Countless Businesses Worldwide Caught in the Crosshairs of Tech Showdown

Welcome back to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. 

This week, Jared Bauman and guest host Morgan Overholt talk SEO, Google, and AI, inspire with their successful side hustles, and share some weird niche sites that will definitely get you thinking.

They kick things off this week by talking about Google’s latest: the December Core Update , not to be confused with the November Core Update just a week ago. 

They share Google’s explanation behind the latest update and how this will likely affect businesses.

Watch the Full Episode

Moving along, they dive into the drama surrounding the dispute between WP Engine and WordPress.org. Jared gives a brief explanation and then they talk about the decision recently handed down in court.

Do you agree with the preliminary judgment? What do you think of Morgan’s assessment? Do you believe the situation creates mistrust, or that the dispute is based on a personal vendetta?

Tune in to hear all their thoughts!

The next news item is that OpenAI and ChatGPT are considering incorporating ads on their platforms. Jared outlines the challenges they’ll face if they move forward with it, and Morgan 

Do you agree that this news is unsurprising? Do you believe that they might bring something new to the table, like Morgan says? What do you think about her thoughts on Instagram ads?

And last in the news segment, they discuss how Google launched Gemini 2.0 and the company’s expectations for the tool. They talk about its new capabilities, 

Do you agree with Morgan that Google is falling behind? Or with Jared, that the company has a lot of runway to get it right? Morgan shares an anecdote about how people distinguish between AI and Google. What do you think?

When it comes to side hustles, Jared shares his latest stats on the Amazon Influencer program, as we’re deep in Q4. 

How’s he doing so far in December? How does he expect the rest of the month to go? What are his earnings for the year?

Morgan shares her experience in the past few weeks on the program as well. How much is she earning? And how many videos has she made?

When it’s her turn to talk side hustles, she talks about her various income streams from Amazon: Amazon Influencer, affiliates, and KPD.

Tune in to hear how much she’s earning and what she thinks of the platform.

Moving on to some weird niche sites, Jared shares the translated version of a Dutch site: Fish Doorbell. Jared tries to explain the site and how it tracks swimming fish.

They talk about its DA, keywords, US traffic, and general thoughts about the site. 

When it’s Morgan’s turn, she shares something a bit more festive: Ship Your Enemies Glitter, which lets you send anonymous glitter bombs.

Listen to the full episode to find out how much traffic it’s getting and find out what’s so interesting about the site’s keywords. Do other pranks like this exist? Does this give you any ideas?

And that wraps up another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. Hopefully you’ve been brought up to speed with the news and feel inspired to continue to crush it with your side hustle.

See you next Friday!

Transcript

Jared: All right, welcome to this week in niche proceeds news. My name is jared bauman And you gotta be kidding me. Google has launched another core update. And so we’re going to chat briefly about that today, but really the big story today that we’re going to get into, you remember all that WordPress and WP engine drama, well, we’ve got a pretty big update to discuss there as it relates to that drama and some of the early stories that we were reporting on a couple of months ago, also, we’re going to be seeing ads as a part of our favorite AI assistant going forward.

Or will we? A lot of question marks being raised there. There’s some interesting things developing. We’ll touch on that. And then to close out the podcast, we’ve got weird ditches, side hustles. I feel like it’s a side hustle season right now. I don’t know. It looks like Morgan and I are talking about the same side hustle today, although you’re going to expand on it.

Morgan. Good to see you. Good to have you back.

Morgan: Yeah, it’s good to be here. My last podcast before the end of the year, I brought a last one. Yeah. And I brought a, uh, well, semi festive, uh, weird niche site as well, um, in an honor of the occasion.

Jared: You, you, you mentioned in the, uh, in the running, the, the show notes here that it’s festive, and then you said, maybe it’s not festive.

So I guess we’ll have to just see. If everybody in the audience thinks it’s festive or not.

Morgan: I put, I put it in the show notes, festive question mark,

Jared: question mark. Yeah, I was like, I don’t know what to do with that. Uh, all right, let’s get into our first story of the day, which, which is that Google core update.

Um, if you feel like maybe you’re listening to a podcast that happened a couple of weeks ago, you’re not, this is now the December core update. We had the December, uh, sorry, the November core update. Now we have the December. Core update. Um, and so here we have it up on screen. Google has released its fourth core update for the 2024 year today.

Um, it came, it comes about a week after the November 20, 24 core update. Here’s what Google wrote. The December 20, 24 core update is rolling out, and we expect it will complete in two weeks. , I love this next line. By the way, if you’re wondering why there’s a core update this month after one last month, it’s because we messed up.

No, they didn’t say that . What they said is. We have different core systems. We’re always improving this past blog explains more and then they link to that. I mean, I gotta, I gotta be honest. They addressed exactly what I thought is why are we releasing a core update 1 week after another core update? And it just, it boggles the mind to some degree.

First off, they’re rolling out multiple updates during what is very heavy web traffic season, especially for e commerce brands, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. We’ve talked in the past about how in the years past, they always seem to zero in on this and it just causes so much stress for a lot of businesses and now they’re releasing them back to back and it raises so many questions.

Morgan: I’m not going to lie, Jared. So I’ve been traveling to speak for family. Like that’s why I’m filming in a different location today. If y’all can see on the visual podcast and. And it’s funny because I knew about the November core update of them following that very closely, but actually miss the announcement on the December.

So when I initially saw that on the show notes, I was probably like a lot of people listening today. I was like, Oh, just the November core update. We’re going to talk about what happened, what we’re seeing. No, another core update. I, my mind was blown. I mean, that was news to me as well this morning. And I love what I love what you just said.

I feel like that’s what despite their actual, uh, what they actually said, but why they’re releasing one in my head. That’s also how I read it because we messed up

Jared: to be fair. They didn’t say that folks. So I was I was kidding around, but, um, I can’t remember a time and I’ve been in the SEO game for quite a while.

I can’t remember a time that comes to memory where they’ve released core updates. So close together. I know that there was a June, July core update where they had one in June. They had one in July. That was 2021 or 2022, but they pre announced those. If I remember correctly, they said, we’re going to be launching two updates.

They’re going to happen. Over the next couple months and here’s why that feels different when you pre announce and you have a reason Versus when you announce when you roll it out And then a week later, you’re like, uh, here’s another one.

Morgan: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I’m just looking at these timelines. We’re going to spend more time in the middle of a core update between November and December than not having a core update on Google.

I mean, that’s gotta be so stressful. Cause the first one was what? About two weeks. Second, one’s going to be another two weeks. I mean, that’s a significant chunk of Q4. I mean, just when you think you’re safe, right? I mean, I hope it pans out for everybody, but just about when you’re ready to take that sigh of relief or hit with yet another one.

It’s a little like, Oh, come on guys. Come on. And in the most important season of the year for me. Yeah.

Jared: And that’s the thing, like for a lot of brands, like this is exactly the time when they just need to focus on their conversions, on what’s working, on what’s driving traffic, on making the most of that.

This is where a lot of brands make the bulk of their money. It’s. I mean, we know Google doesn’t really care about any of that and maybe they shouldn’t for the record, but maybe they should. And you know, it’s kind of the time when a lot of businesses need a little bit of stability so they can try to, um, squeeze out their profits and stuff.

It’s interesting because you, you mentioned it. So I’ll highlight it. The November core update was two weeks, got a week off. Now we’ll probably have another two week update. So that’s about five weeks, right? Well, if you remember back to the March core update, It was actually five and a half weeks. I wonder if in March they were like core update.

