Pete: Doug, welcome to the do you even blog podcast and probably some of your own things that I think we’re going to cross post this video and audio on welcome to the show.
Doug: Thanks a lot. This is, this is fun. It’s been a little while since we caught up, even though we saw each other in person down in New Orleans, but good to see you, buddy.
Pete: Yes. And I’ll, uh, I’ll set this up a little bit. So I actually, we, we have recorded podcasts together before, and I interviewed you before to come on the do you even blog podcast that never made it live. I delayed it long enough, like I just didn’t get to it. I was like, Oh yeah, this is going to be go out next month or two months or like, whatever it was, I put it in the pipeline and literally I listened to it again and I was like.
Well, this was bad timing because this is horrible, nothing you said, but it was just timely irrelevant because we had kind of talked about AI and then it was just a weird timing thing. It didn’t, I wanted to do it again. And then I forgot. And then I saw you’ve been gone and here we are. So if you’re listening to my voice and you don’t know who I am, I think I actually suggested we could cross post this on different platforms or whatever.
I’ll give you like the 32nd bio. So my name’s Pete. I run the Do You Even blog podcast. There’s also a YouTube channel. I don’t focus on this so much anymore. I don’t do a ton of interviews, but it’s been around for about seven years. And I mostly just talk to Awesome creators and online entrepreneurs, just like Doug and others.
Right. And I just ask questions. I like talking about digital marketing and niche sites and SEO and YouTubing and all sorts of stuff. So do you even blog. com is where you can find me in a similar fashion, Doug. Why don’t you give us a brief overview? It could be longer than my 32nd one, if you would like to, for sure.
Um, I have heard about a lot of your projects, but why don’t you give us who you are? Kind of what you currently have going on some of your big brands, that sort of stuff.
Doug: We have a lot of the same interests and platforms and we run media companies basically. And I could, I think I could thank you for simplifying my answer. I have two podcasts. One is called the Doug Show. And it is mainly about SEO, affiliate marketing and niche sites. I throw in some other topics like travel and lifestyle, whatever I happen to be interested in. And I also have another show called Mile High Fi, which is all about financial independence, really post financial independence and personal finance. Again, my cohost and I. Carl Jensen, who blogs at 1500 days, we ended up talking about life and happiness and a lot of other topics that we’re just interested in. So I go off on a lot of tangents. Often I started blogging in about 2013 after finding Pat Flynn. Smart passive income went down the rabbit hole and got obsessed with SEO, uh, blogging outsourcing content. I got really deep into keyword research and created a concept called the keyword golden ratio. I also have a YouTube channel that focuses a lot on the SEO side.
So I could go on and on, but I’ve, uh, found myself kind of in the middle of both the SEO world and the niche and content. Site world and like personal finance, which is how, you know, you and I met at FinCon and it’s really cool to have the overlap or like you and I have skills in both areas and we can go to a place at FinCon where, you know, we meet more and more people that are interested and obsessed.
And there’s a weird Venn diagram where. You know, people like you and I and like Nick Loper and a bunch of other people. We got interested in side hustles and blogging and then like have expanded our platform to YouTube and audio and so on.
Pete: Are you literally the person that coined that phrase golden keyword ratio, by the way? I didn’t know that. I mean, I’ve heard that phrase a million times. I didn’t know you’re the guy.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll, I’ll tie it into some of the, the stories and questions we’re going to answer today. Um, but
yes, yeah. Yeah. If you go back and look and I don’t talk about it much, so this is kind of a little exclusive, but I do, um, I have the trademark on it. So like I filed the
paperwork and the thing is, I want to, I want to spread the information and not charge for it or anything, but occasionally, uh, companies try to use it within their tool and charge for it.
And you, like when you get into patent law and such and intellectual property, like one has to say, Hey, like you, you can’t use it or I have to explicitly give
permission. so so yes, I did. Yeah. Crazy, huh?
Pete: That’s awesome. Um, that’s my friend who used to be personal finance, Sam, who actually introduced me to that years ago. Okay. So doug, I got three questions. They’re pretty big, broad questions, and I’m sure we might branch off a little bit here and I’m going to ask you, and I want to hear your thoughts first and I’ll probably, as I do end up rambling or weighing in with my own thoughts, of course.
Um, actually just let me spoil the three questions for the audience and then we’re going to come back and take them one by one. Number one is blogging dead, quote unquote, I’m doing the air quotes right now is blogging dead, or do you think it’s going to become dead in the near future? Question number two, where do you see AI content again in air quotes, where do you see AI content going in the next year or two?
Obviously things are progressing very rapidly. I want to hear your thoughts on where, where does Doug’s vision see this going? That’s number two question. Number three, I would actually love to hear what you’re doing right now in your own content sites, niche sites, SEO, blogging, writing AI, what projects you have going on, even if you can’t share like super fine details, I’d love to hear how your, what your strategy is for making money.
