6 ms·

Making $5k/mo from my blog “dogfooding” my own SEO content software

6 points by mattscyoc 5y ago

new_guy 5y ago
Congratulations to the author for this achievement. > Over the last 3 months I've consistently published 4-5 articles a day, of 500-3,000 words each using software I've developed myself. It's allowed me to learn, create, and publish 100x faster, with 10x better quality, without ANY writing (outside of deleting and organizing), and without ANY knowledge of the topics or SEO target keywords. WTF? I know, I know. Too good to be true, right? But that said this is exactly the kind of blog spam that would be instantly axed from a new search engine.
- wereHamster 5y ago
  How is that not spam?
  - mattscyoc 5y ago
    I think it depends on your own definition. I think spam is highly subjective, no?
    - PedroBatista 5y ago
      No, it isn’t. I really don’t have a major problem with this, after all you’re just another in a million. But I have a problem with you trying to sell yourself as a good guy all full of virtues.
      - mattscyoc 5y ago
        I think it's possible to separate virtues from this. It's a research tool, ultimately. All the sources/sites are cited and links given. That is encouraged, of course. The user is ultimately in control of the tool to change, add to, curate, etc. the research. This just makes that process a lot faster.
    - tsherr 5y ago
      I'd suggest that any article written "without any knowledge of the topic" is of zero value. I'd define spam as zero value posts/messages. Ergo, it's spam. Not sure how you can argue it isn't. Not attacking you, I'm just interested in your defence of this sort of thing
      - tata71 5y ago
        Same, for the record.
      - mattscyoc 5y ago
        "without any knowledge on the topic" refers to the time BEFORE the user uses the tool. During and after the tool the user will certainly have knowledge after reading and curating the questions and answers, right? Just like, before you read about a topic you "have no knowledge" but after, you might say that you have some now.
        city41 5y ago
        The issue is you have no knowledge of the subject. You said so yourself: > without ANY writing (outside of deleting and organizing), and without ANY knowledge of the topics or SEO target keywords So your content can't be trusted. It's being curated by someone who has no idea of its accuracy.
        tsherr 5y ago
        So when you say "without any knowledge" you meant, you picked a topic you didn't understand, researched it thoroughly, then made the post? So you didn't weeks/months becoming an expert before making the post? Then it's not spam.
    - glup 5y ago
      “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
- pjc50 5y ago
  Yeah, this is "extractive AI": take original articles written by humans and churn them into machine-spam. It's inauthentic, but that doesn't matter, only the ad impressions do.
  - mattscyoc 5y ago
    Do you think there is a world where a human does a search and machines extract answers and teach us about a topic, taking answers from across the web?
    - xnx 5y ago
      This has always been Google's goal, and it is delivering parts of it already in their search results.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      How does the machine know what it's telling us is correct? This is an extremely complicated philosophical question, and it's not limited to machine-generated text; there's already plenty of human-written blogspam. In order for text to be valuable it has to be trustworthy. That is, we have to be reasonably convinced that the author has made some effort to be accurate, to correspond with some mental model of the world which itself corresponds reasonably well with objective reality. Otherwise it's just an elaborate generative fiction tool writing fanfiction about tyres to sell tyres.
- mattscyoc 5y ago
  Hey, I'm the author of this post on Indie Hackers. I added some data and evidence at the bottom of that post. The content and site is performing really well. I'm curious, why do you think this is spam?
  - jacques-noris 5y ago
    Your software just copies what others have written. This is q tool to create blog spam, this makes the web worse and punishes people who create original content, that you just copy
    - mattscyoc 5y ago
      Do you think GPT3 is spam? Where does it get its information? Are Google quick answers spam? While all A.I. be considered spam? Interesting questions. The way that I see the value is that it assists the user with research by pulling together answers across thousands of sources, doing work that a single person would struggle with. Then the user can change, add on top, or modify the research however they want, saving a lot of time in the process.
  - mym1990 5y ago
    Could you expand on the content performing well? If it is useful and informative and accurate, I wouldn’t consider it spam. Someone who gets targeted ads for a brand in their email and finds those ads useful for sales probably doesn’t consider the email spam. Similar line of logic here for me.
    - mattscyoc 5y ago
      Absolutely. The link contains research, screenshots, etc. to show how the final content looks, how it is performing, etc. Feel free to take a look. If you create a webpage that has 10s or 100s of different answers to questions for a topic, and it saves everyone time researching; then I would consider that useful and not spam. Just my opinion of course. And I'm not saying this is a substitute for creative content, and I don't think it is an either or. Informative content vs creative content is just different in my opinion.

