Introduction and Catching Up
Doug: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and I’m pumped to have Alex Cooper from WP Eagle on the channel. We haven’t talked in a few months maybe, and we’re just going to cover what Alex has been working on, what’s working, what’s not working. We’ll talk about his YouTube channel, the direction that he’s taking it, and just the, you know, what’s going on on the streets.
So, Alex, how’s it going today?
Alex: It is good. It’s good. I, I have a little luie, as we’d say in the uk. You’ve heard that word before, right? Luie?
Doug: Never heard of it until you said it about three
Alex: minutes ago. Okay. It’s a very British word. It means, you know, an unspecified bug, a cold, and, yeah. But I, I’m here. I, I, I wanted to catch up with you.
I’m feeling all right. I’ve had. [00:01:00] You know, some hot tea with some money. I’m good.
Doug: Very good. Alright, well I appreciate it and we’ll, um, we’ll keep that in mind. I won’t put too much pressure on you or anything like that, but, um, people should check out your channel. A lot of folks, um, have seen you before.
You’ve been on the show so many times and we met. In, I don’t know, 2017 or something like that. Yeah. And we were creating similar content around, uh, Amazon affiliate. You, you had a focus on WordPress stuff, but you were dabbling with Amazon affiliate. And as, uh, an up and coming YouTuber myself, I was like, okay, I want to collaborate.
So I reached out, we did some stuff together, became friends, and funny enough, it was, I think it was about three years ago, we went out to the Ezoic event in October. And that was, yeah, we were down in San
Alex: Diego. Yeah.
Doug: So cool that those photos popped up and I was like, oh yeah, like it was right around this time.
And so much has changed in the three years with ai. The different, uh, you know, SEO impacts based on ai, [00:02:00] the content website industry. So all that to say, what are you working on these days? What’s keeping you busy?
Alex’s Current Projects
Alex: Ah, you know, I’m working on all sorts. I’m still creating content for my channel, which is W Peal.
I kind of renamed it, actually, I put my name at the beginning, so it’s Alex Cooper w Peal. And I’m still producing quite a lot of WordPress content. I think WordPress is still, uh, still a thing. And, um, yeah, less niche website content, of course. Well, in fact, no niche website content because no one’s doing that anymore.
Um, I’m also sharing updates on there about my other project, which is the project about my, um, my town where I live here in Spain. I have a, um. A big social media presence about the town, about where to go, the best restaurants, things to do, all that kind of stuff, to try and help the tourists that come here and the people that live here, you know, find the best stuff.
And it means I get to go to lots of nice places and eat lots of nice food and drink lots of nice drink. And so yeah, I’ve got that. But then on WP Go, [00:03:00] I share how that’s going. All the numbers, the traffic numbers, the views, what I’m doing, if I’m making any money. And all that kind of cool stuff.
Doug: Cool.
Alex: Apart from that, I’m also, you know, helping a few friends with stuff they’re doing, whether they want a video editing or they need help with their WordPress site, um, that, that’s keeps me busy.
I also do a little bit of AdWords management for a couple of friends as well, so no, keep myself busy.
Doug: And you’re nimble, uh, and you were able to pivot.
The Evolution of WordPress and Niche Websites
Doug: And the thing is, like before you had the YouTube channel and some of the, I mean, you had a WordPress theme, you still have a WordPress theme. Um, but
Alex: yeah, yeah, pop popcorn theme is still going.
I mean, the thing with that is, it’s a great theme, but it was created and designed and is a. Specifically for people that want to create niche websites. And obviously when that the bottom kind of fell out of that market, um, no one wants to do it anymore. So obviously that had a knock on effect on the theme.
Still a great theme, but maybe not as versatile as some of the other themes that are out there.
Doug: Sure. And, and like the [00:04:00] useful features that you added for that specific. Kind of website, they’re not really as relevant. I mean, they can be used, but like it was oriented around
Alex: Yeah, the
Doug: documentation.
Alex: I mean, if you still wanna create a website, review products, that kind of thing, it’s got great features for that.
So you can have comparison tables and you could show off products in a great way. So it’s still good for that. But you know, people aren’t, especially on the web, they’re not doing that so much. They are doing it. I’ve noticed on social media, especially on places like TikTok. And, you know, we have some joint friends who I know are doing very well, um, creating content around products, uh, video content, short form video content, putting it onto TikTok, um, including an affiliate link and of course that affiliate link actually and takes them to TikTok shop.
So it’s like a completely enclosed ecosystem and I know a lot of people that gain a lot of success from that. So it’s quite interesting actually. It’s something I’m gonna explore further for sure.
Doug: And [00:05:00] I, I talked to Jesse Lakes from Genius Link yesterday, so his interview is probably already out, or one of the interviews I did with him.
And, um, you know, he’s. Amazon associate oriented, and he’s like, yeah, people are, I mean, there’s still people earning money. It’s just like, not these websites that we used to do. So, okay. You gave us a lot of areas to jump into. Yeah. So just
Alex: quickly on that, so how, how are they driving traffic to Amazon now?
Doug: It’s just typically, and he didn’t, I, I tried to pin him down, like, oh, is there a primary source? It was basically like. Everywhere else, aside from like blogs. So it’s like from social media, pick your poison, right? Any of ’em are driving traffic. YouTube is very good and it depends, you know, on the niche. So some, some niches have really, um, I guess mature communities and creators like on YouTube [00:06:00] versus, and you know, it depends on the demographic too, but you know.
You may have people that are on YouTube and they watch that and other people are like TikTok, like, I’m not on TikTok. So like all the, I know it’s out there, but I’m not spending any time there. I don’t even have it on my phone. So it’s just like, it’s, I don’t know. Um, but people are, you know, able to convert.
Well, and one interesting thing and then we’ll, we’ll, uh, I’ll let you keep asking questions, but he mentioned that there’s this seller network. That you can use. Okay. Within Amazon. So I’ll skip some of the details, but essentially you’re able,
Alex: excuse me.
Doug: Essentially you’re able to work with, yeah. With the seller network, you’re able to work with the companies producing the products, like the vendors specifically.
