Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington and I’m chatting with Shauna Newman today. How are you?
Shawna: I’m great. How are you
Doug: Doing? Awesome. And it’s good to see you. It’s been a few weeks or months or something like that since we’ve chatted. It’s been a little busy with who knows what travel.
I play guitar more now. I’m just doing a lot of random stuff that you know means I’m not having as many interviews, but. I’m putting the back in the show, so there’s a lot more interviews coming up. We’re gonna talk about a lot of stuff today. We’re gonna get an update, hear what you’ve been working on.
You have agency work, you’ve been spending more time on YouTube, a little vibe coding, so we’ll have. Perhaps a friendly debate. I’m not sure where you stand on this, but before we hit record, I started, uh, ranting about it. But we’ll get into that. KDP books, ai, SEO, and a lot more. So first off where do you spend like most of your time?
Because there’s a lot of things that you’re working on, so I’m just curious like how you prioritize things and where you do spend your time.
Shawna: Yeah, I get bored easily, so I tend to just hop around a lot. Um, I try to make schedules, you know, where like the first half of Monday I work on X and then the second half I work on y.
Um, that’s a great in theory, but it never really works for me because like maybe something takes me a little longer to do or whatever. But yeah, agency work is making up most of my income, so that’s where most of my time is going. It’s not my favorite activity though, so I’m always doing other things on the side.
Uh, lately I’ve been working a lot on directory sites, um, ai, SEO, um, a little bit of Pinterest, and I’m just getting back into KDP books for Q4.
Doug: Gotcha. Yes. You sound. Little A DHD, but it, it keeps you, uh, I, I mean, the thing is like when the money’s coming in, it’s like, oh, it’s very clear. You need to take care of that portion to pay the bills and all that kind of stuff.
Shawna: Exactly.
Doug: So, and you were doing some agency work over, over the years anyway, like here and there, because oftentimes you had people contractors working for you, doing some work on your site.
Shawna: Right.
Doug: Or sites. And then you were able to kind of have, uh, the overflow, they had extra capacity, right? Yeah. So you had client work.
Can you talk about like, pivoting and I mean, basically like we were earning money from websites back in the day, and then you had to figure out how to, you know, not get a job, keep doing what you were doing. So how did that pivot look?
Shawna: Um, well, for me it has resulted in a lot more active selling. Um, you know, and when I was in college, I, I actually worked in telesales, so it’s not like new to me to be, you know, selling stuff.
Um, but I don’t think it’s something I actually really enjoy, you know? Um, it’s like setting up cold emails or, you know, actually doing Zoom calls with people like on the regular, um, you know, like. I’m good if I’m wearing different clothes from one day to the next, working at home. Right. So like, it’s like it has been a bit of a, of a change for me in terms of, you know, how I’m structuring even just my work week because, you know, I may have to have a call in the morning and a call in the afternoon on that call.
I’m having to be selling products. Often it’s explaining SEO to people who don’t really grasp what it is. Um, so it’s like a completely different mindset to I’m gonna spin up a bunch of niche sites and write about, you know, SEO keywords and things like that. So it is a big shift, although I do think for people who have experience in ranking niche sites, a lot of those skills do transfer over.
Uh, the challenge is going to be the things like selling. And the, the things that are very unique to a niche like SaaS, SEO has differences than local SEO for instance, e-comm. SEO also has differences. Uh, I’ve had clients in each, um, and they’re all like slightly different skill sets. Like the 80% is the same, but the 20% is different for each of them.
And that’s something that you have to learn that we didn’t really do, you know, for niche sites. So
Doug: is it pretty easy to pick that stuff up?
Shawna: I think so. Um, I like learning new things though. Um, and I like the challenge of that. Um, for me, I feel like e-commerce, SEO was the most challenging thing I’d learned from niche sites because you know, you have all these products that you’re also having rank, so you’re having to optimize product pages, you’re having to optimize collection pages, things like that.
So it’s like a bigger picture. Um, SaaS, SEO. I actually like it a lot because you’re doing a lot of things focusing on the customer journey. So you’re building entire content funnels, kind of like we did with niche sites. You’re also doing a lot of versus articles. Um, so maybe like instantly versus another Cold Al software if you were doing, you know, SEO for that.
So I really like that. Um, then of course local SEO, I think it is easy mode. I think it is the easiest transition for people who were doing niche sites because it is so incredibly easy to rank locally. You know, you send some citations to their GBP, you optimize it by filling out everything you’re doing, regular uploads to it.
Hello. There are top three in Google Maps. You get paid. So I think that’s why so many people, including myself, have taken the easy mode route whenever possible. Um, and like I said, it is a natural transition I feel like for people who did niche site.
Doug: And do those clients make up like the majority of the folks that you’re working with?
Just because like it’s easier for you to get results and that sort of thing, right? Yeah.
