Google Pampers a Blogger…Here’s What Happened

Welcome back everybody, to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! 

This week Jared and guest host Colin Ma tackle the most recent news in the SEO world affecting creators and entrepreneurs, they inspire with their successful side hustles, and they highlight some unique ideas being used by some weird niche sites.

The first item up for discussion is that Brandon Saltamacchia, the owner of Retro Dodo, whose website was crushed in the Helpful Content Update and he has been very vocal about it. 

He was invited to meet with Danny Sullivan at Google’s office in London, and although the Google Search Liaison couldn’t share any actionable advice, he was hopeful that website owners would see an improvement in the coming months.

Jared highlights a few important sentiments from the article. What did Google say? And what is Danny’s actual role? Tune in to hear what they are!

Watch the Full Episode

Moving along, Jared and Colin tackle an article on The Verge which details a complex but fascinating story involving fake authors, BestReviews, Sports Illustrated, and link schemes.

What’s the juxtaposition Jared points out? Should Google just reveal its ranking factors? How would it all play out? Listen to the full episode to hear their thoughts.

And lastly, they talk briefly about the impending Google Core Update. 

When is it coming? Will it bring with it a recovery to battered sites? And what has Danny Sullivan said about it?

In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Jared talks about his performance on Prime Day as part of the Amazon Influencer Program and how that affects his overall earnings.

Then he talks about the newsletter he recently acquired and the recent stats, which are very interesting. He also talks about working towards potential sponsors.

When it’s Colin’s turn, he talks about his inspiration from speakers in the Niche Pursuits Community inspired him to try out the side hustle, and he’s already earning money from it.

What are his initial thoughts about the program? What’s his ROI? What are his future plans? 

Tune in to hear a strategy he’s considering and some additional creative ideas from Jared.

Jared shared his weird niche first: Calculate Aspect Ratio, which allows users to check dimensions when resizing images. The DR58 site, which has been around since 2015, recently saw its traffic jump and ranks for 58,000 keywords even though it’s just 6 pages in total.

This simple site is monetized with ads and is probably making a couple of thousand dollars a month. What other simple ideas can you think of, using this site as inspiration?

It’s Colin’s turn next, and he shares a weird site called National Nail Fungus.

This DR20-something site has seen its traffic decline considerably, it hasn’t done much to improve its initial design from 2012, and the content is written by doctors and other experts.

Colin did some digging into the site and he made a surprising discovery. What was it? Is it something you could do for your own business? And what do they have to say about the site’s traffic over the years?

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast.

We hope that you feel informed about some of the latest happenings in the SEO world, inspired to start your own side hustle, and curious about how you might replicate the strategies we identified among our weird niche sites.

Catch you next week!

transcript

Jared: All right. Welcome back to this week in the news with niche pursuits. My name is Jared Bauman. Today, we’re going to be talking about a number of topics, but most notably, we’re going to be discussing the fact that Google sat down with a site owner of a helpful content update destroyed website. That’s a mouthful, but basically the HCU came through and destroyed so many websites, so many content publishers.

And Google’s Danny Sullivan actually met in person with one of me, invited him out to London. We’ll also talk about Sports Illustrated and USA Today. Remember that scandal that they were in the news for with publishing fake AI, uh, authors? Well, there’s a big backstory that got released this week on it.

We’ve got another couple news updates that we’ll talk through. We’ve got our side hustles to get into. And of course, we’ll bring it home with one weird niche. Uh, Spencer is out again this week and we are joined by Colin Ma. Colin, welcome. Thanks 

Colin: Hey Jared, thanks for having me happy to be a guest for this week.

Jared: Welcome on board looking forward to doing this with you. Why don’t you give us just tell us, you know, a little bit about your involvement with niche pursuits and uh, maybe your backstory, if you could just 30 seconds and then we’ll dive in. 

Colin: Yeah. So my name is Colin Ma. I’ve been doing SEO for eight years, been doing, I’ve done all sorts of affiliate, my own portfolio, client work, in house agency, um, currently helping Spencer run his niche pursuits pro community.

Um, which actually inspired my, uh, side hustle I’ll be talking about later today. 

Jared: Well, what a good tie in. Um, I interviewed somebody for an upcoming podcast episode that, um, used you and your, uh, to help them grow their, their business, uh, with online with SEO. So, uh, full circle, we’re going to get a lot of Colin Ma mentions here in the next couple of weeks in the podcast.

But, but you’re in the hot seat today. So let’s go ahead and dive in to our first article and, um, our first news story. That is, uh, I’ll go ahead and share my screen. Those who listen a lot and know that this is always an ongoing struggle of mine. Hey, so you, you might’ve caught wind of it. If you haven’t heard, um, we’ve been talking about the HCU, the helpful content update, and the fact that it’s really had a large impact on publishers, specifically publishers of content websites.

And One outspoken person is familiar with the podcast. It’s um, Brandon Saltamachia. I believe I’m saying that right. He actually joined us on the podcast a year or two ago to talk about his website, Retro Dodo. His website has been completely crushed in this helpful content update. He’s been very vocal about it, very vocal about what’s outranking him and the fact that it’s destroying his business.

Um, Uh, well, interestingly enough, Google took notice of this, uh, Danny Sullivan, the Google search liaison invited, uh, Brandon out to the headquarters in London. And um, there’s a couple of sound bites or clips that I thought we would maybe go through and talk about here. Um, from a high level though, uh, did you catch wind of this call?

I’m guessing you got kind of read this article that Brandon published in preparation for today. Thanks 

Colin: Yeah, I mean, I actually did 1st hear about this a couple months back when I think he 1st, uh, published, you know, that just his site got devastated that and another site. So, um, yeah, taking a look at this.

I was, you know, took a closer look at the site saw that indeed lost 90 percent of his traffic and just. Kind of surprised and impressed that he was invited to Google HQ in London. 

Jared: So here’s some of the feedback that he shared in this article. And I do recommend you read it because this isn’t one of these kind of op ed pieces or, you know, written by a journalist.

This is written by a fellow content publisher. He’s been pretty outspoken about what he thinks is wrong with Google. But, um, he got an invite by Danny Sullivan to go out there and kind of talk in person and share this with them. Um, let’s see some of the highlights here that I put pointed out. Um, uh, he said from the outset, I’ll make clear that Danny, uh, didn’t and couldn’t share any actionable advice.

Um, uh, he talked about how, like you said, Colin, he’s had to get rid of his entire team bar one. Um, he’s hanging on for dear life and still losing money to keep Retro Dodo afloat. He said this, one main takeaway from my conversation with Danny is that he did say to hang on, to keep doing what we are doing and that he’s hopeful that those of us building great websites will see some signs of recovery over the coming months.

