SPEAKER_01
Alright James, you got the infamous Doug Cunnington on today, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02
That's always good to chat to Doug. He's almost doing like the opposite of what everyone's probably listening to this is where everyone's trying to keep scanning and doing more and more and make more. He's kind of just cutting back and trying to do less and less and less.

So it's always good to have those perspectives on the podcast too and talk about, I mean he leans a lot into podcasting and YouTube. So it could be interesting for anyone who's looking to maybe diversify outside of just

SPEAKER_01
person content. Yeah, yeah and it's good to get his insights on the finance side. I'm always interested to hear how people are investing their money.

I'm just a nosy guy, you know. And yeah, let's plug our community guys. Join the advice community, it's popping the fuck off.

We also talk about the investment side. We should talk what we're seeing on Twitter. It's all behind closed doors, so you're safe from the public eye.

And make sure to sign up below. Use indexy coupon code to get a lifetime discount on your membership and yeah, let us know what you think of the pod today. What's good everyone, it's Track A Ciao.

And this is James Delicy. And you're listening to This Week in Digital Marketing. All right guys, we have the OG Doug on today.

How's it going man? Good to meet you.

SPEAKER_00
Awesome. Yeah, great to meet you too. Thanks for inviting me on.

SPEAKER_01
For the audience, why don't you give the audience a quick intro about yourself and we can see where

SPEAKER_00
it takes us. So currently these days, I've simplified the answer to I run a media company. So I have a couple podcasts, a couple YouTube channels, one in SEO and affiliate marketing space, marketing in general and the other in personal finance and financial independence.

And I started all this stuff with a blog back in 2013 that I accidentally, you know, got into affiliate marketing and SEO just through the Smart Passive Income podcast. And I was not interested in like side hustles or anything like that. I just kind of fell into it and then got obsessed.

So over time, I had a lot of ups and downs and, you know, quick success. And then like a lot of SEOs, like lose all my traffic overnight, a couple penalties back in the day. And at this point, I spend most of my time really producing content.

And I haven't been really in the trenches with SEO, especially I would say in the last like three years as, you know, more Google updates have rolled out. I've just lost a little bit of the, maybe passion, that obsessiveness is now focused in like talking to people and talking to entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_01
Great, great. Yeah. We've all been there. Let's just say that.

Nice. Let's talk about the financial independence side. What's like, what's your current investment strategy? And did you, from the money you made in, I mean, you've been in the game for so long, does it, are you more of like a cashflow person in terms of your assets? Or did you have like one big exit? Or is it just like cash flowing throughout the years and you invested? Cool.

I love that you asked this question,

SPEAKER_00
because I think I will be counter to most people, especially because it's not a very exciting answer, but the results are quite exciting. So when I first got a job, I did well to invest in my 401k in my Roth. And I had some kind of, you know, shitty advisors we can cuss, right? Yeah, please do official.

So I had some shitty advisors, but I didn't know, and I knew that like saving money was a good thing and investing in retirement accounts was a good thing. So in my 10 year corporate career as a consultant, I did fine. I didn't max it out every year, but those first couple of years really paid off and it didn't make any catastrophic mistakes, which is really all you have to do.

And as time went on, you know, my wife and I never carried debt and we you know, paid off our student loans or anything that potentially could cause trouble. We eventually realized that our advisors were horrible. So I fired mine, she fired hers.

And it was right about the time that we were accumulating a lot of money and we didn't know what to do, which coincided when I started working online and earning, you know, what I thought was just going to be a couple hundred dollars on the side to maybe pay for an extra vacation. Instead, it was like many thousands of dollars and like another full income over there. When I got laid off in 2015, by that time, we ran across the fire movement, the financial independence retire early.

But really, it was just for investing advice because we were accumulating a lot and we knew we shouldn't just like keep putting more money into an account, never investing it. So we invest to finally answer your question in just index funds, typically Vanguard, but there's a lot of like plain vanilla ones. We have nothing fancy.