Okay. So you are paid by them instead of Amazon. So you’re, [00:07:00] you’re not, oh, that’s interesting. You’re referring over via, you’re referring people to Amazon via the seller network, but not using your Amazon associate link, and then you’re able to get paid something he said on average is 18% versus on average most of the time.
Alex: Yeah,
Doug: 3% or whatever. That wouldn’t be. So it’s like dramatically, you know, there’s trade offs. You don’t get. Commissions for products like with the Halo effect. So it’s not everything in the cart, it’s just the thing that you refer them to. So
Alex: yeah, but I think that that bigger commission would probably make up for that.
Doug: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Networking and Conferences
Doug: So mostly the traffic’s coming from, from social in some flavor, occasionally other places, but that’s the main idea, You mentioned, um, you know, creating other WordPress content and you were recently at Word Camp in Portland, Oregon. Yeah. So how was that?
Alex: It was good.
It was interesting to get back into WordPress. I mean, [00:08:00] one of the things that has kept my channel going is relationships with, uh, WordPress companies and sponsored content. The problem I have just to go off on a side note is that the audience that I built on the channel was a lot of people that, um. Are into niche websites, so we’re looking to do affiliate marketing.
So my WordPress content doesn’t always resonate with ’em, whereas before it was a kind of hybrid. It was like, this is how you make an Amazon affiliate website with WordPress. So there was WordPress and there was affiliate, and it brought in a lot of people that were into affiliate marketing. However, I do, I, it works differently because a lot of the WordPress content does rank quite well on Google and on YouTube search.
So although it doesn’t always get that initial reach with my subscribers because they say, okay, I don’t wanna know how to, I know, add a form to WordPress ’cause I don’t even have a website anymore. Um, it does ultimately over time start coming up when people start to search for, you know, how to add a form to WordPress.
So it’s good. But yeah, word Camp was good. It was interesting because. I dunno [00:09:00] if you know much about the WordPress scene, but last year there was a big hoo-ha because, uh, Matt Mullen, who kind of founded WordPress, um, kind of laid into one of the big sponsors, which was, um, WP Engine, right? About how they never contribute to WordPress and all this kind of stuff.
And it was a big kind of fallout this year. He was there again and it was interested to hear him talk about how he sees WordPress going again. They’re trying to bring in lots of AI stuff, which I guess is gonna be inevitable. Uh, and you kind of touched on the bigger picture of, you know, where the web in general is going because as people search less, ’cause they’re using chat bots and stuff, people are visiting websites less.
So therefore, you know, WordPress powers most of the, the, uh, or a big majority of the websites on the internet, it’s gonna have a knock on effect to them. So yeah, it was interesting, but it was also great just to connect with different people and. You know what these events are like. Yeah. Loads of free stuff as well.
And, um, I got taken out for dinner by um, [00:10:00] uh, hosting.com, which is a, obviously a hosting company. Great domain name. And you know what it’s like when you’ve got a YouTube channel, big or small? Um,
Doug: yeah,
Alex: it’s nice ’cause you kind of get invited to these things just on the hope that you might make a video.
Yeah,
Doug: very cool.
Alex: And to connect and, and meet people. So yeah, it, it was fun and it’s nice to, you know, visit the States. So I was only in the States for a week.
Doug: Okay.
Alex: You know, I can’t, I can’t play too much, uh, America for too long. I have to get back to Europe quickly.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people here are the same way, but, okay.
That’s cool. Did you go to Mostly Network or was it like hoping to learn some stuff too and have some takeaways?
Alex: It was mostly to network. I find that always is the, the benefit of going to any of these events. You know, back when I used to go to affiliate gathering here, not here, but back in the uk uh, Carl’s event, I mean the speakers are, are interesting in that, but the most I got was from networking and making connections, talking to people, becoming friends with [00:11:00] people.
Then you know, opportunities and things, uh, come out of that.
Doug: We missed each other by just a couple weeks. I was at a conference out there and one thing that I noticed, I also go to network, by the way. Yeah. Not that I actively try to not learn anything, but you know, the first couple conferences you go to, you may be like, uh, trying to really get to different talks and stuff like that.
But one thing that I realized is a lot of the talks were from people. That were very established and they basically, they were teaching things that probably wouldn’t work for like 90% of the people occasionally. Yeah. What was the
Alex: event you’re at by the way?
Doug: It was called FinCon. So it’s like financial creators.
Okay. Uh, ranging from, um, you know, like budgeting kind of people, frugal folks to early retirement. That’s kind of my area all the way to, you know, just financial, um, companies in general, but Okay. [00:12:00] Y. Yeah, like the main stage shocks were often unrelatable and occasionally the. People were aware enough to say, well, if you’re just get getting started, like, don’t do what I’m saying.
But at that point it’s like, okay, you just told us like 20 minutes about stuff that we can’t do until we have hundreds of thousands of followers. I feel
Alex: like I wasting of time a little bit. Yeah,
Doug: yeah, yeah. It, but I mean, those people. I, I suppose, ’cause they have big followings. They get the asses in the seats and they sell tickets and stuff like that.
But, um, anyway, networking is probably the best thing. Not that, I mean, if there’s the right talk at the right time, it really can change the trajectory.
Alex: Yeah. Sometimes there’s one or two that resonate with you and they’re worth going to. Yeah. I went to one or two and Yeah, that was it.
Doug: That’s fine. Very cool.
Um, so
Alex: for, yeah. I, I provide with, with events it is, it’s the lunchtime ’cause everyone sits down for lunch. You pick a table, you never know who you’re gonna meet. You chat to some people. The events that happen afterwards when people, you know that you see a group of people, you just say, Hey, where you heading?
And they say, oh, you know, there’s a bar around the corner. We’re going for a bit. You go to those, uh, you go out for dinner [00:13:00] with some people or whatever there, that’s where the real magic can happen.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. Like there’s no replacement to like meeting in person like you, you can do it online. Like I.