And we’re growing in audiences right now. So those are the big three broad questions. Let’s rewind back to number one. So define dead, however you want Doug, but is blogging dead or do you think it is going to become dead in the near future?
Doug: It depends, right? So I’ll give some of my definitions. You can adjust them when you answer as well. So when you think back when you and I got into blogging, maybe a little bit earlier, There There was sort of a vibrant community of readers who were very interested in consuming the content and they would go search on Google and they would find something, they would find our blogs, they would leave comments, there was kind of a community within, uh, blogs and it lived in comments and I think that has shifted to social media in a lot of ways and when you think about, you know, blogging, Especially some of my friends who started blogs in like 2007, 2009, even when I started in 2013, there were these vibrant communities. So I can say in most industries, it’s probably dead if you’re looking at that definition. And some of our friends who have been blogging for many years, they’re like, yeah, this is, it’s very different. Now, a lot of those conversations have shifted over to say, Twitter or Facebook groups or something like that. That said, I have a couple of friends. So another guy named Pete, Mr. Money mustache is one of my neighbors around here. And if you look at his posts, which he doesn’t. publish much, um, on a regular basis these days, but he’ll still get hundreds of comments on something that he posts because, well, he has millions of people going to his blog. So if you define it from Years past, right? Blogging has shifted. One could say it’s dead. That’s what people were going to pull for like the soundbite, right? Blogging is dead, but I think there are still readers out there. There are fewer, but we can look at platforms like medium or, um, just other focused.
Um, and there are people that don’t enjoy maybe like short form video, and they, they actually want to read the response versus being stuck on some other platform. In the right industry with the right audience. I think blogging can still work. I think there’s some things we need to adjust and think about like where traffic is coming from.
Right. One thing you didn’t mention, but it’s baked in Google algorithm updates have been,
Pete: That’s actually a large part of my question
Doug: Yeah.
Yeah. Like it’s kicked people in the butt or another place, right. That hurts really bad. And there’s not really. Much we can do, especially in the short term and for a business, maybe an e commerce site that got a lot of traffic via organic SEO. I mean, I don’t know what they do. Especially in the short term. I mean, they could try to run ads, but that’s a whole different business model. So pretty tough. What do you think, Pete?
Pete: Uh, well, hang on. I will answer that. Uh, let me rephrase the question too, to go a little bit more specific niche sites or niche sites, however you want to say it. Are niche sites dead? And do you think those will be. Become dead in the next year or two, right? Cause mr. Money mustache, by the way. It’s funny you mentioned that I specifically found, I don’t think I ever, ever, ever Googled anything and landed on his site ever.
It was all from a friend told me, I found it on a Facebook post and then eventually once I started following Pete, I literally just had like, Chrome bookmarks with some of his posts and I would go back and reread. And then I’d find other ones on his site. It was never like SEO organic search and there was community there and he had forums and all the other things.
But what about niche sites? What about starting one from scratch or one that was even started in the past couple of years is that type of blogging dead, do you think?
Doug: Similar answer. I think if you look back to what we used to be able to do, that sort of single platform of just a blog, I think would be a little bit, not foolish, but I’ll just use the word. That’s what I was going to say. It would be a little bit foolish to just focus on a blog, And again, this is a foreshadowing for some answers I’ll give later, but I mean, I think you have to look at, at the beginning, what is this platform going to look like it should not solely rely on Google. Search traffic because it is so volatile that it seems a little bit scary to me. And I’ve seen people, you know, they’re like, Hey, I worked on this for two or three years. I did all this stuff I’m supposed to with original content. I’m testing the products, I’m doing videos, and then they get hit with algorithm updates in there. I mean. They’re devastated, all this work, all this effort, and they were doing, you know, in air quotes, everything right. So I think you blogging would still be a component. I think it’s very valuable, but it is just a piece of the puzzle now.
Pete: All right. I like that. Uh, yeah, I’ll, I’ll respond really quick. I think is blogging dead or more specifically is. More focus, niche site, SEO, blogging, dead, I think. Uh, yeah, I think so. And I don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon. I even, so I’ve started like a dozen sites this year and, uh, about half of them.
I think I’ve actually shared with my audience just for like example stuff. And I’ve straight up said from the beginning, I don’t think this is not long term. I know this going into it. You actually mentioned like having, you didn’t say the word plan, but you kind of mentioned like having a vision, having a plan for what this is and where it gets.
An audience and that sort of stuff. And my plan all along was, I know there’s not a long term plan. I’m starting these to see if I can have fun with it and make money in the next year, because I don’t think I just don’t trust the long term niche site SEO blogging model anymore. I just don’t. And I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t trust it.
