The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Use Niche Sites to Build Multiple Streams of Income With Doug Cunnington

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

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Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be talking to Doug Cunnington about how to build multiple streams of income through niche sites. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Founder of MasterMoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we are going to be talking to Doug Cunnington about how to build multiple streams of income via niche sites.

If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit me up on Instagram or TikTok at MasterMoney co and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love to listen to this podcast soon. If you want to help out the show, please consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Now today we're going to be talking to Doug Cunnington about niche sites. Nitch sites are a fantastic way to start a side hustle, especially if you want to be able to work from home. And I learned this stuff very early on from Doug. I was actually a student in one of his courses as well. And he has a fantastic way of teaching. In addition, he makes it really simple because he gives you free templates and all these other additional resources. So this

is something that is very cool. And I'm so excited to share this interview with you because we're going to be going through niche sites and how to actually set up a site. We're going to be going through Google SEO and how you can actually work through SEO and understand the basics of SEO. Then we're going to be talking about how you actually make money with niche sites and how you can earn an income. And if you have multiple niche sites, you can earn multiple streets. of income. And then additionally, how Doug utilized niche sites and his online businesses to be able to pursue financial independence. See, Doug has another podcast called The Doug Show. In addition, he has one called Mile High Five, which is one where he talks about

financial independence with his co-host Carl and they go through all the topics that we talk about as well. So this is a really fun interview. It is one that I am really excited to share with you because I think there's a ton of value in here. And if you want to start an online business, this is one of the best ways to do it. This is the one of the best ways to do it. This is one of the best ways to get started because it helps you build skills into building out websites or learning how to sell online or how to put together affiliate programs. All of these different things, Doug lays it out for us so that we have the best understanding possible and the basic 101 of niche sites. Now you can go really deep on niche sites as well and Doug lays it out perfectly to get you started. So make sure you are listening into this episode.

So excited to share with you. Now let's welcome Doug to the personal finance podcast. So Doug, welcome to the personal finance podcast. Andrew, I'm pumped to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. So I am incredibly excited to have you here because, Doug, I used to be one of your students. I bought your course early on.

I learned all of this stuff from you very early on. I used to listen to your podcast, the Doug show on a daily basis, especially when I was working like a nine to five job. I was trying to figure out ways to get out of that nine to five job. So this is some of the stuff that I really, really love. And I kind of fell in love with it by listening to your podcast and Spencer's and a couple others as well. So this is something that I'm really, really passionate about. I'm excited to share this with people because this is something we really haven't talked much about on this podcast as well.

But I think it's something that you've utilized to pursue financial independence. We'll talk about that a little bit later as well so that you can start to build passive income streams and be able to actually build wealth over time. So today we're going to be talking about niche sites. And niche sites are something that I think is an incredibly powerful way for people who are working a nine to five to try to start to generate some additional income or if you're just a business owner, you want to generate income as well. So can we start off by you explaining what a niche site is? Sure. So appreciate all the kind words, by the way. But a niche site generally is just a website that's kind of focused in one topic area. And it could be a very broad topic area. So in the kind of a big

sense, like ESPN is a sports niche website. Of course, you know, it's a big media company and all that stuff. But generally, that's kind of the idea. Now, when we're talking about, you know, side hustles and niche sites, usually we're thinking a little smaller scale. Maybe one of the big ones out there that people have seen would be like outdoor gear lab or baby gear lab. Now, those are pretty big generally and probably make millions of dollars per year and have a full team. But those are kind of what we're thinking about. And, you know, generally they get traffic from Google organic search. So SEO search engine optimization. And then they're monetized typically with either affiliate offers. And that could be like Amazon affiliate or display ads, usually both. Like the best

case scenario is both. And display ads will, you know, those are day ads we see on websites all over. They could be little videos in the corner that pop up when you're trying to look at a recipe, that sort of thing. But that's the general idea with a niche site. And that's perfect. And I think the cool thing about this is if you are willing to put in some time up front, it is something about you can start to generate money in it. Over time, as you have more articles and things like that, then you'll be able to start to generate even more income. So if someone's interested in maybe starting a niche site, what is the process someone should follow in order to choose a niche? Because it's very important in the niche that you choose. And it's something that I think is

really important up front to understand some of the ramifications of Google and the eat and all that kind of stuff. So can you kind of walk us through some of the steps we should take when choosing a Mitch? This is definitely shifted over time. And when I got started, gosh, almost nine years ago in 2013, if I'm doing math, right, things were a little bit different. And depending on who you learned from, you may be selected, you know, just kind of a different path. And as time has gone on and Google has shifted and I have become like a more mature entrepreneur and I see what other people do, especially beginners, now probably the top advice that I can give for choosing an itch is pick something that you're either interested in or maybe lightly passionate in. You don't have to be

absolutely obsessed, but that is okay. And one of the reasons why is you'll know the content pretty well. You'll know the things that people care about because you're part of that community. And things are going to get a little tough. You may not get as much momentum and traction as you hope early on. And if you're interested or passionate or it's something that you care about anyway, it's going to be a little bit easier to push through those obstacles. And there are a lot of other people, maybe some of them by peers that, you know, they'll sort of gloss over the hard part. But this is a great business model. It's a fun thing to get into. But like any skill that you need to develop, playing an instrument, training for a marathon, you know, surfing, whatever it is.

you have to put the time in, you have to develop the skills, and you're not going to be able to, you know, play the guitar as well as you hope to write off the bat in the first week or month or so. So it's really important, I think, to have that sort of positive energy towards it and pick something that you're interested in. That said, you can take a systematic approach to it. And I come from a corporate project management IT background. So systems and templates and all that kind of stuff. stuff is what I gravitate towards. So with that said, you can make it simple, you know, just get a notepad, start writing out a list of the things that maybe you're interested in, maybe that you wanted to pursue in the past, but you never had the time to look deeper into it or you just had some excuse, right? You just couldn't get into it before. Or maybe you have a family member or a friend who is interested in it and you never had time to pursue it. Those are great. Some other things you could do to come up with ideas is go to a place like Amazon, a big marketplace, and just browse around different departments and products and maybe you end up in outdoors,

maybe you end up in camping, maybe you head over to like homewares and, you know, outdoor yard games and stuff like that. So there's all these different areas you can explain. floor and figure out what sort of fits for you. One great reason to go to Amazon is, you know, there's tons of products from the things I mentioned and way beyond. It could appeal to an industrial audience, a business audience, consumers at home, children, parents, whatever. So there's such a huge amount of information there just from browsing around. If they're selling it on Amazon and you can see a lot of reviews, you know that there's a good market out there. People are buying these products. That's kind of

