Sports Illustrated Caught Publishing AI Content, Amazon Influencer Update, and 2 Weird Niche Sites

Welcome back everyone! It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast. 

A lot happened this week so there’s a lot to talk about. Join Spencer and Jared as they discuss and analyze the latest happenings in the SEO, AI, and content creation space.

The first news item they cover is the Google Core Update and the fact that it has finally finished rolling out

. 

How long did it last in the end? What kind of movement did Jared and Spencer see? Was there a reversal from the HCU? Are there any updates currently underway or coming in the future? Tune in and find out!

Watch the Full Episode

Then Spencer and Jared shift the conversation to a slightly more controversial topic: Sports Illustrated allegedly published a ton of content written by AI-generated writers. 

When the articles were deemed as potentially AI-generated, the team at Futurism pressed Sports Illustrated, which then deleted all of the content and issued a response.

What did they say? What do Spencer and Jared think about the situation? And how does EEAT play into all of it?

The next topic is how the Canadian government has reached an agreement with Google on the Online News Act. Google has agreed to pay online Canadian publishers around $100 million a year to publish their news content on Google. 

This is clearly a win for news publishers, who are going to get paid, but it raises some interesting questions. Why did Google agree to pay? Will other countries follow suit? Will it go beyond news publishers at some point?

In more Google news, the number of companies who have blocked Google from crawling their sites and using their data for Bard has increased by 180%. Jared and Spencer have talked about this situation previously, but in that case it was the GPT OpenAI bot; now it’s the case with Google-Extended.

What about this article really riles up the hosts?

Spencer gets especially riled up sharing that Google Bard is now summarizing YouTube videos. Not only can you get a summary, but you can also get a transcript. Spencer gave it a test drive with one of his videos.

What was the result? Was the summary accurate? The result is pretty funny, so check out the episode to see why. 

Moving along, the next topic is X (formerly Twitter), and how some brands have paused their advertising campaigns while others have stopped altogether. As a result, the platform may lose up to $75 million in ad revenue by the end of the year. 

This is attributable to the fact that Elon Musk is a bit of a loose cannon, he’s making offensive statements, and there are also lots of changes to the platform. 

What does this mean for other advertisers? Could this be part of Musk’s overall strategy?

Last but not least is news from Amazon, which has launched a new AI chatbot for companies. This chatbot is not a competitor for consumer-facing chatbots but, rather, for companies to use for their businesses. Think financial projections, policies, and procedures.

What is AWS and how is it involved? And what might the name of the chatbot be a reference to? Listen to the podcast to hear what Spencer and Jared think about it.

Moving into the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer talks first about his progress with the Amazon Influencer Program. With 954 videos currently published, how did he do during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Jared then shares his progress with the program. Currently, he has 982 videos live, but how did he do during the big shopping days? After talking with other members of the program, Jared also has an interesting theory about how to increase earnings during this period next year. 

He also talks briefly about Weekend Growth, progress, and new developments. 

As for their Weird Niche Sites, Spencer goes first with Katie Goes Platinum—a site that’s more unique than it is weird. Katie documents the process of letting her hair gray gracefully and seeks to inspire others. 

She’s got ads and digital products, not to mention a YouTube channel and a section featuring her web stories. A little research shows that back in 2020, she was earning $6k per month from her site—a figure that has most likely increased since then.

Jared’s Weird Niche Site is Hood Maps, which creates funny maps for different cities. He and Spencer take a closer look at a few of them and share some of the entertaining descriptions.

This DR41 website doesn’t have any display ads but it does rank for 50k keywords. But how does it collect the descriptions for so many maps? And is it making any money?

And that brings us to the end of a jam-packed episode. See you next week when Spencer and Jared tackle the latest headlines and serve up more information and inspiration.   

transcription

Spencer: ​Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week in niche pursuits news. And I think we’ve got a good one here today, Jared. Uh, we have a ton of news topics to go through, uh, several. And so there’s going to be a lot of quick hits here in the news. Uh, and then a couple that we spent a little bit more time on because I think they’re more pertinent to publishers or more interesting to content creators.

Uh, and then of course, we’re going to move on to our shiny object shenanigans. I’ll just let the cat out of the bag. We’re going to be talking. Amazon Influencer. We’re right here in Black Friday, Cyber Monday week just finished. And so we’re going to share some of our results. Um, big numbers. That’s all I’ll say.

Uh, and so, um, we’ll share exactly what’s going on there. And then we’re going to bring it home with our weird niche sites. We’ve got a couple of good ones, a couple of fun ones. Uh, I will just say that I have met the person that owns. This weird niche site that I’m going to bring up today. And so a very unique thing.

Uh, so stay tuned, uh, for that. But first of all, Jared, how are you doing today? 

Jared: I’m doing well. I mean, you kind of teased it a bit, but it’s interesting to see how many, just how many news items there are to talk about when we just finished black Friday and cyber Monday, and none of our news topics have to do with black Friday or cyber Monday, that’s how much we have 

Spencer: to get through.

That is very true. Yep. Our, our only sort of news about black Friday is, is our, uh, shiny objects. Yeah. And so. That’s good. 

Jared: It’s good when shiny object stuff is noteworthy enough to show up on a Black Friday 

Spencer: discussion. That’s exactly right. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. Uh, so, you know, first off, uh, is news that the Google Core update finished.

The November Google Core update. It finished just, uh, two days ago, I guess. Uh, it took, what was the time? You know, it usually takes A month! It took a month! Oh my goodness! Yeah, I was just looking at 26 days. 

Jared: Wow. We announced it on the podcast four weeks ago, I believe 

Spencer: Wow, that’s a long one. It 

Jared: was really, I mean, what’s, what’s I don’t, I could theorize so much.

Maybe we won’t get our November December update because this one took so long, I don’t 

Spencer: know. Maybe so, yeah, usually it’s been about two weeks, like 14 days, I think. The two previous Core Updates for this year 

Jared: were two weeks. I think here’s where the Core Updates are always 

Spencer: Yeah. Very interesting. So 26 days, maybe that’s the most noteworthy thing of this core update is that it took so long to roll out because I didn’t see any major, um, fluctuations in my websites.

Um, I don’t know if you’ve seen anything on your end or heard any chatter going on. What have you 

Jared: heard? Uh, definitely saw movement on client websites. Um, uh, a lot of it didn’t see, so I didn’t see client related stuff. I didn’t see much movement from HCU recovery. So I saw clients and most of my clients are more E com or service businesses.

They’re not like your typical niche site. Uh, although we do have some of those, but saw some people that maybe had a little decline in say the August core update or the October core update. We definitely had a couple that recovered and then grew beyond that. Um, saw two clients that went down a bit in this November update by a bit, I mean, 10 to 20 percent that had one in both August and October core updates.

Um, I did see as it relates to niche sites, some conversation in John Dykstra’s fat stacks community about somebody who had a full recovery from the HCU. Posted screenshots and everything. 

Spencer: And so, uh, this article here on search engine land, you know, kind of verifies that saying that what they saw, they saw, uh, that it was pretty big in number of terms, uh, of sites that saw ranking volatility.

