February 13, 2024 • 63 mins
This episode of The Online Performance Podcast welcomes Casey Botticello - and we discuss his journey in scaling his portfolio of sites using AI - to a point where it is now generating upwards of $20,000 per month.
Episode Outline:
Immerse yourself in this episode of The Online Performance Podcast as we sit down with Casey Botticello, shedding light on his intriguing journey and how he optimizes AI for running his online business. Learn how he transitioned from conventional jobs to becoming an independent creator, author, and more. Listen in to understand how he integrates AI to enhance his content creation, redefine SEO, and evaluate the sustainability of blogging.
Our discussion extends to how the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) transforms the blogging industry. You will get a taste of Casey's experience with multiple AI tools, and how these profound changes have significantly influenced his business strategy. You'll learn how AI has helped streamline his content creation process, proving invaluable in handling multiple websites.
We delve further into the versatility of AI, exploring how it aids not only in content creation but also in its potential to revolutionize various online businesses and e-commerce platforms. Understand how AI can impact your business' efficiency and revenue potential, with the added control of generating content specific to your needs.
Find Casey:
Website: www.bloggingguide.com Newsletter: https://bloggingguide.substack.com YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/caseybotticelloMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, and welcome to the Online Performance Podcast, the podcast that aims to
help you elevate your online earnings.
My guest today is a blogger, digital marketing consultant, indie creator,
author, designer, course creator,
and he's had some wild success with AI over the last 12 months or so.
He's also very well known for his website, bloggingguide.com.
(00:20):
I'm really pleased today to welcome Casey Botticello. Welcome to the podcast, Casey.
Well, thanks for having me, Jason. I'm a big fan of the show and excited to
hopefully share some useful knowledge with zero listeners.
I'm sure you will. It's a real pleasure to have you here.
And actually, as I was doing that introduction, I almost had to take an extra
breath because there were so many facets to what you do online.
(00:43):
So I'm sure we're going to dig into a lot of that today. Was there anything
that was incorrect in what I said there?
There's probably a few things that were missed out. But yeah,
it's a mixture of things.
Pretty much every way of making money online, I would say I pretty much tried
short of launching like a SaaS product.
(01:04):
Anything that involves being the individual contributor.
Yeah, I've probably done that. so yeah fantastic we're
definitely going to dig into a lot of that today so we start off
each podcast with the same question and that question is what is online success
what does that mean to you so to me online success is being able to well i guess
(01:27):
in business terms at least being able to to create a sustainable, scalable,
lucrative online business that generates income and allows you to replace your
full-time job or significantly supplement part-time job.
For me, there was definitely that desire to break away from the nine to five.
(01:51):
So I'll always sort of benchmark benchmark online success as,
you know, replacing your, you know, your traditional income with something different.
But I, you know, even if it's just supplementing your income and giving you
some flexibility, I would still definitely call that success.
But for me, the goal has always been full-time income.
(02:14):
Yeah. I suppose there are varying levels of success, aren't there?
And I think that's an interesting approach to how you put that there.
And that's certainly a process that I went through from, I used to be in employment
for about 15 years or so before I ventured into the online world.
So could you just give us a bit of a background as to your online journey or how you...
(02:36):
Went from, I mean, I don't know, were you working full-time prior to being online?
I was, and I was on a very traditional career path.
I graduated from Penn and like most of my classmates, anyone who does well pretty
much looks at investment banking or management consulting.
I had done like the internships and I was fully prepared to go down that path.
(03:00):
And I did take a a management consulting job right out of school.
But I ended up back here in Washington, DC at another nine to five job.
This was, I guess, 2015 to 2018 ish.
So I was doing a full time job, but I started basically just writing for fun on the side.
(03:25):
And slowly I started to realize both just through experimentation.
But also through my job, which was in digital PR and lobbying for a pretty big
firm here in DC, that content can be worth a lot.
It depends on who the end user is, but the same person or different people will
(03:46):
pay different prices for content. And that principle applies online too.
So I kind of started as like a ghost writer doing a lot of basically spec work
for different organizations that wanted to promote a message or wanted to advocate for something.
(04:10):
Something and as that started to
take off i had the chance to work
remotely for a brief time prior
to the pandemic and then the
pandemic hit and at that
point i had i decided basically you know i i'd already decided but i i fully
(04:31):
switched to sort of doing my freelance work and while i was doing that in basically
just through the process of building in public and sort of sharing some of the things I had found.
I connected with a lot of bloggers in particular, and I had been blogging for
years, but that wasn't really what I would, you know, call myself.
(04:54):
But now, yeah, most of my time and income is, yeah, spent doing something related to blogging.
Along the way, I've also I've built a number of paid newsletters.
I have a few different e-commerce businesses I've bought and sold,
a lot of Amazon KDP merch, different things like that.
(05:18):
So, but most of the income is from blogging. So.
Okay. I suppose that's where the website that you set up, bloggingguide.com, that came along.
And was that part of the idea of building in public or was this just something
where you thought, well, okay, I've got a little bit of a following now,
let's capitalize on that?
Or was it just something completely separate? How did that kind of come about?
(05:41):
It genuinely was kind of for fun.
And I wanted to experiment more with website development.
So So I was like, you know, probably the best way to learn is to dive in.
And I, you know, like my, the sites I build now are very lean,
(06:01):
stripped down, you know, they're optimized for speed.
Blogging guides kind of clunky. It looks nice, but I mean, technically it,
you know, it's a site I would never build for Google today, but I had a lot
of fun doing all the custom coding and learning how to create,
you know, each little effect.
So I would say that, yeah, it was partially, there was a little self-promotion,
(06:25):
but it was really more honestly just trying to see if I could make a nice website
and hopefully document some of my finding.
And I think we all go through that process, don't we? Where,
you know, the first few projects that we start, you know, you look back at them now.
I sent an email out today to my audience and very much said that projects that
I was working on five years ago, if I look at that content now,
(06:48):
I almost cringe when I look at it and kind of going back and trying to work
on it and prove it. That's a whole separate podcast.
But yeah, I think that's how it should be. And I think, again,
there's a lot to be said for learning in that way.
Just get stuff up and put it out there. And that's how you learn.
And there's no question that a big part of my own personal journey in this was
(07:11):
really learning how to let go of that fear of perfection when publishing.
When I came at this from the perspective of like a highly paid ghostwriter,
of course, everything was about the quality of the content. You know,
my name wasn't attached to it, but somebody bigger than me's name was.
So it was actually more important that the quality be like a plus caliber content.
(07:37):
I think that over time, it took like probably two or three years to break down
that to where I could be like, no, I really just need to just publish.
And, you know, I can always edit, I can always improve content,
but, you know, at the end of the day, you, you, you need to publish and you
(07:59):
need to, you know, stay consistent with that.
So I, for me, that was a big thing.
A big part of my sort of journey getting here. I think that applies to so many
different aspects of content creation as well.
Obviously you're talking about that from a blogging point of view or from a
written word point of view, but the same for YouTube, the same for TikTok,
(08:20):
you know, social media, like, like you say, showing up, being consistent,
getting that 1% better each time it applies to so many different elements.
So you're, you're, you know, you are involved in a lot of different things at the moment.
If you were kind of just coming into this now, or even now, Now, as you are,
where do you see the biggest opportunities for, I don't know,
(08:41):
even if you just think about it from a making money online point of view,
where do you think the biggest opportunities are now?
Because like you said, you talked about, you talked there about e-comm,
you've talked about KDP, blogging, where, where, where is it? Or is it everywhere?
I mean, it is everywhere, but you're right to try to make it a little more granular.
I would first think sort of it depends on the individual, obviously,
(09:05):
but if you're the type of person that wants to build a team and likes that management role,
they like scaling something, but maybe you're not like the creator sort of behind
every piece of content, content,
then there's still probably a lot of opportunity in the traditional sort of
(09:27):
blogging niche space game.
And you know, that could be affiliate marketing, it could be ad driven, that can be lead gen.
But I do think that, yeah, as we've seen over the past six months,
you know, Google updates have kind of shaken a lot of people's faith,
and the long term viability of that model.
(09:51):
I haven't been hit very hard by any of the updates and I have like 25 sites.
So that's impressive. That is seriously impressive.
Well, and there's a degree of luck to that, but, but there is there,
I've, I've learned a lot.
I also do some like just for fun and to learn like some site consultations and
(10:12):
auditing sites and going through stuff and just helping out friends.
One thing I've definitely learned is that the caliber of content,
when people are really honest with themselves and they really dive into it,
a lot of times we were probably benefiting three years ago from basically Google's
(10:37):
inability to sort of suss out some of the keyword stuff.
Overly SEO optimized content.
And I always stayed away from that despite thinking very much in terms of SEO,
but I tried to not structure the content like a traditional hired writer would.
(11:02):
And I think that made a big difference in the sites. So I do think actually
there's a lot of potential still.
I've launched four sites. this year, 2024.
And so I'm not like, personally, I'm not just saying that I actually am practicing what I preach.
(11:25):
I, and I document these on my site, but I had a site in the last,
that was started in 2023 and it grew from zero.
It was fresh domain to over 20,000 a month on Mediavine.
So you know that
(11:46):
wasn't it all in 2023 i mean the
entire process so is blogging
dead is you know is it not gonna
be viable i think it'll deter
a lot of people all this volatility but in
a lot of ways that opens up a lot of opportunities whether you're
looking on the acquisition side a lot
(12:08):
of people are you know multiples were pretty high just
12 months ago now you could
probably get a site for sometimes half of
you know what you could have got it for so yeah absolutely i just wonder then
obviously you've been you've been putting content on bloggingguide.com for a
few years and and giving advice how has that advice changed over that time and
(12:33):
more specifically i I suppose,
over the last six to 12 months.
Would the advice that you've given in the past, do you think that has changed?
Because you've just said that you very much took almost an anti-SEO approach
where you were very much writing for the user, which is what we hear a lot about
now, particularly post helpful content update.
(12:53):
So has your advice changed, do you think?
Or has your approach changed a little bit in some of the work that you do now?
There yeah it it has changed and
i i try to update or keep the
content consistent with where i'm at but
the probably the biggest shift was i was definitely i
was skeptical when ai content came
(13:15):
onto the scene like i said it the whole purpose of it is to replace people like
me so that that's you know that's a pretty daunting thing and and i knew ai
was gonna at least it would take a while before I would get anywhere close to that level.
But I knew that it didn't matter. In the meantime, the sheer volume of content
(13:37):
you could produce could have an outsized impact.
So I was maybe like a year ago, even though I started experimenting with AI immediately.
Like even before like chat GPT came out, I was trying kind of some of the more primitive tools.
(13:57):
But, yeah, like at the time, my advice to readers was Google hasn't really sanctioned that,
you know, they hadn't really made a formals, you know, they changed their actual
like wording of their policy to sort of include AI content and say,
basically, as long as it's helpful content,
(14:17):
it doesn't matter, you know, who or how it's produced.
