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

In my podcast episode today I interviewed Claire Smith that is doing VERY well with her niche sites. She is making over $10,000 a month with her niche sites. However, what makes Claire's story interesting is that she has NEVER built a link to any of her sites. In her words, "I just never got around to it." Because she has never even tried to build a link to any of her sites, she doesn't have to worry when Google changes how the value links because well she doesn't have any!

Today, I would like to introduce you to Travis Ketchum of ContestDomination.com. In this episode, Travis shares a bit about his own story and why he created Contest Domination (software that helps you run and manage successful contests online). In addition, Travis shares some really amazing success stories of clients that have used Contest Domination to grow their business. One of those companies was able to generate over 190,000 email opt ins from just one contest!

During the podcast, Brian provided a ton of very actionable tips for anyone starting a new blog or looking to attract more traffic and links to their existing sites. Some of the most interesting takeaways that I had are related to how Brian was able to grow his blog so much in the past year. He did this by blogging LESS. By focusing more on quality posts rather than quantity, and then working actively to promote those posts, he's been able to become a widely recognized expert. We discuss the exact tactics Brian has used to grow Backlinko.com and how you can do the same.

When it comes to link building experts, Jon Cooper of PointBlankSEO.com is right at the top of the list. For that reason, I wanted to bring Jon on the podcast for a second time to discuss link building tactics that are working right now. In particular, Perrin and I got a chance to ask about our authority site and actually get some personalized advice for how we should approach our link building.

Chris Guthrie and I have known each other for a long time. Back in the day Chris was out building Amazon affiliate sites and I was building Adsense affiliate sites. I'm not sure where we first crossed paths, but we've been in touch now for probably close to 5 years. I had Chris on my podcast over 2 years ago. However, now his business has evolved so much that I wanted to have him on to discuss his latest business venture. Chris is now actively involved in selling physical products on Amazon through the Fullfullilled by Amazon (FBA) program. In his first few months with his very first product, Chris has built his monthly revenue to over $12k per month with this business! (Profit is about 50% of that). I know that sounds almost too good; however, Chris has been kind enough to privately show me his Amazon account with earnings and the product that he is selling on Amazon. It's a legit business.

About a month ago I was able to attend a conference called Rhodium weekend. While I was there, I got to meet lots of really interesting people, including Jock Purtle from DigitalExits.com. I asked Jock to come on the podcast and discuss some of the insights that he has on buying and selling websites. You see, Jock has been buying and selling websites for his own portfolio for a long time. In addition, he is a website broker selling websites for his clients through his company, DigitalExits.com. This interview definitely focuses on buying and selling more established websites. The type of sites that Jock and his team work with tend to be valued at $100,000 to $5 million.

Today, I’m excited to share with you the interview that Perrin and I did with Shane Melaugh of Thrive Themes. Shane is someone that has been involved in the internet marketing space for a number of years and has seen a lot of success. In fact, he’s been entrepreneurial his entire life and by his own admission is probably “unemployable” at a traditional job. Not only has he found a way to bring money in the door, but he’s become very good at creating products and building great businesses.

Podcast 50! I started my podcast a couple of years ago almost as an after thought, but today I'm hitting a major milestone with 50 episodes! For now I'm excited to share an interview I did with Justin and Joe from EmpireFlippers.com. These guys are well known for their website marketplace where all sites are listed for sale at 20 times monthly income.

Perrin and I were able to sit down and record a podcast based on our last blog post, How to Mange Writers Effectively. When it comes to starting and running an online business, having great content is so critical. If you are not writing the content yourself, hiring and managing writers becomes extremely important. Because of this, Perrin and I felt like we wanted to share some of our best practices for finding, hiring, and motivating writers.

In this podcast, we discuss 2 of Steve's sites: SteveScottSite.com and DevelopGoodHabits.com; and of course his Kindle publishing business. In fact, he was also kind enough to share a link to his author page on Amazon, so you can see a list of all his books! Check them out at HabitBooks.com. Steve's advice and story is quite impressive as he is only started publishing on Kindle about 2 years ago and is now making anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 a MONTH! He reveals regular income reports and has great business tips over at SteveScottSite.com.