Right. And so it appears to have been a pretty big one. Um, so maybe I lucked out or didn’t luck out. It didn’t seem to impact my sites too much, uh, which I’m always just happy with. Yeah. Yeah, if things pretty much, uh, so, so that’s about it, I think for the Google November core update, just kind of a quick hit here in terms of it finished.

Check your sites. See if there’s anything that you can do. The one thing maybe to point out is that the November. Google reviews update is still going on. So those were overlapped, uh, currently. So there is that update still happening. Of course, because why wouldn’t you? Of course. Yeah. Google likes to keep things interesting.

Uh, but maybe we’re done for the holidays for updates. Let’s uh, hope so. You and I both kind 

Jared: of both agreed like that one’s definitely coming. I don’t know. I’m a little more reticent on that, but I mean, let’s be honest. Why would I change my mind now? I still, I’m still bullish on it. I still think another one’s going to come.

Spencer: We’ll have a Christmas Eve present, uh, perhaps, uh, coming. There you go. Christmas Eve. 

Jared: It’s going to, it’s going to hit. 

Spencer: Yeah. Wouldn’t that be nice? Uh, okay. Well, this next subject, uh, feels like a little bit bigger one, a little bit more controversial in terms of, um, what, what people are seeing. There’s a lot of chatter about.

What happened here. So I’ll jump into it. Um, of course, I’m going to, as soon as I share this, I’ve got a big ad. Okay. So on futurism. com, they reported that sports illustrated published articles by fake AI generated writers. And then in the subtitle, pretty good. We asked them about it and they deleted everything.

Uh, and that’s pretty much what it sounds like happened. So as a, I read through this article, they found authors like here’s an example. This is drew Ortiz that didn’t have any social media presence at all. You couldn’t find Ortiz except for what he had written on sports illustrated. com. And then they did some more research.

They found his profile image. Was an image that is for sale on generated photos on an AI generated photos website. So very, a lot of telltale signs that, Hey, this is an AI generated author. And then they spoke to some people that didn’t want to say who they were and say, yeah, a lot of these articles are definitely AI generated.

Sports Illustrated has published several articles. That are AI generated that are using fake authors with AI, um, images. And then, uh, so Futurism reached out to Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated didn’t respond at first, but they did delete all the articles that were questionable that had kind of been brought up.

So all the content, all the authors that were AI were deleted. Uh, and then, so the other side of the story is that, uh, sports illustrated did respond and, uh, the full quote is here. I won’t read it other than they basically say, Hey, we’ve licensed content. We basically have had a contractor, Advan commerce, and they published articles for me, for us.

Uh, and we didn’t realize that they were using AI generated. You know, people and content. And so sports illustrated is trying to say, Hey, we’re innocent here. We hired somebody it’s their fault and we’ve removed all their content and we’ll not be working with them anymore. So there’s the story. What do you think?

I, 

Jared: we’ve been waiting for the ball to drop on something like this. I mean, for clarity here, it sounds like sports illustrated is kind of. Doing what I do as a living, like they’re hiring an agency to produce content for them and whether it’s been explicitly talked about and it was broken or whether it was not explicitly addressed the contract did not seem to have clarity around the use of AI and this.

Advan, uh, group, which I was, I have them up on my screen here. There’s not much on them online. This Advan group clearly was doing stuff that they weren’t covering their tracks very well. And so it’s, it does bring the light for all of us. Certainly the, the, the risks and rewards of using contractors and other companies to help us as we grow our business, even down to building out our, our individual websites.

You know, we don’t know if our writers are using AI. Um, there are AI checkers and we could get that whole debate and all that. But the point is like this. Interesting backlash that’s created because there wasn’t transparency around the AI. And I think that’s really the core of the article is the transparency should Sports Illustrated, if they had known, should it be publicly said this is AI or not?

And are you allowed to publish AI content without saying that it’s AI to people? Right? 

Spencer: Right. Exactly. It’s, you know, it feels like when you’re a major corporation like Sports Illustrated, um, or others that have been caught, you know, CNET, Bankrate. Um, others owned by Red Ventures and, you know, there’s BuzzFeed.

Anyways, when you’re a major corporation like this, you probably should be disclosing things a little bit more readily, especially if you’re gonna put up fake authors, fake images. That feels like 

Jared: The fake author thing seems more egregious to me than the fake Yes. Yes, and it’s not, I mean, AI contest. Sorry.

Yeah. Freudian slip there, but, um, uh, like the fake author. I agree. Like that is one step further again. We’re just talking about how we feel like there’s no data to suggest it is, but I feel exactly what you’re saying. That big corporations, I don’t think they’re towing the line quite right. And this article and the backlash guy that got created is showing that, but you’re, you’re right.

What’s one thing to publish AI content and make out like it’s real humans, right? It’s another thing to have a fake author profile on a major corporation. And by the way, I know you didn’t mention it, but, uh, it was found that, um, sports illustrated who is owned by. The arena group, it was also found that this is happening on the street.

Another publication under the arena groups. This is kind of happening in all of their brands, right? Not just in this one isolated incident. 

Spencer: Yep. And what’s fascinating. Um, another just tidbit of information is I, I know a couple of people that have worked for sort of, um, gaming sports, online gaming. Um, uh, they, they’ve worked at SEOs at these companies.

And they, they say that, man, they, the companies they work for use a ton of AI generated or AI assisted content. I’m guessing we know the 

Jared: same person and you’re exactly right. 

Spencer: Probably, probably so. And, um, I, I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that. And, and I don’t know if that company discloses or, or, you know, how that all goes, but I have to imagine this is an issue that.

Many companies beyond Sports Illustrated are grappling with or have embraced. I mean, it appears that most of these companies have just embraced, embraced in terms of we’re going to publish AI content. Um, but I feel like again, the line was probably crossed in terms of, Hey, we’re creating fake people and not telling anybody.

We’re making readers think, Oh, this, this Ortiz guy, whatever it was, um, is real. Drew Ortiz, you’re right. And then there was other examples, right? The flip side is 

Jared: it’s, it’s the wild, wild West with all of this. And how as a brand, do you know where the line is until you kind of cross it? Right. I wonder if internally these brands are like, no one knows what the line is in terms of what people are willing to accept or not accept.

And how do we know that line until we cross it? Maybe that’s part of the strategy and long term learning what AI, where AI’s role is in a company like the arena group. Maybe corporately speaking, it’s like, well, let’s keep pushing the boundaries until we cross a line that from a PR standpoint, from an engagement standpoint, from a readership standpoint, we feel we’ve crossed too far.

And then there’s a line now we’ll stick within it. 

Spencer: Right. And I don’t know what kind of articles they were writing, but if they were SEO focused, I know a lot of the chatter on Twitter was like, okay, Google. Now, how do you feel about this content? You’ve got a very authoritative website. Publishing AI content.

Are you still ranking it? Where’s your EAT, right? You’ve got fake author, no experience. This 

Jared: stuff should not rank in Google’s EAT environment. It absolutely should not rank. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a DR 87 site. 