And that wasn't until february of 2023 i believe so up until that point i was pretty much like,
don't go down the the rabbit hole of you
know all this quick you know anything that's quick you know it's probably a
bad idea it's not a long-term sustainable business model it's just a money grab
(14:41):
but which i generally would not advocate so that's why i was very skeptical
again though Even though I was skeptical,
I was aggressively building sites and testing it.
That's where I ended up finding a lot of success.
The site I mentioned that I've talked about in other places...
(15:05):
Was seeded with content that I personally wrote, but I then scaled it using AI content.
And part of that was actually having AI write portions of the content,
but part of that was content ideation and just automating sort of the overall workflow.
And basically I was able to, I had a team of maybe seven writers sort of at my peak before AI.
(15:34):
And now I'm back down to a full-time team of one, basically me.
So I do have freelancers that help with various tasks.
But I mean, I was able to cut, you know, 10K a month in expenses.
So, you know, AI was coming for a lot of writers jobs.
(15:56):
Again, that really included me. And I was basically like, you know,
I need to be ahead of the curve on this one.
And so far, it's been pretty good. I still, that's why I like having different sites.
I like having a site like blogging guide where I meticulously research and write every post myself.
(16:17):
I wouldn't dare try to put an AI generated article on there.
But there are some topics and some places where AI content can be useful.
And that's why I've also mentioned the other businesses, because AI can be used
in e-commerce and, like I said, other forms of online business. business.
(16:39):
Brilliant. Well, I'm going to quiz you on that in a minute. So we're definitely
going to come back to that.
So with your projects now, you just said you've started four new websites in
2024 and we're recording this on the 9th of January. So that's pretty good going.
Are all those projects now in utilizing AI?
To some extent, yeah. One of them is sort of like just a pure AI test.
(17:01):
So that's a hundred percent AI.
Then there's, I mean, it's literally like Like I'm feeding it like seed keywords
and it's generating one click articles like just at the other extreme to test.
That site's already doing pretty well, though. I mean, the fact that it's already
even it was January 1st, it was started and it's already gotten its first click.
(17:26):
So I'm I'm a little I'm excited about that one. But then two of the sites are
about what I would call like 50% AI generated.
These are sort of ones that I go in after the AI does like a first attempt at
a first draft, and I'll manually edit, create images,
(17:47):
add media, stuff like that. And that's sort of the sweet spot.
And that's really more what the site I was referring to before that I saw a lot of success with was.
And then there's one where, again, this is more of just an experiment, but it's like.
A mixture where some posts are AI, some are entirely written by me.
(18:11):
And the purpose behind that is not just to A-B test whether AI content works.
The purpose is to see if, you know, that AI is better at writing some types of content.
So if you have like listicle content, if you're,
you know increasingly sort of you
(18:33):
know summarizing information like ai
can be perfect and that could be from a creative use like not just generating
written content from thin air but sort of like transcribing like a podcast and
including like excerpts from that so that's sort of kind of the the approach.
(18:56):
Yeah. I think that's interesting as well, because you are thinking of those
more creative ways to use it.
You're not literally just, I mean, obviously you are at the one end of the extreme,
you are just hitting a button, giving it a keyword and then publishing.
And obviously that's an experiment and a test, but then at the other end of
the extreme, you are using AI in a much more creative ways.
And I think that is, I think that's probably why you've had the success that
(19:18):
you've had because you have tested, you have experimented, you've,
you've You've used it from a very early point in time as well.
So I think that's really interesting. So if someone was coming into the space,
if we think about it from a blogging
point of view again, or just from a content website point of view.
So if someone's new to the space, can they leverage AI?
(19:38):
Is it something that someone brand new to the space can do?
And if so, can it be done on a small budget, so to speak?
Yes. The answer to both is yes, I think. You definitely anyone who I would say
would have the requisite skills to sort of compete in the content site space,
(20:00):
meaning they could build a site, maintain it themselves, just a simple WordPress site.
But, you know, has some basic understanding of that, has at least a little bit
of experience writing or is willing to learn, has kind of the basic SEO fundamentals and knows,
you know, generally what content should look like.
(20:22):
Yeah, I think that pretty much anybody can use AI either to produce content
directly or to just augment that process. As far as like, is that expensive?
I'm in a couple different masterminds where we like kind of AIs become the focus.
And in one of them, there are like, and I don't think people realize this about AI,
(20:46):
like the people that are really doing AI are doing like things like they are
spending exorbitant amounts of money.
They have like 30 person data scientists like teams that are like going through and doing like.
Their own, like custom, everything like they are, you know, it's,
(21:09):
it's at a whole nother level.
So there is that extreme, but I'm not at that extreme.
What I do is actually extremely high ROI.
And I think most people could probably do something pretty close to that.
I mean, I literally started with chat GPT.
So I mean, you know, I don't even use the premium version.
(21:31):
So like, Like, yes, there are some barriers to entry.
You still need to understand, like I said, all the things that would have made
what makes a website great. Basically, that doesn't change.
But it's pretty easy, especially if you've maybe been doing this just for a little while even.
(21:51):
And you've delegated work to writers. Maybe you've even written some of the
content yourself. yourself, you can pretty easily figure out,
you know, where there are areas, you know, that you can save on time or money.
And at the end of the day, I think you have to view all this for what it is
like, I'm viewing it as a business.
(22:13):
I have a few sites that are kind of more like passion projects,
but I very much separate those and I treat those differently.
Like I said, blogging I does earn money, but it really is more of a passion
project. It's where I have fun.
It's probably like affiliate school. You know, it's almost a personal brand slash.
(22:35):
Yeah, just sort of repository for all my experiments. So I'm a big advocate
of having a site like that.
And I really do think everybody should probably have like a,
either a personal branded site or like a sort of small solo entrepreneur site.
But besides that, I would advocate, you know, definitely using AI to scale everything you can.
(23:02):
I mean, there's so many uses.
It's hard for me to imagine somebody couldn't find a use for AI to improve their workflow.
Brilliant. Well, we're going to test you on that in a second.
So we are going to come back to that.
So just on a side note then, a particular piece of software you're using,
I've heard you talk about Koala Writer in the past. Is that still your kind of go-to?
(23:24):
It is. Definitely for the content that's one-click and stuff like that.
Koala. I think it's.
Among the people I've talked to who don't have fully custom built systems, Koala is the best.
You know, I also had the just sort of the privilege of I was on a private forum
(23:50):
with the founder and I watched the idea come to him and like literally saw him build it in real time.
And prior to that, he was just like a niche site builder like me.
And when I seeing him build that, especially at the exact same moment where I was like, man,
if only there was somebody who could like quickly crank out a product that could
(24:15):
like, you know, automate 70% of this, I could, you know, go wild.
And like, I just didn't have the technical skill set to build that type of tool, but he did Connor.
And, you know, I think he, you know, it's, I'm not saying it'll forever be the
number one AI product, but it works really well.
(24:36):
I mean, and it honestly replaces so many other functions, whether it's the,
now it has the AI site mapping, so it can do all the internal linking based.
I mean, just that's what I mean.
So like just the amount of time I save, like not having to like worry about
internal links like or external links or, you know, you know,
(25:00):
you can even include your affiliate links to be strategically placed throughout.
Out i mean the time savings on that even if it's just rewriting an existing
article are huge so yeah koala is my probably just the easiest because i honestly use it so i i.
That's why I recommend it. Honestly, I do use chat GPT still just because when
(25:25):
I'm doing more tests and creative stuff, I just kind of like to see what it comes up with.
And honestly, the more creative you are in prompting it,
you can get sort of wildly different
outcomes and information so that's
good i i have tested a few of the other tools i
(25:47):
think most of them are probably within like 20 to 30 percent range of like the
quality of koala so i i'm not i think you could get by with a lot of the tools
but i built a lot of that site last year using both both free chat, GPT and Koala.
(26:07):
And that's not very expensive. We're talking, you know, 30 cents to 50 cents an article.
So I used to pay writers and I, and since I was a writer and had a good relationship
with lots of writers, I paid my writers well.
So a lot of, so I mean, and I know you're very, you know, focused on that with
(26:30):
the education sort of background,
like, you know, You understand sort of the value of having these basically subject
matter experts who actually know what they're teaching.
So I've tried to find other ways for those people.
Team members to stay involved. Some of them have just kind of left freelance writing altogether.
(26:52):
But a few of them, I'm doing a couple experimental projects where I'm trying
to scale the actual AI content production.
That's the real bottleneck. And that like, honestly, if you can solve that challenge,
like that'll be like the first like niche site,
you know, billionaire, like whoever does that so
(27:15):
i want to dig into that in a little in a bit more
detail in a minute and we're definitely going to come back to that so
we want to test you on these these different
scenarios then for ai and they might
they may well you may well just come back and say that the answer
is the same for all of them but i've got three scenarios or three
types of business that potentially could utilize ai
(27:36):
and i just want you to give me an idea as to how you might implement
it and you probably probably got experience in some of these so the first one
is e-commerce so if there's someone that's running an e-commerce store
let's listen to this podcast they're thinking about trying
to bring ai into their business what would
your advice be so ai is pretty good once you have a little experience with it
(27:58):
at writing accurate punchy copy so i would like yes sometimes you you can see
these hilarious, nonsensical answers.
But for the most part, if you're giving it the right information,
and like I said, you take a little bit of time to sort of train it on.
(28:18):
What you're, it's supposed to be producing, you can definitely do like product descriptions,
entire, you know, product categories, you know, all these pages that,
especially if you're an e-com person, you probably don't have a team of writers.
It's a little different when you're in the, you just produce written material
(28:40):
because writers are always an option.
But if you're an an e-commerce entrepreneur, you probably are leaving money
on the table by not creating more product pages, more detailed product descriptions
by not, you know, I mean, the uses are kind of endless.
So actually e-commerce is probably, it's not the way I'm using it the most,
(29:01):
but I think there's a lot of potential there.
Like, yeah, for sure. I agree. I think there's so much potential with e-commerce for it.
So then look at it from a completely different point of view.
What about at a local business a local business but they've got an online site
you know they've got a website,
how would you advise them to utilize it or would
you i definitely part of it's
(29:22):
the same where if you're a local business since you
typically don't have access to writers or time to write yourself or you're you
know not a writer i think there's a lot of use i i was working with a a dentist
who kind of had used chat gpt on her own to generate an immense just sort of.
(29:44):
Basically blog level of like content and she was generating all these new local leads,
through that so it almost like she was doing her own rank and rent sort of thing
but for her and i thought that was really clever and of course she can attach
her credentials to it So that if you are the subject matter expert,
(30:07):
you know, you have that advantage.
So let AI do some of that grunt work.
And, you know, whether it's a construction business, letting it sort of.