I thought we were friends for and, you know, before we met, but we talked online like this for many, many hours and like passed each other, you know, on the internet often. So,
Alex: yeah,
Doug: but there’s no, no replacement to spend like a couple hours. Um. Sitting around a table and drinking a couple of beers. So
Alex: especially if there’s some, uh, beer involved, it definitely helps.
And yeah, you say about learning stuff, but often you learn a lot from just talking to people because people share experiences and stories and and stuff. And that’s where you can really learn and you can then you’ve got a one-to-one session going on.
Creating WordPress Content
Doug: What kinda WordPress content are you creating now?
Alex: Uh, I’m doing tutorials, um, still quite specific tutorials again.
Approached by a lot of companies now and they’ll have a plugin or a theme and say, you know, can you do a [00:14:00] tutorial on this? And I’ll take a look and if it looks like a decent, uh, product, yeah, I can do a tutorial. And so they’re not salesy videos as such. Maybe a couple of them recently might have been a little too salesy, but generally it’s how to do something with a, a certain product or, or plugin or a theme or whatever.
Doug: And then do you usually do those. For free or are those, do you consider those dedicated videos and make them pay?
Alex: Yeah, they’re generally, I, I do ask for a little compensation for those. Yeah.
Doug: Okay. And I know, I mean, I get, if you have any size of YouTube channel, I assume you probably get like pitches all the time, but you know, there’s so many that are like, oh, we have this really great affiliate program.
And I’m like, I’m not doing stuff for free anymore. Like I, I used to in the beginning, but like now there’s too many pitches and there’s too many bad products out there. So
Alex: there is, you have to pick and choose and yeah, I won’t do anything just on affiliate only anymore.
Doug: Yeah,
Alex: I used to. I used to, for sure.
Yeah. So, yeah. And the other part I worked out was to meet some of the people that I had been working with and have done videos for in person, again, just to, you know, [00:15:00] right. Talk to them and. The, the company directors, the founders, and, and people like that just to, you know, build that relationship.
Doug: And it’s funny, it goes back to the same kind of stuff that you were doing before.
So full circle, like tutorials, how to solve a problem. Someone Googles, how do you, whatever, move the form and there’s a tool to help
Alex: you do that. Fine. Me? Yeah, it’s, it’s crazy. You never know which videos you’re gonna do. Well, I did one recently, but this one wasn’t a pay for it. It was just a simple how to add a map.
Uh, to WordPress without a plugin because I was doing it on my website. I thought, well make a video at the same time, and it’s, yeah, it’s got five fiig figures of views and gets traffic steadily, gets comments steadily, and a lot of people say, you know, thanks for the video. That really helped me out. So yeah, they, they’re very evergreen a along of those things, providing the, the, the software keeps being updated or whatever.
Doug: So do you have like a specific content plan for YouTube? Again, if you go to the talks, you’re like, you gotta have a content plan, you [00:16:00] gotta publish on a schedule, you gotta blah, blah blah. So like, how do you approach your, you know, content planning or just publishing schedule?
Alex: That’s a good one. I’m quite sporadic.
I don’t have a content plan as such. I mean, as, uh. Sponsor content comes in. I obviously do plan that as best as I can and work around my life in general. You know, I’ve got kids and other stuff going on, so I have to be quite flexible. Um, I shown my Estro Life project. I have more of a content plan, which is basically try and upload something every single day, and I have been able to achieve that last few days I’ve been outta town, so I haven’t been able to, but I still sometimes try.
I’ve been, and by the way, these, this is short form content, which is far easier to publish every single day. So I’m always, whenever I’m out and about and I see something interesting, or even just walking along and the sun’s out and the beach looks cooler, I’ll just take some footage. Then when I need something, I’ll kind of montage it together, as you know, beautiful Es sunsets or whatever, and just clum a load of things together.
Using [00:17:00] apps like cap cut or edits from meta or any of these on phone video editing apps that make it super easy to kind of splice together bits of footage, add some music. Push it up to Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and all the rest of them, and it’s grown really well actually. Um, Facebook incredibly is, is the biggest, I think over 14,000 likes now.
A lot of videos get what again, reels generally get well over 20,000 views. And in fact, I’ve been invited to the, uh, the monetization program with Facebook, which I think is quite new. So they’ve started to pay me for the videos, which is nice. And. Yeah, just in general.
Local Influence and Short Form Content
Alex: I mean, I get a, a good vibe whenever I go out because I do get stopped on the street quite a lot now, um, with people visiting the town saying, oh, we watch your videos, we love ’em.
We went to this restaurant you recommended the other day. It was fantastic. Um, and then I make sure that these people do tell the restaurant owners why they’re there and when I [00:18:00] see them and, and a lot of restaurant owners have been very happy and
Doug: they love you,
Alex: treated me to meals and drinks and a lot of places I go now I don’t.
I have to buy my coffee or beer or whatever, which is nice.
Doug: It’s like a,
Alex: so even as I spend most of my money on coffee, beer and food, uh, it kind of balances out quite nicely.
Doug: It makes me think of like, uh, I don’t know, like the mob movies where you like walk around town and then you walk in and they’re like, oh no, no, you do not.
Wait. Like, come on in, like,
Alex: come through your table here. Here’s your drink. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a bit like that. Alright. It’s good. And uh, I mean, I’ve tried to keep everything very positive, which was something I learned. When you are reviewing places on a, on a local level, I’ve did a few negative reviews because of course, actually negative content always does really well.
I, you know, I put, if I put a video up and said, you know, I went to the worst restaurant in Esther Pona, or You won’t believe how bad this food was, you know, it’s gonna get a ton of views. But the nega, the comments and stuff that I got was [00:19:00] just, I, I, I don’t want that, you know, people saying how. Dare you destroy, uh, you know, an established business.
What gives you the right to say these things? And so I pick and choose the places I go to. I go to the places that I know are good, or the places I know I like, and then I create content about them. I know that I could build a really good channel by doing negative stuff, but I just, I just, I stop my staff.
