nothing, right? And then 22. 3 percent do another search. So, uh, really kind of interesting. So, uh, there’s about overall 58. 5 percent zero click searches in the U. S. And 59. 7 percent zero, zero click searches, uh, in Europe now, uh, 41% That doesn’t sound, you know, really that great that ends up in a click, right?

But that’s actually broken down into three potential clicks with only one of those being organic results, right? So set your website, potentially your website, hopefully right to unpaid organic results. Uh, 70. 5 percent of the time of the actual click ends up in an organic result, meaning 30 percent ends up somewhere else.

Jared, where are these places that people go? Uh, 

Jared: so a couple of very interesting things here, but 28. 5 percent in the U S of clicks. Right. So people that actually do click something 28 and a half percent of them. So almost one in three go to a Google property. Remember they have been in the news for all the antitrust situations and this is exactly why So maybe youtube because they own that google maps because they own that google images google news Uh google flights we might talk about that one a little bit later even potentially some of the stuff they’re experimenting With credit cards.

I don’t know if you’ve seen that so google property absorbs Almost one in three of the clicks that happen Inside of the syrup, which is. Pretty low to begin with 

Spencer: right as just incredible right and then and then 1 percent goes to a paid ad 

Jared: now Here’s a couple things on that 1 percent and I wanted to get your opinion So first off I would think that would be higher.

I don’t know why to 1 percent of Clicks are going to sir. They’ve made it so doggone prominent. They’ve done so much to make sure that you It’s so hard to tell the difference between an ad and an organic result. I just would’ve thought that would’ve been higher. Just back of the napkin feeling. 

Spencer: Yeah. And, and I think it is, and there’s actually a caveat in the study for this.

I saw that issue in particular. Uh, they mentioned the use of ad blockers and, and other things that may have impacted this portion of the study. So they did call out that they’re not quite sure that the paid, um, click. Results that the reporting are very accurate, and they do have an asterisk here that ad blockers definitely probably impacted that.

So, um, so that’s probably my hunch is like you, Jared, that I think it’s probably much more than 1%. 

Jared: Well, and you know, not to jump ahead, but something else that I thought was really interesting is that clicks to paid ads in the U. S. was 1%. It’s 40 percent higher. For Europeans, that’s a lot higher. And I’m curious as to why.

Spencer: Yeah, it’s a great question. I don’t know. Um, the, I don’t know that answer, but I was going to look at the, um, the Google properties, the difference there, right? I think that’s maybe the big difference in the study due to potentially the legislation, the antitrust type things happening in Europe, right? Is that okay.

28. 5 percent in the U S. Of clicks are happening on, on Google properties where only 24 percent is happening in Europe to Google properties. So it’s, that’s significant. I mean, that’s a significant, if you can do your quick math, Jared, with the percent, almost 20 percent less, you have four and a half percent, almost 20 percent less clicks, you know, 20%.

Yeah. You know, almost something, uh, less is happening in Europe to Google property. So that that’s significant. 

Jared: It’s really significant. And I think you’re exactly right. The legislation over there is obviously far more. Uh, uh, controlling of that with Google and Google’s gotten into probably more hot water over there than they have in the United States and, and, and, you know, I would imagine that’s what we’re seeing as a result of that.

We know that Google has no shame in putting their properties anywhere they possibly can get away with as long as it continues to help help them out. So, 

Spencer: yeah, exactly. But, um. I don’t know. Is there any? Can we find any positive news in this study? There actually is a lot of, um, data that we’re just not gonna have time to go over.

Um, but it is sort of fascinating and perhaps a little bit disheartening just to realize that, okay, 1000 searches happen on Google. Only 374 or 360 actually end up in a click and out of those, like there’s this huge percentage 24 or whatever percent don’t end up on an organic result. It’s a Google property, right?

Or a paid ad. 

Jared: And Rand has been studying this for a number of years, and you know, it’s kind of like the human attention span, it just keeps dropping every year, you know, they do that study like, we finally just passed, uh, a huge milestone where we are, have a less attention span apparently than a goldfish, has been like the hallmark for, for decades they’ve been studying, but it does, as it relates to this, It does seem to go down and down and down.

It’s interesting that you’re scrolling right there because that was going to be a topic. I did think we could maybe make some time to address right there. If you go up just a little bit, this is something Rand addressed right there. He said, is Google losing in search, right? So how does this tie in with the overall narrative that people are not as happy with search?

People are not as happy with Google, all the botched rollouts they’ve had. AI overviews is something that actually people want. Or is it just something that the executive team want? Um, I’ll read from his article in both the US and EU searches per searcher. That’s a mouthful. Let that sink in. Searches per searcher are rising and in the spring of 2024, they were at historic highs and as he says, that data just doesn’t fit well with the narrative that Google’s cost themselves credibility or that internet users are giving up on Google and seeking out alternatives.

So it’s interesting to see that he does go on though to talk about AI overviews and, um, did they make a big difference in search behavior? And to some degree he says that the results are a bit. Mixed, I would say, um, you know, uh, uh, he kind of goes on and talk about it. We could get into it if we really want to, but we’ve touched on it enough here.

Um, uh, but you know, like, are people more happy with getting their results in the SERP or do they want to go off? I guess that’s kind of the big question here is Google doing this more and more because it’s what people want or are they doing it more and more because it allows them to retain that traffic on their properties and thus make more money from it.

