Ahrefs CEO Has Public Meltdown, Trending Niches, Big Vape, New Amazon Social Features, and More

Interesting stuff I've found on the internet recently

gm and Happy Halloween.

Here are some interesting articles, studies, and videos I’ve found recently:

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Links and recommendations

• Ahrefs CEO Throws a Public Temper Tantrum on X - Long story short: SEMRush bought a blog and changed it so that it recommends their product instead of Ahrefs. Instead of quietly taking the L, Ahrefs’ CEO decided to have a public meltdown. Read it for yourself.

• Pets Supplements Market Size Worth $1.05 Billion by 2027 from Grand View Research - The pet niche is only going to continue growing in popularity. Pets are the new kids.

• 7 Pet Industry Trends to Know from Exploding Topics - Don’t sleep on developing new product categories for pets. People want to spend on their furbabies. Did you know that searches for “pet wipes” have increased 165% over the past 5 years? 🤮

• Bing Webmaster Tools to Remove Disavow Feature from Microsoft Bing Blogs - This isn’t surprising. Disavowing bad links has been pointless for a while. Bing removing the feature from their Webmaster Tools is more confirmation of the obvious.

• Adobe Forecasts $221.8 Billion U.S. Holiday Season Online from Adobe - People are still expected to spend like crazy this holiday season. Most interesting/depressing tidbit? Buy Now Pay Later is expected to account for $17 billion, up 16.9% from last year.

• Halloween Spending to Reach Record $12.2 Billion from National Retail Federation - Everyone is claiming that Americans are broke, yet they’re expected to spend an average of $108.24 each on Halloween costumes. The $12.2 billion figure includes $700 million on pet costumes btw (noticing a trend?)

• It Looks Like "Theirs": When and Why Human Presence in the Photo Lowers Viewers’ Liking and Preference for an Experience Venue from Journal of Consumer Research - If you’re in an “experience” niche like travel or wedding venues then including people in your photos makes potential customers like the venue less because they want to feel ownership over the experience. Human psychology is weird.

• Cosplay Costumes and Wigs Market Share by Type from Credence Research - The kidult trend isn’t going away any time soon. The market for cosplay costumes and wigs is expected to reach $92.8 billion by 2030. Potential niche idea?

• Amazon Adds Social Shopping Features from TechCrunch - Amazon launched a new “consult-a-friend” feature for shoppers who use their app. It lets shoppers send a message to their friends to get feedback on a potential purchase before buying it.

• European E-Commerce to Grow 9% Annually from ECommerce News Europe - The most interesting part of this article is that the US and China are going to account for half of global e-commerce spending by 2027. These two countries have HUGE consumer markets full of people who love to buy stuff.

• Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul from Netflix - It sounds messed up, but this documentary is actually very educational from a marketing perspective. The company’s marketing was amazing, the problem is that they used it to get kids hooked on nicotine. It’s interesting to watch this and think about what they should have done differently (use older models, less trendy colors, etc.)

Upcoming post

I’m working on a guide for ranking Reddit posts in the Google SERPs as we speak.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that Reddit has results on page one for almost every query now.

Most people think, “Oh no, one less slot for me!”

In reality it’s an opportunity to get more traffic and revenue, but you have to do it the right way.

Stay tuned.

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