Doug: Right? Yeah. Smart. I mean, you. If you’re thinking that negative energy and then you have to deal with the comments and the other interaction, like, it’s not worth it. Yeah, I was just thinking,
Alex: um, and, and it’s the other thing that’s very surprising to me. You know, I, on WP Eagle, I, I fascinated on 70,000 subscribers, but though it has been stuck on that for a long time, um, I think I got recognized once or twice in, over like 10 years of producing videos once when I was in London, I think, and, and one other time.
Whereas here with a much smaller following, because it’s a local, um, site and local social media, it happens a lot.
Doug: Yeah.
Alex: Of, of course. But I [00:20:00] wasn’t maybe, uh, expecting that actually when I did it. But now, yeah, as I say, it feels kind of weird as you walking around. A lot of people are, are they even look at you and give you a double take?
Like, I, I I know that guy because you’ve been in their feed or whatever. Or they do actually come over and go, Hey Alex. And they talk to you like you’re an old friend. Yeah. Which is nice. It’s nice.
Doug: That’s pretty cool. Very cool.
Alex: Um, yeah, but I think, and it’s different to you from, I mean, YouTube is a platform that I use for it, and I do long form content as well, but it’s the short form content, which is, which is where everyone is at now, really.
We’ve all become, you know, doom scrollers people just scrolling through Instagram reels or Facebook reels and, and yeah, that’s where you get in front of people now.
Doug: So let’s talk, um, great transition over to Es. You mentioned some of the areas of the platform, so short form, but can you describe like what you have set up and then we’ll get into some more of the details, but Yeah, what is, what does the whole platform look like?[00:21:00]
Alex: Okay, so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a website Eson Life, which I obviously created on WordPress and I’ve done tutorials on w peal about how I created the site is running popcorn theme. And um, yeah, so that’s kind of like a directory site that’s got. A page on everywhere that I’ve been, it’s got details of the, the food they do.
It’s got a map, it’s got the Google reviews, it pulls those in. It’s got a video if I’ve done one, so it’s like a directory site. So if people go on Google and they do a search for a specific restaurant or a bar or cafe, my website generally is near the top. It’s up there with the map results. Uh, because there’s not too much competition.
Um, and then there’s the social media, which is the other side of it. So there’s YouTube, there’s TikTok, there’s Instagram, there’s uh, Facebook, and there’s X. But X doesn’t seem to be working. I think X is, it’s got its own thing. It’s for people’s opinions and stuff. Videos and whatever don’t seem to work there.
So I create long form content about places I go. When I say long form, they’re only five to 10 minute videos of me going to a restaurant, [00:22:00] showing it off, eating some food. Talking about what I’m doing, that kind of stuff. And then the short form content is, it could just be a minute of me just talking about something, you know, I, I’m down at the beach day and look at this, or, you know, something funny I’ve seen.
It could just be clips of me walking around with some music, uh, me not actually in, in frame, just, you know, nice scenes and stuff like that, that often does really well. I could just, like, I did video just the other night of a lot of people walking on the front here and the sun was going down. It was a beautiful scene, just panning across to the left.
Put some trending music on it. Um, from a film that was out and yeah, it smashed like 60,000 views and it’s literally a 15 second pan of the, of the sunset. You know what the kind of effort you’d have to do for YouTube to get that kind of views is, is crazy.
Doug: Right.
Alex: So, uh, and then also I used the final thing, I use the short form content is to drive people to the website.
And that works really well. So I’ll stand outside a restaurant and I’ll say, Hey, I’m outside, you know, Bob’s Burgers bar here. I had a [00:23:00] fantastic burger the other night and, you know, flash up a quick clip of the burger. Uh, I’ve just done a full video at a full review over on the website. Do go check it out.
And I see big spikes of traffic to the website when I do that. And of course on there there’s the embed of the YouTube as well. So YouTube benefits from that too.
Doug: Great. Super interesting with, like you said, the amount of effort for like that shorter form video to get 60,000 views and all that kind of stuff.
Monetization and Future Plans
Doug: The, obviously, like you’ve done some very targeted long form YouTube videos where there’s like a affiliate offer specifically.
Maybe it’s a plugin or something and you could earn a lot of money from whatever. 3000 views because it’s so targeted. So when we’re, you know, when you talk about this, and then when I look at the views that our channels get now versus what they used to get back in the day, I’m like, uh, 60,000 views.
Super [00:24:00] cool. Interesting. You’ve done a lot of work you’ve built up to be able to do that, but I’m like, all right, what does that pay at the end of the day? Like, you’re building the following, but you know, from my. You know, business aspect and the marketing aspect. I’m like, okay. Does that equate to anything at all?
Alex: Um, it equates to a small amount of Facebook revenue, which I think probably this month is gonna get up to about a hundred dollars. So that is growing. So views are, are, or something, I’ve been approached by a couple of companies now that wanna do some affiliate stuff. Um, randomly I got approached by a company.
Basically the law has changed here in Spain regarding cars. And in Spain, you’re supposed to have a little tr triangle, which you put out. If you break down by the side, the road, you’re supposed to put out this little triangle. Um, that’s changing because they realize that when people walk 200 meters behind their cars, put out a triangle, a lot of them get killed.
So it wasn’t helping. So now there’s this new light that you put on top of your [00:25:00] car. Super bright light. You can see it from like a kilometer off. It also sends out a GPS, uh, signal to the police and, and people like that. So they, they know that there’s this car much safer. Anyway, there’s a company that now sells these lights that’s local here.
They approached me and said, um, would you like to, um, create some content? We’ve got an affiliate program on these lights. So those opportunities are starting to come in now. And they also, the guy who’s got the company also has a rent car company said, we’ll give you a car for a while. You can use that. So, you know, there are benefits coming in.
In terms of cash value, it’s interesting. I’m trying to gauge it because I’ve had a lot of businesses approach me and say, we’d like you to come and visit and do some content. I’ve created like a media pack of like, okay, if you want a short form video, it’s gonna be this much. If you want, um, a longer form video, it’s gonna be this much.
I’ve not had really anyone buy on that, so I’ve either got my pricing off, so the opportunities are starting to come in, but I guess I still need to figure out exactly how I’m gonna monetize it. But you’re absolutely right.