Spencer: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, they’re a for profit company. And so they’re always trying to maximize profit, uh, while still keeping users satisfied. So they are keeping, keep coming back. And so a lot of their own properties, right. Probably like quite frankly, right. Like I use Google maps, I use, you know, Google flights and, you know, I use these things and I’m, I’m happy with those results.

Uh, and so they’re, they’re trying to do this balancing act where they’re I haven’t left Google yet, and it looks like the data plays out that others aren’t totally dissatisfied with Google. They’re searching the number of searches per searcher, uh, was the phrase is, is still solid. So it’s going up. Um, in fact, um, and 

Jared: as far, go ahead.

I was going to say to your point, I mean, I’m certainly have no problem, you know, uh, pulling punches when it comes to Google, but at the same time, when we look at our own websites, like. Most of us will increase the ad density on our websites to the point that it either a affects users ability to stay on the page or to the point that maybe a Google update penalizes us for that, right?

Like we want to maximize the revenue per user on our pages. To that point, they have shareholders and if they are continuing to see upward trends in certain areas, perhaps that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing. 

Spencer: Right, exactly. And then just maybe to wrap it up, you know, the AI overviews, um, they rolled it out to something like 84 percent of searches at one point, and then they dialed it back to, I don’t remember, 15 percent or something.

Uh, and we’re probably somewhere in the middle now, right? So it’s fluctuating so much that. While it’s mentioned in this study, it’s not real solid data just because it hasn’t been around for very long. And it’s, it’s, it is tough to draw a lot of conclusions. Um, other than, you know, we can see there are a lot of zero clicks happening and we have to assume, you know, a big portion of that now is, are, are these AI overviews that, um, are happening?

So, okay, so we’re going to move on. Uh, we have just two other short sort of news stories that, um, I thought would be interesting to share. And, and this one in particular is interesting because it is a little bit of a recovery story. So last week we talked about, uh, some positive news, potentially, you know, from Google, people were seeing a little bit of increase, um, after this spam updated, finished rolling out, uh, at the end of last week, this is, um, somebody here.

Uh, the slow solopreneur. com, uh, Mila here writes about, uh, traffic increase, a partial traffic recovery after the March, uh, she writes HCU, but you know, the, the March core update, I guess, right. That is now include the HCU is included, uh, in the, um, the core updates. And so if you look at her traffic graph, you can definitely see a turnaround, um, right around the 1st of March, which is like, I mean, just eyeballing.

It’s like almost a 50 percent increase, right? Going from less than 500 searches a day to close to 1000. Maybe not quite 50%, but, uh, yeah. Getting close there. And what’s interesting about this sort of case study is that she walks through all of the steps that she took. Right? Um, and so some of the notes about our website, it is an affiliate marketing website.

It does not serve ads, though. Um, Even on her informational articles, she does have affiliate boxes. Uh, she only manually does any link building or outreach. It was built on a brand new domain before the March helpful content update. The website was growing and making an average of a thousand dollars per month.

She goes in the history of where, you know, troubles began and she saw a lot of issues, right? Um, but then she walks through the steps. that she took to hopefully to see some of the recovery, some of the changes that she made. Now there’s something like eight different steps that she took. But was there anything that jumped out to you, Jared, in terms of the steps she took that maybe had the most impact you feel like?

Jared: I mean, she summarized it below. Just read the summary super quick because the summary ties up a bit. Number one, mass disavowing of toxic backlinks. Number two, improving the relevancy of internal links. Number three, de optimizing anchor texts. And number four, building more brand authority and eat signals.

Um, yeah. A lot of this is part and parcel with what has been surmised about potential recovery. You know, certainly, um, building all those, uh, external signals to your site, increasing engagement. She started a newsletter on ConvertKit. She, um, built out a lot of, uh, social signals from social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook and, and posting on all those things.

So a lot of the things, unfortunately, are probably things a lot of people have tried. And it didn’t lead to recovery for them. But I think that it’s cool to see someone say, here’s what I did. And here’s what’s happened as a result of it. You know, we haven’t seen the pullback graph. I didn’t see the pullback graph on there.

Like all the way, like a year, you know, cause it does see improvement, but only in the last couple of months, like how does it look in comparison to where things used to be? But again, we’ve got to start somewhere. And we’ve talked on this podcast so many times about. If there, if we, if we could just start with some stories of recovery and this is definitely just partial recovery, it would give us all a leg to stand on.

And here we have something we really do. 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Um, and so I would recommend people go check it out. The, the slow solopreneur. com shout out there. Thanks for sharing the case study a little bit of positive news. Um, it is interesting because kind of. Three out of the four steps she took, if you will, or conclusions that she came to are kind of related to links, right?

Both internal and external links, right? Which has always been the backbone of the internet. And so it’s almost like just simplifying this down mass disavowing toxic backlinks. I mean, that’s a big process. There’s this debate of, you know, should you, or shouldn’t you disavow? She did it. She felt like it helped, um, improving the relevancy of internal links.

You know that I, anytime I can talk about internal links, I love to, because that’s a big part of what I do. I built a software tool, Link Whisper, to help people improve their internal links, right? Um, she may not have used that tool, Link whisper, but, uh, she could have to gone in there and quickly see what’s the anchor text.

How many internal links do all of my pages have? And should I add more? Should I remove some and link? Whisper could make it really fast and easy. 

Jared: I was summarizing it because I was going to say we should have her on the podcast. But as soon as I saw, she didn’t use link whisper for that. I was like, well, I’m going to have to summarize now because we’re not having her on.

Just cross her off the list, 

Spencer: huh? 