Hmm. Well, don’t tell them it’s done yet. Um, let’s launch another one. And then, and now we’re just seeing this time their PR department kind of switched the narrative a little bit. They’re like, no, no, let’s actually tell them it’s done and start a new one. But I mean, we’re almost like having a five week update with a week where nothing happened in between.

That’s a lot like what the March core update looked like.

Morgan: You know, sometime I need to actually do the math and be like, all right, how long out of the year has Google spent updating their website? I mean, because honestly, this is a significant chunk of time at this point. Like you said, like, what’d you say earlier on the March?

It was like five weeks. It’s going to be probably another five weeks this time. I mean, that’s a lot of time to be rolling out some updates. And of course the conventional wisdom here, you know, is not to make any like jump decisions, not to go change anything immediately until everything is kind of finished and see how everything pans out.

So will it, or should it affect what people are doing right now? Yeah. Uh, probably not. Um, will it affect our, uh, sleep? Maybe.

Jared: I mean, I, I run SEO for, you know, client websites. And I mean, we were still kind of settling on what happened to some websites from the November core update, the ups and the downs.

And I’m just sitting here going like, well, do I wait to send that report out? Uh, anyways, well. I want to spend our whole time talking about that. Uh, we could surmise the whole time, uh, folks, it’s going to be a couple of weeks. It looks like we’re going to get right into basically the Christmas week with this update.

Maybe, maybe into the new year, if it extends further. Um, I don’t think they told us how long this one was going to be. Maybe they did. And I glossed over it, but I’m usually expect about two weeks. So.

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Again, that’s coupon code podcast. Go to community. nichepursuits. com today and see what it’s all about. And maybe I’ll see you on our call next week. Thanks a lot.

Jared: On to the real drama. That’s the WordPress WP engine drama. Um, you know, basically I’m not going to go through the whole story. Uh, but WordPress and, um, their parent company automatic and really their CEO, Matt Mullenweg have.

Really went after WP engine and, um, some of their plugins and whatnot. Uh, it’s a story worth looking into if you don’t know where it’s at, but we kind of paused on talking about it for a little while, because there really wasn’t much that was happening, right? We know that if you went to WordPress, you’ve got this big.

Awkward checkbox that you had to check to get logged in to verify that you weren’t using WP engine. We know there’s been a lot of stuff that’s been going on behind the scenes. It’s not allowed them to actually, um, have access to the wordpress. org features and resources. Well. Okay, here’s the update. Um, uh, basically, and let me, let me switch my screen over here.

Uh, basically to, to kind of read or paraphrase what’s happening, a California district court issued a preliminary injunction against Automatic, um, which is WordPress’s Uh, dot coms parent company, it ordered it to stop blocking WP engines, access to wordpress. org resources, and interfering with the ACF plugin, advanced custom fields.

So again, this goes back to a lawsuit that W engine filed against, uh, automatic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg. And so, you know, this isn’t a final thing. And I think both brands admitted it in the article or in the interview, they basically said, um, that everybody expects a trial. It’s going to be the final resolution, but in the end.

All things on this front are back to normal right now that awkward checkbox is gone and, um, you know, WP engine’s able to do what it was previously doing. I can’t remember if you were on the podcast as co host when we were talking about some of these things or not, but I’m sure you’ve kind of followed along with this.

Morgan: Yeah. In fact, I was, uh, I was thinking about my commentary reading through this on the last podcast, because at the time, and I can’t remember exactly when it was, I think late October, when I was on talking about this, I sort of dismissed it. I said, you know, there’s just a lot of like heated egos, a blow over, like nobody’s really worried about it, you know, and it’s, it’s not exactly blowing over in the way that I expected, um, you know, and, and honestly, I really, I have to say, I have to agree with this preliminary judgment, but it, which, you know, basically sided with WP engine, right?

Despite the fact that WordPress apparently in their user agreements, they are allowed to change the plugins without developer consent. Um, and of course, when Automatic was doing that, they were basically claiming that, uh, there was something about a third party upsell, um, there was something about a security patch that they were concerned about, but all of those were kind of pursued to be, uh, loose reasons for doing that.

It’s the more public perception of that is more, it’s just revenge, right? Just possible, not to use a legal term, but possible discrimination, even, uh, personal vendetta, perhaps, is what it seems more, uh, likely in this case. It is a shame to me, honestly, that it has, has, has to get escalated to this degree, because honestly, the real losers in this situation are, are, well, both of them, everybody involved, WP Engine, uh, WordPress, and all of the users that rely on these platforms, because now all of a sudden we’re all looking at this, like there’s instability across the board, right?

All of a sudden I’m thinking, okay, well, if WP Engine keeps coming out with products, is it going to be reliable? Or is WordPress have the personal vendetta? Are they going to keep giving them a hard time? You know, WordPress, am I, am I going to make WordPress mad one day? Are they going to, are they going to take out personal vendetta against me or one of the other publishers or developers of products that I use?

Right. Um, so it doesn’t exactly breed a lot of confidence in either one of these companies. Um, I, it’s just like, this is one of those situations where I feel like it’s a lose, lose, lose for everybody involved. And it is a shame that is having to be escalated in this way.

Jared: Yeah. They, I’ve heard it said before, and it probably applies here.

The only ones winning in this case are the lawyers, right? They’re the only ones who make any, anything off of this. You know, I think you bring up a good point in that there’s really two things happening here. There’s the legal battle over what the documentation says, what the terms of service say, what the agreements are and all that.

And then there’s just the, I’d say, you know, back of the napkin math kind of, um, uh, conversation, which is, it just, It doesn’t look good and doesn’t feel right when this stuff is happening and it looks weird, you know, let consumers decide ultimately then at the end of the day, what plugin, what service, what software they want to go with, that would be a much better resolution.

Um, uh, and sometimes things get this way, that’s for sure. But it’s a shame to watch it play out in the public spotlight because that’s exactly what it does. It creates a lot of mistrust in WordPress and it creates a lot of trepidation over this whole. Idea of a kind of an open source ecosystem, if you will, you know, that’s one of these WordPress has always been so, um, I guess celebrated for is, is the fact that it can kind of harness so many different, um, developers and so many different technologies and, and really, I think that whole model can, I don’t know if it’s coming into question, but it’s certainly, there’s a little bit of skepticism that has to be had after a situation like this.

Morgan: Yeah, it’s really important to note that they’re saying that preliminary judgment is kind of, uh, one of the things they brought up was saying, Hey, look, yes, you have the rights to do these things and limit the use these plugins and change all of this, et cetera, as the company, but you’re not doing it to anybody else.

And that was sort of the basis of the preliminary judgment. They couldn’t really prove that WordPress is treating all their other developers the exact same way that they’re treating WP engine, which is really important to say. And I think that’s not going to look good for them going forward either. I know it’ll be interesting to see where this ends up, but that’s really important again, because it’s that, it’s that it just stinks of personal vendetta is what it smells like to me.

Jared: Just to read off the official line in the article under the preliminary injunction automatic will have to take down the list of companies that displayed on a site it created to track outgoing WP Engine customers. They’re going to have to remove the checkbox that asks WordPress users to verify they’re not affiliated with WP Engine when they’re logging in.

Um, so this will. I think more than likely end up going to trial. So this, uh, again, this is, this is an injunction, uh, while the courts do their thing and the lawyers do their thing. So I, that means we pretty much can guarantee there will be more to report on in coming podcast episodes.

Morgan: Congrats lawyers.

