How to get 1,000,000 page views with Spencer Haws (Ep. #291)

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Welcome to a transformative journey as we delve into "The Evolution of Online Business" with the legendary Spencer Haws! In this captivating discussion, Brooks explores Spencer's 12-year legacy in blogging, uncovering the secrets behind his million monthly page views. Get ready to be inspired by Spencer's entrepreneurial triumphs, including his ventures in site acquisitions, WordPress plugins, and even a pillow business. Discover the strategies that propelled Spencer to success and find out if his wife shares his enthusiasm for business pursuits. Join us on this insightful adventure!

Transcript

Brooks: 0:00

I just got done having a really great conversation with Spencer Hawes. I know you know Spencer. If you don't, he's an OG of blogging. The guy's been around for 12 years. Bought and sold multiple sites, created WordPress plugins, a ton of business success. Here's a few things we talked about. We talked about his process of getting his current website to over a million monthly page views. How he chooses what business ideas to go after. We talked about a pillow business that he used to have. And we'll learn about whether his wife cares or not about what he's working on. You'll have to watch. Enjoy. Spencer, what's going on, man? How you doing?

Spencer: 0:42

Brooks, good to see you, man. It's good to be here. It's,

Brooks: 0:45

it's good to see you. I'm I'm repping the Link Whisper t shirt.

Spencer: 0:49

I love it.

Brooks: 0:50

I thought you were gonna have yours on too, but that's, that's okay.

Spencer: 0:53

You know, I didn't, I didn't want to overwhelm people too much, so I appreciate you having that on, on your end. Totally. Yeah, it's, it's a FinCon throwback, right? I had some shirts at a booth for Link Whisper, and, You were one of the lucky visitors that got a shirt.

Brooks: 1:06

I was one of the lucky few, man. So I'm repping it today. We'll come back to Link Whisper. We're gonna get back there. I'm not necessarily gonna introduce you. Cause I don't think it's needed. I think a lot of people are gonna be like, Oh yeah, Spencer Haws. This OG guy in the blogging space. It's been around forever.

Spencer: 1:20

The old guy.

Brooks: 1:20

Yeah, the old guy on the block, man.

Spencer: 1:22

The OG, yeah.

Brooks: 1:23

So let's skip the intro but You recently got to a million Monthly page views on your blog like the main blog that niche pursuits. Right? That's right. I did I it's crazy. Like I didn't even know like I wasn't even watching it that closely. I had no idea. It was that close. Mm hmm To it and it's 1 million page views But it did. It was just over. It was like a few days after the month ended. And I was like, wait a second. I've never hit that number. That's a big one. So yeah, one million page views in the month of October. And I will just say that Google Discover pushed it over that edge. So I talked about it a little bit. I had some really big days. But that's what did it. You ever seen the movie Fast and Furious? I don't care if you win by an inch. Winning's winning, man. A million monthly page views is a million. Congrats! That's that's awesome.

Spencer: 2:11

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, feels good.

Brooks: 2:13

I set a goal to get my brands in total and aggregate to a million monthly page views. I was like, what? I need to set a goal to do it. And I've kind of been recording it on YouTube. I'm gonna fall so short. It's unreal. But, I'm okay with that. At the same time, I was like excited to set this like, trajectory and try to, build towards something that kind of may be in our control, maybe sometimes not 100 percent in our control per se. Like, you can't necessarily control that outcome, I feel like.

Spencer: 2:39

Yeah. I always think having some sort of goal, whether it's page views or, or earnings or whatever it is, Like something to just like, Keep you motivated and shoot for that next goal post is really important. And so, yeah, I went big on content the last couple of years for sure. And it's gotten me there.

Brooks: 2:56

So I'm gonna circle back to that, man. Because I want to talk about that because I think that's huge. Before I forget, though, I want to know things like, did your wife get you like what you do? You made mention that. You were describing something to her about what you're going to do with your blog. And you, she was snoring and fell asleep. I'm also married and I do some business with my wife kind of, but she doesn't necessarily get anything about what I'm doing. So I'm curious from your standpoint.

Spencer: 3:22

She doesn't get it. No, she doesn't get it. It's like a whole foreign world to her. Like I, I tell her and I told a story about how I was asking her advice and explaining my problems and yeah, she kind of fell asleep, but I do that, right? Like, Oh man, I really need some advice. And you know, you're my confidant in life. And so here's what's going on. And she's usually it's like, you know, your business best, I do what's best. So, she's not a regular reader of the blog, she's not a subscriber, haven't quite won her over yet. In that regard.

Brooks: 3:50

There's still time, man. There's still time, there's still time. That's right! Does she's like a loving spouse, right? So, does she humor you? And, like, listen? When you want to talk about this stuff? Or is she like, Spencer, come on man, leave me alone.

Spencer: 4:02

No, she does, she humors me, right? And she's good. Like, she'll listen, and sometimes that's all I need. She just listen, right. And maybe just vent. And sometimes I figure out the problems on my own, but, she will listen, but I think we maybe just have this silent understanding of like, I'm probably not going to come to her all the time with my business issues. Just because that's so out of her realm of like what she really loves to think about.

Brooks: 4:27

Got it. No. Cool. Thanks for that. Yeah. I've noticed a few times where I go to her and I'm talking to her and then she starts to respond. And she's like, oh you don't really even want a response do you? Like you just kind of wanted to get that off your chest and like, and like tell someone. I'm like, Yeah, I guess maybe that was it in that scenario, you know, I don't know So my my partner is very kind and listens to me as well. So yeah Do you think you'll do this stuff forever or do you think one day you'll retire? Do you think you'll be building? Something or tinkering or working on something for as long as you can Or you think you'll call it quits one day?

Spencer: 5:03

I love your questions, man. These are deep. These cut to the heart of like things I think about honestly all the time. Because I, you know, I'm getting a little older. You know, I've got teenagers, kids graduating high school, that sort of thing. So I'm like, man, am I really going to be doing this forever? You know, when I'm a grandpa or whatever. So two parts to that question is I don't think I'll be doing what I'm doing right now forever. Right? Like, so niche pursuits probably has a shelf life. I don't know what that is. A Few more years, another decade. Like I don't, I don't know.