Uh, he said, I got the vibe that Google are really struggling with how they come across to web creators. The search liaison team and the search central team as a whole have a dang difficult job keeping their users updated and more importantly, keeping them calm during these storms. And then maybe one final quote, um, uh, here is Danny was certainly worried about creators leaving or stopping the production of great content because of algorithm changes.

Quote, we’re not perfect and we are trying to fix it. And that was one of the moments that stuck with me. Brandon commented almost like Danny put his hands up, which is kind of what I wanted to hear because Google certainly isn’t perfect right now and the admittance was welcome. You know, it’s interesting, I guess from a high level, um, it’s interesting to talk this through because this feels like a microcosm, this meetup.

Between Brandon and Danny to me feels like a microcosm of everything that’s going on with Google and web publishers right now, which is you’ve got Danny, who is constantly put in the limelight of defending Google and trying to give us publishers more context around what they’re doing, and he’s constantly getting beat up.

From people like us and Danny, this isn’t working. This isn’t going well. Look what, look what’s happening in the SERPs. And he constantly is more and more having to throw his hands up and say, I, I’m sorry, I don’t really know what to do. I don’t really know how to help you just make good content. Um, and that’s really all that it sounds like came out of this meetup.

It was a nice friendly meetup. Branding got a really cool tour of Google headquarters, but there’s really nothing to come of it. There’s really nowhere to go from it. So it’s this interesting. Dichotomy that exists between Danny who feels and acts a lot like a fellow web creator, having no connection to what’s actually happening to Google.

Colin: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I, you know, it, it’s hard for me to really see, uh, what the intent is in inviting him over, like, is this a PR move or does he actually, you know, think that things are going to get better for independent publishers? Um, you know, encouraging them to weather the storm, right? He says, hold on, but, uh, you know, Retro Dodo losing money, bleeding money.

Um, and it’s, it’s hard. It’s discouraging, um, to kind of just say, yeah, you know, there’s just hold on. Wait, something might happen. But I think it’s also something, I don’t know how much impact or influence he’s going to have because. You know, the algorithms very complicated that has to run by, I’m sure how high level ups and, you know, it’s going to be hard, I think, for them to, you know, really balance out smaller publishers.

Jared: Do you think, because he said in this article that Danny has reached out obviously to Retro Dodo in the past, uh, I think he mentioned that a couple of months ago, he reached out and said, can I get you some feedback? Uh, he reached out to house fresh who we’ve talked about in the podcast quite a bit as well, and they’ve been vocal about it.

Like, do you think Danny is actually trying? You think he’s going to be able to take any feedback and, and, and get any changes across the board. And from a higher level, I’ve seen people this week who’ve reacted to this article, cause this article came out about a week ago. I think it broke right as we were recording last week’s podcast, but I’ve seen some people say, Hey, there’s hope there’s hope on the horizon.

Like it looks like Google is trying to help web publishers. And many of them are leaning into Danny’s comment that you just referenced. Like, do you think there’s hope? Do we have reason to be hopeful? Or is just this another one of Google’s PR statements that is meant to kind of lead us along? 

Colin: I think Danny wants to help.

I don’t know if Google as an entity wants to help. Um, like he certainly seems sympathetic. I definitely buy into that, but I’m not optimistic. Um, as far as smaller web publishers are, um, You know, as, as far as they go, just because, you know, we haven’t seen a lot of progress here and I don’t know how they’re going to tie that into an algorithm unless like they make a very specific use case, uh, for these types of sites, which Google typically is reluctant to, you know, they, uh, like to handle things at scale, like, uh, Sundar’s, uh, interviewed CEO, um, that he did maybe a few months back, which is Basically seemed like a giant PR interview.

He basically said like, yeah, these are, uh, you know, small individual cases. Um, but we need to address these problems at scale. And he might’ve actually even mentioned, uh, 

Jared: you’re exactly right. We covered that story too. I can’t remember who interviewed him. Uh, but somebody interviewed him and directly referenced retro Dodo.

And I think house fresh as well. Ironically. 

Colin: Yeah, yeah, I knew for sure how fresh so yeah, I mean it’s possible I and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some sort of help there But it’s not certainly something that I want to encourage people to bank on I think that’s very dangerous You know when it comes to depending on Google I mean, 

Jared: we have another story that we’ll get to that’s talking about an upcoming core update and its implications like, I guess I’ll kind of close by asking you this question, um, at least close on this topic, like what connection do you think Danny does have then to Google like what, where’s his role here?

Because we just keep finding him in situations where it seems like such a disconnect between what the algorithms are doing and what Danny is saying that he wants for publishers. 

Colin: Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve never really followed him too closely, but, uh, you know, my impression is that he kind of, you know, Employed by Google to get a pulse on the SEO community and how they feel about the state of search.

Um, you know, I don’t know if he has a lot of power or influence really in like the ranking systems and feedback in that, um, nothing that I have seen has really alluded to that. Um, but I think his job is more just to communicate to, you know, maybe some Google executives, like, look, this is where SEOs are and this is how they feel do with it, what you will.

But, you know, I, I don’t know. Um, how much influence he will be able to exert on, you know, small publishers and getting them the help that, you know, they want. 

Jared: It’s a good point. I mean, at the end of the day, if you look at the, the real definition of liaison, like his job is to take what our feedback and give it to the team.

And like, you know, I’m not sure anybody really cares about what he thinks at Google because his job is just to pass on the information, perhaps I don’t know his job description. To be fair. I’m just leaning into this idea of what a liaison does. But, um, you know, I mean, we covered a story last week. If you missed it might be fun to go back and look if you have a site.

It was hit by the helpful content update. We actually did talk about a website that has had a partial recovery. They shared exactly what they did and stuff. And we’re going to get into another topic here in a second. But, um, you know, this, this idea of hope is interesting, right? And this article. Came out at a time where most web publishers are finding the new norm.

And, um, and so still though, to wonder about hope is kind of the thread of this story. So many people listening will have had websites content that got hit by the helpful content updates. So I have to see this plays out. It’s I suppose to close it’s better than the alternative. I’d say Danny inviting Brandon to Google and showing him around and listening is better than not inviting him.

How’s that? That’s the most positive spin I can put on it. 

Colin: Yeah, I think that’s fair. They might not necessarily care, but at least they’re pretending to care. Um, and like you said, better than nothing, 

Jared: better than just telling us we, well, maybe not actually, but I’ll leave that, that conversation of the day.