Jared: Yup. I’m sure they’re getting a nice check from this one. So, Hey, um, let’s move along. Uh, lots of news to cover today. We’re only through the first one or two articles. Uh, I’ve got so many tabs open. There we go. Okay. So I kind of tease this a bit and, um, uh, pretty much cats out of the bag. It looks like, Oh my goodness.

I got ads everywhere. It looks like you’re watching on screen. Just saw the ad bomb happen. It looks like. Open AI chat GPT are moving towards adding ads. Um, this is a very short article in futurism. com and basically what they’ve done is that they have seen ad oriented job listings. That are being posted on LinkedIn and also in other areas where they are, where open AI and chat to PD are targeting, um, like basically, uh, ad oriented people from their big tech rivals like Google and like meta.

And, uh, you know, we’ve talked about how the free version. Of chat GPT, the paid version of chat GPT. They have not had ads. Um, and so that’s made their experience inside of these platforms much different than if you go to say a Google or something like that, even really some of the other, uh, some of the other ones that, that people use, but it looks like.

Based on both the hiring and also based on some of the comments, um, by the CFO that they’re probably going to be moving towards ads. So there was an interview, um, and chief financial officer candidly said that the company had been weighing ads, uh, though she declined to say when or where, uh, but she did say that the company would be thoughtful about when and where we implement them.

So that kind of means. If you just take that English at face value, that means it’s happening. And when it happens, they will be thoughtful about when and where they, they place them. She kind of backtracked on it a bit, I guess. Um, and, uh, and pulled back a little bit of those comments, but at the day, if you’re hiring people for ad related jobs from your biggest tech rivals, and then you have some mixed messages going on in the media about it sure looks like we’re going to kind of have ads coming and chat GPT in some shape, some form, some way.

Morgan: Yeah, and that walk back was not that ambiguous to me either. I mean, it creates some, you know, ambiguity for sure. But I mean, it literally says in the same interview, although we’re open to exploring other revenue streams in the future, we have no active plans to pursue advertising, but I’m with you and well, I’m, I’m more with this editorial, which is important to say, by the way, but this article that we’re reading my futurism.

com is in fact an editorial. So it’s chock full of their own opinions and some speculation. But yeah, the proof does seem to be in the pudding that they’re at least exploring their options at this time. And who would blame them? Right. Was it perplexity? Which one that is also exploring adding ad revenue to their AI at the moment?

Yeah. So

Jared: I think it’s perplexity. And I, I, I wanted to say that earlier and I couldn’t remember which one it was. So I just kind of took a punt on it, but I don’t remember which one it is, but it is another one that is exploring it as well.

Morgan: You know, and also, I just want to point out that there is some humor in this article to, uh, the editorial by futurism.

com because. They also accuse open AI. And I, this is a quote of crossing the Rubicon of sleaziness.

Jared: I was waiting for you to bring that up. That seemed more like your line to deliver.

Morgan: But futurism. com also has a whole bunch of ads and affiliate marketing and everything else. So, you know, a little glass house situation there, if you ask me.

Jared: Took me 30 seconds to get the article clear of the ads for the podcast just now.

Morgan: Yeah. I love that visual aid. Thank you. Cause I was going to bring that up. But yeah, I mean, honestly, I think this is the model that we all assume this is, this is going to. And at the end of the day, it’s kind of funny to me that with all the advances, right?

And this is me speaking as somebody with a journalism background in newspaper. You know, my first ever job was like in a traditional print newspaper, you know? It’s funny to me with all the advances in society and technology that at the end of the day, it is still display advertising and whether it be digital format or print that that brings in the cash every single time, and we are seeing some evolution in this field, right?

And this is the other thing I didn’t want to bring up because. You know, Instagram, for instance, and UGC content, user generated content, you know, and influencers and that sort of thing is really some of the biggest evolution that I personally feel as though I’ve witnessed in the advertising space in the past few years, and it is possible that maybe open AI, if they do explore this avenue, they could be looking at something that’s a bit more revolutionary after all.

The chief product officer, uh, Kevin wheel. I’ll probably say that incorrectly, but he comes from the Instagram world. And so if there is somebody primed, maybe bring something a little bit different to the table, um, that we’ve not seen before, maybe it’ll be them. But I think it’s a foregone conclusion, whether it’s, whether it’s soon or later on down the road, it’s really expensive to operate these AI models.

Right. Every single query we’re using just so many resources. Something’s got to give eventually it’s going to happen whether it’s now or later in my, my, my personal, if I’m a betting woman is what I would guess.

Jared: Well, it’s interesting because I think that, um, I don’t think many people would have a problem with ads done in a, a way that isn’t overwhelming or isn’t, uh, obtrusive.

Uh, that sort of thing. I, I, there’s obviously a lot of privacy concerns that come with the conventional ad model that’s being used today. And we talk a lot about third party cookies and just all the privacy situation that ads are entangled with right now. So there’s that on the table, right? We’ve got that to deal with, but we also have the fact that.

I think the frustrations when it comes to ads in platforms like Google is the fact that over time, the ads are more prominently placed in the actual content as opposed to being the secondary to the content. You know, we’ve got to scroll below the fold in many cases now, past three or four prominent ad units just to get to the results that are the reason we’re there.

Versus the way it started off where the ads were kind of secondary to what the content was. And so I I think you’re right. It’s gonna be interesting to see how they roll it out Will it be conventional ads as we know them today? They’ve gone they’ve gone on record in the past saying that like that model is a bit antiquated I think they’ve actually said that about google So how they do it again assuming that they are but it looks like stand a reason they might How are they going to pull it off and kind of where is it going to go?

And how are they going to maintain a good user experience? You While not just looking a lot like, say, a Google search experience.

Morgan: You know, and again, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but it’s, uh, you know, people ask me about advertising all the time, I guess, because, you know, I’m a blogger and it’s sort of like a love, hate relationship.

I love the money, hate the ads, you know, but no, I mean, no advertisers, if you’re listening, yes, tell me, you know, I’m a typical user too. Right. But I actually find personally, like my favorite way of being advertised too, is currently on Instagram. Like so many of the brands I’ve discovered and like the shirt that I’m wearing today, like came from an Instagram ad, you know, and it’s like my new favorite clothing line.

It’s, I’ve discovered so many brands that way. And I would love to see, um, ads kind of go in that direction as it do seem way little more personalized without being totally creepy as it are almost fun in a way I find myself on Google and even on my own blog and other websites, almost ignoring display ads.

You know, I once read, cause I also have that graphic design, uh, background that the human brain after a while is almost trained to kind of look over the ads, not even really see them just to kind of scroll past them. So. Even though it’s annoying that we’re scrolling past all these ads, we’re really not giving them a whole lot of, uh, weight, you know, or spending time looking at them.

I find Google ads to be in the search to be some of the most annoying ads because they’re not always as clearly labeled. And sometimes I get a little bit more confused about, Oh, this is organic. Oh, this is not organic, et cetera, et cetera. Might be more effective from an advertising advertisers perspective, but certainly, uh, not, it certainly annoys me as, as a user.

I am really interested to see what it’s going to look like. I hope they go the way of Instagram. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but I’d rather see them go that direction and revolutionize that space. I’d rather than the Google direction of a misdirection. Uh, that’s, and that’s what I would call it the way Google’s doing it right now.

So we’ll see what happens.