Spencer: Exactly, exactly. And so, uh, it’s interesting to watch because, uh, and we haven’t done the study to determine, okay, how well is AI content for sports, sports illustrated and other companies ranking, but, uh, it’s definitely 

Jared: from detail.

com. That’s a great, it’s a great thing. Glenn would excel at. 

Spencer: Yes. There you go. Glenn. If you’re listening, put together a whole study of, uh, yeah, AI generated articles, how they’re ranking and is it just based on Dr. Sure. Feels that way. Yep. So there you go. Kind of a, a very interesting story, something for people to keep their eyes on because it’s just going to happen more and more, right?

There’s going to be more content out there. So. All right. The next, uh, story that is, I find pretty fascinating here is that the federal government reaches deal with Google on online news act and this is federal government. Canadian. Yes. The Canadian federal government. Right? And so this is CBC news. Um, cbc.

ca, right? Canadian news. Um, But basically Google and the federal government, they’ve reached a deal on this big online news act. It’s been going on for a while, basically where Google has agreed to pay online Canadian publishers up to or roughly in the range of 100 million a year to publish their news content.

On Google, so a win for news publishers. Certainly they’re actually going to get paid by Google to publish their news content. Um, I believe there was some sort of agreement in the EU as well. Um, over the last year or 2, um, that news organizations. Don’t quote me for sure, but I seem to recall that there has also been some sort of, you know, legislation and agreement where Google is going to pay for news content, uh, in those countries.

Uh, and so, um, this has happened. It’s, I would say it’s very interesting. You know, Google’s not paying me for my content just yet, uh, but they are in Canada for news, uh, publications. The 

Jared: numbers all get a little squirrely when you start adding so many zeros on them, but given the conversations we’ve been having around Google, their revenue that they make reference past pot news podcast to, to see that this a hundred million seems like, I mean, a, a, a literal drop in the bucket, like almost like a, a, a.

Uh, an error, a mistake in, in accounting almost for them, you know, I mean, like go 

Spencer: away, make this problem go away. 

Jared: I really would rather not pay our lawyers. So here’s a hundred million. Just can we, can we just please just publish, you know, and I’m being somewhat facetious for the record, but it does feel like a small amount.

I read that the Canadian government was asking for 172 million. So maybe it’s not that laughable, but it seems like, I mean, I don’t know about you, Spencer, but I, you know, I have access to a lot of websites, you know, work with a lot of websites and the Canadian market is usually the number Uh, the number three traffic market in the U S markets, right?

Like, so I feel like traffic from Google news in that area is a substantial amount that Google should be concerned with. And to get that back for a hundred million, seems like a hundred million a year seems like a pretty good deal to me. 

Spencer: Yeah, and so it sort of begs the question, right? Are there going to be other countries to follow?

Is there going to be another domino here that falls of, uh, either news organizations or does it broaden beyond just news publishers, um, where at some point Google is no, no longer able to just scrape everything for free and publish it. Um, I don’t know. But, but news is, I think in particular unique, right?

Because it lives on the news app, right? It truly is content that Google uses in their apps, right? And so, anyway, it’s just very, very interesting, uh, development here as it relates to the news. 

Jared: And again, you know, I think overall, like if you have to take a look at it as a content creator, Um, it’s hard to take a lot from this because every government’s different and everything, but In general, just kind of seeing Google being open to spending money directly for content is, uh, probably not a bad thing.

Spencer: Yep, exactly. Okay. Well, we’ve got some more Google news here. Um, this is related to, well, again, sort of a company’s not really excited about Google crawling their website, uh, and not getting a whole lot in return. This is the number of websites blocking Google extended jump 180%. And as I understand, um, Google extend extended is the standalone product token.

Google introduced For, to help you block barred vertex AI, AI generative APIs. Anyways, you’re basically blocking. The ability for Google to crawl your site and use your data for barred and it’s AI models. Right. Um, and so that’s, yeah, it’s, it’s jumped 180%. So you got the New York Times, Yelp, Conde Nast, um, all their properties, 22 properties and many others.

That are deciding, you know what, we’re going to just block, uh, the Google bot so it can’t train its AI models anymore. And, uh, we, we mentioned this for websites blocking, uh, open AI has, has jumped a ton. We mentioned that a few months ago as well. And so kind of big. Seems like it’s becoming almost the norm is certainly among large corporations to just block these AI 

Jared: crawlers and to be clear.

Yeah, a couple things there. Uh, not that you misspoke, but to just make sure to drive it home. This is about blocking the quote unquote Google extended bot, which is the standalone product token specifically focused on allowing you to block BARD, Vertex AI, generative APIs and future generations of those models.

So I do believe all these sites still allow The standard Google bot for search engine for search ranking to correct. Yeah, yes. And you’d be forgiven if you are thinking, wait, didn’t they already talk about this? We’ve referenced this in previous episodes about the GPT open AI bot. This is about the Google’s AI bot.

So we’ve seen this play out with open AI bot. And now we’re seeing it play out with Google bot. Google’s AI bot. Sorry, I’m tripping all over myself here. 

Spencer: There’s a lot. There’s a lot here. Um. One other thing that kind of bugs me a little bit about this search engine land article is, uh, where did they get this data?

They’ve got one sentence and no attribution. I saw that! That’s according to research shared exclusively with search engine land by the detail. com team. That’s Glenn. We’ve already given Glenn also two, two shout outs now on the podcast. Where’s the link? Where’s the love? 

Jared: Well, I love search engine land, but this is, I I, I’ve published articles there and, uh, they, this is what, this is how they do things.

It’s just, come on. I 

Spencer: mean, I mean fine make it notes. All the whole reason this, the whole reason this article exists apparently, right? I don’t know, is because of detail.com Looks like Glen link, our show notes, . 

Jared: Ah, yeah, we will, man, I tell you, it couldn’t have at least been a no follow link. You got the data from I, sorry, come on.

That’s hilarious. ’cause I saw the exact same thing and it drove me nuts. 

Spencer: Yeah, I was like, Oh, this is cool data. Wait, where’s the link? So, all right. So that’s, that’s the big news as well. Um, things. 

Jared: So related things that bug Jared and 

Spencer: Spencer. Yeah. Oh boy. If we could, we could go on and on. I think there’s a lot with that, but, uh, I, I got something that kind of bugs me with, with Google bard that we’re going 

Jared: to this.

Okay. This is the thing. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, You know, it’s going to go into our next news item because, uh, Google barred, um, just announced or yeah, it was, I guess they just announced it this week that you can now summarize, uh, YouTube videos, which I think is very cool. I think that’s very cool because you couldn’t do this in chat GPT.

You couldn’t pump pop in, um, a URL to YouTube video. Maybe you can do it now. Um, I, but I don’t think so. And you can get a summary, it can write out the transcript. It could anything you want right about the YouTube video. You just pop it in and it crawls it and it gives you everything. And so I did this, uh, last night.

Um, so I said, Hey. Uh, I gave it one of my videos, uh, my Google discover, you know, video. I just popped in the first one and said, Hey, can you summarize, uh, this for me? And, uh, you know, it did a good job of the summary, except for one thing. It says the speaker, Nick, share seven examples. And I was like, okay, that’s interesting.

