0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast today, we'll be focusing on how to make Google, not like you, but love you to drop these value bombs. I brought Nick Loper into EOFire studios. Nick helps people earn more money. He's an author online entrepreneur and host of the award-winning Side Hustle Show podcast, which features new part-time business ideas each week. And today Fire Nation. We'll talk about Nick's at $550,000 side hustle. He'll talk about what Google wants.

0 (42s):
Lead generation search engines besides Google and how to generate more ideas and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, according to Forbes, a lot of businesses are set to go on an epic hiring spree and all of these businesses reopening means that millions of jobs will need to be filled. So where do they turn to fill these roles? Fast ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address. ZipRecruiter.com/fire. That's ziprecruiter.com/fire Fire Nation. Are you finally ready to publish a book the right way Kevin Anderson and Associates can help for a limited time, they're offering Fire Nation a free 90 minute consultation to discuss writing and publishing your book in just six months.

0 (1m 26s):
Visit KAWriting.com/fire to schedule your free 90 minute consultation today. That's KAWriting.com/fire.

1 (1m 37s):
Nick say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, what's going on, John? First of all, thank you so much for having me back. I think it's five, six years. It's been a hot minute brother. What's something about becoming successful that a lot of people disagree with. I think there is this myth and maybe this mystique that successful people got there because they had this amazing, never been seen before business idea. And because of that, I see a lot of people sitting on the side, hustle, sidelines, the entrepreneurial sidelines, waiting for that perfect idea to strike.

1 (2m 17s):
And I think that myth needs to go away because what we've seen are two things. Number one, a great execution can turn an already been done idea into a huge success.

2 (2m 28s):
And second, most quote, unquote, new ideas are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. And by that, I mean, they make some small pivot tweak change to something that's already out there to create something new slash different slash better. And I know you've given your fire as a real life example of this, like podcasts existed back in 2012, interview podcasts existed, entrepreneur interview podcasts, but a daily entrepreneur interview podcasts didn't it was that evolutionary shifts to something new, something different. And then of course came, this is a really important part, your incredible effort in the production, the systems, the marketing, the monetization that all went into it to make it a hit.

2 (3m 15s):
So I think what most people overemphasize is this importance of coming up with the, you know, the killer never been seen before business idea where a lot of the successful entrepreneurs that you and I have interviewed really earned their way there with persistence and execution. It's so true.

0 (3m 31s):
I mean, sometimes it's just a little tweak, a little adjustment, a little pivot off of something that's already working, or maybe it's just going within that big idea and discovering that void, that underutilized niche that's not currently being focused on for any number of reasons that makes whatever you do explode. And I love that phrase evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Now nobody knows what Google wants, but I'm going to ask anyways, because who knows, maybe we'll get lucky. So Nick, what does Google want?

2 (4m 3s):
Google wants what every other dominant player wants. They want to keep dominating, right? Maintain their market share

3 (4m 9s):
At this point. And so how do they

2 (4m 11s):
Keep up their position as the world's most trusted answer engine? I think they do that by continuing to serve up the best answers. And what does that mean for content creators like us? It means for better or worse that we need to keep feeding the machine by creating the best answers in the world, to the questions that our audiences are asking us and the best resources in the world for the problems that they have. Now, I don't know if you've done this, but early on in my online business journey, I would come up with this like great idea for a new side hustle, nation blog post. And then I would Google it to see if anybody else had already written about it.

2 (4m 51s):
And sure enough, of course they had like, have you ever made a Google search and gotten zero results? Of course this topic had, you know, it's already been covered, it's already been written about. And that was like really discouraging for me at the time. What I have since realized is that yes, of course other people have already covered your topic, but they haven't covered it with your unique voice, your insight, your depth, your level of expertise. And I think that leaves the door open for you to create a, you know, a better resource than what's already out there. That's how the internet gets better. That's how you can give Google what it wants. That's how you can ultimately earn some qualified search traffic for your own business.

0 (5m 30s):
there's so much here. Number one, if you create the top solution to a real specific unique problem in this world, you will win because people will beat a path to the number one solution to their real problem. And they will ignore the second best solution all the way through to infinity, because nobody wants a second best. They want the best. The silver medalist gets ignored. They get forgotten in minutes, the gold medalist men they're on the cover. Nike, you know, they're on there. They get Nike shoes. They're on the cover of Ciro boxes. I mean, fill in the blank. And let's be honest. Nick has kind of been talking about this a little bit. I'm done. So come out and say it. People don't love Google people love that Google gives them the best results.

