This week’s episode of Niche Pursuits News is hosted by Jared Bauman, of 201 Creative, and Shawn Hill, a previous podcast guest and the brains behind The Grilling Dad.

The first topic they dive into is Ezoic’s announcement of the end of its affiliate program and its plan to lay off workers. They talk about the blow to affiliates but also mention how it created an interesting juxtaposition in providing a financial incentive for referring people.

They talk about the statement from Tyler Bishop, the company’s CMO, about the discontinuation of the program, in which he shares some interesting data, as well as the letter from CEO Dwayne Lafleur about the layoffs. They also discuss whether there needs to be an entry-level ad provider for website owners.

Jared and Shawn then move on to a different topic: the Claud 2 launch, by Anthropic. Claud is an AI language model which is gaining attention for having more human-like responses. Claud also allows users to upload files and ask questions about different documents, which is a unique feature.

Shawn shares his thoughts on it after using it a little bit and comparing it with ChatGPT, and Jared has some ideas about how to leverage Claud for SEO. Listen in to hear what they have to say!

Moving on, Jared and Shawn touch on the recent volatility in the SERPs, suggesting that a Google update is underway. While the exact cause of the update remains unclear, there is evidence that changes are happening in the search engine landscape.

The next topic on the agenda is Wix’s launch of its AI website generator. The tool allows users to create complete websites with just the press of a button. Jared and Shawn discuss the implications of this new tool and its target market, noting that it will help certain types of businesses establish a web presence.

In the Shiny Object Syndrome portion of the podcast, Jared goes first with an update on his progress with the Amazon Influencer Program. He continues to rake it in and recently surpassed the 300-video mark. He also talks about taking a brief break from his Weekend Growth newsletter.

Shawn talks about helping a friend build his first niche site and documenting the process publicly, and he also has a positive report on The Grilling Dad, which continues to grow and do well despite spending less time on it.

As for the weird niche sites, Jared kicks things off with HEIC to JPG, which is a great tool for iPhone users, as photos are sometimes saved as HEIC files. They talk about the site's clean design and ease of use. It has a DR of 62 and only ranks for 5200 keywords, but it has a ton of number-one rankings and ranks for keywords with very high search volumes. They also talk about the idea of creating a tool that adds to your business or your website.

Shawn then shares his weird niche site: Cooler Spy. He highlights how the site is dedicated to just one product, how it has lots of addictive YouTube videos, and has just 24 pages. He estimates traffic of around 10k and earnings of up to $1k per month, and although it’s a small site, its quality is off the charts.

And that concludes another thought-provoking and inspiring episode of the podcast, where you can learn about the latest in SEO and niche site news and what it means for you!

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123: 2022 A Year in Review