Why is Nick? And then it goes on and says it again. Here are some of the tips that Nick shared. And then it says, Nick also shared a free download. Like who is this Nick guy, right? Like why, why is Google Bard pulling out Nick as the creator of this video? And so I asked it, why do you think the speaker’s name is Nick?

The speaker’s name is Nick. This can be inferred from the following. The speaker introduces himself as Nick at the beginning of the video. It uses the I pronoun. And the video was uploaded by Niche Pursuits, which is owned by Nick. So who’s this Nick guy? And uh, how can I get in touch with him? What’s your middle name, Spencer?

Jared: Not Nick. Not Nick. 

Spencer: So, I just thought it was hilarious. I, you know, I don’t know why it’s calling me Nick. I, I suspect, here was my one hunch, is that my brand name is Niche. Pursuits. Ah, 

Jared: see I hadn’t made that 

Spencer: connection. And maybe, maybe they think niche is Nick. Um, so anyways, I thought that was pretty funny.

A person, probably the 

Jared: closest male name in association with niche in its repository, perhaps. 

Spencer: Yeah. It just seems so confident. No, the speaker introduces himself, it. The, the channels owned by Nick. Um, anyways, the news topic here is really the, the Google can now summarize, uh, these videos. So let’s see if it does a better job, uh, actually with a recent podcast, uh, interview, um, can you summer summarize this interview, please give live with.

Yeah, give the top strategies and this will be, uh, Julian, uh, Goldie, uh, is the one that we just did. Oh, and I can’t do it. Uh, I’m unable to access this YouTube content. Um, it’s not a valid YouTube link perhaps. Well, it sure looks like it is. Um, well, maybe they’re still working out the bugs here. Um, let me paste in that.

I just went to the embed, see if that works. Um, yeah, well, okay. Oh boy. There you, there you got it. We can’t do a live demonstration, so we’ll just say, uh, they’re still working out the bugs, uh, if you want to test that out, but it’s a cool idea. Um, and it semi worked on my video last night. 

Jared: Yeah. Semi would be the right way to put it.

I, I have used chat GPT to summarize. YouTube videos, but the only way I found to do it is that you have to go get the transcript and then load the transcript into chat GPT. Which is involves a couple extra steps and really when you’re, I’ve noticed that, you know, the transcript comes with timestamps and it isn’t always as good.

I would be curious to hear how Bard does pulling straight from the audio file, which I, do you think they’re pulling from the audio file or do you think they’re taking the transcript from YouTube behind the scenes? I’d be curious to test it and see which one does a better, maybe recap, a better transcription, a better, um, summary for me.

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, it, it’s, it’s very cool because I’ve had a lot of problems with doing essentially what you just said, getting, getting transcripts and summaries. It’s a, it’s a lot of work cobbling together a couple of different tools. If I can just do it all, all in bard, big time saver. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll let people play with that.

Um, still a work in progress it looks like. Um, thanks for that next, 

Jared: uh, episode, Nick. Appreciate that. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Nick’s, Nick’s got your back any, any day of the week right here. Nick’s a new alter. You go? I guess so. I guess so. Google knows something about me that I don’t. Um, all right. Uh, x. Is having problems, Twitter, Twitter’s having 

Jared: problems here.

You’re bouncing all over the agenda today. I’m trying to keep up. So yeah, let’s talk about that situation. 

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Why not? You know, so, uh, on search engine land, uh, again, uh, has, has, um, written this article about, uh, X key advertisers aren’t pausing campaigns. They’re walking away and it kind of jumps in here into a lot of, uh, companies.

Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Universal have paused campaigns, advertising, but now other brands. Have just stopped posting altogether. Yeah. Right. Um, so a lot of, there’s a lot less engagement, a lot less posting by large brands on X, uh, but then a lot of companies have just stopped advertising altogether, uh, and it’s, the platform is estimated to lose as much as 75 million in ad revenue, uh, by the end of the year.

Uh, and so not good, uh, for Elon Musk. And of course it all kind of comes back to Elon Musk being a little bit of a loose cannon. Uh, people don’t like the things, uh, that he, that he says, according to this article, Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Which he has since refused to apologize for.

So anyways, again, kind of comes back to, I mean, Elon Musk in a lot of ways is his own worst nightmare. He’s just, he’s a loose cannon. People love him for that, or they hate him for that. He says what’s on his mind. And, um, you know, it doesn’t bode well if, if you’re a large, uh, advertiser or trying to have a presence somewhere and you disagree with the CEO of that company, 

Jared: I’ll relate it to our industry.

You know, we’ve interviewed many people from different. Brokerages like FE International, Quiet Light, Empire Flippers on the podcast for the years. And, you know, I always ask them like, Hey, you know, what, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the biggest thing that moves the needle in terms of your sale, sale price of a website?

Is it, you know, rapid growth? Is it multiple revenue channels? What is it? They always do the exact same. Everybody always says the exact same thing. And they’re like, Stability brands, what people want to buy a stable asset money wants to buy. And, you know, when it comes to advertising, like brands want stability, they don’t want, uh, volatility.

And like you said, like brands are walking away because of the volatility, uh, on the platform as it relates to, to Mr. Musk. 

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you don’t have a place, I mean, just, just think about it. I mean, he’s, he’s taken the platform from Twitter. He charges people’s subscriptions. Now, uh, he’s made, I don’t know how many changes to the algorithm of how content ranks and now it’s called X instead of Twitter.

So there’s. Talk about unstable, right? Like it just is right. And a lot of that, hopefully at the end of the day is progress, you know, for X’s sake, for Twitter’s sake, hopefully it’s all progress and it moves it to a bigger and better company, but yeah, I agree as advertisers. It’s like, okay, well, now what?

Everything’s changing. Hey, so 

Jared: you gotta take one step back to take several steps forward. We don’t know the strategy internally. Um, yep. These don’t seem like brands you’d like to get rid of, you know, even as part of a strategic step forward, but I don’t think so. Uh, you know, sometimes the baby gets thrown out with the bath water as it goes.

Spencer: Yeah. You know, and I always look at the flip side of this coin where it seems like advertising on Should get cheaper for a lot of people. If all these big publishers are leaving, right, it should get a little bit cheaper because this there’s more ad inventory, right? Supply and demand demand. So it should cost.

Me less to, uh, buy ads, but I haven’t figured out Twitter advertising. I’ll be honest, we we’ve dabbled with it for link whisper a little bit and we couldn’t quite get the conversion tracking to work and we sort of put it on a shelf. Maybe we’ll revisit that here again. Yeah. What about niche, niche pursuits?

Yeah. Niche pursuits. Haven’t, haven’t done advertising for that either. You mean just to, yeah, I mean, I could gain more followers, right? Maybe, maybe, on a platform that might be dead 

Jared: in a year or two. There you go. 

Spencer: You know, ride the wave while it’s here. Hey, there you go. You know, cheap likes. Get some cheap likes, you know, and, um.

Boost my ego at least. So, okay. I think we’re down to our last, uh, news item, this next one here. Um, and it, you know, it, it’s hard to know if this is like a huge announcement, a small announcement. I don’t know. I think it’s pretty big. Um, it’s coming from Amazon. So anytime Amazon has an announcement and particularly.

