Leveraging Reddit as a Traffic Source

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Hey there, thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Anne and in today's episode we're sitting down with you and Finser from ventureforth Media. In this episode, Bjork and Ewan discuss the evolving landscape of digital content creation, with algorithm changes impacting traffic. Ewan emphasizes the importance of going beyond Google and looking for an alternative recipe for your traffic. He shares insights on building a strong presence on Reddit while also highlighting the power of community building as a cornerstone for long term success. This was a really interesting episode because I definitely seen Reddit discussions pop up in search results, but I never considered leveraging the platform to drive traffic. It was definitely an eye opener for me and it's certainly something to consider for your business as Google starts to treat Reddit as a publisher. If you enjoyed the episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now, without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Ewan, welcome back to the podcast.

It's good to be here. Bjork.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about all things search, SEO traffic because as we're going to be talking about, the world of search has changed a lot. A lot of people listening have Felt that, you know, you've felt that as you've built sites and have built these really incredible sites through the years, doing all of the different things that Google has told you to do and doing a really good job with those. And now the hard part is we're in this season where it's like a lot of these really incredible sites that had traffic that was growing, expanding, like gaining traction through the years. There's this thing called Helpful Content Update and that impacted a lot of those. So can you share a little bit about though the sites that you've built through the years for people who haven't heard the past interviews that you've done and then what happened with Helpful Content?

Yeah. So, you know, our context is for the last 10 years really has been starting as a lifestyle for bootstrapping my first couple sites on my own. You know, basically riding the Google train of the Google needed a lot of information, populate the web with quality content and you know, starting off blogging myself, then hiring a team, then kind of creating this concept around incubating sites at scale. So like coming up with a concept for you know, the, there's a gap in the market in I don't know, subscription box reviews or something like, and then creating a site that's dedicated to that or you know, more recently launching a big gaming portfolio with kind of specific blogs and communities around certain types of games or titles. And that worked really well for a really long time with Google. And you know, to the point where we had, you know, millions of page views a month, you know, we were every year was kind of up into the right. And so that's kind of like my context is basically building more niched folk niche down kind of focused content sites around really around enthusiast groups. But then the primary traffic and distribution model being Google search. We had some, we have some other traffic mixed in but like that was always the golden goose for us. And so with Helpful, the Helpful Content Update like I, the way I describe it is currently it's like Google kind of took the web and said okay, content sites, straight content sites, you're, you're not going to get as much real estate, you're going to get less prevalence in search in the, you know, the first page of search. And so that's really been a huge disruption to our business model and to many, you know, many other indie publishers and even big publishers are taking a little bit of a haircut on some of their properties. And what you've seen kind of rise in its place is user generated content A lot of E commerce, like if you're a brand or a product owner, like you can get away with ranking AI generated content, you know, and so it's kind of like this big paradigm shift. There's a lot of flux, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market. You know, we've kind of slowed down our publishing cadence, at least in relation to Google, and said, you know what, we don't know if Google's going to figure it out. And so we're not going to pump any more money into that playbook until we really have that understood and revalidated.

Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it felt like your expertise was really broadly speaking in two areas. You had a really good understanding of how to look at the web using tools and whether that be a traps, you know, semrush, like many other tools that allow you to kind of get a sense for what people are talking about. And like you said, I think you said this like maybe gaps where, hey, there's, we know that there are people who are interested in, you know, like guitar and learning guitar. And we feel like this is you saying that like there's an opportunity to create quality content in that space. So understanding kind of macro, hey, there's an opportunity here. Or video games like you talked about. And then once getting into that, then seeing like, okay, here's the specific things we can talk about within the context of video games or this specific video game. Here are the articles that we can write. So that's one, like maybe it's like keyword research, but it's also like general research about the web.

Yeah.

Having the ability to use some of these tools, understand the web, understand these opportunities. And then the, the second piece felt like was another strong skill set of yours. And your team is then building processes around working with the team to create that content. So you aren't necessarily going to be the ultimate expert personally in guitar and video games and you know, subscription box reviews, but there are people who love talking about that stuff and have a deep interest in it. And so then finding those people to come onto the team and create content about it. And like you said for the past 10 years, it's like you continue to do more of it. You see the opportunities, you have the ability to scale a team, you grow, grow, grow. And then there's this change and you didn't change anything you were doing. You continue to create good content, your team continued to create content. Good content. It was like Google made a decision around what type of content they wanted to share and display. And that has like, massive implications for many people, yourselves included. Can you talk about what that was like to navigate that? And at what point did you step back and were you like, oh, something changed here? Was it like the day of an update? Like, how quickly did you kind of realize something had changed?

Well, I remember actually going into, when we were both going to Rhodium this last year, it was like that it had just dropped. And so it's kind of fresh in my mind. This was like October of 23, kind of going into it being like, okay, here's a Google update. But we've been through updates before and in fact we've been have various sites that were impacted. And so the first initial period of a couple months is like, okay, what's the damage? Don't overreact. Like, the standard stuff, like, let's see how it shakes out. And then it was like, okay, this is, this is a, this is a big hit. But like, it wasn't terrible. But then there was like successive hits, like, all even into the, in Q1.

Of this year, where, like, additional releases coming out.

Yes, like, up. And it kept turning the dial in the same direction. So whatever we initially saw kind of got worse. And we had some sites that skated through the first two that were ultimately hit. So like, it was, the cumulative effect was like, you know, huge shot across the bow to our business model. And so, so, yeah, and so then by, I would say, early Q1, I kind of was like, okay, we've got to change our, we've got our, our default has to be alive. Like, we cannot keep, like, just continuing on and hoping that Google, you know, figures it out. And so we had to cut back a lot. We kind of realized that we need to cut back our content production because new content was being published and it wasn't ranking right. It wasn't ranked on the first page, it wasn't ranked on the second page. And so that's just like step one, stop the bleeding. And then step two is like, okay, like, we take a minute and figure out what does this really mean? And so there was part of me, and part of me still is. A very small part of me is on the fence of like, Google's going to have to figure this out. And if we talk to people like our usual friend Jeff Coyle from Market Use, like, he's like, they have to figure this out. They, they're, they need. And it's like, they're going to. And I, I'm like, part of me is like, yeah, okay, they, you're right, they have to. And then part of me is like, but we can't build the business model around the potential of them figuring it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what, what's right? You know, they're almost like, they have this, like in today's digital world, they're almost like a public utility in some regards. They want to kind of get the benefits of that, but not, you know, the, the downsides of that. But we're kind of waiting around for them to figure it out because like, what we see in search is like, this cannot be the future. Right. This cannot be. Or faced with this core results and Reddit and age domain spam and E commerce sites ranking with AI that are not actually E commerce sites. There's all sorts of problems with the, with the, with Google specifically. I don't say the Internet with Google.