Brooks: 5:37

It might outlast you by a hundred years, man. I don't know.

Spencer: 5:39

Or, or maybe it will, right? But I'll probably exit that at some point, but maybe it'll go on forever. But then the other part of me and my wife actually do talk about this a lot of just like, I think I always need some be working on something. So it may not be like what I'm working on now. Yeah. And part of me hopes that eventually it moves into something that's maybe not necessarily just a business, but maybe it's a nonprofit or. Yeah. Something else, but I probably will always be working on something I think I need to, I think I'd go nuts if I wasn't,

Brooks: 6:13

I share that same thing with you. Part of the reason why I asked the question is because something in my gut told me that you were kind of going to have an answer like that. I'm almost 40. I turned 40 at the beginning of this next year. And it's only been a few years, Spencer, where I'm like, you know what? Like, I don't think I'm ever going to like, retire, like whatever that means. I feel like I'll always be working on something. I think it's just like a part of who I am. And I've kind of sensed that about you, even though we haven't like, you know, really gotten to know each other on a personal level. But just experiencing your business projects and stuff. I kind of wondered if you had that similar vein.

Spencer: 6:47

And like I said, I'm still figuring it out. Like maybe I'll completely abandoned business in a couple of years and it'll just be like hobbies and other skills that I develop on my own. Right. I don't know, go into woodworking or something, but part of me thinks it'll be building something, like I said, maybe a nonprofit or some other cause, because I do. Look at my I was just chatting with my uncle actually the other day and then my dad, he's been retired. My uncle just retired like a couple of years ago and like he made the comment of like, I'm still trying to figure out what to do in retirement, you know, like he's still figuring it out. Like, yeah, my dad and my uncle, they're, they're kind of bored and they always need to be doing something. And I come from those same genes and it's like, man, if they haven't figured it out, like. I'm probably gonna need to be working on something.

Brooks: 7:31

You know I heard someone recently say, like, you know, like, we're, actually I've heard this a lot of times, like, we're all, we're all kind of winging this thing. This life thing, we've never done it before, Spencer. It's the first time. It's not my fault. It's the first time I've lived this life. You know what I mean? So totally cool. I know you were a banker in the past. That's been a while though, right? 12-15 years.

Spencer: 7:48

Yeah. Yeah. I quit, quit my job in 2011. I worked at Wells Fargo bank for like eight years and then yeah, quit in 2011.

Brooks: 7:55

Was there anything you liked about it or did you mostly dislike You know, having the job or whatever,

Spencer: 8:02

Focus on the positive here, huh? Yeah. A couple, a couple of things I did like about it. I did get to know some really interesting people like that. I worked with coworkers and actually one of those coworkers, oddly enough is still somebody like literally right before this call, I was on a call with him. There's three of us. He and I were the only ones at Wells Fargo, but three of us, get together in chat business. He has since also moved on from banking and does online business. And so anyways, I met guys like him and a few others that I'm still good friends with from, that time at, at Wells Fargo. So that definitely some of the people there and then also because I worked in business banking I actually. Interacted with a lot of successful business owners while I was, you know, helping with their finances doing their banking. And that inspired me in a lot of ways to go, okay, like I see these guys, they're successful entrepreneurs. Some of them aren't any smarter than me. I don't think I'm the smartest guy in the world, but these guys aren't brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. And they're doing, I can log into their bank account and go like, okay, they are doing very well. And so that is definitely a positive that I took away. It like helped motivate me to like, okay, there's guys that aren't like geniuses that are making millions of dollars every year.

Brooks: 9:14

Like this guy can do it. I can do it. Yeah. It was like motivating. You had, you had a first, like a front row seat to experience what they were doing. Exactly. Nah, that makes sense, man. Okay. What did you, what did you hate about it? Was there something you just like hated about the job?

Spencer: 9:26

Oh man, I hated not being able to work on the things I wanted to work on. Yeah. It's taken me many years to figure this out, but like, I do not do well when I'm given like, Directions of like, you work on this and only this and all day you got to do that. So just having a boss to answer to, and like, okay, I got to hit my, these specific numbers those sorts of things, kind of feeling like I was trapped, didn't have the freedom to kind of work on what I wanted to. And that of course is, you know. Now what I do is I end up, I end up with a ton of side projects because it's like, well, today I feel like doing this, tomorrow I feel like doing this, and I love doing it. So yeah, just being in the cubicle life, you know, being locked in the office from 8 to 5 or whatever, and answering to a boss, like it, it was just monotonous and boring.

Brooks: 10:10

Totally makes sense. I get it. Based on what you just said about choosing, how do you choose or how do you have structure around what you're working on or what you choose to work on? Does that come easy for you or is that really difficult? Cause I know you have a lot going on in general. What does like, what does that look

Spencer: 10:26

like for you? Yeah, I try to set a bigger goals, whether it's annual goals or semi annual, I don't necessarily have a structure for the goals per se, other than I will sit down and go, okay, I really want to focus on like growing the traffic to niche pursuits, for example. And another example is like, okay, in 2024, I'm going big on YouTube, right? I've already started to do that a little bit. Like, but that, like I get these overall, like, okay, I'm going big on YouTube. Like that's what I'm doing. And so that starts to dictate, okay, what am I working on today? Well, if I really want to do well! Six months from now on YouTube, like I need to start figuring out how to do really good videos. And so I dedicate, and I, I'm looking for my notebook because like I, I'm still a pen and paper guy, like every day, you know, I sit down, here's my to do list, you know, for the day and I, make sure, I can look at my list today and it's like three or four of these are about YouTube. And then the other things are, you know, I have existing businesses that I'm, I'm growing and things like that. Setting the big goals and then, and then sort of setting it into smaller chunks that, you know, daily I can work on to get towards that bigger goal.

