Official Report: 3 Month Check-in for the Build a NEW site with AI Challenge!

[Spencer Haws]

The time has come to report on the progress of your site after 90 days!

Here are the official reports from all the participants after 90 days!

There is no video update required for this report, but participants are welcome to create one if they want!

I’m impressed with the progress and there are several people that just might win this thing after 6 months…it’s a battle!

• This topic was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Spencer Haws.
• This topic was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Spencer Haws.

[Sjpals]

I dont want to quit, but im unfortunatly going to have to because Matomo analyitics is showing visitors in september? I bought my domain before October, but I double checked it was not indexed. Anyway, im not 100% sure why its showing that, and also showing articles being created in september? Im confused, but anyway, it had to be after oct 1st and the stats show otherwise.
Ill still keep working on it anyway. And thanks for the motivation .

[Spencer Haws]

Don’t quit.

We started the challenge in September (on 9/20). So, that is why you created articles and are getting traffic in September. You are just fine!

[Sjpals]

OMG I’m such an idiot, haha. I really thought it was the 1st of October.
Ok, just ignore me,
I’m fine!!

[Sjpals]

Ok, so here are the stats:
9 articles
8 organic search in dec (16 in total)
I use matamo, so am not sure about clicks. Is that actions?
I have honestly done no work since I started. I find that creating the text with AI is quick. Copy and pasting that into a layout and then finding a load of pics is the time consuming part.
I may try some posts with no pics, or just one as a main one, to save time and get a load more posts up.

[Rita Olsson]

For those looking to enhance their site’s visual content without breaking the bank, the Remini Mod apk offers an innovative solution to improve image quality using AI technology.

[Jen]

Stats:
137 articles total
6,267 organic search
7.08k clicks in GSC

*please note that organic search is by users not sessions and this looks confusing*

Ok progress this month, it didn’t beat last month but that is a gamble with seasonal content. Sometimes it increases month over month, and sometimes it falls!

[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

[Troy De Ville]

It’s better than last month, but not a rocket ship like others.

Stats:
139 articles total
932 organic search
648 clicks in GSC

I’m still having fun and enjoy building the site.

[Madison Cates]

Nice! Almost hit the 1k milestone.

[Chris LeBlanc]

I decided to change directions and built out a new site. In choosing my last niche, it was purely based off interest and not much research was invested before jumping right in.

I just finished building out my new site and published my first article yesterday. In choosing this niche, I put in a lot more time before purchasing the domain.

As of now, I have only written one article and waiting for it to be indexed. I will continue moving forward and writing AI articles.

I am learning a ton through this process. Although the stats don’t show it now, it will be beneficial down the line for sure.

Stats:
Articles – 1 (built new site)
Traffic – not yet

[Holly]

Pretty poor effort at my end as my focus has been elsewhere (travel, existing sites, the crazy season) so I didn’t manage to publish a whole lot. I think only 2. This is a niche with great potential too, but definitely the off-season for USA traffic, so hopefully I will get more published this month before things start to ramp up.

Articles 22
Organic: 207
GSC clicks: 152

[Tom Seest]

This is my report for https://HowDoYouGame.com.

Articles: 480
Organic: 0
GSC Clicks: 12

There is an error for this site when connecting GA 4. I’m not a novice and know how to do this. I have around 180 sites where it is connected and working. But something is wrong with both of my new, existing AI sites. I’ll make an effort to get it working now that the other contest is over.

My traffic from other sources is great, and I’m starting to get some more organic traffic. Direct traffic is great from socials.

Plans for this month? I’ve been coding up a tool that uses the Open AI API to rewrite my posts and generate new images. My cost per rewrite is less than $0.10 per article using GPT 3.5, which seems good enough for this type of content. The rewrite takes about a minute per article, and it takes about 5 to 10 minutes for me to complete my edits and publish it. So, I plan to do some major rewriting starting in a couple of weeks. Still just tweaking things to save me time. I’ve cut back my posts per day on all of my sites to 28 from 70, which is freeing up my time for more of this development. It should be a fun three months.

