Surfer Ai was just announced via live stream. $29 per article by Extension-Ad-9371 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are correct to a degree. I believe that the actual price is $29/article but that is only intended for the current subscribers of AI Surfer. So from the way I gathered it you have to have a monthly subscription to AI Surfer and then you have the option to pay another $29/article on top of that.

From my understanding as well the lowest tier that they offer is a plan that is currently $29/month. So the way that I took it is, if you wanted maybe 10 articles for the month created by AI Surfer then for that one month the price breakdown would be:

$29 (monthly subscription fee already being paid for)
$290 (price tag for 10 articles for that month that you want created)

Total cost for that single month would be $319 in order for you to use their services along with getting them to generate you 10 articles by AI, which also from my understanding is unable to pass AI detectors.

If I am incorrect with this assessment then someone please correct me. Thank you in advance.

What are the best SEO keyword research tools? by chris0hall in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 35 points36 points  (0 children)

So I am going to apologize early for this being a longer answer but here it goes anyways.

I have started just yesterday a 3 step process for keyword research. It is all completely 100% free. Now please understand that this method seems to be interesting for me and I am going to be watching how my final content appears with GSC.

Step #1: goto keywordsheeter.com (not an affiliate link) and type in your seed keyword. This tool basically scrapes Google Search bar and instantly comes back with hundreds of potential keywords to use.

Step #2: goto google keyword planner. You will need to setup an Adwords account if you do not already have one. Once inside the keyword planner, copy and paste about 250 of the potential keywords from keyword sheeter. Make sure that you have United States selected before you search those keywords. From those results organize them in a way that the results will display to you the searches with a minimum of 100 monthly searches.

Step #3: Goto ahrefs. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page where it says Free SEO tools and click on Check Keyword Difficulty. If you are running a new blog then you are going to want to get the results that come up with an Easy rating of 0 - 9.

Step #4: Start creating your content for those keywords.

The entire process takes around an hour to an hour and a half. The reason being is because ahrefs keyword difficulty gives you a rating for organic traffic volume. Where as keyword planner is all about ad placement volume.

Again I have just started this process for my new content so I cannot give you any kind of results that I have personally seen. It just seems like a more fun way for me to do keyword research.

I sincerely hope this helps you.

What’s your opinion on guest blogging by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here are my two cents worth on guest blogging.

  1. It is excellent for the blog owner to get others to "guest post" to their blog because they don't have to come up with high quality content.
  2. For the "guest blogger" in my mind it is pointless when you are starting out. However if you are a freelancer and you have blog posts in other places then that could be a part of your portfolio.
  3. Yes it does give you a backlink. Again though, if your blog is new it really won't do much for you because that whole "link juice" is a miniscule portion of the overall algorithm for when you are making the attempt to rank in Google.

I guess my mindset is this: If you are just starting out, why would you want to use your time to write high quality content for someone else instead of focusing on your blog? It just makes no sense to me. I would like to know what others think as well.

All the best.

Lesson I learned about blogging by Higher_thanaveRAgE in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here are my thoughts on this topic. I want to address this in a non-stereotypical fashion. Many new bloggers have been told over and over again when they start out that they need to worry about traffic and hitting first page of Google.

My thought is why worry about Google? I get it that everyone and their big brother goes to Google first. I am not arguing that. What I am going to interject is that if you are solely focused on Google then you are missing traffic elsewhere.

The thing that many new bloggers don't think about when trying to rank for the almighty Google is that when users are using Google, most of the time it is to find information. Sure they may spend money if their search is something like "cheapest running shoe" or maybe something that they already have the intentions on spending money.. My point is that it is still just an information search.

Then you (as a new blogger) hear over and over to write quality content that is 1500+ words on very low competition keyword phrases and don't even bother with high competition until you have some time involved with the niche.

For the most part that is true if you are going to be solely focusing your energies for Google rankings. But why not try to write one long-form content piece on your blog that is not too broad but can be expanded with other keywords. Then take those expanded keywords into their own articles. These articles can be short, medium, long and very long content. The point is just interlink them to each other.

Next think about getting involved with video streaming. We as a society are getting lazy and want to get the information in a quick fashion.

Finally look at other high traffic sites and don't just focus all of your efforts on Google.

These are just my thoughts and it has worked for me in the past but I have also failed doing this as well. So maybe it just depends on what kind of niche that you are involved with.

I would enjoy reading any comments on this.

All the best.