Generous Affiliate Programs
Alex: Affiliate programs [00:26:00] for software products, SaaS products, the commissions are very generous.
They’re often recurring, and yeah, you don’t need a ton of views in order to, to make a nice income from those.
Doug: Right. And And by the way, the question, I didn’t mean for it to imply like, Hey, if you’re not earning money, it’s a waste of time. What’s the
Alex: point?
Doug: Right. But a lot of the, I mean that, that was like the.
The framing of a lot of the content that we created in the past. It’s like, Hey, we’re working on these websites to hopefully get traffic to hopefully blah, blah blah. And yours is a little different ’cause it’s, you know, you’re, it’s part of the local community which you live, so it’s helping the businesses.
It’s helping,
Alex: yeah.
Doug: Some things like it’s a long play local. Makes a lot of sense.
Alex: Yeah.
Doug: So
Enjoying Content Creation
Alex: I get a lot of enjoyment out of it actually. That’s the, that’s the other thing. I actually enjoy making the content. I enjoy, um, the comments I get. I enjoy generally the comments. Most of them, uh, are [00:27:00] positive. I enjoy, yeah, meeting people on the street.
I enjoy the speaking to the restaurant owners and seeing the benefit that they get from it. Like I know the bar owner over there, he’s this side of town, which is not that touristy, but my videos have bought tourists to his restaurant and he appreciates that. He always smiles when he sees me. If I’m coming home late and I need something to eat, he’ll make the effort to sort me out.
So I love all that aspect, so that’s nice. And I can just see that I, you know, eventually attention is currency, so I’m getting a lot of attention. So there’s gotta be some gold in there somewhere. Uh, I just need to kind of dig it out. And it does also gimme nice things to talk about on, on WP about how mm-hmm.
How it’s going and some of the tools and stuff that I’ve been using.
Exploring AI Tools
Alex: Um, but kind of going back to the money thing, um, and let’s just switch to, to AI because. I’m getting really into AI and playing around with AI tools and creating content with ai. I dunno what the future is in that. It actually looks like it’s gonna be a thing.
I dunno if you saw the SOA [00:28:00] app that was released recently by Open ai, which I think is only available in the States, but that’s basically like a TikTok full of, well, let’s call it AI sludge. Just AI generated content that people can just scroll through and people are. But I’ve seen some really cool tools where you can basically create a full product review video, which would work really well on TikTok and TikTok shop in terms of generating money with just like a picture of the product.
So you don’t even need the physical product. You can create an avatar, you can put them somewhere, you can do the product unboxing. You can do all that without actually touching a physical product. And. The reason why that excites me is because I own WP Eagle and I think I’m gonna stick with the same channel.
I mean, I’ve debated whether I should just create a brand new AI focused channel or whether I stick with what I’ve got, but I think it, it should resonate with my audience ’cause they’re into, you know, making money online and doing cool stuff. Um, [00:29:00] into exploring these AI tools and starting to create content about these AI tools, how to use them, which ones are cool, which ones aren’t.
And of course, all these AI tools are hungry for business and they have very generous affiliate programs.
Doug: Right.
AI in Content Creation
Doug: Man, I, um, I haven’t played with it at all. Sora. That is, um, but my brother-in-law. Yeah, my brother-in-law sent a text to like the family chat and it was like whatever, him skydiving. And then there was another with him, rafting with his dog.
So yeah, like Elizabeth and my wife, did it look
Alex: real?
Doug: It looked, it looked pretty real like his parents. I, uh, you know, my in-laws were like. D Oh, that’s great. You went skydiving, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. The, like, our trained eyes can see that it’s chaotic. You can put it,
Alex: it’s getting harder to put it, it is getting harder.
Doug: And well in what you just [00:30:00] described, so I’ve had, this is like a get off my lawn old man type moment. So I’ll preface with that and everybody just chill out. I, I’ll, I, um, I will go back to AI technology at some point, but the, um.
AI’s Impact on Professions
Doug: I have been searching for information and I’ll leave out details of the story, but I’m searching for information AI overview wrong, like a hundred percent wrong and it’s like I know just enough to identify it, but it has got me a couple times and now I’m like, I don’t trust the AI overview ’cause it’s messing up.
Kind of a, it’s more recent, so it’s only been like the last month or two. And I’m like, I’m not trusting it because it seems to be inaccurate and it’s just, um, hallucinating slash making it up. Maybe getting content from bad websites that didn’t have the right information or Reddit or people don’t dunno what the fuck they’re talking about.
Anyway. Yeah. So I’m running into that and what you just mentioned where like some random jerks can not, [00:31:00] you, other people can. Use the product image and then create product reviews of something and sell like the shittiest stuff. I’m like, fuck all that. Like I feel like when people get burned a few times, they’re just gonna stop.
Yeah, that’s true. I’m like to the point where I don’t trust a lot of this stuff, even if it looks okay. And I’ve found, um, I’ve found like, yeah,
Alex: you’d never buy anything off TikTok shop anyway. I’m sure a lot of it is just stuff from China or whatever.
Doug: Yeah. And I’m like, yeah. So in a lot of ways I’m like, this is interesting.
And um, side note that I’ll, I want to hear more about maybe. Perhaps the direction you may go with AI tools?
Alex: Well, yeah, you actually strike a, a chord there. It’s, it’s kind of reminded me of the original kind of niche websites where you would just churn out articles about stuff without really knowing much about stuff, you know, and with the hope of getting, and, and we did it, I did it, you’d write articles about products that you’d never seen just to get the link and the click through to [00:32:00] Amazon.
Right. And, uh, a lot of people did that and it is kind of going full circle on that in a way. But now it’s video content and it may not even be real video content. It might be AI video content, which
Doug: yeah,
Alex: it ultimately ends with just the internet being full of shit, doesn’t it? That’s where that ends.
Doug: Yeah.
And, and I’ve, um, yeah, there’s like the dead internet theory.