Yeah. Better than not invited. Okay. Let’s move on to what I think is the most complicated story we will have ever featured on the niche pursuits news podcast. And I am sorry that you had to join us for that because when this article and this whole topic hit our radar, it’s incredibly interesting, but. Oh my goodness, you need a couple of days to unwind this entire story.

The story is called Chum King Express. It’s an article in The Verge, and the subtitle is The Man Behind the AI Gaffs at Sports Illustrated. And USA Today has a years long history of filling the internet with garbage. So okay, I’m going to attempt to put together a kind of overview of this article. So give me a minute or two.

It’s really, it’s a good read. I’m not trying to downplay it. It’s an incredible read. It’s going to touch on so many things that a lot of us know, especially if you’ve been doing online marketing for a number of years now. So definitely read it. But let me see if I can kind of. piece together some of the things that are behind this article.

So this starts by talking about the website, best reviews. And many of us will have known about that website, very popular review site. It was acquired by the Chicago Tribune. Then, uh, a syndication relationship was set up between the best reviews website and the Chicago Tribune. And then out of the blue, the Chicago Tribune noticed that.

Best reviews was publishing a very weird article with very weird links in the Chicago Tribune. And so again, this is a syndicated relationship. And so what, um, what’d they do? They pulled it called best reviews and they ended up speaking to the owner of best review who they had bought the site from one other than what’s his name.

Uh, Ben Fah, that’s the subject of this article. Best Reviews was owned and then sold by Ben Fah. Uh, the article then goes on to connect, as Sports Illustrated, fake author profiles and their AI content. We covered this at the end of last year, and that’s gone on to have In some part, pretty deep ramifications for sports illustrated.

They’ve had to lay off a lot of people. They ended up rehiring a bunch of them, big story about all that. But this really put this whole fake author profile and AI in general into the spotlight for publishing. Ironically, the company behind all of that, the company that sports illustrator was using was a company called Advon guess who their CEO and co founder was.

There is a, it goes on to talk about best reviews and it really outlines in detail a lot of the link schemes that they were going through. Um, you know, this is something that people listening might remember, like best reviews would put a lot of links to random, interesting articles or content on there.

And what this article kind of deep dives is it seems like Ben Fah is connected to so many of the companies. That they were putting links into, um, business deals with friends and classmates and these sorts of things. Goes on to talk about how towards the end of his time at best reviews, he was actually building competing review sites and inserting a lot of links into best reviews for his new upcoming sites, sold best reviews, uh, and then moved on to these other sites.

So, I will stop there. I am trying to summarize what is a very. Detailed and robust outlining, but it’s interesting because the verge has a habit of doing these. Um, what are your thoughts on all of this? I, first off, did you read the whole article? It’s okay to admit if you just kind of skimmed it, but for your thoughts on all this.

Colin: Yeah. So I read about 70 percent of the article and skimmed the remaining 30%. Once you kind of got the gist of once it started connecting all the other companies and just how, uh, deep it got into the web of companies. But I can’t I can’t say I’m surprised. Um, you know, if you just follow along, like, you know, you hear about news of like businesses and scams and like illegal company formations and stuff.

I’m not saying this is illegal. Um, you know, there’s definitely some conflicts of interest, but I mean, the guy’s clearly pretty smart, you know, graduated from West Point. I think he would like Harvard Business University and found a way to maybe gain the system and be creative. With his companies to generate more revenue through, you know, selling links, uh, maybe a little, uh, You know, maybe a little overconfident in trying to get his content published, uh, or syndicated through the Uh chicago tribune.

I think that’s probably like a big mistake on his end. Um, but selling links I mean, that’s nothing new. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. It’s just a bigger site that does it um, and as far as you know, Linking to his other affiliate sites Um, I know the author of the article kind of dumps on him a little bit for that.

Like, you know, why would you do that to, to compete against your own company? Um, well, I mean, you know, I, I think, you know, if, if you’ve owned multiple affiliate sites, you’re going to look at ways to link to each other in a way that’s natural and organic, not saying that’s not necessarily what he did because a lot were spammy, but again, you know, I think he’s a, he’s a pretty smart guy just trying to figure out ways to squeeze more money.

And, you know, he, he knew what he was doing. He knew that it wasn’t exactly. Uh, you know, kosher business practices, but you know, I don’t, you know, I didn’t see any really terrible implications. It seems like he. You know, it was able to sell links, get clients for his agency, um, that he partnered up with and, and have some nice exits along the way.

Jared: I think this article presents a fascinating juxtaposition because, and, and in light with the other topics we’re talking about today, you’re exactly right. Like a lot of what he’s doing is just kind of what many, and I would argue some, to some degree, most. Would argue is just kind of how the internet works and a lot of that is just Kind of common practices that are going around.

Did he go to the extremes of them more so than others? Sure, probably did he you know? but but to your point like within the confines of how the world of the internet kind of has come to be a Lot of this feels like the verge making a puff piece out of something right and we know they do this They love to just find something and turn it into a moral situation or a big story at the same time It’s interesting to See this article juxtaposed up against a retro dodo who goes to Google and pleads with Google.

And it’s interesting because on one side of the coin, I can sit here and say like, Google, what are you doing? Destroying our sites. And then the flip side, we have to acknowledge, well, maybe this is exactly the type of. Stuff they’re trying to destroy. And so it’s a really interesting juxtaposition to do these two news pieces side by side.

I found, I thought the verge made a big deal out of not nothing, but something that isn’t a big deal. And yet perhaps Google is making a big deal as something that they consider to be a very big deal. 

Colin: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that’s a really good tie in and something that I’ve thought about as far as, you know, what, what are the implications of this?

Right? Like he maybe got a slap on the wrist. I don’t know if he faced legal or. Or, you know, any lawsuits or anything, but it is this type of behavior that Google is certainly trying to avoid. Um, you know, I don’t know how often these cases are. This is probably more of an extreme example than, you know, what you’re going to see, like most people don’t have this kind of SEO poll.

Right. Um, but you know, definitely, definitely causing a problem for people who are doing legitimate SEO. Um, you know, I probably, you know, maybe something that Google has picked up on. They, they have been known to kind of scour media and certainly target people. So it’s hard to say the impact. I would say, you know, that that is probably one of the bigger things that I got from this article.

Um, cause I know you had mentioned that news of this kind of went live a while ago. This is actually news to me. Um, this is my first time reading about it, and I thought it was extremely interesting, maybe a little convoluted. It just got really too deep into it. Um, where, as you said, Verge likes their pub pieces, um, and as at some point, just like, wow, this is a lot of detailed, uh, attention and, um, not literally accounting, but accounting for links and tracing companies and all that for something that, you know, Ultimately, I’m just like, wow, I’m in the SEO community and I don’t even know if I cared to this degree.

