Who is Spencer Haws? Everything You Need To Know

Only a handful of websites survive a decade, and even fewer thrive. Niche Pursuits is one of the lucky few, and that’s thanks to the leadership of Spencer Haws. Learn more about this extraordinary man in this article below.

John Angelo Yap

Updated June 14, 2024

Spencer Haws and his many niche pursuits, generated with Midjourney

Spencer Haws and his many niche pursuits, generated with Midjourney

Reading Time: 6 minutes

The internet has grown so much in the past 50 or so years, starting from a small private network in California during the 1960s. Since then, it has connected people around the world, doing so at a fraction of a second. It has also opened the door to many entrepreneurs to offer their services anytime and anywhere.

Today, there are people who use the internet to their advantage. But there are also people who use their advantages in life to shape the internet as we know it.

Spencer Haws is both.

He managed to build a little corner of the internet where people can come and learn about growing their online businesses, and he’s managed to do it for almost 13 years. But we’re not only here to talk about Niche Pursuits. We’re here to talk about the circumstances that made it possible, including Haws’ education, career, and failed ventures. Stay tuned!

Early Life: Education and Career

Spencer Haws wasn’t always a blogger. In fact, he lived a pretty conventional life before becoming a freelancer.

He graduated with a degree in finance from Brigham Young University in 2002 and pursued an MBA from Arizona State University. After he graduated, he got his first “real” job as a loan officer. But he realized it wasn’t for him. So he quit and a week later, got a job as a manager for a carpet cleaning business, getting a glimpse of what it's like to be a business owner. Shortly after, he accepted an offer to work for Merrill Lynch, one of the largest investment companies in America.

After getting his MBA, Haws traded one large company for another with an offer from Wells Fargo. He worked there as a business banker, where he was exposed to all kinds of business owners. He got to see how the sausage gets made and pick the brains of some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country. This spurred something in him, an idea that would be realized years later.

Despite his successes, Haws always knew that the 9-to-5 hustle and office cubicles wasn’t for him. And that’s when he got the idea that would soon change his life.

Building Niche Pursuits

Haws started creating websites in 2005, but he took it up a notch in 2010. While working in Wells Fargo, he managed to create more than 200 websites that target different keywords and niches. How that’s possible, I don’t even know.

But one thing led to another, and suddenly, his websites started making money. This gave him the confidence to quit his day job and focus on his own ventures. The year was 2011, and he launched two businesses simultaneously that almost changed his life: LongTailPro and Niche Pursuits.

Long Tail Pro

Let’s start with LongTailPro — a keyword research tool that targets long-tail keywords for SEO. The gist of it is this: you input seed keywords and the software will generate long-tail versions of the keyword, which helps you target specific niches with less competition.

This venture brought Haws his first million. While it proved to be a success, he sold this business in 2016 due to lack of motivation and the changes to Google’s search engine ranking policies. Today, the domain LongTailPro.com is inactive, and it seems that the platform has shut down for good.

Niche Pursuits

Around the same time Haws launched LongTailPro, he launched another website called Niche Pursuits. It is a platform that has an extensive catalog of resources aimed at establishing online businesses. The goal is simple: help people in their niche pursuits and be successful at it.

Since Niche Pursuits has been online for 13 years, you can imagine the depth and variety of their content. Their website contains a large collection of articles aimed at creating, maintaining, or improving your online business. Apart from articles, they also offer courses, consistently make podcasts, and share success stories from their community.

What sets Niche Pursuits apart from other similar blogs is their transparency. They don’t lead their readers astray with unrealistic projections, instead they’re extremely open about what you should expect, even sharing some of their ups and downs as a company. They also prioritize quality over quantity, which makes them a great resource for entrepreneurs everywhere.

Other Ventures

Aside from Niche Pursuits and marathons, here are some of Haws’ other niche pursuits:

  • Amazon FBA: Built in 2015, this was Haws’ first business where he offered physical products. Through the Amazon fulfillment program, he was able to sell products that most people overlook and grew this venture to six figures. Like LongTailPro, Haws sold this business in 2018.
  • Table Labs: This product allows Amazon affiliates to create comparison tables for their products. Integrated with the Amazon Product Advertising API, it streamlines the process by automatically retrieving and displaying up-to-date product descriptions, prices, and other essential information. Haws also sold this business in 2020.
  • Link Whisper: This platform helps bloggers optimize their internal linking structure. Apart from Niche Pursuits, Link Whisper is Haws’ most successful business to date with thousands of faithful users worldwide.
  • Motion Invest: Haws also co-founded Motion Invest, a marketplace where people can sell or buy websites. Motion Invest also offers free site valuation for potential sellers to check how much their websites are worth.

The Bottom Line

Spencer Haws is the personification of entrepreneurship. He gave corporate life a try, and when he found out that it wasn’t for him, he took that experience and used it to build something bigger than himself. Even after building more than 200 websites and failing in most of them, he persevered until he found something that works.

But surprisingly, the most important thing you need to know about him isn’t about his talent. It’s about how he uses it to help other people, rather than benefit himself only. I’ve always had this opinion that the internet is a community, and if that’s true, then Spencer Haws is giving more than his village dues. 

Want to learn more Haws? Then I suggest giving Niche Pursuits a visit. And if you’re looking to learn more about the movers and shakers of the internet, give some of our other articles a try.

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Written by John Angelo Yap

Hi, I'm Angelo. I'm currently an undergraduate student studying Software Engineering. Now, you might be wondering, what is a computer science student doing writing for Gold Penguin? I took up studying computer science because it was practical and because I was good at it. But, if I had the chance, I'd be writing for a career. Building worlds and adjectivizing nouns for no other reason other than they sound good. And that's why I'm here.

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