And, and the reason when you say that they need to figure it out and they need to fix it, that's because the results, the, that belief is like, the results aren't as good as they should be. Like, these are not the things that people want to see. Is that kind of the basic premise with it? Yeah.

Even the AI overviews, you know, how that was kind of been bungled and there's all sorts of, you know, examples of incorrect information or blatant kind of plagiarism. Like there's, there's all sorts of issues. And so yeah, there's this like ethical, like it should be, it should be. This is not ethical. But then there's this other element which is like in their self interest right there, at a certain point, users are going to start finding other ways to access information if their queries are not being satisfied. And we're starting to see that a little bit. Like I think I monitor the search dominance rankings and Google's had like 90% for years and they're starting to dip down like a couple points each month. Not huge, but there's Bing, there's alternative search, there's other platforms are not search engines, but like TikTok is a similar function.

Yeah.

And so they're, they're under pressure and, and their challenge is they're trying to ride this AI effect and they want to kind of be upfront with, with their, with their AI technology where they kind of surface the answer engine in a different way. But they also have this legacy business model that's really dependent on, you know, the Google search we know, which is, you know, people contributing creators or publishers Contributing information to the open web for free without an expectation of getting compensation other than, okay, we can monetize with display ads or affiliate links or acquiring customers or building lists or whatever. Like, we can use that free traffic. And that has been a very opening effect, I think, honestly, to the economy. Like, people want to share information, but now it's almost like a publisher's. I know, it's like, nope, we gotta lock it down. Yeah, this, this contract is broken. Even if it wasn't an official contract.

Yeah, you, you, we give you content, you display it, and then we get traffic from it. And that relationship worked. A small portion of the people that use Google would then click on ads. That's how they make their money. The majority of people who use Google click on the organic search and you make money from affiliate or you make money from ads. And like you said, when that contract is broken, then you step back and you say, okay, maybe I need to figure out a different way to approach this. And additionally, it feels like the relationship is maybe fractured when there's these recent Google leaks. Can you talk about what that was and then what information that included in it?

Yeah. So I'm, I'm by no means like the expert on Google leaks. There's some really great Twitter follows or X follows, but from my understanding, basically this was an insider kind of Fed, or someone with knowledge had access to all the documentation around how they basically engineer search results. And this was leaked to the public at various stages. And now it's kind of like accessible to anyone. And a lot of it, you know, there's a whole almost can't even summarize it in just a couple words or even a couple minutes. But, like, there were, there was a lot of information there that came out that was like, people suspected. But Google had publicly said, oh, no, we don't do that. Like, do you have an example? Yeah, yeah, like, click through data. They said, well, we don't measure, like, we don't really measure, like, clicks on a link. You know, like, say if there's 10 results in Google search and, you know, users, nine times out of 10 are not clicking the first result, they're clicking the third result, then that will inform their algorithm to rank the third result higher maybe than that first result over time. And they said, oh, it's not really how it works. And so it's all this kind of like gaslighting around, you know, people with theories on the Internet and turns out that, yeah, it's a real thing. And so much, you know, to the point of like today, there's actually some. I saw some agencies that are actually offering services where it's like, we will, from anonymized locations, click your result, we'll enter, you know, and like, yeah, that has. It's like the growth hack that's really working right now. So it's like all of these types of things. The manipulation is kind of laid bare. It's like the empire emperor has no clothes.

Yeah.

And a lot of the stuff we all suspected was true.

Yeah. It's interesting. Like, you can understand from Google's perspective why they would say that's not true. Because the response then is like, you share like, then these, these agencies is like, okay, if that's what happens, like, we're going to figure out some way to like hack this. And then suddenly it doesn't work as a variable in the algorithm because you can't really trust that the clicks are the clicks. And so there's this. It's almost like a weird relationship where, you know, Google is forced to say things publicly in maybe these kind of like shadowy ways where it's like, ah, it's like not exactly what we do. And then there's this leak that comes out and it's like, oh, that is actually something you do. And it's easy to understand why they would say that, but it also then feels dishonest to be like, yes, well, so then how do we trust what you're saying?

And well, I think it gets at the core of it is. Which is Google can't really assess quality content. You know, they're trying to look at because. Or they can't do it affordably. And so they're looking at these different attributes to kind of approximate, you know, backlinks. Historically had been people voting for your site and. And so yeah. And even things like author profiles, it turns out like, like, oh, you know, you know, just having an offer profile. But there's like certain like tag. I guess there's like tags where it's like in there, in the documentation. I don't know how again it was phrased, but it was something like author by like whatever signal, author bio. Or like it would be like small site classifier. And so like. Yeah.

Or like, like expertise on like science or like.

Yeah.

Categorize people as like having certain expertise or sites as expertise in certain areas. Or like. Yeah. And the idea being like, sites were tagged as being.

And Google said, no, we don't do that, you know, and like, there's no difference between a small publisher and a big publisher. But oh, by the way they have these tags. It's like you're a small publisher which basically said like you're in a different, you're gonna get different treatment. There's not again, there's like is there a smoking gun that says they. Just because they have these tags or modifiers doesn't necessarily mean they're measuring it or doesn't tell us how important they are. Yeah, but it just kind of goes to show these are things that they were, they had come up with a name for it, they come up with a classifier. So they probably were using it in some way.

Some way, yeah. So does the information from the Google leaks. I haven't spent a ton of time with it. Does that. Would you say it still is relevant to understand from somebody who's interested in how search works in like a post helpful content world or is it more of just like the general sentiment around some of the information is helpful to know?

Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think it's like there are certainly tactics that is probably a small window where you could probably do like the click manipulation, you know, but they're Google now is under pressure. They're going to have to change, they're going to have to counteract that because otherwise they're going to be in a, in a sea of spam because everyone's going to be just, oh, here's the playbook. We're going to follow it. So they're going to have to adjust it and kind of prevent the exploits. So I would probably encourage most of the audience here is like yes, I wouldn't necessarily arbitrage the short term here but I think, you know, in terms of the long term replay, you know I, I would kind of just keep it, keep it in mind that like you know, I think there's this public messaging that Google gives around. Just create great content. We're going to rank you. Like to me that is misleading and false. Given the current environment, given the leaks that have come out, given just the treatment of sites that have quality content that are being caught up, you know in, in this whole kind of impact of helpful content. Like and that's kind of where my just like don't take Google's word for it anymore because there's all this evidence to suggest that.

Yeah, evidence through best practice that people have learned kind of with experiments on their own. But then also something like this comes out and it's like actual like documentation to some degr.