The Future of AI and Society
Doug: People watch videos don’t go down the rabbit hole too far, but, um. Are you familiar
Alex: with this? Yeah, it will be. I think it will be. It’ll just be shit content created by robots. All the comments will be robots just talking to each other. There won’t be any humans anywhere.
Doug: And I mean, I, YouTube is my poison, right? So I, that is my social media or content of choice, but I’m spending less time on any, uh, meta products. Like I used to scroll around a lot more on Instagram, but there’s so many fucking ads. And then there’s so much just the AI slop that you’re talking about where it’s just like, there’s so much that’s like.
Just not real, but a long form vlog where it’s like [00:33:00] 20 or 30 minutes can’t be fake. There’s imperfections, there’s, there’s issues with it. And I do enjoy that for, you know, certain. Time wasting activities that I do.
Alex: Yeah.
Doug: But, um, I don’t know. Well, your point is there’s a lot of tools and you actually like them and you’re using them and you could help other people use them for good, not evil, which is what, where I immediately went to.
Alex: Yeah, I, I mean, I’m not just that, that was just one example. I, I have been playing with it for other things. So I have a friend, um, who’s got a gym, uh, equipment company over in Ireland, and they wanted some help with the social media. He’s like, I wanna put more stuff on Instagram or Facebook. I was like, okay, well what, what videos have you got?
And he was like, well, I don’t really have any videos. So for that, it’s actually really cool. And so he is like, I’ve got this, uh, this exercise bike. It’s on offer at the moment. I want to create some content so I can take that exercise bike and I can put someone on it and, [00:34:00] and create a bit of content. It looked like a real kind of TikTok video.
So it was just a guy like going super hard on it and it was filmed in a kind of mobile phone style. He then kind of falls off backwards saying, oh God, I’m beaten by the bike. And it looked like something that someone could have shot in the gym and you, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Its ai and it’s that kind of catchy stuff.
And then at the end, I can do a quick hook, you know, the, uh, the exercise bike bikers on offer. So I think it could be used for good for, you know, for creating, uh, videos. In an easy kind of way about real things, um, when you, when you don’t have, um, time to create the content in real life. And I, I think it’s gonna be a real thing.
And I can see, for example. Companies selling clothing, that kind of stuff, rather than doing a whole video shoot where you’re gonna need models and stylists and, um, lighting and videographers and editors, probably about 10, 15 people just to get a shoot done. You could do that just with a couple of people and you can create some AI models, you can put the clothes on ’em, you can stick ’em on the beach [00:35:00] and it will look great.
And, and those kind of tools do kind of excite me and I think there’s probably an opportunity to create content around those tools. And I, I see a lot of AI channels. Not, not AI content channels, but a channels talking about AI tools blowing up on YouTube right now,
Doug: right? Yeah, it, it is a great, obviously there’s gonna be more and more tools that are gonna get better and better and there was a, there was a little stretch where I was doing more AI content and those, those videos blew up compared to other stuff that I was doing.
And yeah. I wasn’t into it. I like, I wasn’t using
Alex: it. Well, you never have been. If I remember even back in the day when I got hold of Jasper, one of the first AI content, written content tools, you were like, no, I’m not touching that. That’s, that’s not what we want. Um,
Doug: yeah.
Alex: Actually, I feel like I’ve been in AI for quite a while because this was before chat, GBT and all that stuff.
Doug: Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, you are, you’re right. And and it took me a while to [00:36:00] come around and then I was like, this is getting much better. And there certainly was a stretch, probably, I don’t know, it’s been over a year or so, but I was using AI a lot more ’cause I was like, this is very helpful and occasionally.
It’s probably like the activities that I’m doing, the content that I’m creating, I’m not seeking like the kind of help that I was getting from AI before where. You know, maybe I wrote something and I’m like, oh, can we clean this up? And you use it as an editing or writing partner or a content. I mean, people use it as just like someone to bounce ideas off of and that,
Alex: like say when you’re gonna post a video on YouTube, do you not ask GBT to gimme some ideas for the title or something like that?
You know, you’ve got an idea for a title, and you give it that and say, well, gimme 10 other ideas and it’ll come back with some things. You go, oh, actually that’s a pretty cool idea.
Doug: Usually I’ll u I’m in the script, [00:37:00] which. Man, what a buggy tool. It’s pretty powerful. But like, man, like whenever I try to do something, it’s, it takes 10 times longer than like a tool made for video editing, for example.
But I use script and it will give me some suggestions and then, yep. I mean, I’m assuming they’re using chat GPT on the back end. I don’t know if they are. Most of them
Alex: are,
Doug: yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, for some of that stuff, very minor and I. I try to stay away. ’cause I, I was, I was finding that I was using it so much that I think my brain was atrophying a little bit, where I was just like, not critically thinking through something.
So usually I’ll sketch stuff out on paper first. That’s a real
Alex: risk. That’s a real risk. I think it is making, gonna make us all stupid because you don’t think about, I, I find myself falling that I just don’t because I don’t need to think about anything anymore. Right. Yeah. When you can just ask GPT or, or some ai, [00:38:00] why do you need to think?
Because back in the day, you know, you wanted to brainstorm some ideas. Think of some video titles. You’d sit down for half an hour, you’d brainstorm, you get some ideas down, and you’d go from there. Now it’s just like, okay, that one looks good. I’ll use that and.
Doug: Like side note.
Personal Projects and AI
Doug: So I will tell you a little project, I’ve been playing guitar more, which I think the last several times we talked, I was like, oh yeah, I’m playing guitar more.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to put the, I won’t put the image up. But, um, basically, um, upgrading pickups in an electric guitar. And I have, um, I took a, a lot of electrical engineering classes. So back in the day, 25 years ago, I was pretty good with a solder iron and I could wire up some stuff. A guitar is very simple.
There’s only a handful of wires. Ain’t that much stuff going on. So I was like, all right, I can do this. I’ve. I ran into some issues, so right now, like the pickups are out, when I tried to hook it up and like I soldered, I did a horrible job, but like I soldered, got some stuff going. As soon as I plugged it in, it was just like a buzz, like no sound that you [00:39:00] wanted.
