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Google's Stance on AI Content, $200k eBook Strategy, Get PAID To Build Your List
Ingeniosity Issue #1:
Bill McIntosh
October 17, 2023
Happy Friday,
We're excited to bring you the FIRST issue of Ingeniosty.
Today, we're covering:
Let's get into it.
One of the burning questions that I keep getting is "Does Google penalize you for using AI-generated content?"
To answer this, we'll get it straight from the horse’s mouth with Google’s actual documentation.
The type of content we’re focusing primarily on is content like blog posts and articles aimed at attracting organic traffic from Google.
No Penalty for Private Content
First off, let's get one thing out of the way.
If you're using AI-generated content for private members' areas, free reports, courses, or downloadable gifts, you can breathe easy. Google isn't concerned with that; you can use AI freely with zero risk of penalty for such content.
Google's Official Stance
Google has explicitly stated that they reward high-quality content regardless of how it is produced.
Their ranking system is designed to highlight content with Expertise, Evidence, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, abbreviated as E-A-T-T.
According to Google, appropriate use of AI or automation is not against their guidelines, provided that the content is not designed to manipulate search rankings or produce spam.
“Is AI content against Google Search's guidelines?
Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines.”
This means that while you can use AI-generated content without penalty, there are some caveats.
The most important caveat revolving around misinformation.
Google goes out of its way to emphasize how important factual information is on their platform - they’re very wary of misinfo being spread under their banner (even if they can go overboard on this).
“Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?”
Given the unfortunate tendency for modern generative AI to occasionally “hallucinate” incorrect info (and adamantly claim its legitimacy), it’s important that you thoroughly fact check any piece of AI generated content you’re posting.
Google also says they do not want content that is:
“search-engine first”
“mass-produced”
“poor quality”
They provide a list of questions to ask when self-assessing your content to see if it’s suitable for Google (which is nice given how ambiguous they can be sometimes).
Here are some of the questions they say to ask yourself to see if your content is “EATT” compliant:
“Is the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?”
“Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don't get as much attention or care?”
“Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?”
And while not completely ruling out AI generated content on your website, they do have some considerations on the use AI content.
They want you to be transparent about how your content is made, and they really don’t want you to be spammy about it.
So, the short answer is: Google does not ban AI content, given that it doesn’t contain errors, provides value, and is not just mass-produced, spammy copy-and-paste style content.
But, can you actually rank with AI-generated blog posts?
Zero to 750,000 Visitors per Month with AI Content on a Brand New Site
Yes - there are people driving search traffic to their sites right now with AI content.
4,000+ keywords ranking in positions 1-3
13,000+ keywords in positions 4-10
135,000 keywords in positions 11+
The website started seeing traffic in just 24 hours, hitting 300k monthly visits after 6 months and an incredible 750k after 12 months.
He did this with 7k total pages of content generated by a tool called byword.ai.
So, how did this SEO wizard pull it off? Here's how he says he did it:
Understanding the Target Audience: He started by understanding what the audience was searching for, using keyword research tools, competitor data, and brainstorming around the product.
Choosing a Scalable Topic Series: He didn’t just focus on isolated keywords. Instead, he selected series of topics with hundreds of potential keywords to target.
Generating Content: Using byword.ai, he generated content for each topic series. He claims that the tool he used, byword.ai, can do this at a rate of thousands a day.
Building Website Architecture: The website was then structured to house this freshly minted content in a way that Google could easily discover and crawl the pages. Think of it as a well-organized digital library.
The Waiting Game: He expected to wait at least three months to see results - but started seeing traffic the very next day.
If this case study didn’t make it clear, there are people driving tons of legit traffic with AI-content on Google.
We're talking about Joe, a 20-year-old who managed to rake in a staggering $200,000 by using ChatGPT to write an eBook. Yes, you read that right, and here's how he—and potentially you—can do it too.
In a TikTok video he shows a dashboard displaying $206k in net profit. Elsewhere he claims his ebook empire is now worth over $1 million—all this before even graduating from college. He insists the whole process takes 'just a few hours' with the aid of AI.
Joe isn't alone in this ebook success. Meet Natalie Hodson—a pregnant stay-at-home mom who turned a hobby blog on Pinterest about pregnancy into a full-blown ebook business. She wrote her first ebook on health during pregnancy and to date, has generated over $3 million in sales.
While she didn’t use AI to generate those 7-figure sales, her story goes to show how lucrative this ebook business model is.
How To Launch Your Own eBook With AI
Joe started by focusing on a niche. He used ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas tailored to his interests and skills. Once he pinpointed the niche he wanted to target, he turned back to ChatGPT to help create the content.
After defining his eBook's framework, he used the AI to churn out chapters of his eBook one-by-one. All he had to do was copy and paste the AI-generated text into a Word document and polish it once it all came together. He spent just a few hours on this. No overthinking it - just action.
STEP 1: Research What to Write About
Don't know where to start? ChatGPT can help you in finding your niche.
Use this prompt to start with a broad idea, later you’ll work that broad idea into a finer niche:
"Can you give me a list of 10 questions I can ask myself to help me find a niche for my new ebook?”
After some back and forth, you'll have a broad idea on what to write about, but you’ll have to niche down a little further to get a quality ebook.
The next step is to take that broad idea and work with ChatGPT until you’ve worked out a more specific niche to center your book around.
To do that, use this prompt in ChatGPT to work out what exactly that niche will be:
"Can you give me niche ideas for the broad topic of [BROAD TOPIC FROM LAST ANSWER]? I want to create an ebook about [BROAD TOPIC FROM LAST ANSWER]. Can you help me niche down the topic of [BROAD TOPIC FROM LAST ANSWER] for my ebook?"
