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Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. My name’s Doug Cunnington Into this episode I’m gonna talk about. Maybe where you should be spending your time if you had websites before. Niche sites, content sites specifically. I got an email from a former student and he says that he needs help and he actually lays out a pretty good scenario.
And the thing is, you know, I’ve talked about retiring my courses, um, uh, roughly a year ago, and I stopped. Accepting new students. Two years ago, at that point, it was pretty apparent to me that the content site, the niche site business model, wasn’t really working in the way that it had been for the last probably 10 plus years or so, things had shifted, but it was a dramatic change and I pulled the courses and basically said, Hey, this stuff isn’t relevant anymore.
So this person. We’ll call them Steve, for the purposes of this episode, uh, lays out a fairly good scenario here. And the bottom line is, I don’t have a super great answer because it is similar to the past in some ways where someone says, oh, do you think I could do this? And the answer is, I, I mean, I don’t know what you could do.
There’s many factors out there, but I can tell you some things not to do, and. It’s been interesting over the last few weeks as I’ve caught up with some other folks, peers of mine as I caught up with Alex Cooper over at WP Eagle, and then he interviewed a bunch of our peers that generally were YouTubers, so that’s a specific subset of people, but they were YouTubers and like, Hey, what are these folks doing now?
By the way, a little sneak peek. I am going to be doing some interviews coming up with past success story interviews, folks that have been on the channel sometimes a few years ago, and kind of an update and somewhat, um, similar as it’s like, uh, what are they doing now and blogging is. I mean, I think people have been saying it for a while.
Blocking’s dead, right? So, all right. Here’s the question. I’m gonna try to read it pretty verbatim. I always go in and out of first and third person, so I’m gonna try to just read it. But, uh, keep an eye out for those upcoming episodes because of my publishing schedule and my travel schedule and other stuff.
Uh, I will be working ahead a little bit and over the last several weeks, I have not been, and I’m literally recording it just a few days before I publish, which has been rare. But now that I don’t have Cali producing for me and I’m doing this myself there, I like, I could do it in a shorter timeframe ’cause I’m doing less editing and such.
Okay. Here’s the email from, like I said, I made up. His name is Steve for today, my main question is about the probability of blogging for someone. In my situation, I have a good understanding of writing articles and SEO four years experience, but I currently lack the financial resources to start.
I’m concerned about affiliate marketing since Google seems to now favor showing real product usage, which might be difficult without the capital to purchase products. Additionally, video content is becoming increasingly important, but as I’m not from a tier one country, I worry about building trust with viewers and hiring talent from those regions is quite expensive.
I’m also hesitant to invest six months in writing only for Google two, potentially deran my content. Again, wasting valuable time.
While I’d love to reach my previous earnings of four to 5K per month, I’m currently quite confused and want to avoid risky ventures. Given your industry experience, do you think I can create a website that consistently earns 300 plus dollars per month to cover my expenses? Perhaps I could then scale it or build other sites.
What are your thoughts on focusing on old school article writing where the reviews are high quality and sound as if I’ve personally used the products.
I’ve been through a tough period losing my focus and most of my savings. The biggest reasons for my past struggles was lack of consistent guidance. I’ve had some excellent sites, but never progressed to selling my own products.
I’ve experienced success with blogging in the job market in my country doesn’t offer comparable compensation. I’m truly seeking your guidance on what path I should take, even if it’s challenging or not highly profitable initially. Any advice on how to build a consistent $500 per month would be invaluable, Even if it’s challenging or not highly profitable initially, any advice on how to build a consistent $500 per month at least would be invaluable. I’m currently taking a data science course, but I’m always ready to dedicate myself to blogging. Eagerly awaiting your answer,
It was tough for me to read. It was actually well written, but I just had a hard time reading it for some reason. I don’t know if my brain’s slow today or if I need to wear reading glasses and stand closer to the monitor.