Shawna: Yeah. That is what I’ve started focusing on. Um, the problem with local SEO clients, I feel like. It is so easy to rank that you don’t get as long as a, a retainer as you do for an e-commerce client or a SaaS client. Uh, and that’s just the nature of the work, right?
It takes longer to achieve similar results with e-commerce, SEO and SaaS, SEO. Um, so what that means is you’re having more churn. When you’re doing local clients, um, I know that there are some people who kind of string along their local clients or maybe put them on longer contracts. That’s not really my vibe.
So for me, I probably have a lot more churn than most people just because I’m like, you know, I’m not gonna just take your money when you don’t need to pay me. So.
Doug: Right. So, uh, about how long would one of those, like short, shorter engagements where you get results fairly quickly, how long did those last. Uh,
Shawna: three months.
Okay. That’s usually the shortest. Yeah.
Doug: Got it. Okay. And let, let’s move on a little bit. Mm-hmm. So we’ll stick in the AI or the SEO area, but talk about the AI version of it. So can you lay out the, you know, the main idea that you’re trying to achieve? With ai, SEO if people aren’t familiar.
Shawna: Yeah, so Ai, SEO is basically making sure that you show up, um, in the a i overview, you know, those AI answers that you’re getting in the search engines.
Uh, you also are trying to show up in, you know, the LLM, so chat, GPT, clog, perplexity, all of those things. And like, you know, the reason why I started getting into it’s ’cause clients were asking, you know, how do I, how do, how do, how am I showing up, you know, in chat GPT? So. And I offer Ai, SEO, just because people are calling it that.
It’s really just SEO for the most part, right? So right. It’s like, it’s kinda like the other SEOs. 80% is the same, right? It’s the same stuff. And then the other 20% for ai. SEO is basically making sure you are at every touch point everywhere on the internet. So it’s basically brand building, right? Uh, you’re making sure that you’re in the YouTube carousels, you’re making sure that you’re in the Reddit answers.
You’re making sure that you’re in Quora, you’re in niche forums, you’re en listicles, you know, doing your hair links to get into those. You’re in. Places like Medium. If you’re a software, you know, like a SaaS, you are getting reviews on, you know, G two and Capterra and things like that. So it’s basically just honestly doing SEO the right way.
Right. Um, you know, because it’s not just about ranking in Google, you know, you have to show up everywhere else, so it’s just. Yeah.
Doug: Gotcha. And is this mostly for clients that you’re doing this work where they’re like, I, I wanna show up and I wanna make sure that I’m out there. Mm-hmm. That kind of thing?
Shawna: Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s what I’m doing it for. Um. But yeah, like we’ve got, we’ve gotten e-commerce clients who’ve been interested in it as well as local clients. It’s basically a matter of, you know, going yourself into those LLMs and those AI answers, seeing where they’re pulling the sources from so that you can make sure that your clients are in those sources.
Of course, the problem is those sources change up a lot, right? So what you may get them in it in month two, and then by month three they’re gone because they’ve changed what they’re using for sources. So.
Doug: Right. Yeah. So what do you do then? I, I mean, at least then you have like a longer retainer, right?
Because you’re, well, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Shawna: Yeah. So for me, what I try to do is everything, like I, I think I’m probably priced a little higher than most people, because like I said, I get bored easily. So, and that includes working with the same people. So I wanna do it all right the first time so I don’t have to see you again, right.
So,
Doug: right. Interesting.
Shawna: That’s a
Doug: good, I mean, and it’s cheaper for them, right? Yeah,
Shawna: yeah, yeah.
Doug: Interesting. So in I, as you know, and probably a lot of the audience, I’ve been doing less of this type of work, so I’m mostly seeing this on the consumer side.
Shawna: Mm-hmm.
Doug: And I typically, I haven’t been using. Chat, GBT or Gemini or these tools.
Mm-hmm.
Shawna: As
Doug: much as I was before.
Shawna: Oh, interesting.
Doug: Which is a another, I think I’m gonna end up doing an episode about this, but it felt like I was just being a little bit lazy and I wasn’t able to critically think as well, and it wasn’t anything specific, but I’m just like. Is this actually saving me time or I’m just like doing less?
It, it is actually not saving me time. It’s just like I’m not thinking as hard and I’m kind of getting bullshit results. So, right. I’m seeing this from the consumer side and one thing that I’ve been working on is, um, I, I’ll bring every conversation back around to guitars. So currently. Will skip some details, but currently I have some electric guitars and I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna put new pickups in there, I’m gonna upgrade them, I’m gonna take out the wiring and do some other stuff.
And, uh, back in college I actually took several, like a ton of double E classes. So like I actually know circuit stuff. I’ve forgotten everything, but I have, like, I’m familiar so I should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. All that to say I have been Googling. You know, different things. The AI overviews are fucking terrible for something like that because there’s so much conflicting information.