Brooks: 12:10

Love it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Speaking of YouTube, your latest, your latest video is a banger, man. You got a you got a banger that just went out there. I'm one of those views of the current view count I saw the production you had to do. And it's going from like, okay, a simplistic talking head video to the next step of like, let me add in layers, but me also being, creating videos, I'm like, Oh, like I respect and I see what went into it. I also thought you were going to hit the side view mirror at the end when you backed out of when you

Spencer: 12:38

backed out of your comment, I'll have to rewatch that. See how close I was. I don't know,

Brooks: 12:43

man. Just, my mind was like. This guy's focusing on the camera, he's also backing out a car. I'm like, there's a chance he could hit this, he could hit this mirror. It all worked. Okay. Do you ever go to people's channels and sort by the oldest and go look at old content? Do you ever do that?

Spencer: 12:59

I have done that in the past, but not very often. Man, very often. That could be really interesting.

Brooks: 13:05

You should do it more often because it's cool. It's like, when you see, when you see a channel that's growing and you're like, Oh man, they're doing really cool stuff or they're producing stuff, you can reverse and just look at the oldest videos first and just be like, Oh, what did they put out 12 years ago? If you're not, if you're not opposed to it, I have a cool, we were talking about niche pursuits and I saw a video of yours from 12 years ago. And you were hinting, man, you were hinting at a potential blog project that you were going to start. Is that right? You had just you had like literally just had your last day of work and it was like your first day kind of after that and you were creating a like a vlog style video i'm gonna are you cool? I made a 20 second clip out of this video. I think let's do it

Spencer: 13:49

It's pretty exciting. All right, i've been many years since i've

Brooks: 13:51

watched this exactly exactly this this is for you, man Okay, here we go.

Spencer: 13:55

And so to give you a brief overview of what my new blog is and what the purpose is I want to be able to talk about the New and different business ideas, whether that's an online idea or an offline idea. Really Niche businesses in general.

Brooks: 14:14

Did you hear that? Wow. Niche businesses in general, and look at you now, man, fricking niche pursuits is like over a million monthly page views now.

Spencer: 14:24

Man, that guy looked a lot younger than I do. That was, that was awesome.

Brooks: 14:28

I highly recommend doing that on like any channel like big channels, like billion plus, like 10 million sub channels. It's neat to see what people leave up. That that's also, it's also motivating and neat to see the, like, to see the trajectory and the growth over like. Years, right? Like over 10 years, 12 years or whatever. When you made that, when you made that video, do you, do you think you had any idea of where like the Niche Pursuits brand could be and, and like where it is today?

Spencer: 14:54

I don't think so. I did have this big vision of like, this is what I want it to grow into. And I, you know, that's kind of what I'm talking about in the video, but I don't think I appreciated like the size that it could be right. Like it was more like, Hey, I'm blogging about this. I want to get some small community around me. That's interested in doing the same thing. But yeah, no, it's cool to see where it's come over the last, gosh, 12 years. Heck yeah, man.

Brooks: 15:21

Okay. Do you, what is your take on, what is your take on focusing on a project versus spreading yourself out? Because your brand is kind of built on doing a lot of different projects. So it's kind of interesting. So like, where do you personally. Kind of stand with that or like how has that kind of changed for you over the last 10 years?

Spencer: 15:41

Yeah, I try to take the the 80/20 approach towards like side projects or side hustles So 80 of my time or I think 80 of anybody's time should really be focused on probably That one big project that one big idea that they have the real brand that they're really trying to make You know, their money from, or where it's already making their money. Put 80 percent of your time there and then 20 percent of your time, give yourself the freedom, whether that's one day a week or a couple hours a day or whatever, however you work that to work on something that's just really exciting and interesting and fun. Because I think as entrepreneurs, all of us have that. Need to kind of scratch that itch of like, here's a new idea. I want to, I got the shiny object, you know syndrome going and that's okay. I've, I've come to embrace that of like, it's okay. I'm going to spend a couple hours, you know, here and there on this little silly side project. And a lot of times it's not going to go anywhere. But every once in a while, it definitely goes somewhere and it's like, okay, well, now I start to shift some of my, more of my time as I see success with that little side project. So that's how I look at it.

