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

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.