That is a dead dead. No, there’s still money to be made right now for people to do AI content. And we’ll talk a little bit about. What that means in a minute, maybe, but I think there’s plenty of opportunities right there, but I, I don’t see Google really rewarding this a year or two from now, once AI search is like, even like four or five times better than it is in the next couple of months, like literally Google will show.
Articles in search results, probably for the foreseeable future, but it’s going to be surrounded by AI content. It’s going to be as references to AI content and people won’t need to click or they’ll click a whole lot less. We that’s what we already kind of think is going to be coming in the next like three, six months.
I think it’s going to be way worse like a year from now. I do. I think SEO blogging niche site blogging is going to die. Quote unquote, as we know it really soon, I just don’t trust Google. I like what you said about diverse diversification. I like what you said about thinking of any new project beyond that scope.
I think that’s an absolute vital thing people need to do, or go into it knowing that it’s not going to be around a year from now and you should build it and sell it. Even as a starter site, right? Like I’m looking at motion of vest. Like I’m going to list some of my sites there for like a thousand dollars.
I’ve spent way less money on them than that. Like that still turns me a couple of hundred dollars profit.
It’s not life changing money, but if you do that for lots of sites, I don’t know something I’m playing around with, but I ramble a little
Doug: Well, let me jump in and ask you. So you mentioned. That you started about a dozen sites and you’re like, ah, there’s money to be made right now Maybe you could flip some of these sites. Why are you working on? shorter term projects versus Something that you plan further out and you have a longer timeline It is volatile right like you can’t make money in the short term So that that’s one aspect the secondary question is you’re selling like a ticking time bomb to someone.
So like from a net moral, but an ethical standpoint, you’re like, Hey, I don’t know if this site’s going to keep going. You personally believe that it’s probably not. So like, how do you, uh, rationalize that as selling a site?
Pete: Uh, there’s a couple of different questions in there. Selling the site, I, the last thing you said first, I’ve literally never thought about because I feel that way. It’s like that with all the sites, half the sites you see listed for sale are declining or something has happened. You don’t see sites like that are in there, like hockey stick growth up for sale.
Never. Right. Um, how do I feel about it ethically? I think it’s on them and no one knows. I could be completely wrong. If I actually knew the future and I knew these sites were not going to do anything. That would be one thing, but there’s lots of people taking similar gambles and they know what they’re in for people who buy these starter sites that have 500 blog posts on it that are 100 percent AI.
They know what they’re doing. Right. They know the risk. They’re not hoping for a miracle thing and it’s going to go forever. They understand exactly what the game is. So I don’t feel bad whatsoever for that. Um, what was the other more important question you asked? Oh, why am I not doing more longer term things?
Two reasons. And this would actually be a great. Conversation. If we hook up again next week and record a longer interview. Uh, number one, cause I don’t know what the future holds and I don’t know what’s going to be long term right now, no matter what I do. And number two, the reason I have like a dozen sites and I highly doubt any of them are going to become long term things for me is because I’m actually focusing on my apps, coding and building apps and stuff like that.
Um, that’s been my primary focus. So I have a lot of sites that only have like 30 or 40 articles on it because I threw them up and I’m using them as testing grounds for my apps and like all sorts of stuff like this. So that’s the answer. I can go on longer if you want me to, but,
Doug: No, that makes sense. Especially with the, the, apps that you’re creating. It’s like, it gives a perfect, uh, sort of outlet for showcasing what they do.
Pete: and I even, this is, we’re going like super deep here, but I literally sent a sales email last week during like the Thanksgiving black Friday sales or whatever. I held my own little offer and I even mentioned in the email, I was like. I probably won’t be doing this app a year from now. It might not be relevant at all.
If you’re going to do it, do it right now. And there’s a reason I don’t offer annual plans and I don’t offer lifetime deals on AI products, because that’s, you asked me like ethically, morally, that rubs me the wrong way. People who are brain work was one of them. No, not brain work. One of those AI tools just last week announced they were closing down and everybody was like, yo, I just paid you for your lifetime deal.
And they, like two weeks, they’re closing down, they’re shutting down their app. And I was like, that’s why that’s horrible. Anyways.
Doug: I, I wonder if it was premeditated too, cause it’s like, that was an AppSumo deal, right? Like, and I’ve seen
this in the past, but this is like accelerated and
Pete: work?
Doug: well, yeah, we’ll, we’ll fact check It
This is all entertainment anyway
Pete: It doesn’t matter.
Doug: We don’t,
Pete: Yes.
Doug: not, not advice. Yeah.
Pete: I wrote it down because I wanted to, I wanted to record a podcast episode about it, like a solo show. It’s like lessons learned from this. Don’t do this anyways. Um, okay. Lo I want to move on to AI and using these AI tools before you share kind of what you’re doing right now.