where I would start. You can also, you know, take another step back. And I recommend when you're doing this brainstorming to brainstorm for a little while, take a break, you know, go for a walk, maybe come back to it in a couple days. And then think again, like, do I spend time on Facebook groups? What are the topics there? Maybe you're into TikTok or Instagram or something like that. So what sort of communities are you part of? And then what products are associated with that? So that's a great way to like figure out where you're spending your time and then understand that there's a big audience out there. People, you know, maybe just like you. That's a great tip as well because I think some of the stuff that when I early on started this, I did one niche site that failed. And the

one that failed was a topic that I was not interested in whatsoever. And all of a sudden you realize you have to grind through some stages, especially early on. And when you're grinding through those early stages, I mean, you're spending hours and hours writing posts and articles. And it's something where you can really burn out fast if you really absolutely hate the topic. So it's one of those things where maybe it was a good topic in terms of being able to optimize it. But at the same time, you've also got to be able to withstand this business and be able to kind of move it forward in the ways that you need to. So that is absolutely perfect. And I love some of those ideas going through some of your interests and the content that you're actually consuming already because

you're already interested in it. You're thinking about it. You probably understand it to an extent. So it's something that you definitely want to be looking into as well. So say somebody wants to set up a site. There are some steps you obviously want to consider when you set up a site, especially if you're brand new and you've never built a website before. So what are some of the steps that you should follow to get a site up and running? So I'll jump back and go higher level before I answer that. So one great thing about niche sites is you'll learn a set of skills. So even if like the niche site didn't work out or it didn't work out as big as you thought

and it's just a little side hustle, little project, you're going to learn about setting up a website. you're going to learn about WordPress themes. You're going to learn about content and publishing, maybe some graphic design. And I know many people that have not done exactly what they wanted with a niche site, but then they realize they're a great graphic designer and they can open an agency. Right. So I'm skipping a lot of steps there, but like you could figure out something that you're good at by experimenting with like a little side project and then discover that you really want to spend time as a content writer, something like that.

Okay. So with that said, it starts with hosting. So at this point, web hosting is a commodity. There's a lot of big companies out there. I'm not really dogmatic about any one company or anything. As long as you don't get the cheapest hosting, you're probably going to be okay and you probably don't need the most expensive. So we're probably talking, you know, 10, 15 bucks a month or so. Oftentimes, you'll be able to get like a Black Friday deal or a five. Mother's Day deal or Mother's Day deal. There's always a deal going on. So the first year often, it's going to be half price or something like that. So web hosting, that's number one. Next is probably WordPress. That's the best place to probably start. So WordPress should be like a one-click install. Should be very easy. And then after that, you'll need a WordPress theme. This could be daunting. There are many thousands of WordPress themes out there. And they all have really good marketing and sales material. So you may think that you need that specific one. For me, I like the theme to just stay out of the way so I can publish the content and focus on

the writing and the things that are most important. You can get a free theme. Automatic is the company that owns WordPress, and they put out a lot of paid and free themes. Those are very good. The security is going to be tight. They may not be the super fastest, but they're going to be pretty good. And there's one for each year. So there's like WordPress 2021, 2021, 22, whatever, each year they put out a new one. And you can maybe go to a website, someone that you follow. And if you think you like that, you can do some research and figure out what theme that

they're using. And that could be fine too. But generally, you don't need all the bells and whistles. And the more bells and whistles, the more complicated it is. And the more time you can burn just setting up your theme. So for me, simplicity is best. After that, there's potentially a couple plugins you may want to get. You could do a little bit more research and figure out which ones you need.

But I'm thinking mostly like security type plug-ins. So no one's going to hack your website and that sort of thing. There are suites of products that can help you do that. Typically, you'll be able to find a free solution for both the theme and the plugin. So that's kind of the nuts and bolts. And, you know, for me, I spent a lot of time, wasted time, that is, early on with, you know, putting in too many plugins on the website and my site was too slow. The theme was overly complicated. And now I'm just kind of a minimalist.

So, yeah, Andrew, what do you think about themes? Any tips on that? That's the same thing. So I started with three themes. And that was the first thing I started with because I just wanted to hit the ground running like you said. And I learned from you because early on what I did was I put up. million plugins on there as well, and it slowed down my site so much that like it would take 10 seconds for a web page to even load. So once I took your minimalist approach to taking out

all the plugins and kind of reducing that, it sped up my site significantly. And the big thing here is if people are new to websites, your site speed matters when it comes to Google SEO and a lot of other things. You want your site to be as fast as you possibly can get it within reason, but it needs to be fast enough at least. So this is one big thing that you definitely want to be doing. But for themes, after I started to kind of get a hang of it and then started to add some additional sites later on. Then I started to pay for themes, but really I didn't notice that huge of a difference between the two. A lot of times the free themes can do the same thing that a paid one can do. So sometimes paid ones just have extra design features and stuff like that if you're into that.

But like Doug said, don't take too much time on the design side. What you want to do is hit the ground running and start to do the content work and that kind of stuff as well. And that's a big thing that comes into play next, which is the content. So in your opinion, Doug, we're looking at, you know, starting our site. Maybe we get everything put together. We start to get our site up and then we need to start writing content. So should we have a certain amount of articles before we launched the site? And in your opinion, what is the optimal length for some of those articles as well? I wouldn't worry too much about, you know, quote, a launch. So really you can get the hosting, put the theme up, and then say, hey, I launched my website. That's it. There's not really a big

event. Like if you start a new podcast, you may want to have whatever three, five episodes, publish right away and you actually launch and there's some marketing effort behind it. But when you start a new site and your goal is to get traffic from Google, there's not going to be like an event. No one cares. And, you know, one thing that people are hesitant about to just publish content, maybe just one article or something instead of 10 or 20 or something like that, they're afraid that someone's going to land on their site and see there's only one article. They're going to be a little embarrassed. My answer to that is you should be so lucky that someone's going to land on your site early on in the first couple days. That's amazing.

That means you've done some miraculous thing that's going to be working out for you, right? So I wouldn't worry about it too much. There's not really going to be a launch. This is going to be like a soft opening. So I would say as soon as you start writing content, you can start publishing it. One reason why we may get into it more is it'll, allow Google to index that specific page, that post, and then it'll start aging, which is a good thing. Google will be able to start recommending it or putting it in the search engine result page,

which is a good thing. So the sooner you could publish an article, the better. So publish it as soon as possible, you can always come back and edit it. And that's the other thing. Like, it's not a permanent document. It's a living document. You can go back, and you should go back and update it in the future. So publish it and you can come back and fix it when you're a better writer, when you have a better handle on it. That said, I can't answer your question, Andrew. So I would say 20 articles is a good amount to aim for like your first push of content where you're like, my goal is to get 20 articles out in a month or a quarter or six months or whatever is appropriate for you. But 20 articles is like, that's a pretty solid amount. It'll represent, you know, many hours of work and effort from you.