All this assumes that the heart failure doesn’t get worse, and I can still put in my 3 to 4 hours per day on my sites.

[Troy De Ville]

Hey Tom, I always wanted to make a gaming site, but it just seems so competitive. Maybe when I get more free time as a passion site with my 11-year-old son. He and I really like shmups, so it would probably be niche down into that. Keep it up. Your site looks good!

[Tom Seest]

That’s the only reason I’m touching gaming. I got out of gaming in my late teens. But, all my sons are into it. One of my sons does edits for me and linking and so we’re doing 3 gaming sites actively right now. I’m not sure how competitive it is at this point because we have not tried to monetize them yet.

[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.

[Tom Seest]

This is my report for https://HowDoYouLose.com.

Articles: 488
Organic: 0
GSC Clicks: 15

(Copied From My Other Site Because I’m Using The Same Strategy For Both)
There is an error for this site when connecting GA 4. I’m not a novice and know how to do this. I have around 180 sites where it is connected and working. But something is wrong with both of my new, existing AI sites. I’ll make an effort to get it working now that the other contest is over.

My traffic from other sources is great, and I’m starting to get some more organic traffic. Direct traffic is great from socials.

Plans for this month? I’ve been coding up a tool that uses the Open AI API to rewrite my posts and generate new images. My cost per rewrite is less than $0.10 per article using GPT 3.5, which seems good enough for this type of content. The rewrite takes about a minute per article, and it takes about 5 to 10 minutes for me to complete my edits and publish it. So, I plan to do some major rewriting starting in a couple of weeks. Still just tweaking things to save me time. I’ve cut back my posts per day on all of my sites to 28 from 70, which is freeing up my time for more of this development. It should be a fun three months.

All this assumes that the heart failure doesn’t get worse, and I can still put in my 3 to 4 hours per day on my sites.

[Madison Cates]

Focused only on backlinks again this month and saw a good increase. I’m happy considering I posted no new content.

Articles: 128
Organic: 590
GSC: 479

[Jon Kurtis]

I still have the same 2,589 posts published on Lawfred.com. I plan to add more content to these existing posts and add more posts in general this month.

I have not published anything on WordGrail.com or NameGrail.com, my other two sites I will hopefully have time to get to. But at this point it seems they do not have much of a chance even if I do get something live.

[Karan Mallya]

There’s not much to update. Published 0 post!

[Chris Garvey]

(Ignore this, posted to wrong comment)

• This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Chris Garvey.

[Natasha]

Not much to report this month, but we’re only halfway through and I’m sticking with it!

[Bec]

Low and slow here hehe – like most – very busy over Dec and not much got achieved 🙁
Users: 62
Organic Trafic: 8
GSC: 3 clicks

Sharing my site as I’m starting to run ads to it this month – POD site and considering my products as articles as they’re AI written and focusing on keywords themselves. https://classactapparel.com – always been interested in Print on Demand so trying to link it with the challenge so I actually get it started and keep it moving!
I’m considering purchasing some backlinks to trial this effect on organic numbers too (always been to scared to buy links, but hey – what have I got to lose here!). Also hoping to get some Pinterest pins happening – Google might notice extra traffic from other sources and show me some more organic love haha (wishful thinking??).

[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.

[Bec]

Thanks for taking the time to check it out Mike and appreciate the advice and encouragement! 10 more hours in a day would be lovely wouldn’t it haha.

[J Paul Hendricks]

Traffic metrics for the challenge are all up (+73% to +86%…83, 99 and 54 respectively). Total posts are at 79 and rising, up from 51. We also continue to make improvements on existing articles. Overall average position is ~31.8 (down a bit from 29). This seems to be because we have started ranking for a bunch more keywords. Having said that, total impressions were 3.79K, up only slightly from 3.32K. 😬

Top 5 pages by impressions are at an average position of 20.8, a slight improvement from 21.3. Of those, GSC shows the best pages are little changed at avg positions of 10.1, 10.7 and 11. There are some decent KWs now consistently in the top 5, but these top pages are still out of striking distance. Me thinks we need links. 🔗

The Youtube launch is overdue but happening in Jan, along with some light link-building type activities (web 2, etc). And… There is a major PR experiment in the works. If it’s a success we should see a big boost in traffic and inbound links. Maybe then we can get up near the front of the pack. 🤞

[Ian]

Barely touched my site in December cause I was so busy with other projects.