I think overall if I were to zoom out like what's my takeaway, like I have an end goal I want to go to now which is kind of acquiring users or building a community that is what I call within my, within my moat, within my walled garden. And so having like my newsletter, I talk about this like raising the drawbridge, which is like, you know, the old Internet like we talked about. You just publish great content, other people consume it. Yeah, you have to see an ad, but like you get high quality content maybe where all you have to do is view an ad and like that is the cost for anyone to access uncommon knowledge. And so I think actually in the kind of the long term within this, like particularly with AI and like how easy it is now to create mediocre content with AI or like boilerplate knowledge with AI, you know, that uncommon knowledge, having an ability to raise your drawbridge and say, you know what, I want to, you know, actually not share this information widely. And that's kind of has a chilling effect I think on the Internet as a whole, you know, right now. But like being able to build in those mechanisms to our, our businesses where we're not just dependent on what Google, what kind of traffic Google is sending me today. You're actually building a recurring. Even if it's 3% or 2% or half a percent, the traffic you receive gets on an email list. Like those are the types of things I'm thinking about long term.

Yeah, that's great. And I love that phrase uncommon knowledge. Like that I feel like is maybe a better way to define like niche or niche expertise. It's like you have uncommon knowledge and I think especially in a post artificial intelligence, post gen AI world that is really valuable because the common knowledge is going to become easier to access and there's going to be more competition against open web competition or open web content if it's something that is common knowledge. But insofar as you have uncommon knowledge and want to be strategic about building like a content based business, that idea of raising the drawbridge is really compelling. By that what I understand you to mean is like you have the ability to say this is my closed off area. This is my membership site, this is my newsletter, this is my, you know, group. It could be even be an in person meeting or in person meetup. That is going to be the thing that you potentially as a creator moving forward can be strategic about as opposed to how do I publish everything for free and make it available for free and then monetize through ads and affiliate. Is that accurate?

Correct? Yeah, exactly.

So then the question is what does that look like to actually get discovered because you have to have, you know, you said that 2, 3, 4, 5%, whatever it might be, that eventually becomes part of that kind of closed off community for us. We have, you know, our podcast and on the podcast we occasionally talk about the membership site of Food Blogger Pro. But I know that if I publish this podcast, there's a very good chance the transcripts are going to be ingested into some like AI gen, AI open AI like Gemini with Google and that will then potentially give people answers. But for us, it's worth it at this point because we think, hey, a number of those people are going to convert over.

Yeah.

But we are able to deliver that through a podcast app, you know, through, you know, other places that people are listening to podcasts. How do you do that? How do you get there in this? Like in your case, like you have a site that's impacted by helpful content. So what does it look like then to acquire that traffic, those, those people that you're going to bring into your community if it's hard to get them through search?

Yeah. So I think it takes like this back to basics mentality of, you know, trying to imagine yourself operating in a Google free world. You know, of course a lot of our sites still get, still do get traffic. So you, but this kind of reimagine, looking at all the, like, I've started installing like different traffic Google Analytics alternatives because they do a better job of surfacing like alternative traffic streams. And what do you understand, like plausible IO. There's a couple others even like, I'm blanking on the names, but this is a whole slew of analytics. First, it's not an afterthought that Google kind of threw in there. It's easy to use and you start to understand how are people finding us. And just by doing that, if you start visualizing your traffic, be like, oh, I go down the rabbit hole, this random forum is sending me traffic. Let me, let me figure out how that's happening. Or Facebook, I'm getting shared somewhere, someone is sharing my post somewhere, even if I don't have a community. And then start, you start to put the pieces together of like, what could an alternative recipe for your traffic look like? And where. Google has been the golden goose. So we kind of reimagined like, okay, there's Pinterest, there's Facebook, there's you know, talk about Reddit. Reddit's like the thing, I think that's really working. But like there's a bunch of different alternative traffic Sources that we can analyze. And I've started to create little hypotheses around each of our sites. And when you think about, you know, the value of your site, your that was reliant maybe a lot on Google traffic. There's the immediate reality that, okay, it's not that Google business is kind of broken, but it doesn't mean your content doesn't have value. And so part of the exercise is figuring out what are the, what is the intrinsic value of your content. You know, if it really is high quality content. Right. Could you put a drop bridge in front of it or could you redistribute that on a different platform? And so some of the things that are hot right now are like, you know, Facebook pages now doing kind of these. Like Facebook's become like a viral kind of like traffic source. It's like interesting and obscure kind of rabbit holes that you can go down.

What do you mean by that? So viral traffic source, meaning it can send viral traffic or it's. Facebook has picked up speed with content creators as a, as a traffic source. Like it's. Yeah. As a platform has become viral or okay, yeah, yeah.

And so like what's working? Again, we've only had so limited success here so far, but there are people that are having success with creating their, boosting their fan pages above, you know, four or five thousand Likes or members and then kind of distributing traffic that engages that audience and they come directly from Facebook to your website. And you can still. The nice thing about those strategies is you don't have to change your monetization infrastructure. Right. So you can keep the ads. In fact, the AD RPMs are often higher coming from Facebook than coming from Google right now. And so you can kind of keep that flywheel turning. Or Pinterest is another example. Execute a Pinterest strategy where all your recipes are getting distributed on Pinterest and that kind of has this organic mechanism to it where things are getting shared and ranking in Pinterest and then that becomes a traffic stream. And again that doesn't rely on you changing your. If you have display ads, you can keep using those display ads. I think where it gets challenging is if you are selling maybe products or you had affiliate based business and you have to change your monetization model and your traffic model.

Yeah.

At the same time. Or you know, you can choose one or the other. And so, you know, it's like figuring out like putting those pieces together and you know, YouTube's another one. Right. Where like people are investing in that. And I Look at all of these as these are traffic arbitrages. But then I connect it to what we talked about earlier, which is. And then what? Okay, we're, we need to get those people converted into something that allows me to have a conversation to re engage them that is less intermediated by these tech companies.

Yeah, it's interesting. Just as a real quick aside, you had mentioned, you know, these different traffic sources can be more or less valuable. And this is for pinch of yum. Ad stacks are always going to be different but like Pinterest RPM $78 like wow, that's a really valuable traffic source. Direct 54, you know, Facebook like you said 4222. Google search for US 4158. But you can start to see like yeah, okay, if you had a site that had, you know, 75% of the traffic, but the majority of it was from Pinterest, it probably would be earning more than a site that would just have traffic from Google. And so you can start to be strategic about what that looks like to get traffic from different sources. And so much of this world, I don't know if you can relate to this. It feels like it's this never ending balance between what is the tactic that's working?

Yes.