Um, all that to say. Like our brains have atrophied, but I’m like working on a physical thing where I have to, it’s like this is all fucked up and it’s not working, and I have to like troubleshoot. So I have to like find the short, I have to like test the wires. I have to physically look at it. It’s like exercising my brain in a different way than I have in some time.
And I’m like, this has been a little bit of a nightmare. But at the same time, I worked on it for like eight hours in one day. Just like working on it, checking, fucking up, fixing it. Then eventually I’ll get it. But it’s been a different exercise in the physical world versus like, alright, I’m trying to make content online or something like that.
So totally like got my attention and made me focus. So total tangent. Any thoughts on that?
Alex: Yeah, I think you should definitely do that. So you didn’t ask Chad PT to help you fix it?
Doug: Oh Jesus. No. I was gonna say. One of the issues that I [00:40:00] ran into early on was, um, AI overview, where it was like, oh, here’s the size of this wrench.
And it was like, again, it’s based on Reddit threads and other things on the internet where there’s like all these opposing ideas and some of those websites that it’s probably getting info from. It was written by. AI anyway, so I’m, yeah, AI was training
Alex: ai. Yeah, that’s not good.
Doug: Eventually. Um, so I do have a, a friend who’s an electrical engineer in town and has built some guitars.
So he was like, oh, I can help you troubleshoot, but he was like, basically, yeah, like you have to test the leads, see if you got a ground loop, see if you’re shorting anything out. And then the other thing, I’ll eventually, if I run into a huge issue, I can call the pickup company and just say like, Hey, here’s what’s happening.
And they would probably say like, you probably have a bad. Potentiometer, whatever, whatever. Like check this, check that. So,
Alex: okay.
Doug: Yeah. But it could ask chat GBT is that, that’s where you were getting at, right?
Alex: Yeah, yeah. [00:41:00] I, I would’ve asked chat gt, I’d have sent it a photo or something and said, what’s going on here?
Doug: Gotcha.
Alex: I dunno whether it would help or not.
Doug: That’d be
Alex: sometimes it, because it always gives the impression that it’s gonna help and it’s very knowledgeable and knows exactly what you’re talking about, but a lot of times maybe it doesn’t.
Doug: Yeah. It’s like talking to, no offense to the teenagers that are listening to the show.
I’m sure there’s hardly any with my old man, uh, attitude, but yeah, it’s like talking to a teenager, like overly confident, kind of don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and it’s just, okay, I’m not gonna work
Alex: with, yeah.
Doug: Alright. So do you have any, um, other like AI related thoughts? You got some cool tools, videos getting hot.
What else is on your radar with ai?
Alex: Um, it’s the video stuff that’s exciting, but there’s also some music stuff, which you’re into music. I mean, did you see there was that band on Spotify that was doing really well and then it turned out they were ai.
Doug: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: That’s kind of scary in a, in a way, [00:42:00] but no, it’s, we we’re obviously at the, uh, at the beginning of what is gonna be a huge shift, um, in everything, and I think, you know, you need to make sure.
You are on top of it because the people that are gonna survive and succeed are gonna be the people that understand and, and know how to use these tools and can recognize these tools, can recognize the AI videos. And I think they’re like, everything that’s come along before like the smartphone, like the internet, there’s such powerful tools that, and like any powerful tool, um, it can be good, it could be bad, and.
I think it remains to be seen what’s gonna happen, but the effect is gonna be profound on ai. I like the effect of the smartphone was profound. I like the effect of the internet was too. Um, so yeah, I think we all just need to be aware of that and be prepared. [00:43:00]
Doug: That could be like the start of like a, a sci-fi like dystopia movie.
Alex: Well, yeah. I, I, yeah, definitely. I think, um, yeah. A lot of people are gonna gonna lose their jobs. I mean, there was, I watched a thing on TV the other day. Uh, they did a little test where they got four professions. They got like a doctor, a lawyer, a fashion, um, kind of fashion shoot person that does, you know, videos for fashion and, um, one other profession that escapes me right now.
And, um, yeah, they basically tested them against AI and things like, I mean, thankfully the humans, oh, it was a, it was a composer actually, in terms of composing for. Uh, video, and thankfully the, the humans did come out overall on top, but it sh it was only by a very small margin. For example, with the doctor, the AI was pretty much able to diagnose everyone correctly, keeping in mind that the AI only had prompts.
It was just asking them questions, whereas the doctor could actually physically see the patient and touch them and poke them and, and see what was going on. Um, and [00:44:00] the AI pretty much got it right and the AI did it in a fraction of the time. Um, with the lawyer again, you know, the lawyer’s documents that were prepared were better.
Probably they would stand up slightly better in court. It was for debt recovery, um, but cost, you know, four or five times, no, in fact, 10 times more than the AI documents. So, yeah, there’s a lot of professions, especially creative professions and maybe scientificy kind of professions, legal professions, a lot of professions that are gonna be affected.
Um, and I think to be on top of these, if you are a lawyer, you need to be a lawyer that uses ai. It’s ’cause I think a combination of, of a good human and a good AI is gonna be unbeatable.
Doug: it’s, it’s crazy to think about, but I was gonna say, I’ll go, I would go down another huge tangent.
Side note. Did you see the, um, story of. It was, I believe, Deloitte in Australia. They had [00:45:00] something like a $400,000 like deal report that they were working with the Australian government on, and Deloitte used ai. And when the government was going through and checking the sources and all that stuff, basically it was a hallucination.
Situations. So there were references that like didn’t exist. A lot of it was just kind of bullshit. Super interesting story, but they got busted for using ai.
Alex: Yeah, well that’s just using AI badly, isn’t it really?
Doug: Right.
Alex: I mean,
Doug: yeah,
Alex: to to prepare documents and to prepare contracts and to do all kinds of things.
You can definitely use ai, but you can’t just rely on it solely. You can’t just press the button, not even look at it, not even check it and send it out the door. Um. Which that’s irresponsible. And that’s the kind of thing, like if you’re a university or school right now or college and you think you can just churn out an essay using chat GBT in one minute and hand that in, that’s not gonna work.