I really want to hear about it. If anything, some people are honestly taking breaks, by the way, a lot of people I know that are like, I’m going to wait a year or two and then come back and do more content. Um, I want to hear about the future of AI tools or the way you see this going. I’m not exactly sure how much of a, a broader AI nerd you are, you, you tell us, Doug.
Um, I follow all the AI news just because I kind of find it interesting anyways. I like following the new companies that pop up. I like hearing about Reid Hoffman’s AI company and their model and Anthropx and then Llamas and the Facebooks and The bards and Gemini’s and I dig that sort of stuff. Other people tune it out.
That’s fine. But as it pertains to creating content on the internet and doing online business, where do you see AI a year or two from now?
Doug: Obviously.
Pete: that however you want. I know that’s like super weird and broad to ask, but I just want to hear all your thoughts.
Doug: I’m a light. AI nerd. So I think I was very interested for about four to six months or so. And, uh, you know, a lot of changes happened then. Like our first interview, I think things were shifting, like every two weeks, something new was coming out and, you know, you almost have to do like a live stream to make sure it’s kind of current because everything’s shifting so fast. I, I think from, you know, the written content standpoint, there are. So many tools out there. Some of them are quite good, right? You get pretty decent quality content, depending on the topic area. There are techniques that you could use. Like I interviewed someone recently, Tony Meritato. He’s a physical therapist and he is using ChatGPT and I think web pilot. For the plugin and he’s loading in journal articles and then providing his own input and then having an article written So it’s it’s correct information. It also has his opinions So that’s about as authentic as you can get with accurate information from peer reviewed journal articles So there are ways to use AI where it’s pretty good content.
That’s a great approach and he’s just not writing the narrative He still edits it and all that stuff So I feel like there’s going to be a flood of low quality content, which it seems like Google is trying to do something with that and not let it completely ruin the SERPs. That’s so debatable, but. They are pulling, they are her pulling, um,
their AI answers and the SGE and all that stuff.
But I, as a person that knows where the content is coming from, I tend not to trust that for very important things. Um, just generally, I don’t trust the AI answers because it’s derivative of all of the stuff that’s on the internet, which could be absolute nonsense. So I think there’s going to be. You know, the same kind of cat and mouse game that Google has had with marketers and SEOs for many years, there’s just going to be a lot more of that content. I also envision a lot of the AI tools to just go, go under and go out of business. And at some point, you know, there. Their content is not going to rank well, even though they, you know, someone published thousands of posts and they’re like, I’m not going to use that tool anymore, and they’re going to, they’re going to go under, there’ll probably be a little more consolidation to maybe like good tools will be acquired elsewhere. And I think the people that, that use AI as. An actual assistant and they use AI to improve what they’re already doing and augment what they’re doing. And I can give some examples of that in a, in a minute here, I think they’re going to stand out because like, like Tony, he’s using AI. As a, as a virtual assistant, instead of just publishing content as quickly as possible. So I think I’ll end here. What, what do you think?
Pete: yeah, I, uh, I’m going to label my approach, the barbell approach. Meaning if you imagine like an old barbell, there’s two big weights on either end and there’s very little in the, in the middle. And I was actually thinking about this a second ago. I feel like AI and online business is going to become kind of what happened to movies and TV shows.
Let me tell you what I mean. I feel like, I don’t have any data by the way, I haven’t looked, I haven’t researched this at all, I’m just making this shit up. I feel like 30 years ago, or 40 years ago, there were movie theaters, there were blockbusters, there were great movies that came out, especially during the summer, maybe at the holiday times or whatever.
And the amount of money per blockbuster movie was probably pretty similar. And then Streaming happened and Netflix happened and even Redbox happened and all this other stuff where now We could probably guess I’m guessing I don’t know how into movies you are But if I asked Doug, what were the top three grossing movies of this year?
You would probably say something like Barbie maybe Oppenheimer And you’d be correct, by the way, and maybe you point towards like one of the other ones and there are fewer and fewer movies making way more money, but there’s also just millions of more movies. Go browse Netflix for like the new movies added in the past month and there’s like 70 of them like it’s so stupid and that’s okay.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a long tail approach. We’ve been talking about this concept forever, but that’s a trend, right? And I feel like the same trend is going to be happening for blogging. I completely agree with you when you say that if we’re not flooded with low quality content already, Oh man, as more people, even like myself who build AI tools, the AI tools get better and better, we’re just going to see just The Netflix of TV shows and movies, right?
You’re going to Google something and there’s just going to be billions and trillions of results. Maybe that’s stupid, but there’s going to be a flood of low quality content and. It’s going to be the barbell approach. I think there’s also going to be fewer and fewer sites, fewer and fewer brands that start getting more and more traffic, more and more money.
