Welcome back, everyone, to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!

As always, Spencer and Jared offer a quick overview of the most important news items affecting content creators, publishers, SEOs and entrepreneurs.

On this week’s podcast, they decide to lead with positivity, kicking things off with potentially good news for sites pummelled by the HCU.

Recent comments from Danny Sullivan and John Mueller suggest that sites may see a recovery with the next core update, whenever that may be.

Should we believe them? Find out what Jared thinks about all of this.

Also, Spencer has some very interesting insider details about this, so check out the episode to find out what he knows that may or may not affect you and your site!

Moving along, they talk about Google usage over time.

Studies show that people are spending more time looking at search results compared with 5 years ago. So what does that mean exactly? Are people dissatisfied with the initial results, or are they more savvy? Or, is this a strategy from Google?

Spencer and Jared have a few theories about this. And Spencer shares some stats that are completely shocking to him. Tune in to hear it all.

The next news item is about the site The Wirecutter, which is owned by the NYT and has come to be an example to follow in affiliate marketing over the years.

Spencer reveals how the site has seen its visibility decline following the HCU, potentially losing half of its traffic.

According to Jared, they are seeing a very slight uptick recently, according to Ahrefs, which could be a sign of hope for others.

As for Shiny Object Shenanigans, Spencer goes first and talks about the challenge he announced last week where he’s trying to earn $1000 from a new Facebook page in one month.

He’s currently 10 days in and nowhere near $1000 in earnings, but he does highlight some positive results of his experiment so far.

How many followers does he have? What’s his ad spend so far? What interesting and potentially profitable advice does Jared offer him? Tune in to hear all the details!

When it’s Jared’s turn, he talks about a strategy he’s using to try to revive traffic to a site hit by the HCU with a newsletter and a Facebook page.

He also shares his stats and progress from the last 7 weeks: Facebook followers, ad spend, email subscribers, cost per lead, etc.

He’s also working on a digital product that he wants to sell to his audience. What’s going well and what’s not? Check out the full episode to find out.

Then it’s time to discover some weird niche sites. Spencer shares Million Dollar Homepage, which was created by an entrepreneur in 2005 with the goal of selling pixels on the homepage to earn a million dollars.

As it was an unusual idea at the time, the creator got some press coverage and was able to sell out all the pixels and he did, in fact, earn a million dollars.

What happened after he reached his goal? How is his site doing now? What did he go on to create? And did his success streak continue or did it die? Check out the podcast to find out.

Jared then shares his site, US Beer Labels, a DR19 website created in 1999 by a guy who collects and trades vintage beer labels. It only ranks for 242 keywords and gets minimal traffic.

What’s Jared’s theory about this very niche website? What’s so fascinating about it and what can we learn from it?

And that concludes another episode of Niche Pursuits News. Thanks so much for tuning in! We hope you feel informed and inspired, like every week.

See you next Friday!

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EX.583 Fraser T Smith