Jared: Done. 

Spencer: No, you know what? Let’s go ahead and see if we can invite her, Jared. Yeah, maybe we can have a turnaround story here. That’s right. Spend an hour chipping away. With open arms. 

Jared: You know, to your point, Spencer, you could argue all four of the things she did are link related.

Because in many ways, building more brand and more authority, it’s really just a link game. You’re right. You’re right. Um, I don’t want to oversimplify that, but you know, all this talk and a lot of it’s coming down to getting mentions consistently, which link back to you. 

Spencer: Yeah. I mean, it’s at the end of the day, um, there’s been a lot of reasons to believe that Google.

Doesn’t truly understand the quality of your content all on its own, right? It, it comes down to some of these more basic things we’ve seen. Well, you know, through, through the links, right? They, they can’t really read your website and say that’s a quality article versus that one. A lot of it comes down to, you know, some of these basic building blocks, right, of links, 

Jared: here’s something interesting.

She said that I think should not get lost. Cause it isn’t just about traffic. And I think it’s good for all of us to keep that in mind, right? Like. We do look at the search console. We look at the traffic data. We look at that. But she said in the end, the end result is not just more traffic, but more affiliate link clicks and more commissions.

I’ve quadrupled my link clicks and I’ve tripled my income per day since this happened. Wow. So. I mean, maybe you don’t get a full recovery, but how does tripling your income from whereas now to, you know, with a partial recovery, like that sounds a lot more attractive and enticing to, to dive into some of this stuff.

Spencer: Yeah. And that’s why I love sharing this kind of stuff is because we want to see some positive movement, some things. So there’s been, uh, some micro steps in the right direction here. And so let’s, let’s, let’s. You know, let’s reach out to her, see if we can get her on the podcast, have her, uh, tell her full story and hopefully things continue to go well now that we’re in, uh, July.

So, uh, let’s cover just one very quick final, um, news story here. Um, basically if you’ve been looking at your Google search console, uh, it hasn’t updated. Or we’re over 75 hours. I looked this morning and it was like 79 hours or you know, I, I don’t know exactly how many hours, you know, we’re over 80 hours.

So How many days is that, Jared? We’re it, 

Jared: so you’re, you’re nearing four 

Spencer: days. Yeah, 

Jared: exactly. You’re nearing 

Spencer: something 

Jared: like, like that 

Spencer: 96 hours is 

Jared: four days, so 

Spencer: Yeah. And so it’s getting close. That’s odd something is going on Google Search Console. I don’t, we don’t know if it’s just a glitch. Uh. Or, you know, rumor maybe is that there’s like a core update about to happen or going to happen, right?

Sometimes these things, 87 

Jared: hours. I just logged in by the way, at time of recording folks. And this is a very big caveat. It’s at time of recording, but 87 hours, Spencer. 

Spencer: Yeah. So that’s a long time. So, um, just keep your eye on that. We don’t know exactly what that means. And maybe by the time this podcast, most likely by the time this podcast comes out, the, the data is going to be refreshed, but could that mean that there’s Some sort of update happening behind the scenes.

Jared: Yeah, and it’s not just people surmising like there’s a strong connection in the past with when you see a delay in update in GSC and then an update launching. I don’t know why I could theorize, but no one’s ever kind of confirmed or correlated. But yeah, so it’s very, I’d say it’s. You could argue very likely.

Um, you know, I saw on Twitter, John Mew denied it. Like, no, it’s just a glitch. It’s just a bug. Not, you know, or something he said like that. Not related to an update, but you know, history would show that it certainly has been connected at other times in the past. Not always, but um, we’ve been talking about how, you know, I was just talking to a client yesterday and they were like, Hey, when’s the next core update coming?

I’m like, well, you know, they never really announced them ahead of time. Oh yeah, they do now actually, nevermind. But, um, you know, they usually try to squeeze one in here in the summer or the fall so they can, they can get in that doozy of an update right around Black Friday. And, and Chris, you know, they gotta have time to get that one in.

But, um, you know, it wouldn’t be uncommon for them to, to, to have one come in here in the summer. They’ve done it before. 

Spencer: Yeah. And, um, last week when we posted our podcast on Twitter, a lot of people were saying, Hey, now that the spam update is complete, it’s about time that tends to follow one right after the other.

I had forgotten that that happens, but a couple of people chimed in and say, yeah, that’s kind of how Google does it. Sometimes they like finish the spam update and then roll out with a core update, you know, kind of right after that. So. All speculation, but keep your eye on Google search console and potentially a Google core update coming out soon.

So we will leave that as the news topics for today. Um, we’re going to jump into our shiny object shenanigans and, um, boy, I continue to just have some exciting news. As it relates to the Facebook bonus program. Uh, honestly, I don’t remember what my earnings were last week when I reported them, because I feel like it’s just been increasing so much.

And so I think they were 

Jared: in the low two thousands, if I remember correctly, but don’t quote me on that. 

Spencer: That’s that’s. Sounds about right because it’s, it’s been, um, almost a week because we’re recording a little early this week. Right. And, uh, I’ve been clipping along at like a hundred plus dollars a day, uh, in earnings for a little while now.

Uh, and so I currently sit. And, uh, I’ve got a handy dandy screenshot for anybody watching this. Um, let me see if I can get the right one. There we go. Uh, so I’m currently at the time of recording, uh, 2, 927 in earnings in. My first 30 days of the Facebook bonus program. Um, of course, this Facebook page has been around for a year and a half or so as 64, 000 followers, 65, 000 followers.