Actually, maybe that’s it. It’s a little bit, uh, it’s a little bit hard to read, but anyway. Overall, like I said in the beginning, I don’t know if I have the answer because essentially there’s all these business models out there that potentially could work to earn $500 per month. It was interesting to hear from the folks that Alex Cooper at WP Eagle interviewed because there were some people that basically were like, yeah, I kept building my sites and I have a YouTube channel.
That kind of feeds into it. I think maybe. Chris mentioned this, I can’t remember exactly who it was, but I’ll link up so you can check out the video. Anyway, essentially people that maybe still have content sites or earning money, but they’re getting traffic from other sources, so Facebook or Pinterest or YouTube or something like that.
Overall, though, I would say, and the main question here. Do you think I could create a website that consistently earns $300 per month? You probably can. It is probably unlikely, though. I know that it is possible because of the people that I’ve talked to, and there are sites that earn that money. They get traffic from a variety of sources, and it’s possibly.
Um, something that you can do because you have experience writing and you have some SEO knowhow. The main issue is, is it, you know, worth your time? Will it actually have longevity? So let’s say you create a site, you follow someone’s, um, plan someone’s framework, and you earn $500 a month or whatever. Are you going to actually be able to count on that long term?
And I think the answer is no. I think business models in the same sort of area of the websites that we used to build, I don’t think those are gonna be. Viable for the long term. If you’re just starting out, which you’re not, if you’re just starting out, then you can learn a lot of stuff by, maybe you start a website and you can learn all these different pieces.
It’s something that I’ve talked about a lot. Like if you try to do, really any number of business models, drop shipping. Let’s say you do affiliate marketing. Let’s say you do some SEO thing, maybe the Etsy digital printables. Let’s say you get into graphic design and maybe you do some freelance stuff, any sort of like thing that you could do to earn money online.
You’re going to learn skills. You’re gonna learn several things in different areas, and that’s not a bad thing when you’re first starting out, Steve, because you’re not first starting out and you have a F experience, you’re not gonna learn as much by. Installing WordPress and playing with some plugins and that sort of thing, you’re just not gonna get as much out of it.
So with that said, I am not a hundred percent sure where you should focus your time. I, as I’ve mentioned on previous episodes, and I think Steve, perhaps you haven’t listened to the last several episodes that I’ve published, but I’ve talked a lot about, scammy business models. I’ve talked about people that are maybe sharing things that aren’t universally true or they’re not telling the full story of like all the work that they’re actually doing.
I encourage you to check out some of those other episodes that’ve published, but basically I am not. Trying to start anything new. I’m not dabbling around. The closest thing recently is the Etsy shop where I’ve like printed, like the shirt that I’m wearing here. It’s for my other podcast and it’s print on demand t-shirts since a couple other products, but I’ve not put much time into it.
I had a couple designs that I’ve, I’ve uploaded, I’ve sold a few things, but I haven’t really earned that much money. I think maybe like 50. A hundred bucks or something like that over the last couple months. But if you were going to approach it, you can check out like a course like Gift lab. I’m an affiliate for it, but I talked to Emily Oio Sutton, and over the course of a couple years she created, um, I think a couple thousand products, maybe only half or two thirds of them are actually live.
So sometimes you create some product and realize that it’s not selling well and you actually, you know. Don’t have it up for sale anymore. So it’s just, I think maybe in draft mode or something like that, but something like that where you put in the time and effort and all that, you probably can do well.
So as I’ve mentioned over the years, you probably can pick any one of the business models that seem reasonable, that don’t have a scammy, um, feel to them they’re not some thing where. Logically it doesn’t make sense to engage in the business model, for example. Or actually, I’m not gonna be as specific, but I’ll give like a, just a general, um, I’ve seen this many times.
So let’s say someone has a social media, approach and they’re like, Hey, if you just post on. Facebook groups, you can get a bunch of, um, followers there, and then you try to get them to, join your email list and then you can market to ’em that way. Maybe you have a Facebook group and the business model and air quotes is posting AI images that aren’t quite real.
