How I Navigated Google Algorithm Updates And Remained Profitable [Update]
This is a follow up story for increasing.com. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 1 year ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
I’m Jamie I.F., an SEO-turned general digital entrepreneur. Basically, I create online brands, rank them on Google as well as driving traffic via social media, newsletters, and other sources, and monetize them with a mix of affiliate marketing, display ads, and my own products.
I was making around $40K/mo from these niche sites when my last Starter Story interview came out, which ballooned to around $85K in December 2022 (90% profit), though since then Google updates have hit us back down to around $30-40K per month now in 2024.
This $30-40K/month from the niche sites is mostly from affiliate partnerships, though a fair amount does also come from display ads on our sites, as well as direct partnerships with brands for sponsorships.
But, this doesn’t include income I now earn from our array of SaaS tools, such as QuizWizard.ai, as well as my private mastermind, The Conversion Collective, which recently launched and is on its way to 100 paying annual members already.
We released QuizWizard as an initial LTD rather than the standard monthly/annual SaaS offer to validate demand, and I’m happy with how many people wanted the product, so I’ll be focusing more time on the software side from here on out.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
It’s been ups and downs. Everything was amazing and we were at a solid $80K+ per month at the end of 2022, with record traffic and conversions.
But, from 2023 onwards, Google has definitely taken aim at sites like ours, and we’ve taken hits in organic search traffic. We now drive more traffic from Bing than Google, and Google seems very intent on removing small publishers whose main offer is information, rather than a more tangible product, from the search results.
While running these businesses, I was heading up marketing at Lasso (getlasso.co), an affiliate marketing SaaS. I left in March 2023, but the experience in how start-ups and teams work and scale was invaluable, and I’ve since partnered to launch several SaaS tools which I’m very excited about.
They mainly focus on web publishing and blogging and SEO, so they complement our existing websites, so it made sense to make them available to other people, too!
The first product I launched was QuizWizard.ai, an AI quiz generation tool that turns any video or article into an interactive quiz. Basically, we all hate email pop-ups, and quizzes are a more interactive way of both getting engagement, as well as asking for your email to get your full results, so it’s a less intrusive way of building an email list, too.
We launched on March 23rd on Product Hunt and actually made the top 5! And we were the #2 education product for the week. So that was cool!
We also have a few other SaaS tools in the process of releasing. With Google being a less reliable source of traffic, and generally the SaaS game being so fun for me right now, I’m enjoying spending some of my time trying to grow recurring revenue from real, delighted customers – rather than faceless SEO traffic.
But, we are also focusing on driving traffic from other areas, too. We’re growing Facebook pages with paid ads, as well as growing newsletters to then drive traffic to our sites without being reliant on Google, as well as from Pinterest, Reddit, Flipboard, and more.
We’ve also been launching e-commerce and lead gen businesses, rather than pure content websites. These are the types of businesses Google wants to rank at the moment, so alas these are the businesses we shall create and launch.
I’m focusing more on the software and e-commerce – I do not think organic search is going to perform well over the next 5 years, and I would rather gracefully move on from the SEO game, than be aggressively run out of town.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
Honestly, after the September Google Helpful Content Update hit, I spent months just trying to do all the things I thought I was supposed to do to improve our site quality in Google’s eyes.
It was a big hit, and I felt if I did the right thing, and continued to focus on quality, Google would eventually reward that. But that thinking itself is flawed and the wrong philosophy: it was me attempting to bend the world to my philosophy, rather than me staring the future blankly in the eyes and seeing what Google’s intentions were.
Now, 7 months on, and no sites affected by this algorithm update have recovered, it’s clear that this philosophy is baked into Google. My biggest challenges were the loss of traffic, and my mistake was not pivoting faster because I was comfortable making site changes, even if they weren’t going to help us get out of the decline.
It’s been a very stressful year. I love competition, and I love meritocracy in business – at least I know where I stand, even if I’m on the losing side. At least I feel like I have control. But here, it doesn’t feel like that now in Google, and that’s stressful and demotivating.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
I’m still learning these lessons, but just being patient, building the moment, and saying less rather than more, to get maximum reach and momentum when releasing a product.
