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/ AI App On Site – Add AI-Powered Apps To Any Site In Minutes 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 th...