Jared: Um, I can’t imagine like, there’s been other verge articles where I’m like, Oh, my dad would totally love to read this. He’d be fascinated by it. He’d have questions for me. I can’t imagine anyone, any average regular person reading past the first paragraph is just, yeah, to your point, it’s, it’s a lot. 

Colin: Yeah.

Uh, yeah. Even for people like you and I who are in the industry, probably the target audience, I don’t know that it just got way too deep. Um, And I think didn’t need to be that long, but I do agree that maybe this type of behavior is kind of driving some of the unfortunate changes that we’re seeing with Google updates.

Jared: It’s to your point. It’s like, where’s that line? Perhaps for me, that article kind of talked about that. Like, you know, everyone has a different line when it comes to this kind of stuff. Some people might read this article, by the way, and be like, this is flagrantly wrong. Other people might read this article and be like, yeah, that was me on a, that was me in my first year of SEO.

Boy, you should see me now, you know, like the line is so gray. Um, uh, in so many of these circumstances. And I think back to Brandon’s point that he brought up in his article, which is like, Hey, Google, why are we having to watch YouTube videos? Why are we having to hire SEO experts? Why are we having to try to dissect leaked documents to figure out what is and isn’t a ranking factor?

Why don’t you just tell us so that we can all work together on it? And I think this article would almost support that claim. Like. Hey Google, maybe if you didn’t hide everything so much, but maybe they have to hide stuff so much because of stuff. It’s very interesting. It’s super nuanced. 

Colin: Yeah, a hundred percent.

You know, they, it’s a fine line to balance out because if they did tell us it’s going to be abused, you know, back in. I mean, this was before my days of SEO when, you know, keyword stuffing and you’d, you’d make those keywords like the same color as your background. So I, I can’t, 

Jared: I will neither confirm nor deny if I’ve done that.

Colin: Exactly. So I get why they can’t, uh, you know, disclose that information because it’s going to be abused. Um, there’s always going to be bad actors in any system, especially one as profitable, uh, as this one. And you know, even thinking about this type of behavior, it made me think about, um, let’s see, are you familiar with parasite SEO?

Oh yeah. So that’s kind of a term where you get like a content or article published on like a big DR 90 powerful website. That’s the first thing it made me think of. I’m not saying. Um, you know, they’re the exact same thing, but just another way to, another one way to abuse, you know, the, the pull of high, of, of really nice domains, powerful links, um, to make, to make a quick buck.

Jared: Well, it’s certainly not going to be the first time we hear about stuff like this. Especially not if the verge catches wind of anything more so, um, uh, interesting. I highly recommend everyone reads it. We’ll include a link for it in the show notes, but more or less it’s hard to come to any grandiose conclusions from it.

But it certainly does pose interesting questions as we sit here and kind of scratch our heads over why. Some of our really valuable content sites got destroyed. Interesting. Um, okay, so we do have one more quick article to touch on. Uh, this does tie everything in together quite nicely. Uh, Google is back in the news and, uh, this time, though, for something that might happen in the future, the title of the article in Search Engine Land is New Google Core Update Coming in Weeks.

The last core update was a March 2024 core update, although there has been a lot of volatility since then, um, and many sites are still waiting since September 2023 to see helpful content recoveries. So I do think this article is a bit of a stretch, but let me just read you what Danny Sullivan said. He posted this on search engine roundtable this week.

He said. We’d tell you when the next core update will be. If we knew we don’t know exactly yet, that’s all they aren’t scheduled to a particular day, blah, blah, blah. Some stuff, some stuff I would expect. We’ll see one in the coming weeks because that fits in with our general cycle, but precisely when that’s just not known yet.

So, um, I, I mean, that’s interesting. Uh, I think, you know, the article goes on to say many sites are hoping and have been hoping to see improvements with the latest core update ever since the September, 2023 helpful content update rolled out most, if not all of those sites that were hit, did not see recoveries.

Many were hoping to see recoveries with the March, 2024 core update. Uh, but did not, um, it ties in interestingly, this is the second time. That you could say that Danny’s in the news about updates and that there’s correlations between those updates and hopeful recoveries from the HCU, not much to report on because it hasn’t happened yet.

And, um, it would fit the narrative, though he’s right. We talked about this a week or two ago in the podcast, like if you’re going to squeeze in that incredibly destructive, uh, holiday. Uh, Google core update that tends to come out around November, December, you got to get one in now so that you give yourself enough time.

But, um, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see if it rolls out in the coming weeks. I mean, that might be something that, uh, that maybe we do get our first glimpses of hope of recovery of people who’ve worked hard and maybe they’ll see a recovery. 

Colin: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, you know, to me, the article said a lot, but it really didn’t say too much.

Um, I don’t know if he’s really just basing it off of timeline or if he’s also saying like, we’re actually, you know, we’ve actually been working on a core update and so, you know, it’s, it’s coming in a couple of weeks, but we don’t know exactly when. So, I don’t know at this point, it doesn’t really change how I do SEO or anything at this point.

I’m just, you know, if I see an update, I see an update and, you know, let’s just, you know, See, there’s, there’s no way to really optimize for updates anymore. 

Jared: I have a client who sent me this article and said, should we wait on doing some of the stuff you’re proposing? Because it is upcoming core update. My first thought is, wait, wait, how did you see this?

You’re an attorney second off second off. No, no, we shouldn’t like. This is hearsay, and we don’t know when it’s coming, and they’re always coming, like, we know this is coming, they’re always on the horizon, like, that’s kind of how this game works, so, uh, yeah, I don’t think you’d be out of line by saying a core update is coming, because one is always on the horizon in the next three to six months, but, with that being said, folks, It sounds like a core updates coming Okay.

Well, hey, um Great job colin. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the news We got a couple of interesting articles there that we went through. Um, Certainly some of the juxtapositions that were created were fascinating if you have comments on those. Um, Uh, and you’re watching on YouTube, please let us know below.

There’s definitely some juicy stuff to sink your teeth into. Uh, and if you want to share your perspectives, um, uh, speaking of sharing perspectives, let’s move on to share what we’re doing in the side hustle world. Uh, I know that you and I are both going to be talking in some capacity about the Amazon influencer program.

I love that you have a cool story about that. We’ll get to that. Um, I’ll just quickly touch on a couple of things I’m doing. Um, Amazon influencer, which I’ll touch on. Uh, it’s been, it was prime day earlier this week. And again, two days, they started off with one day and then I think they really liked the sales bump and then they turn it into two days.