0 (6m 14s):
The Google gives them the best answers, the best solutions to their problems. If something came along this better than Google, believe me, it would not take long for Google to become the Alta Vista of old people that are old nuts. Remember Alta Vista, you know what I'm talking about? The AltaVista of old, the Infoseek of the nineties. Now traffic get me some lead generation Loper, but I want to do it the easy way. What are some simple strategies that I can use to get more traffic to my site? You bet.

2 (6m 49s):
So I am with you. I want easy. I want low-hanging fruit. I'm always thinking 80 20, right? So one of my favorite ways to do this is to go into Google search console. It's totally free to set up if you haven't done it already, if you already have, I want you to look under your search results performance, and what's, what's important about this is for whatever reason, you can't get this data from Google analytics, but you can get it here in search console. And it shows you the exact keywords that people are typing into Google to discover your content in this search performance results report. You're going to sort by impressions. And what I'm looking for here are keywords with lots of impressions, but not so many clicks because that's usually an indicator that I am a ranking lower on page one, maybe even top of page two in the search results for that keyword.

2 (7m 45s):
But what that signals is with a little bit of TLC, a little bit of effort and optimization. I could climb higher on that page and earn a bigger share of that traffic. So what that looks like for me in practice is, you know, finding keywords in this report, going through the older posts that those are likely showing up for. And you can even add that as a filter in the search console report, like what specific posts are getting those impressions. And I'm going to go through, I'm going to add new content. Maybe I'm adding word count. Maybe I'm adding frequently asked questions to that post. Maybe I, maybe it's just not up to date anymore. Like, oh, it was from 2016. It needs to be brought current.

2 (8m 25s):
Maybe it's updating your subheadings or your title tag to either make it more compelling to click on or include a variation of that keyword that Google is saying, Hey, look, we're already serving up your content for that keyword, but it's just not getting the click through rate that you, that you would like, maybe it's adding a table of contents. Maybe it's adding relevant images. Maybe you add some authoritative outbound links, which is something that I was always hesitant to do. Like I got these people into my site. Like I want to keep, I want them to read my stuff, but no authoritative outbound links seems to be effective these days. And I'm even going through the rest of the side hustle nation archive content to see if there are any other relevant posts that should be linking to the post that I'm updating.

2 (9m 11s):
For example, we did one on like how to start a pressure washing business. And sure enough, I had talked about pressure washing in a few other instances like, oh, those posts auto link to this new post about pressure washing. But when you hit update on that refresh that re-energize piece of content, unless you're just up against, you know, crazy levels of authoritative domains and competition, you can be reasonably confident. You're going to see a healthy bump in your search exposure and in your search traffic. And you can even ask, and I haven't, I have no idea if this actually does anything, but through search console, you can request that they re crawl your page, which may or may not. You speed up that process. Even further.

0 (9m 50s):
I actually experienced this firsthand. I mean, I actually noticed that one of my, a promo codes that I had, so one of my affiliate sites was not being utilized nearly as much as it used to. I was always getting like, you know, a couple thousand dollars per month. It was just kinda like automatic. And I do remember like a few years ago going back and being like, oh, like, that's just cool to see that that's the number one search result for that promo code when people type in like promo code blank, like that was the first result. And it was just like automatic, every couple of every month is coming in a couple thousand dollars and then boom, it dropped down to like a thousand. Then it dropped down to like 600 and then dropped out at like 200. I'm like, something's going on here? Sure enough. I looked, I looked at it and I was like the fourth or fifth result now. And I looked to the ones that were above me and they were just a little bit better than mine and they're being a little bit more helpful.

0 (10m 36s):
So I just went to work and really just, you know, over-delivered on that side. And then sure enough, couple months later, I'm back at, back in the first place, back at a couple K a month. So this can really work for an issue when you implement these things or right away and do that specific strategy that Nick has shared. We're going into Google search console and not just using the regular typical Google analytics. So really amazing stuff.

