Get ready for an exciting new episode of Niche Pursuits News, where Spencer and co-host Jared Bauman of 201 Creative dive deep into the fascinating world of AI, SEO, and website building!
First up on their agenda is Google’s policy on AI-generated content and EEAT. At the moment, Google does not distinguish between AI and human-generated content and is not requiring creators to label their content. The hosts talk about why this may be and about how Google has also shifted its position on this topic and will probably continue to do so.
They also discuss EEAT and AI, as artificial intelligence-generated content can’t claim any kind of experience. As this is a topic that is constantly evolving, they agree to discuss it as changes arise.
The next topic Jared and Spencer talk about is OpenAI’s potential plans to open an AppStore for ChatGPT. This could include customized AI chatbots, which several companies are already selling.
The hosts then briefly talk about how the INP report has now been added to Google Search Console and is now a part of the Core Web Vitals report.
GA4 comes up when Jared asks Spencer about his thoughts on the new analytics, and the hosts talk about their experience using it.
In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the episode, Spencer talks about his new side project, the WordPress plugin Rank Logic, which helps users track their SEO performance. It’s a real game-changer that enables content creators to understand what’s working and what’s not and tracks changes they make as well as content and author performance. He’s even considering incorporating GA4 into the app to make it the data user-friendly. The launch is imminent, so stay tuned!
Jared talks about his new side hustle using the Amazon Influencer Program, reporting that in his first month, he will have made around $1000 from 229 videos. He talks about how daily earnings from the program fluctuate a lot and how inspiring it is to be able to build such a lucrative income stream in just one month.
As for Weird Niche Sites, Jared goes first and talks about the site People of Walmart, which features user-generated photos of the people that shop at Walmart. He talks about how a site like this could be created for any number of stores, although he and Spencer point out how normally it’s very risky to use the name of a company as part of your domain name.
Spencer shares his site, which is Psychic High School, a humorous site. It’s updated actively but is a low-traffic site that’s ranking for very few keywords. The hosts talked about why the site might have been created and they have a good laugh about the content.
You won’t want to miss this episode, where the hosts share insight, opinions, and a few surprises along the way!
This Episode is Sponsored by Search Intelligence
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transcription
Spencer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast Today are we, we are recording an episode of this week in Niche Pursuits News. And I’m Spencer, of course, your host for this particular show. And I have my co-host. With me, Jared, how you doing?
Jared: Very well. New background. I’m sure people are like, what the heck is that?
Really, Jared? I’m I’m, it’s summertime here in the States. I’m visiting family, so I’m confined to the attic for today’s recording.
Spencer: Yeah. Jared is dedicated even while he is on vacation. He can’t miss an episode. So I appreciate you, you joining us in here, but I think you sound good. Look good.
The background’s a little bit different but we’re gonna, we’re gonna rock and roll. Still. Still got the mic. I brought the
Jared: mic with me. You know, like you say the news doesn’t stop no matter what we’re doing, so, you know, so.
Spencer: Yeah. You know, we are coming into summertime and it is a little bit crazy.
I mean, my sister was here in town with, you know, a few kids this past week. She just left yesterday. And so our house has been a little bit crazy with my kids and her kids. They just left. So I’ve got a very quiet house. But Jared’s managing here on his summer vacation. So anyways, I think let’s jump into the news.
What do you say? Let’s do looking
Jared: forward to talking the news here.
Spencer: Okay, let’s jump right into it. We the first topic that we want to talk about is Google and ai. This is like, Always an important subject, but there’s actually a little bit of news that, that Google has given us here. Google is forming a policy on AI content and E E A T.
And so let me just share this so people can kind of see what we’re talking about. This is a search engine journal article that kind of talked about this, and so. Google has actually commented on whether or not you should label your content as artificial intelligence content. Okay. And so it, it’s an interesting article because mm-hmm.
Google’s Gary eyes, if I’m saying that properly answer a lot of questions. That search Central Live, that was in Tokyo just recently. And so a lot of this information is taken from that and a Japanese. Blogger that, that wrote up that discussion. But essentially it, it’s, it talks about okay, whether or not you should label your content as generated by artificial intelligence.
So it, it actually says in the article that, that Google is apparently does not distinguish between AI generated content or not. At least that’s according to this. Particular discussion that Gary says, Hey, Google is not internally tagging this as AI content or not. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts up to this point on, on the discussion here, Jared.
Jared: Well, I mean, it makes sense to touch on like the storied history so far on Google and AI and how they treat ai. And it was just a year or two ago that they were kind of telling us, I, I don’t have it in front of me, but you know, in no short, in no short way, basically like, Hey, don’t do AI content and then.
We had the pressure come from you know, chat G P T initially, but obviously all these language models that are coming out with advanced AI and whatnot. And so they’ve certainly changed their stance as they’ve moved into their generative search experience and, and barred in these types of things.
It would be hard to, to think that they’ve had this big change of heart, but maybe they don’t have a change of heart. They’re just not necessarily tactically labeling it separately than than regular content.
Spencer: Right, and I mean, honestly, maybe there, there’s always been discussion of can Google even detect what is AI content now with so many tools and half of it’s human edited or human written combined with ai, right?
Like it’s sort of become this cyborg content that is, you know, part AI pipe, part human. Can Google even detect that? So maybe that’s part of it. You know, and but the other part is maybe Google just doesn’t care as long as it meets the quality guidelines, which, you know, we’ll get into here in just a second.