Um, but you can see the earning period. I have zero days left. So today is the last day in the period. I’m hoping it tops 3000 just so I can say I made it. Uh, but it started June 3rd. And July 3rd today when we’re recording here. So 3, 000 from the Facebook bonus program, plus another, uh, I would have to add up the display ad revenue, but it’s another 400 to maybe 500 on top of that.

For the month of June. And so things have gone really, really well. Uh, as I explained last week, we have really ramped up the number of times we’ve been posting per day, uh, like 15 times per day, most of these image type posts, and we’ve had several that have gone viral, even in the last seven days. Uh, I think I’ve had, it was five or six different posts on Facebook that have reached more than a million people each, uh, just in the last seven days.

Like since I recorded last week’s podcast. So we continue to, it’s not just like one or two big viral posts. It’s like several, right. That are doing well. So I feel like we’ve hit and hit on some things that are consistently working a little bit better. Uh, and just for those people that like stats and are curious, here is just a screenshot of sort of the insights, right?

So overall post reach in the last 28 days, 17 and a half million, uh, post reach Uh, which means that number of people saw it or scrolled past something that I posted, um, engagement over a million reactions. These are, you know, people that actually liked it, gave it a thumbs up. 350, 000, uh, 90, 000 comments in the last 28 days.

Right. So it’s super active, uh, Facebook page. And I’m just. I’m very, uh, I have a positive outlook about the page. I’m excited about it. Um, and yeah, I feel like we’ve landed on a few things that are working and we’re going to just keep, keep going and hopefully see good things in July as well. I think the 

Jared: elephant in the room to some degree is like, I feel like we were answering this question a lot for how do I qualify for the Amazon influencer program?

It’s not really defined, but there’s some general things that we can kind of learn from it. Like, Along those lines, like what are the steps we got to take to be invited to the Facebook bonus program? I know you don’t know, right? I think you don’t know, but like anything you can give us along the way from what you’ve gathered.

Spencer: Yeah, it, it all comes down to engagement in my opinion. Right. So it’s not so much about follower size, although I think, you know, once you get over, Two or 3, 000, you’re probably in the okay range, right? If you can get above 10, 000, maybe that’s a little bit better, but it’s more about just engagement and are you active right on the page?

If you have a really big page with a hundred thousand followers and you just post once or twice a week and it’s ho hum, you’re probably not going to get invited, but if you have 5, 000 followers and you’re posting 10, 15 times a day, and a large percentage of your audience is actually commenting and interacting.

I think you’re going to get invited. So while there’s not, I don’t have a hard set rule of like, you need this many likes, or, you know, I just think, try to be really engaging and active. And I think that’s going to increase your chances. 

Jared: It’s a huge accomplishment. I mean, I know a lot of people are like, Oh, I got invited.

Cool. Let’s do this. Um, uh, but. There’s clearly like a reason to strategically pursue this because there are other benefits like you mentioned you have you estimate about 500 bucks and uh in ads from your your display ad network as well. So there’s reasons to pursue this and getting invited to the bonus program seems like a cherry on top, but it’s not.

Although I’d argue, maybe it’s more like the cupcake with the other things you’re doing, the cherry on top, you know, 

Spencer: the website now is the cherry on top. You’re right. Like at this point it’s surpassed, um, you know, I never made 3000 in a month with this particular website. Um, and, uh, so yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting.

I don’t know how well it will go, but I feel like based on what I’ve seen, like, it’s almost like a snowball. Like we found some things that are very engaging. We’re staying active. Our audience continues to be engaged. And so I don’t see any reason why it would slow down dramatically. I can’t expect that I’m going to have crazy viral posts every month, but if I can have some that are close to a million, right, or 500, 000, just consistently day in and day out, um, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of a fun little business.

So. 

Jared: What a world we live in, Spencer. Here we have Google taking, uh, helpful content that engages readers and just destroying those website owners. And then we have Facebook saying, we’ll bonus you out for it. 

Spencer: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s wild. And I think about that a lot. About like You know, Google has this Google discover engine that really, they want this type of content that is just really engaging and click worthy, which is what I’m posting on Facebook, but this website doesn’t show up in Google discover.

They just haven’t figured that out 

Jared: because it’s unhelpful content, Spencer. That’s why it’s unhelpful content. Forbes is better for it. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently it’s unhelpful given those numbers you have right there, you know, I mean, post it on some other channel and it gets in front of what 17 million people, but you know, it’s unhelpful 

Spencer: content.

Spencer. I don’t know if you knew that. Google doesn’t like it’s unhelpful. It doesn’t have enough links. Right. It all comes down. That’s what it is. Yeah. So 

Jared: anyways, I actually told us that anyways, sorry, I digress. No, 

Spencer: I, I, I, I do. I just recorded a video on this, uh, for my YouTube channel. So, you know, follow the niche pursuits YouTube channel.

Cause there’ll be a video coming out soon. Uh, people want more, you know, sort of in depth analysis of what I’m doing. I’ll leave it at that. Congratulations. Thank you. What are you working on? Spencer, 

Jared: I bought a newsletter.

Spencer: That’s, that’s a way to announce it right there. You bought a newsletter. You messaged me a few days ago and told me this, and I was like, you, you did what now? Yeah, that was actually, I think, your response. It might be. What, what happened? I’m like. How do you find a newsletter and what makes you decide to buy a newsletter?