And that can be enough to get started and see some traffic land on your site. And that's perfect. And so as we start to write some of these articles, and I agree with you as well, because I think sometimes a lot of people just kind of get into that mode where they're just waiting until they have enough. But I agree with you. Just post it and start getting those articles out there so that they can start aging. And we'll talk about aging a little bit more later as well.

But I think it's one of those things that you definitely just want to get started and get moving on it. Is there like an optimal length for articles that you think for SEO side? And then if there is, how long does it typically take you to write an article? So it does depend on the niche in the topic area, but just broadly speaking without knowing, you know, what topic someone is writing about, about a thousand to two thousand words is going to probably get you pretty close, you know, 80, 90 percent of the time. If it's a very, you know, quick answer, you know, what's the boiling temperature of water in Tampa? What's the boiling temperature of water in Denver? Those could be pretty quick. Like, the answer is, you know, 212 down there. Up here, it's like, like, man, I don't know, 208, something like that, Fahrenheit. So if it's a quick answer, don't write a long novel about all these different topics that maybe are kind of related. Just answer the question.

So those maybe can be 200 words where you answer and then give a little background on why it might be different because of the elevation. As far as, you know, longer articles, you can go and just see what is out there ranking in Google already. And that'll give you a really good idea on what Google thinks is kind of the optimal length. And it'll be, it'll vary, right? So you may find one that's 1,500 words and one that's 5,000 words, both ranking on the first page. But you can kind of get an average, again, you know, around 1,500 words plus or minus 500. that'll get you pretty close. And for me, I'm kind of a slow writer.

I didn't have a strong writing background before I got into this. And for 1,000 words, 2,000 words, it may take me like 2 to 4 hours, depending on research I might have to do. Do I have a strong outline? Is it more of a narrative where I can just write it from my head? And it's more like journaling. Are there images? Maybe I need to go find or maybe I've taken pictures.

and I want to use those, and there could be a little of editing with those, perhaps. But yeah, two to four hours. And again, that's just the first draft, an edit. I use tools like Gramerly to clean up the grammar and make sure there's not misspelled words. I'm not a great comma user. So, you know, I do my best, but Gramerly can come back and help me out.

Yeah, do you use Grammarly also? I do. I love Grammarly. So that's one of the main tools that I use when I write articles. Yeah. then, you know, when you come back, which, you know, can be a few weeks later if you want, or it could be, you know, several months, but you can come back and, you know, re-edit the article. If there's new information, this happens occasionally where there's a news story that's

relevant and I'll go back and I'll add, you know, a little section. Like, here's a little update and I'd link back to maybe the news source where I got that information. That's perfect. And another great tool that I use is the Hemingway app. I don't know if you ever use that as well, but that is one where it kind of helps you look at the readability of your article and go through that process. But I took about two to four hours also as well when I would write articles. And a lot of times doing the structure of the article and stuff and making sure that you actually have the content structured in a way that is appealing to the eye and that you can scan and all that kind of stuff was one thing that actually take me a little bit longer sometimes than I think most people. It usually took me like 45 minutes somewhere around there. So I don't know why it would take me so long, but I would just always have to be like a perfectionist when it came to that kind of stuff.

Sure. So one other thing that comes into play is that you can actually outsource this stuff. And a lot of people don't know that where you, if you're busy, if you're working a nine to five, maybe you're in the corporate world, you're doing well financially, or you have a business and you want to use some of those funds as well. And you want to outsource some of this content. You can outsource content writing. So how much does that typically cost maybe per article?

And when you're looking at that, where are some places that you can actually outsource some of this? So there's a fairly big range and there's two kind of main areas. So you can get freelancers. And I typically go to Upwork, which is a freelance marketplace. And you can find people that can do anything from, you know, video editing to your writing, to project management or accounting and bookkeeping, whatever you want. You can hire someone over there. And it'll be cheaper there. There's less overhead.

You can also hire people from agencies. So the agencies will do all that management. They have a team of writers. They do the project management. they assign it, they do the editing and that sort of thing. So if you are going to a place like Upwork or a similar site, you potentially can get content from maybe about $20 for 1,000 words. That's really on the low end so that maybe, you know, international somewhere where the

cost of living is lower so they can afford to charge a cheaper price, up to, you know, potentially, you know, $50, $80, $100 depending on the quality that you need. in the qualifications and expertise that you need from your writers. So really kind of a big range, but generally, if you hire someone directly, you cut out all the overhead, all the admin cost, so you'll get a much cheaper price. And that's something I did, like, from the start. I knew I wanted to understand how to hire someone directly. And because of my previous corporate gig, I knew how to manage people remotely.

and I knew basically how to hire and when to release them if it's not working out. So I had a fairly strong management and HR skill set. And I knew it would be really good to save money and just use those skills that I had. When you work with an agency, all that is outsource. All the hiring, firing assignments, all that is outsource. So that could be a lot more expensive. And I would say, you know, potentially on the low end, maybe, you know, $60 for a thing. thousand words up to, you know, hundreds. There's kind of no limit depending on how much

expertise you need. And that's kind of the deciding factor. I think another idea, I haven't done this, but I know it can be useful, is if you aim for like college students or grad students, you would have to be a little more clever on how to do that. But I mean, people could figure out how to get to like a job board that's targeting college students or something like that. in that way, you know, they're not used to having a big full-time salary and they're just happy to get some work on the side perhaps. So you could be creative and use, you know, similar ideas like that. So those are perfect. And that's exactly what I try to do too is I would go through Upwork.

And Doug has some great information on his site that kind of walks you through how he hired people on Upwork as well. But Upwork is a great place to look. And the college student one I've heard you talk about as well. And I think that one's interesting. Somebody needs to create like a job board. There's another business idea for college students. link up as writers with content creators. I think that would be something pretty interesting. That is some of the ways to actually outsource it, which I think is absolutely amazing.

