Google August Core Update RELEASED! HCU Recovery Guidelines

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Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast!

It’s been a very big week in the news, with Google taking center stage for several different reasons. This week, Jared and Morgan break it all down for us, and they also share the progress they’re making on their side hustles, and some weird niche sites!

Let’s jump into it!

The first order of business is Google’s announcement about its August core update , which the company has been teasing for some time.

What parts of the announcement do Jared and Morgan highlight, and why? What do they note about the information Google’s sharing about this particular update? Do they believe them?

What’s Jared hoping to see from all of this? How does Morgan view the situation? Tune in to find out.

Watch the Full Episode Here

Moving along, they talk about an article in the New York Times about how the US Justice Department is considering several scenarios after deciding that Google is a monopoly, including possibly breaking up the company.

Jared shares the timeline and the opinions of Duck Duck Go, and Morgan talks about what happened in the EU when Google was forced to give users a choice when installing their web browsers. It’s pretty surprising what she reveals!

They also talk about the ways this ruling could change the internet and which of the scenarios they’d prefer to see. Is Google really resting on its laurels, as Morgan says?

The next topic up for discussion is that Reddit investors are concerned about what all the traffic is doing to its stock price, as company shares have plummeted by 26%.

Why are they complaining about the traffic? Why are “logged in” users more valuable than “logged out” ones? How does Reddit’s current situation contrast with its attitude just a few weeks ago?

Then Jared and Morgan tie the Reddit news to Google’s announcement about its current core update. What do they predict might happen? Listen to the full episode to hear what they say!

When it’s time to talk about their side hustles, Jared comments briefly about the course he recently launched on the Amazon Influencer Program, but then dives into the newsletter he recently acquired, The Slice.

He shares his stats, such as open rates, ad earnings, and affiliate income, and his future plans for the side hustle.

He also talks about Creator Connections, in the Influencer Program, and shares his latest earnings.

Morgan then talks about her Amazon Influencer side hustle and shares her experience creating more polished videos for the program and the impact on her video clicks. She also shares a strategy she’s going to experiment with in the coming weeks.

Jared’s weird niche site comes with its own personal story this week: San Diego Sandcastles, which he discovered while at the beach with his family.

The local business teaches people how to build sandcastles, and Jared and Morgan talk about whether or not it’s a profitable side hustle. What do they discover when they look at the website’s stats?

When it’s Morgan’s turn, she shares This Person Does Not Exist, which generates AI images of people who don’t exist.

This site has been around since 2021, and she shares some of its stats. The site jumped from spot 2 to spot 1 for a major keyword. How did that influence its traffic?

And why are there so many similar sites in this niche? Jared and Morgan share their theories.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of Niche Pursuits News. We hope you found it interesting and that you better understand what’s happening in the SEO and publisher space.

See you next Friday!

Transcript

Jared: Hey, hey, welcome to the niche pursuits podcast this week in the news. My name is Jared Bauman. We've got some big stories today to cover. It feels like it's been a big week every week for the past couple of weeks, the much anticipated, much, uh, much looked forward to for many Google core update has finally come.

We have Google announcing that they've launched the August core update, much anticipated, honestly, much documented, much previewed by Google themselves. So we'll get into that. Uh, we also have a story here that piggybacks upon last week's announcement about Google being deemed a monopoly. This week we have a story that said the U.

S. is considering breaking Google up. That could be big. We'll dive into that. We'll also talk about Reddit and how its investors are not too happy with it. Interesting storylines that we've got there. Morgan is back on the podcast as my co host today. Morgan, welcome. Thanks

Morgan: Thank you. I am very excited to be here today.

It's going to be a spassy one, Jared. It's going to be spassy.

Jared: You picked a good week. You picked a good week. We keep saying that. August has been good for the news. Um, stick around after the news, though. Of course, we'll dive into our side hustles. Morgan, I've had a chance to look, uh, at, uh, at what you're going to be addressing.

It's going to piggyback nicely off of last week, what we talked about. Uh, and then, of course, we've got some weird niches. Mine this week is a personal story, so stay tuned at the very end for the weird niches. Thanks.

Morgan: I'm excited.

Jared: Okay. So we've got to get right into it here. Um, the first story that we want to cover is that Google has announced Google has launched the August core update.

Uh, this is a core update that they have been teasing. This is a core update that, um, in July and August people were surmising that it was coming soon. There was even confirmation in some ways from Google representatives. I believe it was John Mueller might've been Danny Sullivan. I can't remember at this point.

I think that the wording Of this core update is what a lot of people are talking about. Now this just came out a couple hours ago, to be clear. So we don't have any data to report on what's happened, but a lot of people have been waiting for the core update, especially those hit by the helpful content update, right?

That was last September of 2023. We then had a big core update in March. That was the one that we all hoped we would see signs of recovery. We didn't know sites to our knowledge have recovered from the helpful content update. And so a lot of people are anticipating that this Maybe hopefully could be the one that we've also seen Danny Sullivan of note talk about how they're trying to figure out in not so many words how to help sites that are producing good content recover from the helpful content update.

Let me let me read the statement from Google search central here and then we can dive into. Maybe some of the nuances of what it looks like. Uh, today we released the August 2024 core update. It continues our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful.

Notice they didn't say the word helpful there. And less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on search. I got a couple of things to share, but first and foremost, um, Morgan, I know you've been pretty hot and heavy. As a matter of fact, it looks like Twitter knows that we're friends because your comment on this is front and center on the screen in front of us.

Morgan: Oh yeah. Oops.

Oh, look at that. Is that me being snarky right under the official announcement? Oh. Forgot about that. Yeah, no. So this was really funny because, uh, I happened to see this just about like 10 minutes after they initially tweeted this out this morning. So, um, yeah, I got some early eyeballs on it and, you know, and like everybody else, I'm sure, you know, and for context, I obviously have been one of those publishers who lost, you Basically all of their search traffic on multiple websites, thanks to the helpful content update, you know, so I, first I saw the parallel paragraph that you see there in the tweet, which by the way, is the same paragraph that is featured on the actual information page on the developer.

google. com. Um, and I, it put such a bad taste in my mouth, right? And this is a little bit of an iceberg because there's definitely a second paragraph underneath that. But I had a certain kind of feeling, made me feel a certain kind of way, if you will, that first paragraph about talking about how, Oh, we're going to be, you know, focusing on where I'm sorry to quote it, improve the quality of search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful.

Like you said, I didn't use the word helpful. That would be a little more triggering less content that feels like it would simply made to perform well on search. That line is a little bit more triggering. Um, as I said in my tweet. Or my zeet, whatever you call them nowadays, heaven forbid, a search engine, surface things that were made to perform well and answer your queries in search, like that.

So that was my first thought, right? And I don't know about you, but then after I had my new jerk reaction, I clicked on the like button. You know documentation for this and it basically says as mentioned that the latest update takes into account the feedback We've heard from some creators and others over the past few months As always we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites including small or independent sites that are creating Useful, again no helpful, original content when relevant to user searches.

This is an area we'll continue to address in future updates. This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites have made so we can continue to show the best of the web. Jared, here's my question. Have we seen any text that's quite been that clear in a previous core update to your memories and helpful content?

I didn't think so either. Now

Jared: It feels very Tale of Two Cities is what I would say, like the first paragraph feels like they're being even more, uh, you know, that they've been accused of gaslighting content creators of telling us one thing and doing another. The first paragraph feels like a lot of that, right?

The one that I read, this update is designed to continue our work. But the second paragraph to your point is directly targeted at helpful content update publishers, right? Smaller publishers that have gotten absolutely destroyed. Insert. You they end on a positive there and I really want to believe them

Morgan: I mean, I want to believe them but I mean given everything that's happened.

It's hard to believe them You know Like I like I tweeted out so many times this morning because i've already been kind of complaining about them as I as I normally Do as as my new jerk reaction you know, uh tends to have me do but I do, I do want to believe them. You know, I, I, I'm not exactly sure that we can expect a lot.