We're not trying to beat the market. We don't think we're smarter than the market. And that's where I think a lot of people get hung up.

They're like, if I can just not buy the worst companies, then I'll be okay. And then I'll beat the market by a few percent. It's extremely hard to do.

Almost no one does it. If you have friends that tell you that they're beating the market, it's probably only for the little sliver that makes their point. And I'm almost certain they haven't done it for decades.

SPEAKER_01
By during COVID too, right?

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, COVID or yeah, like there's all these sort of scenarios where, and I had a friend recently, he's like, oh, you know what I do? I invest in tech stocks. It's like, no fucking shit. Like it's a lot more complicated than that, right? The point being, you really, you can't outsmart the market in 99% of the cases.

And we do index funds so slowly over time through just investing the extra that we had living below our means, we've accumulated quite a bit. And if you check out the other podcast, my friend and I, we talk a lot about that stuff and the things that you run into like after you have financial independence and you retire, it doesn't solve all your problems. My friend has been retired for about five, six years at this point.

And he's still like, you know, working through his struggles. It wasn't like happiness as soon as he quit his job. So really plain vanilla stuff, you know, invest early and often compound interest pays off.

If there's anything fancy, if there's anything complicated, or that shortens the timeline, there's an associated risk that goes along with it. Yeah. Certainly possible. Luck plays a role, but risk is the other side of that coin.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I think a lot of people, especially on Twitter, don't realize that the higher the returns, the higher the risk. It's quite literally calculated in.

So I don't understand when people are flexing their 15 to 20% gains, even with niche sites, like a niche site is effectively a 30, 30% yield annually, right? Quo unquote yield, but that's just calculated in like embedded into the pricing. But I think a lot of people don't realize that I want to go back to one point. You mentioned your financial advisors suck.

And I have a lot of friends with financial advisors. So how do you define them being crappy? Is it they're just pretty much dollar cost averaging on your behalf and just taking a fat fee, or are they just not doing much?

SPEAKER_00
Are they not active like managers? Right. The number one issue that I had was they were actually insurance agents. So it was a company that I won't mention specifically, but it rhymes with like, Northwestern, Neutral, all right.

So maybe figure that out. All this is entertainment also. But if you're buying, if you're getting financial advice from an insurance company, they're going to like, you know, use the hammer that they have, which is insurance policies.

And it's usually not the best investment. Actually, most of the time, it's not the best investment at all. And I made the mistake of like buying a whole life policy, which is like a big no-no.

And essentially all the fees are like in the first few years, and they take pretty hefty fees. So even though there are potential benefits, and some people use what they call infinite banking, which sounds kind of cool, great branding, but it's kind of BS when you like, look at it a little closer. So the people that are benefiting are the people selling you the insurance policies, and they're the one like perpetuating that infinite banking.

So anyway, that's number one issue. Number two, if you're lucky, they will just dollar cost average into index funds and not try to beat the market. And the issue most of the time is you're not getting a huge amount of value from it.

Accumulating is pretty easy, especially if you just put it into index funds. The big problem is a lot of advisors charge with assets under management. So they're charging like a huge amount of money.

Let's say you have a million dollars, they're charging 1%. When you look, you know, 20, 25, 40 years out, that is a staggering amount of money because it gets the compound interest. And it takes that away too.

So when you look at the return differences, that's the problem. So those are the main things. Now that said, my wife and I are about to start working with an advisor because we're at a point where it actually gets complicated.

So once you accumulate, you have a bunch of money and there's some different buckets. So we have a post tax brokerage account that we've already paid taxes are, we have a couple protected retirement accounts like a 401k or a Roth. And then I have a solo 401k for my company.

So that's some math. Like if you're an entrepreneur, you really can maximize, I think it put in something like 66, some 1000 per year instead of the normal like 20,000 that people can put in. So it's a huge difference.