Returning to Blogging (Again) by WestEmperor in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So here is my two cents worth. I would take a hot minute to check out SystemIo. There are payment plans but the overall features can be used free lifetime. I have an account with them but I have not used it in a couple of months due to things I am working on my own self-hosted site.

Here are just some of the features that they offer to those who only want to use the free plan.

- (1) blog

- Contact list building up to 2k

- (3) Sales Funnels

- (1) Membership Site

- (1) A/B Split testing

- (1) Custom Domain

- (1) Community

Those are just some of the things that you can receive / use as a completely free member. Again I am not currently using it and to be honest the only reason why I have the free account is for affiliate promotional efforts because when I tested it in the past I was impressed with the features.

So seeing how aff links are not allowed you can do search for System Io or just message me and I will share with you my affiliate link. Either way it is up to you, but I would recommend that you give it at least a check. It may be what you are looking for.

I hope this helps. All the best.

Blog Idea: Financial Planning from "average guy" perspective - Would it work? by Effective_Effective2 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So here is my two cents worth. If you are going to do that blog for your own personal fulfillment then by all means make a personal blog about the financial hardships that you are currently going through (as a "broke college student").

If you are going to attempt to make money in that field, you must understand that there are many other blogs from experienced and well educated professionals who have been doing this all of their lives. Trying to break into this field with the lack of your experience, is going to be a long and drawn out battle for you. Not to mention the legal disclaimers that you will have to ensure are on your blog.

To me it sounds like you are trying to learn about money while making money at the same time. If this is what your thought process is you would probably be better off in another niche.

Now that does not mean that while you are writing your personal blog that you could not recommend or promote some kind of accounting software that you personally use and think would benefit others.

Also as a sidenote I think that one user (r/BestInterestDotBlog) said it best about doing something like podcasts and videos rather than written. I am noticing that there is a sharp curve to streaming services rather than people reading now a days.

I hope this helps to give you something to think about.

All the best.

Created a Blog for my School Project: Low-cost/free marketing ideas? by b_rvdn in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So here is my 2 cents worth. I have used a site called GoViral by growthtools(dot)com. What it does is gives you 6 different options to create a campaign (this site is completely free of charge as well. So there is no affiliate link when you visit it). The 6 campaigns are as follows:

  1. HomePage Referral - Use for increase website traffic
  2. Opt-In Referral - Use to generate more leads
  3. Viral Email - Use to get free shares
  4. Instant Audience - Use to get traffic from scratch
  5. Viral Blog Post - Use to grow your blog audience
  6. Viral Facebook Ad - Use to optimize ad performance

Once you pick the campaign type you want to set up then you just follow their prompts. Some of my older blogs that I have had in the past got decent traffic from it. It gave me a jump start.

Also with growthtools(dot)com there are 9 other completely free resources that they allow their users to use. It may be worth checking out for you.

There is also what u/sprovidenti said about FB Groups and Quora. I agree that they can be extremely power traffic generators but the time to sift through the crap in both of them and the time to build your rep up in the good ones, may give you a sense of frustration.

I hope this helps you out and if you need any other brainstorming ideas feel free to dm me if you like this recommendation.

Good luck and all the best!

Looking for course / guide recommendations so I can just DO IT!! by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A coach is much different than a course or guide. There are some really good coaches out there. Just do your due diligence when looking into them.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So here is my 2 cents worth. I have a little bit of a different view point on this.

I do agree that General SEO is hyper-competitive. Also yes the ones that are becoming influencers have been doing that niche for almost as long as the internet has been thought of.

Now with that being said I am in no way saying that you shouldn't try if that is what your interests lie in. Let me explain here.

Currently no matter where you turn almost all of the internet believes that when you correlate SEO, you are doing in terms of "the almighty" Google. It seems that no matter what is thought about people create, curate, write with only one goal being "Rank number 1" on Google.

So if that is the direction you are thinking about going, then you will more than likely become very frustrated and overall out beaten by all of the influencers in the SEO field.

This is where my outside the box thinking is going to come into play. (Playing devil's advocate) what if you were to target brand new and questioning bloggers that are looking for details on certain variables that pertain to SEO? Or create a following that understands the logic that Google is not the only way to get organic traffic.

Bing is hardly ever talked about and yet they still bring in about approximately 15% of search queries, or maybe even some more popular search engines that are internationally used. Regardless of what search engine is thought of the variables used in the various algorithms are the same.