But You know, it’s interesting because the EU is asking social media companies to label any content that is AI generated as AI generated content. So there is this push, yeah. From certain either governments or other organizations that people should be labeling their content, as, you know, generated with AI or used AI or however that label may be.
But Google ha it, it’s mentioned in this particular article that Google is not requiring bloggers or content creators to label their content as generated by artificial intelligence. And so that’s, that’s kind of interesting, right? They’re not. Coming out strongly. One way or another, they’re basically leaving it up to the publisher to decide, okay, do you wanna label it?
Or do you not wanna label it? And you know, I, I find that interesting and I, I, I don’t know what the right answer is. Right. Should you label your content, and maybe I’ll ask you outright, Jared, do you label content or do you recommend that people label their content as generated by artificial intelligence?
Jared: Well, I mean, I, I, I’m glad you brought up the, kind of the European Union stance on it because there’s, there’s obviously also all these political pressures from varying countries and you know, we obviously, we know Italy and Canada have taken a very strong stance against it. And then we have the eu, which is, they brought us GDPR and all these things for email, so you could see them follow in a similar vein.
With ai. I mean, to me this screams of links and the last 10 to 15 to 20 years of Google’s policy on links and saying, you know, varying their stance, but to some degree, paid links are against our terms and conditions, but yet paid links have and do exist and mm-hmm There’s a whole ecosystem for it. And the reality is that Google just has to figure out how to manage around that.
And that’s, this is different, but it feels very similar, like whatever Google is telling us versus what is gonna actually happen. I mean, just cuz Google, let’s say they were to come out and say you have to label your content as ai. I mean, what, what do we have to like you know, submit a report every time we publish a piece of content that shows like, how, how does someone actually do that?
It feels like saying don’t pay for links. Only build links organically. Yet links are one of the most important factors of the algorithm. So we’re gonna have to just figure out a way to, to police it. Outside of that, it, it feels more like that they’re going this direction with it and instead of saying, don’t do this like they do with links, they’re kind of taking a little bit more of an open approach and just trying to make sure their algorithm rewards what they actually want to be rewarded.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and
Spencer: you know, Google, again, it’s reiterated in this article that Google has essentially said We’re okay with. Content generated with AI tools as long as it is that helpful content. Does it, can you still meet that E E A T? And we can jump into that here in just a second as well. But I think that’s similar is that so much content is going to be generated and already is generated by artificial intelligence or at least assisted, right?
If. If the AI helps you come up with a title for your article, if it helps you brainstorm a list of, of bullet points that you should cover in your article, do you have to include the AI tag even though you wrote most of the article? There’s so many situations and variations that make it perhaps cumbersome to even.
You know, hey, my human editor spent hours on this, but AI really helped a lot. Like, I, I don’t know, I don’t know what the answer is. And so Google is sort of in the same boat as, I guess what I just said is they don’t know what the answer is. They’re leaving it up to us as bloggers and content creators too.
Tag our content, as you know, AI generated or not. And I think they’re kind of leaving it at that for now.
Jared: Now, here’s a, here’s an argument that would counter. Labeling AI labeling your article as ai. And I th the article points out, this is an interesting comment. I agree. It’s a very interesting comment.
Read into Google’s comments with a large grain of salt, right? Like we all know that by now. Obviously, any, any major company like read into their PR statements of the big grain of salt. But one of the one of the lines in the article says one of the most interesting comments by Google was a reminder that their algorithms signals.
Are based on human content, and because of that will rank natural content at the top. So it seems that. Google has said, Hey, we built this entire algorithm purposely designed to rank content that was produced by humans, which somewhat explains a lot of the E E A T emphasis. They’re increasingly placing on con content and also would argue to the fact that you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you labeled your content as ai.
If the number one search engine in the world is all geared towards looking for human content signals. Mm-hmm.
Spencer: Yeah, it’s it’s interesting. Google has been trained on human content. Open AI has been trained on human content, right? And so it, it, it’s kind of a, a, a circle, right? Yeah. In terms of, okay, AI is supposed to be producing comment content like humans can Google, you know, determine So, I, I don’t know.
And so I, I think you’re absolutely right that that brings us kind of here to the additional discussion in the article of how does Google handle AI content and E E A T, right? There’s been a lot of emphasis placed on this and in particular, you know, the human experience. Is there any firsthand experience you can put in your articles and using that language that sort of proves that, hey you know, we’ve used the product or we’ve actually been there, you know, we’ve reviewed the location images.
All these things can help. You know, it, a artificial intelligence at this time cannot claim experience in any topic or of a product. Right.
Jared: It’s, yeah, they basically said in that, going on that Google responded that they’re having internal discussions about it and haven’t yet arrived at a policy.
So a lot of this is just a. You know, a lot of this is like a, hey, we’re, we’re still not really sure, but but thank you for asking.
Spencer: Yep, yep. Exactly. And that they’ll announce their policy when they have one when they’ve, they’ve settled on that. And so I, I just find it fascinating again the discussion, the, the entire discussion of that, Hey, They’re forming a policy.
This is kind of where we’re at in this evolution. I mean, again, it’s only been six, seven months. Yeah. Since we even really strongly started talking about, I. AI content since open ai was released. We’ve kind of come to the point where Google said it’s okay if you have artificial intelligence content as long as it is high quality, as long as it is useful and meets those e E A t guidelines as much as possible.