Total articles: 123 (+32 since last month)
Users: 201
Organic Sessions: 48
Total Clicks in GSC: 50

Most of my traffic is from Yandex which is a first for me. Thankfully, Google traffic just started ramping up in the last few days. January should be more interesting!

[David]

December I only added one article, my client work has needed my attention unfortunately, leaving me no time, then we had the holidays my family were away etc.

But I’m really happy seeing the steady inline in organic searches going up every day even with the small amount of articles published.

But each article tales me a long time though. I use multiple Ai systems, edit them , create AI imagery for every section, gather video reference as its all for kids learning niche. I’ve also gained some backlinks

Jan I am unfortunately going to be very busy on a client animation project, which is frustrating as I really want to work on my site, but I’ll do what I can with limited time, thanks ☺

Stats from 1st Dec to 31st Dec

Total articles so far: 11
Users: 153
Organic Sessions: 123
Total Clicks in GSC: 42

[Sarah Auerswald]

Stats report:
30 posts
8 users in December
6 sessions in December
GSC says 0 clicks in December
No where to go but up!

[Pet Content Solutions]

Total articles: 51
Total traffic: 72
Organic sessions: 51

Challenges/Setbacks:
1. Unable to publish content last December because of other projects
2. In Week 3, I noticed that some of the articles changed from Indexed to Crawled currently not indexed. At present 11 of 51 posts are in this status.

Wins
1. From having 3.2k impressions in November, to 5.86k in December
2. Average position, 30.4 in November, 24.4 in December
3. Amazon sales: $.30 in December

Jan 2024 goals:
1. Increase in impressions and clicks
2. More affiliate sales
3. Create a realistic action plan and commit

Action plan:
1. Publish at least 25 blog posts in January. I’m sure I can’t commit more than this because of other projects.
2. Edit the crawled but not indexed articles one at a time and resubmit to GSC and see what happens.
3. Be more consistent in sharing my links to Pinterest. Start with posting 5 pins/day.

[Dan Crone]

3 months. Wow. December went by quickly. I took a vacation and well, the contest isn’t over yet. Time to make some coffee and re-motivated. I wonder what’s on Netflix…

[Selma]

Hey everyone,
65 articles published
3 organic search
2000 organic social (Pinterest)

[Kazi Al Imran]

So far I’ve published 1494 articles, where 1212 posts and 282 pages. In December 2023, I received 18 clicks from 244 organic sessions.

[Adeel Zafar]

I have posted 24 articles butt got only 3 clicks in December because I haven’t worked on website in last month but hopefully will start working on website in coming days.

[Alpi]

Hey everyone,

438 posts published until the end of December.

Bolted on a directory to the existing website with 15.000+ directory pages. It’s still a work in progress, because I need to setup all the nesting pages, search functions, monetization, etc.

G Analytics GA4 shows: 429 Users and 413 Organic search
GSC shows: 207 clicks

• This reply was modified 3 months, 4 weeks ago by Alpi.

[Tom]

Hey Folks,

Articles Published: 76
Total Users GA4: 2100
Organic GA4: 1874
Clicks GSC: 1703

After a few weeks off for the hols, I’m now going to focus on off-page and socials.

[Johnson]

Hey.
I got 5x more traffic than last month.
The site is still growing upwards, but at a small rate.
The total number of articles published before January is 305.
Around 100 posts got deindexed by Google (In September), but it did not affect the traffic. (Those posts weren’t getting any clicks).
I’ve decided to stop posting too much. From now on, I’ll be publishing only one article a day.