But at the point where you have to start thinking about withdrawing or planning to withdraw and actually being a little bit paranoid about hanging on to your money and making sure your wealth lasts, then the advisors can solve problems for you that they solve every day. They know how to do it. They're experts versus I've literally never done that.

I've never done a Roth conversion where I take money from a 401k and then I move into a Roth account. And there's strategic times that you should do it and times that you shouldn't. Like many things, each individual step is not super complicated, but to string it all together, you can make a little mistake that may cost you a lot in the future.

So it's good to talk to an expert even just to get the basic plan in place. What's the infinite banking thing you're talking about there, Doug? I've never heard of that. Well, nobody look it up.

All right. So everyone stay away from the infinite banking thing. But essentially, you quote invest in this insurance policy, right? So it's typically a whole life in policy.

And you borrow the money that you invested into it. So the thought is you don't have to borrow money from banks. You borrow it from yourself.

The problem is the returns are horrible because it's an insurance policy, right? It's not made to grow. It's made to earn money for like the seller in the insurance company. That's literally how insurance works, right? They try not to pay out as much as they take in.

That's how they make profit. So infinite banking is just borrowing your own money. One of the pros they say is you don't have to pay taxes on it, which is true because you're borrowing your own money, right? The problem is you have to pay that money back.

And then the other problem is, like I said, the growth is so suppressed that you run into issues. There's probably several others. The only time it does make sense from what I understand is for like the ultra, ultra wealthy, where they've maxed out everything, all the tax advantage accounts, everything they could do if they have a whole life policy that may pay off a little bit better, but they've literally like maxed everything out.

So but don't look it up. Nobody do infinite banking. Yeah, yeah.

Fair enough. What do you guys do for investing? What an advising. I'm curious about you guys.

So I guess I'll go first.

SPEAKER_01
So during COVID, I was like a degenerate gambler pretty much and got lucky, game stop, hit game stop, and then rolled that into Tesla, hit that. Thought I was Warren Buffet, went big into other tech stocks, got destroyed, but luckily my gains are still there from Tesla. So I'm kind of just chilling out.

And now I'm just averaging very, very heavily into, I don't know what the tickers are in the US, but it's like whole market indexes, SPI, and like growth ETFs pretty much on like a monthly basis or on a weekly basis with like a very high number every month. So yeah, and time horizon probably like 10 to 20 years, and then just chill after that. But I did want to, quick, quick, quick one.

What is, because I hear a very difference, a huge difference in numbers between three and four percent withdrawal rate. What is like a conservative one nowadays? Is it three?

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I would say conservative. There's great debate on this, right? So I still generally use the four percent withdrawal rate as the rule. If you listen to some recent interviews with some of the like original people that did the experiment or study, it's Bill Bangin and people that have done more in depth studies, they say it could be as high as like, four and a half, five percent.

However, and I happen to be married to a conservative woman. So she's like, she's not as optimistic as I am. And entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic.

And we think, yeah, we'll make some money, we'll create some value in the world, we'll earn some money. And she's more of a, she's not a growth mindset person, mincing my words. I don't think she'll listen to the show, but essentially she would be more comfortable with maybe like a 3.

25. And be pretty happy with that. But I mean, she's thinking like, what if the apocalypse happens? Like she's thinking for the very worst case scenarios.

And, you know, we could plan the best we can, but three to four percent is pretty conservative. I would say four percent gets you into ballpark. And from my perspective, no one's going to stop working completely.

Jackie, you know, when you hang up whatever the keyboard and mouse for a couple of years, I bet you're going to get a little bored and you won't be able to help yourself. And you're going to start doing some hobby, you're going to accidentally start earning some money again, because

SPEAKER_02
you're going to be like us gamble shit coins again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you'll,

SPEAKER_00
you'll find something else like wool all like even if I'm like, I'm stopping in a few years, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up doing something else there and some money in that.