Do like articles on different materials on
different finishes you know even letting
(30:27):
it you know just it can definitely lighten
the load i would definitely create it kind of like the
e-commerce store everything from like the meta description to
the body content i mean you can even run
your different titles through it just to kind of
find different ideas and that's the
the stuff that holds up a lot of local business owners because they're
(30:50):
not writers and they're not used to publishing you
know content other than like their
main sales page maybe yeah absolutely i
suppose if you're a digital marketing company as well that's working with clients
like that like in the e-commerce space the local business space there's so many
ways in which you should be utilizing ai to you know improve your offer or service
(31:10):
level to those types of clients I would think that's actually probably the person
who could benefit the most from all of this is because,
of course, someone who's doing an agency like that.
They're always balancing quantity and quality.
Quality so if if you
know you don't have to outsource certain tasks if you
(31:32):
can you know just get your first
draft like 50 better like
that's a big deal like when you start scaling that so absolutely and as you
already pointed out the the costs are so much lower as well so you're saving
from that point of view so then the third scenario that i wanted to give you
was someone that's involved in video so potentially a youtuber or someone that's
(31:56):
producing tick-tock type content.
How would you use AI in that? And I don't know if you've used it in that way
yourself or if you've got any ideas on it.
I've used it and this is basically, so this is the way I would recommend is
you can take either your content, if you have video content,
or you can take other video content,
(32:17):
for the purpose of like, like I said, you're looking for quotes or excerpts
or something that's not already published in text format online. line.
And you can, I mean, that's part of why I use Koala is they have a whole option
where you just enter the YouTube URL.
And doesn't just you know, it doesn't transcribe the interview,
(32:40):
it actually synthesizes, and you can choose a different like voices,
you know, a pretty good article based on that.
And it'll draw inferences, make links to other other videos, stuff like that.
So especially if you have like a back catalog of like video content.
(33:02):
I mean, having someone else write that content to publish on your site is probably worthwhile.
But I mean, this is just so much lower cost.
I mean, you already produce the content, you know, like if we were doing it for this episode,
you know, it would make sense for you to like, you know,
do like the takeaways and it could pull out
(33:25):
these three responses you know that i'm
giving to your question and it could expand upon
them so and i think that that tip right there
should be one of the top ones because i think that's an absolute massive knowledge bomb
that you've just dropped there i think that's a real good one it is there there's
people who are like i'm really surprised how slow people are at adopting some
(33:46):
of this i thought these opportunities would be gone by now And so I sort of
tabled that because I don't personally have a lot of video content.
So it's like, I don't I didn't know what the use case was.
But I mean, there's people, you know, and as you know, producing video content,
I mean, it's incredibly difficult.
And the time it takes is immense. Like, why wouldn't you also want to build
(34:11):
like a parallel site that you could like, funnel all that traffic to?
I mean, that's exactly what AI should be doing for you, basically.
Now, I think you've certainly got my mind ticking there and probably a few others
that are listening and watching this.
Okay, so let's go back. I want to dig back into your kind of AI processes then.
(34:32):
So what does your day-to-day look like right now?
Are you the person pressing the buttons and editing the content and that sort of thing?
You said you've not necessarily got the support in terms of writers that you used to have.
So are you taking on a lot of that or have you got processes in place?
(34:52):
I'm in the middle of, I was trying to sort of outsource, you know,
that's the tendency of anyone who's
done anything online long enough is to systematize and then outsource.
The problem is there really aren't that many people just because it hasn't been
around that long, that many like AI writing experts.
(35:14):
Like I'm, you know, if, if you are knowledgeable about AI writing,
it's almost like, you know, it'd be like finding a really good ditch site operator.
Why would they work for you sort of thing? They're out there and they're making
a lot of money. I can never afford that person.
Honestly, I haven't even found that person. So that's like a big bottleneck.
(35:39):
So I kind of backed away from the system. I did document the processes,
but right now I'm really kind of in the trenches And I know it's not what people like to hear.
It's not the like, I'm on a beach sipping pina coladas sort of thing.
But I am very much like seven days a week, 16 hours a day, other than the few
(36:07):
podcasts and other things I check out online.
Mine, like I'm been, this last year has been nonstop for me.
And I'm very much basically the person who's, which I enjoy doing sort of the high level.
Okay. I've identified a niche. Here's the potential.
(36:28):
Usually it's something I like, but sometimes it's just some in the past,
some set of keywords that I've discovered and knew there was untapped potential.
And I marked that for for later.
But it was like, you know, I never would get to that. Because in the previous
world, that would cost too much for me to do like a, you know,
(36:50):
I can't have like, a team of writers working on 30 sites for me.
But now I can, you know, kind of do that.
So I'm both going after things I left on the table before, but also finding new things.
And yeah, that after that, though, I am literally like.
I use a few freelancers to help systematize, scrape, and organize all the keyword
(37:17):
content that I'm going after,
but I'm very much like nobody is performing more than one task.
I don't even think most people who are working now doing my freelance work would
even know what the end product is.
Is i think they just think it's somebody doing keyword
(37:38):
research or whatever even then
i do most of the keyword research myself it's really
just using them in the same way i use ai like just because i i know that at
scale i can do it cheaply so yeah i suppose the key thing is as long as you
can still be strategic and and be able to take that step back and and and plan
(38:01):
new projects and and all of that side of thing,
which you can because you know what it's like when you're writing content yourself
from scratch, that is very, very taxing.
It's very time consuming. It takes a lot of mental energy.
Whereas I suppose utilizing AI in that content creation process.
It alleviates a lot of that, I guess.
(38:24):
It does. And the way I would compare it
or sort of explain it is really it's it's
almost like having like bionic arms or
something where it it's not that like i'm fully like a robot and things or i
have a robot doing work for me it's really more like the you know the same hustle
(38:47):
sort of grind that i applied before four can now be scaled 30 X probably.
So, you know, unfortunately that's, and that's like probably the biggest moat
to all this people would say, well, if I, if you can do it, then anyone can do it sort of thing.
And that's, that's like in principle, entirely true, but it,
(39:09):
you know, I'm still going through and at the beginning I was spending like three
to four hours When I say like editing and rewriting and, you know, making custom visuals,
infographics, videos, whatever.
So my article process has for each site starts in about that range,
three to four hours per article.
(39:30):
And then I usually can get it down under two.
And in a few case, for a few of the sites, it can get to about an hour,
maybe 45 minutes, like for large swaths of articles.
So it's still, you know, so if you want to crank out, you know,
a hundred articles, that's a hundred hours. Best case.
(39:53):
That's still like a substantial part-time job over the course of like a month.
Yeah. So that's why like.
And that's why I was saying, if somebody could systematize and scale at the
operator level, yeah, that would be the person who could.
But again, it takes so much
(40:16):
money and it basically
gets you back to the same point where now you've gotten to this model where
I can build a site for like 500 bucks that can make me thousands potentially
in recurring revenue before I had to spend 10,000 to 50,000 to do that.
(40:38):
If you start hiring, you know, experienced AI operators, I think you'd be spending even more than that.
So it, it definitely may not be like, like a 10 year business strategy.
But again, once you have like traffic, as some, you know, you know,
I mean, just being in the affiliate space, ads are not the highest like form
(41:03):
of, you know, monetization.
Monetization, you know, some of these right now,
I'm just doing that because that's the easiest and it fits very nicely into
my model because I can't worry about like striking up a partnership deal or
finding that negotiating some crazy affiliate commission.
(41:23):
But eventually, once I come back and I have all these sites and they're sort
of at the more mature level, yeah,
I'll go go back and do that and two of
the sites i've actually built a community around them
so i've added like an actual so one has like a subscription newsletter so like
(41:45):
they're they're kind i'm trying to future proof them a little bit but i think
the main thing is i'm just trying to get to the the traffic before someone else does.
And then hopefully once I actually have people, real people engaging with the content.
You know that the hard part is already
(42:07):
done and the moat's sort of already built once you have
like a community yeah no i i like the fact that you think in long term as well
and i think that's one of the big differences with your approach to maybe some
of the other approaches we see online there's a lot of a lot of people talk
about ai and churn and burn and it doesn't necessarily Necessarily need to be like that.
(42:28):
Does it know and I I I get the temptation like I really do and that's like,
Kind of what that one site I I mentioned I started I guess that might be but
even as I'm doing that I'm always like,
you know for me my shiny object syndrome is finding other ways to monetize the
(42:51):
site Like because that's like a productive Distraction.
So, yeah, I, I never understood really the, I mean, if you do the churn and
burn, like you can do it with AI. There's no question.
But honestly, now that Google's gotten a lot better at AI.
(43:13):
I mean, Google searches horribly sort of in disarray right now,
but the fact that it is much harder for a site to survive sort of like six to 12 months,
I don't think churn and burn is really the right approach.
I mean, it's an approach, but I don't think it's the highest ROI one.
(43:36):
Like I said, the best example is still that site I started last year and just
put in like 1,000 hours of editing.
And that site, like I said, in December did 22K.
Even in January, it's dropped a little bit, which is to be expected, but it's still like 15.
(44:01):
It's on track to like 15 to 18. So that's like a real business.
And at those multiples, you know, You know, you could probably still,
even today, get like, as long as it's not in a downward trend, get 35x maybe.
So, yeah, that's where the opportunity is, I think.
(44:22):
Absolutely. And the fact that that site sailed through updates and all of your
other sites sailed through updates, I think that is a testament to that.
So you obviously are getting something right that a lot of us,
even, you know, creating handwritten content, blood, sweat and tears are not
necessarily doing. But I think I say blood, sweat and tears there a bit nonchalantly
and a bit throwaway, but actually you are putting blood, sweat and tears into this.
(44:44):
And I think that's important that people understand that, that AI is not necessarily just a shortcut.
It's probably just a more optimized way of doing things. But you mentioned the
words grind and hustle a few minutes ago, and I want to switch away from AI
now, and I want to get more into Casey,
the person, and what's led you to this point where you are having really,
(45:07):
really good success at the moment. Yeah.
You also mentioned the word entrepreneur earlier on. Do you see yourself as
having that entrepreneurial mindset?
And if so, do you think you've always had that? Is that something that you've
always had? Or is it something that you read about or saw?
No, I definitely always had it. When I was, I've had like pre-internet,
(45:28):
there were lots of businesses, even in, I almost,
deferred going to college purely to run a vending business that like a vending
machine business that my friend from high school and I started.
And we got like a few major contracts just by like knocking on doors and talking to people.
So I definitely have always been entrepreneurial.
(45:52):
But I think what really attracted me to sort of doing all this online is honestly.
When you're an entrepreneur, you have to focus on risk management.
And online projects offer for like this total asymmetric, you know,
reward where I can make enormous amounts of money potentially off a relatively small investment.
(46:17):
And by minimizing the downside risk, you know, again, it doesn't mean it'll
happen for you or that it won't take many tries.