6 points by mattscyoc 5y ago

Congratulations to the author for this achievement. > Over the last 3 months I've consistently published 4-5 articles a day, of 500-3,000 words each using software I've developed myself. It's allowed me to learn, create, and publish 100x faster, with 10x better quality, without ANY writing (outside of deleting and organizing), and without ANY knowledge of the topics or SEO target keywords. WTF? I know, I know. Too good to be true, right? But that said this is exactly the kind of blog spam that would be instantly axed from a new search engine.

wereHamster 5y ago
How is that not spam?
- mattscyoc 5y ago
  I think it depends on your own definition. I think spam is highly subjective, no?
  - PedroBatista 5y ago
    No, it isn’t. I really don’t have a major problem with this, after all you’re just another in a million. But I have a problem with you trying to sell yourself as a good guy all full of virtues.
    - mattscyoc 5y ago
      I think it's possible to separate virtues from this. It's a research tool, ultimately. All the sources/sites are cited and links given. That is encouraged, of course. The user is ultimately in control of the tool to change, add to, curate, etc. the research. This just makes that process a lot faster.
  - tsherr 5y ago
    I'd suggest that any article written "without any knowledge of the topic" is of zero value. I'd define spam as zero value posts/messages. Ergo, it's spam. Not sure how you can argue it isn't. Not attacking you, I'm just interested in your defence of this sort of thing
    - tata71 5y ago
      Same, for the record.
    - mattscyoc 5y ago
      "without any knowledge on the topic" refers to the time BEFORE the user uses the tool. During and after the tool the user will certainly have knowledge after reading and curating the questions and answers, right? Just like, before you read about a topic you "have no knowledge" but after, you might say that you have some now.
      - city41 5y ago
        The issue is you have no knowledge of the subject. You said so yourself: > without ANY writing (outside of deleting and organizing), and without ANY knowledge of the topics or SEO target keywords So your content can't be trusted. It's being curated by someone who has no idea of its accuracy.
      - tsherr 5y ago
        So when you say "without any knowledge" you meant, you picked a topic you didn't understand, researched it thoroughly, then made the post? So you didn't weeks/months becoming an expert before making the post? Then it's not spam.
  - glup 5y ago
    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
pjc50 5y ago
Yeah, this is "extractive AI": take original articles written by humans and churn them into machine-spam. It's inauthentic, but that doesn't matter, only the ad impressions do.
- mattscyoc 5y ago
  Do you think there is a world where a human does a search and machines extract answers and teach us about a topic, taking answers from across the web?
  - xnx 5y ago
    This has always been Google's goal, and it is delivering parts of it already in their search results.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    How does the machine know what it's telling us is correct? This is an extremely complicated philosophical question, and it's not limited to machine-generated text; there's already plenty of human-written blogspam. In order for text to be valuable it has to be trustworthy. That is, we have to be reasonably convinced that the author has made some effort to be accurate, to correspond with some mental model of the world which itself corresponds reasonably well with objective reality. Otherwise it's just an elaborate generative fiction tool writing fanfiction about tyres to sell tyres.
mattscyoc 5y ago
Hey, I'm the author of this post on Indie Hackers. I added some data and evidence at the bottom of that post. The content and site is performing really well. I'm curious, why do you think this is spam?
- jacques-noris 5y ago
  Your software just copies what others have written. This is q tool to create blog spam, this makes the web worse and punishes people who create original content, that you just copy
  - mattscyoc 5y ago
    Do you think GPT3 is spam? Where does it get its information? Are Google quick answers spam? While all A.I. be considered spam? Interesting questions. The way that I see the value is that it assists the user with research by pulling together answers across thousands of sources, doing work that a single person would struggle with. Then the user can change, add on top, or modify the research however they want, saving a lot of time in the process.
- mym1990 5y ago
  Could you expand on the content performing well? If it is useful and informative and accurate, I wouldn’t consider it spam. Someone who gets targeted ads for a brand in their email and finds those ads useful for sales probably doesn’t consider the email spam. Similar line of logic here for me.
  - mattscyoc 5y ago
    Absolutely. The link contains research, screenshots, etc. to show how the final content looks, how it is performing, etc. Feel free to take a look. If you create a webpage that has 10s or 100s of different answers to questions for a topic, and it saves everyone time researching; then I would consider that useful and not spam. Just my opinion of course. And I'm not saying this is a substitute for creative content, and I don't think it is an either or. Informative content vs creative content is just different in my opinion.