SPEAKER_02
It's almost always the case. What are you currently cash flowing with now, Doug? Are you

SPEAKER_00
still selling your niche site course and things like that? So I have, so overall the streams of income have shifted over time. So for a little while, it was like 50, 50 from like a niche site, cash flow plus courses plus affiliate pretty even spread among those. And as time has gone on, I've like exited some of the websites, sold those.

And currently I'm sunsetting my, my big course multi-profit site. So that's kind of new as time has shifted and AI has been more prominent. I didn't want to create any like AI lessons or modules.

I don't have confidence in like the longevity of that. So I decided to sunset the course and the last time I launched it was about six months ago. And probably what I'm going to do is just be an affiliate for other people that have courses.

They're like, we're embracing AI and moving forward, but I just didn't have the energy to do a refresh on the course material. The other thing, I'm actually, I haven't talked about it very much, but I'm planning on doing kind of a public case study, launching a podcast and potentially most likely selling it at the end of, I don't know the period of time. So it hasn't been done to my knowledge, especially with the intent of like building it as an asset to sell.

But I see companies that are trying to advertise or trying to start their own shows. I've done a few of them. And as I realized, everyone was asking me about podcasting, I was like, I need to just lean in.

It's obvious that if I have like five or six people asking me every month or so, I should probably go ahead and just say, I'll show you everything. It's hard. It takes a long time.

You guys know this, but it could be really fun, very rewarding, great marketing tool, great layer on top of an agency, a great layer on top of even a niche site if it's big enough. And there will be a YouTube component as well. So it's not a full on YouTube channel, but I feel like the two go hand in hand.

So James at this point, yeah, I'm trying to shift over to what I'm more interested in right now, which seems to shift maybe every five to seven years or so as I'm kind of winding down one thing, I'm starting another thing. And now I'm on that phase where I'm like, let's talk about podcasting, let's talk about personal

SPEAKER_02
branding and all that. How do you create a podcast to eventually sell? Because I'm assuming if you're going to host it, because then you have to remove yourself as a host, correct? Or are

SPEAKER_00
you going to go with the sale? Yeah. So great question. And I actually like grabbed a new journal just so I could write out all these things and try and figure it out.

So 100% right. How do you create a podcast with the intent to sell? I'll let you know in about a year. I'll let you know how it worked out.

So I will host it. I thought about hiring a host right off the bat. So it's kind of a full turnkey situation.

However, I also like the format. And I think me hosting it will help it get off the ground faster. So that's part of the cheat code.

I spent time building brands. So me hosting it helps. My thought is I could try to hire a host after it gets started.

And then the host goes along. But the thing is, I don't know who's going to buy it. And the person or company that buys it may want to put in their founder.

They may want to put in their CMO as the host. And what I think should happen is I would do a transition to whoever is taking over. And it could be whatever, six weeks, six months, whatever we decide.

And then I would help transition it over and it won't be abrupt. So kind of flexible. I'll see how it shakes out and may end up being a flop.

But you end up with a story to tell afterwards,

SPEAKER_01
which is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I guess to, yeah, I mean, the other side of the argument is what if you start off with a co-host immediately and, but most people are there for you since the beginning. And at the end, most people are still there for you.

And you kind of, if you depart and the majority of your listeners also depart, that's like a huge risk as an investor side, you know, on the investor side. It's a, I guess if you solve that, you solve the problem. But I guess there has to be some sort of solution because not many people are good in front of a camera, right? It seems like you're a well-seasoned veteran.

And what if the founder of, or the CEO of the buyer comes in and they're awkward as hell, you know, listeners are going to drop like flies.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah. So I think the transition period would definitely be important. And I'm not, there's definitely, yeah, risk on the buyer side, but I would hope.

The other thing is I know there are enough people with like a broadcasting or potentially a communications background where someone could be hired to do this. And I think, yeah, it's a problem to solve. It might be a sticky one, but the other thing is I'm also going to build in parallel the things that I'm good at, right? Email list building and the YouTube channel.