I, um, it’s kind of interesting. So Amazon introduces Q and AI chat bot for companies and for companies is the sort of Because, uh, this is not a competitor of chat GPT, uh, or of, of other consumer facing chatbots. So they are going into the corporate business realm, basically a chat bot queue, uh, to kind of query your own.

Per, uh, not personal, your, your business documents, right? So you can ask it a question about your financials or your company’s, uh, policies or all sorts of the documents that as a corporation might live right within, within your business that you don’t want outsiders to see, you can now chat with that.

And, and do a lot of cool things, right? Just kind of think about chat GPT for your specific business. Uh, it can probably do financial projections or strategy or policies, procedures, all sorts of things. So it’s going after what it feels like is probably bigger money, right? Instead of consumers, it’s going after the companies with the deep pockets.

Uh, Amazon Q, I don’t know any thoughts about it, Jared. 

Jared: I mean, it’s interesting, you know, it’s, it’s very high level, right. And like, we’re just, I’m looking at the screen here in terms of what’s being shown and, um, you know, like probably not as many use cases for people listening to this podcast, I find it fascinating that.

This seems to be a play that Microsoft typically would make, which is going towards the business market. Ironically, uh, Microsoft obviously is a major stakeholder in open AI and chat GPT, so they’re almost flipping roles in many ways. Amazon does have a big business platform through AWS and all that, but oftentimes they’re more known for targeting the consumer.

And so it’s just, I think it’s interesting to watch like the tug of war happening on the corporate level where Microsoft is targeting the consumer with their end product of chat GPT and Amazon’s clearly targeting the business. 

Spencer: Yeah, yep, exactly. It says it was developed by Amazon’s cloud computing division, right?

AWS. Uh, and so they do have that foothold, right? With large corporations that are using their, their servers. So it makes sense for that. It does. 

Jared: AWS is huge. I mean, like it’s massive. Don’t think about it. Uh, at least I know my companies in the past have heavily used AWS. So I’ve seen the capabilities it has.

And, um, if you’ve ever. I mean, you’d be shocked to know there’s a massive AWS conference every year in Las Vegas. That’s incredibly attended. Like it’s up to their, up there with Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. I mean, it’s really interesting. AWS kind of flies under the radar a 

Spencer: bit. AWS is essentially the backbone of the internet.

Like honestly, like all, like every large website. Really is, is running AWS and, and even a lot of, um, probably our websites, you, you know, you’re getting cloud computing from, I don’t know the company, so I’ll name it, but you know, you’re, you’re host, right. They’re actually probably just spun up a server on AWS and they’re reselling it to you, right.

It’s kind of the backbone of the internet. Um, so anyways, the, the, the news is that they, they’ve released, uh, Q, the chat bot and, um, yeah. So if anybody uses it, let us 

Jared: know. Spencer, the Q, what do you think? Maybe an ode to the, the, the fictional James Bond character. Uh, I looked it up here. Uh, Q is the head.

Spencer: You know your James, James Bond way better than I do. I do. 

Jared: My wife and I, before children, watched the entire series, uh, of movies. Um, But cue the fictional research and development division of the british secret service 

Spencer: I like it. It’s, it’s a, an appropriate name, I would say. Yeah, I 

Jared: don’t know if it is purposely an ode to that or not, but, 

Spencer: uh, I like it.

I like it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it makes sense. So, huh, there we go. We went through our, uh, six or seven news items. I think we made it out okay on the other end. Good, look at that. Um, and I guess it’s kind of news as well, jumping right into our shiny object shenanigans, is that it is very recent developments.

We just had Cyber Monday. We had Black Friday. And we’ve got some results to share. Uh, so, um, I guess I’ll go first, I suppose. I’ll just kind of kick it off because I suspect, um, because we’ve chatted a little bit, I suspect your news is a little more exciting than mine. Mine’s not bad news or anything.

Okay. Well, we’ll see. Um, essentially. Over the last month, I’ve had a huge backlog of, uh, videos that I’ve been trying to, um, get uploaded in time for, for Black Friday. Um, and I think we got most of them uploaded. We might have a couple more out there. Um, that have just kind of come in in the last week or two.

You have been 

Jared: publishing a lot of content. 

Spencer: Yes, been publishing a lot more. That’s what it feels like. Um, but, but earnings right is sort of the key and there definitely was a big jump in clicks on like black Friday and cyber Monday. Um, my earnings have fluctuated around 115 to. About $180 a day is kind of where I’ve lived in that range for the past week.

Uh, overall, the, if I look at my last 30 days, right now I’m at $2,700, uh, in earnings. So it’s not like mind blowing, but uh, it’s good. And if I can stay at this, you know, a hundred dollars plus a day. Right. I’m hoping that December ends up closer to 3,500, $4,000, uh, for the month, and I think that would be pretty good.

Uh, and then I guess, yeah, just final update. Let me look it up. Where am I in terms of, is big news of total videos published? 

Jared: The race to a thousand? It’s on with you, like it or 

Spencer: not? You know, I haven’t checked. Today, uh, no, last couple of days, no, no new videos published, uh, 954 videos. So I am like, I am so close.

I heard a small celebration, uh, from Jared there, but I am so close to a thousand. I didn’t quite make it. Jared, are you ready to just break my heart now? Or like, like what’s going on on your side? 

Jared: I have good news and bad news. Okay. Depends on which side of the coin you’re on. I haven’t broken a thousand videos yet.

Okay, 

Spencer: okay, alright. I thought 

Jared: for sure. I am beating you. I am beating you. 982. 

Spencer: Ooh, that’s close. Yep. 

Jared: Boy. 982. So, I think, I think I was Was I behind you or we were, I, I don’t remember all the history. Now you and I have gone back and forth, neck and neck for something. You, you were ahead 

Spencer: for a while. I was ahead for a while and then like I uploaded like 200.

Yeah. I was like at 750 something. You just like uploaded 

Jared: 200. Then I just kind of casually didn’t mention it and I was like, wait, what? 

Spencer: How many do you have? Yeah. Yeah. And then you’ve been so, I I’m very chunky. Yeah. Right. You’ve been a little more consistent. It looks like 

Jared: tortoise in the hare approach here.

Spencer: man. 987? 982. 

Jared: 82. 

Spencer: Oh man, I feel like you’re going to beat me. Now we cancelled our bet, right? Officially. 

Jared: On the podcast. I just don’t think it ever took off. It’s more of a meme 

Spencer: at this point. Well, you can get, you can contact Nick, the head of a niche pursuits and he’ll, he’ll pay you out on that, on that wager.

Jared: So I think this speaks to the crazy fluctuations that influencer earnings experiences, because Again, I don’t remember when, but there was a period a couple of weeks ago where you, your last 30 day average in terms of profit or earnings was higher than mine, which again, I was shocked by because I felt like I was ahead of you for so long there.

And then out of the blue, you’re like, yeah, I’m earning this much the past 30 days. I’m like, man, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re beating me by quite a bit. Um, for me, I’ll share my earnings of the last couple of days as they relate to you and last month. So my last 30 days right now just broke 4, 000. 