It's, it's funny to me because like, it's exactly as you just stated, these two paragraphs seem so opposed to one another, right? Like the first paragraph is, is just more of the same stuff we've been hearing from Google since September of 2023. In fact, it's nearly the exact same stuff with just one keyword swapped out.

That we've been hearing from Google. So when I first saw this, I was like, those liars, again, they are just doubling down on exactly everything that they've been doing this whole time. Then I read that second paragraph and I can't tell whether or not they're actually planning on doing something, whether or not they have convinced themselves that whatever small piece offering they're going to maybe give some publishers will be enough to, uh, calm the masses.

Um, I, I don't, or maybe it's just more PR. I don't know. It could just still, again, be just something to keep the hope up and keep that carrot dangling.

Jared: I have a tweet, uh, up from Mark Webster with Authority Hacker. He, he did a four part kind of breakdown of this. Uh, he had a very hopeful outlook on it. I'll say it from the beginning.

Um, uh, he said, it sounds very much like we will see more weight given to small publishers in the SERPs. Quoting some of that that we just read. Uh, he continued, Google acknowledges that the feedback from publishers has gotten through. They met with the owner of House Fresh recently. I wasn't aware of that, but I knew that they had met with, um, uh, uh, Retro Dodo.

And we featured that story a couple, probably a couple months ago. Now, at this point, Mark goes on. Google is again, emphasizing that it wants sites to create content for humans, not to just do well on search. If you are doing scaled content, this might not be a good update for you. This is again, Mark's opinion.

And finally, we might. Finally see HCU recoveries. They say that this update will quote better capture improvements that sites have made and they updated their very limited guidance on what to do if you get hit and update. I do think that's interesting. They did update their guidance. I saw people talking about how there were changes to their guidance before and after.

Although minor, I didn't break those down. Didn't have time again. This just went live a little while ago. Um, you know, it's going to be interesting. I think I'll reiterate something I've said before. Um, I think if you're out there and your site has been hit by the helpful content updates specifically, I think at this point we're all just looking for a path back for publishers and then we'll start to analyze if it's worth it, if it's scalable, if it's something that can be, um, Uh, you know, uh, we can determine what the factors are that Google is actually looking for.

Certainly at this point, the sites that survived versus the sites that didn't, it's hard to determine what allowed you to survive. Big sites, small sites, sites with AI sites without AI. Sites with brand reputation, sites without brand reputation, sites with direct traffic, sites with non direct traffic, e commerce brands, non e, I mean, we don't have anything that corollarily or causally points to what Google wants out of sites.

I just hope that whatever comes out of this, whether it's recovery, whether it's improvement for HCU hit, we do see some sort of Pattern that we can all learn from.

Morgan: You know, I think the pattern thing, honestly, at Jared, at this point, I would just be thrilled. I mean, not to say that I wouldn't want a lot more, right.

But I'd be tickled to death. If my own brand name was allowed to rank above its own parallel social media handles, right? Like that would be game changing at this point. At a bare minimum again, I'm not expecting anything on this one as a publisher that's been, you know Told certain things before and those certain things didn't pan out and has been reading all the tweets and you know Turn my websites on their heads and spent months of you know months of my time and thousands of dollars doing so You know, i'm personally not keeping my hopes up on this one Um, but i'll say I also personally hope that i'm i'm very wrong.

Jared: Well morgan hope springs eternal So you got to just get in the niche pursuits mindset here, right? Like We got to be a beacon of hope here, you know, uh, you wouldn't be remiss though, for not having as much of it, given what's happened with Google over the past almost year now, keep with the helpful content updates, almost a year old, the 2023 one, unbelievable.

It's almost a year old. So, Hey, I was going to say, um, anything else on this topic? Cause we've got Google next in the news. So don't, don't, don't worry. We're still going to talk about Google and hot waters, but anything else on the core update before we move on?

Morgan: Well, I was just going to say if for some bizarre reason that sites actually recover, right.

And again, I don't think so. It'll probably just be like a little bit of a blip, whatever. My bet. I hope I'm wrong. We should like place real bets on this. Right. But anyway, if for any reason we do see some sites recover, you know, sure. That's an aspirational goal to be like those sites or what have you. But I also just, I just want people listening to remember that everything that just happened has happened before.

It happened 10 years ago with penguin and panda. It happened during medic. It happened again during helpful content update, whatever you do, do not put all your eggs Back in that basket. Okay. I don't care how shiny that basket looks. That basket is just one revenue stream for you and it should not be depended on.

Okay. Just like a word of warning people.

Jared: It's going to be, it's going to be a good reminder. Uh, I feel like we're going to be the old long tooth people in the industry in coming years to tell people like, remember 2023. Remember 2023 and the subsequent year or longer after that. So no, it's good feedback and it's good reminder.

Let's move along more Google, more hot water. Last week we talked about the antitrust lawsuit. We talked about the fact that Google had been deemed to be monopolistic, which I mean, I have to say, I suppose, surprising, I suppose, not surprising, certainly a mountain of evidence, but we haven't seen something like this happen in decades.

Well, this. Week we get a story in the New York Times and the headliner is US is said to consider a breakup of Google to address the search monopoly now last week Spencer and I went through five or six situations that could come as a result of the monopolistic ruling but Um, getting having Google get broken up was lower on the list of things that we thought might happen.

Now, I will say it's a bit of headline drama. Um, it does go on to talk about how that is still just one of many options they're looking at. Let me read a couple of sound bites here, um, to kind of get us on the same page. First off, this is something we talked about last week that it looks like maybe we got wrong.

We know Google is appealing it, but it says, quote here, judge, um, it, uh, meta. I hope I'm saying that right. Of the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia is overseeing the case has asked the Justice Department and Google to come up with a process for determining a fix. By September 4th, he has scheduled a hearing on September 6th to discuss next steps.

I mean, that's like two, three, that's like three weeks away. So appeal again, I'm not sure where the appeal fits in here. I'm not sure about that, but it looks like we could be moving towards, um, action on this, uh, sooner than maybe we thought. Um, I will say, uh, that we also have, um, Uh, the article is a good read, by the way, you should probably go on to read it.

It does talk about what happened with Microsoft, uh, and how really the fact that Microsoft's, even though they ended up not getting, um, broken up as a result of the antitrust ruling on them 20 years ago, It stymied their progression and almost innovated companies like a Google to come onto the scene. Um, uh, one more thing here is, uh, last week DuckDuckGo, which is, we know, a smaller search engine company, they actually came out and proposed what they thought should be, should be the solution.

Um, they said that the government should ban the agreements that Google search engine, uh, that have made Google's search engine the default on devices. Uh, they should, uh, Google should give. Other access. Others access a search and adds knowledge. They should present screens that allow people to change search engines easily.

And they should educate the public about the process of picking a new search engine. Um, and they said all of this should be made under the supervision of an independent body with technical experts to ensure compliance. Um, That's a lot of information. Uh, Morgan, you probably listened to what we talked about last week.

Obviously, you know, all about the antitrust case. You're the one who brought this article forward for us today. Let's talk about it.

Morgan: Yeah. Speaking of Google, making friends, right? I've, I gotta tell you, Jared, I don't think I've ever seen the government, uh, promised to move so fast on anything.

Jared: I mean, Takes two years to get a new toilet if it breaks in the government.

I mean, this is amazing.

Morgan: Yeah. Like we're talking like three weeks from now, basically. Um, yeah, I

Jared: did not, we, we, we talked last week about how, I mean, this could take years and here we are. And again, it's just, it's just the start, but it's the start within weeks. This is amazing.

Morgan: Oh, you know what karma is like, I get it again, you know, that penny Morgan's coming out.

I kind of love this, but, um, so here's a couple of different things, right? So obviously the two big, uh, things that might happen with this is a Google being broken up, which, you know, I I'm really confused with, um, Exactly how that would sort of pan out because as we know, Google's bread and butter is really in Google ads, right?