I’m satisfied with the progress.
–
Johnson.

[Edvard]

Site #1
Total traffic: 49
Organic sessions: 43
GSC Clicks: 7
Pages: 243 (236 indexed)

Most traffic is from Yandex. Did one last update to the site in December but the competition is higher than first expected. Will not put more hours into this site unless it the numbers pick up on their own.

Site #2
Total traffic: 648
Organic sessions: 560
GSC Clicks: 557
Pages: ~7M (43K indexed)

Showing healthy growth with almost 10x from last month. Gonna change my indexing prioritization in January to index the pages with lowest competition rather than the staple posts. Hoping to 5x GSC traffic.

Site #3:
Total traffic: 1,012
Organic session: 934
GSC Clicks: 937
Pages: 5.8K (5.7K indexed)

This site was just published December 10th, so I’m very happy and a bit surprised to reach 1,000 visitors in just 3 weeks. Even the directory pages containing only a list of links to other pages are starting to rank. Gonna focus on content for these pages as I think they have potential. Aiming to 7x GSC traffic next month.

Might publish a 4th site in January to keep it one per month. Might also look into some link building.

[Ashley]

Last month was another slow month of publishing due to the holidays, but my keyword research was super helpful in uncovering related topics I hadn’t originally thought to cover and has increased my Google Search clicks significantly. My organic search traffic went up 28% over November, and GSC shows a steady incline which makes me excited as we head into the spring months when my topic is more likely to be searched on Google.

This month, I’m starting a couple of social campaigns that will hopefully help to send signals to Google that my content is awesome 😉 and I hope to double the number of articles on the site (currently at 47) by the end of the month thanks to the new content ideas.

[Adrian D.]

Here are my stats:

Total articles: 75 (ONLY 5 written in December)
Users (December): 54
Organic search (December): 33
Total Clicks in GSC (December): 11

I have written only 5 articles because Google decided to kick me out of the top 50-100 for all my keywords and I kind of lost all my enthusiasm to write/edit AI articles for the month.
Keywords were ranking well and gaining positions on SERPS until one day.
All articles are STILL indexed but not in the top 100 – except for 1 keyword in the top 20. Weird.

[Mark]

Hey Guys,

So stoked that Spencer allowed me to re-enter the challenge. So I built the website layout, did all the setup & configuration on the 31st Dec 2023 and on the 31st launched the site. It has already been indexed. I have google analytics running. And between 31st Dec and today (5th Jan 2024), I have launched 6 articles onto my site. Average word count per post is 1800 words.

I did a ton of keyword research using paid version of AHREFS and have some goood keywords with ow KD 5-10 and decent search volumes for the KW.

I have scripted an really awesome chaGPT prompt that allows me to do many different important tasks, and most importantly write long form content that is optimized to my needs and most importantly is SEO friendly.

Now that i have the prompt down, the process of creating articles is fairly easy, it still takes me +- 1.5 hrs per blog post to do research, edit etc. (I am trying to avoid using paid writing tools like Kaola or Agility)

[Brad]

520 articles
291 organic sessions

NY Goal is to get 1 session per article LOL

[learningmachine]

I know it is a bit late but I’ve launched a new website and will be working on this site until the end of this challenge.

[Mark]

never too late matey! i just launched mine on the 31st Dec. Let’s go!

[Dennis]

Total articles: 82 ( 42 Indexed ).
Total traffic: 286
Organic sessions: 246
Total Keywords Ranking According to ahrefs: 700
Total Keywords on Page 1: 45
Total Keywords on top 3 spots: 3

I just started to earn some rev with Amazon affiliates, $3 in Dec, and $2 this month so far. Been getting 1 – 4 product clicks daily.

Hoping to get more articles out this month.
Best of luck to everyone.

[Diane]

Total articles 7 (still!)
Organic traffic 2

I will finally have time to work it from next week!