Brooks: 16:47

I like your point of view. What's cool about it though, I, I think is that You know, targeted the right way because of your brand doing those side projects, even without them making money is still in my opinion, cool content for the brand niche pursuits, you know? So like on y'all's podcast, like the niche pursuits podcast, y'all talk about that. You and Jared talk about your shiny object. Like, like that's a segment of the show that people are like brand now. It's a segment of the show. And now people are like probably tuning in to be like, Hey man, what are they going to talk about today on that? And so even, I mean, obviously it's better, I guess, if some of those can make some cash or whatever, but yeah, it's actually content, right? It's like, it's like content for the brand itself. And that's kind of interesting to me. Yeah. Even if it doesn't do well, it's great content. And I will say that's become like a thread of the brand is what I try to portray. And I do I am very honest whether or not everyone believes me or not. I, that is, I hope a core value of niche pursuits is like, I'm just honest. Like I have a faceless YouTube channel project that's going on right now. And it's not doing well, it's not, and I, recently I tweeted about, you know, all the numbers behind that and what happened. And it's like, we have this big spike. We thought it was gonna do really well. And now it's like at zero. Right. And, and that's okay. A lot of people, if they're trying to be like the guru of like, everything I say is amazing and everything I touch is gold. They're not going to share those failures. Me on the other hand, like I'm just comfortable where I'm at. I think is a big part of it. My business is doing well, you know, I'm making good money, but I'm also willing to say that not every business is easy. Not every business is going to work. And even somebody that has experience in business, trying something new, like I fail all the time and that's okay. And so I think that doing that, that actually attracts the right audience for me is like people that share those same core values, like they're, they're readers of niche pursuits. I like that man. And yeah, I kind of sense that about your brand. I think that's one of the things that makes it a brand and like a trustworthy brand is the fact that you are so just kind of outright and just showing all of that, right? Like the Yeah, the wins, the losses. And speaking of that, like you have a lot of cool, like, projects, businesses, like one of them, by the way, side note Link whisper people. I'm a customer. It's a WordPress plugin. Cool business. I feel like for us, like my team uses people on my team uses it more, more than I have, so I have like less familiarity, but like even just using it to find orphaned post, I think is probably. Like that case study alone probably makes it kind of make sense for us to use it. So I think I'm an affiliate. So if anyone's listening, I'll, I'll make sure I have a link so that I can, I can sell it to you and I can make a commission. So Spencer doesn't make all the money from, Definitely use, use Brooks link, you know, in the show notes for sure. But it's a cool so cool product. So you've had a lot of cool stuff. You know, projects Oh, I just realized motion invest. That's like you're a partner in that, right? You're a partner in motion invest, which is a website. Yeah. Okay. What has, what has bombed that you've done over the last 12 years? I wanna know about the, some L's man. People wanna, people wanna learn from that. What can you recall being like, wow. Yeah, yeah, pick, pick em all. I mean, you know, choose a handful. Yeah, whatever. Oh man well I've done For niche site projects and like, honestly, I look at all of them experienced some sort of failure along the way, like every one of them, like even the first project, like it did well. And I don't remember it got up to like a thousand dollars a month, but then like it got hit with. With an update and you know, it eventually went to zero. I mean, over time it took a while, but right. But it was still considered a successful project. And all of those like niche site project three, this is going way back. I know, but that, that was where we had three different coaches, myself and two other people on my team that coached other. audience members to build an itch site from scratch, and we did it all publicly, right? That project did really well, like, people were way into it, we shared tons of videos, watched YouTube to get some of those old calls that I did with Samara, for those people that, that remember, but basically all of those sites didn't do well. So there's always been this element of success and failure. One of the maybe biggest failures where I invested the most amount of money in a project was called table labs. It was a software tool that I built. I had just sold long tail pro. So I exited a keyword research tool called long tail pro you know, I'm at the top of the world. I'm the King, you know, I had this big exit. And it was about a year later that I came up with another software tool idea called TableLabs. It's supposed to be a really easy, fast way to create product comparison tables for Amazon affiliates. Images, price, everything pulled in automatically, it's beautiful. Insert these tables and people are gonna, you know, click and buy. Man, I spent Well over a year in development, I don't remember the exact dollar amount, but it's like over a hundred thousand dollars, like$120,000 it pretty much bombed. You know, we had some buyers, but there just was not this large audience that I thought there were. And so I ended up selling that business a few years later, a couple of years later But when I sold it, it was only making like a couple thousand dollars a month. Right. For something that you spent six figures on. Like that's yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. Do you think there were any of the takeaways that you learned with that? Let's call it a bomb. Whatever the loss, the failure. Were there takeaways that you think you carried forward that you've used? Towards something else. Like, does anything come to mind for that? Yeah. In particular for my next project was link whisper after that. Interesting. Right. So I did learn a lot. Part of it was okay. I need a bigger audience because, at the end of the day, they're just, yes, there's a lot of Amazon associates, but how many of those are trying to build product comparison tables and how many of those are not using a free tool already, right? So it ended up being a much smaller market than I anticipated. And so my next project Link Whisper for building internal links. I did a lot more competitor research to kind of figure out, okay, how big can these SEO plugins get? But the second thing that I did is I interviewed a lot of potential customers before I started building anything. Which I kind of did with table labs a little bit, but not as nearly as much not as in depth. So I got actually on a call or, you know, on a video screen share with, I don't remember a dozen people. And I had them walk me through their internal link process, right? What do you do to build internal links? And of course. I've been building internal links forever. So I knew my process, but they gave me a lot of insight into how they did it and how everyday people are doing it. And basically all those people said, yes, I would love a tool that sped up X, Y, Z. And so that gave me a lot more confidence knowing I got a big market, I'm solving a real problem. Okay, now let's invest this money and this time into this project and, and Link Whisper has done better than TableLabs did. That's awesome. Was TableLabs also a WordPress plugin? It was not. It was a SAS tool. Oh, okay. Okay. And actually that's interesting you bring that up because I remember going from LongTail Pro, which originally was a desktop application old school to Table Labs I was like, I definitely want this to be a SAS a hundred percent because I was the, one of the sticking points of selling long tail pro is this tool is not a SAS, right? It's a little bit more difficult. It's like, I got to have a SAS, you know, standalone. On the web. And so that's how I built TableLabs. And it ended up being a lot of people were like, man, is this just a WordPress plugin? I was like, nah, it's a SAS. I'm like, eh, okay. You know, they wanted it right in the dashboard. It's like, man, I already spent 100 grand on not a WordPress plugin. So a big part of that takeaway. Yeah. Was, yeah, when I built Link Whisper, I was like, you know what? Having a Sass is cool, but a lot of people just want a plugin. I wonder yeah. I wonder if that maybe is the biggest takeaway that you didn't even necessarily think about right now, yeah. Off the top of my head, maybe that was the biggest takeaway actually, because so many people were, eh, you know, nah, I kind of wanna kind, wanna plug in. That's really interesting, man. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's hard and I know that all entrepreneurs are like, it hurts. It hurts when stuff bombs. It hurts so bad, but it's like literally a part of. It's like, what you sign up for, to have the wins, you got to have like losses along the way. And I don't know, man, if you figure out a way around that, please let me know. Or if you've, found someone that's figured that out. I don't know anybody with a hundred percent batting average. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I, I just think it's good for people to hear, especially people that are like, maybe newer, they're like, Oh, I'm getting into something. Like, it's going to be a part of your journey. I feel like, you know just like always just keep improving and keep getting better. I read that you had a pillow company. I didn't know that. Is that, Amazon FBA pillows? Yeah, yeah, I did. I had a pillow company. You did your research. When I read that, I'll tell you what popped in my head, man. Mike Lindell, I was like, you're the pillow guy, man, you're like you're giving some BOGO, man. Some coupons, buy one pillow, get my second pillow. How in the world did you get into that, the pillow business? You know, that was back in the day. I launched it probably early 2015, I want to say. 2015 to like end of 2017 ish. Okay. You know, two, three years is I ran the company and I had a couple of buddies that were getting into Amazon FBA, Chris Guthrie in particular is a guy that I know long, long time ago. That he was, you know, making some money on the Amazon FBA. And I did not understand what that was. And for any listeners that don't know what it is essentially is you can ship a bunch of product. To Amazon, like hundreds of boxes or units of whatever. And then when somebody buys on Amazon, Amazon will ship that product to the customer for you. And it was a light bulb moment for sure is like, Oh, like I can be a product on amazon. com. Like they just go to amazon. com and click buy and they're buying from me. I had no idea. I thought they always bought from Amazon. No, they're buying from me. Right. And so that was big light bulb moment. And I was like, I'm going to try this. And so I thought about different product ideas and I came to pillows for my own need. And this is a very common theme throughout all of my businesses. I usually scratch my own itch. So I love thin pillows. Like that's just one quirk about me. I don't love the big fat pillow, whatever. Same like thin, thin pillows. And so I went to Amazon. Search thin pillows, like even the top one or two results were not really thin pillows. Like I even ordered a couple of them and they were, you know, the six inch, whatever thick pillow. I'm like, that's not a thin pillow. And so I was like, well, I'm going to be the thin pillow guy. And so I got a bunch of samples from China, went through Alibaba got a bunch of samples from manufacturers in China. You know, they ship over a couple pillows, so I make it thin, you know, as thin as you can make it. No, yeah, yeah, cut that in half. And so, yeah, I found a, a good manufacturer that so I ordered like a hundred units or something. It wasn't very much like I started super small and they started to sell. So when people, you know, sold. Or searched for thin pillows. Like I had optimized my title for thin pillows and I was honestly like the only thin pillow guy back in the day. So smart. And it, and it did well, it did well. Yeah, I liked that. I guess if there was a ton of competitors, it probably wouldn't be as fun to try to get into that space. But the fact that you saw that there wasn't what you were looking for, really smart. And I was going to ask a question. I was going to say, Hey, is there a common thread that you have across what you do? But you kind of mentioned one and what you said was I tend to scratch my own itch, like when you're looking at these businesses if I were to ask you that question is, would you have a different answer or would that? Is there a commonality across everything that you do or projects you take on? That's definitely the one that's coming to mind. I mean, I've always sort of solved my own problem and those are the businesses that have done the best. For sure. And part of that is just because I understand the audience better because I am the audience member. Right. A lot of people try to come up with these solutions. Like I'm going to solve the problem for, you know, grandmas that are. Trying to buy a house. I don't know. Right. They are not that person. And so as much as you might try to understand this audience member, like you are not the thin pillow lover, or you are not the internal link builder. So if you can solve your own problems and create a solution for that, that's always done well for me. That definitely is probably the common thread of my successful businesses. That's huge. I mean, that's a big takeaway for, for people, for me, for anyone really is like a reminder, like, Hey, like. Literally look at what you do on a day to day basis when you have your own need. And I think sometimes it's hard to replicate is that, unless you're in the weeds, actually building a business, like a lot of times you don't find those problems. So, so that's the thing is like. I had to be in the weeds, building internal links or doing keyword research to come up with these software ideas. So that's why it's kind of odd because it's like, I'm building one business and then an idea for a totally different business, you know, is built off of, you know, what I was creating over here. And that's happened quite a bit. And so sometimes that's hard to replicate if you're just working a full time job, right? You're not actually building anything yet. So my advice would be like, go try to build something, even though it might fail, you might see like, Oh man, it's really difficult to do X, Y, Z. Maybe there's an idea there. Yeah. No, that's great. That's great advice. It's so funny. Cause like one of the things I'm thinking of is. Trying to figure out some additional revenue streams, right? Like, so I've had some, a good bit of site traffic drop just kind of over the last probably year, really like six months, a year and, you know, steadily working on with my team. And I'm like, man, if I need to bring an additional revenue. You know, I'm trying to like make the smartest decisions for me. And I want to make sure that I'm able to stay like in the grind and try to do things to bring in revenue that are related. So, those are kind of things that I'm asking myself is like, cool, how can I stay as close to what I'm doing and not try to go outside of that to bring in like revenue for my family or even, or even like just self like agency work or whatever. I'm trying to limit the number of website stuff, maybe that I might help someone with, although I'm game to do it. I just want to stay as close to the core as possible so that I can be in my own know. And I feel like that will give me that vision to be able to see those things, right? See things that like I may need to create, or I may need just, just keep me closer to the core, really. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Okay Niche Pursuits Crazy year 2023 you had a goal. I think you had a goal to create a thousand blog posts Or like a million or something. I think it was a thousand and you suck because you didn't get there. I think you, I think you created like 900 or something like that, 999 or something. Yeah. Yeah. So, it was 2022. So last year I wanted to create a thousand blog posts and it was like 900 or. It was close, you know, it was a freaking lot. It was a freaking lot. Yeah. And then was it this year that you said you're trying to do another thousand or more than that or something exactly? Okay. Exactly. So yeah, now in 2023 I've continued on, like I just missed it in last year. So in 2023 I've continued, man, I should check where I'm at. Like right now I don't have that pulled up, but we are going to hit it. Like we are definitely, we'll have more than a thousand blog posts by the end of the year. That's crazy, man. See, most people would get to that just where they were at 2022, that goal and be like, man, well done. I've done a great job. And they would take a deep breath, Spencer. And I feel like they would just relax a little bit in 2023. But you, my friend, you, you put, you've pushed harder and you're like, I failed. I was like one short. So now I got to do over a thousand man. So. Obviously it's awesome, but it's really cool. And your answer, or I should say one of your answers to growth. In your blog has been, well, if I have more content that's good potential, I can rank for more stuff and get more traffic. Am I, am I deducting that correctly? I mean, would that be an accurate? Yeah. Yep. That is absolutely correct. It's like, go big with content. If you want more traffic, like one way to achieve that is to do more content. Yeah, exactly. Now in 2022, I need to refresh myself on that video'cause you recap and I'm gonna advise people. I'm gonna link to that project'cause I think it's really cool for people to be able to see that and see what you did. You showcase everything. Not only did you just create new content, you also created a really nice system for like updating a lot of your