And what does content that actually helps people look like? And how do you dance with those two realities? Because you can't go heads down and just say I'm going to just create extremely compelling content. Because there's always going to be variables that are like here's what's working on YouTube right now, here's what's, here's best practices as it relates to SEO. Like it's this balance between tactics, what's working, what's not working and how do you create content that's really good content that helps people with the thing that they're trying to do. I'm curious to know what does, what does that balance look like for you and your team as you think about that dance?

I mean it's incredibly challenging in some ways because you know, we're again like if you, you could publish the most comprehensive guide to whatever in your vertical, the best recipe, publish it. And maybe recipe is the wrong example, but like let's say the best frying pans or something like, and it would be better than Consumer Reports even. It would be more firsthand. You could test all the frying pans, you could publish that. And if you're not in the favor of few, that article's not getting visibility in Google. And so that's it that kind of gets to your point, which is the distribution method versus the content, that the content quality. Those are kind of separate conversations. And as online marketers, like we're constantly navigating what is the best distribution method for our content. And sometimes, you know, we've created content for Google for years and years and years and maybe creating content for Pinterest is similar but different. Like what, what is quality for that platform? Kind of marries both objective quality with the what goes kind of viral, what gets picked up by that platform, what gets ranked and what. Who is that person using that platform? Right. For Pinterest it's a certain demographic. And so maybe your content is actually going to be a little bit different than what it was for Google or YouTube or you know, Facebook. So, you know, it's a constant challenge for us. And I think again, what I try to keep in mind is these are what I've reminded ourselves. Like we like, we like to think of ourselves as a media company. We like, oh, we're a media company. And when I really thought like after this update, when I really thought about it, I was like, okay, yeah, but like we're actually a Google company.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Like as much as I want to be like I'm a media entrepreneur, like, like I'm like, you know, I don't know, like Walt Disney or something. No, no, no, we're a Google Satellite.

Yeah, sure, yeah, like we are creating content.

How do I, how do I change that dynamic long term? It's going to take a lot of work. I have to get really good at these traffic arbitrages and understanding distribution in this new environment, in this ever changing environment. But again, if I on the back end, I have this way to capture, capture users to have conversations on my own terms. Like that I think is the end goal which is could be in our own community. Like you talked about your food blogger community or with an email list, whatever it is like having that converse or in person events, like having that conversation on my own terms or more on my own terms than not. Right?

Yeah. So like, like it's not exclusively on your own terms. Yeah, but more often than not.

Exactly. And there's still things to navigate. But I think of like my community is kind of the end goal, I think for where I'm trying to go with, with some of these verticals and, and then being like we can play a different game. We don't have to play this musical chairs game. Or at least it's more valuable because we're capturing x percent of those users, if something changes, hey, we have 10,000 members of our community. Like, it's not going to rock the boat as much.

Yeah. Like you have a community and that community shows up every day. They go directly to the site, they log in, wherever that might be. Maybe it's on like a subdomain of your URL, or maybe it's within another platform. But that community is in and of itself the. The solution. As opposed to in a, in another world that might be like, hey, you're getting traffic and people are coming to your site, but it's kind of transactional. They have something they're thinking about doing, they're wanting to buy, you know, frying pan and learn about it, or they're wanting a Reuben recipe and they find you. As opposed to a community which can kind of persevere through algorithm updates and.

Yes.

And platform changes. Because that is the thing. That's where people are going, that's the solution.

So, and as an, yeah, as an intermediate step too, because sometimes that's overwhelming when I think about like, oh, I have to create a community. Like, wow, that sounds difficult. An intermediate step for me is either become a customer or somehow get their email list or, you know, or get them engaged on different platforms. Right. And so you have this ability to, once you figure out what community is, you can market it to people, even if you don't have it quite figured out just yet.

Yeah. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens. Imagine your kitchen. It's more than just a place to cook. It's where your creativity comes to life. It's where you nourish your family, your friends and yourself with food and conversation. Now imagine sharing that kitchen with the world. Imagine inviting people in to experience your unique flavors, your personal touch, your passion for food. At Member Kitchens, they believe that every food creator has a special kitchen to share. And their job is to help you swing the doors wide open. Their white label meal planning platform is your virtual kitchen. It's fully equipped with everything you need to showcase your recipes and brand, build a loyal community and earn a sustainable income. As one customer said, recurring revenue is life changing. Your kitchen will integrate with tools you already use, like Zapier and WordPress. And it's fully configurable, putting you in complete control of your brand and your business, all in an easy to use interface backed up with stellar one on one support. So if you're ready to share your kitchen with the world, set up your Own member kitchen. Visit memberkitchens.com today to learn more and start your free trial and use the code Food blogger Pro for 50% off your first two months of any plan. Can you talk a little bit? I know one of the strategies that you're starting to look at and use is Reddit as a place to launch a community. It's been in just this morning I was thinking about this outside of the conversation that we were having today. Just on my own I was thinking there's like such incredible information on Reddit. I don't love going to Reddit and like spending time in Reddit, but like I want to be intentional to like tap into some of the communities I'm interested in. So I've even noticing in my own kind of psyche thinking about kind of community based information and in getting that information for myself. But I know that there's also an opportunity for somebody who wants to build a thing online to use that as kind of like a broad pursuit that we're all doing to leverage pre existing platforms to kind of build a version of that community or to tap into pre existing communities. So can you talk about kind of some of your early thoughts as you've explored Reddit as a platform?

Yeah. So I'll start with why did I even stumble on Reddit? So like as I was thinking about all of our traffic losses and starting to analyze the search results for like okay, well who are, who's even replacing us? You know, I noticed that like some of the e commerce sites were ranking for their own stuff. Like the best frying pans would be the frying pan company all of a sudden. And so I was like, well, I can't really be the frying pan company. Other things I noticed were like user generated content. So when I, when I say that I mean forums, but most prominently Reddit and kind of Reddit. One way to think about it is just, it's like the granddaddy of forums. It's basically a huge platform where anyone can create a subreddit on anything. You know, people can participate, there's some rules about it but like it's this like decentralization of the Internet. They want to be the front page of the Internet where people can explore their, their passions or so it, on its surface it's a very good match for kind of what we're trying to do, which is like these very niche, like there might be 3,000 people that are into, under, into underwater basket weaving. But like there's a passionate community, you know, on Reddit. About that.

Yeah.