And quite frankly, I partially blame Google for this and the helpful, confident updates. The people who saw the least amount of hits, there’s like 30 companies that control like 98 percent of Google SERP or whatever it is, right? I, again, I don’t know the numbers. People can go find that report at a detail.com.
Glenn Alsup put together that article a few years ago and he updates it. It’s fantastic. It’s basically like these companies right here are just almost unbeatable, almost, almost unstoppable. I think that’s going to become more the case, if that makes any sense
Doug: Mm hmm.
Pete: as more and more AI develops and comes out and stuff like that, one more thing, actually to this point, I actually think, so I won’t tell you what my health issue was, but I had a health issue for about the past two months.
I’m fine now. Everything’s good. Pete’s good to go. There was a time in the past couple of months where I did a lot of Googling on health related topics. And I won’t tell you what it is, but more serious health related topics. And I gotta tell you, this barbell approach. For the health related stuff Not only was I really scrutinizing what websites I was reading, but I was even making sure I read no less than like 10 sites for each one of these questions, just because, like, I have to get this right.
I have to understand this correctly. And so I was looking at Every single domain name. I was opening like 10 sites, reading all of them, trying to get accuracy, right? Accuracy. Compare that to literally the other day when I was looking at my grandmother’s tea cake recipe. My grand, who’s passed away now, tea cakes.
Right. Little cookies. And I had kind of this recipe and I was like, this is so the opposite of my health stuff. I opened up ChatGPT and I said, Hey, I’m doing this. Just give me a recipe. I didn’t fact check it. I didn’t go to Google. I didn’t question it at all. I literally just made this recipe of tea cakes.
From ChatGPT didn’t care why? Because it wasn’t important to me. And I feel like the more AI tools come out, I feel like the more people push out this low quality content. I feel like the things that matter are going to matter way more. And we’re really not going to want to see AI content. And I feel like the stuff that doesn’t matter at all, we’re just going to play like, okay, fine.
Just AI, just ChatGPT or AI and Google search or whatever, like don’t care. Our brains don’t have the capacity to analyze it much more than that. Another. Another barbell approach. What do you think about that? Do you agree? Disagree?
Doug: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you’re right about that, and I know, like you said, with health stuff, glad to hear you’re, you’re better and everything.
Um, yeah, I mean, I’ve had a couple things in the last year, uh, either for myself or relatives, where you look it up, and yeah, you’re, you’re reading very good websites and maybe reading some journal articles to see, like, what actual, Doctors, researchers are saying about it
versus, you know, some, I mean, we blog, right?
Anyone can publish anything they want, basically. So you have to really be careful. And as far as the barbell approach, I mean, I think, I mean, that’s, it’s a really good analogy and a perfect way to put it. Yeah.
Pete: All right. Well Doug, let’s move on to our third and final question and topic here. Let’s come back to today I’d be curious to hear you don’t have to mention any specific project names or anything. I don’t care I don’t think the audience does either but I would like to hear what your current Strategy is what your current obsession is.
If you’re really into something right now, and again, let’s keep it in the like online business or blogging or whatever AI space, anything in the, in our space, right, what are you working on right now? How are you using AI? If you are, what are you currently doing? Like December, 2023,
Doug: Okay, so I’m going to, I’m going to rewind a little bit just to give people a little bit of context on how I ended up with, um, my current situation. So number one, I started blogging in 2013. It was really fun. I got obsessed. I didn’t know anything about it. And I had some good successes, some ups and downs. Just like everyone’s entrepreneurial journey, right? In 2015, I got laid off and then I went all in. My wife allowed me to try to grow my business. So at that point in time, I tried a couple of different business models, like an agency, like a link building agency. I developed some online courses and I went hard on affiliate marketing, especially Amazon affiliate marketing. And. I really didn’t like working with clients. I really liked online courses and I liked affiliate marketing. So I kept working on those two things while I blogged and slowly I expanded the. So I went to YouTube first, published a lot of videos, did live streams, got comfortable working on camera. And then in 2019, I started a podcast and that sort of spread the platform.
It was all the top end funnel for online courses. The online courses were mainly around affiliate marketing. Like you could imagine in the make money online space, which can, it can get a little sketchy, but I tried to keep it very professional, very authentic, all that to say. As time went on, I slowly was less interested in building brand new niche sites. I sold a couple of them and the search landscape shifted. Starting a new site, it took longer to rank, there was a little bit more competition, and I was frankly, bored after about five to seven years of working on it. So I slowly moved more into podcasting and YouTubing 2021. I started the other show mile high five. So you could tell that I’m sort of moving into another. Another not industry, but I’m, I’m, I’m following my interest, which is more podcasting and communication and that sort of thing versus like pure SEO, which I never, I never considered myself like a pure SEO. Some people are like, I’m going to battle Google. And that is. My mission and I’m really into it. I was never like that.
