March 2024 Blog Income Report (Arts and Crafts Niche with Heavily Edited AI Content)

[@futuretechno3]

Finally finished this update. So many valuable insights! Casey, you are appreciated and valued. Thank you for this gem. It’s an enormous amount of work, great to hear about your success!

[@CaseyBotticello]

You're so welcome! Knowing people get use out of it is what motivates me to keep going 🙂

[@jeffreygordon7194]

You seem really passionate about crafting.

[@CaseyBotticello]

lol I actually am…it’s a great way to relax (both making crafts and photographing them for blog posts) 🙂

[@jeffreygordon7194]

@@CaseyBotticello increasingly I find blogs (recipe, craft, etc) that are ai generated garbage basically. Just edited enough to fool Google, but not actually producing real of useful content. It feels like the Internet is getting swallowed up in a cloud of meaningless noise.

[@CaseyBotticello]

@@jeffreygordon7194 I somewhat agree, and I've definitely seen examples of this. But the goal of my content is not to make it good enough to "fool Google"...rather, to produce rough drafts faster, allowing me to spend more time on visuals (which is for many crafts blogs, a significant percentage of the value to the reader).

[@jeffreygordon7194]

@@CaseyBotticello It sounds like a true passion project I guess. I'd love to check it out, but I couldn't find the link in the description. Strange that you don't publicize yourself. Other than your courses in seo and stuff, of course.

[@CaseyBotticello]

@@jeffreygordon7194 this is just a side project so there is no need to attach my name (I’d rather it be fun and anonymous). The second I share the link openly I’ll get hit with negative seo attacks, people reporting site maliciously, and copycats. That is why many bloggers are hesitant to share their sites publicly. 🤷‍♂️

[@CrankyChristian]

What would be your best advice for someone new to blogging? Do you have any other videos where you breakdown your article creation process? I assume you take a draft from Koala and then polish and update it with your choice of photos, etc. before posting onto the site? I'm new to this, other than having a Bachelor's in Creative Writing. Would love to start doing this type of thing!

[@CaseyBotticello]

Just get started, would be my best advice. Waiting on the sidelines is really the only way to fail ! Even if your first site is not a success, the skills you learn will be essential to future success. As for Koala, I don’t have a video yet (although I will at some point here once I have more time), but this article may help:bloggingguide.com/koalawriter-review/ It does differ for each site and each type of article, but yes, generally I start with a draft (or several) from Koala and go through and edit the writing (heavily condensing overly verbose sections and changing awkward language usage). I completely re write the intros, transitions, conclusions , and title. I then create custom media elements to insert into the article (typically every 300 words).

[@SunFlowerSurfer21]

Awesome video! It’s amazing you have so many posts up! & got another site up on Mediavine! Amazing! It gives me hope! Lol I just started a new site in January with hopes of getting into mediavine within a year. Since it’s my second site things are chugging along much faster, but I just can’t seem to post as much as I would like now having a second site. How are you managing multiple websites? Would love some insight on this 💕🙂 TY

[@CaseyBotticello]

It is definitely challenging to scale multiple websites at once…my general advice is to prioritize your money site and not let the new site distract you (until it’s monetized). I tend to work on 2-3 sites for several months, then when I am bored with topic, I switch to new ones. Once you have a few, there is a nice rhythm of launching a site/seeding it with content, letting it sit for a few months to make sure Google is ranking pages/understands what site is about, aggressively front loading content production for a few months, and then switching to another site until these posts have time to rank. But yeah having multiple sites has forced me to be a bit more organized haha

[@SunFlowerSurfer21]

Thank you so much! Yeah it’s gonna be fun to juggle this whole new thing! But totally worth it in the end I can feel it lol 💁‍♀️😜💗

[@futuretechno3]

Amazing work! do you use a lot of external links to authoritative sources in your articles? do you cite a lot of references/sources?

[@CaseyBotticello]

I used to make more of a point of always linking to some external sources, that were reasonably high DA and niche relevant. However, I don’t see much benefit in doing this unless you are directly citing something like a study or content specific to a single webpage. I tend to focus more on making sure my internal linking is 100% before worrying about additional external links. This is one of the variables I tested in a few of my experimental sites, but never saw any proof of definitive proof. It also depends on niche so for this arts and crafts type site, there is less “industry data” to cite (more of citing inspiring or related projects).

[@MrColindg]

Do you use Turbo 4 or3.5? I think a good option is 3.5, real time data then polish before final editing....what do you think?

[@CaseyBotticello]

I try to use 3.5 (with real time data, as you suggested) and then edit. I think most people complain because 3.5 can be repetitive and long-winded but this is much easier to edit, than content that has been condensed/simplified (like with 4 or Turbo).

[@MrColindg]

Good to know....thanks

[@aishakhan2962]

hi! this is great you got into mediavine with a heavily edited AI site. I recently watched a presentation by them and they were saying they don't accept AI sites! and that they are putting programmes into place to detect AI... so it's interesting to see that you got it 😊

[@CaseyBotticello]

(1). This is not really an “AI site” (I’d argue I spend more time rewriting and editing the content than most writers-sometimes even myself when I write articles from scratch). The idea is to simply use AI writing tools as…tools 🙂 just like you’d use grammarly to improve grammar, spelling, phrasing, etc. 2. Mediavine did specifically address this in both their recent call and AI statement. They were clear though they were not “anti AI” but anti spammy content or untested or dangerous recipes (this site contains neither: “We do not monetize low-quality, mass-produced, unedited or undisclosed AI content that is scraped from other websites. We will not tolerate publishers using AI to create untested recipes or any other form of low-quality content that devalues the contributions of legitimate content creators. This policy is already incorporated into Mediavine’s thorough vetting processes undergone by all publishers applying for our services.” www.mediavine.com/ai-and-our-commitment-to-a-creator-first-future/

[@aishakhan2962]

@@CaseyBotticello okay thats good to know! it's amazing you edited 500 posts in such a short time, I'm not even at 50 posts and struggling 🤐

[@CaseyBotticello]

@@aishakhan2962 Well it took about 14 months in total to produce all these posts

[@aishakhan2962]

@@CaseyBotticello I'm on month ten 😬

[@tomantony6495]

What's the point of topical authority how can achieve in a short span

[@CaseyBotticello]

Topical authority is useful because of all the indirect signals it generally sends to search engines. For example, by narrowing your site’s focus, you help Google understand what your site is really about much easier and much faster. You can achieve this in a relatively short period of time by niching down, narrowing your site’s focus, pruning content that is just an attempt to grab unrelated traffic, and using tools (in this case AI writing tools) to speed up your content production, so Google knows how to categorize your site and allows the indexing process to take place faster.

[@shantanuvarun9900]

how old is this site?new domain?

[@CaseyBotticello]

If you check the first video you can learn more about the site but it began in January of 2023 on a fresh domain.

[@ankitsheoranweb]

any backlinks you build

[@CaseyBotticello]

No backlinks built for this site.

[@ankitsheoranweb]

@@CaseyBotticello in future you will build ?

[@ankitsheoranweb]

@@CaseyBotticello and how many post you posted on this 200+ ?

[@CaseyBotticello]

@@ankitsheoranwebif the site gets big enough then yes I’d be open to link building as it can be a great moat and all sites eventually attract competitors.

[@CaseyBotticello]

@@ankitsheoranweb~500

[@TikTokTrends-dc5sb]

u lie a lot, its ridiculous lol