But be on the lookout for additional policies from Google as it relates to this entire subject. Yeah, and I
Jared: think maybe my last comment on the whole thing is I’m really curious to see how Google’s published documentation of E E A T develops, to my knowledge, I mean, they haven’t really published a lot of updated E E A T stuff as it relates to ai.
It still feels like it’s very much geared towards. You write the content, here’s how to make sure that it’s expert, authoritative, trustworthy, and it doesn’t feel like, I don’t know if they need a new E E A T for AI content or if they need to really infuse an AI approach into that, but it does. I’m just so curious.
Like a year or two from now, like. Will we be having somebody like Kyle Roof back on the podcast to talk about if you’re publishing an AI blog post or an AI website, here are the number one, number two, number three factors that help you obtain that e e a T signal that is needed. Like I’m curious to see how the algorithm develops to tweak the e a t signals, as it were air quotes for, for an ai kind of dominated blog, blog environment maybe.
Yep.
Spencer: So in our second subject for the day before we move on to shiny objects, shenanigans, and then of course our one weird niche that we’ll share at the end. OpenAI considers App store for chat, G P T. And Jared, I know that you have recently been playing around with open AI and the plugins that they have there.
And so maybe you can kind of share your thoughts on this particular article.
Jared: Yeah. So I mean, it, it, it makes sense. I mean, there are currently apps and plug-ins that you can integrate into your chat sheet. Bt it doesn’t come outta the box, so you have to kind of enable it and then select which which plug-ins, that’s what I was playing with this week is plug-ins, mm-hmm.
And select which plugins you want to to enable and utilize. And then when you’re. Using chat, g p t, you, you have to kind of tr check the box for which ones you want to be utilizing during that particular chat. And I mean this, you know, right outta the gate reminds me of what Apple did with the App Store.
And obviously that was, you know, 20, 25 years ago, but, This idea that I’m gonna build a phone, but then allow other outside parties to come on and whether for free or whether for a price you know, add value through custom development. Right? It’s kind of this open source type of model. And so this seemed to make so much sense given the way the CEO has talked about how the chat, G P t open AI concept is very, you know, nonprofit oriented, these sorts of things.
Mm-hmm. I, I’m barely in on the plugin and using it and stuff. I was actually trying to see if I could give chat G p t, I’ll say complex data sets and see if it could pull out insights for me. Right. So imagine like giving it. Month over month reports that we would send to clients, and then giving it 12 of those over the last 12 months and actually asking it to give me insights.
Mm-hmm. And so I was trying to see if I could utilize some of the math plugins like Wolf Rum and these sorts of things, and had limited luck. But I, I, I mean, having played with it this week, this seems part and parcel for where open AI should go. Yeah.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And it sounds like, I mean, the focus is on sort of chat bots, right?
Allowing companies to create different chat bots that maybe solve the solution exactly as you just described in your particular use case. Maybe there’s a company that comes out, you know, a way to analyze all your financials over the last 12 months and come, you know, give you insights and, and things like that.
Maybe that’s one particular model that is on the app store for OpenAI. And So the focus on customized AI chat bots that they’re considering. And what’s interesting that I was unaware of is that Salesforce and Microsoft mm-hmm. Already have marketplaces. Salesforce
Jared: has a fantastic one we use for, for
Spencer: AI chat chatbots.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jared: Oh, I didn’t know it was for AI chatbots already. I’m sorry. I just meant in general, Salesforce
Spencer: has one. Yeah. Yeah, they already have stores selling AI chat bots using OpenAI technology. So but now OpenAI is basically saying, Hey, we wanna openly compete with you guys. Okay. We have our own chatbot.
Store, right. Our own app store that, you know, people can sell customized chat bots.
Jared: I, I misread that, but I’m glad you clarified. I, I think it’s, I mean, why not? I mean, this is, this is so interesting, especially if, I mean, I think open AI and all the, the language models and, and AI models have their hands full.
Just trying to keep up with technology as it is. Let others kind of come in and add their specialty to, to do the things. Kinda like what we were talking about. I’m sure we can think of five or six examples right now that. We could use it for, I mean, I’m on a trip right now and I was looking it over and I kind of wished I’d use the Expedia chat g p t plugin.
You know, like that could have been an interesting use case. I thought this, it was interesting, Spencer, to, I, I’d love to hear your thoughts cuz it doesn’t sound like you’ve used any of the plugins. And it does say somewhere in here. See if I can find it that the however oh, earlier this year, OpenAI launched chat, g p D plugins allowing users to interact with websites such as OpenTable, Shopify, or Expedia.
However, these plugins haven’t become popular have not become popular highlighting the need for further product development and market research. So maybe the plugin experience is a bit cumbersome in this chat type of nature would be a better way for companies to utilize it,
Spencer: right? Yeah, maybe so.
Exactly. I have not really played around with the plugins much other than Yeah, just. Sort of seeing what’s there and, and seeing a couple of examples that, that are interesting. But I think there’s so much potential Yeah. For individual entrepreneurs and companies to come in with, I guess call it a, a chatbot if you will, but, you know, just a tool of some sort to help people solve problems.
And if there’s a marketplace that there could be a huge opportunity here for individuals to do that. So I think it’s interesting for entrepreneurs to maybe pursue and consider what problems they could be solving. So. And then maybe we’ll move on to our final news article. And this one will be pretty quick.