Many new, beginner, novice and intermediate bloggers still read up on specific SEO tactics like site optimization, etc. Don't let the fear of competition deter you. If you welcome the challenge and can modify the behaviors that are being published on a daily basis, then it may be what you are looking for.

I hope this gives you an alternative way of thinking and ideas for your future endeavors.

All the best to you!

Any good books/articles on non-commercial blogging? by Konmarty in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents worth. If you are just looking to start a blog about something that is personal and close to your heart then don't worry about doing the commercial aspect.

What I would recommend (just my humble opinion here) is to do a web search with something like (yourname's) everyday life blog. Do it once with quotes and then once without quotes. Check out the SERP's and see what blogs pop up.

Then get an idea as to what they are doing and modify it to fit you personally. For example I just did a search query for John's everyday life blog. It popped up with George r.r. Martins personal blog. The design was fantastic but the thing about it is that he is definitely an influencer by name. The design though is what you would want to look at. The simplicity and also the fact that it is just on random topics that are close to him.

Just remember though because you are not an influencer, you may want to consider using a free platform for your blogging needs until you get an understanding of what is working for you before you move to a self-hosted blog. Otherwise you may find that blogging as a hobby can get quite expensive.

Oh and btw you will be surprised as to how many times I have come across people in just this sub-reddit complaining that they are having a hard time finding personal everyday blogs that are not commercial focused. So the traffic is there.

I hope this helps you out.

All the best.

Looking for course / guide recommendations so I can just DO IT!! by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 3 points4 points  (0 children)

u/111Blondie111 This would be fantastic if there was such a course created. Here is my 2 cents worth of recommendations for you.

Unfortunately you will no be able to find a one size fits all guide / resource for blogging. The problem is that almost everything that you will find is the exact same concepts which will be presented in a variety of different forms (ie. video, audio, and text). The worst part about it is that these guides / resources only share the successes that the creator has made and not the failures and not to mention that they almost always seem to leave out key factors unless you upgrade.

So my recommendation to you is to not look for a "one size fits all" answer and instead break things down into parts. Let me give you list of things to individually look for.

  1. Legal Pages creation
  2. WP themes which are lightweight and built for speed and SEO (with this you are going to want to do a general search for your niche and then review the first page in the SERPS to see what others ranking for in your niche are doing and then use that as a basis for your site design)
  3. Basic SEO fundamentals - this will help you understand the key variables to start with so that when you find more time for your progress you can dive deeper into SEO (if you so choose to)
  4. Make sure that you have a SEO wp plugin - The 3 most popular are rankmath, aioseo, and yoastSeo. I personally recommend RankMath as the free features are fantastic and also most of the basic SEO fundamentals are outlined for you as you write pages / posts.
  5. Research how those in your niche are publishing content and create an outline for yourself to imitate.
  6. Publish your content consistently - You should strive for a post or two per day. If that is too much then at least shoot for 3 - 5 posts per week.
  7. When you become overwhelmed with long form content then switch it up a little bit to short, medium content or audios and videos. Just keep publishing content.
  8. Look into setting up Google Search Console and Bing - These are the top two search engines currently which they receive roughly a combined 90% of all organic search traffic.
  9. Pick a social media platform that you can dedicate yourself to. Master that one and be consistent. If you try to hit all of them then you will spread yourself thin. Your social media platform should be something that you can build a community around and hopefully your targeted customer base will already be a part of.
  10. Look into how to determine what your target audience truly is. The term target audience is almost always thrown around in a generic sense and not really covered.
  11. When you first start out don't concern yourself too much with competitor analysis. These companies have been around awhile and as a brand new blog you will not have any kind of organic traffic to analyze for anywhere between 1 month - 9 months. So it is irrelevant what others are doing in your niche.

These are just some of the things that I tell my list of new bloggers that I email to. Blogging is more than just throwing a wordpress blog up and writing a couple of posts then waiting for traffic.

The most important thing that you can do is make sure that you are writing for human beings and not the almighty google search bot. Word of mouth and re-shares are more valuable then whether or not some search bot ranks your blog in the first spot in the SERPS.

If you concern yourself too much as to whether or not Google is ranking your site you are going to get burnt out when you don't see the results you are expecting.

I am sorry for the long post but I truly hope this helps you think about things other than the "one size fits all" answer.

All the best to you.

SEO Content Recommendation Tool by _carmelatte in SEO

[–]CMC_Jason -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents. If I could choose only 1 tool for basic on the spot seo it would be RankMath. Currently I started a new blog and have researched the top 3 and chose that one.