So they’re yeah, they’re they’re very big company, you know I’m just one little guy. So I started a new site in around 2020 or so and have slowly worked on it over the years And have kind of tapered off as I was less interested. I’ve outsourced most of the content, outsourced a lot of the link building and you know, it’s fine.
It’s still out there. You asked about if I’m using AI and what I’m doing. So I never published, um, like a huge amount of AI. I. Generally have had my writers and editors just update and, or, well, they, they wrote the content from scratch. Of course, the tools weren’t as sophisticated when I was publishing a lot for, you know, two and a half years or so. And as the landscape shifted, I, I was like, you know what, the work that we’ve been doing has not been paying off AI content. So I’m going to, I’m just going to taper off a little bit here and let it sit. And what I am going to work on coming up soon. I’m not sure when this is going to air, but I’m, I’m going back to something.
I think you, you, uh, had some content around, you know, starting a podcast. And the thing is, I realized that I was getting two or three questions per week about podcasting or YouTube, and it’s something that I am passionate about. So I’m literally. I’m like 99 percent sure I’m going to, um, have a course and kind of a workshop on podcasting and YouTube. And I’m actually going to start a new show in parallel so that people can see what it’s like. And this is kind of, kind of a new thing. I haven’t told many people, Pete, but I’m going to. Start a new show with the intention of selling it in a specific market where I know there’s a lot of interest and not many people that I know of have, you know, started and or sold a podcast. So it’ll make, you know, there’s a multifaceted approach here. So even if it doesn’t work out, I have good stories to tell. I get a course at the end of the day. There’s a lot of pros. For working on this project. So what am I working on now? I think a podcast is great. I think YouTube and a video is awesome. There will be a blog, but I am not super, um, invested in the blogging portion. And I will be using AI to essentially pull the transcripts, turn things into blog posts, create summaries, create lead magnets, the whole thing, right? I’ll use AI as a tool, but not to create the content, only to repackage the content into specific formats that could help me out and build the platform.
Pete: I like that. I like that a lot. Good for you, man. I like that. I have been, um, before I answer the question, I’ve shared this before, but I’ll share it again. I do a word for the year every year that just kind of like lives in my head as I make decisions and do things. And this year was energy, energy. I wanted to have more energy in my work.
Part of that means. Only choosing projects that I’m interested in or have energy for. And I got to tell you, it’s worked out really great. We can talk about this some other time, but I like that you’re in a podcast and you’re in a video, you have experience with it anyways. And it kind of sounds like you’re, you’re a little jazzed for it.
Like you’re, you had some like tinkering, uh, a tinkering look in your eye where you’re already kind of thinking about, Oh, I might do this or I might try this or try this or do this. I love that. That’s cool. Good for you. Also, uh, I intentionally stayed away from AI podcasting tools, just cause I haven’t had the mental bandwidth to really dive in like I want to.
But as I understand it, there’s more and more. Um, obviously just like AI writing tools. Um, and I’m actually, I brainstormed with a few people at FinCon on some potential, like podcasting AI tools that would be amazing or super fun to build. And I actually wrote a bunch of them down. I’m really, really interested in that.
Doug: yeah.
What are you working on right now, Pete?
Pete: I am on my technically third, although the really two of the AI apps that I built this year, uh, you tried the first one, it was called Promptomizer.
And it was, uh, it was there, it worked technically. It wasn’t a really strong value add. And I very quickly like gave it up in favor of this new tool. Uh, it’s called Fab and. Honestly, it was just me again, pursuing my energy. I had the thought in June of like, what if I just built a tool that did everything of the blogging process, the SEO blogging, like literally start to finish, like, what if I could click a button, check it, check back in every couple of weeks and months and be like, yep, those are ranking, uh, those, you know, they all have internal links and affiliate links and featured images and all this stuff.
I was like, what if I, what if I could just do everything? And so that’s what I started building. Um. And I got to tell you, it’s just been so much fun. It, uh, it does make money. I did the beta launch and it has paying users and everything feels great. And I only recently consider myself like a really lazy marketer.
I haven’t done a whole lot of that. There’s not a whole lot of new people using it, but it’s just been fun. Like I look forward to working on it and coding is so much better than Promptomizer ever was or ever could be. Like, uh, it’s just, it’s just a lot of fun. And I do have. Again, like the, not quite a dozen, but almost a dozen niche sites, basically, or what they are, um, that I actually, just as of this morning, I started having the itch to go back on them and use my own tool that I built for this purpose.
I’m like, I swear, Doug, like an hour ago, I was just thinking about this. I’m like maybe two or three days worth of work away from a good stopping point. My tool, not that it’ll ever be like complete, but honestly, like for right now, like it’s a great stopping point. Like I’m so close, like a couple of days work and it’ll be there.