We’ll just mention this because we talked about this a couple of weeks ago that Google had announced that they’re going to add the i n P report to the Google search console under your core web vitals report. So basically all the news is, is that that happened, it is now available supposedly in your Google search console.
And so You can go ahead and take a look at that. You can see the interaction to next paint reporting is there. That’s becoming part of core web vitals. And yeah, I think Jared, you took a look at a couple of years and you saw that it was there, but there not much information.
Jared: I, apparently none of these websites I checked are triggering a an I N P issue because it just said no.
You have, I don’t remember what’d I say? It said like, you have no issues to report or something like that. So it’s there, you gotta poke around. But I did find I did find where I NP was, was yielding a result and apparently no results to, to speak of. So,
Spencer: Yeah. And so it simply just says that it classifies the URL performance in three categories.
Good needs improvement and poor, right? So if you’re good, you’re good to go. So people can check out their core web vitals report, dig into that. Just wanted to give people a heads up, basically, is all that. This is now live in Google Search Console. So that’s something that you can check out and use as needed.
Hey, that’s all I had to share
Jared: about that. Hey Spencer. If at the risk of going off script, can I ask you a question about some news that didn’t make our agenda, but maybe certainly should make next week’s agenda. And, and speaking of Google rolling out a new feature, and we, we see it’s gonna be rolled out next year and we hope that they do a good job with it.
How about GA four, hitting the hitting the mainstream in less than two weeks now?
Spencer: Boy, oh boy. You know, I have heard so much chatter about this. Most of it. Very negative. Yeah. Well people are not loving the GA four experience. And yeah, a whole variety of negative comments. It’s difficult to use.
They thought they set up their property, but now it’s not set up. All, all those sorts of things. So, I will simply say that I set mine up a long time ago in terms of at least its gathering traffic data. I have not set up all my goals and everything like that. Yeah. Which I need to do. I, I don’t love the experience there.
I. The, the reports are a lot harder to find and, and dial into what I need. But yeah, that’s, that’s my early thoughts and, and maybe when it goes live, we will do a deep dive. We could probably do a whole show on just yeah, Google Analytics four.
Jared: Yeah, I’m thinking if it’s next week in preparation or maybe the week after or something, we should talk about it.
But it’s it’s coming like, you know, we kind of all wanted to just put our head in the sand and hope the storm blew over and this one didn’t. It looks like, so, yeah, I, I share some of the same thoughts as you. I, I sa I’ve been sa I, I set it up a while back. I’ve been saving these little. Blips. I see where, here’s how to set it up so it works for you.
And I haven’t dove in yet. I’m kind of like fearful of it. I don’t even want to touch it. Cause every time I log into GA four I’m just like, I just wanna run away. But I think I gotta figure it out. But anyways, I just had to ask, since we’re we’re getting so close,
Spencer: I. We are getting so close and actually maybe that ties into our shiny object shenanigans, which we’ll, we’ll share now.
So my first one that I’ll talk about is Rank Logic. And I know I’ve mentioned this before, but that is something that I’m focusing on a lot. This is my new WordPress plugin that helps you track your SEO performance in a lot of different ways. So it will track your keywords and your Google rankings.
Show you if you’re, you’ve increased or decreased, lets you dial in at the page level, lets you dial in at the author level, you know, to see all articles that a particular author has written. How are those performing? And, and you can group different baskets of content in a variety of ways. So it helps you really analyze what’s working.
Is your new content strategy working? Is your old one working better, et cetera. And then, you know, the, the big thing is that it tracks all events that take place on your content. So if you make a content update, it automatically says, Hey, you added content, or you changed the title, or you changed the yo meta description, right?
And it notates that on your graphs so you can see that, hey on June 1st, I made these changes. By June 22nd, my traffic’s increased. I, I think I did a good job. Right? So, so the plugin automatically tracks all those changes for you. So why this maybe ties in, and I wasn’t planning on sharing this, but you asked about Google Analytics.
Four is that I am strongly considering adding a feature that essentially makes a beautiful Google Analytics tracking within your WordPress dashboard as part of Rank Logic. And so there’s we could use the Google Analytics for API to get all the data, but display it in a manner that is much more user-friendly.
And much more familiar for people that used universal analytics. And so I am talking to people to help me build that. I wasn’t planning on talking about this, so let’s keep this between you and I, Jared. Okay. Yeah. And, and the listeners this is a feature that, you know, it, it won’t be in the next two weeks, but maybe in the next couple of months that.
Very likely is, is coming down the pipeline.
Jared: Well, since it’s just the two of us talking, let me tell you what I would like. Yes. Because this is what I’ve always envisioned and I was hoping, and maybe it’s out there, maybe somebody can comment on it and then it could be piggybacked. But like for my clients, when we email them as an agency, we’ll give them monthly reports in a.
What used to be called Google Data Studio and now is Looker Studio, right? And so we take analytics and Google Search Console and a couple other things and kind of roll it up into some nice looking reports that customers or clients can play around with. And then they don’t have to navigate into their analytics account or their GSC account or these other third party accounts to kind of get data at their fingertips.
And I’m thinking like more and more as the old man, I’m like, I don’t wanna go learn Google nalytics four. I want someone to build a. A Looker studio report or a rank, you know, a plugin report that kind of just does what ga, what universal GA did for me. And then just I’ll happily pay for it.