I'm excited to bring you another podcast today! Perrin and I were able to recently sit down with Gael Breton of AuthorityHacker.com to discuss all the important elements of building an authority website. Gael knows what he is talking about. You'll like this interview because he not only shares very actionable tips, but also gives the URL of his website that is making over $10,000 per month. I always love having an example website that I can look at and try to replicate.

Wow, apparently my article from earlier this week really rocked the boat! I made the firm stance that I will no longer be building private blog networks (PBNs), and it garnered A LOT of attention. In fact, my article was mentioned on SERoundtable.com, SearchEngineLand.com, tweeted by Rand Fishkin, and even Matt Cutts tweeted about the news articles (that I was in). Then of course there have been plenty of other blog posts, online discussions, and overall a major buzz around the topic of PBNs getting deindexed and whether or not to use them going forward. The day of that blog post was the highest traffic day this site has ever had, and there are already over 400 comments on that blog post! To say the least, I've hit a nerve that lots of people care about. As a result, Perrin and I only felt like it was appropriate that we record a follow up podcast to dive a bit deeper into the risks vs. rewards of private blog networks. As you can see from the podcast title, I still think you should NOT build a PBN. Listen to the podcast for all my reasons why.

A few days ago I shared the monthly income report for a few sites that I purchased this year. The site buying case study is one that I've learned quite a bit from and has helped expand my business. In total, I've now bought 4 sites this year, and as you can see from the what I've learned from spending $37,100 on buying sites, I've been able to do pretty well! Today, I'm sharing a podcast that Perrin and I recorded to review our monthly earnings from just a couple of sites along with a discussion of what else we have going on in our business.

Perrin and I had the chance to interview Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com. Neil is very well known for the products he's built (Kissmetrics, CrazyEgg, and others) and for the traffic strategies he's implemented on large websites such as TechCrunch.com and Amazon.com. When it comes to content marketing and traffic experts, Neil is right there near the top of the list. So, I hope you enjoy the interview as we discuss his entrepreneurial background, traffic strategies, infographic strategies (that still work), and much more.

Last week, I finally broke the silence about what happened to my survival knife site, from niche site project 1. As revealed in that post, the site appeared to have been hit with negative SEO. And then when Penguin 2.1 came out in October 2013, the site finally tanked in the rankings (the spammy links obviously being the reason that it was affected by Penguin). I tried several tactics for over 9 months trying to bring the site back from the dead without much success. However, last week some interesting things started to happen: the site started to rank for keywords and the traffic was increasing rapidly. Perrin and I discuss what's going on.

One of the hottest business ventures right now, is publishing books on the Amazon Kindle platform. I've personally been curious about the prospects of publishing Kindle eBooks, but have never taken the leap. As a result, Perrin and I jumped at the opportunity to have Jonny Andrews of AudienceHacker.com on the podcast. We recently interviewed him and had the chance to dig into how he's been able to build a substantial business using the Kindle platform.

Perrin and I were able to sit down recently and interview Rand Fishkin of Moz.com! If you have been in the SEO world for any period of time, you are likely well aware of Rand and the company he founded, Moz. He is one of the most well-known and well respected entrepreneurs in the SEO space. Perrin and I really relished our opportunity to pick Rand's brain for an hour on SEO, marketing, and his story.

Recently Perrin and I were able to sit down and interview Dre Baldwin of DreAllDay.com. I'm excited to bring this interview to you today, because well, its different! Dre is not your typical niche site builder or affiliate marketer (like almost all of my previous guests). Dre is actually a professional basketball player! I'll let you read or listen to his entire story below, but he worked his way from basically not playing much in high school to eventually playing professionally overseas. However, the moment he decided to put one of his highlight VHS tapes from a training camp onto YouTube changed everything for him. People started to find his videos and he continued to add more, until eventually he decided to start adding daily basketball tips and training videos.

Our guest today is Dhanish Semar (those of you in the League of Legends community probably know him by his IGN: DiffTheEnder). Dhanish owns Cloth5.com, a site he built by making great connections, writing premium content, and putting it in front of his audience using the platform that was most important to them. The result? Cloth5 now gets over 1,000,000 visits per month.