But if you compare this to something like real estate,
like I have family members who do very well in real estate, But if I wanted to,
you know, even do something kind of flashy and like change the zoning of like
(46:41):
a office building to like mixed use, like residential that we're,
we're talking about like millions of dollars needed to like do,
at least in my area, like a very small project.
And even then you're looking at a pretty low return compared to like,
you know, the, the sites like.
(47:03):
Like I was just talking with a friend who actually has
like a legit like commercial real
estate sort of brokerage he was talking
about somebody making like you know just kind of 10,000 passively like through
this triple net lease and I was like I mean I probably have like 10 of those
(47:25):
incubating and I didn't have to put up 3 million to do it. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, so another question I like to ask people is about personality.
And the question I was going to ask you is, would you class yourself as an introvert or an extrovert?
Because typically extroverts are more open to risk and introverts are more risk
(47:48):
averse. Not always, but quite often.
Where would you see yourself? Because I always struggle with that question.
I really struggle with it. I don't know if you find the same.
I do too, just because I'm definitely more introverted and like,
that's kind of like my default,
I think nature I'm, you know, this doing all this work, you know, if,
(48:09):
if I had like a, a team and all that, it would be great, but I'm very much like
physically alone sitting there doing this and short of like, yeah.
And, and short, that's why I do things like masterminds or building in public and community.
I'm sure that's why you do a lot of the same stuff.
(48:30):
I mean, otherwise, you're just sort of shouting into a void. It's sort of daunting.
So I still need connection, but generally introverted.
But I've never been...
Again, I think of it as risk management. So if the payoff is big enough,
(48:53):
Like, I'll take what maybe somebody else would see as extraordinary risk,
but only at, like I said, the right sort of ratio.
And I'm very much, you know, like, I count on having the best acquisition cost up front.
(49:15):
That way if things don't work out
like basically i know and that's why i like
ai content i i know i'm only spending this
much amount not borrowing money i'm
not even dipping into like substantially like savings or anything i'm able to
and that's why i don't mind putting myself through the ringer sort of for this
(49:37):
too is you know that there probably will come a day when these exact exact strategies won't work.
And, you know, some people would say that's like six months from now.
I'm more in the like, probably, it's been really slow for people to adopt.
So maybe two to three years. But.
(49:58):
It's hard for me to imagine that those skills won't be applicable again in another
digital marketing business.
So, I mean, most of us who have been around a while, like kind of have lived
through at least a few different eras of boom and bust.
And I think that's like true of all entrepreneurs, but especially if you're
(50:22):
an online entrepreneur, every few years, there's like, you know,
a new trend or a new, you know, new shiny object or a new threat.
So part of it is just you have to have that conviction and just sort of push
through and not get distracted by the noise.
Is i think that's interesting actually you talk
(50:44):
about pushing through and conviction because my next
question is going to be around potential setbacks that
you haven't had in the past you know you've been in this game for a reasonable
amount of time have you had any kind of major setbacks most of us have and if
so you're happy to like maybe talk about one and and because essentially what
(51:04):
we're trying to do here is to help people avoid making the same mistakes or
even just to to allow people to see that,
you know, you can make major mistakes and learn from them. And as long as you
do that, it's all, it's all good.
I was going to say like, first of all, yeah, I make a lot of mistakes.
Like I, that's like the business model.
Like I expect most things not to work. So we're, when I talk about like asymmetric upside,
(51:29):
that sort of implies that, you know, I'm focused on like a hedge,
you know, a portfolio of basically a lot of small bets where I know only a few
of them are going to pay out.
But when they do blow up, they'll blow up big enough to recoup the rest of the
fund and then many times more.
(51:50):
So I experience failure all the time and I try to make that clear in my writing
and blogging guide that even when I did that case study site with the site that
I could have never known that site would have done so well,
While that was an aberration, I think, even with all the hard work I put in,
(52:12):
I actually, in that same case study, did another site which had almost the exact opposite outcome.
And nobody really focuses on that. Yeah, cool.
But I still include that in the income update reports because I want people to see.
And there's very divergent outcomes. comes. So I, and you know,
(52:34):
that site's second site's interesting because it was labeled a failure,
like when I first talked about it, but really it just took longer for it to work.
So basically like it was a year behind the other site and now it's starting
to see some decent growth.
So I think that speaks to a lot of this, that like you can't predict like the timeline, but.
(52:59):
You know, if you don't give up on your project, it doesn't necessarily ever
have to become a failure.
I, you know, it's when you call it, like, I'm not saying you should stick to
things that are, you know, horribly, you know, wrong, but like,
if, if you believe in something,
(53:19):
I think you do need to expect that. Yeah.
There's going to be failures to give you a more concrete example.
Example, I tried buying a site that I hadn't built that had been built by somebody
who's actually pretty big in the niche site, Twitter world.
So it came from somebody who you would think would,
(53:42):
you know, maybe the site might withstand some of
these updates or have like a better than average chance like a
pretty a pretty well-known like seo and
this site has been obliterated and
i it's been like that was like the big loss last year was i now luckily i did
(54:04):
some creative financing on that with some seller take back so the i basically
only paid for half up front and the rest was It was almost like an earn out.
So the fact that the site got crushed, I'm basically just not going to get the
rest of that money recouped.
(54:25):
But I'm not out the full amount. Yeah, cool.
So I think that like, you know, that and you could say, like,
does that mean, though, I never would buy a site again?
No, I think that was again, that's a small sample size.
There are sites out there that I would buy.
It's just right now, like the cost of building is so much lower that it it just
(54:50):
doesn't. And the other thing is, I don't, you know, this guy probably,
he didn't say he did, but he probably did some sketchy things like link building.
I mean, not that link building is inherently sketchy. I mean,
but he probably specifically did link building. Stern types of link building, yeah.
Yeah. And like maybe I didn't pick that up in due diligence.
Yeah. But again, that was why I structured the deal financially up front the way I did.
(55:16):
I was like, yeah, this guy's probably trying to screw me.
So I'm not going to give them 100%.
I'm going to say, I have this inflexible, indefinite financing at 0%.
And that way, if the site gets clobbered in six months, I have an out.
(55:36):
And not to mention that site, although it was a total failure and I don't even
like checking its earnings anymore, that site was my gateway sort of to Raptive as an ad network.
So basically, like I've been able to onboard other sites because this site,
because that site at the time was doing so well. Yeah.
(55:59):
And so that was part of the strategy is you got to come into these things expecting the worst.
And, you know, I that that's what happened with that one.
But it doesn't mean I wouldn't try that again. So I, I think,
like I said, you have to find the right deals and be willing to take the risk still. Absolutely.
(56:21):
So on the flip side of that, then, is there an end game for Casey in whereby
you would sell all of your sites?
Or do you set goals like that, like financial or that side of things?
I do say I'm big on goal setting.
I wouldn't say that I have any specific plans to sell all the sites in one,
(56:48):
say off into the sunset or anything.
Thing right now probably not i honestly like
i've become so accustomed to working all the time like i went on like my first
like vacation in like years for like a true no phones allowed with my girlfriend
like a few weeks back and it was like a three-day weekend and i was like.
(57:14):
You know, I was going, yeah, it, it, yeah, it's like, you know,
and it wasn't just like, oh, I needed like social media.
No, like not knowing where my earnings were not like seeing the analytics,
even the things I don't like about the business.
I was like, what am I doing? Like, so I don't, I don't think I could quit cold Turkey.
(57:39):
I think, and that's the beauty of this is that I probably will sell a site or
two this year if I had to guess, even though I don't have any specific plans to.
But just to de-risk probably a little bit, that site that is doing really well
is definitely on the, like, if it can get to 12 months, I mean,
(58:03):
just to end the case study.
Yeah, it'd be nice. Yeah, give it closure. Yeah, it would be nice.
I know just because people are rooting for it to fail, I kind of want to keep
it just to spite everyone, but I'm much more pragmatic than that.
And if I got the right offer, I probably would sell it.
(58:26):
But, but no, I, I don't, for me, there's, there's no, no firm end goal,
but I would like to, I would like to have,
you know, my goal is maybe over the next five years to sort of future proof
myself because I do see a lot of change in like AI more broadly in the workforce.
(58:50):
Force and basically my goal is to never
even consider going back to a real
job and i'm definitely like
doing fine right now but i you know
i i do think ai will disrupt things and again like i might have to live off
you know less you know i may not have the same earning potential in the future
(59:13):
so you got to make hay while the sun is shining right absolutely absolutely Absolutely.
Okay. Coming towards the end of the podcast, I just want to ask you this final question.
One tip for being successful online.
There will be lots of people listening to this that have not had such success
or they're just getting into it.
What would be your one tip to kind of achieve success online? I mean...
(59:39):
I was one of the people who I would, in my mind, have said up until maybe two
years ago, I hadn't achieved any success online.
Part of that's my self-doubt, but part of that is the reality that this was...
I was seeing geometric growth. You know, years, the first eight years,
(01:00:03):
you know, were like losses or like, you know, break even.
So, you know, you basically have to, it's almost impossible to do something
for like, let's say five to 10 years that you really hate.
So I, I think out of necessity, you have to enjoy it as cliche as that sounds.
But I think more than that, you
(01:00:26):
know, it has to be something like you're willing to commit to for like,
you know, even though a site can be built quickly and you can exit and those
are great stories that that shouldn't be the goal or the expectation.
I think this should be like, no, you're going to make this, whatever it is,
(01:00:48):
work at all costs, whether that means iterating and switching to ads,
affiliates, community models.
Subscription products, partnering with a SaaS tool to get equity in that company.
Company that there's so many ways to monetize it that I think as long as you
(01:01:09):
basically are willing to stick with it and you have the financial means to do so.
So part of that is you have to kind of like get yourself to a place where you're
not like, like when I see people or people message me and they're like,
I need like a hundred dollars like this month, like for like like my electricity
bill, like help me with blogging.
(01:01:31):
And I tell people just, no, blogging is the best thing to do that. Yeah.
I was like, you know, you have to have, it's less money than like an institutional
investor needs, or like I said, to do real estate or most brick and mortar businesses. Yeah.
You need some base level of support, but, you know, keep your costs low in your
(01:01:58):
personal life and, you know, to the extent possible.
And, you know, you just might end up, you know, building 10 year overnight success.
Right. So it's what people don't see, isn't it? Yeah.
Casey, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. Where can people find
(01:02:18):
you? Where do you hang out?
Yeah, so I guess bloggingguide.com is probably the easiest way to check out what I'm doing.
I post case studies monthly and just other kind of articles.
I have a Substack newsletter by the same name, Blogging Guide,
(01:02:38):
that you can also subscribe to.
But I give away all the best stuff in the free version anyway.
So there really is no course or paid gimmick.
Like the idea has always been for me about, you know, share the most useful
stuff and people will, you know, if they find it useful, they'll,
you know, they'll buy something on the back end, like to say thanks.