Spencer: No way dude, 

Jared: that’s awesome.

So November is gonna break 4, 000 what today we’re recording on Thursday, November 30th So in theory, we’ll have November numbers tomorrow when this goes live, but I’ll break 4, 000 I guess unless today is just an awful day somehow I think I still will though, because there’s no grass. Yeah, anyway, that’s big.

So, um, and then the last, uh, seven days I’ve had black Friday and cyber Monday. I’ve had lows. I mean, Thanksgiving was a low, but we know why, right? Like Thanksgiving, they’re not shipping much. People are taking the day off. The lowest I’ve had. If you take out Thanksgiving was 120 and the highest I’ve had is 390.

Spencer: Whoa, almost a 400 a day 

Jared: or 100 a day. And so 

Spencer: what I just have a couple of big products that day. 

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. I won’t share exactly which products were sold, but I think I sold like three products that day that were over 2, 000 each. Wow. I’m looking at shipped revenue that day. So the amount of money that the products were that I got credit for videos and it was over 16, 000 that day.

That’s big. 

Spencer: Yep. That’ll do it. 

Jared: Yeah. So if I do the math, then the last seven day average, which again, I was averaging under a hundred dollars a day going into this and the last seven days to include black Friday, cyber Monday, but really a wholesale week, right? Like we’ve just seen Amazon’s just been, everything’s been on sale for the whole week, basically, but the average has been 236 the last seven days per day.

Spencer: That is huge. Yeah. I, I, I am guessing that you have a lot more videos on higher end products. So slightly higher end. Yeah. 

Jared: This has been interesting to talk about. Um, because I’ve been sharing on Twitter about how I’m actually not that impressed with the results. I am, I mean, it’s obviously I, but I, I will be honest, I was hoping for, for more and for bigger.

And some other people that I’ve talked to have had much bigger results, you know, like really big results. And, um, I think I’ve cracked a bit of the code in terms of what led to my Black Friday earnings being where they’re at. I’d like to talk with you more about yours. Maybe we can, I don’t know, do that next week on the news podcast, make that kind of our shiny object special.

Um, but I’m going to address it in my November Amazon Influencer YouTube video. So I am going to address it and talk it through. But I’d like to run the theory by you a bit because I think I have I think I have a pretty good understanding of what would lead to a much bigger Black Friday and Cyber Monday results next year.

Let’s just put it that way. 

Spencer: Okay, and just to tease, do you think it could be something that could lead to bigger results, bigger sales throughout the year? Or do you think specifically Black Friday, Cyber Monday is what you’re landing on? The general 

Jared: concept, I’ll share it really quickly with you, is that there’s certain things people buy.

On deep discount versus things people buy on non deep 

Spencer: discount. Yeah, that makes 

Jared: sense and psychologically speaking that makes sense And so, um, a lot more to go down that road, so it’s not that simple, but there’s a lot of threads to pull there when you start pulling them and start doing some, some research.

Probably the first time I’ve ever done any research with this program. I just pretty much published a video about something I have, but I got a little fascinated by it, but yeah, I think there’s something there. And, uh, certainly every time I’ve looked into it so far with other people or with myself, 

Spencer: it’s played out.

Okay, interesting. Okay, cool. Yeah, well, we’ll try and chat about that a little bit more certainly people can go to your YouTube channel and See that video coming out in a week or whenever you publish that get around to it You know, 

Jared: yeah, first we gotta wait for the day 

Spencer: to come through. That’s right. 

Jared: Yeah Hey, we said or we didn’t say I said I’m not gonna throw you under the bus here I said that this sales period this week was gonna be very Uh, important for me to evaluate how I’m going to treat the influencer program in 2024 and beyond.

Um, has it been influential for you in your decision? Has it swayed you one way or the other? Has it given you more confidence, less confidence? Has it just not really done anything for you? Like, what has this week done for you in terms of the influencer program? 

Spencer: Yeah, if I’m honest, I was hoping for a little bit more results that I’m seeing, you know, I still want to let the full holiday season play out cause there’s still lots of buying to be done, um, during December, but it’s like, it’s like, okay, I mean, it’s, it’s cool.

Like I am still just. Like in love and fascinated with the influencer program. Right. It’s doing better 

Jared: than your faceless YouTube channel. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, it is. It’s doing a lot better. Uh, but no website. You don’t have to drive any traffic. Like I’m still just fascinated that you can just publish a video and make money.

And like, let’s take a step back. Like I’m going to make almost 3, 000 this month, you know, from, from this thing. And you’re going to make 4, 000. Like, so it’s still very cool. Um, we’ll see if I’m going to like. The decision is, do I double down and like publish another thousand videos, right? Or do I just kind of let it marinate after that?

And maybe seeing these results, I’m thinking maybe I’ll let it marinate a little bit, but I don’t know. 

Jared: I, um, uh, one more thing on the influencer program. Um, I crossed the 2000 followers subscriber mark on the weekend growth, YouTube channel this week. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know. Nice big numbers. What can I say?

You know, 2000 subscribers 

Spencer: just that’s, that’s big. A lot of people never hit that. Well, 

Jared: yeah, it’s fine. It’s good. I don’t, I don’t, I actually have a reason for sharing that not to, not to brag or anything. Um, it is great. Thank you for those who, who do subscribe. But, um, I thought it was a good opportunity to try to apply for another Amazon influencer account under the weekend growth brand with the YouTube account, right?

That’s one of the four you can use. To qualify for Amazon influencers, you can use YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram. And so I did try to apply and I got rejected. Um, and you know, I know I, I, I kind of thought in the back of my mind, like, well, as soon as I hit a thousand, as long as I have decent engagement on that channel, which I think I do, they get a lot of comments and, uh, every video does so.

Um, but yeah, so I don’t know if maybe it’s getting harder or maybe, uh, it’s just random and somewhat arbitrary or something about. That YouTube account, but yeah, YouTube account with 2000 subscribers and decent engagement got rejected this week from the influencer program. So not quite enough, just thought I’d share that 

Spencer: with, you know, it’s, it’s hard to know what they’re looking for exactly.

Right. And, uh, since you mentioned. YouTube channel. Uh, you know, I quickly pulled up social blade, which I kind of like using, let you analyze a YouTube channels, right? You’ve got the weekend growth. 

Jared: He’s getting roasted here live on the 

Spencer: air. I haven’t seen this getting. No, no, no, no, no, no roasting, uh, over 2000 subscribers.

It gives you your subscriber rank rank. So you rank 15, 230th.

Uh, but when you, yeah, yeah, you would think, wow, I have the 15, 000 biggest channel and I still can’t get on it. Well, it’s like, well, except when you read this, it says this spot is shared with 25, 000 other people. So that specific rank 15, 230th, like you share it, right. And how many people share. So in other words, there’s 7.

7, there’s 7. 7 million channels that have. Yeah. Anyway, so I don’t know if that humbles you or makes you feel good, but, uh, social blade is kind of cool. But, yeah, you’re still not, still not quite there to get, uh, approved on the, uh, influencer program. Well, 

Jared: you know what, Spencer? The biggest thing I see there is C And what I always say is C’s get degrees.