Jared: It’s clear that they could use the revenue. I mean, they’ve admitted how, how expansive the costs are for this. I mean, they’ve raised so much money and their valuation is so high. I think the article touched on it. It doesn’t seem like it’s, um, I like a cash situation they need right now, but you know, the platform can’t be free or relatively cheap forever.

And they’re going to have to figure something out. So you’re going to have to pay to play, or you’re going to have to get ads or, you know what I mean? Like this, these are all businesses at the day. They’re not even a nonprofit anymore. They’ve kind of removed that distinction. Like they need to profit.

Right. So, um, uh, I believe I have that right. They removed that nonprofit. Didn’t they, was that in the article?

Morgan: I didn’t see that part. I

Jared: think they did had, uh, don’t quote me on that, but I believe that they were either looking into it or they’ve actually already removed it. So expect profit to be something they focus on at some point.

But, um, well, man, a lot of speculation today on the news. You had to speculate about this Google update. We’ve had to speculate about what’s going to happen with WordPress and WP. And you’re going to speculate about ads, uh, in chat GPT. Our last article, no speculation. We can actually report some news that happened and is live and is factual.

Not that the other stuff isn’t interesting, but Gemini 2. 0, um, was launched by Google. Um, let’s see. Uh, here we go. Google Gemini 2. 0 coming to search and AI overviews. Which I think is probably the most, probably the most interesting thing here. I’ll touch on that in a second. But I think the AI overviews portion is probably the most interesting thing.

Um, so Google released its upgraded AI model, Gemini 2. 0. This was yesterday. So Wednesday, December 11th. They’re going to be rolling these advancements into Google search and AI overviews. Uh, and Google’s AI overviews should be able to quote, tackle more complex topics. And multi step questions, including advanced math equations, multi modal queries, multi modal queries and coding, Google wrote.

Um, blah, blah, blah. We’ve got a quote from the CEO that doesn’t really say much. Um, it is, uh, basically Google’s here. This is one more line I want to read. And then I want to get your thoughts on this. Cause I have a couple of thoughts myself. Uh, Google already started limited testing this week. Of this updated model for AI overviews.

And Google said they will be rolling it out more broadly early next year. Uh, they also said we’ll continue to bring AI overviews to more countries and more languages over the next year. So it’s interesting because when I read about what this new updated 2. 0 AI overviews will Is advancing. It sounds a lot, especially the part about multi step questions and advanced math equations.

It sounds a lot like it’s going to be doing some of the things that open AI’s newest model for chat GPT is doing, because that’s a lot what the IO model was released a couple of weeks or months ago to tackle. Um, So there’s Gemini 2, there’s Gemini and there’s people. Do you use Gemini instead of chat GPT?

That’s my first question for you. And then the second part, and probably, like I said, the more interesting part is how they use this new Gemini in AI overviews, which is where the AI enters the SERP and the SERP experience for Google.

Morgan: You know, it’s interesting. Actually, I thought the most interesting aspect of this was that latter part that they mentioned.

There’s actually a demo video that I would encourage everybody, uh, to go watch right now on the Gemini 2. 0. Cause I thought. When I first read the article, um, and about the expanded IO overviews and all that, I was like, yeah, whatever, right? I mean, I think I’ve made it pretty clear on this podcast that I have been using Search GPT ever since it came out and am madly in love with it.

And I think OpenAI really just kind of seems to be on the, on the cusp of that, the forefront of this innovation and change right now in a way that Google, it seems that they’re falling behind more or less. Now with the Google demo that came out alongside this, uh, this press release or this article about Gemini 2.

0 being launched into SERPs, I did see some features there that I thought would be potentially exciting, but now, again, we’re just talking about things that are in beta, things that are being solely released. It’s one thing to see a cool video. It’d be like, Oh, look at all the really awesome stuff that it does.

And then see an actual practice, because that was sort of how we felt. At least I felt I should speak for myself. When AI overviews were announced and then AI overviews actually came out, but some of the, some of the interesting things that they’re basically saying they could do or like multi step instructions, like things like, like, I think the example they use was something along the lines of, you know, I want to, I want to find this, uh, painting from this era.

And then I want you to go to Etsy and find like a painting this era, then add it to my cart, like that kind of thing where it’s actually controlling aspects of your browser or doing things on your behalf, instead of just answering you with, uh, or answering your query. So. I think that’s got a lot of potential.

I’m really excited to see where that’s going to go, but will the reality, you know, equal the, the beta, the preview here? Well, here, I don’t know. We’ll see.

Jared: It’d be funny. Cause the video had some really cool use cases. Um, I felt like that in a lot of Google videos, like when the first Gemini video came out, um, there were, it was both, you know, kind of, uh, You know, made fun of in many ways because of some of the stuff that was done in there, but then also there was some really cool things that they were showing you that they could do with it.

Right? Um, and like you said, though, this is a lot of beta. And so we’re gonna have to see AI overviews took forever to launch. You know, it started as, um, the search generative experience, and then that beta basically expired. And then it went like another. Six months and then got launched. I believe it was May of 2024 as AI overviews.

And we know that launch didn’t go very well. So they’re probably being a little more careful about their launches when it comes to some of their AI stuff. Hence why we might have this in beta. Um, but yeah, you know, um, you didn’t answer my question, but I’m guessing you sort of answered it by not answering it.

It doesn’t sound like you use Gemini at all. And I posted this. Um, on X Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I asked like, what ratio are you using chat GPT, Gemini, perplexity, these, you know, like, are you using one? Are you splitting your time? Are you going to Claude? A lot of people had varied answers. Almost to a T, I think only one or two people said that they were predominantly using Gemini at its core product level, you know, and I know I don’t, I use chat GPT and Claude, but I, and a little bit of perplexity, but I never ended up getting the Gemini.

Morgan: Yeah, no, yeah, the same. I I’m basically using chat GPT and I’m on the paid version of chat GPT as well. I don’t usually, I, I really, I just haven’t been using Gemini. I mean, I just haven’t, again, it feels like Google sort of chasing open AI’s tail at this point. And, you know, and as Google should know more than anybody, you know, a lot of times it does pay to sort of be the first big, well known person in that space.

Right? I mean, obviously back in the day, you could have argued that was Yahoo and search before Google kind of overtook them. So it’s not the end all be all, but. It pays to be amongst the first, and right now I’m not really sure Google’s feeling that way, you know? But yeah, I’m not personally a user, uh, I mean, I could, I’m not, I could be converted, I could be converted.

I obviously have a bit of a personal bias against Google, uh, that I don’t exactly hide very well, but I’m open to trying anything, I will say that. I am impressed by their demo video. We’ll just see whether or not that actually, uh, ends up being the final product or anything, even in the universe of the final product.

Jared: Well, as much as we talk about, you know, whether it’s, um, you know, Google taking misstep after misstep PR situations, um, you know, bad experiences, poor results, people not using them as much. I mean, last week, the story was Google is for old people. This week, we’re talking as much as we talk about all that stuff, when you have 90 plus percent market share.

You have such a long runway to get it right. Um, not that each botched rollout or each failed search result isn’t hurting them, but there’s still just such a runway that they have. Right. So they’re not going away anytime soon. We’re going to continue to see this Gemini product, um, evolve and develop. And to your point, like, Hey, if they can make it awesome and it makes all of our lives better than, you know, more power to them.

Morgan: The anecdotally this and this is also kind of interesting to me is that I was having this conversation with my stepmom actually just a couple of weeks ago. Her company is now, I mean, she’s one of these people that just like she doesn’t know what Google is not the Internet more or less. I mean, it’s just all the same to her, right?