older content and cleaning up stuff. You did a a complete site redesign, like site looks great. Niche pursuits.com looks incredible. Thank you. You did all of that stuff in 2022. Right? Yes. Yes, exactly. All in 2022. And so it was like the end of January, I think is when I published that 1000 blog posts video on YouTube that gives the overview. So if people want to watch that you know, it's 10 months old or whatever it is, but continued on in 2023. And part of that is because we had enough data. I had a year of data to see like what happens when you add. You know, almost a hundred articles a month to your blog. And I could see that my traffic had 5X in 2022. It's like, okay, well, why stop? Right? Like I can see the data of like, yes, I invested this much, but now it's starting to pay off. I've got the traffic, more revenue. And so this year I've continued to do that. The traffic has, I had to look at the exact number, but it's doubled again. Right. It hasn't 5x again, but it's doubled, you know, this year. Right? And so now that's why I'm hitting like a million page views. Yeah. No, that's awesome. In 2022, were you going to do that no matter what the results were? Did you say I'm going to do like my goals to write these posts, these thousand posts, like were you going to do that no matter what? I basically looked at the, like the number of like, it's going to cost this much money. I had that number in my head and said, I'm okay investing. I'm pushing all of that in. And not looking at it again, essentially, like, even though, you know, I'm spending it every month, I'm essentially, that's the number. And I'm okay with that, but yeah, let's just do it. And that's kind of how I've looked at 2023 again is like, okay, I know my monthly nut, my monthly content cost is X, like. I'm just pushing that in. We're doing it. Got it. Got it. Yeah. I was gonna ask at 2022. I don't, I was like, I don't know if I've ever seen you mention it and maybe you won't disclose. Maybe you will. I don't know, but like the total investment in 2022 that you invested and you could lump it all together, like content site redesign also older content, everything you did. I mean I'd have to imagine I'd have to imagine six figures beyond six. Oh, yeah for sure Yeah, no, it's like 20 to 25 grand a month in like content costs got it, right? It's probably what it kind of averaged out to be. Yeah, I love it though, man. Do you advise that for brands that haven't had success elsewhere? You know what I mean? Should a, should a brand say, yeah, man I'm willing to put my savings account in this. No, no, I don't think so. I mean, Everybody's in a different situation, right? Like my sister has a blog, right? I would definitely not tell her to spend that much money on like a new blog. Like, that's just crazy. Now, on the other hand, I do have a buddy that has had. Is actually my buddy from Wells Fargo that I was just on an hour ago. Like he, he's had a number, he's had a couple of successful website exits. He sold a website. I don't know what it was two years ago, two and a half years ago for like a million dollars. Right. Nice. And so he's in a different situation where it's like, okay, the next site he built. Yep. Yeah. He was spending a lot of money every month. Right. But he's got this nest egg. Everybody's different. Look at your own finances. If a thousand dollars a month is all you can spend. Don't do more than that. Just because. I'm able to do more than that and be okay with that. It it may just require more of your time Right, you may just need to say i'm going to invest three hours every day In writing content. I am going to be the hustler on the site and you figure out your time budget and invest that Yeah, right. So it might be different for different people makes sense. Yeah, it makes total sense. Okay, with what's the speed? Of AI and what's happening now. I mean, it's nuts. It's pretty amazing. I mean, it's awesome and we're talking we're talking ai so Yeah AI, I mean, not like, Oh, what do you think of it? Or like, I mean, obviously it's like, it's, it's integral into everything that we do. Every commercial I'm seeing on TV is involving AI. Every company is like, Oh yeah, or your AI solution. I'm like, okay. Literally every company in the world is integrating. Everything like all of this, right? Chatbots and solutions and cut businesses are going to be more efficient in our world. Obviously content, very interesting. Like you can click a button and get an article. In fact, what was it that you had? You got people that are writing like AI only content and they're like competing or something, aren't they? Oh, yeah. I've got an AI competition. Yeah. Just to see what happens. Yeah. People building sites all with AI content. Got a bunch of people. Yeah, right now we're a couple of months into that challange. Is it like AI only like, Hey, sorry, you can't no human editing. No, no, I'm allowing. Human editing, so AI assisted content, and I'm letting them define at what level, but they need to have AI involved at some point. Got it, got it. Okay. Okay. I mean, in some, in some scenario, I guess we've all been using AI for years, you know, a spell check and some Grammarly or whatever. So the question is you know, but. But now we're talking about GPT4 tile style stuff. That's pretty insane, pretty intense. Potentially for the first time that I've heard from lots of people, equal or better than your average human typer with, you know, the knowledge database that it's got. So, does it worry you excites you? Are you just like, dude, I can write 3000 articles in 2024. You know, like what is your, like, where do you kind of come at it from? I feel like, we're almost there at a point where AI, like you said, is just going to be integrated with everything that we do. It's almost like, you know, going from the typewriter to the computer, it's a tool, that everyone has and we're going to be using a lot more of it's interesting because I have been testing on my own site on niche pursuits, in fact, have been testing AI. Assisted content. We definitely have editors, doing a lot of editing as part of that, and that content does well. It's ranking well in Google. Google doesn't seem to mind it, I suppose. And, I definitely just feel like it's tool. I don't know where it's gonna go. I can't where, we're going to end up with it, but it feels like it's a tool now that like, if you're not using it to speed up your business and your processes, like you're going to be left behind your labor costs should be coming down. At what level you use it. I don't know. Maybe it's to create outlines. Maybe it's read a whole blog post. Maybe it's just for certain aspects. But I feel like if you're not using it, you're getting left behind at this point. How much more I'll integrate it into my own business? I don't know. We've tested out a number of articles. They've done well. I probably won't go. 2000 or 3000 articles in the year or anything crazy like that, but cause I do want a human involved still as part of the process, but boy, it may just be around the corner. GPT5 or 6 or whatever come out and like, it is good enough. It's better than my human editor will do. Like, I don't know. It's really interesting. It's fascinating. Exactly. I'm pretty fascinated with it too, man. It just makes me wonder, like I'm on the daily basis thinking like, okay, cool. articles. Great. Like they're kind of all democratized at some point. Like, okay, what makes me better as a brand or a person? What can I do that makes something really useful for the readers? I don't know what those answers are. I mean, yeah. Charts and tables. Cool. But are there wild things? Like I'm trying to think of like, man, what's something wild that we can like really integrate? And I don't have the answer yet and I don't know those answers, but like, that's kind of, in my opinion, going to be like some of the differentiators for brands where people are going to be attracted to. If you can just do things that are really amazing and like have this connectivity, I think communities are probably really important. You've done a killer job, man, creating community. I think that's important. Do you have comments turned on Niche Pursuits on the website or no? Not anymore. Not anymore. A few years ago and haven't, haven't turned it back on. Yeah. I've been tempted to turn it back on again, but have not. Yeah, exactly. I was having an issue turning mine back on. I was going to turn mine back on. I think it's kind of where I'm, I'm sitting. So I run a personal brand and I run a local media site in Mobile, Alabama as well. So, travel, bloggish, local media, telling people like what to do. Hotel stays like things to do places to eat and stuff. Yeah, so yeah, that's the lens I'm thinking through. I feel like the contents I don't mean to say democratizes and like, it doesn't matter, but like think about when we get to GPT5 or 6 like. if it knows real time and it can write as good as any writer or write in the style of any writer, it's not going to have anything to do with the, like the writing itself, is it? I guess everyone gets to a million