So those as assets should still come through. So I don't know, I don't know how big of a component it may be like, here's a fat email list with the right kind of customers on here with like that may be enough. And then the podcast is just gravy, right? Just another medium.

It may not be as big. Maybe, right? Maybe it takes off on the YouTube side and that's actually bigger than the other portions of it. So I am thinking, you know, I want it to be a full marketing like turnkey situation for a company that is, you know, probably an agency because they have enough cashflow and they like, those are the companies that are advertising on podcasts.

What other holes can you guys pick in, pick in this

SPEAKER_02
pick in this? I think one thing, something that I've experienced since I acquired one of my sites, obviously I got the YouTube channel with it had and the big Instagram and everything. And then because it was based on the previous owners, I guess you could say content persona, like those are absolutely dead. Like I can post all sorts of YouTube stuff.

And it's just like a slight slow decline in subscribers on Instagram, a slow decline in followers. It's crazy. Just because I mean, it wasn't warm either.

I mean, he had left it for like many years before I think as well, but all the old subscribers, all were subscribing to his content. And so now that I'm

SPEAKER_00
posting on there, man, it's brutal. brutal. Would you do you think if you had like a transition period, how much do you think that would have helped if he turned the reins over to you and you guys had a rapport and people had a social proof or whatever? Yeah, maybe. I think as well, I think

SPEAKER_02
that just the type of content so different from what he was posting to what I'm posting. I think that I think that is what not I guess it is the person that subscribed to you. But I think the type of content is the thing that makes it so different to the point where it just doesn't

SPEAKER_01
drive with the current subscribers or followers. I guess James, what if you followed exactly the same content format as the previous owner? Do you think that would would have helped a lot?

SPEAKER_02
Like different person same format. There was used to be a lot of memes and stuff. So I'm posting a lot of memes on social and those seem to go well and all good.

But the old content is just like old lifting videos and things like that. You know, like from like 10 plus years ago, when that was like fitness YouTube. So it's just it's just a completely different, I guess, era of content back then compared to what it is now.

And he's still a lot of like wack ass

SPEAKER_01
shit too. So I'm not going to go do some back as shit. Got it. Got it. Doug, I did want to ask you with like such huge changes coming in the at least the niche site space. How do you feel about AI taking over the SERPs are not what they used to be.

I think they're predominantly dominated dominated by, you know, the larger companies nowadays. I think niche site owners are getting absolutely obliterated. Are you seeing the same thing? Do you even agree with that statement? How do you

SPEAKER_00
feel about the industry as a whole right now? Big shift. Yeah, I largely agree with your assessment. And I think there's still an opportunity for niching down and having a brand.

I think at this point, if I was starting something brand new, which I am, I'm making the decision to have a podcast, have YouTube, have the email list. And by the way, I will have a blog because now the AI tools are good enough where I can take my transcript, get a blog post from it that's good enough. I'm not trying to compete on Google, but it'll be nice to have that content there for people that are on the email list, for example.

And I think the opportunity is in the, you know, niching down at the same time. I think the SERP quality is a little bit lower. I was recently looking up some information about some supplements, right? I take some supplements.

And I was trying

SPEAKER_02
to find information. You can't cross Jackie's articles. You definitely can't cross my size.

SPEAKER_00
I don't know. I wish I did because I ended up on Reddit where these morons...

SPEAKER_02
Oh, you made it because of my post.

SPEAKER_00
I can't get a list of bad marketers ruining everything. So yeah, I ended up with responses. You know, I tried to look at the Reddit thread just, I was like, oh, maybe the answer will be in there.

But it's just like a forum from back in the day where it's a couple of people arguing about the minutiae. And I'm like, just which supplement of these two things do I need to get? Like, is it going to upset my stomach or whatever? Does it taste horrible? Do I need to get a capsule? I'm trying to get powder, right? Just to like buy in bulk. But anyway, I ended up on Reddit and I couldn't get an answer.