(01:03:02):
And that's like the only people I want buying my stuff are people that already found real value.
So I would say blogging guide is the best place. but on social media,
I'm on Twitter and I'm going to be doing some more YouTubing.
So you can also just search Casey Botticello. So brilliant.
(01:03:23):
Well, we'll put all those links in the show notes so people can find you nice and easily.
It's been a real pleasure for me. I've learned quite a lot from listening to
you talk today, particularly around the AI, but I think just you talking about
your mindset and your background has been fascinating as well.
So thank you so much, Casey, for coming on. Thank you for having me, Jason.
Hi, and welcome to the Online Performance Podcast, the podcast that aims to
help you elevate your online earnings.
My guest today is a blogger, digital marketing consultant, indie creator,
author, designer, course creator,
and he's had some wild success with AI over the last 12 months or so.
He's also very well known for his website, bloggingguide.com.
(00:20):
I'm really pleased today to welcome Casey Botticello. Welcome to the podcast, Casey.
Well, thanks for having me, Jason. I'm a big fan of the show and excited to
hopefully share some useful knowledge with zero listeners.
I'm sure you will. It's a real pleasure to have you here.
And actually, as I was doing that introduction, I almost had to take an extra
breath because there were so many facets to what you do online.
(00:43):
So I'm sure we're going to dig into a lot of that today. Was there anything
that was incorrect in what I said there?
There's probably a few things that were missed out. But yeah,
it's a mixture of things.
Pretty much every way of making money online, I would say I pretty much tried
short of launching like a SaaS product.
(01:04):
Anything that involves being the individual contributor.
Yeah, I've probably done that. so yeah fantastic we're
definitely going to dig into a lot of that today so we start off
each podcast with the same question and that question is what is online success
what does that mean to you so to me online success is being able to well i guess
(01:27):
in business terms at least being able to to create a sustainable, scalable,
lucrative online business that generates income and allows you to replace your
full-time job or significantly supplement part-time job.
For me, there was definitely that desire to break away from the nine to five.
(01:51):
So I'll always sort of benchmark benchmark online success as,
you know, replacing your, you know, your traditional income with something different.
But I, you know, even if it's just supplementing your income and giving you
some flexibility, I would still definitely call that success.
But for me, the goal has always been full-time income.
(02:14):
Yeah. I suppose there are varying levels of success, aren't there?
And I think that's an interesting approach to how you put that there.
And that's certainly a process that I went through from, I used to be in employment
for about 15 years or so before I ventured into the online world.
So could you just give us a bit of a background as to your online journey or how you...
(02:36):
Went from, I mean, I don't know, were you working full-time prior to being online?
I was, and I was on a very traditional career path.
I graduated from Penn and like most of my classmates, anyone who does well pretty
much looks at investment banking or management consulting.
I had done like the internships and I was fully prepared to go down that path.
(03:00):
And I did take a a management consulting job right out of school.
But I ended up back here in Washington, DC at another nine to five job.
This was, I guess, 2015 to 2018 ish.
So I was doing a full time job, but I started basically just writing for fun on the side.
(03:25):
And slowly I started to realize both just through experimentation.
But also through my job, which was in digital PR and lobbying for a pretty big
firm here in DC, that content can be worth a lot.
It depends on who the end user is, but the same person or different people will
(03:46):
pay different prices for content. And that principle applies online too.
So I kind of started as like a ghost writer doing a lot of basically spec work
for different organizations that wanted to promote a message or wanted to advocate for something.
(04:10):
Something and as that started to
take off i had the chance to work
remotely for a brief time prior
to the pandemic and then the
pandemic hit and at that
point i had i decided basically you know i i'd already decided but i i fully
(04:31):
switched to sort of doing my freelance work and while i was doing that in basically
just through the process of building in public and sort of sharing some of the things I had found.
I connected with a lot of bloggers in particular, and I had been blogging for
years, but that wasn't really what I would, you know, call myself.
(04:54):
But now, yeah, most of my time and income is, yeah, spent doing something related to blogging.
Along the way, I've also I've built a number of paid newsletters.
I have a few different e-commerce businesses I've bought and sold,
a lot of Amazon KDP merch, different things like that.
(05:18):
So, but most of the income is from blogging. So.
Okay. I suppose that's where the website that you set up, bloggingguide.com, that came along.
And was that part of the idea of building in public or was this just something
where you thought, well, okay, I've got a little bit of a following now,
let's capitalize on that?
Or was it just something completely separate? How did that kind of come about?
(05:41):
It genuinely was kind of for fun.
And I wanted to experiment more with website development.
So So I was like, you know, probably the best way to learn is to dive in.
And I, you know, like my, the sites I build now are very lean,
(06:01):
stripped down, you know, they're optimized for speed.
Blogging guides kind of clunky. It looks nice, but I mean, technically it,
you know, it's a site I would never build for Google today, but I had a lot
of fun doing all the custom coding and learning how to create,
you know, each little effect.
So I would say that, yeah, it was partially, there was a little self-promotion,
(06:25):
but it was really more honestly just trying to see if I could make a nice website
and hopefully document some of my finding.
And I think we all go through that process, don't we? Where,
you know, the first few projects that we start, you know, you look back at them now.
I sent an email out today to my audience and very much said that projects that
I was working on five years ago, if I look at that content now,
(06:48):
I almost cringe when I look at it and kind of going back and trying to work
on it and prove it. That's a whole separate podcast.
But yeah, I think that's how it should be. And I think, again,
there's a lot to be said for learning in that way.
Just get stuff up and put it out there. And that's how you learn.
And there's no question that a big part of my own personal journey in this was
(07:11):
really learning how to let go of that fear of perfection when publishing.
When I came at this from the perspective of like a highly paid ghostwriter,
of course, everything was about the quality of the content. You know,
my name wasn't attached to it, but somebody bigger than me's name was.
So it was actually more important that the quality be like a plus caliber content.
(07:37):
I think that over time, it took like probably two or three years to break down
that to where I could be like, no, I really just need to just publish.
And, you know, I can always edit, I can always improve content,
but, you know, at the end of the day, you, you, you need to publish and you
(07:59):
need to, you know, stay consistent with that.
So I, for me, that was a big thing.
A big part of my sort of journey getting here. I think that applies to so many
different aspects of content creation as well.
Obviously you're talking about that from a blogging point of view or from a
written word point of view, but the same for YouTube, the same for TikTok,
(08:20):
you know, social media, like, like you say, showing up, being consistent,
getting that 1% better each time it applies to so many different elements.
So you're, you're, you know, you are involved in a lot of different things at the moment.
If you were kind of just coming into this now, or even now, Now, as you are,
where do you see the biggest opportunities for, I don't know,
(08:41):
even if you just think about it from a making money online point of view,
where do you think the biggest opportunities are now?
Because like you said, you talked about, you talked there about e-comm,
you've talked about KDP, blogging, where, where, where is it? Or is it everywhere?
I mean, it is everywhere, but you're right to try to make it a little more granular.
I would first think sort of it depends on the individual, obviously,
(09:05):
but if you're the type of person that wants to build a team and likes that management role,
they like scaling something, but maybe you're not like the creator sort of behind
every piece of content, content,
then there's still probably a lot of opportunity in the traditional sort of
(09:27):
blogging niche space game.
And you know, that could be affiliate marketing, it could be ad driven, that can be lead gen.
But I do think that, yeah, as we've seen over the past six months,
you know, Google updates have kind of shaken a lot of people's faith,
and the long term viability of that model.
(09:51):
I haven't been hit very hard by any of the updates and I have like 25 sites.
So that's impressive. That is seriously impressive.
Well, and there's a degree of luck to that, but, but there is there,
I've, I've learned a lot.
I also do some like just for fun and to learn like some site consultations and
(10:12):
auditing sites and going through stuff and just helping out friends.
One thing I've definitely learned is that the caliber of content,
when people are really honest with themselves and they really dive into it,
a lot of times we were probably benefiting three years ago from basically Google's
(10:37):
inability to sort of suss out some of the keyword stuff.
Overly SEO optimized content.
And I always stayed away from that despite thinking very much in terms of SEO,
but I tried to not structure the content like a traditional hired writer would.
(11:02):
And I think that made a big difference in the sites. So I do think actually
there's a lot of potential still.
I've launched four sites. this year, 2024.
And so I'm not like, personally, I'm not just saying that I actually am practicing what I preach.
(11:25):
I, and I document these on my site, but I had a site in the last,
that was started in 2023 and it grew from zero.
It was fresh domain to over 20,000 a month on Mediavine.
So you know that
(11:46):
wasn't it all in 2023 i mean the
entire process so is blogging
dead is you know is it not gonna
be viable i think it'll deter
a lot of people all this volatility but in
a lot of ways that opens up a lot of opportunities whether you're
looking on the acquisition side a lot
(12:08):
of people are you know multiples were pretty high just
12 months ago now you could
probably get a site for sometimes half of
you know what you could have got it for so yeah absolutely i just wonder then
obviously you've been you've been putting content on bloggingguide.com for a
few years and and giving advice how has that advice changed over that time and
(12:33):
more specifically i I suppose,
over the last six to 12 months.
Would the advice that you've given in the past, do you think that has changed?
Because you've just said that you very much took almost an anti-SEO approach
where you were very much writing for the user, which is what we hear a lot about
now, particularly post helpful content update.
(12:53):
So has your advice changed, do you think?
Or has your approach changed a little bit in some of the work that you do now?
There yeah it it has changed and
i i try to update or keep the
content consistent with where i'm at but
the probably the biggest shift was i was definitely i
was skeptical when ai content came
(13:15):
onto the scene like i said it the whole purpose of it is to replace people like
me so that that's you know that's a pretty daunting thing and and i knew ai
was gonna at least it would take a while before I would get anywhere close to that level.
But I knew that it didn't matter. In the meantime, the sheer volume of content
(13:37):
you could produce could have an outsized impact.
So I was maybe like a year ago, even though I started experimenting with AI immediately.
Like even before like chat GPT came out, I was trying kind of some of the more primitive tools.
(13:57):
But, yeah, like at the time, my advice to readers was Google hasn't really sanctioned that,
you know, they hadn't really made a formals, you know, they changed their actual
like wording of their policy to sort of include AI content and say,
basically, as long as it's helpful content,
(14:17):
it doesn't matter, you know, who or how it's produced.
And that wasn't until february of 2023 i believe so up until that point i was pretty much like,
don't go down the the rabbit hole of you
know all this quick you know anything that's quick you know it's probably a
bad idea it's not a long-term sustainable business model it's just a money grab
(14:41):
but which i generally would not advocate so that's why i was very skeptical
again though Even though I was skeptical,
I was aggressively building sites and testing it.
That's where I ended up finding a lot of success.
The site I mentioned that I've talked about in other places...
(15:05):
Was seeded with content that I personally wrote, but I then scaled it using AI content.