And so there's that natural affinity that you were kind of getting to. And the way I've kind of come to think about Reddit is it's actually two different things. And this is like a revelation to me a little bit. There's Reddit as a platform, like a Facebook. It's a. It's a social community with its own kind of currency. There's karma, there's all sorts of, like, little nuances to how it works and etiquette. And each subreddit has its own rules and there's a homepage and stuff that goes viral gets featured on the homepage, and then there's categories and if you. Things on certain groups can go viral. So, like, there's a whole little algorithm and a way of operating, interacting with Reddit as a platform, but then there's Reddit as a search proxy. And what I mean by that is it's basically Reddit. It's like Reddit and Google are kind of synonymous in that sense. So because Google is sometimes giving Reddit such precedence, even ranking them first, even kind of describe that, since what that picture looks like, if you've noticed, maybe your verticals, you know, there'll be a Reddit answer and that may be on the first page somewhere. It'll be that blue line, that blue link that maybe a website used to get. But then there's like four related subreddits, or threads, if you will, that are also in their pack is bigger. So, like, they're not getting like the standard website pack. They're getting like maybe 1.5 times the real estate just for their normal results. Right. And then so there's almost. There's five opportunities to rank in that pack that tends to be featured prominently. Then there's this new search feature called Discussions and Forums, which is almost like it's like the news category. It's like a new thing that Google has added as a tab. So if you just wanted to search discussion forums, you could just search Google that way. But even if you're not, they're going to have that, like, pack and it's going to be. Usually it's going to. It's going to have that title, Discussions and forums, and there's going to be four, three or four separate links below that too. And oftentimes they'll be on the same page. So Reddit will get treated like a publisher with its, you know, with that box I described, and it's going to have discussions and forums, of which two of the three are Reddit. Maybe Quora's in there, you know, maybe some other random forum is in there. But like sometimes when I'm finding search queries like 40 to 50% of the page ends up kind of being Reddit. And so that's one. If you're looking at how to replace your Google traffic, that's like a very immediate place to start. Step one. Step two, it's like operating on the world's most powerful domain. It's like, you know, Dr. 100. And by creating a subreddit or a community within Reddit and then you kind of get that URL descriptor. So it'd be like Reddit dash or slash pinch of young and that would be your community. You can like I've had, I've done. What was a light bulb moment for me is we publish like 3, 3 posts on Reddit on, I think it was like we have on like a newsletter stacks. I just like out of the curiosity I created a little community and it was a convertkit versus beehive. And we ranked on the first page within like three days. And we were ranking like it was like above Neil Patel and niche pursuits. And so that was a light bulb moment for me. I was like, wait a second. This is basically a super high powered publishing platform to get that Google real estate. So that's a long way of saying like there's two versions of Reddit and you can optimize for both. And oftentimes just by optimizing for Google search, you end up getting interactions and that viral boost as well internally in Reddit.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was thinking about there's this personal finance app we use, Monarch Money. And I've noticed myself using the Monarch Money Reddit to see how people are using it, but also to get answers. And I didn't until this moment think about the fact that they as a company potentially set that up as a, you know, solution for their users. Maybe they didn't, maybe it was somebody else who just said set it up. But I do notice they're in it, responding, giving thorough responses. They almost view it as like a support channel similarly to what they would like, you know, support.monal money.com.

Yes.

And it's interesting, you know, this change that you see with in and I just Googled just out of curiosity, best frying pan, you know, there's, I have the search labs AI overview activated. So like that's the first thing that you see is like Google's generative AI response to it. There are in this case a handful of like, you know, affiliate type sites, U.S. news & Reports, New York Magazine series seats, Consumer Reports, but then it's Reddit. And then towards the bottom they have that discussions and forums kind of area and you know, it's frying pan recommendations on Reddit and then to Quora links as well. So one of the questions that I would have is, I know kind of the spirit of Reddit. Like pretty quickly a Reddit community can sniff out like self promotion. To what degree do you are. Do you have to be aware of that as you're interacting with the community? Because it feels like the purest form of Reddit is, hey, I'm a guy out in the world, a girl out in the world chatting about this thing that I like. And as soon as it gets into the category of like, hey, I'm kind of marketing my thing that very quickly there could be maybe pushback against that. So what does that look like to walk that line? Well, within the context of a.

Reddit community, I would say yes, yes, your assessment is correct in, in some ways. And I think one of, that's the, one of the things I had to get past. I tried Reddit, you think, years ago, and it felt like anytime I posted anything was vaguely like promotional, it would just get shut down. I think that was true of Reddit 5, 10 years ago. Right. So like one, a lot of we have to revisit our, our preconceived notions about what Reddit is today partially because they've had an influx of users and because Google surfacing like Reddit, you know, in a way that, like, there's a whole different influx of different types of users. Like there's the hardcore Redditors, you know, the crunchy, like angry people that, you know, everything that like any kind of commercial, anything was bad, but there's, I think most people, it's actually not the case. That's a trope, I think with Reddit, partially because any place you land on Reddit, there's good, there's a. You're generally landing on a subreddit and each subreddit is governed by different rules. And oh, by the way, York, you can create a subreddit pinch of yum or whatever, foodlogger Pro. And you can, you're the king. You can create all the rules. Sure. So what this really means is that like Reddit is, is just a, it can be anything. It's like the Internet. It's like you can create a bad site or a bad community, like not using those superlatives, but like you can create different rules, right. And I think, like, there's different nuances that are, that I'm seeing emerging. There's like, as moderators, right? These are the people that are generally moderators of like, the old Reddit. These are unpaid volunteers. And a lot of them have, like, intrinsic motivation to do that. But that is not a scalable model. Right. Like, there's even been talk with, like, if you follow like the Reddit's ipo, like, how are they going to compensate these moderators and are they going to get that preferred stock and all that kind of stuff like that? It's, it's a problem. The problem to scale that. And so you kind of end up with, like, there's certain. Some communities, they come up their own rules. Like you have to have 10 karma to comment or, you know, in each. And once you see one community, you just see one community. There is like a universal Reddit algorithm where, like, if you create an account and blast it with affiliate links, like, your account's gonna be banned. But that's more of a algorithmic thing. It just picks up on the pattern. It's like, okay, no, so, you know, kind of, I guess so what it's like, okay, so how I am finding success engaging with Reddit is one experimenting. Because there is no rule around how many profiles you can have. In fact, there's a subculture within Reddit of having multiple profiles for, like, different purposes, you know, and like, not necessarily having just one profile or even one community. You can create tens of, you know, communities, you know, around different subjects you're passionate about. So one is like, there's no real enforcement mechanism. And if we look at Reddit compared with Google, there's no webspam team at Reddit. They have a fraction of the resources. But they have been. Their implicit guidance from Google basically is like, you are now in charge of the Internet.

Effectively.

Yeah. But it's like, well, they don't.

Have the resources traffic that they're getting now because of Google search. Suddenly there's this influx of people consuming the content, but also then creating the content on.