And I think once that happens, probably like Monday or Tuesday of next week, I think I’m actually just going to focus on these sites and absolutely pump out the content. I’m talking about thousands of posts a month across across all the sites and I’ll tell you Why, first of all, that was always, that was always the point right at the moment, like the spray and pray technique.
I just wanted to see what happens. Like, I don’t know if any of this is going to work at all, but just recently we’ve started seeing these case studies of people who use koala writer, who use, uh, by word. ai, who use content at scale, these like bulk AI tools, my tool being one of them now, fab.ai. Uh, to do the spray and pray approach.
And we’re just now seeing case studies of people finding success with it. I’ve read two today. I literally wrote it on my to do list. Go check out those case studies. And it kind of got me excited again of like actually going back into these sites and seeing if I can grow them into something. Meaningful.
So I got to finish my, this one feature that I had to release over the next couple of days, and then after that, I’m going to be working on like four or five different sites. I already have the sites set up. They all have content on them, but it’s like 20 posts or something like that. I think I’m just going to pump out content.
Over the next, like six to eight weeks, like the next, like two or three months and then reassess. Like that might be what I do for the next couple of months and then reassess. So that’s what, that’s what I’m doing right now. Uh, let me say one more thing, unrelated. I answered that question, but you mentioned this
and in my head, I actually thought of the word breaking point, and this is in reference to Google search changing and the helpful content update. And we saw a lot of sites, quite frankly, suffer. And you mentioned Google’s kind of sort of trying to drown out the low quality AI content that’s going to be like, you know, just everywhere.
Right. It’s trying to like de-rank that stuff. It’s trying to distinguish that content. As you were talking about that, I thought of my specific breaking point with Google in the past year. And it was the helpful content update. One of my sites, which is, I can’t remember if it’s actually public or not. For the long time, it wasn’t public.
It’s a keyboard site. I’ll just say that I don’t care. Um, it was totally a hobby. I didn’t really care if it makes money. It ended up making money. I have a YouTube channel with two and a half million views. For that brand now, it’s just been fun. It doesn’t make a ton of money It didn’t even make a ton of money before it got hit with the content update But it made some money and it was just a hobby and I don’t plan on selling it anytime soon still I don’t I still do content even though it doesn’t make any money, but that content Doug I’m gonna brag here for a second.
It was good. I spent a crap load of time on this content I wrote it myself. I used AI tools, uh, like Jasper. This was before ChatGPT for like a little bit of assistant, but it was like extremely heavily edited. Lots of photos, my own photos, my own research, YouTube videos for my brand and audio sound tests for the keyboards.
Like. Painstaking amount of time and effort got crushed, got crushed. And I look at the content that outranks me now. And I’m like, I’m done. I tried, I’m done. I’m sorry, Google, but you screwed up like objectively. My content is 10 times better. Not like a little bit better, not like questionably better, but like 10 times.
Better and more accurate than some of the sites, not all the sites. There’s other people that do good stuff, but some of these sites that are out ranking me now, and I’m just like, I’m done. I’m sorry. This was a breaking point. I do not trust Google for the foreseeable future for money making. I’m just done
Doug: That, uh, that makes sense. Um, I want to call back to something I mentioned earlier, which will hit my breaking point. Are we still good on time? Are you good on time?
Pete: I’m good. If you are. Yeah, I just realized I asked you here like an hour and a half ago
Doug: No, it’s all good.
Pete: I failed.
Doug: I’m going to try to make sure this is not me whining, but it may, it may sound like that, all right, it may sound
Pete: I just whined for like five minutes. That’s fine.
Doug: I think I started to give up on Trying to rank in Google for my personal site, niche site project. So the callback for the keyword golden ratio is what I’ll talk about here. So I made up the term, right? Keyword golden ratio was not referenced. Uh, before I talked about it, I did a bunch of videos and I ranked number one and got. A decent amount of traffic for that search term. I mean, I made it up. I wrote a good article, so I’m kind of the authority on it. Over time, people were like, Oh, I’m going to, I’m going to try to rank for that too. And some of them, they don’t link back. They don’t reference me. They like treat it like their own idea. That sucks, but it means people are. They’re like trying to take a good idea. One interesting thing happened. I wrote a guest post for a keyword research tool, and I wrote a very good one on the keyword golden ratio. It’s a great article. I actually outranked myself with a guest post. So that was like strike number one. I was like, ah, it kind of sucks. I wish that I ranked number one ’cause it pulled in a lot of email subscribers. Now, fast forward, it’s been several years and for a little while I was continuing to try to rank number one for that term. I created a, a bunch of FAQs and other topical, clusters around the keyword golden ratio, and slowly I dropped down. Now I’m probably ranking number 10 or so. Or worse. I might not even be on the first page anymore. Right. But there are lower quality sites and results ranking over me. And at some point I decided, right, you’ll hear a lot of people talk about this.