articles and have the same content, but like now what else do you have? Yeah, I agree. And I think there's like two different types of content, right? Like one is the more SEO focus, keyword focused that GPT may just be able to essentially write all of that. You know, just your very standard, like, here's what X, Y, Z is. And here's that type of content, but a true community, a true brand, true followers want, I think the opinions of the owner of the brand of the blogger, right? I don't know if we're going to get to this point, but I almost feel like there might be a pendulum swing of like, okay we know all this content's written by AI. And if I'm just doing research on XYZ, like I'm cool with that. But if I want the opinions, of something like, I want to know this article was written by a human. I know what I want to know. It was written by Spencer or Brooks, and I want to know his take on X, Y, Z subject. And that's where things could get more interesting is like, okay, this is like a salty opinion, or this is like a some hot take or unique angle. Man, even though, this may be true, this is how Spencer feels about it. So I think, like, following individual human writers could become more and more important in the future. And so, but that's certainly something I'm thinking about. That's really interesting. Like while you were talking about that, my head just fast forwarded like 10 years. And I was like, man, there's, there's going to be human verification content. Like instead of people disclosing like, Hey, we had AI helped us write this. It's going to be like, this was verified written by a human. And I don't know how that would work or happen, but I could see that happening. Like the analog, like in the digital world, you know, like, man, this is a real thing. Well, and you can for sure see people like only read blogs that were written by humans, like for whatever. You know opinions they might have, like almost political opinions. Like I will not do this. Right. Unless it was written by a human. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Obviously we're not there, but I think it's smart. I mean, personally, I think it's smart to always be thinking down the road and be thinking about those things and the evolution. Speaking of evolution, man, you, so you've been around. Like 12 ish years around, like building solid, not like dabbling really, but really like kind of building stuff going from having like, you had a big portfolio of sites early on when like, when the niche world was crazy and you just had all these sites and you spin them up and like, let's start broad and we'll kind of bring it in. How have you just seen the evolution of blogging happen or building an online brand, like what's crazy different. And what threads are like the same core concepts? Yeah. Definitely when I look at my own personal journey, right? Like definitely early days were all about trying to game Google and just trying to like get free traffic from Google any way possible. I didn't do like a lot of black hat stuff, but I knew my content wasn't great on these small niche sites. It was all about, can I get the exact. Match domain for that keyword, write an article that targets that keyword and get a few links that have the anchor text of that keyword. And that worked right. It's just like fun. It was like, Holy cow. I can get to the top of this billion dollar company for this keyword and get some clicks on my AdSense and you know, that's paying my bills. Like, that's more what it was all about. Like, honestly. But even when I quit my job, I created niche pursuits and I was. 12 years ago as we mentioned, like that business. It has always been different. That was never about gaming Google. I don't know how many years, many years, I never even tried to write SEO content. I wasn't trying to rank for anything. I was just literally writing for people I knew were reading my blog, like, Hey, here's my update for last month. Here's what happened on my niche sites. Hey, I'm thinking about starting a new project. Do you want to participate? Like, all my blog posts were like, personal. Community focus, like it was all about the blog comments, almost more like Twitter in a way, right? It's all about just like, Hey, here's what I'm thinking right now. Here's a 500 word thing. So, what's evolved is going from like thinking about Google as an opportunity or as like a way to gain the system now to like, okay. What I was doing all along with niche pursuits was right. I was thinking about the community and that's perhaps why it's doing so well now, like I hate saying the same things that, you know, Danny Sullivan sometimes say is like right content for humans, but yeah, part of it, I was always doing that and maybe that's why things are going so well. And so I think if brands and individuals put that hat on of like, okay, instead of thinking about the algorithm so much, thinking more about the audience and like, okay, what's interesting to them, that's going to get you further. I think then the way it used to be, that's, that's, what's changed. Gotcha. Only, if you're playing a long term game, Only if you're playing a long term game. Yeah, which you're playing a long term game. Yeah, I had the realization, I think, so I kind of got excited, like reinvigorated into blogging. It's only been about three years ago. So like where I had these sites. I was like, Oh, I know I've ranked for some stuff, but I really started going, Oh, like, let me dig into this. Which kind of makes sense. I was seeing Google as the like, cool. This is the this is the cash cow. Like this is where all the traffic comes from. Awesome. Until like, I kind of had a decline and now I'm like, Oh, okay. It's awesome. But it's just another traffic source, like any other, like. YouTube might be, or maybe like social might be, and I'm trying my best to like diversify and just see Google as another traffic source. If it's the biggest one, awesome. Do you think that's a good idea? Kind of, kind of what I'm doing and the way I'm thinking about it? Yeah, I think so. I think having them as One traffic source amongst many is probably the right way to go. Okay. Okay. Alright. Feels, feels, feels good. Thank you. Thank you for confirming that. If you were going to rewind back and build from the beginning, do you think you would do anything differently? Or do you think you would kind of take the same route? Oh, man. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Certainly. And so I think I've learned a lot from those. I think I probably would have focused harder on one brand from the beginning, like putting more time and energy into niche pursuits, for example, whereas over the years, niche pursuits, if I have my 80/20 niche pursuits has usually been the 20%. My 80 percent was the pillow business was the software was the niche websites, right? 80 percent was always something else. Always. I just recently flipped that 2022, when I said I'm doing a thousand posts, that's when I flipped it and I was like, I need to make 80 percent of my focus. And 20 percent is these side hustles, the pillow business, the Amazon influencer, right? And so that if I could go back to the beginning, that's what I would do is like, this is my big thing. This is the big idea. Makes total sense. Very interesting. Do you think though, that having those other 80s allowed you to even put energy into the 20, which allowed it to one day become the 80%. You know what I mean? It's so hard, right? It's so hard to know. There's a lot of truth to that for sure. Because that's always been a big draw is like everything else I'm working on. Yeah, because I mean, I mean, let's rewind back. Let's say you could have made Niche Pursuits your 80 percent early. Like, what do you think that would have done to your Business. Like, do you think it would have been able to sustain you early on to be the 80%? Interesting. I Don't know. Okay. It probably would have taken a long, maybe, maybe not, right? Because it was definitely all my niche websites, certainly the first couple of years and then long tail pro was shortly after that. Yeah, Nichepursuits. com didn't make hardly any money for many years. Okay. Yeah, listen to that kids. It might take you years Just want people to hear that. Yeah, it might man Welcome to business. Welcome to life. Okay is there anything you wish that when you hopped on chats like this that you're like, man I wish someone would ask me about x and I didn't do it If so, let's no, you've done really good. I mean, we touched on, you know, sort of my big plans thinking about YouTube and video. Right. That would, that would be one thing that I would love to dive into even more. Like I'm still learning, but I think, it has been like a major medium of the internet for years already, but it's just going to get more and more like when I look at my son He's a teenager. Where he gets his answers, where he consumes content, it's YouTube. Like, he's not going to Google, he's not reading blogs. And so, I think video is very important for content creators to be thinking about. That would, that would maybe be the only thing.

