Weird Niches

Welcome to another great episode of Niche Pursuits News.

This week Jared is joined by his 201 Creative agency co-founder Kaitlin Cooper to unpack all of the latest developments from the week that may impact online publishers. And there was surprisingly a lot to go over.

They start by discussing the integration of ChatGPT and Bing, which is powered by Microsoft's Prometheus and offers current results. Kaitlin highlights the composition feature in Bing, which allows for AI writing prompts, while Jared dives into the Expedia and Zapier plugins and their various, exciting use cases.

The conversation then turns to Google's public acknowledgment of topical authority in the context of news sites but most certainly all kinds of sites. And they share some interesting takeaways you won't want to miss.

They also discuss some of the unfortunate issues happening this month regarding video searches. A reported Google search bug has caused a drop in video traffic, and Google seems to now only show video thumbnails next to search results when the video is the main content of a page.

Google's testing reportedly shows that the recent change in video thumbnails will have minimal impact on publishers, but there is still debate about the actual impact.

But in more hopeful news, Google Bard is now including relevant images in responses and highlighting the source of the image. Bard is emphasizing the importance of images in communicating ideas effectively. And as a reward, Bard is even sourcing smaller sites for queries that larger websites typically dominate in image search or regular web search.

This a potentially cool development if publishers can manage to improve their images for Bard.

Next up, they dive into their shiny object shenanigans. Jared shares an update on their newsletter where they've managed to surpass their goal of reaching 1,000 subscribers in 12 weeks. And they get into how it is they're able to average 40-50% open rates and what their next goals may be.

Kaitlin shares how she's transitioning her side hustle wedding photography business site Kaitlin Cooper into a content affiliate site, and discusses some issues that others may relate to.

As always, they close out the show by discussing a couple of fun and weird niche sites found.

Kaitlin shares Hold The Magic, which is certainly not your typical niche site. It's a site created by a mom who wanted to give her daughter something other than money from the tooth fairy. The website sells tooth fairy gifts, has an influencer program, and they even set up booths at dental conferences.

Jared then shares his website which specializes in treehouse rentals. Treehouse Trippers is a site dedicated to finding good treehouses to rent for vacations. At first they debate what qualifies as a treehouse and whether some of the site's offerings fit the bill. But then they praise the site's targeted approach to SEO. The site does a good job of producing long-tail targeted content specific to certain states and types of vacations and monetized by offering affiliate links to online booking platforms.

But as always, it's possible that these sites are leaving money on the table and so the hosts brainstorm some ways they could boost monetization.

Overall, it's another great episode of Niche Pursuits News, covering a wide range of topics related to SEO and niche websites. So be sure to watch the full episode below!

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