Spencer: Yeah. All right.
Well, if you would pay for it, others would probably pay for it. So I, I’m, I hadn’t thought quite about the full reports that you mentioned, maybe almost custom reports, but eventually maybe, maybe it could get there. Right. Well,
Jared: I can get by with the basics for starters. Just perfectly fair. It’s,
Spencer: you knows, but I, I am building it in a way where it has all the Google Analytics data.
It already has all the Google search console data. And so being able to marry the two data points there’s a lot of things that, that we can be doing. And so I’m going that way. So All I was planning to share here today on, no, that, that’s fine. Apparently, I’m, I’m easy to crack is that I’m very close to launching the initial public version of Rank Logic.
The plan was to, to launch it next week. Okay. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. It, it’s, it’s ready to go. I’ll just say that I wanna make sure my support team is in a place and ready to go. And so it may still happen next week, but I may push it back another week just to make sure all our, you know, t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted there.
But the plug plugin itself is ready to go. And so I’m very excited about that. I’ve been developing it, you know, for, for over a year. It’s kind of been a very much a side project. Yeah, that’s why it fits here on the shiny object shenanigans. This week and next week it’s going to become my main focus for at least a few weeks.
So I can get it launched and out the door. But it’s, it’s kind of this cool thing to see that this little thing I’ve been dabbling on, where I’ve only been putting in, you know, 30 minutes a week to make sure my developers are building and, you know, slowly, you know, Putting a little more effort over time is finally coming to fruition.
I’ve had about 40 beta testers. I’ve gotten great feedback. I asked for testimonials. I got a ton. My homepage is full now of testimonials. So, so beta testers like it and I’m building up a wait list and gonna be launching it next week. And so it what is launched. I think is just the beginning.
I’ve got two huge features that I am planning on building. One is the Google analytics for, and the other one will be kept secret. Okay. Sure. Until another week where Jared pries it out of me unexpectedly. So, so we’ll hear about that one next week. We might hear about that one next week. So anyways, that, that’s what I wanted to share.
Not a lot of necessarily results of, Hey, I’m making this, or, Doing that, but it’s finally happening. I’m, I’m gonna be launching maybe by the time we record next week it will be live. If people wanna check it out, they can go to rank logic.com. They can get on the wait list you know, to be notified when it’s first released.
Jared: If it goes anything like Link Whisper has, I mean, it’s so exciting to think about about where it’s gonna go. And like you said, it feel, I know for you it probably, it’s been a year of work, but it feels like this hit the seam really fast, you know, so it’s like, it what do they say It takes took five years to become an overnight success.
It kind of feels like you’ve been building this, building this, building this, and then it’s just ramped up very quickly since you first started talking about
Spencer: it. Yep, absolutely. And so you know, maybe very soon instead of just having my link whisper logo here, I’ll have, you know, rank logic over, you know, here and if it goes well.
So,
Jared: Just don’t replace the shell that gets a lot of comments throughout the different
Spencer: episodes. It does it. Okay. All right. Well, we better keep that. You know, I need to add some little Easter eggs behind me every once in a while so that people can, can find, so, yeah. All right, we’re rambling now.
Jared, let’s move on to your shiny object. What are you working on?
Jared: Well, I think, I thought we could circle back on the Amazon influencer shiny object pursuit I’m making and give us some update for people. We are nearing the end of the first full month on the influencer update on the influencer.
Kind of, I don’t have to call it like the video influencer pursuit.
Spencer: Something like that. Yeah. Amazon Influencer Pursuit. I don’t know. You go and so it’s, it’s only been 30 days, or it’s only been one month since you launched your first video. So,
Jared: okay. Here’s how I’m, I had to debate this. I about how, where, where is the first month?
Where does it start? Cause I, I want to kind of report on the first month cuz that’s kind of a big deal, right? Like one month in, what did it do? So I, I settled on it this way. I said the day that the vi shoppable videos were approved. Is the day that that it started. So I think I started on a Friday. I signed up and got approved to the influencer program, but you still have to have your first three videos manually approved.
That was a Friday. I submitted those on a Monday and I think I got approved on like a Thursday. So it was like a six day gap before those, and then I’m counting that as like day one right there basically sounds
Spencer: great.
Jared: So, because I couldn’t earn any money on them until that day. So I figured that, you know, that’s kind of day one.
But, so I think we’re on day let me some, my notes here, 28. So. Day 28. So actually Friday that this goes live will be, the last day will be day 30. And so when I wake up Saturday morning I’ll have a, a full month, a full 30 days. I guess we’re calling 30 days a month. It could be 31 or 20, 30 days of data.
But so we’re, we’re getting close here and I’ll say that It’s gonna be really tight. It’s, I’m either gonna come in at just under a thousand dollars in the first month or just over a thousand dollars in the first month. It just depends on the next couple of days. Go.
Spencer: That is huge. That is amazing. So how many videos do you have?
Mm-hmm. And is the ball still rolling as fast as it was, you know, two weeks
Jared: ago? Yeah. So it slowed down, right the first week we got a hundred videos up and published and that was, that was pretty, I. Pretty good. Like that was the goal and mm-hmm. That was kinda like, wow, we actually hit that goal. And a lot of that was probably some low hanging fruit.