So I like left there and tried to find a site with some actual information. So yeah, I don't think the cert quality is up to where it used to be. And in fact, I just interviewed Amanda Chicago Lewis from The Verge who wrote that article about the people that ruin the internet.

Yeah. So I interviewed her and I thought the article was great overall because it took you on a journey, right? And I think everyone, especially in the SEO world, I know everyone's about to throw their phone out the window because I'm saying this, but I took it as sure the SEOs are making some decisions and at the beginning, it's provocative, right? It's like the SEOs ruin the internet. But I also read that as like, did Google ruin the internet? So if you read the whole article, which was quite long, it's like, I don't know, like the SEOs are just following the incentives.

The SEOs are doing their job. Like they're not doing anything wrong. And I think some people missed it because they didn't read the whole article.

And you can look on The Verge, you can see they have published some pretty low quality affiliate content. And I don't know, did you guys

SPEAKER_01
read the article? What did you think? I didn't read it. Yeah, I'm doing a video on it right now, actually. It's going to be a spicy one.

But yeah, I think the cliff notes are, they're quite, they're definitely contradicting themselves with that article. But I guess the reporter wouldn't know about that because it's not her industry. And I think in general, it's well written and great storytelling.

However, it kind of leaves you, after you finish reading it, you're kind of like, I'm not sure how to feel, right? Because there's no point of the article. It just takes you on a journey of what the SEO industry is kind of like at a surface level, the people they interviewed are not great. And yeah, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see my final thoughts on the video that I'll eventually do.

But yeah, how do you feel, James?

SPEAKER_02
Well, I didn't read it. So I don't go and read it, to be honest. Whatever's ranking, Google, I'll follow along.

Yeah. Yeah, that's...

SPEAKER_00
Well, and I think, so hopefully, I don't alienate too much of my audience or other audiences, because like I said, I read it from... I tried to read it from an outsider's perspective, right? An understanding that she mostly writes about cannabis and stuff. She does not, she's not an SEO beat report.

She's not even a tech reporter. I think she has like one other tech article that she wrote. And I think she did a pretty good job, great storytelling, but a lot of people didn't make it through.

And a lot of people, I think unfortunately, in the SEO space, we were a little too sensitive. So some people were more defensive, even though she was like, ah, this thing's kind of fucked up. I used to be able to get good results, but now I can't get it.

And I don't know, it's crazy out there, which is what I took away. But yeah, there's no, she's not like, here's the right answer. There's no right answer.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Yeah. So I will say it's interesting. I do agree.

Yeah, it is interesting. And it's largely Google's fault, right? Because if they incentivize and they reward shitty content from, let's say for example, right now, large publishers, then that's just what people are going to do, right? More and more large publishers are going to come out with shittier and shittier content. And that's on them.

It's a, especially with the emergence of AI, like now you see a ton, like Sports Illustrated, who are caught doing nothing but AI articles. I think we're going to see a lot more of those coming out. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're going to see a lot more of those

SPEAKER_00
coming out like soon. So how do you guys see it shifting? Because I think one more thing on the AI aspect, generally I'm thinking like the bulk publishing of AI content in the short term might be interesting, but I think anyone doing it is probably wasting their time. And I heard an interesting quote from, I think Morgan Housel, but it's whatever you're doing, like right now, is like you're sowing the seeds for five to 10 years from now.

So are you going to get into some competition with publishing as much AI content as you can? Do you think you're going to be able to beat all these other people that have way more time or more resources? It just seems like a losing game. And that's why I'm like leaning into like podcast and YouTube. Like those make sense.

Those make sense to me. So where do you guys see it shifting, especially with AI? I think,

SPEAKER_01
you're going Jackie? Yeah, I think the mediums that you mentioned, like podcasting, YouTube, so on and so forth are going to be pretty resilient to AI, especially if you have like any sort of personality, right? Like you'll be just fine. But in terms of AI content, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to definitely be commoditized. I think it's a matter of time, larger and larger publishers embrace it.