Um, we’re recording on a Thursday. Prime day was Tuesday and Wednesday. And then the data usually is delayed by a day or two in terms of when you see the sales come through. Because it’s not until it ships that you kind of get the pace. So maybe stuff you sold on first day of prime day on Tuesday, you’ll see your results on Wednesday.

Stuff you sold on Wednesday, you’ll see results on Thursday. Maybe some of the stuff you sold on Tuesday doesn’t get shipped until Wednesday. So you see it Thursday. So the reason I say that is to say it’s Thursday at recording. I got a little bit of numbers back, but hopefully the numbers will continue to go up, but I hit almost 300 yesterday on prime day, um, on the reporting, which would have been the results from the first day.

So, um, that would be probably about a hundred percent up or double what I normally would do on a day. And, um, second, so the day that reports tomorrow about today usually would be higher on these kinds of experiences, the downside, and I like to share this because if you actually look at the math. Is that a lot of people stop their purchases in the weekly and up to prime day.

And so you actually end up with normally, and this is what a lot of people talk about less sales in the weekly and up to it. So honestly, if you pull back and look at the entire month, it honestly usually ends up a wash. You get a bunch of sales on two or three days and then you, you kind of have less sales in the days leading up in the days behind it.

So anyways, we’ll see. I want to hear about your prime, uh, any prime day stuff from you on your influencer thing. I want to talk about the slice, the email newsletter that we purchased. So that was going to be kind of the main focus there. Um, Uh, so I told everyone that we were, we bought a newsletter and we’re trying to warm everything back up.

Well, we’re four emails in, and so I thought I’d kind of report on those results. It’s very interesting. We have sent four emails now. Open rates have ranged from 10 percent to 38%. Total clicks on the emails have ranged from 65 total clicks In one email to 1, 317 total clicks in another email. And, um, they’ve all followed a fairly similar format.

And so it’s fascinating that I honestly thought that we were writing for the first four emails were going to be for. General topics for each team that we’re going to be really solid for the audience. And boy, we have found some that have performed so well with, you know, over 1300 clicks from an audience that’s just over 6, 000 people, right.

To some that have performed absolutely awful. 10 percent open rate, 65 clicks, nobody engaging. So we’ve been playing a lot with content types, moving content blocks around, trying to kind of find the right formula. Um, here’s some. Quick feedback, just, you know, to share. Uh, so the email, there’s two emails that have done really well.

One email that’s done okay. And one that’s done awful. Out of the two emails I’ve done really well, there’s a clear correlation between being really clear in the subject line about exactly what they’re going to get. So not as clickbaity, not as like, you know, your life will change with these eight tips.

Like very clear, like, uh, the one that did really well was about here is a way to change your morning habits. And then as soon as you open the email, the highest click stuff is right in the top of the subject line. Um, so, uh, moral of the story. Is that if you have an email list, whether you bought it or whether you started it, test, test, test, because man, we have gotten such different results, but without knowing, without trying different things, we wouldn’t have known that.

So, uh, yeah, early days, but, um, certainly some of the ones that are doing well, we’re really impressed by. 

Colin: Yeah. That’s pretty exciting. Over, uh, almost 1200 clicks in a single email, uh, in one of your first emails is pretty nice. Um, do you do a lot of email Cool. Marketing or just email sending journey. 

Jared: Yeah, we do a lot.

We do, uh, uh, my last company, we were sending, uh, millions of marketing emails a year. Through all sorts of automated funnels. Um, we do that now as an agency. So we help businesses with their email marketing. We set it up, we do it kind of advanced funneling for them. And then we have a couple of newsletters of the weekend growth newsletter, um, which gets sent out.

We have the slice now, and then we run newsletters for a couple of our websites, um, and then along with the client work. So yeah, we’re in email a lot. 

Colin: Got it. Okay. Yeah. So you’re a seasoned pro. I was going to say, you know, if not, what helped me. Uh, level up my email marketing a little bit was a talk given by Juliet Lyle in the niche proceeds community.

Um, I don’t do a lot of, uh, email marketing, but she gave some really nice tips, um, in that community that helped me and a few others in the community. But well, I don’t 

Jared: know, it’s, it’s one of these things where you can always learn something and it’s like, you know, whenever you go to a class or a workshop or any, as long as you pick up one thing, you know, like it, it ends up being worth it, you know?

Colin: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I say. If I listen to a podcast over 45 minutes, if I can pick up one thing, that’s, that’s a win for me. 

Jared: Still a win. I mean, you, you want to pick up more. Don’t get me wrong, but I, in a note, they’re all recorded. Right. So, um, you know, anybody who signs up can get access to all of the past calls and I can go back and listen to it without having to worry about missing it.

Colin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. 

Jared: So we’ll keep doing the email and, um, you know, I, I’ve been on a couple of calls with a couple of different brands about sponsorship for it. Um, start as we get the data back. I can, you know, we can kind of give a little bit more of an authoritative platform for sponsorship opportunities, but, you know, we have a sponsor for the first couple of emails and, um, some others that are interested in sponsoring it.

So, um, so, uh, Uh, yeah, I think overall good spot to be after four emails. Definitely would like to throw away that one email that performed awful, but that’s, that’s what you have, you know, you have some throwaways. Um, what is going on in your world of side hustles? 

Colin: Yeah. So you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you know, mostly just working on as my primary side hustle, the Amazon influencer program.

Um, and you know, that’s actually something that, you know, you, you and Spencer actually turned me on to in the niche pursuits community. Um, Spencer talked about it first, um, during his call and said, yeah, I, I, I, I outsource all of that. I’m like, okay, whatever that’s, you know, interesting. I don’t know if I want to do all that.

And then you came in the next week and you said, Hey, I’m, I’m, you know, I’m making all these videos myself. This is the format. I’m not really testing stuff. I’m like, okay. I think I could do that. So actually credits to you, your, uh, second call is the one that really inspired me to get going. Uh, so thank you for that, Jared.

Jared: Sure. My pleasure. . 

Colin: Yeah. And so I got accepted, uh, at the end of March. I had my first sale in April. Okay. I’ve made about $480. Okay. Um, that’s a hundred to $150 a month. So it’s, it’s not a lot of money. Um, you know, it, uh, you know, might pay for a nice date night for myself and the fiance. I would love to get it to about 400 a month because that, at that point, that’s when it takes care of like a real bill.

Yeah. Um, you know, for me, you know, just myself and my fiance, that’s, You know, groceries for the month. Uh, that’s pretty nice. And, you know, I want that to hit that, not including like the holiday seasonal increase that, you know, you see in October, November, um, you know, that said, I haven’t been working that hard to get to that goal.

Um, I have 123 posts and I’m doing about three to five posts a week. Um, so honestly, 15 to 30 minutes a week. Not spending a ton of time on it. I’m honestly just pickleball. Um, but I’ve spent about 15 hours in total on this. And so, you know, if you kind of calculate your hourly pay, um, or like you’re the 480 I’ve made over 15 hours.

That’s about what I want to say. 33 an hour. Um, which is, you know, not bad at all. And it’s only going to move up. Uh, I hope as you know, I’m not spending much time, but the sales are fairly stable at about 100 a month. So again, nothing life changing, but. What’s one thing that I really like about it is, you know, I ran sites of my own.

It would take six to 12 months just to see her for a sale. Um, and man, within a week of being accepted, I see a sale. I’m like, wow, this is, this is real. Um, I even posted it on Reddit and someone like, wow, congrats. You can just buy yourself coffee now, like kind of sarcastically. But I’m like, man, that was a big win for me just to see kind of like that first dollar come in for a new business.

Jared: It’s huge. It’s so motivational. 

Colin: Yeah. And you can 

Jared: put the 150 all you want, but to your point, I think the most important thing about it is the return on investment, the ROI. Your investment was 15 hours. So it’s not like a website where you have spent, I mean, every piece of content, you know, pre AI, of course, but would take hours to produce.

And you’ve spent 15 total hours over several months. And you know, those videos will continue to produce in some way, shape or form going forward. 

Colin: Yeah. Yeah. If I found out about this sooner, well, I actually heard about this a little ways back, I think when you and Spencer first started and I thought videos, it’s not really my thing, but, um, man, if I had just started back, then.

Would be making a lot more money. You know, videos take a couple minutes to film very easy to do it between tasks. Uh, they’re a little more fun than spending eight hours on a blog post. I remember my first site, I would spend 6 8 hours writing about swimming pool cleaners. Um, made a lot of money, but, and I was very lucky, but I would not go back.

Jared: Was that the site? Cause you were on the niche pursuits podcast as a guest many years ago before I started hosting and I just hit my three year mark. Someone told me, um, so it must’ve been four or five, six years ago that you were on as a guest. Was that the site that you talked about? 

Colin: Man? Probably. Yeah.

Um, that’s definitely like my first site that got me started and I was very lucky and being it being very successful where. Swimming pools, obviously being a seasonal niche, I would wake up, uh, you know, 8 AM on the summer day and I would have already made more money than I did at my job, which was, uh, you know, a consulting software engineer.

So it was a, it’s a good job, but I’d wake up and you’re like, wow, I already made 900 from a dumb blog about swimming pools. 

Jared: So good. So good. Bring those days back. Bring those days back. Yeah. Um, well, hey, congratulations. Are you planning on going in further on it? Are you going to just continue to do a couple a week?

Like where, where are you thinking about going now? 

Colin: Yeah, honestly, it’s something that I like to spend a little time on. Um, you know, I do want to, when I go to Airbnbs and actually, again, got this tip from you, Jared, look up products. I’ll take, I’ll take my, I’ll walk around with my phone. Look, see what products are on Amazon.

I’ll make note of them and then I’ll film them. And then, uh, in between shoots, my fiance will give me. Uh, some crap for it, but, um, yeah, I definitely want to do Airbnbs. Sometimes when I go to a friend’s house, I’ll review a couple of items. Um, a creative idea I had, and I haven’t tested this, was, you know, getting paid to pet sit at people’s houses via Rover.

And, um, yeah, disclosing this that like, Hey, look, I’m, I’m not a weirdo, but I do this thing. I’ll give you a discount on, you know, uh, on pet sitting, but I’m going to film a couple of like, you know, stuff around products, you know, I’m not going to have any, like identifying stuff in your blah, blah, blah, um, in the videos.

So I was going to try that out, but again, I’ve kind of put this on the back burner. Just for now with wedding planning and stuff. Um, but those are certainly some ideas that I have. And also I just heard about this vine program. 

You 

Colin: can be invited to get products for free. Um, so one, you get free products, you know, great to have for your house.

And then two, that means extra review opportunities for the influencer program. 

Jared: That’s the tough part because the things that make me the most money are certainly the higher price stuff. And, um, there’s only so many higher price things. We own and it’s not like I want to go out and spend 300 on something to hopefully have a video, make its way into the carousel and sell a lot.

You know, there’s just, the odds aren’t quite high enough to make that viable to me. So finding ways to get access to some of these higher price products is like the goal, the Holy grail, right? Like if you can find that, that’s, that’s amazing. Um, I heard someone recently was telling me that, They were actually trying to kind of, um, negotiate with different Airbnb hosts in their neighborhood, um, and say like, Hey, I, here’s what I want to do.

I want to actually come in and just record your appliances and stuff. I don’t actually want to spend the night. So could I pay the fee, but could we not do the cleaning fee? Cause I won’t leave it. You know, and I, I, I heard that they had, um, mild success. Is it somebody, a couple of people in the neighborhood said yes, eventually on a slow day or something like that.

I thought that was a good idea, you know, avoid paying some of the fees there. 

Colin: I love that. That’s super creative. It gives you maybe 20 hours to film content. Airbnb stays what? 150 to 200 bucks. And you might get, I don’t know, the two times I’ve done it, I probably found about 20 to 30 products each with some high ticket items.

Jared: Well, I mean, the story for me is, again, we were at a cabin in Lake Tahoe last year for our two Oh one creative board meeting. Um, and I think they’re about 25 products. If I remember correctly, I think you’re exactly right. And, uh, I was like, I don’t want to waste my, I’m on vacation. I mean, we’re not vacation, but darn near close to it.

But finally the last morning, I’m like, I’m getting up early. So I got up at like five 30 or six and I cranked out all these reviews while people were still sleeping. I had to bleed a little over into when people were actually awake and caught quiet down, I got to do this one video, but one of the products there.

From that Lake Tahoe cabin in November went on to be the product that kind of went viral in during the holiday sales season. And I made the bulk of my money off of, 

Colin: wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I, uh, very similarly, I was at an Airbnb in, uh, in mammoth snowboarding last, last day, I just decided like, what the heck, let’s just film some.

And can’t say I had the same success. I think probably from those products, I maybe made 30 bucks, um, just guesstimating from like 20 videos. So, you know, didn’t quite see the same benefits, but you know, I, I, the process is, is fun to see. 

Jared: But you never know because that’s the funny thing about it is I’m now noticing that a lot of my videos I made a year ago are selling again and seasonality plays such a strong component in it.