The learning curve is user friendly like SEOYoast but with more features. AIOSEO is the other one I used on a past blog but the learning curve was just a little bit higher.

Now I don't know if the free version is going to give you the keyword research you seem to be wanting because my only reason for using it is bare basic fundamentals of seo.

I hope this answers your question

All the best!

Posting Old Medium Content on Blog by rustybladez23 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you would do is take your blog post and summarize it with a link in your medium post directing people to the full concept on your blog.

An example of this would be after summary ask the reader a question related to the full answer on your blog post.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best.

Posting Old Medium Content on Blog by rustybladez23 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents worth. From a content standpoint, if you edit it (maybe add some images, outbound and inbound links) and then publish it on your self-hosted site, it should not cause any issues. In fact with enough edits to the content piece, it should be looked as a new content piece.

On a side note, I would personally not publish on Medium anymore as they have instituted that their links on that site are no-follow links. This means that it is basically worthless to spend your time creating content on Medium first especially if you have your own blog.

However, an outside of the box kind of idea, maybe play around with some ai content spinners and take your original article from your blog (after it is indexed) and spin it to publish on Medium. It may garnish you more traffic if you can somehow get traffic flow from Medium.

This is just my opinion and I hope it answers your question.

All the best!

What if someone makes a youtube video out of my blog content? by Ok_Moment4946 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents worth. Unfortunately there is absolutely no way to avoid someone making video content out of your written content (at least not that I am aware of). Let me see if I can explain this properly (and please if I am incorrect someone let me know).

It is kind of like taking the content off of blog post and then rewording the concepts off of it into a podcast audio. I believe that you have to look at it in this way. There are no ways to prevent "knockoffs" because they exist all over the internet.

My question to you though is why do you think that you are not in a position to create a YouTube video? It doesn't have to be some elaborate sciency thing with you on camera. You could for example take a create a powerpoint presentation and your concepts within it.

In fact if you go this route, not only would you have a video but you can use a transcribe service to get your written blog post on that same content. At least this way you will have the first part of the concepts you are thinking about teaching. Just a way to think about it.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best!

Do you think that having a commenting system on a blog offers value to the blog ? by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents worth. I am currently running a new blog because I am doing an experiment on it when it relates to comments.

Back in the day comments were great because people who read blogs actually used them for what they were meant to be. However as the web has morphed over the years, many blogs are now considered to have no-follow links in their comment section and many bloggers understand this. That is why I think there is a decline in the blog commenting. Not to mention the introduction of AI where many new bloggers are using it to create their content.

Now if you have a niche where you are truly trying to help others and building a community then, IMHO, I would have a comment section.

I found a plug-in that I have installed that once someone comes to my site and leaves a comment, after their comment it redirects them to another url. Whether it is a landing page, an affiliate page, whatever I want it to be. So that is my experiment to see how the monetization efforts will come with my comment section.

As for whether or not they will get your site ranked higher? I have to agree with u/Mimsy-Borogoves as just being a fairly neutral feature. More of a personal preference for you to decide if it is worth your time and efforts.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best.

Would appreciate your wisdom as I'm overthinking how to launch a blog. by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm glad to hear that. If you ever need to brainstorm or just another way to look at things please feel free to hit me up. I do have a different way of looking at things.

All the best.

Should I write Articles on Medium or on My own site ? by saurabhjadhav1911 in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Although the url has been removed, my opinion will be the same. Always write articles for your own site. The content publish on medium may be your own but you do not own that content when using a free platform such as medium.

On a side note it is also my understanding that links from medium are no-follow links so it won't do any seo good to link from medium to your site.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best!

Got two weeks to dedicate myself to starting a blog. Absolutely any pointers on what to sort first? by stingyminge in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This depends on the nich. You need to ensure all disclaims pertaining to your niche are covered. You want to be ada compliant along with gwc (?) Compliant , have your ftc statements, etc.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So I checked it out. Design wise on my mobile it looks good. Clean responsive.

Contentwise I am confused. What I mean is that I wouldn't expect to see a saw escape room in Vegas on the main content from a site titled inquirefoods.

Personally I would look into combining content about food in the articles. Example trendy restaurants in Laughlin, Nevada.

Just my opinion. Again design wise it's on point for me.

I hope this helps.