And part of that was actually having AI write portions of the content,
but part of that was content ideation and just automating sort of the overall workflow.
And basically I was able to, I had a team of maybe seven writers sort of at my peak before AI.
(15:34):
And now I'm back down to a full-time team of one, basically me.
So I do have freelancers that help with various tasks.
But I mean, I was able to cut, you know, 10K a month in expenses.
So, you know, AI was coming for a lot of writers jobs.
(15:56):
Again, that really included me. And I was basically like, you know,
I need to be ahead of the curve on this one.
And so far, it's been pretty good. I still, that's why I like having different sites.
I like having a site like blogging guide where I meticulously research and write every post myself.
(16:17):
I wouldn't dare try to put an AI generated article on there.
But there are some topics and some places where AI content can be useful.
And that's why I've also mentioned the other businesses, because AI can be used
in e-commerce and, like I said, other forms of online business. business.
(16:39):
Brilliant. Well, I'm going to quiz you on that in a minute. So we're definitely
going to come back to that.
So with your projects now, you just said you've started four new websites in
2024 and we're recording this on the 9th of January. So that's pretty good going.
Are all those projects now in utilizing AI?
To some extent, yeah. One of them is sort of like just a pure AI test.
(17:01):
So that's a hundred percent AI.
Then there's, I mean, it's literally like Like I'm feeding it like seed keywords
and it's generating one click articles like just at the other extreme to test.
That site's already doing pretty well, though. I mean, the fact that it's already
even it was January 1st, it was started and it's already gotten its first click.
(17:26):
So I'm I'm a little I'm excited about that one. But then two of the sites are
about what I would call like 50% AI generated.
These are sort of ones that I go in after the AI does like a first attempt at
a first draft, and I'll manually edit, create images,
(17:47):
add media, stuff like that. And that's sort of the sweet spot.
And that's really more what the site I was referring to before that I saw a lot of success with was.
And then there's one where, again, this is more of just an experiment, but it's like.
A mixture where some posts are AI, some are entirely written by me.
(18:11):
And the purpose behind that is not just to A-B test whether AI content works.
The purpose is to see if, you know, that AI is better at writing some types of content.
So if you have like listicle content, if you're,
you know increasingly sort of you
(18:33):
know summarizing information like ai
can be perfect and that could be from a creative use like not just generating
written content from thin air but sort of like transcribing like a podcast and
including like excerpts from that so that's sort of kind of the the approach.
(18:56):
Yeah. I think that's interesting as well, because you are thinking of those
more creative ways to use it.
You're not literally just, I mean, obviously you are at the one end of the extreme,
you are just hitting a button, giving it a keyword and then publishing.
And obviously that's an experiment and a test, but then at the other end of
the extreme, you are using AI in a much more creative ways.
And I think that is, I think that's probably why you've had the success that
(19:18):
you've had because you have tested, you have experimented, you've,
you've You've used it from a very early point in time as well.
So I think that's really interesting. So if someone was coming into the space,
if we think about it from a blogging
point of view again, or just from a content website point of view.
So if someone's new to the space, can they leverage AI?
(19:38):
Is it something that someone brand new to the space can do?
And if so, can it be done on a small budget, so to speak?
Yes. The answer to both is yes, I think. You definitely anyone who I would say
would have the requisite skills to sort of compete in the content site space,
(20:00):
meaning they could build a site, maintain it themselves, just a simple WordPress site.
But, you know, has some basic understanding of that, has at least a little bit
of experience writing or is willing to learn, has kind of the basic SEO fundamentals and knows,
you know, generally what content should look like.
(20:22):
Yeah, I think that pretty much anybody can use AI either to produce content
directly or to just augment that process. As far as like, is that expensive?
I'm in a couple different masterminds where we like kind of AIs become the focus.
And in one of them, there are like, and I don't think people realize this about AI,
(20:46):
like the people that are really doing AI are doing like things like they are
spending exorbitant amounts of money.
They have like 30 person data scientists like teams that are like going through and doing like.
Their own, like custom, everything like they are, you know, it's,
(21:09):
it's at a whole nother level.
So there is that extreme, but I'm not at that extreme.
What I do is actually extremely high ROI.
And I think most people could probably do something pretty close to that.
I mean, I literally started with chat GPT.
So I mean, you know, I don't even use the premium version.
(21:31):
So like, Like, yes, there are some barriers to entry.
You still need to understand, like I said, all the things that would have made
what makes a website great. Basically, that doesn't change.
But it's pretty easy, especially if you've maybe been doing this just for a little while even.
(21:51):
And you've delegated work to writers. Maybe you've even written some of the
content yourself. yourself, you can pretty easily figure out,
you know, where there are areas, you know, that you can save on time or money.
And at the end of the day, I think you have to view all this for what it is
like, I'm viewing it as a business.
(22:13):
I have a few sites that are kind of more like passion projects,
but I very much separate those and I treat those differently.
Like I said, blogging I does earn money, but it really is more of a passion
project. It's where I have fun.
It's probably like affiliate school. You know, it's almost a personal brand slash.
(22:35):
Yeah, just sort of repository for all my experiments. So I'm a big advocate
of having a site like that.
And I really do think everybody should probably have like a,
either a personal branded site or like a sort of small solo entrepreneur site.
But besides that, I would advocate, you know, definitely using AI to scale everything you can.
(23:02):
I mean, there's so many uses.
It's hard for me to imagine somebody couldn't find a use for AI to improve their workflow.
Brilliant. Well, we're going to test you on that in a second.
So we are going to come back to that.
So just on a side note then, a particular piece of software you're using,
I've heard you talk about Koala Writer in the past. Is that still your kind of go-to?
(23:24):
It is. Definitely for the content that's one-click and stuff like that.
Koala. I think it's.
Among the people I've talked to who don't have fully custom built systems, Koala is the best.
You know, I also had the just sort of the privilege of I was on a private forum
(23:50):
with the founder and I watched the idea come to him and like literally saw him build it in real time.
And prior to that, he was just like a niche site builder like me.
And when I seeing him build that, especially at the exact same moment where I was like, man,
if only there was somebody who could like quickly crank out a product that could
(24:15):
like, you know, automate 70% of this, I could, you know, go wild.
And like, I just didn't have the technical skill set to build that type of tool, but he did Connor.
And, you know, I think he, you know, it's, I'm not saying it'll forever be the
number one AI product, but it works really well.
(24:36):
I mean, and it honestly replaces so many other functions, whether it's the,
now it has the AI site mapping, so it can do all the internal linking based.
I mean, just that's what I mean.
So like just the amount of time I save, like not having to like worry about
internal links like or external links or, you know, you know,
(25:00):
you can even include your affiliate links to be strategically placed throughout.
Out i mean the time savings on that even if it's just rewriting an existing
article are huge so yeah koala is my probably just the easiest because i honestly use it so i i.
That's why I recommend it. Honestly, I do use chat GPT still just because when
(25:25):
I'm doing more tests and creative stuff, I just kind of like to see what it comes up with.
And honestly, the more creative you are in prompting it,
you can get sort of wildly different
outcomes and information so that's
good i i have tested a few of the other tools i
(25:47):
think most of them are probably within like 20 to 30 percent range of like the
quality of koala so i i'm not i think you could get by with a lot of the tools
but i built a lot of that site last year using both both free chat, GPT and Koala.
(26:07):
And that's not very expensive. We're talking, you know, 30 cents to 50 cents an article.
So I used to pay writers and I, and since I was a writer and had a good relationship
with lots of writers, I paid my writers well.
So a lot of, so I mean, and I know you're very, you know, focused on that with
(26:30):
the education sort of background,
like, you know, You understand sort of the value of having these basically subject
matter experts who actually know what they're teaching.
So I've tried to find other ways for those people.
Team members to stay involved. Some of them have just kind of left freelance writing altogether.
(26:52):
But a few of them, I'm doing a couple experimental projects where I'm trying
to scale the actual AI content production.
That's the real bottleneck. And that like, honestly, if you can solve that challenge,
like that'll be like the first like niche site,
you know, billionaire, like whoever does that so
(27:15):
i want to dig into that in a little in a bit more
detail in a minute and we're definitely going to come back to that so
we want to test you on these these different
scenarios then for ai and they might
they may well you may well just come back and say that the answer
is the same for all of them but i've got three scenarios or three
types of business that potentially could utilize ai
(27:36):
and i just want you to give me an idea as to how you might implement
it and you probably probably got experience in some of these so the first one
is e-commerce so if there's someone that's running an e-commerce store
let's listen to this podcast they're thinking about trying
to bring ai into their business what would
your advice be so ai is pretty good once you have a little experience with it
(27:58):
at writing accurate punchy copy so i would like yes sometimes you you can see
these hilarious, nonsensical answers.
But for the most part, if you're giving it the right information,
and like I said, you take a little bit of time to sort of train it on.
(28:18):
What you're, it's supposed to be producing, you can definitely do like product descriptions,
entire, you know, product categories, you know, all these pages that,
especially if you're an e-com person, you probably don't have a team of writers.
It's a little different when you're in the, you just produce written material
(28:40):
because writers are always an option.
But if you're an an e-commerce entrepreneur, you probably are leaving money
on the table by not creating more product pages, more detailed product descriptions
by not, you know, I mean, the uses are kind of endless.
So actually e-commerce is probably, it's not the way I'm using it the most,
(29:01):
but I think there's a lot of potential there.
Like, yeah, for sure. I agree. I think there's so much potential with e-commerce for it.
So then look at it from a completely different point of view.
What about at a local business a local business but they've got an online site
you know they've got a website,
how would you advise them to utilize it or would
you i definitely part of it's
(29:22):
the same where if you're a local business since you
typically don't have access to writers or time to write yourself or you're you
know not a writer i think there's a lot of use i i was working with a a dentist
who kind of had used chat gpt on her own to generate an immense just sort of.
(29:44):
Basically blog level of like content and she was generating all these new local leads,
through that so it almost like she was doing her own rank and rent sort of thing
but for her and i thought that was really clever and of course she can attach
her credentials to it So that if you are the subject matter expert,
(30:07):
you know, you have that advantage.
So let AI do some of that grunt work.
And, you know, whether it's a construction business, letting it sort of.
Do like articles on different materials on
different finishes you know even letting
(30:27):
it you know just it can definitely lighten
the load i would definitely create it kind of like the
e-commerce store everything from like the meta description to
the body content i mean you can even run
your different titles through it just to kind of
find different ideas and that's the
the stuff that holds up a lot of local business owners because they're
(30:50):
not writers and they're not used to publishing you
know content other than like their
main sales page maybe yeah absolutely i
suppose if you're a digital marketing company as well that's working with clients
like that like in the e-commerce space the local business space there's so many
ways in which you should be utilizing ai to you know improve your offer or service
(31:10):
level to those types of clients I would think that's actually probably the person
who could benefit the most from all of this is because,
of course, someone who's doing an agency like that.