Spencer: That’s right, man. You can make money with the C plus. I’ll take 

Jared: a C plus on YouTube. I don’t need to, I don’t need to be an A. That’s right. I mean, it’s not bad. No, be honest. It says up there in the upper right, like user created April 20th, 2023. I mean, it’s like what? Yeah. Seven, eight months old now at this point.

Yeah. No, that’s great. So, you know, I could be doing better. Yes, but overall nothing to complain about. 

Spencer: Absolutely. No, I agree. So anyway, sorry to put you on the spot there, but I thought I’d pull up that channel since, uh, since you were mentioned the number of subscribers and stuff. So I would love 

Jared: if people in the comments have applied recently.

Or even over the last six months, if you’ve applied and are comfortable sharing, like, maybe what account you applied under, like a YouTube versus Instagram, what your numbers were at, and whether you got accepted or denied, it’d be kind of fun to get some other feedback on that, you know, and give people not an updated, uh, look on it, but, you know, the last we really talked about the application process and numbers you needed was, when we had Matt Donnelly on, I believe.

So, you know, maybe they have moved the bar a bit, right? Maybe the goalposts have moved a little bit. So if you do have any information you’re comfortable sharing in the comments and YouTube, let us know. 

Spencer: Yep, no, that sounds good. All right next up. We’ve got weird niche sites. I got one you got one Mine is kind of interesting because as I teased in the beginning I have met this person Physically met this person at a business conference.

I was in Atlanta Uh in october for the fin con conference and uh, we had a booth for link whisper which uh shout out I’ve got my t shirt on uh here for link whisper And uh, so I was giving out t shirts at the booth and uh, a lady came up to me Her name was katie and she says oh, yeah You know, I I use link whisper and we chatted answered questions and she says i’ve got a a website Um, if you want to check it out it is Katie goes platinum.

com and I was like, what is Katie goes platinum. com. Uh, and so, uh, we pulled it up and I chatted with her right there. We looked at her website while she was there. I was like, man, this is a unique website. So I hate to call it weird, but it definitely is unique and kind of different. And it’s all about Katie going gray, gray hair.

Right. Uh, and so ditch the dye and rock your natural gray hair. And it’s just kind of about being confident with gray hair, uh, understanding gray hair, and she’s got a shop with some, some products. I think they’re, um, digital products, downloads. Yeah. Every which way to gray, everything you need to know about transitioning naturally, silver hair, a couple of info products, and then just a ton of resources about.

You know, if you’re, if you’re going gray, embrace it, love it and, uh, learn about it. So blog, um, selling some products and recommendations. Oh, how’s the YouTube account? 

Jared: Almost 8, 000 subscribers. 

Spencer: There you go. Um, I 

Jared: mean, you know, not all of her videos hit. Oops. All right. There she is. No, she had a video. She published, um, looks like fairly recently.

That’s over 8, 000 views. So she’s definitely got social channels. 

Spencer: Yeah. And she’s got, you know, it looks like a media vine ads, uh, on the site. So she’s making some money with media vine. She has her shop. Uh, she’s, you know, and she’s very involved. Like the, these are pictures of her, right. She’s showing, uh, before and after, um, different things.

Well, and then she has pictures of other people too, of course, but in the 

Jared: bottom there, Spencer. Uh, and the footer check something out. We haven’t talked about this much, but it has come from the podcast before. Look at that web stories link. She has links to all of her web stories. She’s 

Spencer: created. Oh, there it is.

Oh, cool. I wonder how she does, um, with her web stories and uh, yeah, she’s very active on social Tik TOK, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. 

Jared: Yeah, man. If you’re looking for examples of web stories and like, you know, I don’t know how they’re doing to be great to hear, but yeah, she’s got them all right here.

Spencer: They’re really cool. Yeah, well, I do have a little more information on how she’s doing. Uh, not a ton. 

Jared: Spencer, I gotta tell you, I’ve complimented you before, but you have really upped your transition game these 

Spencer: days. It’s just, it’s on point. You know, it’s like a muscle, you know, you exercise this. Eventually it starts working.

So, um, we are at a trefs. If you look at her traffic, she’s done well. Right. Um, it’s kind of mostly been up into the right. Well, it’s like maybe the helpful content update, a little dip, but not, not crazy. Definitely not as bad as we’ve seen. Yeah. Uh, so, um, you know, she’s ranking, let’s see what keywords, uh, she’s, she’s ranking for here.

Um, She’s ranking for things like how to go gray, natural gray hairstyles, purple shampoo for gray hair, yada, yada, yada. So, um, and city beauty reviews, I imagine must be a beauty product for people going gray. So yeah, pretty, pretty much on topic, uh, things that she’s ranking for now. I don’t have like insight information other than while I was chatting with her.

She mentioned that she had been on other podcasts and she would be interested in coming on the niche pursuits podcast. And so we’re going to. Try and make that happen here so we can get updated numbers. But she was on the side hustle nation podcast with Nick Loper. And this is from 2020. So it’s two, three years old.

Uh, but at that time she was making 6, 000 a month. Hey, that’s very respectable. 6, 000 a month blogging about gray hair. Um, and if you remember the AH refs graph compared to 2020, she has increased. In terms of traffic, so I would suspect that she’s making quite a bit more, you know, I don’t know. Is it, you know, yeah, yeah, double triple.

I don’t know. But yeah, certainly probably five figures a month blogging about gray hair. So, um, cool, cool website. Super nice person. Um, podcast. We’re going to try and make that happen. But yeah, that’s, I That’s kind of the site. People can check it out at, uh, Katie goes platinum. com. It looks like a pretty 

Jared: classic, you know, I want to say like affiliate style website, but she’s got, it looks like reviews of products where she’s getting an affiliate commission.

Um, I didn’t see, does she have display ads on any of her content or articles? You know, she does. She’s 

Spencer: got some media vine 

Jared: ads. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of times the websites we cover here and certainly the one I’m about to bring up are very unconventional. But this is a little bit more of a great example of a kind of a conventional website monetization style.

Yeah, there’s that Mediavine box. You scroll. Yeah. Recognize 

Spencer: that. Yep. Yep, definitely. Kind of a, kind of a cool sight. She’s done a good job, it looks like, so. All right, what do you got for us, Jared? 

Jared: Well, today’s website is, uh, is a big pile of, of interesting. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s fun though, I’ll tell you that much.

If you could boot it up for us, we are talking about hoodmaps. com. 

Spencer: Hoodmaps. 

Jared: com. First off, I was, I was waiting for you to pull up because I wanted to see what happened to you. It says it Localize is where you’re at, and every time I open it, it pulls me into Lisbon, Portugal, which is where it pulled you, and you and I are not in the same city, so that’s interesting.

Yeah, 

Spencer: no, I, well, okay, I’ve, it’s actually a link directly, I, maybe, is that the link you shared? Oh, maybe I shared the Lisbon link? No, I, no, you didn’t, I just, I refreshed at the homepage, and this is where it came. 

Jared: Okay, yeah, I might have, because that’s where I end up with all the time, but basically, sorry guys, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see what’s going on.