Reddit. Yes. And so Google's kind of devolved that responsibility to Reddit. And from Google's perspective, like, well, we find a lot of users really preferred. And there was this phenomenon where someone would search like Food Blogger pro Reddit, which would be like the, the, the, the problem there was like Reddit's internal search was really.

Bad. So they would go to Google to get.

The. Yeah, to get the right answer in Reddit. And so Google kind of interpreted that well, people want Reddit. And so, you know, that's part of, I think the reason why they. But the other idea being that there's moderators like, you know, there's this filter. Right, Interesting.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. And like a built in moderator, which was an issue that Google's having, was moderating content. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the reality is there's, there's, it's kind of like the wild west, you know, right now. And at the very least what I'm telling everyone I know is like set up your, your kind of white hat, your above board, like your profile and it could just be like food food blogger pro subreddit. And to your point about people will bring consumer complaints maybe to that forum. And by the way, those, those complaints happen anyway. And if you don't register your community, someone else might or you might get mentioned in a different, you know, like blogging community. Be like, hey, that your guy, he's terrible. But you don't have a way to really address.

It.

Right. And so just by having a venue on Reddit that's like, oh, here's where you can go to talk about us, that'll have some intrinsic benefits. But then just distributing your content on Reddit, like even if it's content you've already created, just like you might with Facebook and Pinterest and whatever, like create your Reddit post and some brands just put their link, naked link in there and I kind of get into that in like my, in the course I created. But like you can, what I found success doing is providing context like hey, here's a product I reviewed. Like I found that it was like great for this, this and this. It really sucked for this. But check out the, like here's the link to check out the full review for like my, my full analysis and all my images. And so it's kind of like, it's almost like remember dig back in the day, it's kind of like that's a similar era and genre and vibe that kind of Reddit is, has. And so just by doing a little bit of adjustment to your distribution strategy, you can get, you know, that traffic that'll, there's the viral traffic. And by the way, a lot of times that keyword you might be targeting on your article that you publish on your blog that isn't ranking Google is getting picked up by Reddit. And so it's an extra step that someone goes from Google to Reddit to your post and then you know, it's, but it's it's a way to.

Recapture.

Yeah. Some of that.

Traffic. That's interesting. And with, you know, the Monarch Money example, like, it was, it was a good thing. When I look back to it, it's like they were able to like, have these customer support. I don't know how they feel about it, but like have these customer support interactions in a way where they probably surfaced easier on Google. It was easier for people to find them. They had access to this community. So almost in a good way, it was like they had access to their customers maybe in a way that they wouldn't have otherwise. And what I hear you saying that is, you know, the, the search part made sense where you previously, you know, in your example of Beehive versus ConvertKit, could maybe have created an article that would get onto the first page and you could have gotten traffic to that keyword. In the current state of Google, much harder to do that. But if you create that on Reddit, you might be able to get search traffic to that. So that conceptually it's like, okay, that makes sense where you're kind of finding a way to still get access to that audience. But the thing that I hadn't really considered is like this idea of just you kind of are building a community that you can then speak directly to. And I think about that within the context of a brand. Yeah, you know, like Pinch of Yam. Not currently actively doing this, but like for a while had this Pinch of Yum VIP group and it's like that was the group that we would talk to when we're like, hey, we're thinking of like tweaking the logo. Which one of these do you like best? A, B or C? Like, it was just a place to interact with the community and, and a natural platform to do that. And it's almost like you could even think about leading with that. You know, especially for people that are listening to this podcast who are kind of brand forward type creators, not necessarily like product forward, but they have a brand and their brand is their site and they create content on that site. But like a way to interact with your community and let them know stuff that's happening, things that are going on. Additional benefit of potentially capturing search traffic related to some of the things that you're creating content about. What does it look like? Like, talk to me about the drawbridge idea is that like a hop after, like you have search traffic that you might be getting, it might come straight to your site. You have search traffic that maybe comes to Reddit that eventually comes to Your site, you know, maybe you have people on Reddit who are seeing something you post and come to your site. At what point do you imagine that, like, drawbridge scenario happening where you try and build that audience of 3% of your traffic that comes into your community, whether it's a newsletter or like a paid community, like we have with Food Blogger Pro, like, where does that happen in that process? Or do you view that as Reddit, that.

Community? Yeah. So it's interesting because I think it's. Reddit has a couple different ways. Like there's this intermediate step of someone joins your community on Reddit. And so then what that basically means is kind of like someone liking your Facebook page. Like when you publish something where some activity happens in your group that gets surfaced and prefaced like in, in your feed when you log into Reddit. So if I, if I subscribe to Food Blogger Pro, if you post something today, I'll probably see that, like, next time I log in. Not every time there's an algorithm. It's not perfect, but like, there's that additional sticky layer where with Google, like, you know, I guess they kind of have, like, if you visited a site before, they might preface it, but there wasn't, like you couldn't have a membership through Google, you know, with a site, really. And so there's that element and that's a huge advantage. Have that additional stickiness. And then. Yeah, and then it's getting people, if you can come to your site to capture them that way, just like you would with Google. But I've even seen like, it's a wide open kind of playbook. I've seen people getting users then to go to Discord as an example and then. Or going to an email list, but like to Discord as like something that's a little bit more sticky. And then. Because Discord is something that you have a little bit more control over and, and even more so than Reddit. Like in theory, Reddit could take away your community from you. Like, you know, if you do something nefarious or whatever, there's even a. They have that cover this in the course. But it's like this, this place, I didn't know that existed, where you can claim lost Reddits, where someone stopped moderating or there's a lot of spam and you basically say, hey, hey, I want to take this over. Here's the process. Like I want to manage it actively. And I was in there and found one, like examples of container homes, that subreddit was being taken over by some Spam. But there are people that had questions and there was real engagement happening. And there's a process. You go through this 27,000 members and you could, this person was like, hey, can I have this community to moderate? And yeah, here you go. Like there's a process to go through. But yeah, you have access now, 27,000 subscribers. And anyway, so like, yeah, you can get people off of Reddit. There's also, it's like a landing page almost in the sense of you can sticky posts at the top and say like one example I give, it's like, welcome to our page. Follow us on Discord. Like also follow us here. And then you kind of get everyone that kind of sees that homepage over to Discord. Then there's also a sidebar, just like you would have on a website where you can have rules. You can have outbound links to an email list, to your YouTube channel, to your website, to other subreddits that you recommend. And so there's all sorts of like, if you really get into it, like building the spider web of related communities like food bloggers and bloggers and you know, recipe book creators, like, you can kind of create this web of related communities that refer traffic to each other and then also have places where they can offshoot to either become a customer or subscriber that is off channel off Reddit. And so that's kind of how I think about it. It's kind of the world's your oyster in the sense there's like a million different places and ways you can get people off of Reddit. But yeah, I mean it's, it's kind of, it's I similar to any other kind of platform. But I think Reddit gives you more real estate that you can work. I've even seen some subreddits that almost look like landing pages or squeeze.