So the specific stuff that I’m looking up is often wrong. So I immediately stopped trusting it and I don’t, I was just like, this is bad information. And depending on what you’re looking for, it may or may not be accurate. Right. But you never know when. Yeah. So. I’m sure that there will be you know, times where it’s, it’s accurate, but the algorithms change.
And I’m just looking at Google AI overviews, but I’m pretty sure if I went other places, there’s just inconsistent information because there’s so many different sources and there’s so many different variables. So I’m better off just like thinking about things on my own. So. I’ll finish the thought and then I’ll just get your, your feedback on your observations of the pros and cons of using AI overviews.
So I ran into some issues and basically over the course of a couple days, I would unfortunately wake up in the middle of the night and start troubleshooting circuits in my, in my mind, which was fun. You know, you fall asleep and then you have a dream, and then you’re like, oh, I think, I think if I. If I put a jumper here, I could identify and troubleshoot what the issue is.
So I actually was able to do that and I was like, oh, I’m solving these problems not immediately. And I’m also not using, you know, other help. Like I’m not, I think I, I was. Actually chatting with her friend, Alex Cooper, similar situation or similar story that I was saying, and he was like, oh, could you take a picture and then upload it to ai?
And I was like, fuck ai. Like I’m not doing like I can figure this out. There’s only a few wires. Like I’ve done way more complicated things. So anyway, I’m using AI less because I don’t want to be stupid, basically. Any thoughts on this?
Shawna: Yeah. Um, a few months ago, Scott DeLong, the guy who was the guy behind Viral Nova, I think was what they call stuff.
He sent on a newsletter saying something similar. Basically, he thought it was making him, you know, basically not able to think as well. Um, and I actually have experienced a similar thing running Facebook ads for my agency. Right. Um, because I’ll have an idea and then I’ll go to chat GPT and ask it, and then it’s like completely different.
And then I start second guessing myself, right. And I’m like. Am I like totally off here? Do I not know what I’m doing? And then what will happen is I won’t do anything. So yeah, so I definitely have experienced that. Um, and then, and then for the AI overviews, I don’t trust them at all. If I’m looking up something online.
If it is not something that’s like new information, I’m trying to find something that was published before chat, GPT, just because I know someone probably actually researched it, you know, the time that I am using, you know, chat GPT or perplexity or something like that, is when I need to gather a lot of information.
If I’m researching something and I’m, and I don’t know where to look for the, for like the accurate information. So one of my crazy ideas that I have is I wanna start a tour company like. By the end of the year, like taking people around like Portugal, where I’ve picked as my first place, um, just for like eight to 10 days, stuff like that.
And I got this idea because my parents are going on these Viking cruise tours. And I don’t know if you know how much these things cost, but they are insane. They pay like $20,000 to go on one. It took them to the weirdest places. Right. And then they were like, so we’re gonna do one next year going to Europe.
And I was like, okay, where’s it gonna take you? And it’s like, they’re not even seeing any of the big cities. And I was like, number one, no. So now I’m taking my parents to Europe next year, but that’s, that’s irrelevant. So I’m like if, if they are snook people, like my parents for this kind of money and not even taking them on a good trip.
What the fuck am I doing? Right? So, so I went in chat GPT, and I told it what I wanted to do, and I was saying, ask me questions. I think this is the best way to use it. Ask me questions to help me work through this idea. Mm-hmm. It asked me like 25 fucking questions, which was crazy. And then it gave me an awesome idea with places to go to find the information.
It gave me things that I didn’t even know to think about, like depending on what state I register the company in for the tours. I have to have a certain type of insurance, like I never would’ve known that otherwise. So that is like where I find the value in ai. But for the most part I still hate it and I really look forward to the day where I don’t have to use it at all.
Doug: Perfect example. And, and I was gonna say like there are certainly some really awesome ways to use ai. But in my specific, like the thing that I was trying to solve, it was like not helping. And then as time goes on, I mean, I think people are like, I’m using it for everything. Yeah. And I think that will, I mean, things will shift.
I mean, people are taking a different path. Like some people are gonna have more original ideas and others are gonna have like derivative ideas of, you know, nonsense kind of thing. Mm-hmm. Side note, I’ll, um. I will send a link to you. One of my friends literally has done this. It’s called Five Friends Travel.
Oh, good. And she, she’s been doing a handful of trips. I mean, she spent essentially like three years, like going to different events, building community, and her network and all that stuff.
Shawna: Mm-hmm.
Doug: It’s, um, you know, you can niche it down into your own area, but these are like either early retirees or enthusiasts that will retire soon.
Mm-hmm. So she has a style of travel that she likes to do, and, you know, it’s not my style, it’s like fast paced. However, she’s actually doing a couple cruises, like she’s doing the, um. It’s like the German and Austrian Christmas market cruise. Oh yeah. And then she’s doing another one. Actually, my wife and I went on our honeymoon for this.
