I won't stop proving to people that SEO-oriented blogging still works no matter what. I once created a thread here on NL where I detailed how I created Naija-targeted site from scratch and grew it until it broke the $100/month income record.

See the thread here: https://www.nairaland.com/7655871/blogging-still-works-2023-see

Earlier this year, I started blogging with AI (ChatGPT to be precise). And presently, I have two AI-based blogs that are generating some decent traffic. One is doing about 60-80 visits per day, while the second has crossed 100 daily visits. Interestingly, the second is only about 3 months old. Both sites are targeted at the US audience.

In my bid to continue to test how well AI works for blogging, I decided to start a new site that is targeted at Nigerians. My goal is to see how well AI content does in Naija-related niches.

So, I'll be sharing my journey on this thread. And I'll keep you posted on each step I take and how things turn out. Feel free to ask me any questions relating to this journey or blogging in general.

SO FAR...

So, I settled for a niche related to the Naija lifestyle.

October 12, 2023: I registered a .com.ng domain on Domainking.ng

October 13, 2023: I set up the site on self-hosted WordPress. I used the Schema theme and installed only a few plugins (Classic Widgets, Classic Editor, RankMath SEO, and Litespeed Cache). After completing the necessary tweaks, I published the first article on the site. I also added the site to Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

AS OF TODAY...

I have published 7 articles on the site. After the first on October 13, I also published on the 14th, 16th, 18th (2 articles), 19th, and 21st (yesterday).

As of this morning, I checked the site's indexed pages using the "site:domain" modifier. Only the home page is still indexed. I lost my patience. I headed to Google Search Console to manually submit all the articles to Google's index.

About 5 hours later, I checked again, and all 7 articles have been indexed. Fantastic one there!

Lol! You were waiting for auto index. These days eeh, once you publish an article, go and submit for indexing on search console.

Following

PawsitiveBro:
Lol! You were waiting for auto index. These days eeh, once you publish an article, go and submit for indexing on search console.

Auto index still works, though. Just that it has become highly unreliable. I started a niche site for a test project 3 weeks ago. The first few posts were indexed automatically within 2 days.

I purposely waited to see if the same would happen to this new site because manual indexing is an additional task. I presently have and manage over 20 blogs. That's enough work already.

webincomeplus:

Auto index still works, though. Just that it has become highly unreliable. I started a niche site for a test project 3 weeks ago. The first few posts were indexed automatically within 2 days.

I purposely waited to see if the same would happen to this new site because manual indexing is an additional task. I presently have and manage over 20 blogs. That's enough work already.

You dey try bro. After selling my site in August, I started three new sites and managing has been hell for me, talk more of having 20 sites.

I will follow this your journey since your first journey led me to creating and selling a pet site for great price.
I no longer use AI for my articles Shah because all my AI sites never get more than 300 pageviews daily before flipping. I am currently trying Nigerian traffic with articles I wrote myself.

Site 1 currently has 63 articles after 2 months.( Nigerian traffic)
Site 2 has 16 articles after a month.(US targeted)
Site 3 is an e-commerce site with blog currently having 12 articles. ( Nigerian traffic)

May God help us.

PawsitiveBro:
You dey try bro. After selling my site in August, I started three new sites and managing has been hell for me, talk more of having 20 sites.

I will follow this your journey since your first journey led me to creating and selling a pet site for great price.
I no longer use AI for my articles Shah because all my AI sites never get more than 300 pageviews daily before flipping. I am currently trying Nigerian traffic with articles I wrote myself.

Site 1 currently has 63 articles after 2 months.( Nigerian traffic)
Site 2 has 16 articles after a month.(US targeted)
Site 3 is an e-commerce site with blog currently having 12 articles. ( Nigerian traffic)

May God help us.

Pls if I may ask, what's the average length of the articles on the sites?

By the way @OP I'm following this thread and your other thread

NJV:


Pls if I may ask, what's the average length of the articles on the sites?

1000 words

PawsitiveBro:
1000 words

Ok thank you

JAPAHTML:
boss we fit talk for WhatsApp? Abeg here is my digit 0 7 0 2 5 9 6 3 0 6 4

You can send me an email at basicfreelance@gmail.com

PawsitiveBro:
You dey try bro. After selling my site in August, I started three new sites and managing has been hell for me, talk more of having 20 sites.

