Niche Pursuits Podcast: Find Your Next "Niche" Business Idea!

What does it take to grow a thriving newsletter with 60,000+ engaged readers all while working full-time as a CFO?

CJ Gustafson, from Mostly Metrics, is on this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast to share how he built a highly profitable brand on the side.

In this episode, he delivers a masterclass in newsletter growth, monetization, and the power of niche content.

This is a conversation packed with actionable insights and behind-the-scenes stories, and CJ reveals how he turned a once-slow-growing side project into a high-performing B2B media brand serving over 60,000 subscribers—including CFOs, founders, and business nerds who geek out over financial models and company benchmarks.

Ready to join a niche publishing mastermind, and hear from industry experts each week? Join the Niche Pursuits Community here: https://community.nichepursuits.com

Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter

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Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits News Podcast, everyone!

This is the podcast for SEOs, content creators, webmasters, and entrepreneurs looking to understand the latest events and get inspiration for their businesses.

It’s been a crazy week in SEO news, so let’s get right into it! And, as Google suggested, you better buckle up as it’s going to be a wild ride!

The first (and only) topic Spencer and Jared dig into is Google’s very big news.

It’s rolling out the March 2024 Spam Update, which will take 2 weeks, as well as its March 2024 core update, which will take about a month. It’s also worth noting that the Helpful Content system is now part of the core updates.

Spencer and Jared discuss this news at length, covering the main aspects: scaled content abuse; site reputation abuse, or parasite SEO; and expired domain abuse. Google’s stated goal is to reduce the amount of low-quality, unoriginal content by up to 40% and send search traffic to helpful and high-quality sites.

What does this all mean? And what does it mean for AI content? Who is Google targeting specifically?

What cryptic sentence from Google’s announcement does Spencer consider the most interesting? What sort of behavior is Google cracking down on in particular? What types of penalties is Google doling out, and who’s getting hit?

What step did Google announce that leads Spencer and Jared to suggest Google is biased? And what kind of practices are they cracking down on when it comes to expired domains?

They also talk about how Google might start to use a page classifier as opposed to a site classifier. What implications would this have?

Tune in to hear Spencer and Jared discuss Google's latest news and share their thoughts on what's going on.

The next portion of the podcast is Shiny Object Shenanigans.

Spencer goes first with an update on his Amazon Influencer side hustle. He reports a rough number of his videos and his earnings this month to date. The good news is that he is officially in the black.

He also announces that he’s going to do an in-depth presentation about his Amazon Influencer side hustle for the Niche Pursuits Community, his new, premium membership group, which launched at the beginning of March.

Spencer will be sharing just about everything, from his storefront to his earnings to his secrets for hiring people. If you want to check it out, join the community before Monday!

When it’s Jared’s turn, he provides a brief earnings update on his Amazon Influencer side hustle, and then digs into another project: using paid ads to drive subscribers to his Weekend Growth newsletter.

He explains how he set it up through ConvertKit, how he’s going to try different ad ideas, and how he is about to go live with the ads. He will be providing more details and results as they come in, so watch this space!

As for Weird Niche Sites, Spencer reveals that his site is getting 2 million organic visitors per month and 6 million visitors in total. Random lets you generate random things, such as numbers, and they do it using a very unique method. Listen to hear what it is!

This DR83 site is making some money. Tune in to hear how they do it.

When Jared’s up, he shares the website for the Stinky Candle Company, which sells unique candles with scents like chlorine, gasoline, and bacon.

This DR30 site is not getting much traffic, but Jared does reveal a few interesting tidbits about it. It looks like they could be getting 30k visitors a month. With targeted traffic like that, how much might the site be earning? Tune in to hear what they think.

And that concludes another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast.

There’s a lot going on right now in Google’s world, so come back next week to hear Spencer and Jared break it down all over again.

Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter

Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper

Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: ht...

Welcome back to another episode of The Niche Pursuits News podcast, where Spencer and Jared break down the latest and most relevant news for SEOs, content creators, and business owners.

They kick things off by talking about the Helpful Content Update, which was rolled out in September 2023.

There has been lots of chatter of late—in Twitter threads, in Facebook posts, and beyond— where people are looking for signs that recovery from the HCU is possible.

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan explains a little bit about the helpful content classifier and how it works, although his explanation certainly gives rise to more questions.

How does Spencer interpret his explanation? Does he think it’s possible to see a recovery in the short term? Have Jared and Spencer seen any sites make a full recovery?

What interesting statistics does Jared reference in terms of HCU recoveries? If the classifier is constantly being updated and tweaked, what does that mean for content creators?

Since no one can truly define what is and isn't helpful content, the big question remains: Is there hope? Listen to Spencer and Jared’s predictions.