Recently, Perrin and I were able to sit down with Matt Paulson of MattPaulson.com for a podcast interview to discuss his amazing business. Matt is an unassuming guy and you would have no idea how extraordinarily well his business is doing unless you asked him. Well, we had the chance to ask about his business and the numbers he shares will blow your mind (at least it did for Perrin and I). Matt owns a financial network of sites including AmericanBankingNews.com, AnalystRatings.net, and a few others that combined get over 2.5 MILLION pageviews per month! The earnings from those sites is even more impressive than the pageviews in my opinion.

In the podcast, Perrin and I review the income report from last month, discuss the business potential of buying and selling websites, and then go into more depth in our new authority site project. While we do cover similar topics to my last blog post, we also have a chance to dive quite a bit deeper and throw in a few other interesting topics as well. Overall, if want our most up to date thoughts on buying and selling websites, building out niche sites, building large authority sites, and more, then I hope you'll give it a listen.

I recently interviewed Andrew Youderian of eEcommerceFuel.com. Perrin and I were able to have a great chat with Andrew to talk about his business and the great success that he has had with a couple of his drop shipping/ecommerce sites; including selling one for $170k at the beginning of 2014.

I started the NichePursuits podcast just over 2 years ago. The most popular episode since the inception of my podcast has been episode 9 with Hayden Miyamoto recorded just over 2 years ago. At the time, he was making over $30k per month from his small niche sites. However, a lot has happened in the past 2 years and his strategy has changed dramatically. Today I am publishing an interview I did just a few days ago with Hayden Miyamoto from NoHatSEO.com. So, why did I bring Hayden back for a 4th time on the podcast? Well, not only have his episodes been the most popular, but a lot has changed over the past year or 2. In fact, Hayden has changed up his strategies a bit and is focusing more now on building out larger sites. One of his sites is now doing over $10k per month! So, I wanted to bring him back on to discuss what has changed and what’s still working for him.

Perrin and I discuss what passive income is all about and whether or not people actually stop working once they achieve their income dreams. In addition to sharing the early influence of our fathers, we also discuss some of the wealthiest people in the world and how they spend their work lives. Finally, I share my own day to day schedule as an internet entrepreneur.

Perrin and I had the chance to sit down and discuss in detail our new business Vylo.org for Episode 33. We dig into the story of the product, how Perrin generated initial buzz, and plans going forward. The story of how Perrin came up with the idea and how he got over 6,000 people to express interest in the product and get on his email list in 24 hours is pretty remarkable. So, this episode is all about the story of Vylo from idea to launch (which happened about 12 days ago).

Perrin and I discuss the May income of 2 niche sites that I purchased in January 2014. We also discuss whether or not I should sell one of the websites; and share our thought process behind making this decision.

Perrin and I discuss when its time to stop creating new websites and when to just focus on your existing portfolio. I discuss my own website portfolio, specific traffic stats, and the decision I have made to stop building new sites for the foreseeable future.

When it comes to building a niche website that you hope to rank at the top of Google, you could potentially make hundreds of mistakes. As a result, there is no possible way that I could cover every possible mistake that someone might make when trying to build and optimize their site for SEO. However, I do believe that there are some very common mistakes that many newer people might fall prey to when building niche sites. As a result, Perrin and I cover the 9 most common mistakes that people make when building niche sites and doing SEO.

Perrin and I just finished recording a new podcast, episode 29. During this episode, we discuss the April income report from my last blog post, and share some additional thoughts and nuances that I didn't have a chance to cover. Overall, I hope you enjoy the episode! If you find any value in the podcast and have a chance to leave a rating or review on iTunes here, that would be great.

I recently wrote a blog post titled, "Wh you Should NOT start a podcast". This was an opinion piece that I wrote based on some of the frustrations of my podcast. However, after taking a look at the data and hearing some feedback from others, my opinion has evolved a bit in regards to podcasting. Listen in to hear what the future of the Niche Pursuits Podcast will be...along with other interesting stats about my business.