Jared: Well, one of the good things about being a podcast host is you meet a lot of people over the years, you know Um, so when we had in the podcast, maybe maybe less than that. Um, sean markey Uh long story short and I talked about this in my email this week from weekend growth But I found out he was selling a newsletter Um, he mentioned a little about it piqued my interest And one thing came to another We made a deal happen very quickly and we took over this newsletter.

So we bought a newsletter. It’s called the slice. You can go see it. I’m telling you the newsletter I bought the slice. co. I love it. So there it is. That’s the newsletter. I guess we’re building in public now. Um, yeah, it is. It is. Uh, and this is what really intrigued me. The tagline, who it’s being marketed to, who’s on the list to the best that we could determine based on looking through The data of this list.

It’s been around for two or three years as email, your essential digest for the solopreneurs journey. I mean, that’s kind of a lot of this market that we work in Spencer. Um, certainly my agency, I work with a lot of solopreneurs. I work with a lot of single owner, businesses, small business owners, other business owners.

Certainly on the podcast, we talk to a lot of solopreneurs. We interview a lot of solopreneurs. We can growth. The list is full of solopreneurs. It feels right up my alley. Right at my agency’s alley. And so it felt like a very good acquisition for us to make. 

Spencer: Now, I think you shared some stats on the newsletter size, um, and maybe even revenue.

Um, is, is that something that you can share? Revenue is zero 

Jared: for the newsletter. That’s easy. Uh, that one’s easy. So, um, subscribers are just over 6, 000. Um, it’s been a bit dormant, uh, since about April. But it was getting consistent emails once per week. Uh, it has a flow and a cadence to it. It’s a flow and cadence that we’ve already, uh, within the first week of owning it built out, uh, our entire process internally.

So we already have our team assigned to writing and creating the content every single week. Um, and then we’ve added some things to it and you’ll be happy to know that every week, one of the segments or the, the blocks we’ve added is we’re featuring a solopreneurs journey. From the niche pursuits podcast.

Ooh. All right. Fist bump. Hey, I know I hadn’t told you that one yet. So I love it. That’s like a free advertising pretty much. Uh, so this upcoming week, I think the email goes out on Friday. We’re still trying to find the right date. Email goes out this Friday, the fifth. So same day this podcast is released.

Um, and we’re featuring, uh, Kevin Espiritu’s, uh, interview we did last year, which is a fantastic solo journey. Um, and we’ll keep featuring one every week and whatnot. But so that’s kind of the metrics by about 6, 000 or so people on the list. Pretty engaged. It was getting open rates well above 40%. Um, that’s 

Spencer: really good, 

Jared: you know?

And so, uh, and so, yeah, I’m very excited about it. 

Spencer: So tell me about your monetization plan. Uh, is it selling ad spots, sponsorships, or does this become kind of a funnel potentially for your agencies? 

Jared: All of the above. And, uh, I’m happy to report we’ve owned it for what a week now. We already have a sponsor for the first four emails we’re sending.

Is 

Spencer: that right? I, I don’t know who it is, but I imagine it just comes back to your network, right? Your connection. Exactly. Yep. Do maybe even from doing it in public. Yeah. 

Jared: Yeah. Probably both probably to some degree. I mean, that’s the thing. The great thing about having weekend growth is not every sponsor that sponsored weekend growth is a good fit for this, but certainly many of them are.

I sent literally one message. Yeah. Obviously, I, uh, I don’t know much about this list yet. So the deal was, was pretty attractive for the brand that said yes. Cause I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know how it’s going to perform for you. I don’t even know who’s on this list yet. Let’s go with the lowest thing you’re willing to give me.

Yeah. What do you want to pay? Yeah, uh huh, you know, so no one’s getting rich over here yet. But um, yeah sponsorship certainly we’ve made that work very well at Weekend Growth and it’s a very um, well, uh documented model for for for emails to to get paid on right now and as you mentioned it’s going to tie in I would imagine to some degree nicely with Weekend Growth some of the services we offer there and certainly for you For some, uh, 201 creative, you know, my agency works a lot of solopreneurs as it is.

And, um, and so, uh, I think that there’s, well, if you want to get the 411 on everything that we’re going to do, I’ve already written the email for next week for weekend growth. It was kind of funny, very meta here on weekend growth newsletter. I write now about how I’m going to grow the slices newsletter letter, but yeah, I went, I’m going through the whole thing.

It’s another one of these three or 4, 000 word emails. So if you want, just go get signed up for the weekend growth. Newsletter and um, and I will be emailing that out next week. But yeah, there’s so many monetization plans that, um, I mean, it’s just fascinating, like what we hopefully will do and who knows, maybe it won’t work.

I don’t know, but I thought that everything lined up to where it was worth a shot at it. So, 

Spencer: yeah. I like it, you know, in terms of acquisition, right. And kind of having a side project, if you will, something that can potentially fuel your main thing. It is my opinion, not a, not a bad idea, right? It may just make money on its own and never impact, you know, your agency or weekend growth or anything.

Right. But it has the potential to have a lot of synergies. And so I think that, uh, is smart. So if I’m counting properly, you had now have at least four newsletters. You’ve got the slice, you’ve got weekend growth, you’ve got 201 creative and your niche sort of newsletter that you’ve talked about here on the podcast.

I 

Jared: don’t really have a 201 creative newsletter. Okay, I should. I should have an email list. Yeah. Um, yeah. And guess what? I wasn’t planning on talking about this, but this morning I found a newsletter that I’ve apparently been building for four and a half years of 15, 000 people. One of my HCU hit websites.