Like that would be the impact, like some of the articles that I've seen, they're talking about like breaking off Google Chrome and making it a separate company or whatever, but I mean, again, you know, the financials, the finances of this are not my expertise guys, so don't add me, but like actually do add me inform me, but, um, Chrome is not exactly, I think, going to be their big Achilles heel if they're forced to break that off.

Now, if they're forced to break up their ad component, I can see that having a major impact. And then the second major impact, possibly, that they're talking about addressing here is giving users a choice. Now, this is the part I really want to address. Cause I don't know about you, but whenever I hear them talk about how, Oh, giving users a choice, won't make a difference because you know, people are so ingrained with Google.

They'll always choose Google, right? They'll, and then they always cite what happened in the EU, but, and I actually put this in the show notes, Jared, if you do want to pull it up just so everybody can kind of see what happened when they acted this in the EU, they acted what they, what happened in the EU after they would After they, you know, did their stuff with Google, they decided to make all Chrome browsers on mobile device.

Or I'm sorry, all Android Chrome. I believe that's the way it was show specifically, um, an opt in screen when setting up your phone. All right. So a, it was not all devices and B, I want you guys to actually see, and I will visually describe this for those who are not listening on the YouTube version of this podcast.

Um, I want you guys to see exactly what that looks like for people setting up a phone. Now, this is what the screen looks like. It actually says Google play. You can choose an additional. Search service, cannot talk an additional search service for your device. And at the top, it says Google search installed.

And then it has like one, two, three, four, uh, five different options under that. Okay. So it's still the default search that's installed on those phones post EU rolling. And you have to essentially choose to install an alternative on top of the one that is already default installed. And it's funny because this gives me a little bit of both hope and hesitancy because a, I'm like, okay, I've been told for years that nothing happened in the EU when they rolled that out and the people still chose Google.

This does not look like it's that much of a choice to me still. That's like, Hey, this is already here. Do you want to change it? But you probably shouldn't, but Hey, look, you know, it's already here. If you want to use it, just saying, but also a little bit of hesitancy because what if a similar solution is rolled out by the United States?

And they're like, yeah, that's good enough. I think that Google should not be the default period. It's still, shouldn't just to be about offering a choice. It should not be pre installed. It shouldn't even be allowed to be at the top of the option screen. It should be a. Uh, absolutely, uh, just, I would say a choice that has no preference to any one search engine.

Jared: Yeah, it's interesting if you, I've actually studied a lot of this, believe it or not. Um, a weird thing that I'll share about me. I'm such a nerd. This is another nerdy moment, but behavioral economics, uh, and a lot of this, the default, the standardized choices as a studied, uh, situation and behavioral economics.

Danny Aurelia actually has a fascinating Ted talk. I'd encourage everyone to go watch mind blowing and it's on the power of the default. And the fact that the default is such a dominant force in our mindset and in the way we choose, we would rather not make another decision, another choice in our life, even if they're big decisions.

And the default will predominantly always get the lion's share of the. Whether it's clicks or business or preference and stuff. So couldn't agree with you more. We'd love to see some data on the EU and how that is actually translated to did DuckDuck grow DuckDuck go grow. Did Firefox grow some of these ones that we saw on the screen in front of us?

Um, let me pull this article back up to this is another one that you had presented here and, uh, uh, let's see here. Um, it's about another breakdown, another idea, a little bit more, um, a little bit, a little bit more data. Yep. On what could possibly happen is titled six ways that Google antitrust ruling could change the internet.

I'll just highlight them really quickly. Many of these we touched on last week, but this has kind of expanded on them. Uh, number one, imagine a Google quality search engine, but without ads or one tailored to children, news junkies, or Lego fans. So it's possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access his term.

Search technology, um, and, uh, uh, you know, that, that secret sauce might, might, might be spread around. Number two, this is an interesting one that we haven't talked about yet. Would Google, would Apple create a search engine? So we know that Google maps was such a prominent, uh, you know, part of Google. And then Apple just one day out of the blue launched Apple maps and.

What was it? It's the default on Apple devices. You can still get Google maps on Apple devices, which I have on my iPhone, but I also have as a default Apple maps. So what about Apple launching a search engine? Everybody else is doing it these days. Why not them? Number three, could prices go down for the products that advertise next to your searches?

Which, by the way, they are quick to point out as most products. Number four, company could break up into baby Googles. It's kind of we addressed earlier. Number five, what if Google weren't allowed to know so much about you? This is about that data and the idea of sharing data or not even being allowed to have that data.

And then number six, you might be able to download almost anything from Google's Android app store that, um, That is interesting. We haven't talked about that either. The judge in the other Google Monopoly case, which, by the way, is set to go, um, to go to trial, I think, next month as well, uh, the judge in the other Google Monopoly cases seemed receptive to loosening the company's absolute power over apps.

Uh, I mean, obviously we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to how this will end up going, but, um, which one's the most interesting to you?

Morgan: Well, actually I like all of them except number one The only one I kind of don't want to see happen is a google based or you know, google technology based alternate search engines engines, because to be honest with you, I ain't too impressed with how Google's working nowadays.

So DuckDuckGo competitors, if you're listening, Google doesn't work that great. I think they're mostly relying on their brand name laurels at this point for their main search product. So I wouldn't exactly see that as something that I'd be going after personally. And I definitely would not want to see replicated across the industry.

Personally. Yeah. So that would be a little bit, I hope they don't go after that, you know? And again, that's what happens sometimes when you're a monopoly, I suppose. It feels so good, by the way, to say that, right. Just to be able to say the monopoly word without fear, but I guess it happens sometimes when you're a monopoly monopoly, you start resting on those Laurels resting on that brand name, resting on the fact that, you know, everybody will use you despite how good or bad your product is.

And honestly, I think big, Google has been a bit asleep at the wheel on their core search product lately, because they've been a little distracted with some of these other apps. They've been way distracted with AI search results, in my personal opinion, have never been worse. I can't hardly find anything I'm looking for.

So number one terrifies me. I love all the rest of them. Highly recommend five stars.

Jared: The juxtaposition we get to talk about every week with this kind of stuff is so fascinating like I would agree with you We've obviously we have the same sentiments that Google's search quality has been going down.

It's not just HC related by the way It's it's across the board in a lot of other areas We'll get to it next like read it's everywhere and why is that such a good experience in search? But it's not just our opinions as small publishers It's really this global opinion that we continually find stories to share about You The idea that Google search quality seems to have gone down and people are less happy with it.

More ads are crammed into it. It's just not as helpful as it used to be. And yet, in many ways, this antitrust lawsuit and result is a result of the judge and every, all the data and all the evidence showing that they're the biggest, best and most powerful search engine. So it's really interesting to just kind of put these things all next to each other.

You present a compelling case. Are they resting on their laurels because they're so powerful they don't need to be Great. Anymore. They can rely on, on their monopolistic practices and their brand name. So, uh, this one's fun. Reddit. Okay. So we'll move from Google to Reddit, but not really, because what this story is about is about investor concerns.

over what the new traffic that Reddit has gotten from Google has done to their revenue, their profit, their stock price. So the article here, which is great, uh, is Reddit's increased reliance on Google traffic. Has Wall Street anxious to see if visitors sign up? Uh, so, as we all know, but perhaps for most people, most laymen, they don't know that Reddit has climbed to the top of Google results following a series of updates by the search giant.

Reddit, whose IPO was in March, subsequently timed very nicely with that deal they made with Google. Uh, Reddit needs to con nce

Morgan: coincidence. .

Jared: Yep. Right. Uh, and so Reddit needs to convince a growing number of these visitors from Google to register for official accounts or as so-called logged in users because logged in users generate much higher rates of ad revenue.

And to this point, shares of Reddit have dropped 26 percent since reaching a high last month. So basically in a nutshell, what's going on here is that Google is sending Reddit a ton of traffic that has excited a lot of people because it's led to a lot more traffic for Reddit. But the problem is that these are logged out users and that traffic isn't logging in as much as logged out traffic has, um, or as, uh, sorry.