And it's, I think it'll will end up in a place where it's going to be AI generated articles, human edited at all times, and it's just who can do it at scale. And for me, my time horizon is not as long as what you mentioned, like five, six years, it's more like two, three years in and out, get my retirement fund in there, you know what I mean? We'll be out of there. But it'll be interesting to see, especially since what I keep mentioning is SGE, will replace informational content.

And display ads revenue is about to get clapped to oblivion because of the third party of removal. So it's like the perfect storm between SGE replacing your info content. So you're going to have a drop in content, drop in traffic there, plus removal of third party cookies, which I'm, I'm like projecting like at least minimum 60% drop in RPMs.

So double clappening, it's going to, it's going to be bad, but that's how I feel. I think affiliate articles will be just fine though. James, how do you feel?

SPEAKER_02
Similar boat, but I think now it's just about being a multimedia company versus just written content. And if I was going to start something new video first, I'm pushing video hard on my sites now to the point where I've still got written content going up and updating, but I'm focusing big on the YouTube side, and then pushing the social, I mean, it makes sense in my niche just to do that. So that's where I'm focusing most of my stuff now.

Obviously still doing a lot of written content on top of it, but the video is, yeah, is where I'm trying to push it.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I guess, I guess we'll see. We'll see.

We'll see. We'll see. How do you feel? Are you much on Twitter or formerly known as Twitter, Doug? No.

No, I hear there's a lot of great conversation. Yeah, I would argue against that. It's like people are a lot more negative on Twitter, I guess, because you're heavy on the YouTube space, right? People are so positive on YouTube, whereas on Twitter, there's just so negative and there's just so mean sometimes.

I don't know. I'm definitely guilty of that, but it's bad out here.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I have not spent any time on Twitter. And in the past, I would say two years, I've had some peers and friends say, oh yeah, there's a lot of discussion over there. But as soon as I read a couple threads, I get that negative feeling, like you say.

And one thing I've been really good at is avoiding stuff that I don't like or that it's a negative input for my life. And even though it could hurt profits, it could hurt growth, I will choose happiness and contentment over growth. And it's been tough to do, especially when I see some friends, they're on the show, they have virtually no following.

And then through being on the show, and then potentially that helping a little bit, of course, they put in a lot of time and effort, and they have like a content system for Twitter. And I'm like, I don't give a shit, I don't really care. So I try to stay away from it because I get that negative feeling.

And I guess it's like the platform inherently rewards the controversy, the cynical response versus if someone's like, hey, right on, like you did a great job. You know, thumbs up, I don't even know that I would probably get laughed out of the thread if I said something like that, right? Yeah, I think the platform

SPEAKER_01
native posts are the controversial ones, the hot takes. Yeah, I don't know if you follow, I guess you wouldn't, but Nick Huber from the sweaty startup who runs like a bunch of self storage units. And it's like a huge real estate investor, all he does is hot takes all day.

He like engagement farms the woke and they just lose their minds every single time they take the bait and he gets like millions of impressions on it to be like he loves saying that oh yeah, I outsource to the Philippines and we replaced our US staff with offshore VAs and everyone loses their mind and he at the end of it has an offer to like head hunt the offshore VAs and with his affiliate like he's like banking, you know, it's just that that is the whole playbook on Twitter. So if you ever want a an organic lift, just take hot, yeah, hot takes is all you need.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it's yeah, it's good to get the reinforcement, like the real story Jackie from you, because again, I, people are like, Oh yeah, you got to hop on there, like that's where I learned about this or that and instead I'll just talk in real life to people and then they'll

SPEAKER_01
tell me what they read there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I will say the audience on Twitter, I find so far at least is more valuable than Instagram Pinterest, at least b2b side and LinkedIn as well, which LinkedIn I was a bit surprised about LinkedIn is actually lower quality than X is what