She’s kind of demographic. He’s in home stock about. Um, but her company is now training her on chat GPT. And so now when she thinks of AI, she’s not thinking of Google, Jim and I are using Google for that. She thinks Google is the internet. Google is a search engine and then AI is chat GPT. So it’s kind of interesting because we also can’t assume just because Google is like this big company that, you know, everybody’s going to stick to Google because this is what they’re used I’m not necessarily saying that I see people saying, Oh, AI, that equals open AI.

That equals chat to be, that doesn’t necessarily equal Google. And that’s what I’m personally seeing from the, some of the, you know, the older generation and maybe even some of the less techie, uh, people among us. But again, that’s just completely anecdotal. I, you know, haven’t seen a real study of that.

We’ll see how it pans out.

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Jared: Uh, well, I think we can, uh, put the news to bed for this week. Uh, lots more to talk about it is December. So, uh, we are in the throes of the big Q4 spending season, which means that. I feel like it’s side hustle season. I say that it’s, it’s not side hustle season. It’s kind of the festive season, but this is when ad revenue and RPMs are at their highest.

This is when people are spending more. So your affiliate sales, you’re like basically just stuff is happening. More so now for most niches, for most industries than any other time. So, um, my side hustle, I kind of teased it last week. I’ll probably be talking about it all month is Amazon influencer. Um, I did share in an email this week, uh, about a, uh, an HCU hit site of mine that, um, Thomas Smith and I partnered up on to use the email address to reboot.

And we’re having great results. That’s about 30 days old. I will talk about that in a couple of weeks when Thomas is on. But it’s all Amazon influencer until then. So we are 11 days into December. We’re recording this on the 12th. I talked last week about how the earnings for November came in at around 5, 250.

So that’s about 25 percent more than my last year’s November. Um, now black Friday fell really late this year. I think it was like the 29th of November. So. You might say, why is that important to bring up? Well, because the other like really black Friday’s on a Friday. And so what is turned into now, is it that Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday, which they call cyber Monday.

Those are kind of the big four spending days. And then with the way Amazon influencer works, you don’t actually get your. Commission, you don’t actually see it reflected in your revenue until the product ships. And so many brands ship that day or the next day, but many brands take a few days to ship out.

And so what you really see is earnings come in over that weekend and in the subsequent days to follow. And why am I bringing that up? Well, because black Friday was on a 29th of the month, the month only went to 30 days. And so a lot of this sales period is ending up in December, which is encouraging because I did.

25 percent better November with really a shorter kind of holiday sales part. Where are we at for December? 11 days in, um, let’s see, 11 days in, we are at about 3, 350. So we’re over half of what we earned of what I earned in November has already happened the first 11 days of December. Now, if that carried on, that continued, I’d make over 9, 000 this month, but it’s not, obviously, um, I’ve already started to see sales kind of dwindle a bit.

It’s still better than it is on a normal everyday, you know, work week, but it is starting to fall back. And we know from last year and just from common sense that as soon as products won’t arrive by Christmas or whatever holiday people are buying them for, The sales will come to a grinding screeching halt.

And so the second half of the month is usually actually lower than an average month. And so I still feel like based on doing a little bit of math from last year, and then looking at this year, I’ll probably end up right around the same as November around that 5, 250 mark, give or take 10, 15 percent either way.

Morgan: You know, it’s funny, you and I also had an exchange on, uh, Twitter publicly about the Black Friday earnings, and you were dead on, you said, because you were like, how’s your Black Friday? And I’m like, me? It was all right on Influencer. Oh, yeah. Said wait, didn’t where that went. Yeah. Yeah. You said wait for the weekend.

And sure enough, it was actually two days later that I had my highest day of the season. So. I’m not having numbers like yours. I ain’t going to lie, but no, it was two days later that I actually had my peak because it does take the time to actually ship those things out. Um, I’m also having a great month.

I mean, just looking at my last 30 days, I’ve made like a thousand bucks. Basically. I think I’m at, um, not to, not to like spoil my little side thing, but over 500 already so far this month, and I have only 270 videos. I mean, it’s like nothing really in the grand scheme of things. So. And also to your point, I also want to make sure that everybody also realizes if you’re new to Amazon influencer, you can get dinged on returns.

So when he talks about how this might go, it might slow down and your numbers are going to kind of come to a near halt, it could also go backward a little bit. And that’s sort of the name of the game. And of course the. Busiest return season of the entire year is that week after Christmas. So don’t be too surprised if you see a little bit of that reversal as well.

But overall, Jared, your numbers are absolutely, I mean, it makes me drool. Like I just think, Oh my gosh, I need to be spending more time on Amazon Influencer. It’s incredible. I mean, that’s a full time job. That is more than a full time job for, I would say most Americans. Right? I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s bank.

That’s money.

Jared: It’s also fun to look ahead a little bit. Um, and I did the math and, uh, you know, if that 5, 000 ish number holds for December, um, that would put me at about 45, 000 in earnings in 2024 from Amazon influencer.

Morgan: I mean, people do not sleep on that. That is crazy.

Jared: I know. And

Morgan: remember, even though we’ve talked about this, I feel like we beat this dead horse, you know, over and over again on this podcast, but to anybody that’s new at soliciting, you only need like a decent social media following.

We have seen people get into Amazon influencer just a couple of weeks after starting a new Tik TOK and a handful, a couple of hundred followers here or there. This is not something that you have to be like a superstar celebrity influencer to be able to get into. I’ve seen people who have never been influencers before, who do not own a blog, who just started their social media channels, get into this and start earning money.

And it’s such an easy thing to do. Even in this house, my dad does not shop a lot on Amazon. But over the years, I’ve bought gifts for him. And this week, I’ve spent all week looking for all the gifts I bought him from Amazon. And it’s like we’re filming my little influencer videos, you know? Their copy spot is on Amazon.

I’ve already filmed a little video for that. You, you’d be surprised the amount of Amazon products you start seeing in your life and just straight like there’s a like cartoon like dollar signs floating above, above them in your brain. You know, once you kind of start getting into the rhythm or the groove of the whole thing and you realize how easy it is, just quickly shoot that video and upload it to Amazon.

So don’t sleep on that. Uh, Jared is a master to y’all, uh, of, of this entire program. So definitely listen to every word he says on this because really incredible. He’s the one, I mean, Jared, you’re the one that guided me on how to get started. And, and honestly, I was skeptical when I first heard about the program.

I mean, I, I heard about it and you put it off and thought, ah, it’s not for me. Then it was you who convinced me to give it a try. And I’m so glad I did.

Jared: Well, I think your earnings are a Testament. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve uploaded much in the last month or two, but I know. You know, call it a month or two ago.

You hadn’t even added any videos in months. Um, I think it was like summer when you’d last added videos and it’s better if you add videos. But I think that kind of brings up the point, like the earnings I’m sharing in 2024 are, uh, really reminiscent of an account that I have not put a whole lot of effort into this year.

I mean, I have been. Active a couple hours a month in filming videos and uploading them. But beyond that, I, I take the most unstrategic approach possible. And I think that’s also what’s on the table for people listening. Um, you know, I got on a call last Friday, every Friday, there’s an Amazon influencer call inside the niche pursuits community.

And so I jumped on that call. Cause I was really excited to hear what, how everybody else was doing with their black Friday numbers. And there are people. I learned so much in this half hour call. There are people who are showing me how to be better with Creator Connections, who are having all this success on that Creator Connection platform there.