I will follow this your journey since your first journey led me to creating and selling a pet site for great price.
I no longer use AI for my articles Shah because all my AI sites never get more than 300 pageviews daily before flipping. I am currently trying Nigerian traffic with articles I wrote myself.

Site 1 currently has 63 articles after 2 months.( Nigerian traffic)
Site 2 has 16 articles after a month.(US targeted)
Site 3 is an e-commerce site with blog currently having 12 articles. ( Nigerian traffic)

May God help us.

Well, the truth is AI sites can be a hit or miss thing. And to get results, one has to be quite strategic about it and avoid any unnatural signals. For example, your posting frequency shouldn't send signals of aggressiveness.

You're really doing well for yourself as a blogger. Keep it up!

webincomeplus:
You can send me an email at basicfreelance@gmail.com

sent

UPDATE: October 31, 2023.

As of today, I have published 15 articles on the blog.

When I checked Search Console to see how the blog is faring on Google, I saw good signals. A few visits are already coming daily (see the attached screenshot). Not a bad start for a 3-week old blog.

For now, I'll continue adding new articles to the blog. I'll keep you posted as usual.

UPDATE: November 15, 2023.

As of today, the blog has 33 published posts.

Search Console data shows that the blog is still growing as expected. I was even congratulated for reaching 200 clicks within the last 28 days.

For now, I'll keep growing the blog by adding more articles.

webincomeplus:
UPDATE: November 15, 2023.

As of today, the blog has 33 published posts.

Search Console data shows that the blog is still growing as expected. I was even congratulated for reaching 200 clicks within the last 28 days.

For now, I'll keep growing the blog by adding more articles.

can you put me through please

I noticed some people are trying to PM me. I'm sorry, but I don't get to see the PMs. You can reach me via email instead (basicfreelance@gmail.com).

I read a comment about a guy saying something about ai content.

Ai content ranks well and brings in massive traffic.

I don't know if you have heard of "your input determines your output"

You can also automate the process using zapier.

All you need are;

Ai workflow (mostly paid)
Semrush
Zapier
Time
Dedication

That's all.

Google & YouTube is your friend.

Greetings, sir.

Please do you edit your ai contents manually or you post them, verbatim.

If you do, could you please summarise your approach to editing and humanising? Do you target 100% human-written or you are less concerned about the percentage of ai-human ratio.

EmmaxKeys:
Greetings, sir.

Please do you edit your ai contents manually or you post them, verbatim.

If you do, could you please summarise your approach to editing and humanising? Do you target 100% human-written or you are less concerned about the percentage of ai-human ratio.

I don't bother editing articles I generate with ChatGPT because:

1. The quality of the grammar is always top-notch. Even Grammarly usually has little or nothing to do.

2. 99 times out of 100, the content will pass plagiarism checks excellently.

And when you use ChatGPT-4, expect even more impressive outputs.

As for "humanizing", it's just a blatant myth in my opinion. If you want to humanize, write from scratch or hire someone to do it for you.

And talking about AI content detectors, there is no single one that is reliable. Even the so-called best ones have flagged manually written content as AI-generated, and vice versa. So, with that in mind, I don't care about the ai-human ratio or whatever it's called. If the basis of something is unreliable, don't waste your time relying on the output.

This is how I maintain impressive quality with the content I generate from ChatGPT:

1. I use highly specific prompts.

2. I provide manually written outlines based on primary and secondary keywords as well as user-intent expectations.

3. Before publishing, I read through the article to ensure that it flows well and will be helpful to the reader. I cut out unnecessary parts, and I expand where necessary.

4. I only use ChatGPT to write on topics that are appropriate for it. That is, topics that are quite low on specific and technical details.

@OP, how's the going? Any updates?

UPDATE: DECEMBER 2, 2023

I have now published 50 articles on the site.

So far, things are still looking good. About 10 days ago, Google congratulated me for the increasing clicks. See the attached screenshots for the graphs from both Search Console and Google Analytics.

Presently, the site attracts 30 to 40 visits daily. Not bad for a site that is just less than 2 months old.

At this point, I'll take a short break. I'll wait for the articles to settle well into their rightful positions in the rankings. By the time that happens, I'm sure the traffic will go up significantly.

Fingers crossed! I'll keep you posted as usual.

