Niche Pursuits Podcast: Find Your Next "Niche" Business Idea! - How Noah Kagan Started an $80 Million/Year Business From a $12 Sale

How Noah Kagan Started an $80 Million/Year Business From a $12 Sale

02/14/24 • 61 min

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

Appsumo founder Noah Kagan joins the podcast today to remind us that we all start small.

Noah's own path to success began by experimenting with various small online niche ventures, a few of which eventually led to the creation of several multi-million dollar businesses.

He shares his process of experimenting with different ideas to find product-market fit, highlighting some failures along the way, and the valuable lessons they taught him.

But as he mentions - business is the one game where you only need to win once.

You just need to start to have a chance.

He acknowledges the importance of time though and urges the rapid validation of ideas, offering solid examples of how to do this efficiently.

He also shares invaluable advice on generating business ideas and stresses the importance of interaction with people throughout the process.

A key part of his message is the power of asking for what you want, exemplified by starting with small acts like requesting a 10% discount on coffee to help build resilience.

Some other key takeaways are:

To focus on basics,
Revisit successful tactics,
Employ an experiment mindset,
And persist with what actually works.

By experimental mindset, he means running short experiments, identifying problems as opportunities, and validating ideas through quick tests - offering up concrete examples

He discusses learning the "language of making money" as a skill that fosters financial success over time and underlines the importance of self-belief and action to achieve your goals.

Overall, persistence and consistency are major themes, and Noah advises you to give an idea with potential at least 100 tries before considering quitting.

He also highlights optimism, intelligent risk-taking, and pitfalls to avoid when starting and growing a business - with personal experiences and insights from tested strategies to help you on your journey.

And don’t forget to check out his book The Million Dollar Weekend for more in-depth insights into his awesome and inspiring success.

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: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Appsumo founder Noah Kagan joins the podcast today to remind us that we all start small.

Noah's own path to success began by experimenting with various small online niche ventures, a few of which eventually led to the creation of several multi-million dollar businesses.

He shares his process of experimenting with different ideas to find product-market fit, highlighting some failures along the way, and the valuable lessons they taught him.

But as he mentions - business is the one game where you only need to win once.

You just need to start to have a chance.

He acknowledges the importance of time though and urges the rapid validation of ideas, offering solid examples of how to do this efficiently.

He also shares invaluable advice on generating business ideas and stresses the importance of interaction with people throughout the process.

A key part of his message is the power of asking for what you want, exemplified by starting with small acts like requesting a 10% discount on coffee to help build resilience.

Some other key takeaways are:

To focus on basics,
Revisit successful tactics,
Employ an experiment mindset,
And persist with what actually works.

By experimental mindset, he means running short experiments, identifying problems as opportunities, and validating ideas through quick tests - offering up concrete examples

He discusses learning the "language of making money" as a skill that fosters financial success over time and underlines the importance of self-belief and action to achieve your goals.

Overall, persistence and consistency are major themes, and Noah advises you to give an idea with potential at least 100 tries before considering quitting.

And don’t forget to check out his book The Million Dollar Weekend for more in-depth insights into his awesome and inspiring success.

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: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Previous Episode

Google SEO Starter Guide Updated, Here's What Changed + 25k Pageviews from Facebook

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!

This is the place to hear the latest news in the SEO and content publishing industries and it’s where Spencer and Jared break it all down. This week, as always, they also share progress on their side hustles as well as two very, very weird niche sites.

The first topic up for discussion is Google’s decision to rebrand Bard as Gemini. Google certainly is putting a lot of effort into building out AI tools, and this will be one of their flagship products.

What do Spencer and Jared think of the company's decision? And what new features will this tool have?

The next topic is how Google's updated its SEO Starter Guide.

The guide originally dates back to 2008 And is a guide specifically for beginners. Although there's probably nothing meaty there for people that are familiar with SEO, Spencer and Jared did highlight a few interesting items, in particular, from the section on things you should not do.

What kind of advice did they share? What does Google say about article length? And how about PageRank and EEAT? And what about business cards?

The last news item they discuss is how Google won't be able to proceed with third-party cookie deprecation. This means that the phasing out of third-party cookies may or may not be delayed as Google has been asked to comply with additional safety requirements in the UK.

This is big news because it could potentially affect content creators’ earnings, Although it's true that advertising is Google's bread and butter and it will likely do everything it can to maintain it, this is definitely a topic you'll want to keep an eye on!

In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer goes first with an update on his Facebook traffic side hustle. He was able to reduce the cost of his likes campaign to grow his page. He shares a lot of the data behind the campaigns, but the real question is whether those likes are driving traffic to his website.

Is it working? What does his Google Analytics reveal? And what is he going to do moving forward?

When it’s Jared’s turn, he provides an update on his Weekend Growth YouTube channel, which officially qualifies for monetization. He shares the stats behind his growth and reveals that the site is less than a year old.

He also offers an update on his public speaking side hustle with an exciting announcement. Check out the episode to hear what it is!

When it comes to weird niche sites, Spencer takes the lead with a very weird site called Is It Friday Yet. According to Ahrefs, the site doesn’t get any traffic, although there is a very entertaining video on YouTube that reviews the website, so tune in to hear more about that.

When it was Jared’s turn, he revealed a 1-page weird niche site: The Office Stare Machine, which lets you input an emotion and it will show stares from Office characters conveying that emotion. They test it out, and the results are pretty funny!

This DR30 site ranks for just 28 keywords, but it does have 49k likes from Facebook. It doesn’t get a lot of organic traffic, and Spencer and Jared talk about the potential strategies the owner might be using on Facebook. Where does it have the potential to do well?

And that brings us to the end of another great episode of The Niche Pursuits News Podcast. We hope this weekly dose of the latest news has brought you up to speed in the SEO and content creation space and you’re feeling inspired by Spencer and Jared’s side hustles.

See you next Friday!

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: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Next Episode

Is Recovery From the Google HCU Possible? AI Challenge Update + Weird Niche Sites

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:...