That traffic isn't logging in as much as previous before Google started putting Reddit everywhere in the search. And as a result, the revenue is lagging. Um, I'm going to pull up a couple of things here, a couple of notes I took, but let me turn it over to you because you are the one who found this article.

And I think you've got a couple of interesting points to make on it.

Morgan: Well, first I was kind of sad because I have a knack for personally buying stock at the completely wrong time. I'm pretty sure I bought Reddit stock on its day high. I'm pretty sure like the actual high point. So it's just downhill for me, but.

Um, so yeah, as we always say, this is definitely not a financial advice or stock advice podcast. It's always a little bit hairy to even talk about this stuff, uh, you know, on these kinds of podcasts, but definitely never listen to me when it comes to this stuff guys. But on a personal level, other than my money, um, you know, it's, it's pretty humorous to see the rest of the world finally waking up to this.

And even more funny, Jared, after like our conversation on the niche pursuits podcast, two weeks ago about, you know, how Reddit was basically giving the middle finger to all the other search engines saying, we don't need you. You know, we're going to block you. We're only going to be on Google now. And now the rest of the world is like.

Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, they are really dependent on Google. Wait, that's not a great business strategy. So it's like kind of humorous that they were sort of bragging about doing that in the news, right? And so publicly making that, putting that flag in the ground, right? And now,

Jared: well, and we talked about it.

It wasn't just a flag in the ground. It was like a very much a, um, a, like a flagrant, uh, just in your face statement that didn't need to be so aggressive, right? It was so aggressive.

Morgan: Yeah. And it's never a good sign, right? I mean, 26%, he says here, that's huge.

Jared: That's massive, right? Like that's so, when you look at 26 percent of their market capitalization, right?

When you look at 26 percent of what they're worth as a company gone. That's huge.

Morgan: Yeah. And I'm also not surprised. You know, it's the first time I'm, I'm actually getting to really like see and read about these metrics about the logged in users versus the non logged in users. Right. But that doesn't surprise me at all.

I mean, like I only had a Reddit just because I think back in the day I needed to do something for work. And so every once in a while, if I absolutely have to log in, I do that. But by default, I'm certainly not logging in. Spending extra time on the site, the way that I would, you know, that the, at least the way that Facebook always seems to hook me in when I want to check Facebook or Instagram and I'm hooked, you know, scrolling on reels for hours, right?

It does not have that effect. It's like, Hey, when I have to use it, I'm in there for the answer. And usually I'm back out and back to the Google service.

Jared: So let me read some of the sound bites I had. I apologize. I don't have these up on screen. Um, uh, the article is very long, so I grabbed these so I could read them, but I don't know where they are in the article, but, uh, here's a couple of sound bites.

The challenge for Reddit, which held its stock market debut five months ago, it's only been five months, is to make money off people who land on the company's website after performing a random query. Reddit calls them logged out users and based on some industry estimates, they only monetize at Third, the rate of logged in users, as Reddit said in its financial filings, quote, logged out users typically have lower engagement, spend less time on our platform compared to users who are logged into a registered account.

It makes sense, by the way, getting a greater percentage of them to sign up with Reddit and even download the app is critical to the company's effort to bolster its reputation on Wall Street, logged in users. increased 31 percent in the second quarter to a total of 42 million while logged out users increased at a much more robust rate of 74 percent to 49.

2 million. Uh, I'll end on this. While results for the period ended June, uh, topped estimates across the board and Reddit's net loss narrowed dramatically from a year prior. We talked about this in the podcast, uh, many months ago about how that I believe 60 million from Google would really cut that net loss down.

So that's, that's been realized. So while even, even though while this was happening, the stock price dropped after the report. Reddit shares have now fallen 26 percent since peaking in mid July and are up just 8 percent since their IPO pop in March.

Morgan: Maybe Reddit should try blogging.

Jared: Maybe Reddit is going, can you imagine, just by the way.

With all this, this is concerned. This is 26 percent drop with Reddit being the darling child of Google. What if this core update ruins that? Where will they go from there?

Morgan: Yeah, that'll get super spicy. Right? Like I couldn't help but wonder what the core update is going to do to read it. Um, I mean, cause I mean, let's be real.

Like, okay, again, I don't, I hate, I hate myself for even having hope, Jared. I hate myself for having hope, but let's just play the devil's advocate for one second. Okay. Like imagine that they actually do start ranking some of the small sites again, or some of the independent publishers. I mean, by the very nature of that, considering how prolific Reddit is in the SERPs right now, they'd have to go down.

It has to go to, it has to Right. Benefit is by a fractional percentage point because you're honestly, that site across the board is the one that has stolen traffic from me. I'm sorry, I don't use that. Stolen. Yeah. Has, has, has now gets my traffic. The traffic that I used to get more than any other,

Jared: I know there is a scenario where it doesn't exist, but your ex, that's the exact dots.

I was gonna connect myself. Google just, we just got done reading that. They said we are going to, and we will see it when it, we'll, we'll believe when it happens, but. We're going to reward small publishers who are making improvements. We're so sorry that we messed it up. We're going to re reward you.

You're right. Where do they go? If they're going to go back into the SERP results, they have to take the place of something that's already there. I, I would be far more, I would bet more on the fact that they pull out Reddit Quora and these types of sites than they would on the big giant, you know, behemoths of the world.

Uh, and so it's interesting, but you're exactly right. Like, The other side of it says Reddit couldn't, how could they go any higher? You know, how could they get any more prominent? We've shared the search graphs in terms of this search, a visibility increases they've had, and it doesn't even fit on a graph anymore.

So, um, uh, to some degree, like, There's not much more they could get from Google. It would seem

Morgan: they basically have to be the search bar They would just replace a search bar with just read it search. That's that's yeah, that's been talked about by the way

Jared: Yeah, you've been talked about having like an AI you know versus not that I've heard people talk about having like a Like a user generated content search bar versus a non I've heard that that's that I mean, I would never use it but

Morgan: as long as we're keeping both going back to choice in

Jared: the power of default, which would be the default?

That's the big question.

Morgan: We've been through so much with Google at this point. I swear to you one day, I really do. I saw somebody mock it up on a t shirt the other day, like the word Reddit in the Google colors, you know, in the Google font with the search bar. But that's, that's one day I swear I'm going to log into Google and that's what I'm going to see.

Jared: Man. I Yeah, there was a quote from Lily Ray in that article, and she was, I can't remember the exact quote, but it was basically like, I guess she's trying to explain this to the layman, to like the everyday reader, but she's like, uh, in our industry here, this is kind of never been seen before, like, this is unprecedented in terms of Reddit's growth, it's just Bonkers.

So, uh, and again, that's not a direct quote. That's my impression of whatever it was that, that she, that she said. But anyways,

Morgan: it's, it's, I think the rate of growth that Reddit is, I'm sorry, I think the rate of growth that Reddit has seen as something pretty unusual for our industry race. Oh, you found it.

Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. Okay. There you go. It's a little more tamed down

Morgan: to like, what do you think? I would love to see, take a look at some of those, um, like bounce rate metrics, right? Like the pogo sticking for Reddit too, because of course, that's one of the things that we've always sort of suspected has something to do with, you know, the algorithm and the preference that Google shows certain sites.

And of course you don't want to encourage pogo sticking. And of course, pogo sticking is that act of going into a site. Would you get your answer or don't get your answer? Then going back into SERPs, right? They don't want people like going back and forth too much. You gotta wonder, I mean, obviously that's, you know, with so many logged out users just going in for their answer, they're probably some of their Seemingly bad metrics are also probably going up or at least going in the negative direction too.

But again, that doesn't seem to currently affect them as they do seem to be being, being manually pushed up in the SERPs. But again, will that affect them in the future? So I don't know. This, this whole thing is just absolutely, it's like a telenovela in the SEO world.

Jared: Oh, it really is. And we got to move on.

We're already behind schedule here. But just in summary, I mean, wow, what a week. Wow. What a week for you to come. Poor Spencer missed out on so many juicy stories this week. You got to come in on some of your favorite topics. We're talking core updates. We're talking helpful content, update, recovery, potential.

