[Mike B]

Thanks Spencer.

I kind of lost momentum after starting off well. I was hoping for some traffic but it never materialized. I probably chose the wrong niche…

1. How well did your website perform during this 6 month challenge? Terrible…21 clicks and 330 impressions over six months. What was frustrating is thing seemed to be moving upwards until the end of Jan. when Google stopped helping people find my site.
2. What strategies worked well? What strategies didn’t work well? The best was that I had kind of a big hit on one day from a social post for some reason. But that was it.
3. What will you do with your website now that the challenge is over? I’m going to leave it up. I still have some ideas if I can find the time. I have another site that I find a little more interesting that I want to focus on. Of course, Google hates that site right now too. But it is getting some visitors – Bing likes it.
4. What additional thoughts or opinions would you like to share as it relates to this AI project? I think it was a great test and if you picked the right niche, you had a chance. But I think moving forward, everyone will have to find a subject they can build multiple sources of traffic from – Youtube and Socials moving forward. And have some way to monetize the site with a product. (What Spencer and Jared are saying)

[Mike B]

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to add any new posts last month. That being said….my site never gained any organic traffic and I received zero organic clicks.

I did get 267 sessions from Organic Social and most of them came over 3 days. Maybe that’s the ticket to getting traffic to my website.

I had high hopes but maybe my topic is way to broad with way too much traffic. But it was a good learning experience.

Thanks Spencer for the contest. I haven’t given up on the site, but may let it simmer for a little while.
-Mike

[Mike B]

I think Google has outed themselves. We all know they have absolute control over the SERP results. And the Google AI fiasco especially shows they control everything they want us to see.

[Mike B]

This is my 3 months review.

85 articles published by 12/31
11 Organic Clicks.

I’ve attached a video review. https://youtu.be/kC1cSlVMrD0

[Mike B]

Here’s a link to my November video.

Quick Answers

1. How do you feel about your progress so far? What’s working? Good. Got a lot done. Met goal for number of posts.
2. What challenges have you faced? Time mostly. It’s hard fitting it all in. And waiting on AI images to get generated seems to take a long time.
3. What will be your strategy going forward to get more organic traffic? Build you the Youtube/Rumble Channels. Post more content. Continue internal link building.

3A – Stretch goal – turn videos in a podcast!

[Mike B]

My October Video Revew

[Mike B]

Spencer,

Can you create a thread for each checkin video? Give it a good label so we know where to post our videos?

I just posted under the Week 1 thread and probably should have posted my video here. Sorry for the duplicate entry.

My original idea of a review site didn’t work because chatGPT was producing false information. Moving on to a politically themed niche.

[Mike B]

Anyone else having issues with the forum? I usually have to submit twice.

Here’s my First checkin video.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Mike B.

[Mike B]

Entry Video. I tried this a few minutes ago but don’t see my post.

Video

[Mike B]

Maybe proof Google doesn’t really know what it’s doing…

[Mike B]

I think a lot of people are starting to question the use of AI. I did some tests with Originality.ai recently and it’s almost impossible to get it to say the content isn’t AI unless is has all kinds of crazy synonyms in it.

At the end of the day…all we can do is try different things I guess.

[Mike B]

I think Google has outed themselves. We all know they have absolute control over the SERP results. And the Google AI fiasco especially shows they control everything they want us to see.

[Mike B]

Bec,

wow. Great idea and the website looks to be off to a great start. I have an ecommerce site (https://coffeemugsandhats.com).

Definitely add a blog to your site an create content. Google likes shopify sites. There’s so many ways you can go with your website and create content to get people to your site.

The only other suggestion I’d make is to come up with better images of your products. If you could get some actual images of folks wearing the shirts, I think you’ll have something. I’m trying to get motivated to come up with better, unique product images on my ecom site. I just need about 10 more hours in the day.

I really like your idea. You have a huge target audience.

[Mike B]

I’ve noticed some issues. I have one site that Google appears to really hate right now. G isn’t reading the sitemap for some reason. I’ve resubmitted a couple times without any luck.

I think G is going to migrate Search Console to GA4 and they have started the process.

But what do I know.

[Mike B]

David,

Great looking site. Just an idea. On your drawing downloads, you should try to collect email address prior to getting the downloads!

-Mike

[Mike B]

Ran into the same problem trying to do an AI product review site. I realized AI was just making stuff up. Thankfully I recognized early on and was able to start my project on time for the first reviews.

[Mike B]

Try submitting the individual links. Do 5 a day and see if they get indexed.

[Mike B]

Tim,

I’m in a battle with you for last place!! Zero traffic so far. I did want to test Google to see if it would find my site without a Sitemap. Unfortunately, the Big G hasn’t found my site.

I’ve am interested to see what happens next month. I have 50 articles on the site and will be submitting my Sitemap tomorrow night or early on Dec. 1 to see if that makes a different on how fast G indexes a site.

Fingers crossed.

[Mike B]

Brian,

I don’t think you are alone with getting very little traffic!

-Mike

[Mike B]

Jon,

It’s just test to see if Google will pick up the pages naturally. I know submitting is the way to go but I have another site in which google hasn’t crawled my website since October 10. So I’m not sure what’s going on with Google. It could be simply because the sites are new.

Another reason is that I would like to get up to 50 articles before submitting the sitemap and see if that helps in any way.

Again…just a test.

Thanks for the question!

[Author]

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