One of the things I did to grow aPennyShaved was to reach out to a bunch of other bloggers in the shaving community, a process I outlined in one of my previous posts. It was a super fun process, the response was spectacular, and I ended up making a bunch of cool friends. One of those friends was Douglas Smythe, who founded Howtogrowamoustache.com. We exchanged emails about shaving, discussed blogging strategies and ended up collaborating on a guest post, which was a ton of fun. The more Douglas and I chatted, the more I became absolutely fascinated and blown away by his success in the very same community I was working to succeed in, especially because his site wasn’t just a simple ad-supported site. Douglas was leveraging his traffic to expand his shaving site into a larger, product-driven business.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down and interviewing Doug Cunnington for the Niche Pursuits podcast. He's had some impressive results with one of his newer niche sites that I wanted to share. Does the name Doug Cunnington sound familiar? You may recall hearing about Doug because I shared his success story just a few months ago! At that time he was earning over $1,000 per month from the site already, and he's come back to tell us how well its done since November. Overall, Doug basically took the techniques that I've shared from Niche Site Project 1 and Niche Site Project 2 and applied it to his own new sites. And of course, he has tweaked the process and strategies a bit to make them work well for him. In fact, he's done so well, that his site earned over $6,000 in December alone!

The January income report for aPennyShaved.com is here! This is one that I know a lot of you have been anticipating, because of how well the site did last month. After earning over $650 in December, the big question was whether December was so big mostly due to Holiday shopping. The clear answer is NO! January was a much bigger month, and Perrin and I attribute that to simply getting more pages indexed and ranking in Google. Newer sites can take a few months before Google starts ranking all the long tail possibilities. And January was the month that aPennyShaved really started to do well in Google. Below, you can see the full income report along with Perrin's thoughts. However, this is a special occasion because in addition to just the normal income report, Perrin and I also recorded a podcast to review the entire project! This is meant to be the final official coaching call for Niche Site Project 2. This podcast/coaching call is the culmination of the entire project...so we hope you listen!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Cooke of EmpireFlippers.com just a few days ago. I'm sure you already know about Justin and Joe, as they are pretty popular guys! In fact, I had both of them on episode 3 of my podcast back in April 2012! So, its been almost 2 years ago since I interviewed them. I wanted to catch up on what has changed, and what their business plans are for the future.

Jon Cooper is a sophomore at the University of Florida studying finance. Even though he's "younger", he happens to be a respected expert in the SEO arena; particularly when it comes to link building. I had the absolute privilege of interviewing Jon Cooper recently to discuss niche sites, link building, and more. Today I am excited to share that podcast interview with you!

I had the opportunity to interview Nick Loper of SideHustleNation.com and ShoeSniper.com, a short time ago. I was excited to interview Nick because he has a great story of how he was able to take a little side business he started and develop it into something full-time. That business was ShoeSniper.com, an affiliate site selling shoes. What's interesting about his strategy, is that almost all of the traffic is paid traffic...mostly from Google Adwords. So, in this episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast, I let Nick tell his story of why he got involved in the shoe business, how much the site was earning at its peak, some of the challenges that he's come across along the way, and what he is working on lately.

Well, Hayden Miyamoto is at it again! I decided to bring Hayden back onto my podcast for the 3rd time because he continues to build his business in unique ways that I think we can all learn from. In my interview with Hayden today, we discuss how his niche site business has fared over the past year, and what he is doing differently now. In particular, Hayden has been able to build a huge business using expired domains and his own private blog network. You may recall my previous 2 podcast interviews with Hayden of NoHatSEO.com. They were very in-depth and groundbreaking for many people. In my first interview, Hayden shared how he was making 30,000 dollars a month with niche sites, post penguin. In my second interview, Hayden shared how to find valuable expired domains for just $9. I HIGHLY recommend that you listen to those podcasts if you haven't already.

Several months ago, I ran across a blog that I really enjoyed reading in the personal finance niche. Before I was running my business full-time, I worked in the finance industry for several years, so I've always been interested in investments and personal finance. As I researched this blog a bit more, I realized that it was doing quite well! According to its "About" page, it was receiving over 200k unique visitors a month and I could see that there was a very active community. I've always been intrigued how people build their blogs into successful businesses, so I contacted the owner of FinancialSamurai.com and asked him if he'd be interested in doing a podcast interview with me. He agreed. So, on the podcast today, I'm excited to share the interview I had with Sam of FinancialSamurai.com. Financial Samurai is a personal finance and investments related blog that covers all the topics surrounding saving, investing, retirement planning, and more. In my interview, I dug a little bit into Sam's story of how he was able to engineer his own layoff so he could work full-time on FinancialSamurai.com at the age of 35. In addition, we dive into how he was able to build a blog of such significant size in an extremely competitive niche. The personal finance niche has got to be one the most valuable and highly competitive niches that are out there. However, Sam has been able to build a significant following and financially do well. In the podcast, you will find out how he was able to do that.