So you don’t know, like maybe that was products you made really won’t start getting seen bought and surfaced until the fall or the winter or you know, and so sometimes, you know, it, it can be very challenging to, to kind of see their feedback loop, but a lot of it is seasonal based. 

Colin: A hundred percent. Yeah.

I mean, I can say this, this program was already a success for me. I could stop earning money and, and say like, yeah, I, I learned, and this was a really good success. I hope I can keep earning a a hundred, 150 bucks a month. But yeah, overall, uh. Have a lot to you and Spencer to thank for it. 

Jared: Well, both Spencer and I have made YouTube videos about our first year in the program.

And again, he and I went about it very differently. Uh, Spencer was all outsourced. Um, I was all pretty much insourced. Um, but we both have videos. So if you go check out the niche pursuits, uh, video channel and YouTube channel, which by the way, is different than the one you’re listening to right now. If you’re watching.

This is the niche pursuits podcast, YouTube channel, but over the niche pursuits, YouTube channel is Spencer’s video about his first year on the Amazon influencer program. And then you can go see mine over at the, uh, the weekend growth, YouTube channel. So, well, Hey, um, congratulations. Glad all this jabbering for over a year that Spencer and I’ve done about the influencer program is, uh, I suppose inspired you a little bit.

And, uh, I’m just so excited to hear, you know, even early days, but it’s still been a win for you. So, 

Colin: yeah, definitely. I think it’s just like, don’t overthink things. Just, you know, just do it. Like I didn’t edit the videos to high quality. I didn’t do anything fancy. I just, you know, talked through a product and got some inspiration and got lucky.

So just for me, it’s just, I took some action and I got a little lucky, but you make your own buck. 

Jared: There’s a lot of conversation about this in the, uh, niche pursuits community. I know Morgan was on last week and was talking about. She was talking about Influencer, talking about how that’s where she goes to get all of her information about the Influencer program is our, is our community there.

And she was peppering me with questions about how long I spend editing. The videos. And I was like, I don’t edit the videos. And she was like, what, you don’t edit them? Like, no more, you got to stop editing the videos. So I’m glad to hear you’re not editing your videos. 

Colin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there are some people who do, I know Morgan does a lot of editing and she’s done well, but yeah, I mean, she started, you know, uh, the program as well as one other member, um, just because of the niche proceeds community and both have made over a thousand dollars.

Jared: Yeah. She broke the, right. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe there’s something to it. Maybe she’s, uh, maybe she’s making better videos than us. Maybe. Hey, so it’s, um, it’s time for our weird niches. Um, uh, this is where each of us bring a weird niche. It’s always good to have, um, have fresh faces in the crowd to see what kind of weird niches you’re going to bring.

Um, I was gonna prepare an update on the now infamous checkbox site that I brought a couple of weeks ago. This is the website I kind of declared was the weirdest niche of all. And Spencer skeptically. Raised an eyebrow and then by the end kind of agreed. So we were going to check back in on that site and I haven’t, I didn’t have time to pull that together before I was reading that verge article.

That’s really where all my time went. So I will do that next week, folks check back in. We’ll, we’ll talk all about that checkbox site. But in the meantime, um, I, uh, my weird niche for the day, it’s honestly not that weird, but it is a very bizarre site when you think about a site and how much traffic it’s getting and how simple it really is.

The site is calculate aspect ratio.com and uh, it’s, uh, you know, the URL kind of says it EMD for the win. Again, like I, like, I like to say. Um, this is a site that allows you to, uh, basically get the, use this ratio calculator to check dimensions when resizing images. Again, this is something you can totally do with your phone and the calculator on your phone, but nonetheless, there’s a site for it.

And, um, it’s, it’s been around since 2015. So it’s, it’s got almost 10 years going for it. Um, if you want to, let’s see here, I am going to pop over to AH refs. And if you want to look at AH refs. You can see that it did have a downturn back in 2022, but since then it’s been pretty steady and then since the March core update, it has almost doubled in traffic, maybe 50 percent of an increase in traffic.

It’s only, it’s a DR 58 only ranks for 4, 000 keywords, but again, it’s only a six page website. It’s just a calculator. It’s not even a calculator. I guess it’s just. I guess it’s a calculator, but it ranks for 58, 000 keywords. Um, and, uh, Oh, I didn’t, I went to top pages here. Uh, here we go. So, um, sorry, it ranks for 4, 000 keywords, uh, with an estimated organic traffic of 58, 000 per month.

And we know Ahrefs tends to undershoot this. It ranks number one for aspect ratio calculator, uh, which is an 18, 000 a month, uh, search term. Um, I mean, it’s loaded up with, uh, with ads, of course, I, I count five ads on screen as we speak. They somehow have managed to fit not one, but two left sidebar ads and two right sidebar ads.

So, well done. I didn’t know you could fit that many in there. Um, it’s such a simple site. It just, it’s great. Very simply allows you to put in the aspect ratio that you want. Uh, here’s classic film three by two. Um, and then you can kind of punch in, well, let’s see, I want it to be 1500 pixels wide. And so that means I need it to be a thousand pixels high.

Ah, not much more to share about this site, except that it’s probably making a couple of thousand dollars a month when you do the math on the ad, on the ad revenue. 

Colin: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s so simple, but you got to love how they had a basic idea. They ran with it. Nothing complicated, uh, because yeah, like you said, even though we have our phones, like, you know, for me, if I try, if I’m trying to do some math, I’ll just punch it in my chrome browser.

I’m not going to live out my phone. Uh, very convenient. So I get it. I can see a need for that. Not something that I use personally, but a lot of people who are more into design photos. I’m sure it’s very helpful. 

Jared: Yeah, you know, it’s not weird and it’s not off the wall, but a lot of what the nature of the weird niches has kind of developed into is kind of weird ways people make money.

You know, like, and a lot of people will say, like, obviously, you know, no one’s going out and building some of these weird niche sites we feature, but it really does give you a lot of ideas on how to better monetize or even some little. You know, cool little things you can do on the internet to, to make money and to, uh, to, to, to, to get success out there.

We also like to say there’s a community for everything. I don’t know if that one applies here, but we’ve certainly seen some weird niches where there’s a community for it and you’re shocked by the community for it. So, um, okay, that’s my weird niche site. I am now going to pull yours up and you go ahead and take it away.

Colin: Yeah, I’m pretty excited to share about this. Maybe a little weirder than yours. Mine is about nail fungus. And here’s the crazy thing. It started off, you know, wow, this is a really weird niche site. Why does this exist? But I did some digging and, um, I think this audience and you were probably going to appreciate what I’ve discovered.