So there’s a lot of ways to do way better than I’m doing. Just to be fair, you’re, you’re showering the praises. But the reality is, is my approach has just been all about the ROI. Like how can I get the maximum return for the least amount of investment? But there are so many more strategic ways to go about this than I’ve done.

And so really I would look at what I’m doing as it’s great. But you could do better if you wanted to put more time, more effort and more strategy into it.

Morgan: Yeah, for sure. And like you said, too, it’s also important to know that there are other ways to earn money through that, you know, special incentives.

And Amazon might offer the creator connections thing, you know, working directly with brands. So it’s really just, yeah, it’s a, you can, there’s lots of different ways to do it. And, but yeah, man, it’s, I, I haven’t seen many, I haven’t seen many side hustles online in recent years where you can see such.

Immediate gratification in the way that I’ve seen on Amazon influencer. Uh, I mean, that’s, it’s gotta be one of my absolute favorite all time side hustles to be honest. I couldn’t

Jared: agree with you more.

Morgan: Didn’t hurt that I already had an Amazon addiction when this whole thing kicked off. So now I just feel justified.

Jared: Yeah. There is something in the back of your mind and you’re like, well, At least I can make a video about it. Well, I mean, that you want to talk about influencer, you shared a little bit of your numbers, um, kind of a question or two, but maybe take us through the side hustle stuff you want to talk about today.

Um, and, uh, it’s more than just influence. You’re talking about the greater Amazon as a whole.

Morgan: Yeah, I mean, so I just kind of wanted to really talk about just making money on Amazon period. Right? Um, because right now I have two different income streams in it. Well, technically three different income streams in Amazon, right?

I’ve got my Amazon influencer, which I believe you touched on a second ago. Um, just December already, I only have 270 videos and some of those I only uploaded last week and are not even live yet. Probably really like 260 that are live. I’ve already made 521 bucks. I’ve made a thousand dollars in the last 30 days, just filming stuff.

I already have around my house and, or sometimes filming Christmas gifts as they’ve been coming in. Probably I’ll probably be chasing the nieces and nephews around. Like after they opened their Christmas gifts this year, trying to film those too, you know? But I mean, it’s really incredible numbers. In fact, I was kind of looking at this just kind of in Q4 and if I’m counting Q4 is sort of like mid to late October, I’ve earned over 1, 300 in Amazon influencer alone, um, that doesn’t include, you know, Amazon affiliates, which of course I still use, um, a little bit through my blog and a little bit through YouTube, which.

And, you know, has coming back a little bit, uh, since some of the November core updates. So that’s nice getting a little bit of that starting to trickle back in. Um, that’s just for a couple, you know, a few, a few, uh, not even a hundred bucks there, but still some money. And then another way of making money in Amazon right now is through the KDP print on demand, uh, situations.

So if you guys have been following along on that, of course, I was one of those bloggers that was hit really hard with the September helpful content update. Right. I decided to take some of my old blog posts, have AI helped me sort of form that into a book, go back in, make sure everything sounds cool. Uh, do a print on demand, do the Kindle direct publishing program on Amazon.

Both offer that on Amazon storefront, as well as my own storefront, because I don’t have to hold inventory. Um, Um, and through that, I just launched that in late October. And again, this might not seem like a lot of money to a lot of people, but it seemed like a lot of money to me. Um, just since late October, I’ve earned 374 just selling, repurposing old blog posts on a print on demand program on Amazon.

And even better this I’m in a very, very super niche topic, right? Like my book was about how to make money freelancing on Upwork. Is this not like a broad interest topic? So for me to pull in almost 400, then just like 45 days or so from that, to me is incredible and it has me wondering what if I did start to approach maybe some broader topics or something like that, you know, and, and, and because I’ve, I’ve got the skills, I see how easy it is now, but Overall, I just, I’m really starting to see Amazon as a monetization method is its own side hustle.

And there are so many avenues to making money on Amazon, whether it be the Kindle direct publishing program or whether it be, uh, you know, Amazon influencer, Amazon affiliate. Then if we aren’t considering all these different ways to make money in the platform, I think we’re really leaving some serious 2025.

Jared: You know, it’s so interesting that you’re bringing it up because, um, it just reminds me of so many things. Like I teased that Thomas and I partnered up to take content on an HCU hit site, decent content and repurpose it. How do we repurpose it? An email that goes out to people, drives them back to the website, monetize with ads.

You are taking your content from an HCU hit site, doing something totally different with it. You put it into a book, you’re selling it on Amazon. You’re making hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month off that. I took a somewhat similar approach a couple months ago with taking some of my content and put it on medium and making hundreds of dollars a month on that.

Here’s the fun part about it, you can do all those things with the same content. That’s why I love this section of the podcast because every week we talk and share about this and like, you’re listening. Yes, each of these things takes work, but not as much work as it took to put together the content and build the website as it did in the first place.

Morgan: I would like to say to you, I mean, I would like to think at least even though no one knows 100 percent for certain what kind of your signals Google is really looking for these days. Right? But to me, because it is all print on demand. I’m more or less keep a small inventory of those print on demand books on me all time.

Usually like 10 or so. And I’m also selling some of them through my actual website as well. And so now I’m sending, hopefully, hopefully those good signals to search and those good signals to Google. So people are seeing those conversions and those transactions, which hopefully, again, hopefully fingers crossed, Google will see me a little bit less as a niche site.

It’s just relying on display advertising and more like an e commerce provider. So I think there’s a lot of benefit. And I think it’s really important to say too, because a lot of. I personally heard a lot of bloggers who have been hit say, you know, I would love to offer products, but I can’t make a product.

I don’t have any physical products to sell. I can’t do that. I can’t do that. You know, books are so easy to do. They’re so easy to put together and they’re very cheap to ship. You, I ship most of mine out through USPS media mail, which is cheaper than a regular package. It’s one of the most affordable things to ship.

So. Yeah, I, I’m totally thrilled. And now I’m wondering, uh, I’m wondering what else is possible. This, these programs.

Jared: Well, Morgan, I still haven’t gotten my signed copy in the mail yet, but, um, I’ll wait. I know you’re busy.

Morgan: Oh, no, no, I’ll, I’ll get the one out to you. No problem.

Jared: Uh, congrats on, uh, again, I think it’s just really, I think it’s inspiring to it, the influencer program is great, but you do still need to make the content.

Right? Like it is still starting from scratch. We talked a lot about how the videos do not need to be very, you know, amazing and they can be done very quickly. But I love the second update you give because yes, it’s about publishing a book, but I just love that it’s based on something you’ve already built and already done.

And it’s, that’s something that I think a lot of people listening have an old project that never went anywhere, have a project that got hit by a Google update, have something that maybe isn’t earning them what it could be and what its potential is, and they could use to publish in all these other, uh, various platforms.

Morgan: It just feels so good to like get appreciated for creating again, you know, and in a world where it feels as though search has become a hostile environment. For content creators to have a platform like Amazon that seems to embrace us right now, and it’s giving us all these different avenues, you know, and, and by the way, there are other things you can do to Amazon that I’ve not even touched on yet, like there’s a whole like merchandise section of Amazon where you can have them do on demand shirts and hats and all this other stuff.

So. I just think the possibilities are endless. And I, I shout out to Amazon. I thank Amazon for, for embracing creators like me right now. It feels good. It feels good to get paid for your work again.

Jared: Well, um, I can’t wait again, I guess next time you’re on, it’ll be 2025. So we’ll probably wait and hear some of your kind of year end results at that point.