SPEAKER_02
I found. Unfortunate, but okay, yeah. You also have your white hat SEOs that you love on Twitter.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a yeah, I think there's a huge community of like, and there's a constant struggle between niche site owners and in-house SEOs and they're they're always like dunking on each other. It's it's it's fun to see and honestly, that's where I get my entertainment from, but it's like, honestly, it gets a bit toxic sometimes, but it's yeah. Well, the funny part with that is

SPEAKER_00
it's like, there's probably so much overlap of what they actually agree on. And they understand they're in the same industry, right? And it's so it's sad that they are focusing on like the 5% they disagree on to look good on Twitter versus like, hey, like, we could talk the language that we know because it's our business. So yeah, and yeah, I think there might also be a bit of resentment

SPEAKER_01
from the in-house SEO side. Because if you see like some niche site person with shitty content, and they're pumping out, I don't know, they're doing double your salary, there's got to be some sort of resentment, you know, you make 3k a month in inner city, like London and some niche site owner is making double that on a crappy niche site that maybe goes against what you've learned and what your manager has been telling you to do and you're kind of like, oh, man, come on now. Yeah, I think there's there's that sort of dynamic as well.

And maybe the in-house SEOs are trying to they can they claim to try to make the internet a better place, whereas the niche site owners, you know, they're trying to their capitalists, right, they're trying to squeeze every dollar out of an asset. And I think there's a lot to be said there, just different intents, I guess. But yeah, I guess, Doug, you tend to attract more of the niche site owners, right? Yep.

Yeah, overall,

SPEAKER_00
and, you know, that's an artifact of, you know, where I got started and the blog, niche site project was all focused on kind of starting from the beginning, like doing keyword research and like building your first couple sites, some more advanced topics. But yeah, from the very beginning, that was kind of the focus and, you know, interesting thing. I mean, I know as I am shifting as I'm sunsetting the old course and shifting into kind of a new area, I hope I'm a little bit ahead of like where the industry is going to go.

Talking to you guys, you know, mentioning like the formats of podcasting and YouTube and just video in general, I think I should be in good shape, but there's going to be growing pains along with that. Because some people are, you know, one, they're going to tap out, they're going to be like, up this niche site industry has changed so much that, you know, it kind of has gone away, especially Jackie, if what you predict is correct, which it sounds, you know, directionally, it seems pretty accurate, right? There's big shifts coming. And I don't know how it'll, it'll shape up.

But yeah, but there's a lot of people that at the core, they want to earn money on the side and hopefully turn it into a full time income. So I think that's the common ground. And there's a ton of, you know, ways you can earn money online, whether it's selling your own digital products or even, I don't know, just a website where you're selling other people's stuff.

SPEAKER_02
You can be a TikTok shop affiliate now, literally just do TikToks and be an affiliate on TikTok

SPEAKER_00
and absolutely crush. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So there's tons of success stories out there and other ways to slice it. So, but yeah, mostly, you know, niche site owners or, you know, people

SPEAKER_01
aspiring to do that. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Well, I think, um, yeah, gotta be mindful of the time, Doug. We do typically just run at 45 minutes. Where do, where can people find you? Where do

SPEAKER_00
you want to send people? So if you like the video format, you can head over to YouTube, just search for Doug Cunnington. There's a lot of tons of videos out there. I typically do a live stream each week.

Sometimes I do a demo and you, you can also follow my podcast, a lot of the same content, but a lot of long form interviews as well. And then if you're interested in the personal finance stuff or financial independence or early retirement, head over to a mile high fi.com YouTube and a podcast as well.

But we ended up talking finance some, but a lot of it is just about lifestyle and happiness and trying to, you know, be content and happy with your life and moving forward. So there's a couple of places, if you Google me, you could probably find some other

SPEAKER_01
stuff too, but those are the main spots. Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on today, Doug.

It was good chatting, finding great to meet you. Yeah. Perfect.