So first of all, it peaked at around, uh, 1700 visitors. February 2023. It’s now down to 120 ish, uh, ranking for 240 keywords. Dr. I want to say mid twenties. Um, the content, you know, it’s written by people with PhDs, MDs, the EAT look good. Um, and the content looks pretty good. I mean, I just checked out a couple of pages.

Um, but it looks to be good. You know, it’s a little outdated. You know, it was founded, uh, started up in like 2012, I want to say. And, you know, website design hasn’t changed much. It has even has some YouTube videos, kind of a defunct Facebook page. So all in all, it seems like more or less like real brand, but I did some digging and in the top right corner, it says a GG HealthWorks Inc initiative.

Jared: I saw that. 

Colin: Yeah. And so like the site, it looks pretty official, you know, outdated, maybe like a nonprofit helpful website, but I looked up GG HealthWorks initiative. Now, this company is basically a holding company for e commerce products. One of the e commerce products is a nail fungus solution. And it is promoted within the site.

The site does have a few affiliate links, although it doesn’t have any ads to be fair. Um, so this. The company was definitely using this as like, uh, you know, to appear as an independent unbiased, I know very official looking third party site about toenail fungus really to push their own product. Um, now due to the organic traffic, it’s probably not that helpful in, in creating sales, but I can say that product, it does get branded search terms.

It does get traffic. Um, I think the branded search term for, um, it is like, it’s like 1100. Uh, searches a month for that nail fungus solution. So, you know, they were definitely investing heavily into the marketing of it. So all in all, it was kind of just interesting to see this content to product funnel and being executed by, you know, a company, even though at first glance, I was excited because, yeah, this is pretty interesting.

It’s a website about Yeah. Tonail fungus. 

Jared: I have, I discovered a little e commerce comparison on the nail national nail fungus dot org site is the one you’re talking about. Does it happen to be this ammonia nail product? That 

Colin: is it. Exactly. Go figure. 

Jared: Look at that. It’s the number one rated, uh, one out of all the ones they’re comparing.

Colin: Would you look at that? What are the chances? 

Jared: I, and you know, it’s odd that There’s, you know, a lot more additional red boxes around it. You know, graphically, they’ve really made that review. Um, stand out, you could say. 

Colin: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I will say credit, uh, some credit to them though. They did not take the standard affiliate content site model of maybe what people have done in the audience that are familiar with, you know, niche pursuits where, you know, you’re kind of outsourcing content and stuff where it does seem like the content is actually good, is pretty helpful, and it does seem like they have.

Uh, you know, MDs and PhDs writing that content unless they are really good at faking it at a time before faking it was really popular. So either way, credit to them for making it seem like a legitimately helpful site. 

Jared: Yeah, I agree. I’m on the about us page. Excuse me. And, um, you know, they seem to have checked all the boxes in terms of, you know, uh, different people.

Although this person, Pat, doesn’t have a last name. Uh, but aside from Pat, it does look like they definitely, like you said, have kind of checked some of the boxes here. They have a physician login. you saw that. Um, uh, they, they have a donate button. I don’t, says that the donation is needed to support medical research on nail fungus.

Uh, what are the odds that that goes to support that? Um, But maybe it does. I don’t know, you know, to your point. I don’t know. This is super interesting. Um, guy, I, I’m with you. I wonder, I mean, it’s, there’s not, for the record, there’s nothing wrong with, you know, trying to sell your product. Um, uh, I guess you could bring up the idea of, you know, is it, is it wrong to not disclose that, that you have an interest in that product, but, but it’s very interesting.

It’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard that strategy being used either, by the way. I know a lot of people who use that kind of that, use that strategy to help proliferate their brand. 

Colin: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Um, and you know, as soon as I uncovered that, I’m like, ah, okay, this, this all makes sense.

Maybe it’s now a little less weird, but still fun to kind of do a little bit of a more digging than I expected myself to do and really kind of see where it went. So it was a fun journey that, uh, that they took me on. 

Jared: Well, I’m going to pull it up here before we close. If you’re watching, um, boy, that, um, it, you know, we’re so used to seeing traffic drops that are more like the HCU where they just kind of fall off a cliff.

Right. That’s not this traffic drop, but this is a different tale of a. In the end, ultimately a massive traffic drop. It just steadily declined over the last two years. Um, if you can see on camera, uh, on screen there. Um, and if you go all the way back, I don’t know if you saw this, but all the way back to 2019, this site was rocking and rolling.

Colin: Oh, wow. Actually, I didn’t go that far back. Um, but I will say we are probably seeing a gradual decrease because their actual last piece of content was published. Late 2020 or around 2023. 

Jared: So I just went back even further, Colin, that was 2019 and look at 2018. Oh my God. 

Colin: Yeah. I did not do that level of digging Jared.

Uh, I could have, I guess, suppose. Clicked on literally one button in Ahrefs and seen that. So, you know, let’s say this site was fairly successful. 

Jared: Um, I don’t worry. This is what Spencer and I do. We all, we just, we just goof around on here and kind of discover stuff as we talk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s funny because those product review boxes looked pretty 2018.

If I were to date them, they looked like something I would have created back in 2018. Um, And yeah, at that kind of traffic level, selling an e commerce product like that or pushing traffic, I mean, I bet they were doing pretty well back at that time. 

Colin: Yeah, I bet so. 

Jared: Interesting. Wow. That’s fascinating. What a fun topic.

And everyone got treated, if you’re watching online on YouTube, you got treated to a lot of pictures of, of, of nail, of toe fungus. 

Colin: Probably what they signed up for. 

Jared: Yeah. That’s exactly what you wanted when you came to listen or watch this podcast. And if you’re listening, just be glad you’re listening this week.

Hey, nice work. You knocked it out of the park. Thank you for joining your first news podcast episode. I believe Spencer’s back next week, but don’t hold me to that. Um, great job coming on board. Thanks for being a great guest host this week. 

Colin: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, uh, charity. It was a blast. 

Jared: And again, I always ask where people can find you, but I know people can find you in the niche pursuits community anywhere else that you hang out these days.

Colin: Yeah. I mean, honestly, you can email me colinlma at gmail. com. If you have specific questions, not really taking on clients or anything at the moment, but I love talking to people. Uh, really big extrovert, but, uh, yeah, you know, if, if anything, you can find me, uh, very active in the discord of the niche pursuits community if you want to pick my SEO brain.

Um, but if you want to just casually chat, you can hit me up on my email. 

Jared: Well, all right, everyone, thank you for coming this week in the news. We’ll be back. Same time, same place next week, talking about what has developed since then. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye bye.