Um, and maybe, well, they’re not real at all, but they’re kind of like misleading in some way. So you have a lot of people commenting. So you actually get a lot of reach with those. But it’s kind of like people are angry and they’re not super, happy about what you’re posting, but it’s getting a lot of engagement and that actually does well.
So let’s say someone is telling you about this business model and they’re like, by the way. You can automate this and you just need my software to create the image and you need my software to do the caption, and then it’ll auto post or whatever. So they have some software and they’re like, you could do this.
It’s working awesome for me. And then they sell it to you. So something like that seems like. Kind of fishy. So refer to the previous episode where I talk about questions that you should ask yourself before you engage in some business model. Essentially how to identify a scam. And one of ’em, like multi-level marketing folks, um, often.
Do, like, hey, you can uh, be one of our reps. You just have to buy, uh, the training and $500 worth of product, and then you have to pay to be able to sell their stuff, which doesn’t seem quite right ’cause now you’re buying their stuff and then you have to figure out how to sell it and unload it. So it’s pretty tough.
And like I said, I don’t really have a great answer. I would say, you know, you could check out. Things that are working. I mean, I know there’s people that are talking about different business models, things that they’ve been doing, but I would say, um, the old blogging business model is not viable.
Even with what, you know, with SEO and you know. When I read the question, I was like, ah, Steve, like, uh, you haven’t seen a lot of the recent content, or, I mean, the fact is I used to talk about niche sites all the time. Basically all the other people that Alex interviewed for the, where are they now? Video.
Yeah, we all talked about similar things and now essentially no one’s talking about that. Some people are offering, um, different services. Like my friend Shauna Newman over at Skip Blast, she has, um, I think it’s called Growth Cupid, and it’s essentially SEO services for local businesses. So that’s totally viable.
Like that’s something that you could do. It’s weird because, well, I’m out of SEO generally at this point, or at least the traditional SEO that we’re thinking about. But essentially Steve, you have the skills for probably local SEO, and you can help those small businesses.
But if you’re trying to do it with your. Niche site where it’s like a worldwide audience and these kind of websites aren’t really favorable anymore. The SEO skills that you have are probably not working for that, but those SEO skills could work for a small business. Again, I’m speaking as an observer, not someone who practices SEO or local SEO.
And in fact, um, I have, a friend locally here who was like, Hey, I got this, um, client. Who needs SEO help? Are you interested? And I was like, oh, hell no. I’m not doing, any kind of client work. Um, no way. I have zero interest. But I have a friend who does do. Like small business, probably medium sized business, SEO, especially in the sort of e-commerce space.
So I referred ’em over, they had a great talk and I think they’re probably gonna end up working together. So, you know, there are people looking for SEO services even in the landscape now because in different markets, right? Our niche site world with product reviews and informational content, not really helpful these days.
AI is everywhere. It’s in the results, it’s in the content, and it’s really, tough to try to make a niche site work with Google, SEO traffic. But you can use those skills and SEO practices do work if you apply them to businesses, e-commerce, other stuff like that. I know those industries probably changed as well, or those specific flavors of SEO changed as well.
But I think a lot of the same ideas apply and those probably still work pretty well. I’ll try to summarize what I said. It’s been a bit of a struggle of an episode. I feel like my voice was, uh, dying a couple times and I just misspoke. So I’m gonna try to summarize this so you could do something with it.
I’m not sure why my, my, uh, my throat is a little bit scratchy today, but it is, unfortunately. So in summary, Steve says, I seek your guidance on what path I should take, even if it’s challenging or not profitable at the beginning. How can I earn $500 per month? The answer is unfortunately, I don’t know. I will give you similar advice to what I told people years ago. Find someone who is presenting content that you find trustworthy and they’re sharing a specific business model that seems to line up with what you are interested in. You don’t need the skillset yet. You can learn whatever it is. They’re.