But, um, congratulations. To both of us success. Yeah, this side hustle section is full of success this time of year, which is great to hear Um, all right, let’s move on to our weird niches I will go first this site was shared with me by michelle and I believe that this is my first foreign language site so I will be sharing the translated version, um, uh the site And I’m going to get it wrong.

So I apologize to everyone in the Netherlands, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a site. Uh, and, um, uh, visitor bell dot NL. So I’ll just spell it. Uh, V I S D E U R B E L dot NL. So if you want to follow along at home, that’s the website we’re talking about in translated terms, it is the fish doorbell. Now, I don’t know if it’s one word or two, cause they spell it.

Both ways on the site many times. So I’m like, I don’t know if it’s fish space doorbell or the fishter bell. Uh, so anyways, a lot of things I don’t understand about this. Basically, let me read, let me read it to you. Here’s the homepage on screen and welcome to the fishter bell, the fish doorbell. The 2020 fish doorbell season is over.

I didn’t know there was a fish doorbell season last spring. Many thousands of fish passed through the lock again. Thanks to thousands of people from all over the world who helped these fish through the lock on behalf of the fish and the fish doorbell team. Thank you. Fish swim up the rivers every spring, right through Utrecht.

I hope I’m saying that right. That’s a city looking for a place to lay eggs and reproduce. And basically it’s this, um, how do I explain it? Um, you can watch. Basically, you can watch, uh, fish swimming by, and every single time the fish swim by, You, um, hit the screen and, um, basically, it tracks the fish in this way, I think.

Uh, it’s very hard to explain. Um, you can watch their, their, their, uh, their videos there. They have tons of photos. Um, and they’re not monetized. Uh, it’s, it’s a, it’s a website that’s kind of basically put on by, I believe it’s by the government or something. Here’s where it gets a little interesting. Um, if you go over to, uh, Ahrefs, uh, they are a DR 46 and, um, they don’t just rank for, you know, fish doorbell and these sorts of keywords.

Um, they, they rank for just a wide variety of, of keywords in the number one spot. And so I’ve got to imagine they’re getting a decent amount of traffic. Um, their estimated traffic is over 40, 000 from Ahrefs. I’ve got to imagine it’s a little seasonal given this, uh, kind of time of year sort of thing.

That it happens once a year, but, um, what a bizarre website.

Morgan: Yeah, that’s interesting. Can we actually see the video or does that not, or some of the pictures that they’re taking?

Jared: Let me get some of the pictures. You know,

Morgan: it’s funny because I I’ve, I’ve come accustomed now to, Oh, interesting. I’ve come accustomed now to sort of sneaking a peek at your picks before I got these podcasts.

And lately I decided I want to be more surprised. So this is a, I’m looking at this with completely fresh eyes to have an actual reaction to this. But this is kind of like looking at the pictures to describe this to, uh, the audio listeners of the podcast. It’s almost akin to like your own nest cam on your door.

Yeah. That’s what it reminds me of, but with fish.

Jared: So I feel like I did a pretty bored, poor job trying to explain it. Uh, I thought when I was getting ready for the podcast, I’m like, I’m going to explain it and not read it. Cause I wanted to explain it as like how I saw it the first time. I just don’t feel like I did a good job.

So let me just read what it says online. So if you’re. Wondering what the heck it is. I just didn’t feel like I did a good job. So here’s the about section and I’ll just read how it works. Pressing the fish doorbell notifies the lock operator that there are fish waiting to pass. The operator can decide whether or not to open the lock.

The lock seldom opens in spring, but now can be opened daily if necessary. The fish doorbell allows us to work together to ensure that fish do not have to wait as long at the weeder’s loose lock. This is good news because it means they are less likely to be eaten by other animals. Um, and so like, it, you know, it begs the question why this can’t be automated in some form?

Um, but

Morgan: we’re relying on community involvement to make sure the fish aren’t being eaten.

Jared: I mean, it’s 2024 kind of feels like this should be automated, but I feel like I’m just missing something. And cause this is totally a thing. It gets a lot of traffic. It’s a website and there’s lots of stuff going on.

So, um, yeah, I, I’m sure I’m the one missing it here, but what a weird niche, what a weird topic and how fascinating that this happens in the Netherlands every year.

Morgan: Yeah, there’s some kind of form of like social pressure now I’m not even in the Netherlands, but I’m like, what if there are fish that are waiting at the door to go like, release them.

That’s the best way I could describe it. That is fascinating. I’m with you. They clearly can automate this. Like there’s no way they can’t automate this. They’re just, I don’t quite get it. Maybe there’s something being lost in translation. Maybe there’s some sort of like, that’s what I mean, like edition or something we’re missing here.

Jared: Yeah, I mean, cultural thing. It feels like something’s missing, but it feels substantiated enough that it feels like it’s me that’s missing it.

Morgan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I’m missing it too. I don’t know. Netherlands people weigh in in the comments. I would love to know if there’s just something, like, this is just like a family thing where y’all gather around and release the fish.

I don’t, I’m fascinated though. It’s very interesting. And I would love to know some of those key terms. I noticed the organic key terms is ranking four. They all look like a similar word. So I say it has something to do with, I saw a lot of branded words too, but probably some form of fish doorbell, but, uh, hard for me to tell exactly what it’s ranking for.

Jared: I mean, I’m really going to now make myself look like a bit of an idiot, but visitor bell sounds kind of like fish doorbell in, you know, In Dutch. So I’m imagining it’s something like that. Um, there was one, um, American, uh, English term there that was on that first page was fish doorbell Utrecht. Uh, as you can imagine, it doesn’t get a ton of search volume, but they also ranked number one for that.

So they are ranking for keywords, um, in the Netherlands, but, um, you know, about 30 percent of their keywords are United States. Um, so clearly it’s something that people are looking at here in the U S I Really? That’s interesting. I don’t know why. Very

Morgan: interesting. I think it’s a thing. I find that stat the most surprising.

Yeah. That’s the most surprising stat you’ve said so far. Right? Yeah. Maybe we’re not missing something culturally. Maybe we’re just not quite getting it.

Jared: No, I, that’s what I mean. I mean, 929 keywords in the Netherlands. Well, they rank for 529 keywords in the United States. I need to

Morgan: start putting up webcams, like, you know, just like animals or, I mean, I’ve got a lot of iguanas in my backyard.

Maybe I could like monetize that somehow, right? The iguana doorbell. That’s

Jared: all it takes. It is fascinating to think about like if you could get a webcam up in a interesting area and kind of gamify it and then throw an ad or two on and let her just let it go, you know,

Morgan: we can have like feed the iguanas.

com. I can like an iguana feeder in my backyard. We could push a button. It would like, you know, spit out whatever iguanas eat. You know, that’s something I need to workshop. I need to workshop it a little bit, but the wheels are turning.

Jared: We have coyotes. So, I mean, you know, tune in to see if a coyote got a dog today.

Like that’s kind of the gossip in my neighborhood. I know it’s terrible. It doesn’t happen very often, thankfully.

Morgan: You’re going to have trouble monetizing your site. It’s

Jared: going to be more violent. I don’t think any advertiser would want to do that. I mean, but I think if you’re in an area where like, I know, um, uh, a weird niche that I almost brought on the podcast was, uh, was a birdwatching, um, uh, webcam.

And I know webcams are really popular when I’m going to, uh, like, uh, I love to look at the webcam for Yosemite, um, because they have these different webcams with the views and I’m like, Oh, did it snow there? I mean, if you have something that is prominent enough that you can get access to, I don’t know.

