Niche Sites, Vibe Coding, Real talk - Jason Paul Hendricks - DS583

I talked to Jason Hendricks while we were in Portland for Fincon 2025. We talk about the old days of niche sites. Then, I have harsh words about vibe coding. And More!

Connect with Jason – https://www.jphendricks.com/

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Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m joined by my good friend Jason Paul Hendricks. How are you today? Doing good. And we’re at FinCon recording in a. The convention center here in Portland, we’re sitting like in a big corridor. It’s huge. The ceiling must be 30 feet high, and it’s quiet in here.

So a lot of times I’m like recording live and there’s a noise from the crowd. There’s just people walking by, so it’s pretty chill and quiet. We knew we were gonna hang out and I’m like, we gotta record together. And Jason, you sent me a bunch of, uh, ideas that you had, which is great. That’s my homework and I didn’t have to do it.

So we’re gonna go through a lot of stuff, but like for people that don’t know who you are, give a little intro and you’ve been on the show a couple times, but, um, we will link up. But who are you?

Jason: Sure. it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me. Jason Hendricks, uh, I do a variety of things. , From a, from a.

You know, earnings standpoint, I do, uh, , business development consulting, broadly for FinTech companies. I’ve always had one foot in the marketing space. And, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s the area that, originally got me connected to you in a long time. Listener and, uh, watcher of the channel.

And, uh, so on that side of the thing of the, of the, of my brain, I’ve, uh. Built a couple of SaaS products and, uh, I live in Asia, so I currently live in Bangkok. Uh, long time, lived in Hong Kong before that. Again, this, this related to the finance industry work that I’ve done, but there’s a whole lot of SEO and marketing conferences in Asia as well.

And so a big part of the community that I interact with is over there on the Asia side, even though the US is my home.

Doug: And you were, I mean, you were into side hustle stuff. For several years. ’cause I, I mean, I’ve been doing my stuff since 2014 ish when I started publishing online. When did you get started, like working online?

Um, in, in this sort of like, niche site area? Mm-hmm. Or SaaS products related.

Jason: Yeah. So, so right throughout my career, uh, I sort of do, it did the marketing thing for the companies I work with. I usually work with small companies, but, uh. I think in earnest, I started building out sites in 1516, we’ll say. Okay, 20 15, 20 16.

And so there’s a bunch of sites that I continue to, to work on or help maintain. So there’s a couple of folks that, uh, uh, have subject matter expertise in certain areas of, uh, travel traveler food, uh, and I help them with the upkeep of the site. But, um. None of these were ever heavily, uh, focused on traffic and ad revenue or affiliate.

They were, they were more brand for, for sort of brand maintenance and, um, you know, for other business activities. And this was sort of the brochure of the business. Mm-hmm. Uh, and even my consulting business, I’ve got websites related to that, but I’m not looking to organic, uh, or SEO to, to bring in customers.

I, I, I do that through other meat.

Doug: Got it. Okay, cool. And you, I was gonna say, um, not to name Drop, but Matt Esei is around here and you followed him for a little while also. Yes. And and the cool thing is I was like, Matt, you should maybe come. It’s like awesome in Portland. Like he loves Portland. He’s a big beer guy.

And the thing is like Matt came to these events for years, so he. Um, is like one of the original people and he knows some of the, I mean, there’s a handful of people that have been to all of the Fincons, or they’ve been fixtures for many years. Yep. And he knows them from like eight or 10 years ago, stuff like that.

So anyway, he’s around here. We’ll gonna be able to hang out. Funny you guys haven’t crossed paths yet, but we’ll be able to Well, I know

Jason: him, but he doesn’t know me as well. But although I, I did, uh, when you first moved down to Colorado, I don’t know if you remember, I sent an intro email and you guys knew of.

B each other before, I think. But I, I had said, I was like, Hey Matt, this guy Doug is, is moving down. You gotta,

Doug: and I think, yeah. ’cause we, we knew, I remember listening the first time that I remember like, oh yeah, this guy, Matt. It was, um, on Nick Loppers podcast Side Hustle Nation. And the funny thing, it’s ’cause I, I’m a podcast listener, um, all, many different, uh, topic areas.