They're always balancing quantity and quality.
Quality so if if you
know you don't have to outsource certain tasks if you
(31:32):
can you know just get your first
draft like 50 better like
that's a big deal like when you start scaling that so absolutely and as you
already pointed out the the costs are so much lower as well so you're saving
from that point of view so then the third scenario that i wanted to give you
was someone that's involved in video so potentially a youtuber or someone that's
(31:56):
producing tick-tock type content.
How would you use AI in that? And I don't know if you've used it in that way
yourself or if you've got any ideas on it.
I've used it and this is basically, so this is the way I would recommend is
you can take either your content, if you have video content,
or you can take other video content,
(32:17):
for the purpose of like, like I said, you're looking for quotes or excerpts
or something that's not already published in text format online. line.
And you can, I mean, that's part of why I use Koala is they have a whole option
where you just enter the YouTube URL.
And doesn't just you know, it doesn't transcribe the interview,
(32:40):
it actually synthesizes, and you can choose a different like voices,
you know, a pretty good article based on that.
And it'll draw inferences, make links to other other videos, stuff like that.
So especially if you have like a back catalog of like video content.
(33:02):
I mean, having someone else write that content to publish on your site is probably worthwhile.
But I mean, this is just so much lower cost.
I mean, you already produce the content, you know, like if we were doing it for this episode,
you know, it would make sense for you to like, you know,
do like the takeaways and it could pull out
(33:25):
these three responses you know that i'm
giving to your question and it could expand upon
them so and i think that that tip right there
should be one of the top ones because i think that's an absolute massive knowledge bomb
that you've just dropped there i think that's a real good one it is there there's
people who are like i'm really surprised how slow people are at adopting some
(33:46):
of this i thought these opportunities would be gone by now And so I sort of
tabled that because I don't personally have a lot of video content.
So it's like, I don't I didn't know what the use case was.
But I mean, there's people, you know, and as you know, producing video content,
I mean, it's incredibly difficult.
And the time it takes is immense. Like, why wouldn't you also want to build
(34:11):
like a parallel site that you could like, funnel all that traffic to?
I mean, that's exactly what AI should be doing for you, basically.
Now, I think you've certainly got my mind ticking there and probably a few others
that are listening and watching this.
Okay, so let's go back. I want to dig back into your kind of AI processes then.
(34:32):
So what does your day-to-day look like right now?
Are you the person pressing the buttons and editing the content and that sort of thing?
You said you've not necessarily got the support in terms of writers that you used to have.
So are you taking on a lot of that or have you got processes in place?
(34:52):
I'm in the middle of, I was trying to sort of outsource, you know,
that's the tendency of anyone who's
done anything online long enough is to systematize and then outsource.
The problem is there really aren't that many people just because it hasn't been
around that long, that many like AI writing experts.
(35:14):
Like I'm, you know, if, if you are knowledgeable about AI writing,
it's almost like, you know, it'd be like finding a really good ditch site operator.
Why would they work for you sort of thing? They're out there and they're making
a lot of money. I can never afford that person.
Honestly, I haven't even found that person. So that's like a big bottleneck.
(35:39):
So I kind of backed away from the system. I did document the processes,
but right now I'm really kind of in the trenches And I know it's not what people like to hear.
It's not the like, I'm on a beach sipping pina coladas sort of thing.
But I am very much like seven days a week, 16 hours a day, other than the few
(36:07):
podcasts and other things I check out online.
Mine, like I'm been, this last year has been nonstop for me.
And I'm very much basically the person who's, which I enjoy doing sort of the high level.
Okay. I've identified a niche. Here's the potential.
(36:28):
Usually it's something I like, but sometimes it's just some in the past,
some set of keywords that I've discovered and knew there was untapped potential.
And I marked that for for later.
But it was like, you know, I never would get to that. Because in the previous
world, that would cost too much for me to do like a, you know,
(36:50):
I can't have like, a team of writers working on 30 sites for me.
But now I can, you know, kind of do that.
So I'm both going after things I left on the table before, but also finding new things.
And yeah, that after that, though, I am literally like.
I use a few freelancers to help systematize, scrape, and organize all the keyword
(37:17):
content that I'm going after,
but I'm very much like nobody is performing more than one task.
I don't even think most people who are working now doing my freelance work would
even know what the end product is.
Is i think they just think it's somebody doing keyword
(37:38):
research or whatever even then
i do most of the keyword research myself it's really
just using them in the same way i use ai like just because i i know that at
scale i can do it cheaply so yeah i suppose the key thing is as long as you
can still be strategic and and be able to take that step back and and and plan
(38:01):
new projects and and all of that side of thing,
which you can because you know what it's like when you're writing content yourself
from scratch, that is very, very taxing.
It's very time consuming. It takes a lot of mental energy.
Whereas I suppose utilizing AI in that content creation process.
It alleviates a lot of that, I guess.
(38:24):
It does. And the way I would compare it
or sort of explain it is really it's it's
almost like having like bionic arms or
something where it it's not that like i'm fully like a robot and things or i
have a robot doing work for me it's really more like the you know the same hustle
(38:47):
sort of grind that i applied before four can now be scaled 30 X probably.
So, you know, unfortunately that's, and that's like probably the biggest moat
to all this people would say, well, if I, if you can do it, then anyone can do it sort of thing.
And that's, that's like in principle, entirely true, but it,
(39:09):
you know, I'm still going through and at the beginning I was spending like three
to four hours When I say like editing and rewriting and, you know, making custom visuals,
infographics, videos, whatever.
So my article process has for each site starts in about that range,
three to four hours per article.
(39:30):
And then I usually can get it down under two.
And in a few case, for a few of the sites, it can get to about an hour,
maybe 45 minutes, like for large swaths of articles.
So it's still, you know, so if you want to crank out, you know,
a hundred articles, that's a hundred hours. Best case.
(39:53):
That's still like a substantial part-time job over the course of like a month.
Yeah. So that's why like.
And that's why I was saying, if somebody could systematize and scale at the
operator level, yeah, that would be the person who could.
But again, it takes so much
(40:16):
money and it basically
gets you back to the same point where now you've gotten to this model where
I can build a site for like 500 bucks that can make me thousands potentially
in recurring revenue before I had to spend 10,000 to 50,000 to do that.
(40:38):
If you start hiring, you know, experienced AI operators, I think you'd be spending even more than that.
So it, it definitely may not be like, like a 10 year business strategy.
But again, once you have like traffic, as some, you know, you know,
I mean, just being in the affiliate space, ads are not the highest like form
(41:03):
of, you know, monetization.
Monetization, you know, some of these right now,
I'm just doing that because that's the easiest and it fits very nicely into
my model because I can't worry about like striking up a partnership deal or
finding that negotiating some crazy affiliate commission.
(41:23):
But eventually, once I come back and I have all these sites and they're sort
of at the more mature level, yeah,
I'll go go back and do that and two of
the sites i've actually built a community around them
so i've added like an actual so one has like a subscription newsletter so like
(41:45):
they're they're kind i'm trying to future proof them a little bit but i think
the main thing is i'm just trying to get to the the traffic before someone else does.
And then hopefully once I actually have people, real people engaging with the content.
You know that the hard part is already
(42:07):
done and the moat's sort of already built once you have
like a community yeah no i i like the fact that you think in long term as well
and i think that's one of the big differences with your approach to maybe some
of the other approaches we see online there's a lot of a lot of people talk
about ai and churn and burn and it doesn't necessarily Necessarily need to be like that.
(42:28):
Does it know and I I I get the temptation like I really do and that's like,
Kind of what that one site I I mentioned I started I guess that might be but
even as I'm doing that I'm always like,
you know for me my shiny object syndrome is finding other ways to monetize the
(42:51):
site Like because that's like a productive Distraction.
So, yeah, I, I never understood really the, I mean, if you do the churn and
burn, like you can do it with AI. There's no question.
But honestly, now that Google's gotten a lot better at AI.
(43:13):
I mean, Google searches horribly sort of in disarray right now,
but the fact that it is much harder for a site to survive sort of like six to 12 months,
I don't think churn and burn is really the right approach.
I mean, it's an approach, but I don't think it's the highest ROI one.
(43:36):
Like I said, the best example is still that site I started last year and just
put in like 1,000 hours of editing.
And that site, like I said, in December did 22K.
Even in January, it's dropped a little bit, which is to be expected, but it's still like 15.
(44:01):
It's on track to like 15 to 18. So that's like a real business.
And at those multiples, you know, You know, you could probably still,
even today, get like, as long as it's not in a downward trend, get 35x maybe.
So, yeah, that's where the opportunity is, I think.
(44:22):
Absolutely. And the fact that that site sailed through updates and all of your
other sites sailed through updates, I think that is a testament to that.
So you obviously are getting something right that a lot of us,
even, you know, creating handwritten content, blood, sweat and tears are not
necessarily doing. But I think I say blood, sweat and tears there a bit nonchalantly
and a bit throwaway, but actually you are putting blood, sweat and tears into this.
(44:44):
And I think that's important that people understand that, that AI is not necessarily just a shortcut.
It's probably just a more optimized way of doing things. But you mentioned the
words grind and hustle a few minutes ago, and I want to switch away from AI
now, and I want to get more into Casey,
the person, and what's led you to this point where you are having really,
(45:07):
really good success at the moment. Yeah.
You also mentioned the word entrepreneur earlier on. Do you see yourself as
having that entrepreneurial mindset?
And if so, do you think you've always had that? Is that something that you've
always had? Or is it something that you read about or saw?
No, I definitely always had it. When I was, I've had like pre-internet,
(45:28):
there were lots of businesses, even in, I almost,
deferred going to college purely to run a vending business that like a vending
machine business that my friend from high school and I started.
And we got like a few major contracts just by like knocking on doors and talking to people.
So I definitely have always been entrepreneurial.
(45:52):
But I think what really attracted me to sort of doing all this online is honestly.
When you're an entrepreneur, you have to focus on risk management.
And online projects offer for like this total asymmetric, you know,
reward where I can make enormous amounts of money potentially off a relatively small investment.
(46:17):
And by minimizing the downside risk, you know, again, it doesn't mean it'll
happen for you or that it won't take many tries.
But if you compare this to something like real estate,
like I have family members who do very well in real estate, But if I wanted to,
you know, even do something kind of flashy and like change the zoning of like
(46:41):
a office building to like mixed use, like residential that we're,
we're talking about like millions of dollars needed to like do,
at least in my area, like a very small project.
And even then you're looking at a pretty low return compared to like,
you know, the, the sites like.
(47:03):
Like I was just talking with a friend who actually has
like a legit like commercial real
estate sort of brokerage he was talking
about somebody making like you know just kind of 10,000 passively like through
this triple net lease and I was like I mean I probably have like 10 of those
(47:25):
incubating and I didn't have to put up 3 million to do it. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, so another question I like to ask people is about personality.