We're talking Google and the antitrust and what could happen to them as a result. And we're talking about Reddit, not being the darling child, at least not to the stock market to wall street for now. It's still the darling child of Google though.

Morgan: Can I say one more thing? I know we were over scheduled, but I think it's so important to say, you know, I was one of those publishers that has been to like their Google publisher meetups.

I was one of those websites that was featured in their Google success stories. And whenever people say that Google is not scared about everything that's happening with the DOJ and the industry, I can personally tell you they are extremely scared. In fact, about half of the time spent at our publisher meetups when I've met at their headquarters is spent talking about different legislation that's aimed at them.

The DOJ trial. They asked several of us to testify on their behalf in the DOJ trial. So I'm just saying guys, they are absolutely scared about what's going to happen. They are not untouchable. And I want people to keep that in mind.

Jared: Search is definitely changing. It's changed in landmark fashions over the last year.

AI overviews, the HCU. It's obviously going to continue to change, perhaps for other reasons. But what a time to be alive. I'll just end on that. And Morgan, remember, optimism. Hope.

Morgan: Believe it when I see it.

Jared: Fair, fair enough.

Morgan: Alright, let's talk side hustles.

Jared: Okay. Um, uh, the, uh, let's, uh, let's, let's move into maybe a lighter topic, , because let's put the wind down.

Let, I'm kidding. Let, yeah, we'll, we'll bring this back down a little bit. Um, uh, we've got a couple of different side hustle things. I've got a couple of different updates. I'll start with that. And then I know that some of them will dovetail nicely for you. Uh, first off, thanks to everyone who, uh, engaged and emailed and tweeted and all the other stuff last week with the launch of my Amazon influencer course.

It went very well. That does fit as a side hustle. It's a course. So, you know, a little side hustle thing. It was eight months in the making. I got partnered up with authority hacker. We talked about it last week. It was really, really good. Pretty wonderful to see all these people and some people have some people already some people got the course last week and have already gotten their amazon influencer account approved so they started a social media account last week based on what's in the course did that and i've already seen people posting screenshots they're approved so man there are some go getters out there uh i hope someone breaks uh you know cracks A lot of money in the first month and that sort of thing.

But, um, um, I wanted to give an update this week on the email newsletter that I purchased. So we are seven weeks into owning that. Um, and I'll present the stats and the numbers to you. Morgan, tell me if you think, and you can be honest, tell me if you think so far it's off to a good start, meh, or if you think we're just totally blowing it here with this thing.

So again, when we bought this newsletter, it was. Six to 7, 000 subscribers, uh, we bought it for, I can't remember now, five or 6, 000, um, uh, targeted at a side hustle niche, kind of a side hustle, uh, sort of, uh, content basically hadn't been, um, you know, it hadn't been emailed to in a long time. I think one or two emails had gotten sent in 2024.

We acquired it in early July, late June. So we've now sent seven emails. We sent one email a week basically, and we've tried to kind of each week modify a little bit, but keep the same general structure to the emails. Um, we're averaging 35 to 40 percent open rates, um, which seems pretty good. Pretty good.

Uh, you know, that's what it was when we bought it basically. So it's kind of maintained that, um, click through rates. I'll be honest. I think a pretty low, you know, we're in the 1 to 2 percent in terms of total click through rates. Uh, and you could say like, well, what type of content is it? Yeah, it's content.

We'd like you to click on. Uh, we do put a lot of information in the email so you can get overviews and different things. But, um, there's certainly aspects that it's like, Hey, go click here. To get what we need you to get to read the whole article to, you know, to, to, to purchase the product or whatnot. Um, so far we've made just under a thousand dollars in advertisements.

So we've had three or four different brands have ads. Some of them have done up to four ads. So four emails worth of ads, other brands have done one ad and I think another brand brand did two ads. So we're just shy of a thousand dollars in terms of ad earnings. And then we've made. 49 in affiliate commissions.

I can't remember what you, I think we recommended some courses, um, on Udemy. And I think we've recommended some, um, some app sumo, uh, uh, software products. Uh, so I mean, seven, seven emails in less than two months in, and we're already. We've already made back 1, 000 in essence of the 5, 000 purchase price. A part of me feels like that's pretty good.

Um, we haven't grown the email list at all. We haven't tried to grow the email list at all. Uh, I don't know. I think, I think overall I'd say that it's an above average first couple of months.

Morgan: Dude, let's play a game. Let's imagine that instead of an email newsletter, we're talking about, you just bought a small niche site for five, 6, 000.

Right. First of all, I don't think you could even buy a small niche site for five, 6, 000. Right. And even right now in this volatile climate that had, you know, let's say 6, 000 people a month. Looking at the website consistently and then make a thousand bucks right out of the gate on it on your first month and On track to be have your full return on investment Even if things are just going exactly as they are today with no additional growth in six months I'd be like dude i'm gonna buy these all the time Where can I go to the niche site store where I can buy like 12 of these?

I would say that's phenomenal personally that gets me excited.

Jared: All right Well, maybe now i'm playing the pessimist card and you're playing the optimist card here. Our roles have reversed

Morgan: You're feeling pessimistic about this. So that's, I think that's phenomenal. I mean, I certainly didn't make, you know, a thousand bucks my first month blogging.

I mean, I don't think I made my thousand bucks. I'm trying to think how many months it took me to make that. I mean, probably at least like four or five months before I ever hit a four digit month. I mean, that's pretty phenomenal. And again, it's a pretty minimal investment overall. Like I can't think of another purchase I could go out and make right now.

Other than maybe a physical real estate of some kind, like an online purchase, I'll say at least where I could instantly see that kind of return on investment.

Jared: I think the next step, and I need to find the time to do it, is to kind of figure out the next, the growth path for it. Right. Um, obviously at 6, 000 people, uh, every time you send an email, you get some unsubs.

There's no real path for people to join this. Like the website for it doesn't rank for anything. Um, Uh, it's, I think we need it. Well, fair point actually, who does, but um, we can growth has some rankings because it's like the anti SEO website. I've never spent a second on SEO in that website and ironically it ranks for some terms, but I digress.

Uh, I think the next steps are really trying to figure out how to grow it, right? It's, it's, it is nice and you're right. I guess we could see ourselves repaying the investment within a year at this rate, which is a great return, right? That's like a hundred percent return, meaning you make your money back.

Within a year, um, uh, on the investment. But I do think we didn't buy it just to sit on it. So we've got to start to figure out some growth, some growth plans for it. So I'll have to carve out some time for that. Um, okay.

Morgan: I have a couple of questions. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. To your weekend growth newsletter. Is that correct?

Do I remember that correctly? It

Jared: does have parallels. pollinated at all, except when I, Launched when we did an email about why we bought this, one of our weekly emails was about why we bought this and sharing it. That's the only time I've mentioned it in our weekend growth emails. There is a lot of crossover though.

Like if you are on my weekend growth email list, there's a lot of stuff we talk about in the slice that would be very interesting to you, you know.

Morgan: And also just for everybody listening, I'm sure they like me are also really curious about how you make that much money on ads on a newsletter. Would you mind sharing?

Jared: Yeah. So, um, I, I think the more targeted you are with what you talk about and who you attract in your email newsletter, the more money you can charge for ads because brands are more sure that they're going to get their brand in front of the right audience. You know, um, it's been very organic. I mentioned when we first started.

First bought the newsletter. I did reach out to a colleague and say, I think this will be really aligned for some of your products. And so that was the initial buy. But since then, it's been a very organic conversation where I'm just talking with brands, whether it's online, whether it's, uh, on calls. Yes, I pick up, I get on calls, uh, and it's just been very organic.

And so, um, uh, I think. Yeah, and that's been how weekend growth has gotten its newsletter advertisers as well. We've had advertisers in newsletter for consistently for probably nine months now.

Morgan: That's awesome. Now, I think that's really, those are some really exciting stats and it's interesting. That's all been organic growth too, because you know, you, when you talk about ROI, you can't just talk about finances.