[Ryan]

Total Articles: 610 (144 new in December)
Google Search Console Clicks: 35 (+5 from last month)
Google Analytics 116 Users & 125 organic sessions (+77 / +79 from last month)

I had some nice traffic growth in December from non-Google search engines. Hopefully, Google will follow suit. I still need to work on images and internal linking. Ugh… the time consuming stuff! Happy New Year, everyone!

[Jenny Meechan]

I’ve just filled in the form and things are moving slowly for me. I’ve spent a lot of time link building and a lot of my getting posts live time was taken up with kids/health stuff over this first three months.

I’m pleased that I’m ranking for a few keywords (although not anywhere near page one) and I think I’ll give all my time to posts moving forward and put a pin in link building (unless I run ahead of schedule) .

I’m aiming to publish 40 posts this month and get everything pinned on Pinterest with the hope that getting some traffic will get me more traffic.

[Tonja Gasperlin]

Recipes niche

206 articles
8,425 total web search clicks in GSC

Just need to push out more recipes and get them indexed as fast as possible. Still using Google trends for what is trending and focusing on these recipes that people are searching right now.

[Jen]

Nice Job!!!

[Ryan]

Nice results! What are you using to create recipes using AI? Is it a lot of manual work or have you found something that works well?

[Tonja Gasperlin]

I think the success is more connected to keyword research and topical authorithy then anything else.

First month I did topical authorthy for bread and cookies section and these have a lot of views now. Then I started doing random recipes based what is treding from the past day on Google trends.

I have recipes in slovenian language, so all keywords by now have Keyword Difficulty Zero (by AHREFS).

I was using ChatGpt 3.5 for most of my articles and my strategy is:
1. Check Google Trends for trending keywords
2. Check Ahrefs keyword Explorer for any additional keywords under the main keyword amd try to include those inside the article
3. Almost every article has the same structure.
My promts are very basic:
A Write me a recipe for … in Slovenian language
B Write how to make the dish better
C Write what to serve with the dish
D Write nutrtional value of the dish
C Write history and fun facts about the dish ( if applicable).

So that the viewer gets additional value besides just the recipe.

Now I sm using ChatGpt 4, and I like it even better, because with some articles it is good that it browses the internet ( for examples ‘give me examples for the best awarded wines for homemade mulled wine).

I take free images from Wikimedia, only one per article. The most time it takes me to read everything and correct the grammar mistakes that ChatGPT makes.

Do you know how would I check if I have any returning visitors?

[Tonja Gasperlin]

Every article it takes me around 45 min to 1h to make…
Researching, promting (chatgpt is usually sooo slow), and then editing in Ghost.org CMS, with manually writting excerpt and meta title + metadescription.
I don’t make a lot of corrections to the content itself. Would still say it is a lot of manual work.

I will try to find someone who knows my language and can help me generate more articles, because not enough time is still the biggest obstacle… After the contest Im gonna try to push Youtube ads with different short videos (my idea is with some unusual stock footages, that you would not expect from the recipe website and will address audiences problems, like not to know how to decide what to eat) and we will see how it goes from there 🙂

[Tonja Gasperlin]

Sometimes I also promt:

‘Write in a more human sounding way ‘
Or ‘Give me more usual and unusual suggestions’

then I weed out what I like and what is too vague or repeats itself somewhere in the article.

[April Duffy]

Oh man, so behind! A false start and some trial and error later and I’m still at 0. But I’ll give it one more month.

[Gayathri]

Hi everyone,

I am a little late here.

I added 23 articles to my website.

I have not driven any organic visitors to my website yet. Hopefully I will start publishing more and start receiving organic traffic.

[J Paul Hendricks]

🤩 {excitedly waiting to see the latest rankings!}

[Tonja Gasperlin]

Ow yeah! Second place… I am SO close!

[Seb]

284 organic sessions with 25 articles.

Didn’t post any new articles in December.

Giving up on this website and making 2 new ones that probably won’t win this competition, but are better shots at passive income in the long run.

[Mark]

did anyone here see traffic to their site in the first 2 weeks of launching?

[Author]

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