But you could use AI to certainly help you, um, produce that essay in a [00:46:00] much more efficient manner.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s one of those deals where like. We had no idea, like with smartphone’s, great example, no idea. The capability. It’s like, oh, very interesting. Might change some things, but we had no idea what it’ll do.
And I assume it’ll be a similar thing where like people are making predictions, we’re talking about it now, it’s gonna be completely, yeah. But we never predict Completely different.
Alex: Yeah. And it’s the negative effects that you just, that you never predict. And you know, like I was out having lunch the other day in, in Manor in the city, and I’m sitting there, uh, with a friend and on the next table there’s a family of four.
There’s the mother, the father, the two kids, all four of them are just looking at their screen. They’re not talking to each other or even looking at each other. And you, you see sites like that and you just think that’s the downside to the smartphone. I mean, it is an amazing tool to have in your pocket, but when you see people and like even just walking on, you see so many, especially younger people, I will say, because it is younger people.
They can’t even walk along the street without scrolling their phone. I [00:47:00] mean, I, I, they must walk into all kinds of things. I don’t know that you can’t even just be out and be present and just take in the world around you. You’re just still on your phone.
Doug: Yeah.
Alex: And that makes me sad. Yes. I mean, we’re part of the problem.
We’re producing the content that they’re scrolling through. I’m, I’m part of the problem as well, but, you know, I don’t know. It’s great in small bursts, like a lot of things, but people just get hooked on it, and it is a big dopamine hit at the phone. Mm-hmm.
Doug: Yeah, it’s tough. Well, we gotta wrap up here in a second, but I’m just curious, are you like, do you consume like reels?
Are you on Instagram? Are like, are you in there because you’re creating the content, you’re seeing what’s hot? Like are, do you get sucked in?
Alex: I do. I do. I try to stop it. I don’t, I’m not as bad as hopefully, uh, I could be, but yeah, I’ll go onto Instagram or whatever just to check how my reels are doing, and then suddenly I’m down the hole and I’m swiping and there’s all this crap coming up and you just have to.
Put the phone down.
Doug: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s bad. It’s bad. And you, you, you mentioned TikTok. [00:48:00] I have TikTok because I’m posting stuff on there, but thankfully I, I haven’t got hooked on that just yet. I dunno why Instagram reels does get me though sometimes, but not, um, even YouTube shorts gets me sometimes.
I was just kinda YouTube just to check something and then before I know it, I’m in the shorts feed and,
Doug: yeah. Yeah. Very interesting.
Alex: Yeah.
Doug: Well, and it’s, it
Alex: hard take repairs in a lot of ways.
Doug: I’ll, um, so I typically do a good job. Like I said, I, I do stay out of like some of the, the rabbit holes that you can go, but if you see me at the gym, I, I’m usually trying to find a YouTube video to watch.
So I will literally, I’ll scroll and I’ll, I’ll like look at, um. I’m looking at like guitars and music equipment, so I’m just like reading on there. So like I’m no better than anybody else. It’s just like I have a different, a different outlet. The good part is like I’m not buying stuff like constantly or anything, so it’s very easy for me to just like put the phone [00:49:00] away.
I don’t miss it. I don’t think, Hey, I need to keep scrolling and looking, but I’m no better than anyone else. So if you see me at the gym. I probably got my head. Yeah, I,
Alex: that’s good. I hope, and I hope that when you go out for dinner with your wife, you sit and talk to her rather than both you sitting on your phones.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I have great, I have great friends, um, around,
Alex: yeah, when you’re out with your buddies, you’re not all sitting there just scrolling ’cause uh, yeah, there’s no, nothing sadder than that.
Doug: Yeah.
Alex: See, seeing a group of people out with each other and they’re just looking at their phones.
Upcoming Content and Projects
Doug: So what’s coming up in the next, uh, few weeks, few
Alex: months?
Well, what’s coming up? Uh, yeah, so. More WordPress content, more AI content. I mean, I have dabbled with the ai. Um, one last thing I haven’t mentioned on Es. Upon life, I created a load of t-shirts using ai, using a, um, print on demand AI tool, which is pretty cool. I sold quite a few of those t-shirts, so that was fun.
That was interesting. Um, again, just kind of giving the AI tool a photo or some inspiration about where I live here and it creating some really cool designs, picking the best ones. Um, and then printed in on t-shirts and [00:50:00] mugs and that kind of stuff. So that was fun. But yeah, more, more content on ai, on WordPress, on how my projects are going and, and whatever else I I see fit.
I mean, I, I put a question out on my last video about where my community were and yeah, a lot of people are, are still working on stuff. And also, of course, the video that you featured in recently, you were in that one, weren’t you? Yes. Where, um, I caught up with what everyone, you know, the old, old school YouTube collective, what they’re all up to.
Uh, generally it was positive, although a lot of people, well, not a lot of people, a few people didn’t join me on that. And I think the reason they didn’t wanna join me is because yeah, they, they weren’t in the game anymore, which is a shame. But the majority, I’d say, have found something and, um, are making it work
Doug: Very good.
And
Alex: on your, you, that video used to be a follower of mine and Doug’s and, and that whole, whole group
Doug: Yeah. Yeah.
Alex: Of uh, was, yeah. And
Doug: you do cover some of the, um, like the revenue and some of the numbers for esta life on your channel with some videos, right?
Alex: Yeah, yeah. [00:51:00] I, I try and do an update every month or two on how it’s going, the growth across social media, across the website, traffic, uh, print on demand sales, all that stuff.
Email lists, subscribers, because that’s growing quite well as well. That’s growing nicely. So, um, yeah, all that stuff.
Doug: Perfect. Yep. ’cause I didn’t ask any of those questions, but if you are curious you can head over to Alex’s channel and check it out and just, you know, look through all his videos.
Alex: Yeah, it’d be good to see you.
Doug: Alright, thanks man. Good to catch up.
Alex: Alright, see you later. [00:52:00]