But I was listening to that and I remember, ’cause I was living in Bozeman and I was walking, um, my dog on a specific trail and I could just picture, ’cause Matt was talking about, um, brew Cabin and he was like, and I’m a home brewer. So we had, we had all these different interests. The funny thing is like Matt and I actually finally met.

Um, at, it was like a, a brew day at the coworking space where we know, um, like Mr. Money mustache, that’s a name drop. Right, right, right. Our other friend Pete aid me. Um, and yeah, yeah, so it was, it was there and we were just brewing beer hanging out and then Nice. Like, we didn’t even talk about business, but I was like.

Hey, we basically do the same thing, like let’s talk about it. And then we started hanging out after that and now he lives like a, a mile and a half away or something. Nice. So, okay, well it’s cool that we’re gonna be able to cover a lot of things. Uh, do you, and we recorded it FinCon a couple years ago.

Yeah. You Orleans. And do you remember what we talked about? What were you working on then?

Jason: I don’t remember. So I was working on another SaaS product at the time, Chrome extension. I still have that. Um, a, a little something has changed in the SERPs, you know, the Google SERPs. So, so I don’t focus on that Chrome extension quite as much.

Um, we also, uh, debated a little bit about, about, uh, you know, opinions on fire and whatnot. ’cause we’re at FinCon. Oh, right, right. No need to, uh, to re-litigate. Of course. Who won? Yeah. It’s like

Doug: we

Jason: both lost. I remember.

Doug: Yeah. I think, did we talk? I don’t even remember that. Okay. Obviously very memorable

Jason: ever.

So briefly.

Doug: Alright, so one of the topics that you mentioned is just essentially like online business. And we passed, um, Ricky Kessler from in Income School. We was sitting right over there and I haven’t had a chance to chat with him too much, but I think his talk is, uh, related to blogging in general. And yeah, we were kind of talking like, is Blo like.

For years, people were like, oh, is blogging dead? And I, I mean, I kind of think, yeah, like a website can serve a different purpose, but it’s not like, it was like the, the people creating that content. Like most of the talks here, people are interested. It’s video. Like currently everyone’s just like video pick whatever platform, but it’s video.

People aren’t writing like in the same way. So yeah. What’s your take? What do you think? Uh, blogging and SEO and the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think,

Jason: I think. The term blogging, uh, when it was used more commonly was about, you know, uh, consistently in, in a recurring fashion, creating content. And if you did that and, you know, the, the algorithm gods sort of, uh, smiled on you, then you would get traffic, uh, from Google, usually.

Right. Uh, people say vlogging, now they don’t, they don’t hesitate to use that term. Mm-hmm. But of course you have to publish on YouTube if you’re gonna do that. And will the algorithm Gods shine on you if you do that? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I think to the degree to which a website is still a thing you own, it’s still your property, you know, your stake in the ground.

Um, I, I think it’s silly to suggest that websites are dead. Right. So is the word blogging sort of antiquated? Probably. You know, I, I think if you just, you know, build, you know, write content and they will come. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore. Right. Um, and so, but, but is it important if you’re running your, you know, doing this as a business, is it important to have a place that is your home base where you can bring leads?

This is where you’re gonna collect an email from a visitor and, and through email interactions, you’re going to grow a relationship with them when you podcast, right? Mm-hmm. You have the distribution platforms for podcasting. Uh, but there again. It’s nice if you can bring them back to a place and, and, you know, interact with them there.

If you, if you’re selling a course or mm-hmm. You know, uh, selling a ebook or something, then, uh, another antiquated term, but still, but still a thing. Right, right. A digital product. Then, uh, you know, for that reason, I think, uh, you know, websites are still important.

Doug: Do you still have, ’cause you built a handful of niche sites like.

So what do you have around, you kind of mentioned earlier, some things are around how many sites do you have left or like, are you earning money in a traditional way with them or what’s going on?

Jason: Yeah. No, my, the websites that g