AI Generated (Human Edited) Blog Case Study (0-$15k per Month in Under a Year)

My journey with my expanding portfolio of sites & AI content experiments

Hey everyone!

I did a guest post for the KoalaWriter blog, which I figured would be a great jumping off point for a recap of how my portfolio of sites has been doing, thoughts on AI as it pertains to bloggers, and other interesting tidbits.

In the article, I explain the progress of one of my niche sites (which I’ve been documenting on Blogging Guide).

The title is clickbait-y but true—I launched a new blog on January 1st 2023, and in October 2023 I reached over $15,000 in monthly revenue ($14,934.56 in display ad revenue + about $1000 from several different affiliate programs).

Of course, this isn’t my first blog. I have ~25 active currently, and have previously created dozens more.

But it is my first blog built with 90%+ AI generated content.

It was meant to be a prototype for a future model of blogging, in response to the advent of free/cheap AI generated content from companies like OpenAI.

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One point that I didn’t have space to include in the article was my firm belief that:

Regardless of whether you are a current blogger with a well established site, or are considering starting a blog, AI generated content can play a very positive role in your content production process.

While the tool I used (KoalaWriter) advertises itself as a “one click article generator” (and indeed it can be used in such a way), the content that achieved these staggering results in my case study was heavily edited AI content.

By this, I mean I used Koala to generate a first draft, which was then manually edited by me in such a way:

• New introduction: AI writing tools have mastered many things, but in my experience humans who are subject matter experts can almost always do a better intro. So I always wrote this myself.

• I deleted anywhere from 20% to 60% of the text in the article: If your prompts aren’t super refined, or you attempt to publish in bulk, you’ll need to delete a ton of “fluff content.” While Koala is much better than any alternative I’ve tried, it still produces extraneous content.

• I restructured articles: In addition to deleting content, I would move fragments of a sentence, sentences, and paragraph around to create the final product.

• I added in language that seemed more appropriate to my niche: AI writing tools may not understand who your intended audience is or what persona to adopt if you don’t spend some time with prompt engineering. This can lead to the inclusion of odd or overly technical jargon.

• Understanding strengths and weaknesses of AI writing tools: AI writing tools are just that—tools! If you calibrate them perfectly or apply them to the correct task, they can do phenomenally. But this requires planning and strategy on the part of the content creator.

Read my full KoalaWriter Review.

To fully get the most out of an AI blogging tool you need to make sure your niche is conducive to AI content.

As I noted in the guest post, this usually means choosing a blog niche that:

• is as narrow as possible. AI writing tools tend to write a consensus opinion unless otherwise prompted, so the more specific the topic, the less fluff your article will have.

• contains lots of factual content. Content that remains relatively constant is usually best for AI writing tools as it reduces the overall rate of inaccuracies.

• has relatively low competition. Specifically, make sure that the pages you are trying to outrank aren’t super high in terms of domain authority (ideally low authority, high traffic sites.

One great thing about Koala is the real time data overlay. If you’ve used ChatGPT, you’ve likely encountered some error message saying that “my knowledge only is current as of ____ date.” Koala uses fresh SERP data, meaning you can write about anything, in almost real time.

While my niche site from the case study didn’t have a ton of news content, there were some product updates, releases, and news-like content, and typically, within 24 hours of this content being published, I would see the new information applied in my Koala drafts.

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SERP Volatility / Site Progress

The Google algorithm updates from August to November (currently one ongoing) have been brutal to many bloggers.

One of the sites that I had purchased this year got hit quite hard leading to a significant drop in revenue.

But overall, the sites that I personally created, have weathered the storm quite well. None of those have experienced more than a 20% drop, and most are up over 50% since August.

Note: this is true for sites where I personally write the content, sites where I outsource content to a team of trusted writers, and my AI content sites.

I still get lots of questions through Blogging Guide, implying that blogging is dead:

“Now that blogging is dead, what are you going to do with your sites/how will you make money…”

😂

Blogging is not dead!

But I’ll concede that many bloggers may need to consider the long term viability of their niche, and adjust their blog monetization strategy.

-Until next time,

Casey

Recent Articles on Blogging Guide:

October 2023 Niche Site Report

Examples of Amazing Blogs Monetized with Mediavine

How Lead Generation Blogs Make Money

A Day in the Life of a Full-Time Blogger

The Alphabet Soup Method of Keyword Research for Bloggers

Rank and Rent in Blogging

How to Build an Online Community

Learning Management System (LMS) Statistics 2023

Buying vs. Building a New Blog

How to Become an Authority in Your Blogging Niche

How to Find Low Domain Authority Websites with High Traffic

Niches to Avoid as a Blogger (Worst Blog Niches)