You also have to take your time into account. And the fact that these people are coming to you begging to be featured in this newsletter, you've not even had to put in a ton of time there either. So it makes your ROI even sweeter.

Jared: I do wonder, you're exactly right, like the crossover. I'm wondering if we should kind of go out to the people we've worked with at Weekend Growth in the newsletter and say, Hey, this is our, what do you want to call it?

Our sister email, our, our related project. Um, would you want to get in front of these people? Cause the people I imagine there's all, we could compare, obviously I should do that, but I imagine there's almost no crossover in terms of the subscribers.

Morgan: Or no crossover, or you mean a little bit of crossover?

Oh, we mean an existing list.

Jared: Yeah, like if you already advertised a week in growth, I don't think that there's really hardly anybody who's also on the slices email. Those 6, 000 people are unique and different, but still kind of in the same niche of topics they're interested in.

Morgan: And I'm guessing if you actually looked at those two lists, like have you ever, well, I should ask, are you considering ever trying to blend them in the future or not that much crossover?

Jared: Good question. At this point, no, keeping them separate.

Morgan: No, I think it's really exciting. It makes me want to go do it. Actually, honestly, it makes me want to reactivate the one I'm not currently using.

Jared: And the big reason is because ultimately Weekend Growth is me. And I think most people who get an email from Weekend Growth know they're getting an email from Jared.

The slice isn't anyone. It's a, it's an email about something. And so the brand is very different. The email tone is very different. Um, The topics are in the same niche, but approached at it very different. So I don't think it would blend very well at this point.

Morgan: Okay. Very interesting. Very interesting.

Jared: Um, final update for me, I've been updating my first month on creator connections through Amazon influencer, uh, reference back to previous episodes.

If you want to learn more about that and what I'm doing, but after three weeks. Uh, after the first week, by the way, I think I was at, uh, uh, what was it? 20 something dollars. Last week, I was at 40 something dollars. This week, I'm at 72 after three weeks of being on it. So maybe we'll hit 100 in the first month and no, it won't be life changing income, but I did sign up for one more, uh, uh, campaign this week.

So I think we're up to like 12 campaigns now, really rolling in the dollars. But again, I don't use it in a very robust way. So we'll see how that goes. Um, that dovetails nicely into yours though. You're talking, uh, I saw Amazon influencer this week.

Morgan: Yeah, and I will say, I didn't put this in the thing, but I will just make a quick note that I, based on what you said you did with Creator Connections, I went ahead and signed up for my first three, so maybe I'll have something to report, um, by the next podcast.

We'll find out. But again, I'm not getting too excited, and it was just, I just used videos I already shot, so. Okay. Not, not exactly a big risk here, anyway.

Jared: It's, it's, if you're gonna, if you're gonna go that way, it's pretty easy.

Morgan: Yeah, basically. I mean, you know, as you know, which dovetails into my next little point here, I spend way too much time on my videos.

So I'd already addressed so many of the things that these people want us to showcase in the Creator Connection videos. So they were already, you know, probably 10 times more than what anybody else was even really expecting out of that anyway. So it was easy for me to do. Um, but speaking of which, okay, so I am.

Um, I'm, I'm struggling guys on Amazon influencer between editing my videos and not editing my videos as covered on this podcast before I feel like I'm coming to like an Amazon editing anonymous meeting right now, right? But I'm coming clean. I've been editing up until like two weeks ago, 100 percent of my videos.

I'm talking like B roll and doing all sorts of fancy stuff. And again, I'm not like a professional video editor or YouTube. It's fancy in my mind. It's fancy for Amazon Influencer, but it like, it's not exactly cinematic stuff here either. Okay. But still it takes up a lot of time. And Jair told me a few weeks ago, Hey, look.

And also, very kind mentions, mentions this in his course too, very consistent, says, Hey, look, don't spend a lot of time editing this videos. Go rapid fire, rapid fire, rapid fire. I have started doing more of that in the interim and seen a lot of success and spent way less time on the videos. So my ROI is a lot higher.

But, but I bring to you people today, one use case for spending a little bit of time on select videos. Okay, so I was listening to last week's episode on edge pursuits on the red eye fly I had last weekend and I was listening to Jared and Spencer talk about those stats, right? And Jared, I don't know if you want, if you remember exactly what those stats were, or if you want to give a real quick recap, but it was something you determined.

It was something like 10 clicks per video or something like that.

Jared: 10 to 11 clicks. Yeah. Somewhere in that range where all three accounts, we looked at a brand new one, mine and Spencer's were averaging 10 to 11 clicks per month across all three accounts. And that's 10 to 11 clicks per video per month.

Fascinating.

Morgan: So here's the thing guys. Now, again, I'm spending way too much time on my videos. Okay. So this is a trade off and I do not think I needed to do this on all of them, but I'm averaging 33. 5, six clicks per video.

Jared: You shared this with me offline and I'm like, what?

Morgan: No, I was, well, on the red eye, I can't sleep on planes.

So I was like pretty sleep deprived. And so I'm listening to the podcast and I'm on wifi. So, and again, apologies, by the way, for texting you probably like in the middle of the night. I don't even know when I sent those messages, but I was like, Jared, I think I'm reading this wrong. Would you look at my panel?

Cause I think I'm looking at the wrong place cause this can't be right. And then the next day you were like, what the heck? No, that's right.

Jared: Yeah.

Morgan: Now, again, now I would say, you know, only, only a certain number or percentage of my videos, I would say roughly about 30%. I would say are really getting those massive clicks because they are so well produced and getting like a ton of those views.

Right. But again, I think there's a place to strategically do this. Now devil's advocate. My conversion rate is also significantly lower than spent on average, because I am getting so many clicks. My conversion rate is an average of 11 percent right now versus about 20%, which is what you guys are saying.

But if the, if you math it out a little bit, I still come out ahead just because of the ridiculous number of clicks and volume that I'm getting. So. I think, and I will keep reporting back on this, but here's my current strategy on Amazon Influencer. I'm going to go about like, I'm going to take like a 90 10 principle.

I'm going to go 90 percent not editing. And then that 10 percent on products where I think I have something very unique to show or have a very, very unique video idea that I think can get a lot of clicks and have a lot of longevity. And perhaps, especially on products that have a lot of sales volume on Amazon, I think I'm still going to go after it.

Jared: Let me ask you a few things. Because this could also play into the clicks. Do you have, or do you create custom thumbnails for your videos?

Morgan: So I've gone back and forth on this as well. Um, and I've actually found that. A custom theme thumbnail with text only works if you are really showcasing something very specific, like doing some kind of like a test.

Like for instance, I'm probably going to be doing this blender test next week because I've got a couple of those like little portable blenders and be doing a side by side and be like, Hey, look, this is what it looks like when I'm testing, like. Ice cubes in these blenders. Can these tiny blenders handle ice cubes?

Something with text on like that. That is very, very specific that I'm showing that almost has an entertainment value to again, maybe what was convert is high. That's when I think a custom thumbnail really works outside of that. I've noticed for me, at least that the number one thing that makes a difference in the thumbnail department.

Isn't really text or isn't whether or not it's super fancy or pretty it's whether or not the product is full focus. Right. Like, like I have this bottle of, Oh, even better yet. No, I have my, my, my grow with Google notebook here. And I'll just demonstrate that I got the Google publisher conference back when they loved me and I, before I would like show the product like this, right, which is like my face and the product, then all of a sudden I started going full frame and I'm like, okay, here's the product, right, where that's pretty much all you see from From top to tail, those thumbnails actually worked way better than even my overproduced ones or anything else that I had.

So to me, it's really more about like, you know, full frame, this is the product is very clear what I'm talking about, unless you were showing something very specific.

Jared: I think, and obviously I would, Spencer and I talked about it and maybe I'll do it. I was talking with, um, someone on our team this week at my agency and I'm like, can we pull this as like a study like this off?