It's a great way to go, especially early on. If you have a couple thousand dollars to invest, you can invest in some content. And if that content is written well, it's edited down, well, that it can make you money for a long period of time. So I think it's something that's very interesting as well. Now, when we do some of these niche sites, early on, you know, we want to focus on the content, the content we're writing as well. But should we incorporate video and YouTube in this as well? Only if you like video. Only if you want to learn a little bit about it, or maybe you already have that skill set. I love video, but I didn't start doing it until I had an established blog and I had that part taken care of. The great thing when you do want to add video

or if you already have a video as part of your skill set, you can really just repurpose the content. So if you have a blog post, you can just convert it over to a video. Of course, you know, you would need to write a script and shoot the video so that it fits, but you've done the majority of the work. You've done all the research. So like I said, I love video. So I like it when people get involved, but it is complicated. There's a lot of stuff involved.

It can be easy. You can get started on your phone. So if you want to dabble, I would say start on your phone. keep it simple, make sure the sound is good, make sure the lighting's good. You don't have to worry as much about the quality of the video. You know, you could probably publish in 720P instead of 4K, like it's not a big deal. But if your sound is not right, people are not going to sit through it. So those are a couple of things I learned over time. But yeah, what do you think as far as video? I agree with you. And I think once your site maybe starts to build, maybe you have a brand or even

some authority that comes into play, then you can start to kind of dabble in video as well unless you really like it. If you love video, then obviously the content's there, you can go ahead and do that. But I agree with you as well because I think it's just one of those things. It is very difficult to learn early on. And once you learn it, it's a skill that you have forever. But at the same time, it's one of those things that's going to create a lot more work for you going forward, especially if you're editing yourself and doing all those other things. So one thing that we're looking at here is we want to understand how Google works. And a lot of people may know what SEO is or maybe they don't. But that is one major factor when it comes to creating because you want your content to rank on the first page optimally or at least the first two pages in terms for a specific search term. So can you explain SEO and some of the skills niche site owners might need to understand, including like keyword research, backlinks, that type of stuff? It's a huge vast area. So we'll just hit the high points here. But if people want to, you know, learn more, they can certainly go to like YouTube and just start watching videos and you'll realize how deep this whole thing goes. But in just,

general, the concepts are, you know, someone goes over to Google. They type in some search term. Let's maybe stick with a video idea. Someone might type in best DSLR for YouTube, for example, and then there will be some results to pop up, probably, you know, several blogs, maybe some YouTube videos as well. But that's the general idea. And from the, you know, just most basic SEO standpoint, if you can rank high, then people are going to click on your site. And it's really dramatic. Like if you rank number one versus number two, like number one is going to get something like 75% of the clicks. I haven't seen recent data, but, you know, number one gets a huge amount of the traffic. Number two, even though it's just one position lower, it's going to get something like

25% of what number one got. So we're talking, you know, just, I, forgot the math that I just said, but say 20%. And then it drops off dramatically. So the first position gets a huge amount of traffic. So that's why you want to be up there. And as far as, you know, SEO skills that you'll need to look into, one of the key pieces is to make sure you're writing content that people are actually searching for. Otherwise, no one will search for it and no one will go to your site. And I think the tools these days are pretty sophisticated. Back in the day, maybe not so much. And I know maybe if you were thinking, hey, I want to start a blog and you just start writing about what's going on in your life, you don't get much traffic typically because, you know,

no one's searching for the obscure title that I went on a hike in the fall. No one really cares about that. So you have to make sure people are searching for it. And, you know, going back to the, you know, choosing a niche area, this all sort of fits together. So when you're choosing your niche, you would go and look, perhaps use an SEO keyword research tool where it'll tell you the number of searches per month for a keyword phrase. So it's purely an estimate. You know, it's not going to be exact. It's based on historical data. And months can vary. So in December, there's going to be a lot of searches about Christmas lights and Christmas-related gifts and that sort of thing. But in February, there's going to be very few of those searches. So there's a seasonality completely.

as well that you have to consider. So you have this number of searches per month. And it's an estimate, but it gives you an idea relatively compared to other keywords. If it's, you know, search for a lot and maybe really profitable, or maybe it's not searched for very much. And it's fairly low search volume. And that also means low competition most of the time. So when you're starting a site and you're looking at keywords, you may be tempted to go for the highest search volume because that would be the most profitable. The downside to that is that is exactly what everyone else will do because it's profitable. So it's a little bit easier to rank and it's a little bit easier to get started if you aim towards the low competition,

low search volume keywords. A lot of times you'll see this noted as like a long tail keyword. And that's sort of a mathematical, you know, graphical representation. And the long tail, it kind of goes on forever. There's a whole. book by Chris Anderson by a few years ago. That is very good and it kind of explains the long tale. But that's the general idea with the keyword research. Again, SEO is huge. So I've lost my spot on actually what I was talking about. So Andrew, can you reel me back in here? Absolutely. So we're talking about because SEO is like a giant blue ocean. So you were right. I mean, Doug's had episodes and episodes and episodes on SEO. So it's one of those things that's a massive thing.

but understanding some of these key basic things like keyword research. So for example, if someone is going to start doing keyword research, one cool hack that I like is because you'll see some of these tools can be expensive monthly, especially if you're just starting out in business, is that you can do a bunch of keyword research for a couple of months, and then you don't have to maintain that subscription. You can, in that subscription until you need it again. It's one of those things that I used to do early on.

Are there any tools for keyword research that you like using? Sure. One of my favorite for sort of pure keyword research is called KWFinder. And, you know, again, it's one of those where you might be able to get a free trial for a few days, but, you know, these offers vary. Some other good ones are H-Refs, which is kind of a full marketing suite. So it's really overkill. There's a lot of stuff in there, but very powerful tool. And it's one where maybe you would pay for it for like a month or two and then cancel it because it's kind of made for, you know, professionals and agencies.

So it is fairly expensive. And then really one of the best ones is free. So I'll plug that. And that is just Google. It's like go over to Google and start typing in. And you'll have auto suggest fill in for you. So if you start typing in Best DSLR, you'll see a bunch of auto suggest pop up. And if you type in for FOR and hit a space, a bunch more will pop up.

So just using Google Auto Suggest, most people should be able to find. probably more keywords than they could publish in a year, I would guess. I mean, in a few minutes, you could most likely find 50 of them or so. And once you find a pocket of them, you could kind of go with it. So one of the best formats from a product review perspective for keywords is best product type for, and then it's either a user type or an application. So I'll stick with a camera idea since I'm not creative. So best DSLR for YouTube, for astrophotography, for portraits, for pet photography, so different applications here. You also can put like a user type and I just thought of another idea. So best running shoes for women, for men, for teens, people with flat feet, people with high arches and so on.