Right? Like and again, listen to previous episodes. If you want to learn more, we’ll be talking more about it in future podcast episodes, how this whole influencer program works. But a lot of those videos that I created were stuff that I was very familiar with using around my house. And as the weeks went by, we’re now, and this is where it’ll be on day 32, cuz I, I’m, I’m not gonna upload any more videos for a while.
We’re at 229 videos. So, I know you and I have been neck and neck. I don’t know, where are you at these days with the number of videos? Do you know? Are you, I think we were, we were like almost dead on even for a while there. So but we’re at 229 videos. We’ve earned $891 and that’s after 28 days. We had a high this past week of $114 in one day.
Spencer: That’s a huge day. That’s awesome. So
Jared: we did break the a hundred dollars per day mark once, and then it went back down. You know, it’s, it fluctuates quite a bit. I mean, we’ve had, after the first week or two, we’ve had days that are as low as like $17 and then a day as high as like $114. So it varies dramatically.
But I think by next week we’ll be able to kind of, I don’t wanna say call it, but certainly like put an end to the first focused month of this and then just start providing kind of periodic updates.
Spencer: Yeah. You know, I find that super motivational. Hopefully listeners find it motivational that man, in 30 days you’ve, you’ve built essentially a thousand dollars a month income stream, right?
And, and that. Should continue, right? Just as you add more videos, that should hopefully just build from there. I did just look up, I have 221 videos, so you are eight videos ahead of me. You, you’ve passed me up. Although I will say that. I’ve just uploaded a ton, you know, a backlog of I don’t know how many, but 25 to 30.
Right. Okay. So I may, I may jump ahead of you. We’ll on each other over the week or two.
Jared: This traveling puts a dent in it, you know, in terms of recording, although, you know, you just made me think I could probably start recording stuff here.
Spencer: You need to walk around the house. Yeah. See what your relatives have.
Jared: This is my only the, I don’t, and the nice thing is I didn’t, you don’t need sound equipment for it, you know, you can just record on your phone for most of ’em. So, I don’t know. Spencer, maybe. Maybe I, how many did you say? I got about 20. I gotta upload here.
Spencer: Yeah, you need to do 20, maybe 30. Just to be safe.
So just to be safe. But that, that is so cool. I, I, I, I think it’s awesome, right? That you’ve done it so quickly, you’ve shown that, hey, this is possible if you really just hustle. And yes, you had somebody helping you do a lot of those videos as well. But if you, if one person even just focuses and does it, I mean, they can be making 500.
$600 after a month when I went back
Jared: and checked, I made 160 of those for people who are wondering. Yeah. Wow. My business partner, Caitlin, who was on the podcast a month or so ago, she did the other, you know, whatever that is, 40, 29, 69 videos. So I still did 160 myself. So and I so going back, cuz you, we talked with you about your account a month ago or so.
Mm-hmm. And I think you said a number, I don’t remember, I should have looked it up before this, this episode. You said basically you broke it down to where, I think you said you’re making about 30 cents per day per video. Yeah, that’s about right. I, something like that, right? Mm-hmm. Somewhere in that range.
And so if I do that same math on 2,229 videos, that means that hopefully as the account grows and ages a bit, that that’s actually a $2,000 a month. You know, we’re kind of sliding into the first month with these bigger days at the end of the month, and so I, I agree with you, that’s why I brought it up, like how inspirational for someone.
I mean, yes, you have to have a certain threshold to get accepted into the program. A certain social media following and engagement, but, Outside of that. And if you are building, say, websites, we talk so much about how to build social media components of that. So there’s already so much in terms of tips and tricks out there for how to do that if you’re doing that, and then you can qualify, like that’s a big side hustle income to be able to generate in the first month.
You know, that’s mm-hmm. That, that, that’s that’s, that’s good money for, for a lot of people. So I, I agree. I hope, I hope somebody else is inspired by it.
Spencer: Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. And so just to kind of share some of my numbers as well, I mean, we have almost the exact same number of videos. Yep. I should come in very close the month of June to close to a thousand dollars as well.
So we’re, we’re very close. Mm-hmm. In terms of earnings per video, we’ll, we’ll see where we end up, but not
Jared: too far off. You hadn’t a month ago when I started this. You didn’t, you had like 30 or 40 up, right? Like it’s been, most of those uploads have been in the last month as well. So we, we mirror each other in many ways in this, in this, in this last month.
Spencer: Yep. Yeah, I sort of had a gap of not uploading as many as, as quickly, because again, I’m having other people do it for me. And so a couple of people stopped recording videos and then I worked on other projects. And then, you know, it took me a couple of weeks before I found some people and, but I, I’ve got somebody now that is, is very active.
And hopefully that continues. And so I should be ramping up quite a bit through the end of June and into July. And we’ll, we’ll see where it goes, but Yeah, it’s, it, it’s it’s cool to see the, the growth the hustle and the success so far on your end with that. So thanks for sharing the update.
Jared: Of course, come back next week and you will hear the full report on the first 30
Spencer: days. Yes, yes. Little teaser. Come back for more next week. We’re, we’re here for you next week. Very good. Let’s move on to our final subject of the day. One weird niche. This is where each of us share one weird niche site that we found out in the wild, out on the interwebs that we just find a little bit weird, you know, a little bit different from our standard blog or content website that we have.