In podcast 19 of the Niche Pursuits Podcast, I was able to sit down with Elaine Heney and discuss her business of building mobile phone applications. She has currently built over 200 iPhone or Android Apps and only started about a year ago! I was completely amazed at the success she is having, and knew I had to have her on the show. Elaine has an interesting story because she's not a programmer and was just tired of working for someone else (sound familiar?). After creating her first app, she saw a little bit of success...not much, but enough to keep her intrigued by the app market. As a result, she did something that I could never do...she quit her job before she was really making much money! She decided that she was going to give herself a few months to do nothing but work on her iPhone app business...and well, it turns out that it worked big time! She has now built over 200 mobile phone applications and is comfortably living off this full-time business. She share tips on building iPhone apps and more on her blog at: TheChocolateLabApps.com.

A little while ago, I shared the success story of Jon Haver from AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, I highly recommend you check out what he is doing and how he is doing it. Jon has set a goal for himself to be making $15k per month by his 35th birthday. He wants to achieve this primarily through building websites and monetizing those sites. And he's well on his way! I wanted to sit down with Jon and dig a little bit deeper into how he's built a site that is making $3,000 per month. So, in this podcast you will here more details on that site, along with tons of other awesome strategies that are working for him. This podcast is a little different as well. I tried to keep it a bit less formal, and more just like Jon and I sitting down for a casual conversation about business. So, I ask Jon some questions and Jon asks me some questions, and we just talk shop.

I interviewed Jamie Wilson who is a stay at home mom, but also a successful entrepreneur. In fact, throughout the interview we dig into 2 successful sites that she owns: OrganicBambooClothing.com and JellyBeanQuilts.com. Jelly Bean Quilts is currently her biggest money maker, and quite honestly, I think is a pretty cool business (yep I have kids!). I found out about Jamie because she submitted her "Success" story to me following these guidelines here. After reading it, I decided I needed to have her on the podcast, and I'm glad I did! She shares tons or really cool tips and tricks. As a result, I have the text that she sent in for her success story, so I'm going to share below. The podcast follows a very similar format to what you see below; but there are TONS of points we discuss in the podcast that is not included below. So, I recommend both reading and listening to get all the great information that Jamie has to share.

I felt like it was time that I sat behind the microphone and shared a few of my thoughts on the current state of SEO and my public niche site project. In fact, as I look back at when I published my last podcast, its been over 4 months! What I think you will find are some motivational words to help you see how I view the world of Search Engine Optimization and more. In addition, I cover a few more topics in regards to my niche site project that I haven't mentioned previously on my blog yet. So, its definitely worth a listen.

I am always amazed when I find people outside of the "internet marketing" niche that are finding big success with the principles that I teach on my blog all the time. I am constantly trying to harp on the fact that finding "long tail" keywords is something that EVERY business should be doing, not just affiliate marketers. I've shared the success of Marcus Sheridan with this for his pool company. Jon Haws built a successful landscaping company using long tail keywords. Last week, I shared the story of Perry Rosenbloom that found success with his Glacier National Park travel guide site using smart keyword research and great content. And now today, I'm happy to share with you the story of Nathan Hartnett. I had the privilege of interviewing Nathan Hartnett recently about his niche eCommerce sites. And you guessed it: he attributes much of his success to solid keyword research (understanding markets), and exposing low competition.

Today, I'm sharing a podcast interview I did with Perry Rosenbloom. I think you will find his story interesting, because he was able to build a large website based on his passion for hiking and the outdoors. The site was so successful that he expanded his business into other related sites and was able to quit his full-time job about a year ago! These are the kind of success stories that we all love to hear about. However, Perry's journey has not always been rosy. Shortly after quitting his full-time job, Google Panda hit which had a big impact on his sites. He has since been able to recover his primary site, but he has also been savvy in diversifying his business income as well.