So once you come up with like a couple keyword ideas, you can kind of expand it out. and do this sort of combination approach where you just mix and match. I love that. And I think that Google auto-suggest is one of the things that you can definitely use right away because that's what people are actually searching for.

Google is telling you this is what people are actually searching for when you have these terms into play. So it's a perfect one. And once you get those keywords into play, you can make a list on a spreadsheet or something like that, then it's time to get to work.

You don't want to be doing this all day long and every single day doing keyword research because that's the key is getting it up front and then having a list that you can start to work on. Now, one big thing that comes into play that people really need to understand is the Google Sandbox. And this is one thing where we were talking a little bit earlier about age sites and age articles and things as well. Can you explain the Google sandbox and how it works and how long does it take to actually get out of the Google sandbox?

So this is a unconfirmed concept from Google. So SEO folks and people that are aware will have this term and we'll sort of throw it around. But Google has never said there's a sandbox or if they did, it was, you know, many, many years ago. I think there's some forum posts, some obscure place on the internet where there was a mention, but it's kind of unconfirmed. So essentially, the idea is Google kind of puts you in a, you know, quote, probation sandbox area where they're not going to rank your site as high, thus not giving you as much traffic, but they won't rank you as high until you put your, you know, quote, time in. And generally, that's going to be about six months or so. it seems like a lot of people are seeing about a year these days and towards the end of 2022,

it may take a year. Now that said, there are absolutely exceptions, right? So it doesn't mean you won't get any traffic. It just means you might not perform as well as you will in the future because your site just doesn't have the age and maybe the trust from Google. So this can be seen like fairly evidently when you see analytics graphs and, you know, things are trucking along. Maybe there's a little growth from, say, month two forward all the way to month six. And then you'll see like a really nice growth where something happened. And you didn't do anything different. You just kept publishing, doing whatever you were doing before.

And like I said, sometimes it can be longer. So one of my recent sites in the last couple years, I didn't see. very much until month nine or 10. And it started to grow a little bit more in terms of traffic and rankings. And then month 12, it actually started to grow a lot more. And I don't know why. I mean, I've started many sites that one move faster. I just interviewed someone on my channel named LJ. And she started a brand new site on a brand new domain. And she was able to get traffic and earnings up to, I think, $700 by month four, which is pretty quick. I don't remember the traffic level, but, you know, she had enough traffic to earn that much.

And then I just talked to her yesterday, month nine, she hit $3,000. And that's net. So that's after her expenses with her assistant as well. So $3,000. And pretty amazing within nine months. That's definitely an anomaly. But the point is, usually there's a sandbox. Not always.

There's always exceptions. but most of the time you can expect it to take six months or a year before you start getting more traffic. Exactly. And that's kind of the point with any content if you think about it is putting the time in. A lot of times if you go on YouTube, for example, it's going to take you some time before YouTube's actually going to start ranking your videos and search because it's a Google entity, obviously. But the same thing for podcasting and everything else. When you create content, they want to make sure that you're actually going to stick with this instead of, and then they'll reward you for sticking with it. And a lot of times when you create content, you'll see that the people who kind of stick around the longest are the ones that can start to see success. as long as you have that good timeline and your content is good obviously as well. So between those few things, as long as you can stick with it, you create good content. It's something that you can definitely see results from over a longer period of time like everything else. Now, we talked about this a little bit earlier as well, but when it comes to making money with niche sites, we talked about you know, display ads and affiliates. Are those the two primary ways for niche site owners to

earn an income, in your opinion? Yes. So there's a couple other pieces that I'll throw in. So for the affiliate side, Amazon is probably the easiest way. It's the most obvious. It's very easy to sign up. The great thing with Amazon is it converts really well, very low friction. We could probably accidentally order something on our phone while we're on this interview right now. It's just so easy with one-click ordering and people don't have to put in their credit card. The downside with Amazon is their commission rates are lower. In fact, in 2017 and 2020, they lower. They lower their commission rates significantly. So a lot of people, you know, had income that was cut by, you know, 30, 40, 50 percent depending on the specifics of their site. And, you know, that hurts. You don't

have control over it. You can't call up Jeff Bezos and ask them to reconsider or anything like that. So it is easy to start with Amazon. The good part is most companies do have some affiliate programs. So, you know, Walmart's out there also. You can work with individual companies as well that just want to work with you. Maybe they have a program. They still sell on Amazon, but they have a program and they'll earn a little bit more money. Maybe your commission rate is a little bit higher. The downside is it may not convert as well. So you always have to test to kind of figure it out. The other piece with affiliate marketing that a lot of people forget if they just think about Amazon and physical products is digital products. So software and courses. And the great part with software and courses is they're

sort of infinitely scalable and there's no inventory. There's no money tied up in a warehouse. So with that, the product owners are much more willing to pay high percentage rates. So instead of, you know, one to say five or six percent, they're willing to pay like 40, 50 percent in some cases. So one of the key things when you're choosing a niche is if you can figure out one that does have software or courses associated with it, that's awesome because you could expand out. You could kind to diversify your income sources. And again, the example with photography, there's software for video editing. There's other software to sort of optimize audio portion of video and so on. There's tons of software out there for photography stuff. Courses, you know, same deal. You can

go to a place like Udeme and just browse and see what courses are available out there. And the good part is online courses and the platforms are so mature at this point that it's hard to find a topic area that doesn't have courses associated with it. So if you go and search, you probably can find one. So these digital products really powerful if you spend the time to go find them, you know, figure out the right way to write the reviews and promote them. Maybe you've taken the course. That's great way to actually write a good review. And I love that as well because the digital products are just one of those things where obviously like you said, you don't have inventory, you don't have anything available there. And if someone is wondering, okay, well, if you've never heard of what an affiliate is

before, what it is, it's a way for you to work with Amazon, for example, like Doug said, Amazon is the easiest place to start. And say, for example, you land on my website, for example. We have a book club. And if we talk about a book and we link it up to on Amazon, then what's going to happen is then we get a small percentage at no extra cost to you. So it's basically a sales commission that, that you get from linking to some of these projects. And there's so many out there now where you can link to so many different types of products. In addition, like Doug said, there's Walmart, there's Target, there's a bunch of Best Buy. They all have different affiliate programs that you can sign up for.

So that is a really cool way to earn an income. But the digital products are something where you can earn a much higher percentage, especially on the profit side and be able to not have to, you create it once. And then it's kind of a set it and forget a thing as long as you're getting traffic there, which is really, really cool. Now, the other side of it is display ads. So it used to be that you just sign up for Google AdSense and you could do display ads that way. But now there's obviously a bunch of new programs out there as well.