Has had a pop up on it and has a several autoresponder sequences that I built out and that has been firing for four years And it has I discovered this morning 15 14, 000 plus people on it Wow So I have another newsletter today. I don’t know I don’t I don’t have any more side project room to work on stuff But but yeah, that’s a whole nother conversation another day.

So man, maybe after five and a half years You’ll 

Spencer: have time to 

Jared: One thing at a time, man, oh man, um, yeah, that was kind of a funny discovery, but, um, uh, you know, that site, ironically, that site still does very well in Bing. So even though I lost a lot of Google traffic, it still does great in Bing. So it still gets decent enough traffic.

You know what this whole thing feels like? You kind of, you kind of brought it up, so I’ll just kind of tie it together here. It feels like I bought a starter website. That is in a shoulder niche to my main niche, you know, like, let’s say that you own a website. This is pre HCU potentially, but let’s say you owned a content website, all about credit cards, you know, like that was your main thing.

I’m people pick credit cards, all that. We were talking about Google credit card, getting to the credit card game just a little while ago. So that’s what’s in my mind. And. I didn’t go out and buy a second credit card website here, but I did buy a starter site that talks about like a sub niche of credit cards.

Maybe like it’s a starter site. It’s got a hundred articles. It’s got some traffic, but it’s not earning money yet about travel credit cards. And, um, that’s kind of how I look at this, right? We, we, we, uh, the buying and selling of websites and content assets has, has been around for a long time to some degree.

I’m just playing that in the email newsletter space now. 

Spencer: Yeah, you may end up becoming an email newsletter aggregator on a larger scale. Um, who knows? There are 

Jared: those, I don’t know if you’ve dug into that. There are some large ones and I’ve certainly heard of some, yeah, there’s some really successful ones.

So, um, it’ll be a fun experiment. Um, I decided that this one was. Be shared. So I hope everybody enjoys it. If you want to go get on the email list, you can see the emails that we’re putting together and we’re sending out. We’ll be tweaking them based on how people engage. So probably change a decent amount of the next month or two, as then we settle into the cadence.

And for a lot of you listening, hopefully it’s helpful for solopreneurs would love your feedback if they’re helpful or not, because we’re still trying to figure this stuff out. You know, just got this a week ago. We have sent out, we did send out one email, by the way, last week. Um, and guess what? Open rate was 37%.

Hey, that’s solid. That’s very good. Two or three months off, you know, so I don’t know. Green shoots. Hopefully 

Spencer: that’s great. That’s exciting. This is a, it gives us a lot more to talk about in future episodes. So I’ll be following along, excited to see how the slice goes. And, um, 

Jared: hopefully you’ll start 

Spencer: seeing all 

Jared: that, uh, 

Spencer: referral 

Jared: traffic to the niche pursuits podcast.

That’s right. 

Spencer: It’s, it’s listed in all the newsletters. So awesome. You, you bought a newsletter. I mean, that’s, uh, that’s never happened here on the, uh, on the podcast. So 

Jared: I do wish I’d been in the room when you heard rather than just on messenger. It sounded quite surprised. I’m, I would love to see the reaction.

Spencer: I was a little surprised because we’ve talked about how you’re too busy to have a side hustle and then you did what now you got, you got another one. Okay.

No, very cool. All right. We people, I know, love the weird niche sites that we cover, uh, today’s weird niche site, the one that I’m going to talk about is kind of inspiring because it’s doing extremely well. A lot of times we talk about these weird niche sites that they’re cool and maybe they get some traffic, but they’re not making any money, you know, type thing.

This one is making a lot of money. And I know that because the person has publicly shared how much money they’re making, uh, from their website. So let’s maybe just start with that. Like the, the end results here. Um, this person Ash young on Twitter, uh, has shared that the first six months of the year are done.

What a year it’s been so far. He’s up 50%. A year on the year, um, next stop, 10 million for the year. He has a screenshot here so far this year, they’ve made 4 million pounds, uh, is, you know, the currency. Um, so over 4 million pounds for carmats. co. uk. And so his website, it’s an e commerce website, but I love it because it’s extremely niche, right?

You get. We we’ve talked about used car websites. You might have car part websites, but this is just like one single car part. One car part. Well, floor mats, floor mats, right? So lots of different floor mats, but you know, there’s all sorts of accessories for cars that’s the entire website is for car mats.

So car mats. co. uk. Uh, he, he’s hoping to make 10 million this year. He’s already made 4 million or 4 million pounds, uh, this year. Incredible. Like, I don’t know why this blows my mind so much, Jared, but. Are there really that many people buying car mats in the UK? Online, uh, from one website. I mean, that’s just, it just seems like such a huge number.

Jared: How old is this? Uh, how old is this project? 

Spencer: So, um, let me pull up. So if I go over here, it looks like about 2020 is when it started. Yeah. Um, so it’s a few years old. Right. He’s been working on it. And, uh, so in fact, if I go ahead and just pull up, I’ll share my screen here for a trefs, uh, you can see that, uh, at least the traffic sort of made its first blip in 2020, right.

But, uh, it’s traffic has been increasing. Uh, it looks like actually it got hit in the March core update. I mean, it’s definitely down. It could be a seasonal thing for all I know. Um, and, uh, but now it’s, I mean, it’s not. It’s done pretty, pretty well here in, uh, late June. Um, so it’s getting anywhere from 20 to 25, 000 organic searches a month.