Spencer: 50:19

I will just say, hat tip to you, Brooks. Like, your questions have been excellent. Probably some of the best of any podcast I've been on for a long time. So I appreciate you asking the real questions.

Brooks: 50:30

You've done a good job. I'm clipping, I'm clipping that, baby. We're making a clip that's making a highlight reel. Testimonial page right there. Testimonial page. Testimonial page. Speaking of the YouTube, are you have you decided if you're going to pull your podcast off of your, of that channel? Oh, man. Yeah. I'm still wrestling with that question. I've got you know, some people saying that is absolutely the thing to do. And I see a lot of strong points to that. Yeah. And then I've talked to a couple other people that are also like YouTube experts are like, no, don't do that. YouTube can figure it out. They know who to serve your content to. Yeah. So I'm, I'm still wrestling with that right now. I'm, I'm leaving it. But I might, I might change my mind in a month or two. We'll see. I'll be watching. I need to know whatever you do. I'm doing man, whatever you do, I'm doing, because yeah, you do all the homework and then you let me know. Okay. But I do know that YouTube brought that, you know, the podcast playlist and it's literally on the desk. It's like there, it says podcast. So I'm like, in my mind, if you put your podcast files there, YouTube knows it's a podcast. And yeah, I hope they're that smart, right? So to say, Oh, these are podcasts. Let me not suggest these to people that want to watch a shorter. Exactly. That's my thought. It makes logical sense. And when you think about the algorithm, how it works in particular, when you talk to people that are doing really well, or even work for YouTube, like they're saying this, like they know who to serve your content to. Right. So like, I just came out with a short video, you know, 10 minute video or whatever, like YouTube knows who to serve that to. They serve it to people that like watching 10 minute videos that are about SEO and Google. My podcast, they serve that to people. They know watch hour long videos. They're probably not serving that to the people that watch my 10 minute video. They know they have all that data. So that, in theory, is the way it should go. But there's a lot of good arguments to, you know, segment it out. So, we'll see. Well, you keep doing the homework, and then you let me know, man. Because if you decide to split it off, then dadgummit, my little small, you know, 3, 000 subscriber channel is gonna do the same dadgum thing, man. I'm gonna move mine off, too. Alright. If people wanna connect with you, you're super involved online, where do you want people to connect with you? Like, where would you like people to say, oh yeah, let me follow this guy. I'm probably most active on Twitter. So, my handles at niche pursuits on Twitter. So they can go there if they want to see my takes or whatever. There's a niche pursuits community on Facebook. They can join, join a private group there as well. And then, yeah, if they want to watch all the latest productions go to YouTube, the niche pursuits channel. YouTube is where it's at, man. That's where you're that's where you're spreading your wings and flying, man. One correction, Spencer. It's X dude. You can't say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't accepted that yet. I haven't either. I say both. I say both in conversation. I'm like, yeah, on Twitter X, formerly known as twitter. Yeah. Formerly known as twitter. Exactly. Well, man, I have appreciated the conversation. It's been a lot of fun. I'm going to let the people that are watching this, I'm gonna let them watch this next video that flows up. And if you don't mind, stick around, man, let's chat for a few more. Seconds will do. Awesome. Thanks, Brooks.