So a lot of people starting off, they sign up for Google AdSense. And then can you explain kind of how display ads work and maybe how much money you can make, depending on how many visitors you get to your site? Sure. I'll do my best on the revenue side. But display ads, typically they are going to be similar to like the AdSense style that you've seen in the past. and a lot of ads still come through the Google Ad Network, but it's usually through some other company these days.

Ezoic is one, Mediavine, Ad Thrive. Those are kind of the big three, and I'm partial to Ezoic most of the time. I am as well, yep. And they do a great job. All of them are kind of software companies in some capacity. And one thing that they do for you is they'll help you, you know, replace the ads. So back in the day, if you just got AdSense, you maybe would have to figure out where to put the ads for optimal earnings, which is really difficult to do. You have to know how to do A-B testing and like analysis with all the stats that you get. So kind of tough to do, but the companies that help you out, like Yeozoic, for example, they do all the testing for you. So they actually can set it up where, you know, anywhere an ad can be placed, they'll test it. And, you know,

through these thousands of AB tests that they do, they'll kind of figure out the optimal ad placement. And these ads have advertisers on the other side. And they'll put in their maximum bid for a specific placement. And then it goes through kind of an auction in real time. And then those ads are displayed. These days are very sophisticated. And as I mentioned before, there may be little video ads. In the worst cases, you'll see a bunch of ads, some video ads.

some video ads in the bottom, and then at the top, and then you could barely, you know, if you're on your phone, you could barely read anything. So, you know, we really don't want to have that kind of user experience. But if you do it in the right way, the ads are shown, hopefully it's relevant to the user, and they can see whatever content they're trying to see. So that's the general idea. As far as earning, it really varies a lot based on the niche and the number of advertisers that are out there. So I don't even want to speculate too much, but what I can say is most of the companies can give you sort of a ballpark overall, their network, the niche, and then the typical earnings per thousand visitor. So you may see that as RPM or EPMV for EZOIC, and you'll have

an understanding like, okay, here's kind of the range for the niche that I'm in. But, you know, one thing just to maybe state the obvious is, you know, markets that have a lot of money and advertisers behind them will most likely pay the most. So if you're looking at, you know, finance or, you know, pharmaceuticals or something like that, they're just going to pay a lot more. And you could watch ads on TV and see, like, who has the most ads out there. So if it's a, you know, smaller market with very few ads out there, it's probably not going to earn as much as one that's very mature. And there's a ton of money that they put into marketing. Absolutely. It's one of those cool things, too, is as you put these ads up and as you start to see some traffic, it's kind of like that's the passive income when it comes

to niche sites in terms of having those up is the more articles that you have, obviously, the more people are landing on those pages, which means you can make more money based on those display ads. And like Doug said, if you have too many display ads up, it just obviously makes the experience less optimal for people who are reading. But addition, it also can slow down your site, which is another thing that you don't want to be doing if you have way too many ads. So that's another big thing. as well. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy, clothes don't fit anymore, and routines are changing.

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and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. There are some examples. You talked about a couple here before and some of the outliers, but what are some examples of how much someone can make in their first year? And then beyond their first year, what are some cool examples that you've seen?

Because you've interviewed so many different people who have niche sites. So what are some of the coolest examples of people maybe who have earned money outside of their first year when they get out of the sandbox and all the things? those other types of things. So I'll give you a quick sort of average. When people just ask me, and I don't know their niche, I don't know how much work they're going to put into it and a lot of other details. In six months or so, it's not unusual to see the quote average person make about $100 in a month. So that's, you know, putting in a few hours each week for six months. And I don't

know what niche it is. I don't know how you're earning money. But earning, about 100 bucks is not unheard of. I've also seen people make probably $1,500, $2,000 also. So there's some outliers in there. And it really depends on how much work that you're putting in. So if someone is putting in 10 times more work, they're probably going to see better results. And this is a sort of a classic case of, you know, the inputs and the outputs have a really kind of a long feedback loop. So you could be put in a lot of work and you're like, this isn't working. And then after six months or 12 months, then it kicks in and you realize you could have or you should have been putting even more effort as time went on. But there was such a delay from the results that you didn't realize

it was working and you were doing a great job. So with that said, some of the outliers, so LJ is one that I mentioned. There is a student who I've worked with for about four years. So she started her site in 2018. And, you know, fairly average start. In month four, she had her first $100 month by month six. I think she was at about 800. And currently, so fast forward a few years. So in 2021, she made about 70K. This year in 2022, she's on target for probably, I would say, 100 to 120K.

We don't know how the retail season will come out. And she's actually doing it on the side. I've interviewed her a ton. Her name's Christy, and she's been featured on the channel a lot. And, you know, she's put in a lot of work. She has about half of her revenue from Amazon, the other half from display ads and maybe a couple other smaller affiliates. She's now added another revenue source with some online courses, which is not her thing.

So I think she's kind of going to just move on from that. But she has an email list, and she's been selling, like, direct ads. So those are going to be, you know, $500 a month whenever she closes one of those. And she just started. She already has one. I think she'll have another one probably by the end of this week that we're recording this. So like all these possibilities open up once you, you know, you get started, you get moving. And, you know, she didn't have the ability to sell ads on her email list until later.

But she, you know, got started. And after a year or two, she was able to start the email list. And then now a couple years later, she has this awesome asset that's probably worth a few hundred thousand dollars that she's doing. that she's doing on the side, which is ridiculous. And that is what, Christy is one of my favorite stories on your podcast as well. I kind of follow along with that. That was one of the inspiring ones for me, especially early on, is kind of looking at what she did and just the progress there.

And one thing I like to do, too, when I, you know, when people do this is you can just kind of set up many goals here. So like the first thing you want to do is try to hit your first $100 a month. If that's your first goal or even $50 a month, depending on what you're doing, that'll kind of get you motivated to actually stay the course, especially when you're grinding, writing articles and you don't see people coming to your site yet. This is a point in time where you can kind of set up some of these small goals and then build it up from there because you'll see progress as time goes on and then it kind of snowballs over time as well as long as your content

is good and people are coming to your site. So that's another cool thing as well, but it's an interesting process especially because obviously it's difficult in the beginning but then as time progresses you can start to see more income come in and the more sites you have. Obviously if you get really good at this or you start to hire out people, you can have additional sites and it's a really cool thing that you can do on that front as well. So what are some things people can do like pretty early on to grow their sites if they want to grow within, you know, the first two years or so? There's two main areas to put time into. And it's fairly simple, luckily. So you're publishing more content, going after more keywords. And on the content side, you can also improve

existing content. So once you get out there and, you know, you publish your first set of articles, maybe there's new products or maybe some products have been discontinued or maybe there's, you know, new information that you can add. But Google, I mean, has actually come out and said they want publishers to spend about half their time publishing new content and then the other half, right? So 50% of your time improving the old content. And it seems like a lot to me. And honestly, I haven't gone back to improve content as much as they've advised. But with that in mind, you kind of need a process to go back. So that is all on the content side. And like I said, straightforward, publish more content. You know, we're talking high quality and make sure it serves the visitor. That's one thing.