I decided to play a different game. I was like, I’m not going to play. The game against other people that could like, you know, build a bunch of outrank me. Maybe Google doesn’t like my results anymore. I’d probably change it up myself. But at some point I was like, you know what? I’m playing a different game.
And if people outrank me for my own term, I don’t really give a shit. It is. Totally fine with me. So I designed my own game with my own rules and Google search does not come into play at all for that, for this new game that I’m playing, I haven’t defined all the rules, but that’s where I started to give up.
And then slowly over time, I was like, I don’t care. Like it’s a weird game to play and I don’t want to compete in the same way that I did before. But what do you think of that?
Pete: I’m with you. Well, I actually just Googled keyword golden ratio. And before I hit enter the auto complete things, you don’t know what the second one was, the one like right under golden keyword, keyword, golden ratio. It was keyword golden ratio, Doug,
Doug: Oh really? Yeah.
Pete: which I was like, that’s just, this is perfect. This is perfect.
Um, well, first of all, I mean,
Doug: It’s a weird thing.
Pete: That sucks. Yeah. I don’t know what to say that, uh, that that’s kind of saying you’re like kind of hit on something kind of cool and catchy and then people start catching on and then you like lose control of it like a little bit. It’s got to be frustrating. I’m sorry.
That’s number one. Um, yeah. And I did look at the. The page one, by the way, just because I was curious and there’s stuff I’ve lots of stuff, actually, I’ve never heard of. I like this idea of at least being aware of the game you’re playing, quote unquote. This, I don’t want to talk about this too long. Cause we’ve been going for a while.
This is a little bit off topic, but you even mentioned a few minutes ago, being in the make money online space and how it can be a little. I don’t know why I thought of the word queasy. That’s not the term you use. It can be a little sketchy or a little bit. Uh, I was just going to say difficult sometimes.
And for the longest time, I wasn’t willing to play that game. I would like dabble in the. Like not super unethical spammy stuff, but you know what I mean? Like some marketing tactics, any, every, anytime you use a deadline funnel, like an evergreen deadline funnel, to me, that’s the boundary. That’s like, there isn’t actually a deadline on this.
You could clear all your browser cookies and resubscribe to my newsletter and get the offer again, but it’s not really terrible. You’re not really hurting anybody. Like that’s, it’s a great area, right? And there’s so much of that in the make money online space that I, I. I don’t know. For the past, I’d say like two and a half years now, I’ve been doing less.
Do you even blog stuff? Way less? Do you even blog stuff? Because it just didn’t feel like the game I wanted to play.
Doug: Yeah, that, that makes sense. And I think people should, should take a step back, like get a higher level view and think like, what do I want to work on? Like, is this a good place for me to be working? And, you know, I’ll wrap up the KGR stuff, um, in a positive light. So, you know, the keyword golden ratio is a really good example of marketing.
And maybe I should, you know, talk about it that way. I pulled together like decent ideas. Good ideas from a lot of other smart people and. It takes a long time to create a marketing term where people pay attention to it. And I talked into a void and no one gave a shit for probably two years. And then slowly people started to talk about it, but it was an exercise in marketing and branding versus anything else.
It’s a fine idea. There are, you know, other tools you could use. There’s other ideas that are better. But it helps beginners and it’s very simple for them to understand. It has golden ratio in there, which is a, it’s a sexy term. People like that in any application,
Pete: All right, doc. Well, let’s wrap things up here. Uh, where would you point people to follow along with all the stuff you have going on?
Doug: you can go to a niche site project and sign up for the email list there. I, you know. Publish, uh, videos and, and YouTube videos and, uh, podcasts. So I usually send it out there. If you’re a video person, you know, hop over to, uh, YouTube. You could find my channel, Doug Cunnington and the podcast. My couple podcasts are on all the directories.
So it’s Mile High Fi or the Doug Show. You could find them there. So what about you, Pete? Where can folks find you?
Pete: Yeah, I usually just point people right to my homepage at do you even blog. com for anybody interested. And, uh, the make money online stuff. Yeah, I got lots of stuff on blogging, podcasting, and YouTube, lots of great podcast interviews over the years. And, uh, at this point my email list has been largely on the back burner, but I still send out at least.
Uh, one email every two weeks. And it’s usually like a roundup email at this point, which is helpful things. I’ve found fun stuff and some stories every now and then, and, and that sort of stuff. So do you even blog. com right there on the homepage is where I point people. And that’s it, man, dog. Thanks for coming on and hanging
Doug: Yeah, this was fun. We’ll talk to you soon.