And they were like, yeah, we totally could. So maybe we'll actually do it. But. Your situation in terms of the clicks per video is such an anomaly in my head. Having gotten pretty experienced in the Amazon influencer program, what I think It very well likely might be, is that you have made some videos about some really heavily searched products, products that get a ton of searches.

And more than likely in those cases, because your videos are so much better than everybody else's, they're ending up in spots, one spots, two spots, three. And because of that, you're getting so many clicks. Like there are certain products that just sell like gangbusters on Amazon. They're hard to get in the carousel.

I've had people ask me this week, like, Hey, if it's a big selling product and there's 10 spots in the carousel and all 10 are taken by a video, do I go for it? I even bother what your, it seems. I would imagine are going after those. And because of the video quality you're doing are probably ending up in the first couple of spots and getting so many clicks, and that's what's causing these metrics to go so high.

We just got to work on you selling better. You got to get that conversion rate up. I

Morgan: think that's the problem, right? Because in my quick videos, my easy videos, I sell in my entertainment videos, I'm more doing something fun, like a demonstration or doing something more entertaining. And I think that's why the conversion rate's so low, but again, the clicks are really high.

So, you know, you take it or leave it.

Jared: It's great. So those numbers are so interesting. Congratulations. I mean, you know, you're doing very well. How many videos are you at now? How many months roughly are you at just to share so people listening can kind of get an idea around it? Sorry.

Morgan: Oh, for sure. So it says here that I am currently at, and it's weird Jared, because I know that this, I know we talked about my conversion rate being 11 percent on the other screen, but on this screen it says my conversion is 36.

73, so I don't know how this stuff works, but anyway, I have 197 videos, um, on just Influencer alone, alone past 30 days I've made 792. Uh, 6, 613 clicks and on this screen, it says my conversion is 36. 73, but I think you've got to look at the app to get the accurate one, right? Cause I, that's where it says 11 for some reason.

Jared: Very, yeah, very, very confusing. I totally agree. Um, the conversion rate I found to be the most accurate is the one that's on the, uh, the same page as the, uh, uh, you know, your standard Amazon associates looking graph, I guess that's the best way to say it.

Morgan: Those numbers are wildly different. But anyway, that's, yeah, those are the stats.

And honestly, I'm pretty happy with that, to be real with you.

Jared: It's really good. It's really good. Congratulations. Um, well, fun update. It's definitely been a lot of Amazon influencer of late and for good reason. Um, let's move into our weird niches. I'm actually very excited about this. This happened, uh, this past week.

So I was, um, uh, at the beach with my family. This is the weird niche segment, by the way, I'm transitioning, but it's a personal story about a weird niche. And, uh, uh, so I was at the beach last week with my family on a Friday. I'm there with my kids. I'm walking down the beach with my, um, with my son and we look over and he's like, Dad, that is an awesome sandcastle.

And I walk over. I'm like, man, this is a really nice sandcastle. I could never build something like this. And lo and behold, there is someone there with tools teaching a family how to build sandcastle. And sure enough. What would you know? I start talking to the guy, he's very friendly and he runs his own business, San Diego Sandcastle, uh, San Diego Sandcastles.

And the weird niche that we're talking about today is this website, san diego sand.com. Uh, so this is someone who will come out, it's a small business and he will build sandcastles with you. Um, it's. Frankly, very interesting. The sandcastles are super cool. Let me go ahead and show you a few of the sandcastles.

He has up on his website. It was like the one that we were looking at the website slow, by the way. It's a very old school website. The ones we were looking at were like castles. He was doing a castle with them. But here's a crocodile. Uh, or an alligator, I guess. Uh, here's like a, a Jenga corners and curves sort of thing we've got on the screen.

Packing a punch, a punch going through a stone wall. This is a, sandcastle, folks. This is crazy. Here we've got Snoopy. Oh my gosh, it's

Morgan: Snoopy! I love

Jared: that one! So cool, right? It's like, it's like

Morgan: the classic Snoopy where he's got like the aviator goggles and he's on top of his doghouse. That's adorable.

Jared: It's amazing, right?

It's like really good. Like these are, and again, he's helping you, but he's, he's kind of, there's this experience where you hire him to come out. Here's that leprechaun for St. Patrick's day. Oh my gosh. Look at the chimney with by the chimney with care. It's a Christmas theme. Um, so, um, what, uh, you know, you got to get into it here.

Let's see. Um, basically you can come here and, uh, what he says is it's 160 for the first two participants, 20. Each for up to five additional participants and then you can move into the group rates. Um, uh, he says it takes two to three hours Um, your instructor is scheduled for the full three hours But with younger kids they often finish closer to two.

So two to three hours is a good planning guideline. Um, and uh, So he kind of goes into it here and uh, he has this whole reservation system Um, so you can make a reservation here. He's got his calendar Right here. So, you know, here we are we can look at his calendar and uh, you know, there's availability I will say Um, although he's really he's booked out this whole week this week and next week He's he's pretty booked out probably the end of summer coming pretty soon.

But like let's say he wanted to do it Oops, um on august 25th. Let's go september 1st. Here we go. September 1st sunday. September 1st. You can do 10 a. m or 2 p. m um and uh And yeah, like, you know, you got to figure he could do two of these a day Um, if he could do two a day Yeah, 9 30 and 1 30 at, uh, you know, I mean, if I did it with my family, it'd be about 200 bucks.

Um, and so, uh, uh, whoops, sorry, folks. I wasn't sharing that tab, but about 200 bucks. So you could do two of those. You can do 400 bucks a day. Um, I mean, this is not a classic niche site, classic weird niche where you're making money on ads and affiliate sales, but I don't know, not a bad little business. 400 bucks a day.

2, 000 a week, uh, 8, 500, 9, 000 a month. That's not a bad little business there.

Morgan: Talk about organic ads, man. Nothing really beats showing off on the beach. It's like, what, what kid wouldn't see that and be like, Hey dad, can we, I want to make that sandcastle. Hey dad, why doesn't your sandcastle look like that sandcastle?

That grows itself. That's, that's a great idea.

Jared: I mean, you get a great picture for social media right out of the gate. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to say you hired someone. You can just say, Hey, I'm in San Diego building sandcastles, a family, just kind of a normal day here. Right. Exactly

Morgan: what I was thinking.

Jared: Right. But I mean, it just goes to show you, like, if you know, you've got travel time and all that, but like, if you, if, You know, once you learn your craft nine, 9, 000 a month for what would be, you know, a very, uh, just doing the math on it, a very normal 40 hour or less per week, uh, sorry, work week, you know, like that's, um, that's, that's not bad at all.

Uh, uh, you know, if you want to go after your own business and stuff, you could hire people out for that. Pay them a certain amount. And then you're taking a cut of that. You can get multiple people on board and maybe he does, I don't know. But if you could double book Saturdays and Sundays or the more popular days and have multiple instructors, I mean, the tools weren't very expensive.

They were probably a couple hundred bucks in total as you walk around with Home Depot buckets and stuff like that. So. Such an interesting niche. What a cool, small business.

Morgan: Oh, is he getting anything on, uh, organic or is it just totally word of mouth?

Jared: Thank you. I, I was so excited about it. I didn't even pull up the numbers here.

Uh, I'll get it in the agenda. H ref. So appreciate it. Thank you for subtly telling me that. Hey, Jared, come on. Dr 12, which again for such a small, weird niche, I actually think Dr 12 is kind of interesting. It's not that bad. 224 backlinks. We could look at some of the backlinks. Only 127 keywords. Only about 100 search traffic.

But I mean, again, ranks number one for San Diego search castles. Um, ranks number five. For the global the U. S. Search professional sandcastles, um, ranks number seven for best sandcastles. Uh, you know, so I mean, not many keywords around San Diego sandcastle building, but I think he's on the first page for the majority of them.

Morgan: Yeah, he's doing a lot better than a lot of small businesses I see. You know, um, one of my, one of my, um, one of the companies I kind of like oddly inherited back in the day, just because of my graphic design and web building stuff was, um, a company by my father in law where he hosts a bunch of old, uh, cabin rental companies and that kind of stuff.