From this interaction, you’ll get the final niche or topic your ebook will be on.
I want to reiterate how important it is not to overthink this. Too many people get hung up on the research step of this process and never move out of it.
It’s better to produce an MVP and then to go back and polish it later, than to spend forever researching the ideal book before even producing one word.
STEP 2: Compose Your Book
Now that you know what you’ll write about, it’s time to actually write your book (with the help of ChatGPT).
Begin by asking ChatGPT for an ebook outline, or skeleton of your chosen topic.
Use this prompt, giving ChatGPT the niche you selected from the previous prompt:
"Write me an ebook outline on [NICHE] with [#] chapters. Topics are bullet points under chapter topics. Each chapter has at least 3 topics."
With the outline ready, prompt ChatGPT for each section of your book as given in the outline from the previous prompt, keeping an eye on the token limit. A “token” in AI essentially just means a unit of information, or fragment of words.
As of September 14th, the GPT-4 token limit is about 8,000, but OpenAI is constantly making tweaks and changes to ChatGPT, so this is bound to change.
Regardless of what the token limit is at a given time, it’s a constraint you have to work around. This isn’t a big deal, it just means you’ll have to work on your book one segment at a time, piece by piece, instead of in one fell swoop.
You can use a prompt that resembles something like this, pasting the name of the chapter from the outline, as well as the sub-topics that ChatGPT provided alongside it:
“The following is 500-1000 word a book chapter named [CHAPTER NAME]. It will go through the following topics: [PASTE YOUR TOPICS]. I don't want transition words such as finally and in conclusion."
Joe says it should take about 50 generations to get a 25,000-word ebook.
After generating your book from end to end, make sure to proofread and polish your book. When you have the final version, you can use a service like Canva to put it into a presentable PDF file.
After editing and formatting your ebook into a PDF, you'll need to host it on a website with a product info page and checkout functionality.
My recommendation is to do this on the Profit Platform network, where you get:
Hosting for your site
A drag and drop site builder, which you’ll need for your sales page
Built in checkout functionality
$8,574 in paid premium plugins, themes & tools
Training & coaching
And a lot more…
STEP 4: Drive Traffic
Now it's all about getting eyeballs on your ebook.
Joe says that he used Pinterest ads to drive traffic - while this is a fine way to drive traffic to your offer, we think there’s a bigger opportunity in using AI content on YouTube to drive free, organic traffic to your offer.
Regardless of how you do it, the world is your oyster and there are tons of traffic methods you can choose from, depending on what you’re comfortable with.
Consider Courses
We think ebooks are an excellent info product to make and sell with AI, but if ebooks are the only info prouduct in your arsenal, then you’re missing out on a lot of untapped cashflow.
To REALLY harness all of the potential profits AI has to offer, launch an ebook + course combo - with a free or cheap ebook at the top of your funnel and a comprehensive course as an upsell.
In fact, why not have AI build out a 12-module course that you can sell to people for A LOT of money?
Also, be sure to:
and
Have you ever dreamed about a multimillion dollar business exit? Well, that’s exactly what happened with Morning Brew founders, who sold a majority stake of their newsletter company to Insider for a $75 million valuation in 2020.
Founder Alex Lieberman spun it out of his college dorm room in 2015, and in a very short five years’ time, it scaled to a whopping 8-figures.
Morning Brew isn’t an isolated case.
While the exact amount of the acquisition isn’t publicly known, we do know that at the time it had hit 250,000 subscribers, and in such a high-ticket niche, the value of each subscriber had to be substantial…
So what's stopping you from doing the same? Well, growing an email list can be expensive. Traditional methods often involve running ads, creating high-value lead magnets, or even hiring a team to help you get those treasured emails. It can be like pouring money into a black hole with hopes of a future ROI.
Now, what if I told you there's a way to not only cut down these costs but actually get paid to grow your list? That's right - I’ve been able to drive millions in revenue with a strategy that pays me to grow my email lists.
The secret lies in promoting affiliate offers right off the bat. When somebody joins my list, I tend to hit them with affiliate offers day one. This way, I’m usually able to ROI on a subscriber very fast.
The downside? It can take a lot of work to arrange the deals that make this strategy effective. This involves a lot of manual work, from going out and tapping into your network to find deals to negotiating terms and integrating them into my newsletter.
Enter Beehiiv—a platform that changes everything. Their unique feature, known as "boosts," automates this whole process for you. Just like that, with a click of a button, you can have your newsletter set up to promote other people’s paid newsletters.
You can make $1-4 for every subscriber that signs up through your boosts signup form. So while you're busy growing your subscriber list, you’re also making money.
We’re actually in the process of running an experiment with boosts as we speak, and you’re apart of it.
This newsletter, Ingeniosity, is an ongoing, trial of Beehiiv that is active in real time. As we grow Ingeniosity, we intend to test different AI tools, media buying strategies, and rapid-scale growth hacks and tell you all about it.
In fact, every Wednesday at 2pm PDT, we go live and tell you exactly what we’ve been up to, what we’ve tested, what worked, and what didn’t. Some of the topics we’ve covered live include:
How we used a text-to-video AI to run Facebook ads
How we used ChatGPT’s Code Interpreter to batch-create high quality blog posts
And a lot more…
And a lot of our trainings/experiments have been inspired by realtime feedback in our live chat, so if you want us to try out a new tool, or to test out an experimental ads strategy you’re unsure of, join us live next Wednesday at 2pm and ask us and we’ll try it for you!
And, as a thank you for making it this far, here’s a quick roundup of cool things I’ve found online:
Thanks for reading Ingeniosity, see you next time.
P.S.