Funnels. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting even to use that Monarch example. Like I just pulled it up now. I've never even looked at the like the homepage, the subreddit homepage, but they have a little blurb here. Extend your trial 50% off now through July 10th. Use the link below to get an extended 30 day trial. 50% off an annual subscription. Useful Links Monarch Website Monarch Help Center Feature Request Product Roadmap like, yeah, it's like, oh, okay. Like you can pretty easily see. Yeah, exactly how they're using it. You know, and they have the rules like it. But it's, it's interesting. Or even like pinned to the top is Monarch is hiring Join our team. You know, it's as you may know, this subreddit, you know, experiencing a lot of growth, do hard work, like join our team. And as a community manager, like, it's, it's all of this is like me learning this from you in real.

Time.

Yeah. Like I need to go through the course to like learn more. But you can start to see very quickly like, oh, this makes a lot of sense and if you have the bandwidth to kind of be a part of it, maybe that's a good question. To round out conversation is like how, you know, people are trying to keep up with their site, you know, updates, maybe doing keyword research, doing all the content production, if they're doing it on their own, maybe on some social platforms. But what does it look like from a time perspective when you think about folding this in as a part of what you're.

Doing? Yeah, so that's a great question. It's going to vary a little bit, you know, obviously depending on what you got going on. But for me, I've realized it's when I look at all the alternatives and I'm trying everything, right. Some of it's working like Pinterest is working, but it's slow, it's a slog. It's like six to 12 months and then finally you get enough outbound clicks for it to make a difference. Like with Reddit, the ROI is quick. Like often within 24 hours we're showing up on the first page and like to have that push button effect is like, gives me a lot of confidence. That's a good place to invest resources. So I'd just like to caveat this whole thing. Reddit now has the same brand visibility, digital visibility as Amazon.com and it's happened in six months. And so I think there's this opportunity now that again I also. The human brain is so bad at like.

Exponentials. Yeah.

Right. Like I've even me like I've been used to doing things with Google for 10 years and it's like, oh, Google's, here's the Google strategy. And like everyone's kind of now knows about SEO, where maybe five years ago is still kind of an emerging thing. But this is like early, early days for this Reddit kind of phenomenon. And I kind of think about it in. Because there's a risk here with investing time in another platform and then pulling the rug on you. Right. So I kind of think about this in 2K, the bear case and the bull case. Like the bear case, worst case scenario, Google stops prefacing Reddit, they're like, you know, we made a mistake, we're not going to feature you so highly. Okay, there's still going to be some residual traffic from Google, but Google has added so many users to Reddit and every minute they're having more users. So at a certain point the plane is big enough to fly on its own and Reddit kind of can take off and they can call their own shots. If enough people sign up and become part of those communities that are very sticky and very engaging and get a notification every time someone posts something, it kind of has this network effect that takes over. But that's the bear case. Like Reddit is another Facebook. The bull case is that that is true and Google still continues to give them all this free traffic and there's still the search arbitrage. And so I kind of look at it relative to these other places where I invest my time and energy and I really like that, those, that kind of range of outcomes I'm very comfortable investing. What I recommend everyone start with is just get your brand presence on, on Reddit, even if you're just distributing your content and providing a little blurb just like you would for Facebook. Like it's, I think most of us and most of your audience probably has like a publication cadence or like a, here's what we do when something goes live. You know, you share the link on here, here and here. We'll add Reddit to that, maybe prioritize Reddit a little bit more. But that's like minimal investment. It's probably like if you're doing that or your VA is doing your editors doing that, just have them add it to the list and just see what happens over three months. You know, it's not going to add a huge, maybe going to add a couple minutes maybe, but it's not going to be this huge investment. I think if you're, if you see some signs of progress there and you want to dig in, then it's kind of like that traffic leak or like engagement strategy of really investing into the platform, commenting on other subreddits and then there's a whole strategy around even just attaching yourself to a pre existing subreddit. It could be like gluten free recipes, like there's a subreddit and you just start engaging with that community and over time you develop a relationship, you're allowed to share stuff, you figure out the rules and you can get traffic either directly from that community or if that's like a no go, you can get traffic from Gluten free recipes to your pinch of yum subreddit. And there's like this funnel effect. So it's, it actually, it has this like, like we're, we're approaching it as marketers, but it has a very natural kind of like you're providing value, you're developing relationship, but you're, you're actually like spending time just like you would on Instagram or Facebook, like actually engaging with the platform in a deeper way. And so that's another level investment. And then like the crazy investment strategy that I, I've explored it all because I really want to understand the platform regardless if I want to pursue these tactics. Is a whole underground market for acquiring communities, subreddits, acquiring user accounts with high karma, buying up votes, buying down votes. There's a whole kind of like I call black hat SEO operations around. Right. So that, that would involve spending money to acquire accounts and things like that. That's a whole like buyer beware. Yeah, but that like, I would say like you can start small, start with just treating it like another platform to distribute your content and then see if that resonates, if that.

Works.

Yeah. And then take it from.

There. And it, you know, I think the majority of people who are listening to this have some brand and the way that they, whether it's a personal brand or just like a brand that's maybe not them personally, but like a brand that they kind of curate. And so I think the biggest takeaway is like, what does it look like to have a brand presence in a place that's somewhere you haven't thought about before, at least for a lot of people. And how do you curate that and treat that? Well, you know, I think a lot of people listening would think about Instagram, you know, and then there may be like, and TikTok is also kind of one of those things. But as you've talked about, and it's interesting even to look up on like a keyword research app like Reddit. It's like helpful content update. And then it's like up and to the.

Right.

Yes. And it's just bonkers. Like I don't, I don't remember what it was, but it's like I can pull it up here like 600 million and organic traffic, you know, and it's 10x what it was, you know, less than a year ago or a year ago, essentially, like exactly a year ago. So it's like 10x primarily, I would assume due to search traffic plus then the flywheel that happens when you sign up for an account, you get notice notices and notifications you're linking to it, more things like that. So it's important for anybody who's creating content on the Internet to at least be aware of it and then for us to make the decision around how do we approach that from kind of a brand strategy perspective, I think is super smart. So I know that you have a course that you talked about, and I think it's a great way to quickly accelerate our learning. Anytime that we can, you know, draft off of all of the work that somebody else has done and then has compiled that into an easy to consume course, it's a big win. I know you have that on Reddit. Can you talk a little bit about that if anybody wants to check it out or look into.