Trying to teach and make sure they’re trustworthy, make sure you like them, and I would say you could dabble and look at that business model to see it. If it’s something that you’re interested in and you want to do because of how quickly things are moving these days, I. Wouldn’t have a lot of confidence in a few business models that, you know, maybe they sprang up really quickly and then they maybe have a quick, um, route to earning a lot of money or getting a lot of views or success or whatever the metric is.
If anything is like a little too fast and too easy, I’m often a little bit, hesitant to spend time on those because. A couple things. It seems volatile, right? If you could be successful super quick, that is a little bit of a red flag, and it also means that other people could also be successful really quick and then probably take your spot.
It’s not always a one for one situation. Sometimes it’s just a growing industry. So that’s one thing to think about and look out for scammers, again, refer to the previous episode, the other. Observation, and it took me a couple years to see this and really confidently give it as advice. The things that end up working out, usually they kind of click for you quickly.
So not everything is like that. But when I started on niche sites, I didn’t do a really good job on like the purely informational sites with AdSense. Again, this was. 12 years ago in 2013, I didn’t do that well with those, but as soon as I started with product reviews and Amazon affiliate marketing specifically, that worked really well very quickly for me, and it came more naturally than the purely informational approach that I was learning from.
With AdSense, um, informational websites specifically. So I leaned into that a little bit more with my courses. Same deal. I was able to launch a course fairly quickly with paying students that prepaid, and that worked as well. There were several other business models that I tried out and it didn’t quite work and I just moved on.
It doesn’t mean like. AdSense doesn’t work. It’s just, it didn’t click for me early. So the takeaway here, and I’ve heard this from other people now, is like, yeah, when I started doing print on demand and stickers, that worked immediately. I’m just making up that example by the way. So once they, once they tried something, it pretty much worked.
Right away they clicked with it in some capacity and they were like, oh, wow, this, this works a little easier than I thought. This may contradict what I mentioned before where it’s like, uh, look, look out for the flash in the pan type business models, but you can look at maybe directory sites. So directory sites are not a flash in the pan.
We’ve heard about those since the beginning. There were directory sites way back in since the beginning of the internet, right? Like it was one of the classic ways to organize content as like directories. So directories are not a foreign concept that are brand new. It’s just the technology’s a little bit better.
There’s more niche industries out there. The internet’s more mature. People are looking for a way to find information in an organized fashion. So with that said. It’s, it’s one of those deals where I’m like, well, you wanna look out for, um, something that has success too quickly, that doesn’t make sense to you, but you also don’t want to start something where, you know, by the end of the, the niche content site, uh, life cycle, people were like, yeah, you need to publish content on your website.
Hell, I probably said it, right? You need to publish content for a year or a year and a half or two years before you get any traffic. That’s a really long time. To, to publish content where essentially nothing is happening. In the beginning it was like, yeah, you should get, uh, you know, your first traffic within a few days of launching your site, which I actually did way back then.
And then it went to, well, if you can get 10 or 20 impressions in the first month or two of publishing content on your website. That’s way different just impressions listed on go Google, uh, search console. Like that’s way different than actually having people on your website and like having a sale or two within a few weeks again, which was totally true.
So I hope that was, uh, somewhat helpful. I feel like maybe it wasn’t super helpful, but it’s one of those deals, uh, these days where I think. There’s not a clear path or framework for people to follow. So there’s a lot of, um, uncertainty. There’s a lot of opportunity out there because you’ll be able to try stuff with the things that you know, that maybe no one else is really trying and see if it works or not.
It is a lot more uncertain and a little bit scarier because you’re actually putting in time and you don’t know if it’s gonna pay off. So you’re actually putting in time and you don’t know if it’s gonna pay off, which is tough. It’s part of the deal though.
So if you have any follow up questions or comments or observations, let me know. You can shoot me an email feedback at Doug show or leave a comment over on YouTube. And if you’re not on the email list, be sure to sign up over there. And if you have any show ideas, you can, uh, send me an email, just like I mentioned.