Good stuff you're doing here. However, what is the indexing rate? are all your articles indexed? How many articles do you pump in per day? Do you use automated plugins that post the articles, or do you edit first? Do you use custom prompts? Is this a new site? what is an honest setback you may have faced? I will gladly appreciate your feedback.

I have been blogging, but I prioritize quality articles, and getting quality articles sometimes means writing them yourself, since the so-called good writer will still use AI, and their submissions lack description and researched facts.

However, I have seen over 30 AI blogs across different niches performing great, and I intend to test the waters. Any firsthand advice will go a long way. Thanks in advance!

wealthpreach:
Good stuff you're doing here. However, what is the indexing rate? are all your articles indexed? How many articles do you pump in per day? Do you use automated plugins that post the articles, or do you edit first? Do you use custom prompts? Is this a new site? what is an honest setback you may have faced? I will gladly appreciate your feedback.

I have been blogging, but I prioritize quality articles, and getting quality articles sometimes means writing them yourself, since the so-called good writer will still use AI, and their submissions lack description and researched facts.

However, I have seen over 30 AI blogs across different niches performing great, and I intend to test the waters. Any firsthand advice will go a long way. Thanks in advance!

>> What is the indexing rate?

As for the indexing rate, it seems the days when you wait while Google indexes automatically are gone! No thanks to the crazy rate at which new content hits the web these days. If you want faster results now, you have to submit your pages manually to Google's index.

>> Are all your articles indexed?

So, since I did manual indexing for my articles, they are all indexed.

>> How many articles do you pump in per day?

For this particular site, I published 50 articles over a 5-6 week period. I was that slow because the topics required adding a few images to each article for the reader to understand the content better. So, adding the images slowed me down.

Even without the images, I don't publish more than 10 articles per day on my other AI sites. I've observed that going more aggressive can quickly get your fingers burned.

>> Do you use automated plugins that post the articles, or do you edit first?

No, I edit first. And I publish manually. One of the keys to success with the strategy is to keep things as seemingly natural as possible.

>> Do you use custom prompts?

Yes. As I stated above, you're likely to get better results if you things seemingly natural. So, I create heavily customized prompts. I even craft the outline for each article.

>> Is this a new site?

Yes, it is. A fresh .com.ng domain. Even my 2 other AI sites that are also doing well are built on fresh .com domains.

>> What is an honest setback you may have faced?

Finding more niches that will work perfectly with AI-generated content. Not all niches will do!

webincomeplus:

>> What is the indexing rate?

As for the indexing rate, it seems the days when you wait while Google indexes automatically are gone! No thanks to the crazy rate at which new content hits the web these days. If you want faster results now, you have to submit your pages manually to Google's index.

>> Are all your articles indexed?

So, since I did manual indexing for my articles, they are all indexed.

>> How many articles do you pump in per day?

For this particular site, I published 50 articles over a 5-6 week period. I was that slow because the topics required adding a few images to each article for the reader to understand the content better. So, adding the images slowed me down.

Even without the images, I don't publish more than 10 articles per day on my other AI sites. I've observed that going more aggressive can quickly get your fingers burned.

>> Do you use automated plugins that post the articles, or do you edit first?

No, I edit first. And I publish manually. One of the keys to success with the strategy is to keep things as seemingly natural as possible.

>> Do you use custom prompts?

Yes. As I stated above, you're likely to get better results if you things seemingly natural. So, I create heavily customized prompts. I even craft the outline for each article.

>> Is this a new site?

Yes, it is. A fresh .com.ng domain. Even my 2 other AI sites that are also doing well are built on fresh .com domains.

>> What is an honest setback you may have faced?

Finding more niches that will work perfectly with AI-generated content. Not all niches will do!

Thanks! This will go a long way. I have also observed that Google is very lenient with newly published domains.

Moving on, I will have my custom prompt developed, I will get someone to do the editing and fact-checking. More grease to your elbows.

Lastly, Have you considered expired domains?

I want to say a very big thank you to the op.

Your explanation comes with live practicals which is awesome.

Please here are my questions:

How much do I really need to start?

Because from my research so far, I have been told I need the $40 monthly plan on WordPress before I can add AdSense to my WordPress blog.

I will be glad if you can give me a financial run down of how much is needed.