This is, and you might’ve seen it. These have been popular memes going around and inevitably you end up seeing something on Facebook about your city, but it basically gives a uncharacteristic or more slapstick style map of a town, 

Spencer: right? Yeah, I’ve got Seattle pulled up now. It’s really 

Jared: funny if you are from that town or know that town or city, because.

Inevitably, at least half of what they say makes you laugh out loud, right? So, you’ve got San Francisco. Zoom in if you can, because it gets more fun the closer you get. Um, and so, you know, it’s got things like, uh, uh, you know, you’ve got San Francisco there. So, uh, cruise ship tours. Oh, this is Seattle. Yeah.

Oh, this is Seattle. I’m sorry. I thought you said Seattle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, you’ve got cruise ship tourists. Another area is called decent upscale bars. Another area is called Nirvana live at the Paramount in 1991. 

Spencer: The, uh, sketchiest McDonald’s on earth is right here. Cute otters. 

Jared: Perpetual road construction.

I know that area of Seattle. I know exactly what they’re talking about. I haven’t even been to Seattle in five years. 

Spencer: Danger. 

Jared: Um, I mean, I poked around, it’s got a lot of cities, like. All over the world. It’s got so many cities. I mean, bring up San Diego if you can, cause I can kind of rattle off a few in my city that I, that I think are fun.

Um, and it’s interesting cause as you get really drilled in, it’s clear that they’re also pulling in Google map, uh, notable locations. So there you go. So you’ve got, um. Hipsters that can’t afford North Park. Uh, that’s literally where my wife and I’s first house was. In that area. Out by San Diego State, you’ve got, San Diego State University, the largest university.

Teenager make out point. Where’s that at? Out there in the, on the right side of the screen out east. 

Spencer: Oh, there. Oh, which is where all the crackheads sleep. It’s 

Jared: somewhat true. Can’t, can’t argue with that. Somewhat true, unfortunately. Okay. So, uh, beginner hikes. That’s very true. Uh, uh, so many truths there.

Right. Um, but, um, here’s the 

Spencer: thing about it. Worst NFL team was here. Yep. Oh, that’s great. 

Jared: Uh, it’s, uh, so it’s a fun website. Um, I don’t see a lick of monetization. Yeah, how does this thing make money? I have no idea. So if you pulled up an ahrefs Um, if you could, I don’t know if we’re, where we’re at with the screen share there.

Oh, yeah, 

Spencer: we, we could do that. We’re good to go. Sometimes 

Jared: just a second. I never even know these days if you’re, uh, if you’re with me here on the podcast. 

Spencer: Well, everything seems to be working today. So let’s, let’s just fingers crossed. Listeners 

Jared: don’t understand all the editing that’s gone into the past couple of weeks here.

Um, 

Spencer: this one’s smooth sailing. Yeah, hood maps on AHRFs. 

Jared: Yeah. You got a DR 41. So just kind of respectable 51, 000 keywords though. It ranks for neighborhood maps all over them, all over the map, 

Spencer: all over the map. 

Jared: Uh, and it’s really fascinating. Like, I think when you type in like Seattle, like there you go.

London neighborhood map. I think when you type in London neighborhood map, you’re not looking for this map, but you get it and it’s in spot two right now. 

Spencer: Yeah. I was just going to do a live, live search. I mean, 

Jared: there it is. We can’t see it on your screen, I think you’re still in the A Refs tab, but yeah, there you go.

Yeah, there we go. It’s number, it’s 

Spencer: number one. Number one, just under the map. The map, uh, the uh, image pack, yeah. Image, yeah. 

Jared: Good grief, I mean, I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for when you’re typing that in, but somehow the user metrics are saying that people enjoy this more than an actual 

Spencer: neighborhood map.

You can give a thumbs up, thumbs down. I’m just trying to think of what else you can do. Is there a Other pages or is it literally the whole website is maps for various locations? 

Jared: Well, I’ve got to imagine it work with me here, but if you’re ranking for neighborhood map queries, um, like you should have somehow featured listings in each of these areas that you can get referral commissions or something on, you know, I don’t know if you can set up, I don’t know, does open AI, uh, open AI, the world I live in does open table have a, um, an API.

I think they do, by the way. And does your API allow for some sort of commissions? I. Uh, obviously I’m, I’m not in that space, but I, I think that there could be a little bit more you could be doing maybe to create leads or something for businesses in these areas. 

Spencer: Yeah. Interesting. I’m just, I don’t see any other, I’m looking at all their top pages in, in Ahrefs, um, I guess I’ll pull that up and it’s all the neighborhood maps.

Like I don’t see any other pages, right? There’s no articles. There’s no, 

Jared: I’m one step ahead of you. I actually went up to the URL field there earlier and filtered out URLs with the word map in them and there’s nothing. There’s nothing. Okay. I was thinking the same exact thing you were like, are they doing other things to internally link to these pages?

Are they, is there a content strategy behind all this that somehow is fueling a lot of this ranking? No, these are all just neighborhood pages to my understanding have no internal links to each other. They’re standalone pages on the website that somehow. With a DR 41, are ranking really well, huh? 

Spencer: Yeah, so it’s a, it’s a cool website, it’s a fun website, you can check it out.

How are they doing this? Maybe somebody’s just passionate about this. Uh, I, again, anytime they’re pulling in descriptions, they’re, nobody’s manually, I don’t think. Well look in the bottom right, 

Jared: see. Copyright Mapbox, Copyright OpenStreetMap, so it looks like maybe multiple APIs coming in here. But how are they getting, you know, El Cheapo Cinema with crusty seats?

Spencer: I don’t know. I 

Jared: don’t know. That’s gotta be user generated or somehow they’re working with an expert in that area to come up with that maybe? 

Spencer: Yeah, um, I just think maybe it could be like people can comment on Google Maps or tag, you know, a location or, uh, or maybe on open street. Right. And they leave comments or reviews.

Maybe it pulls in frequently mentioned things. And I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a good question. If anybody knows how they’re creating this, uh, let us know if anybody knows why they created this. Uh, if it’s not to make money also, let us know 

Jared: flight path. Definitely. That that’s where Heathrow 

Spencer: is. Yeah, there you go.

Well. I, anything else to say about that website? 

Jared: Okay. It wasn’t a whole lot to talk about with this one, except that it’s fun. It’s a bit whimsical. It’s meme worthy, but how the heck are they making money 

Spencer: on that? That’s the question. Um, so a cool website that interesting. Yeah. Oh man. I would think at some point we’re going to eventually run out of weird niche sites, but we haven’t yet.

You keep finding good ones. So, um, keeping it, keeping it fun, keeping it interesting. So, uh, but that’s all we got for you guys. Uh, thanks for hanging out with us. Talk about the news, talk about, uh, our, you know, shiny objects, Amazon influencer program, uh, for today, a couple of weird niche sites about gray hair and, uh, strange maps.

Uh, kind of fun, but, uh, most of all, I’m thankful that all the tech work today, uh, everything appears to have gone well, so thanks Jared for sticking around, doing the, uh, niche pursuits podcast with us and all the listeners, thank you very much for listening. 

Jared: Have a great weekend, everyone.