If you're going back to improve the existing content, make sure it fits the searcher's intent. So you can think about it again. If you're part of the community, you're part of someone that would actually search for that, you know what they're looking for. So that's one area. The other is backlinks. So we didn't talk too much about that, but there's this whole other area of SEO and that is backlinked. So that's when another site links to your site, usually they're referencing it in some way. And those backlinks serve as kind of like a quote unquote vote that Google sees. So that means that someone liked your content or found it so useful that they link to it from their site. And Google views that is a very positive signal. Now, there's this whole

sort of cedey underworld of backlinks and SEO where you could buy links and all that. So there's definitely a huge difference in the quality of the backlink. If it's a bad backlink where, you know, maybe someone's selling these links on Fiverr and there's thousands and thousands of links that other people purchased, then it's probably not worthwhile. But if you get a link from New York Times or a big news story or just a reputable company, that is a very good thing. So improving your back links and generally like doing outreach and promoting your site is a way that you can improve your rankings. And like I mentioned before, if you move up just, you know, one position, even for a low search volume term, your traffic is probably going to go up in a disproportionate. You know, disproportionate.

amount that would probably surprise you. Absolutely. And I think the backlinks are just such a major factor and obviously the content site as well where you can kind of do that up front. But backlinks are something like Doug said. It's like a vote for your website where as you set up your site, you have other people linking back to your site. So it makes it seem like it's more of an authority, especially to Google when they're looking at, especially if it's like a big website like the New York Times or something like that. So that is a fantastic way as well. And some people used to write like guest posts and things like that to be able to gain backlinks in a legitimate way so that they could, actually have links go back to their site. That just obviously takes more work, but it's something

that you could do up front as well. Now, if people have more money than they have time, another thing that you can do is you can buy niche sites. And one thing that you've done in the past is you've actually sold niche sites, and there is ways to sell your niche site. As you mentioned, Christie's site is worth a certain amount based on how much she's earning every single year. So how can someone buy a niche site? And what are they typically worth depending on how much they earn each year. So there's a few marketplaces out there. One that's sort of, I guess, really well known in the community that I'm in is Empire Flippers. So they have any kind of online business, but a lot of them are sort of niche sites. Some of them are software products. Some are agencies. But the majority,

I think, are niche sites. And, you know, the value of going through, you know, someone like Empire Flippers or there's another FI international Flippa is more like kind of an auction site. So there's a few places out there, but when you look at Flippa versus one of the other brokerages, Filippa is a little more unregulated, like Wild Westy, and you don't know exactly what you're getting, where on the brokerage side, they are vetting the sites or doing some sort of preliminary analysis and verification of whatever the seller says their site is doing, as far as traffic or analytics or anything like that, the brokerages are doing some homework for you, which is good. There's a lot of due diligence out there that should be done. And the brokerages

can help you out with that. And on Flippa, I think they're trying to clean things up. I'm not a huge user, but I think things have improved a lot over at Flippa, but they're still like, you don't know who you're buying the website from exactly. Now, as far as the multiples is typically what people refer to. So it's kind of moving up. So right now, a website, you look at the net profit per month, and then you multiply it by this monthly multiple. And roughly, it's around, I would say, like, 30 to like 45 or so on average. And it depends on a number of factors, like the age of the site, the number of traffic sources. So are they getting most of their traffic from Google or is there some coming from social media, the number of revenue sources. So do they have their own products?

Do they have just Amazon affiliate? Are there a bunch of other affiliates? Are there display ads? And the more diversification from either the traffic or the revenue side, that'll boost it up. There's also other assets you might have, like a social media profile that has a lot of followers, YouTube, if you have a bunch of videos, email list can be valuable. And, you know, if someone knows, how to do email marketing, it could represent a really strategic asset as part of the full website. So, you know, each layer of, you know, something else that you can add on there is going to boost the multiple up. So it's really crazy. You know, when I first got started, the multiples were around, I would say, like the low 20s or so. And, you know, it's just been creeping up. And even with some,

you know, economic uncertainty over the past year or two, the multiples are still quite high. It's kind of mind-boggling. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why that is. But yeah, have you ever bought or sold a site? No, I've looked at it before. And I haven't looked at it in a while. And so those multiples are much higher because I saw them in the low to mid-20s last time I looked. But I was always interested in it, but just never did it. But I think that is absolutely amazing that they're going up like that because it's one of those things that years ago makes me wish I would have bought a site and just flipped it. But it's one of those things that you could definitely see as if it's growing like that, then maybe even in the future they'll be growing even more.

That's really interesting. Perfect. So the other thing I want to talk about with this, Doug, is really into financial independence. And you have utilized this to be, you know, you're very involved in the financial independence community. You have another podcast called Mile High Five, which is with Carl, which we met at FinCon via this. And, you know, you're very plugged into this community. So how has building niche sites and how has this whole process work? working online impacted you in your financial independence journey? I think it made it all possible. One thing, I won't tell my whole biography here, but I worked in the corporate world as a management

consultant for about nine years or so, and I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. There were certain projects where I maybe did hate it, but, you know, I just, I didn't really enjoy the corporate politics and that sort of thing. In 2015, I got laid off, but luckily at that time, I was already working on some niche sites. I had about two years of experience, some big highs, some big lows and a lot of failures. And I have, you know, a ton of things that just didn't work out, but I kept trying. When I did get laid off, I thought, well, now is my chance.