2 (10m 60s):
And it's so much easier than trying to create a brand new post from scratch. It's just, you know, has to do with updating and tweaking the stuff that you already have. That's already, you've already crawled up your way past a millions of other sites to make it to the first page. The second page,

0 (11m 14s):
Man, such good advice and foundation. We have a ton of more advice coming up. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors Fire Nation. Do you realize the value being a published author brings to your business? As one of myself, I can honestly say a lot. So if you've ever considered writing a book, but feel like you don't have the time writing ability or idea to make it a success, then I've got great news for you. Kevin Anderson and Associates is an industry leading all inclusive book writing firm that can help you go from no book to publish author in as little as six months Kevin's team has launched 19 number one, New York times bestsellers and hundreds of national bestselling books. You'll be able to work directly with those who helped launch the careers of the biggest names in the book business, including Bernay Brown, Simon Sinek, Robert Kiyosaki, and many more.

0 (11m 59s):
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0 (12m 39s):
There are some things in life that I like to pick out myself. So I know I've got the ones that are best for me, like an avocado from the markets or my next pair of running shoes. What if you could do the same thing for hiring choose your ideal candidate before they even apply. Now you can thanks to ZipRecruiter's invite to apply. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire. How does invite it to apply work? Well when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, they send you the most qualified people for your job. Then you can easily review the candidates and invite your top choices to apply Lauren Web SVP of talent acquisition at medulla health raves about ZipRecruiter is invited to apply. She says, I love that feature because we have a much higher follow-through rate. If I invite candidates, it's easy for me and easy for them.

0 (13m 21s):
In fact, according to ZipRecruiter's internal data jobs where employers use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply, get on average two and a half times more candidates, which helps make for a faster hiring process. See for yourself, visit ziprecruiter.com/fire to try ZipRecruiter for free that's ziprecruiter.com/fire. One more time. ZipRecruiter.com/fire ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. So Nick, wait a second. Hold up. You're telling me there are other search engines besides Google. I mean, obviously I know that we talked about Alta Vista, Infoseek dead and gone, but should I be optimizing for search engines that are not? Yes, you should.

2 (13m 58s):
And I think it's pertinent that you just mentioned, like nobody remembers the silver medalist. Nobody knows the, you know, who the third place finisher was. Most people in the search world know that Google is number one, YouTube is number two, but you

1 (14m 11s):
Know, who's number three.dot go. Possibly. I'm

2 (14m 14s):
Actually thinking of Amazon. Amazon is number three. Facebook is number four. And I think these are really interesting search engines to play around with another search engine that is worth exploring, depending on your niche would be Pinterest, much more a search engine for content than a, than it is a social network. Now I like search traffic because it's super consistent. Like you said, two grand a month on clockwork hitting this page. And it's unlike most social media where it's, you know, here today gone two hours from now, or even, even email, like where you can message your list. Do you see this big spike for a, you know, a day? And it's certainly better than not having an email list to send to, but it really like the steady predictable stream that comes with, you know, winning exposure in these popular search engines and YouTube.

2 (15m 4s):
I think YouTube is second most popular. I'm not the world's most successful YouTuber. So I don't think you should ignore YouTube. And, but I do want to point out a couple of the strategies that are working for me on Amazon, in Facebook, that might be worth a look. The first one, actually the, the power of Facebook or the power of Amazon, rather as a search engine, my eyes were really opened to this. When I published my first book self published my first book, like back in 2012, my theory was that people would come to the website, forgive the crappy design that I had at the time, discover that I'd written a book on the topic say, well, he must know what he's talking about. He wrote the book, click over to Amazon and buy it through the magic of affiliate link tracking.

2 (15m 46s):
What I found was almost the exact opposite happened. Instead, people would search on Amazon for the topic, find the book, buy the book, and then come visit the website afterwards. And how would I know because I was making books sales, but didn't have any corresponding affiliate commissions on those books sales. So that was Amazon as a powerful search engine, but fast forward to how I use Amazon as a search engine today. I, my, my main goal in life is to like own my primary keyword own that side hustle keyword in as many marketplaces as possible. And for awhile, I had the, I had the trifecta of iTunes, Google, and Amazon. And then, you know, this Chris Guillebeau guy comes along.

2 (16m 26s):
It's all good for, for Amazon today, I am using, what's called the Permafree strategy where I want my book, the side hustle to, you know, number one show up when somebody searches on Amazon for that term. But number two have as little friction as possible to get somebody into my ecosystem, consuming my content. And, you know, I could probably be better about tracking email sign ups and leads from that book, but it consistently generates 500 plus downloads a month and occasionally spikes much higher. Like just this week randomly has over 2,500 downloads. So far, the challenge is Amazon. Doesn't let you price your book for free. So you have to upload it to a different marketplace that does, and then send them just, you know, a friendly support email.