And it ranks for the usual suspects, if you will. Car mats, UK car mats, rubber car mats, floor mats, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So it is doing well in Google and I have to imagine that’s where a lot of its traffic comes from. Um, however. If we go over to similar web. Uh, you can see that, um, they do a lot of paid search as well, right?

So organic is only about 20 percent of their traffic. Another 20 percent is direct, almost 10 percent is social, but then almost 50 percent is paid search. So they have clearly figured out a model where they’re able to pay for traffic. Yeah, it’s profitable. They sell the car, Matt. Um, and then people, you know, come back and buy more, hopefully.

Jared: Ecom, you know, you can really drive a lot of sales if you find the right, you know, concoction of ads, price points, all that kind of stuff. 

Spencer: Yeah. And so, um, you know, it’s a, we, we don’t often cover a lot of e commerce websites, but, um, it’s just such a narrow niche, like, you know, one product, right? Uh, just the car mats.

That’s it. And they just become the car mat website in the UK. Uh, like who else are you going to go to online if you want to buy a car mat? And talk about niching down, right? Yeah, niche down and it it’s cool because you can select your manufacturer. You’ve got an Aston Martin, right? You got the dbx And uh, 

Jared: you’re just selecting your car.

That’s the one. Yeah. Yeah, you 

Spencer: know and there you go. Boom It’s on sale for 21. 99 Um, you know, I can get my my car met uh But it’s super user friendly obviously. Um, yeah, cool, cool website. And it’s just very cool that, um, you know, Ash Young here is kind of sharing the entire journey publicly, sharing his numbers, et cetera, um, just.

Great to see. 

Jared: I went and look for my car, but I don’t think they sell it in the uk. 

Spencer: unavailable. It’s a one of those old Volkswagen beetles or something that 

Jared: uh, Hey, I owned one of those. That was my first car. Is that right? Hey, 70. 70 VW Bug. Hey, nailed it. I don’t have that car anymore though. Probably wish you did.

I, oh, I love that thing. Uh, I love that thing. It was a piece of junk, but I love that thing. . 

Spencer: Uh, so, um. Yeah, there you go. That’s, I mean, that’s my, that’s my weird niche site. I mean, they’re doing everything right. So if you want to truly see a quote, I wouldn’t say weird, but definitely a very niche website.

And you want to see one that’s doing really well. Like, Hey, go check out this example. They’re doing great. They’re growing. Uh, and they’re making a lot of money. So there you go. 

Jared: I thought maybe you’d take a different approach this week. You know, after my. Incredibly weird niche last week. Maybe you’d come in swinging, try to one up me.

I see you went the opposite. And you’re just like, I’m not even going to do a super weird niche this week. 

Spencer: You know, you kind of covered that category for like a few weeks. I think like we’ll, we’ll ease our way back into that. I didn’t see, I didn’t, I haven’t 

Jared: checked recently, but I didn’t see anybody in the comments for last week’s episode.

Disagree about it being the weirdest niche ever. I don’t know if somebody went on to say that cause I haven’t checked a while, but certainly in the first day or two, I popped in and you know, I didn’t see anybody disagreeing that last week that might’ve been the weirdest niche site ever. 

Spencer: Yeah. I think we got a lot of boxes checked, uh, last week for sure.

Well done. All right. What do you got for us 

Jared: Jared? Can’t follow last week, but mine is weirder than yours, but also not all that weird. So we have really had a Let a let off of last week’s weirdness this week. Mine’s not all that weird either, but I think quirky, cool and kind of interesting and definitely weird in terms of how these sites come about.

Um, my website is, uh, key br. com. Um, I still haven’t really determined what key br stands for. If you have any ideas or if you see it without me knowing that, let me know. Uh, it’s. In essence, at least to the extent I’ve taken part in it, it’s a typing. Uh, both test and as to some degree method to improve your typing skills.

Mm hmm. 

Jared: Um, you know, it is at its core a test and, uh, uh, Spencer, I’m going to actually ask you to share my results. If you can, I did give you a screenshot of that. I, I do have 

Spencer: this screenshot. 

Jared: It is a typing test at its core. And so here I took the test. And so what I did was you can see on the screen, if you’re watching, If not, I’ll explain it to you.

They basically give you a set of words to type. Uh, mine was rent, rate, tilt, neat, taller, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, there’s actually a heat map there as I type this. Uh, I don’t really know what it means, but there’s a heat map there. And I went through it all. Now I took the test. 73 words per minute.

I think my, I think I used to be a lot higher than that, but maybe I’ve slown down. That’s, that’s 

Spencer: decent though. 

Jared: Yeah. It was counting, you know, I don’t work as hard as I used to either. Um, and how about this though? My accuracy Spencer was 99. 17%. That’s incredible. You know, it’s the tortoise and the hare, I’m like the hare.

Like, I get there, but I get there effectively. That’s right. 

Spencer: No mistakes to fix. 

Jared: So, I get a score, right? And, um, I guess I didn’t, I don’t know what all keys means. But, anyways, it gives you a daily goal. And it kind of keeps track of what you’re doing. And, um, you know, uh, it teaches you some, it has some, it has a whole tutorial.

Uh, when you first appear on the site on how to type better. Um, and, and so, I don’t know, I think, I learned typing in high school, if you can believe that. Like that’s how old I am, like they actually taught typing, it was one of the best classes I ever took. I don’t think they do that anymore. And so people have to kind of learn other ways now.

This is a really cool website. 