And Jared, I’m gonna let you go first. You’re on the list here, and I will just preface this by saying that this was listed on my potential list. I’ve got a spreadsheet that I keep, that I’ve got, you know, a couple of dozen weird niche sites. This was on my list, so you sniped it and got it. I got it in there.
Share? Yep.
Jared: Well, I thought I’d follow last week where we did awkward family photos.com and slide into this week with a somewhat similar vein. I’m gonna guess most of you have heard of this. I dunno why I feel that way. I feel like this is a common website or a popularized website and it’s people of walmart.com.
Now I don’t wanna be disparaging towards towards the Walmart crowd here. We have a Walmart in town and, and we do shop at it here and there and stuff. So, This is not a this is, this does not represent my thoughts or feelings, although there are a lot of people who definitely enjoy looking at people of Walmart.
So in essence it’s a website with pictures of all the weird people that end up at Walmart. And again, to be fair, you could probably do this in a variety of stores. I see a lot of weird people at Home Depot every weekend, you know, so, but I mean, there’s some, they just, they just have the, the most shocking stuff you’ll ever have seen.
So there is definitely something to it. I’ll read the overview that they actually give, but I mean, just Spencer first thoughts on it, especially since it had already made your list. Mm-hmm.
Spencer: It’s, it’s just it’s one of those websites you can go to when you’re bored, you know, and just, it’s, it, it very much is like awkward family photos where you just go and you, you know, you just, people see people with interesting clothing choices or interesting hairstyles or whatever it may be.
So it’s, you know, it’s an entertaining website. Good for a chuckle. You’ve got Mrs. Hamburger here, right? Yeah, you know, You just kind of wonder, you know, why people make certain choices and, but that’s, that’s okay. Again, we’re not judging. I shop at Walmart. We may find our pictures on here someday.
Jerry, I was gonna say, so late at night when I, you know, I throw on my whatever, baggy, sweatpants and flip flops, I’ve got, who knows, maybe I’ll, I’ll end up on the website.
Jared: The yeah. And so just for everybody watching, if you haven’t, if somehow you’re living under a bit of a, a Walmart rock and you haven’t been, these are all, this is very user generated.
So these are all clearly cell phone snaps of of pictures of just the weird people look dress up and everything that they wear in and outta Walmart. Here’s what the, the website says. People of Walmart is a humor blog that depicts the many customers of Walmart stores across the United States and Canada.
Through funny photos and videos, people of Walmart is an entertainment blog, and this will kind of dovetail into the next part of the conversation. It’s an entertainment blog in the three ring blogs network that features over 30 of the funniest humor blogs on the internet. Walmart is the largest retail store in the United States and has millions of people visit.
And has millions of people visit stores each day wearing anything but proper attire.
Spencer: Mm-hmm. There you go. Oh, the pumpkin mad. Wow. Wow. He is, he is full command. David s Pumpkins. That’s a Saturday night live sketch. If people want to dive deep, they can look up David s Pumpkins. So yes. Okay, couple.
You, you mentioned that there’s sister websites and, and you know, it looks like up in the top navigation menu that there’s a bunch of other websites. Yeah. And
Jared: so that’s why, I mean, just real quickly, like it’s, it’s it’s a DR 62. It’s got over 528,000 backlinks with a hu over 10,000 referring domains.
It hardly ranks for any keywords, mainly cuz it’s just pictures. I imagine it only ranks for like 6,000 keywords. Again, just like last week, I’m sure the similar web traffic would be off the charts in comparison to the organic traffic. This is not a website making most of its money. Or it’s traffic at least on organic search.
But yeah, you know, the, the sister blog network that, that it referenced is very interesting because I would say that. This exists a lot in the world, right? Like we know about Red Venture, we know about Meredith, we know about these different big brands that are, that are making pushes on big, big, big media companies.
But this three ring blogs is interesting because they, they literally do, you’re on their page right now. If you’re watching the YouTube account, they have a website that showcases all the different, Funny humor blogs they’ve created people of Walmart is on there, but there’s Wedding Unveils. There’s awkward selfie ones.
There’s something about fast food text messages. Boy, we’ve, man I’ve, that is a go-to for me is awkward text messages. I love seeing those. Yep. And so they’ve done this collection of funny blogs and it’s, it’s, it’s just kind of fa it looks outta date. Like I looked at the media kit and the media kit was last updated in 2011.
On this three ring blogs website, they talk about how they can build a website for you. Is it an agency? The copyright date was last updated 2014. So the people at Walmart continues to go on, but this, this three ring blog seems to be much further behind the game.
Spencer: Right. That is very interesting.
Yeah, build yours. So yeah, people can check this out. I mean, this could almost, you know, sort we could source several weird niche sites just from three ring blogs. Yeah, right. In future weeks, And so yeah, it’s, it’s always interesting to see kind of a conglomerate, you know, that owns a bunch of blogs and see what they’re doing.
But yeah, I’m sure people of Walmart does does all right. Obviously it’s ad based books I didn’t see over here. Okay. I went to the books tab and this page can’t be found. I found another page. It was I don’t remember where I was looking, but there was another page that was broken. So it kind of makes me wonder if there.
Staying on top of the website here as much when you’ve got a main navigation page that isn’t working. But fascinating, weird niche site. Probably making a little bit of money. I looked on SimilarWeb. It looks like it’s getting, you know, at least a couple hundred thousand visitors a month. You know, just in itself with people posting, user-generated photos.