2 (17m 12s):
Hey, you know, would you mind price matching this? It doesn't always work on the first try, but usually they agree to, to get that done for you. And even if you don't want to give your work away, the strategy still works even with a paid book, especially if you can work at primary keywords into that title, then does that make it, that

0 (17m 29s):
Makes a lot of sense to me and something Fire Nation that a lot of people just don't even think about. And again, I love how you reverse engineered that neck, where you're talking about at the beginning about how people were finding and then buying your book. I mean, this is the type of stuff you need to be doing. So what else do you want to talk about on this specific topic? I want to talk

2 (17m 46s):
About Facebook for a second and I am, I'm blown away by many people use Facebook as a search engine. Like there's that search bar at the top, but I, you know, it's number four, most popular search engines. So a ton of people are using it. And again, if they're searching for my primary keyword, I'd much rather that they find me rather than some other resource or a competitor. And you probably, you know, you probably already have a Facebook page set up for your business, but where I've found that the magic really happens with a group, the side hustle nation Facebook group is now more than 40,000 members strong. And the majority of those people discover the group organically on Facebook, through search or through, you know, the recommendations in the sidebar recommended groups.

2 (18m 29s):
Now, from there, I can invite them to check out the podcast to join the email list. It becomes this really consistent discovery engine. And I should add, I've had some guests on the side hustle show where this is a major entry point into their funnel, like top of the funnel for their online course businesses. But the point is when it comes to search Google, definitely isn't the only game in town. And

0 (18m 54s):
This is critical stuff to realize that you want to have this multifaceted approach. You don't want to just rely on one search engine. You might be crushing like by the way I was for awhile. And then all of a sudden something can happen. Something can change, algorithms can update, whatever it might be. Then all of a sudden, poof, there goes everything and you ha you, cause you had all of your eggs in that one single basket. So I think it's fascinating to think about Amazon in that different light about Facebook and that different light, but the power of Facebook groups. I mean, you know, we have a very powerful Facebook group as well. And like we see the benefit of that, about how that can cross pollinates. And co-mingle in all these other different areas, because once you start getting rolling than other things just happened because once a lot of people start searching for your topic, then finding your book, your book is a higher ranking.

0 (19m 40s):
And then once your book is higher ranking, it starts getting bought more. You're probably going to get more reviews and ratings. And when you get all of that stuff, guess what? Now, Amazon is the start saying customers who bought this also bought that. And those are putting your product, your service, your book in that area as well because it's selling well and people are talking about it highly. So you have to realize this is like a snowball effect, but let's just be honest. I've completely run out of ideas. I mean completely. How do you figure out what content to create for me? It starts with your audience and your business goals. And the sweet spot is really, you know, obviously where those two things are aligned because the last thing you need to do is to create more content for the sake of like, well, I, I, I said, I'd publish a blog post every Monday.

0 (20m 31s):
Like if it doesn't align with your goals and you're just forced to get, to meet some arbitrary publishing schedule, like stop, stop, cluttering up the internet. And, and in the past, I've totally been guilty of that. Like, oh, I need a, I need a blog post for tomorrow. But instead what I do today is I keep an Excel file, actually, a Google sheet with all these like seed topics or seed keywords that you come up with.

2 (20m 54s):
If you already have an audience, you already have people paying attention to you asking you questions, those make great fodder for this type of thing. Like, what is your audience already asking you about? Those could be topics that, you know, you want to cover. You could even type in a seed keyword, like maybe it's side hustle, maybe it's podcasting, maybe it's, you know, gardening or something. You can punch those into a tool, like answer the public where you punch in that keyword. And it spits back out a bunch of relevant questions related to that keyword super cool tool and free to use. And then I, the other tool that I use is just like Google itself. And I've done this a bunch of different times. Like you start by typing in a phrase into the search box and then space bar, just to see what pops up in the auto suggest.

2 (21m 40s):
Like I've gone through like how to make money blank, and then you'll see, you know, what comes up. And those auto-complete suggestions are normally sort of sorted by search volume. So the closer to they aren't to the top, like as an estimation, the more searches that's getting and you find some crazy ideas that way I can just go through the whole alphabet, how to make money a and then see like, oh, all the different options that come up with that. But once you have that list, the next challenge really is prioritizing because hopefully you come up with, you know, 50, a hundred different topics I've been using this free Chrome extension. It's called Uber suggest this is pretty slick because it just overlays into your Google search, the estimated search volume for each keyword that you punch in.