And the question I was going to ask you is, would you class yourself as an introvert or an extrovert?
Because typically extroverts are more open to risk and introverts are more risk
(47:48):
averse. Not always, but quite often.
Where would you see yourself? Because I always struggle with that question.
I really struggle with it. I don't know if you find the same.
I do too, just because I'm definitely more introverted and like,
that's kind of like my default,
I think nature I'm, you know, this doing all this work, you know, if,
(48:09):
if I had like a, a team and all that, it would be great, but I'm very much like
physically alone sitting there doing this and short of like, yeah.
And, and short, that's why I do things like masterminds or building in public and community.
I'm sure that's why you do a lot of the same stuff.
(48:30):
I mean, otherwise, you're just sort of shouting into a void. It's sort of daunting.
So I still need connection, but generally introverted.
But I've never been...
Again, I think of it as risk management. So if the payoff is big enough,
(48:53):
Like, I'll take what maybe somebody else would see as extraordinary risk,
but only at, like I said, the right sort of ratio.
And I'm very much, you know, like, I count on having the best acquisition cost up front.
(49:15):
That way if things don't work out
like basically i know and that's why i like
ai content i i know i'm only spending this
much amount not borrowing money i'm
not even dipping into like substantially like savings or anything i'm able to
and that's why i don't mind putting myself through the ringer sort of for this
(49:37):
too is you know that there probably will come a day when these exact exact strategies won't work.
And, you know, some people would say that's like six months from now.
I'm more in the like, probably, it's been really slow for people to adopt.
So maybe two to three years. But.
(49:58):
It's hard for me to imagine that those skills won't be applicable again in another
digital marketing business.
So, I mean, most of us who have been around a while, like kind of have lived
through at least a few different eras of boom and bust.
And I think that's like true of all entrepreneurs, but especially if you're
(50:22):
an online entrepreneur, every few years, there's like, you know,
a new trend or a new, you know, new shiny object or a new threat.
So part of it is just you have to have that conviction and just sort of push
through and not get distracted by the noise.
Is i think that's interesting actually you talk
(50:44):
about pushing through and conviction because my next
question is going to be around potential setbacks that
you haven't had in the past you know you've been in this game for a reasonable
amount of time have you had any kind of major setbacks most of us have and if
so you're happy to like maybe talk about one and and because essentially what
(51:04):
we're trying to do here is to help people avoid making the same mistakes or
even just to to allow people to see that,
you know, you can make major mistakes and learn from them. And as long as you
do that, it's all, it's all good.
I was going to say like, first of all, yeah, I make a lot of mistakes.
Like I, that's like the business model.
Like I expect most things not to work. So we're, when I talk about like asymmetric upside,
(51:29):
that sort of implies that, you know, I'm focused on like a hedge,
you know, a portfolio of basically a lot of small bets where I know only a few
of them are going to pay out.
But when they do blow up, they'll blow up big enough to recoup the rest of the
fund and then many times more.
(51:50):
So I experience failure all the time and I try to make that clear in my writing
and blogging guide that even when I did that case study site with the site that
I could have never known that site would have done so well,
While that was an aberration, I think, even with all the hard work I put in,
(52:12):
I actually, in that same case study, did another site which had almost the exact opposite outcome.
And nobody really focuses on that. Yeah, cool.
But I still include that in the income update reports because I want people to see.
And there's very divergent outcomes. comes. So I, and you know,
(52:34):
that site's second site's interesting because it was labeled a failure,
like when I first talked about it, but really it just took longer for it to work.
So basically like it was a year behind the other site and now it's starting
to see some decent growth.
So I think that speaks to a lot of this, that like you can't predict like the timeline, but.
(52:59):
You know, if you don't give up on your project, it doesn't necessarily ever
have to become a failure.
I, you know, it's when you call it, like, I'm not saying you should stick to
things that are, you know, horribly, you know, wrong, but like,
if, if you believe in something,
(53:19):
I think you do need to expect that. Yeah.
There's going to be failures to give you a more concrete example.
Example, I tried buying a site that I hadn't built that had been built by somebody
who's actually pretty big in the niche site, Twitter world.
So it came from somebody who you would think would,
(53:42):
you know, maybe the site might withstand some of
these updates or have like a better than average chance like a
pretty a pretty well-known like seo and
this site has been obliterated and
i it's been like that was like the big loss last year was i now luckily i did
(54:04):
some creative financing on that with some seller take back so the i basically
only paid for half up front and the rest was It was almost like an earn out.
So the fact that the site got crushed, I'm basically just not going to get the
rest of that money recouped.
(54:25):
But I'm not out the full amount. Yeah, cool.
So I think that like, you know, that and you could say, like,
does that mean, though, I never would buy a site again?
No, I think that was again, that's a small sample size.
There are sites out there that I would buy.
It's just right now, like the cost of building is so much lower that it it just
(54:50):
doesn't. And the other thing is, I don't, you know, this guy probably,
he didn't say he did, but he probably did some sketchy things like link building.
I mean, not that link building is inherently sketchy. I mean,
but he probably specifically did link building. Stern types of link building, yeah.
Yeah. And like maybe I didn't pick that up in due diligence.
Yeah. But again, that was why I structured the deal financially up front the way I did.
(55:16):
I was like, yeah, this guy's probably trying to screw me.
So I'm not going to give them 100%.
I'm going to say, I have this inflexible, indefinite financing at 0%.
And that way, if the site gets clobbered in six months, I have an out.
(55:36):
And not to mention that site, although it was a total failure and I don't even
like checking its earnings anymore, that site was my gateway sort of to Raptive as an ad network.
So basically, like I've been able to onboard other sites because this site,
because that site at the time was doing so well. Yeah.
(55:59):
And so that was part of the strategy is you got to come into these things expecting the worst.
And, you know, I that that's what happened with that one.
But it doesn't mean I wouldn't try that again. So I, I think,
like I said, you have to find the right deals and be willing to take the risk still. Absolutely.
(56:21):
So on the flip side of that, then, is there an end game for Casey in whereby
you would sell all of your sites?
Or do you set goals like that, like financial or that side of things?
I do say I'm big on goal setting.
I wouldn't say that I have any specific plans to sell all the sites in one,
(56:48):
say off into the sunset or anything.
Thing right now probably not i honestly like
i've become so accustomed to working all the time like i went on like my first
like vacation in like years for like a true no phones allowed with my girlfriend
like a few weeks back and it was like a three-day weekend and i was like.
(57:14):
You know, I was going, yeah, it, it, yeah, it's like, you know,
and it wasn't just like, oh, I needed like social media.
No, like not knowing where my earnings were not like seeing the analytics,
even the things I don't like about the business.
I was like, what am I doing? Like, so I don't, I don't think I could quit cold Turkey.
(57:39):
I think, and that's the beauty of this is that I probably will sell a site or
two this year if I had to guess, even though I don't have any specific plans to.
But just to de-risk probably a little bit, that site that is doing really well
is definitely on the, like, if it can get to 12 months, I mean,
(58:03):
just to end the case study.
Yeah, it'd be nice. Yeah, give it closure. Yeah, it would be nice.
I know just because people are rooting for it to fail, I kind of want to keep
it just to spite everyone, but I'm much more pragmatic than that.
And if I got the right offer, I probably would sell it.
(58:26):
But, but no, I, I don't, for me, there's, there's no, no firm end goal,
but I would like to, I would like to have,
you know, my goal is maybe over the next five years to sort of future proof
myself because I do see a lot of change in like AI more broadly in the workforce.
(58:50):
Force and basically my goal is to never
even consider going back to a real
job and i'm definitely like
doing fine right now but i you know
i i do think ai will disrupt things and again like i might have to live off
you know less you know i may not have the same earning potential in the future
(59:13):
so you got to make hay while the sun is shining right absolutely absolutely Absolutely.
Okay. Coming towards the end of the podcast, I just want to ask you this final question.
One tip for being successful online.
There will be lots of people listening to this that have not had such success
or they're just getting into it.
What would be your one tip to kind of achieve success online? I mean...
(59:39):
I was one of the people who I would, in my mind, have said up until maybe two
years ago, I hadn't achieved any success online.
Part of that's my self-doubt, but part of that is the reality that this was...
I was seeing geometric growth. You know, years, the first eight years,
(01:00:03):
you know, were like losses or like, you know, break even.
So, you know, you basically have to, it's almost impossible to do something
for like, let's say five to 10 years that you really hate.
So I, I think out of necessity, you have to enjoy it as cliche as that sounds.
But I think more than that, you
(01:00:26):
know, it has to be something like you're willing to commit to for like,
you know, even though a site can be built quickly and you can exit and those
are great stories that that shouldn't be the goal or the expectation.
I think this should be like, no, you're going to make this, whatever it is,
(01:00:48):
work at all costs, whether that means iterating and switching to ads,
affiliates, community models.
Subscription products, partnering with a SaaS tool to get equity in that company.
Company that there's so many ways to monetize it that I think as long as you
(01:01:09):
basically are willing to stick with it and you have the financial means to do so.
So part of that is you have to kind of like get yourself to a place where you're
not like, like when I see people or people message me and they're like,
I need like a hundred dollars like this month, like for like like my electricity
bill, like help me with blogging.
(01:01:31):
And I tell people just, no, blogging is the best thing to do that. Yeah.
I was like, you know, you have to have, it's less money than like an institutional
investor needs, or like I said, to do real estate or most brick and mortar businesses. Yeah.
You need some base level of support, but, you know, keep your costs low in your
(01:01:58):
personal life and, you know, to the extent possible.
And, you know, you just might end up, you know, building 10 year overnight success.
Right. So it's what people don't see, isn't it? Yeah.
Casey, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. Where can people find
(01:02:18):
you? Where do you hang out?
Yeah, so I guess bloggingguide.com is probably the easiest way to check out what I'm doing.
I post case studies monthly and just other kind of articles.
I have a Substack newsletter by the same name, Blogging Guide,
(01:02:38):
that you can also subscribe to.
But I give away all the best stuff in the free version anyway.
So there really is no course or paid gimmick.
Like the idea has always been for me about, you know, share the most useful
stuff and people will, you know, if they find it useful, they'll,
you know, they'll buy something on the back end, like to say thanks.
(01:03:02):
And that's like the only people I want buying my stuff are people that already found real value.
So I would say blogging guide is the best place. but on social media,
I'm on Twitter and I'm going to be doing some more YouTubing.
So you can also just search Casey Botticello. So brilliant.
(01:03:23):
Well, we'll put all those links in the show notes so people can find you nice and easily.
It's been a real pleasure for me. I've learned quite a lot from listening to
you talk today, particularly around the AI, but I think just you talking about
your mindset and your background has been fascinating as well.
So thank you so much, Casey, for coming on. Thank you for having me, Jason.
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