It can be cool to bring people along for the journey and live tweet whenever you ship a minor product update. But I’ve found you can get 50x more reach with the right positioning on one post which shows a real “zero to one” product that just surprises everyone and gets them sharing. My lack of patience, and excitement to show people stuff quickly, affected that for some launches that lost momentum as a result.
I’ve definitely learned to focus better this year though. I have a better system, taught to me by Leon Castillo at SelfMastered, for focusing for 90-120 minutes at a time to get into flow states and ignore distractions. That’s so essential for getting high quality work and producing truly delightful, beautiful products.
Without deep and singular focus, nothing truly outstanding can be created. I’m still far from the finished article here, but even beginning to adopt his system was so transformative for me.
I’ve also learned and seen how much the SEO landscape has changed. Where affiliate and content sites used to rank, now it’s increasingly either big brands as Google becomes more risk-averse due to AI content proliferation, or commercial keywords that affiliates used to rank for, increasingly going to e-commerce sites.
Hence, we’re moving with the times and launching e-commerce-facing projects, rather than standard content sites now.
The plain and simple truth is that: information is no longer in vogue like it was. And AI companies (Google, OpenAI) have scraped all your information for their own models, and are using it as their own.
I have no political opinion on this, but it’s a general philosophy: if you sell products, and you have demand, you’ll be fine, but if you sell information that an AI model can scrape and repurpose, you have less of a moat than before.
Focus on fewer products, and focus on what you can make incredible, and what, most importantly, other people perceive to be incredible.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
I’m focusing more on the software side, as well as e-commerce side – I do not think organic search is going to perform well over the next 5 years, and I would rather gracefully move on from the SEO game, than be aggressively run out of town.
I also find SaaS growth to just be so much more fun. SEO boils down to content and links (though the strategies for this run so deep that I don’t want to disrespect SEOs by acting like this isn’t extremely difficult to do well), but the SaaS game just feels so much more three-dimensional.
Paid ads to email funnels, extensively A/B testing landing pages, product vision and priorities, delighting real customers – it’s just so much more vibrant and enjoyable right now than written content for SEO.
I’m also enjoying selling real products on e-commerce stores for much the same reason. It’s a lot more intricate, and rewarding when it goes right – and I’m enjoying it a lot.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
One of the best books I read this year was Chip Wars by Chris Miller. It was a great overview, but also just shows how much the modern world is formed around incentives, and when you have incentives as great as supercomputers and silicon semiconductors, how much this can transform how the modern world looks, and how power is distributed among countries and economies.
One of the best videos I watched was this video on Basquiat, and his work ethic. It doesn’t go deep into Basquiat’s story as other videos and books do, but was just such an amazing overview and I found it very inspirational, and watched it many times.
I truly believe you have to go into the deepest depth within yourself to create products that are both truly your creative self, as well as understanding yourself in order to understand the world. In my opinion, this process of creating art, and any other product, are far less different than most think.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Focus on fewer products, and focus on what you can make incredible, and what, most importantly, other people perceive to be incredible.
A great friend of mine, Sacha, is the best person I know at this. He’s known as one of the best digital PRs around, but does not do work for other people, even though it could make him a lot of money. He is singularly focused on making his SaaS tool for PR, JournoFinder, the best it can possibly be, before he even releases it.
And you can just tell it’s going to be a hit. Whenever I release a product, the reception is good, but I still have to convince people why it’s good – it has never just flown off the shelves. With Sacha, he has people actively contacting him daily demanding he release it as they need it ASAP – that is the sign that you should double down on a project like that. That’s rare.
I’ve never built a product as in-demand as that, but I think that’s also because I’ve divided my time across too many products. If I could do it again, I'd do fewer businesses, and ensure all are unbeatable and incredible as possible.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I’m currently looking for:
- A video editor (flexible hours)
- A Google Ads PPC person who has run profitable campaigns for affiliate marketing campaigns (not just e-commerce)
- An experienced affiliate manager who can run multiple SaaS affiliate programs and has scaled these in the past
Where can we go to learn more?
- Website
- YouTube
- Newsletter
- My private community where we do live streams
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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