2 (22m 27s):
And it gives you this score between one and a hundred of how, like how difficult the software estimates, estimates it's going to be to rank for that keyword. So like, you know, if it has a keyword difficulty score of like a 90, like you don't want to touch that the higher number means it's harder, but if you find something and everybody's looking for like these unicorn, you know, high volume, low competition keywords, that, that also serve your audience that also align with your business goals. So it's, I understand it's a little bit can be tricky, but you know, if you have enough of these ideas, I guarantee you that you'll start to find those where it's like the search volume is high enough to justify your effort in creating that piece of content. And the competition is such that like, okay, I'm reasonably confident that I can get on the first page.

2 (23m 13s):
And I'm like, it feels a bit like this, like strategic, treasured, hind, but it's really rewarding to go through that process to create this great piece of content, follow all the best practices SEO wise, and then have it land on the first page of Google. Usually within the first few weeks, it honestly feels like alchemy in a way, because you're creating this asset out of, you know, ones and zeros in a sense that you can drive traffic and drive leads, can drive revenue almost out of thin air, like creating something out of nothing. And that's, I I'm totally a nerd, but like, that's a ton of fun for me. There's a lot that I want you to take away from this Fire Nation. But the top thing is find that unicorn find that unicorn that Nick's talking about that aligns with your business goals.

2 (23m 58s):
It doesn't have that crazy Uber suggest score that can drive a lot of traffic. And you know that, Hey can be not super difficult to take over to conquer. And I don't know if you remember this heck, but I went to answer the public and I haven't been there for awhile. Then there used to be like a creepy old man, like as a centerfold of that website. And like, he's not there anymore.

0 (24m 19s):
What happened to them? They probably got the feedback that he was creeping people out. But I do remember that that was so good. I used to go there just to like, be like that. That's the best, but listen, Nick, I want to get the mic to you because I want you to share the specific key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about here today. A lot of value bombs. I know you have a special gift in call to action for Fire Nation. So definitely share that now. And then we will say goodbye, and we will say I do. So one question that I get a lot, and I'm sure you get a lot to John is like how to make money online. And there, there are a million ways to get it done. But the short answer is it really comes down to helping people build helpful resources and then figuring out how to market them.

0 (25m 4s):
I mean, this is what you put in the common path, be the best solution to a real problem. So that's what I want to leave people with you. You want to figure out how to make money online, figuring out who you're going to help, how are you going to help them over at side hustle, nation.com/fire put together a few resources I think will be valuable for Fire Nation. First up is this curated SEO and online business playlist from the side hustle show archives, some of the heavy, hard hitting podcasts, some real pros in the SEO and affiliate online business space.

2 (25m 37s):
There you'll also find my free guide to the three most common website mistakes that I've seen from reviewing hundreds of listener websites that are costing you money and how you can plug up those holes. And I've also gotten a special limited time offer on my all new traffic course where I go step by step through the marketing strategies that we talked about today, and a ton of Fire Nation get over there. Side hustle, nation.com/fire. Nick has an amazing audience for a reason. I mean, I was honored to be a guest on his show when I was promoting The Common Path to Uncommon Success. And the feedback from his audience was fantastic. The support was amazing. So now it's time for you to get over there and support him sidehustlenation.com/fire.

2 (26m 21s):
Cause you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with NL and JLD today. So keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com type Nick in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Nick, thank you for sharing your truth with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (26m 41s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Nick and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary seventies roadmap to your financial freedom and your fulfillment. And I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need by our nation to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to order your copy today, I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (27m 23s):
According to Forbes, a lot of businesses are set to go on an epic hiring spree and all of these businesses reopening means that millions of jobs will need to be filled. So where do they turn to fill these roles? Fast ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address. ziprecruiter.com/fire. That's ziprecruiter.com/fire Fire Nation. Are you finally ready to publish a book the right way Kevin Anderson and Associates can help for a limited time, they're offering Fire Nation a free 90 minute consultation to discuss writing and publishing your book in just six months. Visit KAWriting.com/fire to schedule your free 90 minute consultation today. That's KAWriting.com/fire.