I didn't even have to, you know, work up the courage to quit. they laid me off and I had the chance to go for it. So I tried a bunch of things and it turned out that I was much happier working for myself. So just from a happiness standpoint, the autonomy to pick what I wanted to work on was fantastic. I could structure my day, how I wanted to. Corporate politics were gone. And the crazy thing is I was earning more than I did, more than I thought I ever could at a corporate job, which is insane because that is not sort of the background that I have. I didn't have an entrepreneurship interest, side hustles. I didn't even know. I just kind of accidentally dabbled and it kind of worked out. And, you know,

because I started to earn a lot more money working for myself, that accelerated the process. And I, again, I just kind of got lucky finding the FI community. So my wife and I started to accumulating some money and we were trying to figure out how to invest and we fired our previous financial advisors that weren't doing a great job. And then I think my wife actually found Mr. Money Mustaches blog, found a couple things about investing. And we actually didn't really pay too much attention to the rest of the blog. We just kind of figured out how we wanted to invest, which is index funds. We did that for several years. A few years later, my wife got a job offer in Boulder, which is pretty close to Longmont, which is where Carl Jensen and Mindy live,

Mr. Money Mustache, Pete lives over here too, and, you know, several other people in this area. So I lived here for about six months before I joined the co-working space and then met Carl and the crew and just happy accident. And it turns out even though we didn't follow any of these sort of mustachian or phi ideas, we kind of ended up there anyway through just earning more money and being relatively frugal. And we actually have a lot of the same values as the Phi community. We just weren't as maybe obsessed as some other people.

I was more obsessed with like entrepreneurship at the time. But now I've like flipped. And it's amazing. There's a huge overlap in the values with the Phi community and the side hustle and entrepreneurship. But they don't often talk to each other. So I feel like I'm kind of bridging the gap.

And there's even potentially a little judgment on both sides, but I think it's the same values. They just are talking different languages a little bit. So that's kind of the story. And I don't know if I answered the question, but that's how I ended up in this Phi community too. You absolutely did. And that's the perfect answer because I think it's one of those things

where you created freedom with a different route. And what we talk about here a lot is financial independence has so many different ways that you can get there. Where a lot of people, the traditional form is the Mr. Money Mustache form where, and he's the person I learned from early on. He's the person that kind of inspired me to get into financial independence. When I first read his blog, I think I read the last, whole thing in like two days. But early on, that was one where, you know, that's a traditional

form. But then there's so many different ways now between fat fire and barista fire and all these different ways that you can actually become financially independent. And you did it your own way. And your way is an amazing way to do it between entrepreneurship and being able to work for yourself and do what you enjoy. And now you get to do what you love every single day, which is something that is absolutely amazing. So that is one thing that I want people to kind of take note is, you know, there's just different routes that you can take to get there. And one of the one, of the coolest things that Doug did was he did it in a way that was maybe potentially unorthodox, but they have the same exact principles. I mean, they really truly do. And so bridging that gap,

I think is a really cool thing that you're doing as well. So I want to shift gears here. So these are a couple of questions that we ask everybody. And it's interesting because we get different answers every single time. But between the two of these, so the first one I have is what is the best advice about money you've ever received? It's such a tough one. And I'm going to cheat. I'm going to give you two, but it'll be different time period. So invest early and often. And I think I probably heard it, you know, when I was young and I didn't really understand. And I don't know, you know, where I got that advice. But I know when I first got my job, I was throwing money into my 401k, maxing it out for those handful of years that I was working. Actually, even when I was in college,

like doing internships and stuff. So I knew that that was a good thing to do. The other that is more relevant now that we have more money and we don't have to be as frugal is, you know, money is a tool and money buys you time and freedom. And when actually we were interviewing Brandon, mad scientist, right? And he talked about how we would treat $20 when he was in college versus how he treats $20 now. And we kind of all, or at least us in the room that day, we still treat $20 like we did in college, even though it represents a much smaller amount of net worth. And we're toiling over decisions where we could just buy convenience and maybe we should treat $1,000 like we did $20 when we were in college. We probably wouldn't do that because you can't do a lot of things with $1,000.

But the point is, you know, money's a tool and you can buy convenience. and I have been doing that a lot more in not spending so much time making a decision. When it kind of doesn't matter, you know, go ahead, get the Uber to save a little time. It's going to be okay. You know, $35 is not going to matter too much in a few weeks or a few months or, you know, maybe not at all. And I used to fall in the same camp too where I would do the same thing. I would wrestle with these $20 decisions. And then I kind of realized as time went on, it's changed a lot, especially after I had kids and stuff as well, was it's more so about that convenient size.

and that money is there as a tool to bring you value and actually utilize in ways that gives you your most rich life. So I think that's one of the coolest things that you can do with money as well. And the last one is my favorite one. So what does wealth mean to you? Kind of ties into the last one where, you know, wealth is time freedom for me. So I'm skipping a couple things, but like that's the value that it brings to me. And quick, you know, very specific example. My mom passed away a couple years ago. But before she did, we were able to go on a six-week-long trip to Alaska. We drove here from Colorado.

And it was before we knew she was six. So we had a great time. We were gone for six weeks. You know, there's not that many people that could take six weeks off unless they're, you know, retired or have just some interesting arrangement or something. So, yeah, we were able to just go have a great time. and unfortunately she was diagnosed with cancer a few months after that. But, you know, we were able to spend all that time together and definitely couldn't do that

with, you know, a full-time corporate job. So the wealth, you know, for me, it's time freedom and options. Absolutely. That's the most powerful thing that I could do is help you spend time with people you love most and have that time freedom. So that is absolutely amazing. So, Doug, thank you so much for coming on. This is an incredibly valuable episode that I know people are going to love.

So where can people learn more about you, what you have going on? Tell us about, you know, your website, your podcast, everything. Sure. So a website is niche site project. And as Andrew mentioned, I have like templates and other stuff that if you want, they're available for free. You just sign it for the email list. Pretty easy to find. There's buttons to sign it for the email list. And then I have a YouTube channel where I cover sort of SEO affiliate marketing that's under Doug Cunnington. And you could find success story interviews. You could find tutorials. There's actually thousands of over a thousand videos there. And I do a live stream each week, usually on Tuesdays. So you can check that out.

And then my other show in the FI space, so if you're more interested in the financial independence, Carl Jensen and I talk to each other often, but we interview people as well. And you can find people that are on their journey to FI, people that have already, you know, reached it. We've talked to people like Paula Pant and Brandon Madfcientist, Pete Adney, Mr. Money Mustache has been on a couple times. And there's tons of stuff, the J.L. Collins interview as well. So there's a lot of stuff over there, both on YouTube and any of the major podcast players. That's absolutely amazing. And Doug's podcasts are some of the best ones out there. So definitely make sure you check that out. His YouTube channel is amazing. I've learned so much from that as well. So we'll link everything

that Doug talked about down below in the show notes as well. So if you guys want to check that out, sure you go check all that stuff out. Doug, thank you so much for coming on. This was really, really fun. Thanks. It's amazing and I appreciate all the kind words. Absolutely.