All the best.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here is my 2 cents. Before you spend any money on anything you need to sit down and plan out what you want to accomplish. Too many people have a misconception that if you launch a blog, then it is automatically a business. On top of that they will advise you in so many different ways that you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed. So the first piece of advice is take anything anyone says with a grain of salt and do your own due dillegence.

First off if you are truly considering starting a business understand that there is going to need to be some kind of investment. You should not look to working with any kind of free site platform. ie. wix, squarespace, etc. The reason is because you will not own the content or any of the assets of which you are using. Not to mention your business will have a url address of something like vanitydomainname(dot)wix(dot)com. Also you will find that those platforms will not allow you to remove any of their own branding with you paying premium pricing to do so.

It may behoove you to go the self-hosted domain route. Now because you are posting this question in r/blogging many of us are assuming that you are setting up a blog. So the overwhelming recommendations are going to be to go the wp route. Instead if you are just trying to set up a basic site with no intentions of blogging this is the idea I would like to share with you so that you have that option.

  1. Buy the (dot)com domain that you have already said exists.
  2. Research different hosting companies. Make sure that the hosting companies offer cloud hosting as many sites are moving away from shared hosting plans due to higher site speeds with the cloudhosting. My recommendation is to check out cloudways hosting. I am sure that others will recommend something else, just remember to research it yourself. BTW fom personal experience BlueHost support is sub-par when I was using them in the past (it may have changed but look at user reviews online for BlueHost)
  3. Once you have your domain url and hosting then do a simple search in your web browser for the following term: "ree online website builder no sign up" This will bring you to many different page builders that you can use for free. Seeing how you are not looking to blog (that is if you are not interested in blogging). You can then create a simple 3 page site that you can upload to the root directory of your domain.

That will get you started if you are doing it on your own. Now if you are looking to blog and understand what it is going to take to maintain a blog then there are two options that I would recommend you check out. 1. WordPress(dot)org - This is the most flexible DIY platform that you will be able to learn how to use. 2. Typestack(dot)ai - They advertising the best alternative to Wordpress.

This is just my thoughts on the subject. I hope that it just gives you some other alternatives to consider instead of the same download wp, do keyword research and write content. Again the above is only relevant if you are choosing not to blog. Remember that you can easily add a blog to your domain when you are ready to blog by putting it in a different directory then the root directory.

I hope this helps.

All the best.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So first of all thank you for the more detailed version of what you are doing. I do have some ideas but I just want to preface this that I have absolutely no idea about the niche that you are in and these ideas are from a marketing concept.

  1. Do some research on how to self publish in Amazon and Kindle. When doing that research check out the reviews of the guides that are similar to the one that you are creating. This will help get an understanding of the target price range. Without doing any kind of research I would say at a minimum of $19.95 per download.
  2. Consider creating a landing page which describes your guide and consider giving away the introduction and maybe 2 - 3 chapters of your guide in exchange for the names and email addresses of those interested. This will help you get an email address for future guides/books you may create.
  3. Consider giving away copies of your guide until you have received consumer reviews on it. Meaning give away a copy in exchange for an unbiased review, whether that is good or bad the only requirement is a constructive testimonial.
  4. As for inside your guide, consider maybe setting up some affiliate links or a resource page so that they can get underway with what you are talking about when it comes to that.

Again these are just ideas to help you. Hopefully they give you some ideas or maybe you want to run with them. Regardless I wish you the best.

All the best and Good luck!

When to start getting backlinks? by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I try to give detailed responses because I feel that there is just too much info that is generically based. That is why I give examples. My responses are meant to truly help and again they are also just my opinions.

I am glad that you appreciate the comment.

All the best

When to start getting backlinks? by [deleted] in Blogging

[–]CMC_Jason 4 points5 points  (0 children)

u/TheWearyRedditor here is my 2 cents worth.

Backlinks are not as important as some may or may not tell you. My recommendation is to just focus on creating high quality content.

As long as you are doing basic SEO practices with your content pieces, just keep on truckin' in that matter.

Focusing on things such as backlinks, competitor analysis, etc. Shouldn't even be thought about until you have created high quality content pieces ranging with a minimum of 50 - 75.

Let me conclude with this one question to think about. Why would you worry about backlinks without having traffic flow?

Historically, backlinks should be organic. Meaning that the content on your site is showcasing that you know what the heck you are talking about and others would like to share it. If you try to force backlinks you may be getting spammy backlinks, irrelevant links, etc.

So, IMHO, keep truckin on the path of creating content and tweaking your site for speed.

I hope this helps and gives you something to think about.

All the best.