And just websites that were made like ASB. net that like, I'm just hosting, but I've already warned them. We don't even know how to update these anymore. Like circa 1995, you know, yep. But this guy is doing a lot better than a lot of other small businesses I see. I'll tell you that much. Like I see people that just throw up a basic website all the time, kind of don't touch it.

Don't really do anything. Don't really have a lot of pictures. Don't really have, you know, the fun story to tell. Like this guy has set up, um, this guy's doing a great job with a small business. He has a perfect web presence and it's ever proof that you don't need to have like some massive, you know, site out there somewhere to do all the heavy lifting for you.

He's, he's got a great site to support him and a great small business as well. So yeah, that's, that's a pretty cool one. I like that one, Jared.

Jared: I pulled it up while you were talking. Look at this. I wasn't able to share it cause I don't have a subscription to New York times, but he landed a, um, a very.

Awesome link from the New York Times just two months ago. Best. Yeah, it's an article by the New York Times published in, I guess it's, uh, late May. So three months ago, uh, the best kid friendly beach families. And, uh, it talks about a beach in San Diego and, uh, it quotes San Diego sandcastles and the sand sculptor JT Australia.

So, yeah, that's, that's, that's about good as good of a link as you can get in the world out there. A, uh, very niche relevant incon in content link from the New York Times.

Morgan: And by the way, that entire site was built on Wix according to CMS detect, just for any of those geeks out there listening. Curious.

Yeah,

Jared: it's, uh, it's a very wy site, so, yeah. Anyways. Alright, well, um, we're, we're, we are, we are getting there on time, but hey, we have gotta talk about your weird edge now. You might be the first person ever to have not actually told me which weird niche you want me to pull up on screen yet. So I'm, I'm ready to go.

You tell me which URL you want me to pull up. I got them all up right here.

Morgan: Let's see. All right. This is the interesting thing about mine and I'll promise I'll be quick. This is kind of boring this week in my personal opinion because, uh, you know, I asked, uh, my social media people. Hey, can you guys give me like a G rated weird niche site?

And apparently the internet has a, as a questionable relationship with the word term G rated. So, um, we ended up back on this. Uh, let's do the one of the hyphens in it. This hyphen person, hyphen does hyphen not hyphen exist. com. Is what we're going to do

Jared: today.

Morgan: Yeah, I like this for a variety of reasons.

And again, I think a lot of y'all have seen this before. Um, but there are a couple of like interesting things about this website. So I'll just go ahead and do it. In fact, my biggest concern about bringing this one on the podcast is that I thought maybe niche pursuits has covered it before. Um, Jared said not to his memory.

Uh, so here we are,

Jared: which is suspect.

Morgan: Yeah, right. Mine's mine's the same. I get it. But this is basically a website that. As one function, you go to the website, you click a button and it automatically generates an AI image of a person that does not exist in real life. Um, now there are a couple interesting things about this one.

I pulled up this one because it seems to be one of the biggest ones that's also monetized. So we can kind of speculate a little bit about their earnings, which is always fun. Um, but. It's also interesting because this and other sites like it have been around for a while, actually, it's easy to be like, oh, with mid journey today, you know, they're probably just using that technology, whatever.

No, this site, for instance, has been around since 2021 and doing really well. So this would have been if you found this back in 2021, you know, before all the chat GPT and the mid journey stuff came out, you'd have thought this was just like magic and a hat. Right? And it is producing pictures that are that mid journey quality.

Honestly, I would even say better because they're, they're very photo realistic. Um, on this particular site, all the only inputs it asks for is the gender, the age and the ethnicity. Um, Um, and you can just keep hitting that refresh button and it gives you a little square with somebody's random mugshot in it.

And that person has the site, uh, in his name does not exist. And it's got ads all the way around it. To give you the stats on this particular one, and I'm going to give you one other fun fact about this particular niche too. This has an authority, authority score of 42. It gets 71. Oh, hang on a second. Yes.

Okay. Authority score of 42. It's got organic search traffic of 71. 5 and it's got over 11, 000 backlinks in this by the way.

The other interesting thing about this particular site. is that it also seems to be a very popular niche, a very competitive niche, where a lot of their competitors are also doing pretty dang well at doing. In fact, that's why I listed multiple URLs. Uh, and we don't need to pull them all up, but, because they're all very, very similar.

Another site is this person does not exist, exact same name without the hyphens, dot com. This person does not exist without the hyphens, authority score 51, organic search traffic 83, 000, 2. 6 million backlinks, but no.

Jared: Does this,

Morgan: I

Jared: have that one up right now. This person does not exist. com. All I'm getting is just a picture.

Like there's no fields. There's no dropdowns there. Are there any ads? There's not even a refresh button.

Morgan: It's just, you refresh the page. It's literally just a full frame picture. You refresh the page. It gives you a new one. Every single. That's all it's doing. There's also unrealperson. com, same story. It's doing like 14, 000 in traffic.

This one's a little bit newer. Looks like that launched in like 2022. Um, it's essentially, again, doing the same thing. Just randomly generating images of people that do not exist. I was just kind of interested in this because I've seen it. I've seen, I've seen sites and sites like this, uh, similar to this floating around on the internet, you know, for the past few years now, it's kind of interesting to me for, well, quite frankly, because with all the different image generating, uh, software out there today, you would think that sites like this wouldn't, would no longer exist, become, uh, you know, deprecated, but here they are, they seem to be living their best lives and probably making some money along the way.

Jared: So I pulled up in Ahrefs on the screen here, this, that, the one with all the hyphens, we'll just leave it at that.

Morgan: Also,

Jared: whoever said a

Morgan: hyphen URL doesn't work, man, here we are, living proof.

Jared: Oh, but look at this. So we're recording this on the 15th of August. And look what happened on the 14th of August to the 15th of August in Ahrefs.

Um, the site's organic traffic, uh, doubled overnight. Uh, could this be core update related? I don't know. Usually hrefs doesn't pick it up that fast. Looks like they leapfrogged from spot two to spot one for the search term. This person does not exist at 23, 000 searches a month going just from two to one for that one search term.

It looks like has doubled their traffic overnight.

Morgan: It's interesting too. I have to wonder, I'm curious your take on this. Do you think their top keyword is this person does not exist? Is that a brand search or are that many people to the tune of, let me see, 22, 000 searching the term this person does not exist?

Jared: I think it's a brand search.

Morgan: I would hope, right? I think it's a brand

Jared: search. I don't, like, I'm just thinking about my dad or my wife or other people that aren't like savvy at what we do. I don't think they'd ever go like, Hmm, I'm looking for a fake person. What would I type to get a fake person? You know, like they would type fake person photo or fake person photo generator or something else.

Right. I feel like that's a branded search.

Morgan: I would hope so. Maybe there's some kind of a crossover, like a Venn diagram with like dating websites, maybe with a catfish as well. There could be those people out there, right?

Jared: I like the site. I mean, I think a lot of people have heard about it, but I don't know if people have really thought about the metrics behind it and how much money it's probably generating.

I mean, these, these sites are, um, numerous and probably with the traffic making decent money.

Morgan: I do imagine they're staying on the site for a little, some time as well, generating until they get that image that they're looking for. Or

Jared: that's a good point. You're hitting refresh so many times to get the right image.

You're continually refreshing the ads

Morgan: Yeah, I bet you the metrics are just about through the roof Which is why i'm looking at the search traffic and i'm like, yeah, I bet they're doing just fine

Jared: Yeah, their rpms have got to be really good. That's a really good point. Oh Oh, well morgan. We are at time and over time.

It was quite the busy week I think it's quite all right that we went a little bit long today. Um, hey everyone. Thanks for sticking around Um, we had so much in the news Exciting updates on the side hustle. And then I think some pretty good weird niches, Morgan. Thanks again. You're becoming a regular great as always appreciate it.

And thanks for stopping by.

Morgan: Thanks so much.

Jared: All right, everyone. See you next week.

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