Morgan: Yeah. I mean, webcams, you know, in my travel blog, they’re super big as well. People always tune in to see whether or not it’s snowing or see, um, whether or not the traffic is really bad, you know, on the main strip in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, so. Webcams are huge. I mean, gosh, even just like we used to have an article that sort of did a roundup of the best webcams in the area.

And even that article did like an incredible amount of traffic back in the pre HCU days. So yeah, webcams are all their age. Maybe we’re sleeping on another one, Jared. Side hustle number 742. Yeah, I

Jared: got my mind spinning. Got my mind spinning. Um, we got one more side hustle today. It’s a little more festive than the fish doorbell.

Uh, gonna go ahead and pull it up and let you talk us through it.

Morgan: Oh, weird, weird site niche or weird niche site more accurately. But yeah, so I, I will say my aim was in this to find some kind of festive site. I’m not really sure whether or not I’ve hit that mark. In fact, I think I kind of went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with this, but.

Uh, you know, Glitter’s festive, right? Glitter’s festive. Yeah, I’ll give it to you. Thanks. This is ShipYourEnemy’sGlitter. com. Um, like I said, we went down a kind of a dark hole, but anyway. Have you ever thought to yourself, you know what I would love, if you’re listening to this podcast today and you thought to yourself, I would love to send My worst enemy a glitter an anonymous glitter bomb to their house.

Guess what guys you are in luck now you can do so With ship your I want to make sure you get that. You’re right ship your enemies glitter. com now According to the e commerce site. So that’s how they’re making their money. They will And it’s exactly what it sounds like. They’re putting together glitter bombs.

They can even put together custom message, glitter bombs. The glitter inside of them can be everything from, you know, kind of a NC 17, 17 rated to poop emojis to traditional glitter. Um, it’s getting, it’s getting four point, according to Simrush, it’s getting 4. 3 K organic traffic. Um, with a ton of branded traffic, in fact, 87 percent branded traffic, again, according to Semraj, a DA of about 33.

And his top keywords are things like glitter bomb, mail, anonymous glitter bomb, thin glitter bomb, which is interesting to me because honestly. It like, oh, and look. And so Jared’s got this pulled up on Ah, refs, right? Or that 5.3 or organic? Is that what I read correctly?

Jared: 53? No, 53.

Morgan: Oh, 53 what?

Jared: 53? Uh oh no, sorry.

Oh, 53.

Morgan: A DR. 53 and Dr. 50. Dr. Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. 1.5 organic, sorry. 1.5 Organic

Morgan: is what I always wonder what the truth is. Priced somewhere in between on these different platforms, but. The shared number of people who are looking up how to send anonymous glitter bombs in the mail is both interesting and frightening at the same time.

Jared: Well, to your point, look at this. Look at the, look at the search volume for glitter bomb package. 24, 000 a month and glitter bomb is 47, 000 a month. That is, that is a wildly high amount of searches.

Morgan: That that’s kind of what I was thinking. Also y’all y’all be, y’all be twisted. Y’all be twisted out there.

If that many people are Googling this on a daily basis, and let’s just see, cause I forgot to write this down. I want to see exactly how much, what the average price point is here. I basically were looking at like. And be careful clicking on this because some of these are NC 17, you might have to, might require.

Oh, yes. You’re right. I hadn’t,

Jared: uh, Yeah. Yeah. Be careful. You’re right. I’ll scroll past. I got to click on one. There we go. Here’s a card.

Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. Some of these, they basically range from like about 11 all the way up to, uh, 20. It seems to be the average price. And I’ve got to imagine that the margins on this are absolutely phenomenal, even at a 20 price point.

I love that you can do, you can literally put glitter. I mean, guys, think about this. Seriously. These guys are literally putting this glitter in a card, just an actual, just like, you know, cardboard or paper card and sending it in the mail for 10. I mean, the margins spectacular. It doesn’t cost a dollar or two to do that.

Come on. Amazing. Evil. Evil, arguably, but amazing. See, this isn’t festive at all, is it, Jared? This is just me. That’s the slippery slope I went down at this point. I was like, oh, glitter, how festive!

Jared: There’s a lot of red on the screen. That’s about all I can say. Um, you’re exactly, as I said on the podcast, uh, earlier, I haven’t looked at this yet, but you’re right.

I’ve got to be very careful what I’m clicking here. Um, uh, but, uh, I’m not sure festive is what I’d say, but very interesting, and I think I’ll I mean, to me, the most interesting thing is how heavily searched this is, you know?

Morgan: Yeah. Apologies. I probably, I didn’t notice the, uh, the really bad ones live on the podcast.

It might require a little bit of editing there. We’ve, um, we’ve,

Jared: we’ve actually had stuff that we’ve had to edit out accidentally on the weird niche section where we’re like, Whoa, that, that just happened. That didn’t know that was coming.

Um, uh, is this a thing like with other things, like this is glitter bombs, but are there other pranks? Like, I’m just trying to think out loud. Are there other pranks that you could. Start something by with the same model in mind, but just take advantage of other things.

Morgan: You know, I’ve seen some of the craziest things ship, you know, for a while.

I saw that on Shark Tank not too long ago. Somebody was literally shipping out potatoes with like messaging on it. You know, I mean, it’s, it is kind of funny. I mean, there is a definitely a sector for, for print gifts. Although I would say the glitter bomb package is amongst the most evil of those print gifts.

I’d far rather receive a potato in the mail than a bunch of glitter. And I love to see how their about page literally says that it is a hundred percent anonymous, not to worry about a thing they’ll never know who sent it to them, like So, and you know, this has got to be popular. Cause like Mark Rober on YouTube, like how, you know, he basically popularized the idea of sending glitter bombs, you know, and like, and sabotaging, like stolen packages of glitter bombs and, and I would say that’s only helps, uh, probably some of this, some of those keywords and some of that notoriety to site is received.

So yeah. Interesting.

Jared: So that’s exactly where I was going to go with this. We can combine our two weird niche topics and we can make a webcam that shows glitter bombs going off. Now that every day. A website that everyday features the reaction to one of these? I don’t know. I think that’s pretty viral

Morgan: up a camera in that box.

Oh my gosh. We are good to go. Yes. I need to register that. Like, you know, trademark that idea. Like right now, second to go with the podcast,

Jared: I was going to say before you can, you can start this before this goes live. It’s the combination of our two weird niche concepts brought together into one website, one experience.

Morgan: He’s gone completely off the rails. And then we’ll add a community aspect where people can tune in to push the button and decide when the glitter goes off.

Jared: I’ll tell you that’s right. Just like the locks. All right. Well, we’ve come full circle. Um, it, it definitely got weird today in the weird niche segment.

There’s a lot of, uh, very off the wall, bizarre things, but that’s what this segment’s for, um, Hey, so we’re at time. Um, thank you so much for joining today, Morgan. Lots of interesting things in the news today. Uh, many of them continuing stories based on other things we’ve already discussed like WP engine and WordPress.

Got another Google update coming out. I mean, it’s just crazy right now. It’s, it’s the time of year where you think the news would slow down. Certainly hasn’t, but, um, congrats on your Amazon success. And, uh, we’ll see you again in the new year and for everybody else. Have a great weekend.

Morgan: Yeah. Sounds good.

See y’all.

Spencer: Hey there. Thanks so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Did you know that Jared and I are members of a private group called the niche pursuits community. And today I want to share with you how you can join for just 1. The niche pursuits community is a private members area for niche online publishers.

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