It’s an Avalon cruise that goes through the Netherlands and Belgium. There’s a lot of beer there, so that’s why we went on it. Yeah. Um, and she, yeah, so she’s able to go on cool trips and, you know, there’s only a couple cruises. Basically she ends up planning exactly what she wants to do and then brings like 15 people along.
Shawna: Yeah, I’m just gonna run Facebook ads like the last week of December and early January and see if I get any deposits, and then if I do, I’m gonna run with it. If I don’t, I’ll just, you know, not do it or refund money if I don’t get enough.
Doug: The, the one thing that she does a really good job on, which you, you may or may not need to think about this, it’s.
Basically people she all knows and a lot of them know each other. So, you know, there’s no duds in the group because you can run Facebook ads. What kind of, you know, what kind of people you get in there? It could just be like random weirdo kind of thing. True. Um, but it would prove the business model. But there’s a hundred, like I could tell you there’s a hundred percent like.
People will pay premium prices to mm-hmm. Like go on a good tour. And, uh, my friend Kristen, she’s, it’s actually like. I don’t know if she’s even making money at it. She’s essentially just covering her costs to be able to go on these trips. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, they sell out like pretty much instantly. Again, she put in a ton of time to get it rolling, but Great idea, great idea.
Alright, so a any other details on the AI SEO angle or anything like that?
Shawna: I mean, it’s super easy to manipulate. Um, I think if somebody wants to kind of try it out, like half as in it, Reddit is the way to go. Uh, because, you know, Reddit is powering the AI overviews. Most of the answers in perplexity, although I think they just got sued by Reddit, so that might change.
And they used to like really dominate chat GPT, but that’s reduced some, but still Reddit is driving most things and you’ll also rank that Reddit discussion and the organic results, so.
Doug: Got it. So the perfect transition, you’re a pro. To transition to this other topic, which is, uh, I mean. I’m like yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
I’m such an old man. I’m like, Reddit, another thing that I can complain about. But I mean, that’s the source of some of these bad AI overviews because there’s a lot of people on Reddit that they kind of talk past each other. And or they’re just talking about things that they heard somewhere else and they have very strong opinions about this stuff.
So let’s talk about the Reddit marketing, which I mean, to your point, very effective depending on what you’re trying to do. And there are pockets, of course, of Reddit that they have good people there. But I would say very small amount of Reddit. So Reddit marketing.
Shawna: Yeah, I Reddit, like I love Reddit marketing.
Um, I’ve been doing it for my own sites forever. I have had my own subreddits that I have taken control of that match a lot of my niche sites. Um, and like that’s something that people have just started doing recently for, for basically both affiliate marketing as well as. Controlling the narrative for their products, their client’s products, things like that.
I feel like though a lot of people are getting tripped up with Reddit because Reddit is very unique in terms of, it’s not like the rest of the internet. So if you haven’t spent a lot of time there. You’re gonna go in there and you’re gonna bomb. Right? Yeah. Um, you know, there, there’s like tons of inside jokes in Reddit, you know, like poop knife and things like that, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with, but it’s one of my favorite things ever on Reddit in history.
Doug: No. Can you, is there any way to explain it?
Shawna: Yeah, it was just like a story where one time someone went to someone’s house and was really confused because they didn’t have a poop knife in the bathroom because in their house they always had a knife in the bathroom to chop up their poop so that it wouldn’t clog the drains or something like that.
And so like, it was like this iconic thing that’s, you know, Reddit lore or whatever. And there’s tons of things like that on Reddit. So you’ll be in these random threads and someone will just go, poof, knife, you know, or one of the other million things. And I feel like that’s the kind of stuff that you don’t really know about unless you’ve used Reddit a lot.
I’ve used Reddit a lot, probably. 15, 20 years, you know, there’s also a lot of trolls on Reddit. People in Reddit love puns, things like that. Um, they are also incredibly intelligent in terms of they know if you’re trying to sell to them, if you know, aren’t really clever about it. Um, they know immediately if you’re using AI to type up your answers, they will call you out, things like that.
Um, there’s also certain subres where the mods are like crazy. Ban happy and like you will get booted outta there so fast. So it takes a lot of learning in terms of, you know, what subreddits are safe to go in. What’s the language in this specific subreddit? How do they feel about me marketing to them?
Do I have to be kind of slick about it or can I just like, just do it out in the open? Things like that. Another interesting thing about Reddit is it’s easy to get your account banned, but you can keep posting so you don’t really know your account is banned, right? So you have to regularly check. Like either your profile or some of the answers you’ve done in an incognito window to see if they’re actually showing up.
So, I think people who are new to Reddit end up getting a lot of their accounts just shut down very, very fast. So you have to have aged accounts, and I know that it’s really popular to buy aged accounts. People are selling those for a premium. Um, I 100% do not advise doing that because you want to have an account where you know the history, right?
Um, because as soon as you start straying from that history, it’s gonna be noticeable. Um, you’re also gonna need more than one account. But you’re gonna need unique ips for those accounts. So I use an antide detect browser where I, and I have this like big spreadsheet. Where I can put, you know, account one, this is its lo IP location, here’s the login information and all of this.
Um, that way I can log into a ton of different accounts to control narratives if I want upvote my own posts, downvote, competing posts, things like that. I, I have worked many, many months on growing and aging these accounts because Reddit works on something called Karma, which you get by posting and commenting and up uploading and things like that.
So you have to really put in a lot of months growing your account naturally before you can start your mass spamming. Um, I have 300 and something accounts right now. Wow. Through my anti-tech browser. Um, so it is, if you’re doing this yourself. It is like obviously a slog if you’re trying to get as many accounts as I have.
You don’t need this many accounts, right? So if you are, say you have your own SaaS or your own e-commerce store, or maybe your own, I don’t know, you wanna do affiliate marketing, maybe 20 accounts, 15 to 20 accounts would be enough for you to control the narrative the way you want, get your things ranking the way you want them to.
Um, but again, every subreddit you try is going to be unique in terms of what will work for it, what will get you banned, what will get approved, what won’t get approved, things like that. How clever the people are in terms of sussing out that you’re actually marketing to them. Um, so you have to actually also spend time like feeling out a, before you start posting, just to see like what’s the vibe here.
You know, what am I gonna be able to accomplish here? Things like that. Um, but once you really get it down, it works incredibly well. Reddit ranks so fast. If you’re up uploading your own stuff, maybe send a PBN link or two to, you know, a thread that you’ve done, get it showing up on page one. All of a sudden it’s in the AI overviews showing up in perplexity, showing up in chat, GPT, things like that.
So. It is also great for reputation management. I don’t know if anybody’s taken on that in terms of agency work. So if, uh, you get a client who has like some bad reviews on Reddit, you can change the narrative by making you know, a bunch of threads that are positive reviews, things like that. There’s also some shady stuff you can do where you can use all of your accounts to basically report your bad reviews to get them taken down.
It’s not something that I partake in, but it’s something that people do.
Doug: So is the idea, let’s say you had the, the 20 accounts and you
mm-hmm.
Took your time and built the karma points or whatever. Kinda other things you need to do is the idea to post and then interact with your own posts and like post replies and up vote and have other, just, I assume you have to do like some normal interactions with other stuff as well.
Shawna: So the first thing you wanna do is you want to look up what, what Reddit posts are already ranking in Google for your target keywords, because those are gonna be the ones that are gonna be getting pulled in by the AI answers and the LLMs. Then you go to that to see if it is still open for commenting, because sometimes older posts are closed for new.
So you can’t, you know, leave any, any new comments. Sometimes though they’re closed for new comments, but you can leave replies to other comments. So the, I think the best way to go about it is to leave comments on those posts. Right. Comments tend to work better than starting new posts because you just look like.
An average person who’s just recommending, you know, a particular product or something like that, then you use your other accounts to upvote your comments, things like that. Downvote, the competitor’s comments, things like that. Uh, it is all like, kind of shady, right? Like, let’s be honest. Um, but the same works.
Like if you wanna shield your affiliate links in there, you know, send people to your blog where you have, you know, a buying guide, things like that, it’s the same way to do it. So what if all of the Reddit posts that are ranking on page one in Google. Aren’t accepting comments, aren’t accepting replies, that’s when you have to make a new post.
Then you have to work on getting that post enough up votes so that it gets replaced. It replaces the other. On page one, you’re also probably gonna need to send some PBN links or something to it as well. Maybe 3 0 1 redirect and age domain to get that to basically replace it, so, okay.
Doug: Yeah, I’m having flashbacks of like all the stuff we used to do in like 20 14, 15 where, you know, the Web 2.0 blogs.
Shawna: Mm-hmm.
Doug: You know, like blogger.com and all that, and then fake articles and then you link some stuff and then, oh yeah, we gotta, you know, you have to get different IP addresses and whatnot. Yeah. All that stuff. I mean,
Shawna: it’s work. I mean, that’s for sure. Work. Yeah.
Doug: And it gets. It gets complicated, like you said, you have to have like a very organized system to keep things straight.
Yes, yes. Otherwise you may, you know, toast all the work that you, you know, did in the past.
Shawna: Yeah. Wow. And you have to regularly check your accounts to make sure they didn’t get banned and you don’t know it also.
Doug: So do you have like a regular routine where once a month you spend a couple hours like going through and checking them?
Shawna: Uh, I try to do it weekly in batches because I don’t wanna be basically doing client work with accounts that have been banned without me knowing they were banned. You know what I mean? So, yeah.
Doug: Yeah. So you have to make sure those are Plus if you like. To switch tasks, it’s perfect. You’re like, I’m bored with this.
Why don’t I just check these 20 accounts or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So like a productive, uh, procrastination method.
Shawna: Yeah.
Doug: Alright. Reddit marketing. Okay. Anything else with that? That made my brain hurt.
Shawna: Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, no, I think that’s it. Like I said, it is, it’s, it’s a process like I don’t think anyone should get into it.
Not realizing, basically it’s a lot of work. Uh, you can farm it out. If you’re farming it out though, you need to check that their accounts aren’t banned. Uh, I know there’s someone on Twitter who keeps promoting their service, and I keep seeing, they keep getting clients and you can see their screenshots of where they’re showing for proof.
And then you go look it up on Reddit and the accounts are banned. Oh, so it’s not, yeah. So you have to be really careful if you’re hiring someone.
Doug: Good grief. Alright, let’s switch over to, uh, vibe coding. So, okay. I, I am on your email list and I saw you, you sent something out that you were, you were working on some stuff.
Mm-hmm. And I mean, it’s all the rage. People are like, oh yeah, you just, you could sign up and you just describe what you want and then, uh, boom. You have a fully working SaaS product. So what, yeah. What have you been working on?
Shawna: Um, well I started, ’cause I had two needs. Uh, the first need was I’m tired of paying a monthly fee to get the, the local SEO maps grid ranking thing.
When I only need a few of those a month. So I’m like, I’m gonna make a tool where I can do these, you know, one at a time if I want. And then maybe I can also. Sell it as the pay as you go model. Right? Um, that one hasn’t actually gone live yet for people to buy, but it is working. Um, so that’s something that I’m gonna release.
Although, like you said earlier, I don’t know shit about coding. Um, I’m just trusting the little thing that you click and lovable that says it’s. Security checks, you know. Um, but the other thing I’ve built, um, I used to have a guy who worked for me for hero stuff who had built like a custom GPT essentially where we could feed in client bios and it would use that to do our hero answers for us.
He left. I don’t have that technology anymore ’cause I don’t know shit about making a custom GBT. But I can code up one on lovable for myself to use. So I did that. Um, it’s working, but again, I don’t trust the security checks of lovable. So what I have made public is just essentially a user dashboard where someone can create an account, fill out an intake form for the hero style links, um, and then I can put a monthly report in their dashboard.
So they don’t actually, they are not, it’s a completely separate thing. From the internal tool. That was the best solution I could come up with, you know, for protecting, you know, people’s things and keeping it separate. Um, so essentially all that the people see publicly is that dashboard if they sign up and they, the payment is connected through Stripe.
Um, so, so now I’m back to having a hero tool that I’m really excited about. I actually had to change the domain name this. Past week because apparently that domain had been registered before and burned on Facebook, so I couldn’t run Facebook ads on that domain. So I had to buy a new domain and I’m now running ads on it.
Um, I think authority back linker.com, I think it was the new URL. Gotcha. So it’s just harrow links, um, super cheap because it is that same kind of system with the ai, you know, we feed in the, the bio, the, it connects with the open opportunities on featured and, and harrow and stuff like that. Um, and then we basically get the AI output and.
Get the links. So, and I’m doing an, an, a slightly upgraded, um, version of that, that’s a little more expensive, $300 a link where we’re doing also quoted, um, and one other, I think it’s called press plugs. It’s the uk it’s the UK specific one. Um, and we’re guaranteeing a minimum Dr. On that one. But there’s actually gonna be a human involved in that particular one to make the answers a little higher quality.
Doug: Gotcha. And perfect. You know, perfect examples where you were like, I have a problem trying to solve it. Yeah. And then you’re working through it. What, what has the experience been like? Is it as easy as people say, like to get something working, how you expect it and all that?
Shawna: I mean, it works as well as AI works, which is not very well, right?
So I, you know, I would tell it what I wanted and it would do it, and then I would say, no, you didn’t do that part right? I need you to do it like this. So it would do what I asked for that time and completely erase everything and it had already done. And so like I’m just in there, I’m like, why did you change the header to that when I didn’t ask you to?
So it got to the point where when I’m using these tools now, I’m like. Make the following change and then they all kept, do not change anything else unless I tell you to. Like it is, it’s really a nightmare. Yeah.
Doug: And it, you know, AI has gotten better, so I suspect like over time it’ll improve and all that stuff.
Um, and. I think I made a similar rant certainly before we started recording, um, which I should have just saved it so you don’t have to hear it twice, but here, here, here we go, we’re gonna do it again. And I, I, I’m pretty sure I did a version of this on a previous episode, but essentially one of the issues that I have very, very specifically, so someone creates a tool and.
There are people out there that are like, I’m just gonna create tools, try to get a handful of users, and then sell this SaaS product to someone else. Often they’ll entice their email list or whoever they’re selling to with a lifetime deal. So they’ll create some tool. They’re like, Hey, and I’ll give a specific example ’cause it illustrates how people can get swept up with certain tools.
So. Remember, it’s not a actual software developer, it’s just the marketers like us. Mm-hmm. And they, uh, they’re like, okay, I’m gonna get this tool. It’ll post on social media for you. It’ll post on Facebook. It’s automated. All this stuff. It’s exactly what you need or what you think you need because the person is telling you that you need this to be able to like, share stuff on Facebook.
So they get a handful of users, I don’t know, say 20. They get ’em to pay whatever, $150 for lifetime access. So they have paying users. The tool is, you know, working mostly, but there’s always bugs and there’s always changes. Mm-hmm. On like interfaces, APIs and otherwise there’s always updates and things that might break it.
So. The, you know, the marketer doesn’t know how to fix the bugs. They try to go through, they don’t know like proper testing and software development. Mm-hmm. So they like fix something, but they break three other things along the way. So it’s kind of buggy, it’s kind of hard to use, but they do have paying customers ’cause.
If they have an email list or something like that. So they were able to get some folks in. They sell the product to someone who like doesn’t do any, like, they just like let the tool die, which is pretty common. Or they’re like, this is much harder to do than I thought, and then it dies. But essentially you end up with like customers that paid and then the tool like doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, and then the software just dies.
Mm-hmm. It’s too easy to spawn these up. So I’m. The thing is, like years ago, I kind of, I, I didn’t like the lifetime deal for a lot of stuff ’cause it’s not sustainable for the company and eventually they’ll go outta business. So, you know, like App Sumo famous, like, I unsubscribe from everything. Like, I’m like, don’t show me anything related to Noah Kagan or Op Sumo.
It’s just like they. They beat up their, the folks that they were working with, their partners. Mm-hmm. And then like the partners would go outta business. Now, I haven’t paid attention in a few years, so maybe it’s like completely the opposite now, but I was like, I kind of had enough of these guys. So any, any, any thoughts on that?
Shawna: Um, I, I agree. Like, um. Um, and like for me, like I, I know I don’t know anything about it. Right? Um, so I would, I would never even think about trying to flip a tool that I coded with one of these things. Right. Um, and one of the other things that I think is a real problem with these tools that I forgot to mention, um, which you may or may not already know about, is the output of it.
The website it makes. I think it’s supposed to be in, in some type of JavaScript or something. So it is, it is not in the format that Google likes to read. Right. So what I’ve been reading is people saying things don’t rank as well, because Google doesn’t like the way it’s laid out. Right? And so I keep seeing these people, you know, on Twitter and stuff being like, why should I pay a web designer to make me a website when I can make one for $25 and lovable.
Well, you dipshit, it’s not gonna be good enough to rank as well as something you make in WordPress because you’re just trying to save money. You know? So it’s, it’s something that pe it’s like one of those things where you don’t know, you don’t know. And they don’t know that they’re hurting themselves that way.
And like I, I put a call out in my newsletter of people asking, asking to explain to me like, what do I need to know about this? And it’s like super complicated. It seems to me, at least as a non coder, to get it from what the output is and say lovable into what we think of as a traditional, you know, website with HTML that we can, you know, view the source code of and things like that.
And so it’s not something that I feel comfortable doing myself. So. I don’t think there’s gonna be a lot of other people who do as well.
Doug: Right. And, and then, uh, you know, the folks that do figure it out and they’re like, okay, like, I will port this over to the right format or whatever.
Mm-hmm. Like,
they will have learned a lot and like, right.
You could obviously learn this stuff. Like I was Right. Yeah. It, it, you know, going on about the software development cycle and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. You could go through a course in a couple hours and kind of have the broad points and go deeper where you need to. So it’s not like, it’s not solvable, but it’s just like, it’s.
Uh, people are lazy inherently, and they’re like, if I could do this in an easier way, then I’ll do it an easier way. And there’s some very low, uh, resistance Yeah. Decisions and paths that you could take. So you end up with, you know, potentially kind of working tools slash again, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Yeah. So you’re like, oh, I created this tool and it’s out there and blah, blah, blah. So, I don’t know. It’s interesting. Well. What’s next, uh, on your tool to-do list, do you have some other things that you’re like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna check this out. ’cause you’re gonna be getting better and better as you go along.
Shawna: Yeah. I don’t know. Like, I feel like I’ve gotten, I’ve, I’ve accomplished what I’ve wanted to accomplish for the most part, but it’s also been a lot of frustration along the way. And it’s not like, like for me it’s like what do I wanna spend my time on in the day? Right. Because all of the hours I spent, I mean, let’s be honest here.
All of the hours I spent making my local Rank Tracker tool, I should have just fucking paid for the month and only used it a few times of someone else’s tool. I mean, honestly, because it was a lot of time and like, yeah, did I learn some stuff? Yeah, I did learn some stuff. Is this stuff I’m ever gonna use again?
I don’t know. Could I have learned something better? Probably so, yeah.
Doug: Yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah. When someone already solved the problem and it’s like, well it costs a little money, but like, is it worth it? So, but you know what you like or don’t like to do, you’re like, ah, you know what, yeah, it will be worth it to take, you know, whatever, another few days or several hours to like get something going.
So, yeah. Alright, well as we’re moving through. Last thing on my list here I think will be the KDP book. So yeah, you’ve mentioned, um. These in the past when I’ve interviewed you. So yeah. What do you have going on with the cake? Yeah,
Shawna: I wanted to do this last year and I ran outta time, so I’ve already started on it this year.
Um, Q4 for Amazon books. Um, you can make a ton of money targeting print books that are gift books. Right. Um, so, um. Some easy examples are gonna be things like joke books for kids. Uh, if you wanna make like planners, journals, a lot of cookbooks sell that time of year. Um, like basically any type of gift book that you can think of, like go to Barnes and Noble, walk around, see what they have in the gift book section, you can probably do it as well.
And coloring books are also always really big this time of year activity books like crosswords, word search, things like that. Um, and I feel like. It is such a great opportunity, especially like right now, all you, you know, buy a year of Enneagram or whatever it’s called for $180, crank out those coloring book pages.
Even if you have to pay somebody to format it for you for KDP, why the fuck would you not do this? Like, I’m so mad I didn’t have time last year. I’m, I’m gonna go fucking crazy this year on it though. Yeah, and that’s like, all I’m doing is like the, the, the print books that people will buy as gifts.
Doug: Okay, so you focus down and then do you, it reminds me, uh, similar to like the digital printables, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I’ve interviewed a few folks. The marketplace they focus on is Etsy, so mm-hmm. Often giftable are, are really good. Yeah. There’s fewer returns as opposed to like print on demand like shirts or things that won’t fit. Right. But the giftable, it’s like pretty straightforward. So do you, have you identified like.
Niches that you think will work really well, or are you aiming for like a volume of products across many different areas? Or are you just kind of focusing in on this product type for different users and stuff?
Shawna: No, so it’s a little of both. Um, I have a video on my channel of a tool called Book Beam. Um, it is the tool.
I 100% recommend for anyone wanting to try this. Uh, they do have monthly plans. Um, they also usually do a pretty good Black Friday sale, but it will be, have been too late for you if you wait until Black Friday.
Right.
Um, but it is basically a keyword research tool that will show you, you can like see like what was popular last Q for, how’s that trend been looking since.
Okay. This is what I’m gonna target, right. It will show you the titles that are ranking. It will show you the estimated sales, like how much they made. Things like that. Like it is an insane tool. It’s perfect for this kinda research. Um, like there’s cookbook ideas that I found in there that I’m gonna run with this year, things like that.
Um, I don’t know what will pop, if anything for me. Um, but I’m definitely going to make it basically a, a throw shit at the wall and see what sticks kinda situation. Um, the thing though is you are gonna have to run some ads more than likely on Amazon to get your initial traction. Um, I was talking with someone a few weeks ago who told me they focus 100% on evergreen things that are big during this time of year as gifts, and they only run ads in Q4.
Um, and this person made like $30,000 last Q4. That was profit after ads. I think she said she spent like 2,500 on on ads in Q4. So it was like a crazy profit margin. She has 600 books, I think she said.
Doug: Holy cow. Yeah. And is it a lot of uh, like giftable type things like that? Yeah. Yeah.
Shawna: That’s all. Yeah, all it is.
Yeah.
Doug: Very cool.
Shawna: And a lot of this stuff, like if you’re doing coloring books and stuff, you can cross promote that over on. Etsy because you can buy author copies at a discount from Amazon. So you could basically order them and ship direct to people if you wanted to.
Doug: Got it. Very
Shawna: interesting. That’s like not something I’m doing, but you could.
Doug: Very cool. Alright, well I wanna wrap it up here, but you did mention your YouTube channel and I know you’ve been. Publishing more and more there. And you have some useful and helpful things, like many of the things we talked about you cover over there. Mm-hmm. What’s coming up? Um, like upcoming videos or anything like that that you wanna talk about?
Shawna: Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff on directory sites. I have a few more of those videos I’ll be doing, um, today I’m actually recording. A, a Reddit marketing, like start to finish Reddit marketing a video. It’d probably be out by the time you publish this. Uh, I also have scripted one on SaaS, SEO. Uh, basically I take requests, so people on my newsletter send me emails and they’re like, Hey, can you do a video on blah, blah, blah?
And I’m like, okay. So yeah.
Doug: Perfect. Yep. And we’ll link up to the channel so people can check it out and all that stuff. And like I said, it. You cover exactly what we’ve been talking about. Yeah. And you go through your stuff, um, so people can learn. Alright, well thanks Shauna. Really appreciate it. Always fun to catch up.
Shawna: Yeah. Have a good time with you all the time, right?
Doug: Yeah. Alright, we’ll, we’ll have you on again soon.
Shawna: Cool.