Marcus Sheridan is an entrepreneur that truly understands content marketing. He was able to take his pool business from the brink of the financial abyss to strong profitability primarily through the use of online content marketing. I absolutely love the story that Marcus has to share, and it was a pleasure to interview him for today's episode of my podcast. To get the full picture, you really need to listen to the podcast; plus you get a better grasp of the fun personality that Marcus has. It was all I could do to keep myself from busting out laughing during a few parts... Content Marketing Advice However, here's a brief synopsis: Marcus started out as a partner in a small swimming pool business. However, for a number of reasons, the company started to go downhill after a while. At this point, Marcus knew he needed to do something differently and started learning about content marketing. He decided to give it his FULL attention and produce lots of great content on their company website: Riverpoolsandspas.com . It wasn't overnight, but the website started generated more traffic and a lot more interest in their business. By focusing on the questions customers ask for content (this is critical), he was able to rank well for lots of long tail keywords in Google. This free traffic, began converting into paying customers. Fast forward a couple of years and their pool business was thriving all because they started marketing their business with content online. Now Marcus focuses the majority of his time teaching others how to use content and inbound marketing in their business. His blog for this business is at: TheSalesLion.com . I highly recommend that you check out his site and download his free content marketing ebook. Warning, its over 200 pages long! Because of his experience with his own pool business and now his blog, Marcus consults other businesses on how to have an effective content and inbound marketing strategy. Follow Marcus on Twitter: @thesaleslion

Don't tell Jon Haws that he doesn't own a tech company. Even though he currently spends his days pushing lawn mowers and leading a crew of landscapers, Jon has embraced the internet and so much more to market and run his business. In fact, if you ask him about his business, the fact that he cuts grass may never come up. Instead you'll get an earful about long tail keywords, niche sites, subscription based business, auto-billing, lead generation, and more. Because Jon has been able to think of his company as a tech business, he's been able to build it to over $70k in revenue in less than 6 months! Yes, Jon happens to be my cousin (what up cuz!); which is how I got the scoop on his fascinating story. Not only is his experience very interesting to businesses of all kinds, but the priciples he discusses can REALLY help you in your marketing efforts. Rather than go over his entire story, please listen to the podcast below! Here are just some of the topics covered: Why Jon put nursing school on hold to start a landscaping business. How Jon got his first few customers without a crew, equipment, and living 1500 miles away. (A true lean start-up!) Why Jon had to write a business plan and executive summaries for his wife before leaving school. How niche sites and long tail keywords bring in 40% of his business. The importance of understanding the life-time value of a customer. How these online marketing tactics can be applied to any business (and local service businesses in particular). How average monthly billing, additional services, and "passive" tactics are all part of Jon's plan for business growth.

After a break of about 4 months, I’ve finally done another podcast! The podcast recording is just me…no guest this time. I felt it was important to say a lot of things that are hard to say in a blog post. I can talk for a half hour and make my points much better than I could if I tried to blog about it.

Last week, I released a podcast that I did with Hayden Miyamoto where he explained how he is pulling in $30,000 a month with small niche sites. As suspected, people loved the podcast! Hayden was able to share a lot of his "secrets" that he uses to build micro niche sites after Google Penguin in that podcast. So, today I am releasing a new podcast interview I did a couple of days ago to dig a bit deeper on how Hayden is using expired domains to build links to his niche sites. In particular, we discuss exactly HOW and WHERE he is finding the high value expired domains. These are some advanced tactics that most people starting with niche sites are not familiar with. In fact, I didn't even know you could find expired domains using these methods until recently.

I always love to hear the success stories from readers of my blog. And this story is a big one. I am absolutely blown away by the success that Hayden Miyamoto is having with small niche sites. In particular, Hayden has refined his process post-Penguin and is doing better now than before! Now only 2 months since Penguin, this new process has proved to be extremely fruitful - his income is already back up to $30,000 a month - all from small niche sites.

Andreas not only have a very interesting story of how he got started with his business, but he also has some excellent advice for creating a successful launch of an iPhone app. Of course I took and followed some of this advice as I launch my own app, and there are several other points that I will be doing on this app or future projects. I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast interview below if you ever consider launching a mobile phone app. The advice Andreas shared here is very unique to anything that has been shared or discussed on this blog before.