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

I'm all FIRE'd up! FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is a movement that is all about making and saving enough money at an "early" age so that you can live off your investments for the rest of your life. I'll be honest that I've thought about this subject a lot.  In fact, I quit my job in 2011 (in my early 30s) and have been building online businesses ever since. I sold my software company a few years ago for 7 figures and have had some other successful ventures.   I've thought, "I might be able to just stop working and live on what I've saved for the rest of my life". I wanted to see what others have been able to achieve and see if this FIRE lifestyle was something I should pursue. However, the more I researched the bloggers and influencers that say they have "retired early" thanks to their savings, the more I got annoyed. And even a little upset! Today, I want to share my thoughts on the FIRE Movement and why I think most of the influencers are lying to you. 

Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative business. In fact, it’s how I was able to quit my job over 9 years ago and I’ve been building sites, products, and running various online businesses ever since. However, when it comes to building a site like OwnTheYard.com (my Niche Site Project 4 site), it can be extremely risky. An affiliate site that is reliant on Amazon for its earnings and Google for its traffic really is at the mercy of businesses that are out of your control.   Today I want to take a look at both the upsides and downsides of affiliate marketing and then what I think you can do to eliminate some of that risk.

Would these behemoths of the internet make up their minds?   Do they love my site...or not?! Google and Amazon appear to be all-powerful and that power has been on full display over the past couple of months. First, Amazon decreases their commission rates...during a pandemic...because...Bezos money? Next, Google rolls out a core update near the end of May, and I'm not gonna lie, my niche site took a hit.  Not a fatal blow, but a hit nonetheless. So, after all this fire and brimstone from the internet "gods", I thought it was time to assess the carnage for OwnTheYard.com.  You know, my Niche Site Project 4 site. I basically said that last time I did an update post, it was potentially going to be my last update post.  But I wanted to be transparent and share the bad that sometimes comes. Affiliate marketing is hard, with lots of ups and downs.  But as you'll see in this full income report, it's not all bad. I mean I still did make about $3k a month without really doing much :). It just could have been...oh, what could have been!

Jon Dykstra is back on the podcast to share more of his story and an update.  He's now making over $50k a month with his niche sites and avoids link building.

Listen in to hear what happened to OwnTheYard.com when I did an internal linking case study.  I built over 100 internal links to various pages and tracked the Google position over time.  

Listen in to find out why I closed blog comments on Niche Pursuits and perhaps why you should consider doing the same.

Learn how to create content groups in Google Analytics so that you can better track the performance of certain segments of content on your site.

One of my sites recently cracked 10,000 visitors a day.  How much did it make that day?  I'll dive into where it's getting traffic, how much it earned, and overall discuss how much money you can expect to make with a site at these traffic levels.

I'm excited to have Doug Cunnington back on the podcast! Doug and I connected back during the first Niche Site Project (2013) and he enjoyed my project so much, he started his blog and stole the name for his domain from my project!  : ) NicheSiteProject.com is where you can follow along with what Doug is up to these days.  Even though Doug has been in the niche site game since at least 2013, he's now gotten heavily involved in Youtube and growing a significant channel.  With about 20,000 subscribers, he's definitely gained some great traction there. Today, Doug shares how to grow a Youtube channel.  He shares his journey and the strategies that have worked well for him. And of course outside of YouTube, I had to ask a few hard-hitting questions related to KGR and his project "go white hat" that had mixed results. If you want to get access to Doug's Trello board for content creation, a Google Spreadsheet process doc, and a case study on publishing 60 videos in 30 days, you can get those right here. Overall, I hope you enjoy the interview!

Harsh Argawal is a well-known blogger in the WordPress and digital marketing space.   Shout Me Loud gets over a million pageviews a month, which is really high for a blog in just about any space, but especially the Wordpress and Blogging niche.  Not only has Harsh built a significant business, but he's also found a way to a have a proper work life balance. Listen in to hear how Harsh has grown his blog, how he finds content ideas, how he runs his business, and how he makes time to travel, meditate, and more.