Spencer: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. And I know other typing websites exist, but I have never heard of this one. So what do you say, you want to do it live? You 

Jared: willing to uh, to take a test, you know, do it live for us? That’s a lot of pressure, but 

Spencer: you know, I’ll do it for niche pursuits listeners.

Let’s do it. 

Jared: Let’s see what you get. And, uh, you know, I think you just have to go to the homepage and just start taking the test. 

Spencer: Okay. So, uh, I I’m on the homepage. So I just start typing. I’ve, I see the, you know, the first word is rare, right? Like I just go with that. I did. Okay. Well, let’s, well, let’s, uh, 

Jared: so it’s like rare nine are, maybe I shouldn’t say this while you’re typing.

I might three off. I’ll let you go. He’s taking the test right now, folks. If you’re watching, he’s about halfway through. So it’s a super quick test. Just random words. Um, he’s doing pretty well, I have to say. So I don’t feel too confident at this point, but we’ll see maybe a late surge. Maybe I perform 

Spencer: well under pressure.

So am I done or do I keep going? You’re done. Accuracy 100%. I thought my 99 was good. You gotta, they gave me a lot of words. I like ear and inner and uh, I don’t remember what else I had. Wait, what’s your 

Jared: words per minute is 77. What was mine? 73. So, Oh, boom. Pretty close, but you did it in both categories. I thought for sure I would have nailed you on the accuracy.

Wow, a hundred percent. Apparently I perform well under pressure here. That is really good for you. 

Spencer: You know, I, I have a funny story to tell about this. Um, did I secretly 

Jared: discover some weird niche that you’re incredibly passionate about? Well, 

Spencer: it of it, no, of a memory, but maybe it’ll trigger a weird niche site.

Um, is that my son is, has been on, I think there’s monkey type or something. It might be monkey type. com. I should look that up. Um, where you basically do this thing and you, you practice and he super fast, like over a hundred words per minute. Wow. Right. Um, and my mother came to dinner one evening, we had her do it and you know, she it’s grandma and she’s just trying to figure out how to do the laptop.

And somehow she got like one finger was off or something. She got like 0 percent accuracy and it was like 10 words per minute. And it was just, it was just, you know, pretty hilarious to come. Not good is what you’re saying. So I didn’t get it from my mother. I’ll, I’ll thank my dad’s side for the typing fingers, I guess.

Jared: Well, uh, excuse me, I gotta go on late afternoon here. In terms of, um, some of the other stats, so it’s, uh, it’s doing pretty well. It’s a DR67, um, in AH refs. It, I say only, I mean, at DR67, you kind of think maybe more ranks for, uh, Uh, 13, 000 keywords, but I mean, 435, 000 monthly organic visits again, according to AH refs.

Um, wow. It’s up to 450 now since I pulled those stats this morning. Um, and he’ll look at that. That’s an interesting organic traffic graph. Something’s going on there, but got destroyed by a couple of dates. Pretty consistent since a couple years ago. It’s been humming along, right? Um, monetization. Well, there’s ads everywhere.

I mean, again, ads like we’re used to for these kind of weird niche free sites. Uh, I wouldn’t call them distracting, but they’re on every corner. And below and up above and all that. Here’s something that’s interesting. Um, there is a, uh, a link that says remove ads. And you can set up an account. And your account is 10 lifetime to get a no ad experience.

Um, you know, uh, at that kind of traffic, I’ve got to imagine most people are just dealing with the ads, but they’re probably getting a healthy chunk of change, um, with the ad density they have and that kind of traffic they’re generating. Right. I would think 

Spencer: so. Um, and you probably get a lot of direct traffic would be my guess.

If you’re getting that much organic traffic, a lot of people wants to discover it or just coming back. Right. 

Jared: They just kind of come back here. They’re just gonna need to bookmark it or they’re just gonna remember it. Um, again, don’t know what key B R stands for key B R K K E Y B R. com is the website, some sort of keyboard abbreviation, right?

Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know.

So, anyways, I thought it was a really cool site. Uh, I’m not really in the world of practicing my typing anymore. I feel like I type enough emails every day, I get enough practice, but I certainly can see a huge chunk of the population that would find this really valuable. 

Spencer: Yeah, so, um, good find. I, boy, I, I’m glad I was able to, to show up and not embarrass myself typing.

I really do type on the internet every now and again, and so it came in handy. 

Jared: I’m gonna remember to maybe, uh, uh, cater my challenges a little bit better next time. Maybe do a little bit more research so I have a better Higher odds, I thought. 99 percent point. 99 percent accuracy. I’ll win that. Let’s give him a challenge.

Boy. 

Spencer: I’m surprised I did that. We could probably record this 10 times and I wouldn’t do it again. Like you said. That’s one for the history books. 

Jared: You’re the guy they put out at half court. Uh, NBA game and they’re like you get one half court shot for a million dollars and you’re like bam sink it. That’s right.

Couldn’t 

Spencer: do it in practice, but put me in front of a crowd. I’m good to go. There you go. That’s how it is. You, has anyone ever told you that you’d make a good podcast 

Jared: host? Good under pressure. 

Spencer: No, no, they haven’t actually. That’s, that’s why I gave it to somebody else. Give another call in front of their life.

Um, very good. Well, thank you everybody for, uh, hopefully spending your, your holiday weekend, if you’re in the U S you know, happy 4th of July weekend, if you’re not in the U S you know, happy weekend anyways, thanks for joining us here. Hopefully you enjoyed the news, the weird niche site, our side hustles, a lot of exciting things going on and, uh, we’ll talk to you next time.

Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, everyone. Have a great weekend.