The next order of business is the fact that web stories are no longer visible as Google is deprecating the carousel view of web stories in Discover.

What are the two takeaways from this brief news story?

And last but not least, Spencer and Jared talk about the recent news of an upcoming Google algorithm update.

Lots of people have noticed an uptick in traffic as well as volatility, and suspect there might be an update brewing. Have Spencer and Jared noticed anything going on with their sites or the sites they manage?

Next up on the podcast is the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion. Spencer goes first, but instead of talking about one of his side hustles, he shares an update on the AI content competition underway on Niche Pursuits.

This competition was launched after the HCU and the goal is to grow a new site with AI content. He shares the 4-month leaderboard, and there’s no shortage of interesting things to talk about!

The person leading the pack is getting 24,000 organic visitors to his site with around 7 million articles, and after just 4 months, the top 10 people in the challenge are getting more than 1000 organic visitors per month, which is impressive considering these are fresh domains.

If you want to hear the backstory, check out the full episode and also the Niche Pursuits community.

When it's Jared's turn, he provides an update on his public speaking side hustle, reporting that he has reached out to more than 50 different conferences to see if he can speak. How many did you hear back from? And what did they say?

He also gives an update on his Weekend Growth YouTube channel, which recently reached the thresholds for monetization. Jared shares his stats as well as some useful advice for YouTube content creators, and reports on how much he's earned to date from that channel.

When it’s time to reveal their weird niche sites, Spencer goes first with Snow Day Calculator. This site, which does have a social media following, allows users to calculate the number of snow days according to their zip code and type of school. It also offers predictions of future snow days.

The DR42 site is monetized with display ads and has a relatively strong backlink profile, thanks to links from news outlets. As it's a seasonal site, the traffic spikes in winter but dies during the rest of the year.

How much money might it be making during those peaks? And what other clever strategies are they using to earn money? Listen to the episode to find out what Spencer and Jared discover as they poke around.

Things take a morbid turn when Jared reveals his weird niche site, Aerial Ashes, a company that uses drones to scatter people’s ashes over land and sea in the UK.

The site, which is clearly for a local company, is a DR8 and is ranking for just 45 keywords, so it's difficult to say how successful it is.

However, Jared makes a great point about this section of the podcast:...

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast, where Jared and Spencer break down the latest SEO news into bite-size pieces. Buckle up people, because they cover many, many topics on today’s episode!

It’s been one week since Google announced its core update for October, plus the spam update was rolled out, so Jared and Spencer first talk about how to know which may be affecting your site.

For those affected by the HCU, they look at a very exhaustive, data-heavy resource and highlight some of the conclusions, including what type of content performed better, how new sites fared in the update, how article length importance has shifted, and conclusions about AI content. They also share their opinions on some of the author’s theories and touch on the future of updates.

Moving on, Spencer and Jared address Google’s antitrust lawsuit and the recent news reveals that Apple was in talks to buy Bing or DuckDuckGo. They talk about the money that was exchanged between Apple and Google and how Apple negotiated the deal.

The next topic is how a recent op-ed on Wired claiming Google alters users’ search queries was recently pulled from their website for “not meeting their editorial standards,” and Jared and Spencer discuss why it might have disappeared.

In the latest SGE news, they talk about how Google appears to be testing a lite version, where the results are taking up less space at the top of the page. They share a few theories about why this is, how the experience has changed over recent months, and what this means for website owners.

In other SGE news, the conversation shifts to Google’s AI-powered search and its ability to generate images and drafts. They also talk about how AI images are something we should be paying attention to.

The next topic is how Google is using clicks to rank websites, contrary to what the search engine has said for years. They talk about the implications for privacy data and how this information may change the way we operate.

In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer talks about a website in the news niche he created with his kids, the goal of which is to get traffic from Facebook. He built up a Facebook page to 30k followers and the website has traffic of 27k over the last month. His goal is to get into Mediavine in the coming months, and he’ll report back as he and his writer make progress.

Jared then talks about a spreadsheet he created to help website owners, SEOs, and content creators with prompts relating to the HCU. It’s free over the weekend and then he may start charging for it, so grab it now!

When it comes to weird niche sites, Spencer shares Cake Wrecks, which documents cake fails and adds some funny titles to the cakes. The DR59 site, which has been around for many years, is making money through ads and the author also has a book.

As for Jared, his site is History Colored, which adds color to traditionally black-and-white photos. What probably started as a personal project to add color to photos eventually expanded into a bigger website that targets informational topics and gets more traffic. They talk about how some pages might go viral. With 515k followers on Facebook and 355k subscribers on YouTube, this is a topic that does well on social media.

And that brings us to the end of another jam-packed episode of the podcast. See you next week!

Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter

Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper

Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: