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“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” ~Chinese proverb
My website is all about connecting with people. This is more for those who are in marketing and are curious and maybe even been trying to do something like this on their own. Would like to hear from you if that is the case.
I find a lot of things intriguing, however over the last few months I have been focused on marketing. Really traffic generation. With the burning question of – is it possible to sell inexpensive products online (Something under $10)- without running ads as the key source of traffic generation?
{Content System Abstract}
I am a big fan of Seth Godin. However, I do read a lot – so I am not 100% sure this idea came from him – but the idea is – Make it once.
Let that sink in for a bit. Make it once. And how does that apply to marketing? Especially online marketing?
We could say, oh I made this ad once, and now….after a lot of testing, tweaking – I know for every X number of times it is shown – I will get X number of visitors. It will cost me X number of dollars. And it will produce this result. It becomes a system.
I like systems by the way. And I also value – Freedom, Self-Reliance and Independence.
So, what if we could create a system based on SEO optimized content – that achieves a desired results? A system that is – well for the most part fully owned. Meaning, besides being dependent on search engines to bring in traffic – you own the site and content.
Think of it – almost like how Soap Operas came to be.
Soap operas originated in the 1930s in the US radio industry. Advertising agencies from the soap, toiletry, and food industries developed programs to attract a female audience. The term “soap opera” comes from the fact that the radio dramas were originally sponsored by soap manufacturers.
You can pick that a part until you are blue in the face, but the basic is – making content – that appeals to a key audience.
At the heart of a content system lies a targeted audience. Each choice and action should be guided by what serves this specific community best. Content is the driving force behind your system. A self-sustaining content system is built on serving the unmet needs of that niche audience.
So, at a very simple level you have….Websites with content – which I will call Attractors that you own! That basically run some sort of ads (That you own) and Target Websites that are optimized for conversions that you own.
You might can even think of this like a funnel system. (Much of this is besides the point – you will see later)
This (Attractor and Target) strategy creates a symbiotic relationship between the Attractors and Targets. The Attractors pull in traffic through a variety of content and direct it to the Target sites, which are optimized for conversions, whether that’s selling products or generating leads. By focusing on long-tail keywords and niches, and employing automation to reduce maintenance efforts, this strategy aims to create a sustainable, efficient method for lead generation and revenue creation through content marketing.
{Content System – Core Concept }
A strategy for generating leads through content marketing, by creating independent niche content websites that focus on the long tail search. The strategy is divided into two key components: Attractors and Targets.
Here’s a breakdown of the concept:
{Focus on Long Tail Niches}
The strategy emphasizes targeting long-tail keywords and niche markets. Long-tail keywords are specific phrases with lower competition and potentially high conversion rates.
Niches are specialized segments of the market that might have less competition, making them easier to dominate.
{Content Aggregation}
Accumulate or generate a large amount of content from various sources. This content serves as the backbone of the strategy by drawing traffic and generating leads.
{Automation}
Streamline the process of updating and maintaining the websites by using automation. This will ensure the operation remains simple, easy to handle, and time-efficient.
{Attractors (Magnetic Mechanisms)}
These are separate independent websites filled with a bulk of content aimed at drawing traffic. While they may or may not have email capture mechanisms, they will have advertisements or other type links pointing towards the Target site(s).
Attractors should be easy to build and maintain, possibly utilizing recycled or curated content.
Optimization of these sites includes targeting specific keywords to attract search traffic.
Attractors can be optimized for a local market or a wider national or global market.
{Targets}
Target sites are where the revenue generation occurs. They could offer products for sale or aim to generate leads through list-building efforts.
The traffic from Attractors are funneled to these sites through ads or other linking strategies.
The ultimate goal is to convert the traffic from Attractors into customers or leads on the Target sites.
{Optimization}
Ensuring that both Attractors and Targets are optimized for search engines is crucial to ensure visibility and attract the right audience. This includes targeting key search terms, especially on the Target sites to meet revenue or lead generation goals.
{AND HERE IS THE PROBLEM – Or Problems}
Sounds great! However… Unless you have a team of content makers and a big budget. It is really out reach for most people. Especially a one person enterprise. There is just not a way to generate enough content to make a dent.
Well, until AI came along.
Call it, or think about it want you want. I have been playing around with AI for some time now. Few years. Mainly generative AI. At the start.. Yeah maybe it produced something worth using. Still the cost in time was pretty high, because you had a lot of misses (LOTS of misses) with the generated content. Might have even been better to use a random generator.
And when I am talking content, the focus is around text and images. And when I talk scale, I am not talking about 1 or 2. I am talking 1000s.
You had the generative images – a few years ago, throw in some images, maybe try to do style transfer, you know turn your photos into watercolor art. Again more misses than hits. Then you had Generative, well yeah.. It was good at making abstract images. At the time.
{Phase One}
So, me being the curious one. How can you generate, title, organize, upload.. And don’t forget upsize a few 1000 abstract art images. Along with offering them for sale.. And would anybody buy them?
Don’t laugh at the site – it was my first attempt at a system. Yeah, I should go back with what I know now and optimize it more, not to mention that the AI tools have gotten 100 times better in the past few months. It has 6,481 images for sale.
For what it is – it works. It helped me sort out a bunch of improvements in the system. SEO being the big one. The titles used a random abstract art title generator I put together in python – using some basic title rules.
From start to finish the site is automated – {Generated Art Image} -> {Title} -> {Packaging} -> {Upload to website}
Anyway – just-abstract-art.com is the site. Yes there a things that I will change – like using AI to title the images, along with generating product descriptions.
{Phase Two}
Moving to the next level.
Years ago I launched a site what was nothing but Hymn Lyrics. It was my first Python project to scrap public domain hymns from the internet and repost them to a website. The goals was scraping, cleaning data, generating feature images with text, automating the upload, and seeing what all you don’t know, that you don’t know. Along with what problems come along with trying to maintain a wordpress site with over 40K blog posts.
For the most part it worked, but wasn’t the best site, so I let it die out. I learned a lot. But kept the orginal content of like 40,000 hymns.
Bible-Warriors.com is the next version of that site.
The experiment is – Taking existing content and using AI to expand upon it. The existing content is the hymn. And now that AI image generation has improved by leaps and bounds – I am generating an image that goes along with each hymn.
The system goes like..
{Existing Content – Hymn} -> {AI: Suggest an Image description for Hymn} -> {Image Description into AI Image generator}->{Image}
{Existing Content – Hymn} -> {AI: Explain the meaning of this hymn} -> {AI: Create a Summary of the Meaning}->{AI: Generate Keywords and SEO Key} -> {AI: Based on SEO Key – Generate a metadata description} -> {From The Hymn Title – Generate URL Slug}->{AI: Generate optimized image ALT and Description}
There is a review process! For both images and text content. This is key for any AI generated content. I wrote an interface that makes this process really painless. The content is either approved or requires edit.
Approved content – is then packaged, the images get resized with text added, and then it is ready for bulk upload into wordpress.
The slowest part of the process is image generation – as I am generating 10 images for each post. As again – AI generated images are much better than they used to be – they still don’t get it right 100% of the time. The image AI model I am running local – and I just have one machine dedicated to it, which limits me to about 50 images per hour. The image generation is a batch process – using Rabbit MQ as a message storage device, so the image generation is scalable – I just need another high end GPU to add into the mix.
After about 1000 pieces of content – I saw that there were some image themes that were repeating. I put in a system that compares the generated image description with the existing ones – and if there is a close match, use the existing images. This has helped a lot.
And I might not need a unique image for each post – but my plan is to use the image some place else. Again – Make it once.
As of this post – I have 1790 blog articles posted on that site.
I have been running this process – also on project-quotes.com – which is very similar in design, but instead of Hymns, I am using Quotes as the starter content.
Project Quotes has 1,150 blog articles. And I think I have around 300K quotes in the database.
*Things learned – for a new site it take Google some time to pick it up. By pick it up – indexing the site. Even using the instant indexing api – you are limited to 200 posts a day. Even then you are at the mercy of waiting for google to crawl and index what you have.
These two sites are long term investments for myself.
{Phase Three}
Let AI do the work. Local Search and Topics.
In the previous phases – I used starter content. It is very possible to do the same thing with PLR or other content you can collect from the web. You could even have AI rewrite the articles for you, in the case of PLR content. But I am more intrested in topics for niches.
(Just to be clear – these sites don’t have any bearing on what I believe)
Prayer-warriors.com – another website I started based on topic generation. In this case prayer.
The content is all full AI generated, from blog post suggestions, etc.. The starter is a topic.
{AI: Generate a list of X number of blog post titles about – } -> {Extract SEO Key} -> {AI: Generate A post about (Title)} – > Summary, Meta, image.. Etc… and so on…
Goes into content review… then approved content is bulk uploaded.. Done…
Local Content Market……
The last part of this experiment is – local optimized content. Using a similar approach as above. But requiring that a location is used in the title generation as part of the SEO Key.
Crystalcoast-IT.com
I focused on some surrounded areas to pimp some of the stuff I do for IT. City specific (8 locations). Along with key topics, like Python Automation, Python Programmer, Windows Admin.. Etc. Asking AI to generate post titles, and alternated titles that people could be using to find those things.
I skipped the image generation process, since I had a batch of IT realted images already.
The output generated – 3,833 articles. Which are posted on the site. This is a really new site – so still waiting to see what the results are….
{Future}
I have the – ton of images that have been created for the other sites. One of the next phases will be offering them for sale, either as stock (download) or as a printed image. Using AI to generate the title, product description.. And what not.
{What is next……}
Yeah, so that is a lot. Just will put it out there. If you have been doing this – or have some ideas, would love to hear from you.
Have a Creative or Technical Project in Mind?
Looking for guidance, insights, or a fresh perspective on your technical or creative journey? Or just somebody to chat with?
Reach Out
jamie@jamiestarling.com