Jared: Spencer, I I wanted to ask you a quick question if I could, and you know, we don’t spend much time on it, but what do you think about with copyright issues and using the, the, the brand Walmart in not only your url, but also as just like the subject matter of this?
Spencer: Yeah, that’s interesting. I wonder why they haven’t gotten a cease and desist, right?
Because I’ve seen lots of domains that have a brand name in them that. You know, they get shut down. Yeah.
Jared: Apple’s notorious for it. Very Sony, Samsung. I’ve, I’ve have lots of friends who’ve had gotten caught up in that without even realizing they were doing it. I mean, this is a clear play at at it, right.
Spencer: I dunno, Walmart has decided not to pursue action maybe on this I think it’s extremely risky. I wouldn’t do this. Like I wouldn’t do a people of Costco or people of, you know, whatever. Yeah, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I would definitely recommend don’t put a brand name in your. In your domain. So, but they’ve gotten away with it, and so they’re probably in the clear at this point, right?
It’s been 10 plus years. Yeah,
Jared: that’s a good point of distinction. I think, you know, just be cautious. Obviously this site’s doing very successful with user generated content and hilarious and all that, but it feels like a ticking time bomb. So just, you know, be careful. Yeah.
Spencer: All right. Now, my weird niche site.
I don’t, I don’t really fully know what I’ve got on my hands here. If I’m honest. I, I just found this that’s, so I’ll share it. It’s a weird niche site. This is sci high.com. Psychic high School Now. I have to assume in my five minutes of reading and looking at this website that it is a satire.
Parody website. Like I don’t think anybody is really going to a psychic high school. I don’t think anybody believes there is a psychic high school. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is this weird corner of the world where people are going. But based on sort of what I see in, in fact that there’s a comics, you know, in the in the navigation menu I, again, I don’t really know how to explain this, you just kind of need to read some of this.
Psychic High School is the leading trans dimensional day and boarding school for psychic youth of all ages and dispositions. We strive to create a community of diverse and individuals with a wide r wide range of talents, including ghost cat whispering serial mancy, and precognitive reverse storytelling, just to name a few, right?
So it’s clearly. Humorous in a dry, humorous sort of way. Right. But it appears to be active. They’ve got June student of the month that was updated yesterday. Billy Angler, I, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here with this website. Jared, it’s, it’s just kind of weird.
Jared: This is the wildest one I think we’ve seen yet.
Like I have to ask the outside, how did you ever find this one?
Spencer: Yeah, it’s it’s just fascinating. I mean, they’ve got a student section, like I said, they’ve got a story section and these are updated like almost every day. I like, is it the owner that’s updating all of these? Or are people really active? But yeah, the, the mission kind of made me chuckle here.
You know, at Psychic High School, we believe in students. We believe in their abilities and their visions, their familiars, they’re ghost twins. Their past life trigger word issues and their phantom tentacle limbs. In a word we believe in you. And so yeah, a weird niche site. You know, I look, this is also one that does not get a lot of search traffic.
You know, it’s, it’s probably very low traffic overall, you can see on aah refs that you know, it’s only ranking for like 18 keywords. But on SimilarWeb it it does get a little bit of traffic, you know, maybe five or 6,000 visitors a month. So, I don’t know why it was created other than for fun.
I don’t know if the intention is to be making money, you know, with the website. If I [email protected], I don’t know. I, I think I did see display ads at, at one point. But maybe not. So I so there you have it. That’s my weird niche side.
Jared: So, let me ask, this is by far the most bizarre one. Like, how did you find this one?
Did, did, did somebody send this over to you or did you, I mean,
Spencer: well, I can’t reveal my sources. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, because I don’t want, I don’t want you to compete with all my findings, but I may or may not have found a website. Got it. That sort of lists weird websites. And, and this was one of those that I found.
So through my own sleuthing, I sort of found a treasure trove of interesting niche sites. That, that’s where I found it. Yeah, no,
Jared: nobody, I was gonna be even more surprised if you said like the marathon website, that this is one of the sites you, you know, actively pay attention to.
Spencer: I just am very deep into the psychic niche here.
I mean, they
Jared: have an entire admissions page dedicating to you know, getting admission into S High. Can you see yourself at SAI High? They have a picture. Of registration day at SAI High with a picture of the psychic high school work desk or front office. I mean, this is full commit.
Spencer: This is somebody is very committed to this website.
I mean, they have t-shirts. I actually don’t know if you can actually buy it. Or is it a joke as well? There there’s a listing. It’s, it’s there. You can buy Yeah. Psychic high school athletics,
Jared: T-shirts. That’s through Threadless. Yeah. It’s a real thing.
Spencer: It’s through Threadless. Through Threadless. So I could buy it.
I won’t buy it, although, you know, maybe, maybe I will. I’ll think about it. It’s not a bad design, so, all right. We could, we could probably, We could probably ramble on and on if we, if we spend here, spend more time. But let’s wrap it up with that. That is our weird niche sites. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that.
I don’t know if it inspires you to do anything, but maybe it gives you a chuckle and just sees, you know, some, some different corners of the internet that are out there. So overall, just thank you everybody for listening to this week in Niche Pursuits News. Thank you Jared, for making time on your vacation to join all of us here today.
My pleasure. Have
Jared: a great weekend everyone.
Spencer: We’ll see you next week and thank you again everyone. We will indeed see you next week.