It? Yeah. And so like, I'm not a course creator. Like, you know me, of course well, like really never had anything to sell. But I, what I stumbled on with Reddit was like, oh my God, like, no one's talking about this. Like, there's not, I couldn't, I couldn't go anywhere and find some information. So I was like, you know what, why don't I just give it a shot? And I'm not the world's, I don't even describe myself as a Reddit expert. You know, I want to engage with the community and learn. And so maybe I'm a little bit, a few steps ahead maybe of some, some people that. But that's really valuable at this point in the game to have someone that's just a little bit further down the tunnel. And that's how I created this. It's called Reddit Leverage. And it's a course that kind of walks you through basic orientation. And then I talk about these, like three kind of main strategies. One being the brand strategy of like, how do you just want to kind of get your brand exposure, do it above board. Then there's like this middle tier strategy which called the traffic leaks, which is, okay, you're kind of taking a more growth hacky. You know, it's not really gray hat, but maybe that would be the best analogy. It's like, okay, how do I reverse engineer what's working? And that's a lot of keyword research. You can even plug subreddits into Ahrefs or semrush and kind of understand what they're ranking for. And a lot of these are like successful niche sites in terms of the community traffic they're getting. So that's like the other one. And then the last one is like the direct monetization. Like people like put. You can literally sometimes get affiliate links into posts. You can kind of be very mercenary. You know, I always recommend providing value with whatever you're doing. But there's all sorts of strategies and there's even like if you're a brand, like your Pinch of Yum or your Food Blogger Pro, even if there are no links allowed just by dropping your brand mention in a subreddit, that'll drive. It'll be hard to tie out with analytics, but see a spike in search traffic then from, yeah, it went viral in some subreddit and someone dropped like Monarch Money. And like there's a whole strategy around that too. So I kind of walk through these different strategies and then like kind of on the more black hat, like, okay, you, you want to invest a lot, you can go out and buy accounts and I cover that just as context if people want to do that. And then when I'm, what I'm adding, it's a real time evolving document. Every week I'm adding more modules. I'm trying to add case studies. I. Last week I added this module on how you can. I've discovered how you can claim Reddit subreddits. And so I added that module and like today I got some feedback. Something like, can you actually show me how you create a community? I was like, okay, I'm, I'm uploading that now. And then I find different interesting ways people are leveraging Reddit and I add a case study. And so it's this like course. That's it, it's actionable now. You can get traction now with it. And there's like this implicit, like, I'm going to be, I'm adding. It's almost like I envision eventually having a community around this where it's an evolving course, but also a community that we can share best practices. So yeah, that's the, that's the course in a.

Nutshell. That's.

Great. I think it's the first of its.

Kind. Yeah, that's really interesting. And like you said, kind of covers the full spectrum. I think for anybody listening, like to really think about what does that look like to own kind of your brand conversation. Like you said that being a really important step. We encourage people to check that out. And so much of what we do is like showing up in different places on the web and being like we talked about, strategic about that in knowing where most people are showing up. Like if we did a podcast about MySpace, it might be interesting. Like there might be Some really like curious ways that you could be using MySpace but not a lot of people are using it. And so tactically, even though you could create really compelling, really good content that is super helpful for people, if you're doing it on MySpace, it's going to be tough to build a business. And so there's this balance for us as creators to say, where does it, where's our content going to be multiplied? Like where is it going to be most strategic? How do we understand how to best create within the context of that platform? Reddit is different than Instagram, is different than TikTok, is different than a blog, you know, is different than Pinterest. And then what does it look like for us to create something that's truly compelling, helpful for that community, Something that is going to hopefully like make a difference. You talked about gluten free. Like if you are somebody who understands gluten free and you're going to be able to help people, you can make the world a better place by figuring out where a lot of people are trying to get help eating gluten free and help those people in a way that's going to make a difference for them. And that balance of finding the tactics, finding the platform that works and then finding out how you can best help on that given platform. I think if we can become really good at that and takes a long time to figure out how to do that, that's where you can have some of these really incredible breakthroughs. So super fun. Like all new information for me that I haven't thought about or an angle that we haven't really considered. So really appreciate it. Ewan, can you talk about if people want to check out that course? Like we'll include it in the show notes but like, yeah, how do, how do people get.

There? Yeah, it's a, it's a teachable course but I'll, I'll add a link and like a discount obviously for the, for the audience and it'll just be, you know, here's the link, here's your sign up. And, and yeah, it's fairly, fairly straightforward. It's not going to be too complicated and I, I imagine like again evolving that and adding materials and communities and resources and even like part of the, one of the value adds including a list of other user generated content platforms that are like Reddit that you can leverage. It's a resource like list and I'm adding to that daily. Like there's Quora, there's Niche forum where like the Shopify forum where you know, you can add, you know, you can have a presence there and get traffic and so yeah, it's just a simple resource and it's probably going to evolve over time. But it's a link. You sign up and enroll in the.

Course. That's great. And how about are you active online? You and like if people want to follow along with what you're doing and what you're up, you, you're up to. What would be the best way to do.

That? Yeah, so I have my, my newsletter which is like a weekly take on what's happening in the niche media publishing world. It's nichmediapublishing.com include in the show notes too. And that's like my thoughts, current thoughts. And then yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, kind of active on X, I guess. But we can I include that in the show notes. That's a great way to follow along too. But yeah, I, those are, those are my.

Channels. Well, Ewan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate.

It. Thanks.

Bjork. Hey there, this is Anne from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoy this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Since we're kicking off a new month, we wanted to give you a behind the scenes look at what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this September. Later this week we'll be publishing a coaching call with Sri and Manny from Vidya's Vegetarian Kitchen. In this coaching call, they discussed a strategy behind reaching a broader audience with a niche blog, being intentional about protecting your business against a future with AI, and how to use clarity to its maximum potential when updating and republishing old blog content. Next up is our September live Q and A. We were so interested in the topic of leveraging Reddit as a traffic source that we asked Yuen to come back on to host a live Q and A for the Food Blogger Pro community. So if you enjoy this episode and would like to learn more about how to approach Reddit as a traffic driver, be sure to join us on Thursday, September 12th and submit any burning questions you may have about Reddit beforehand. We're rounding out the month with a brand new course all about creating vertical short form videos. This will be a deep dive into creating those eye catching videos that we all see on Instagram and TikTok. So if you've been wanting to learn more about how to create those for your blog, you won't want to miss this course. It's going to be a great month and we really hope that you can join us for some of these new pieces of content. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and would like to join us, just head to foodbloggerpro.com membership to learn more about our membership and how you can join us on Food Blogger Pro. We would love to have you and we'll see you back here next week for another podcast episode. Make it a great.

Week. Sam.