Publisher. Builder. Investor. Writing about online business, leverage, and building a life that feels less like work and more like choice.
Vancouver, BC
Joined October 2014
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Most experiments I run fail.
The ones that work make up for the bombs.
This week I spent one hour coding with AI a new email signup feature for two sites I own.
This feature would normally cost me $99+ per month with 3rd party software. Now it’s free.
It’s a simple email popup form with unlimited split testing capabilities.
As you can see, this particular experiment is one of the few winners.
I’ve tested popups many times in the past but this time simplified the copy. That made all the difference.
What's up with @GoDaddy's alarmist email marketing?
Their use of "Billing failure" as an email subject line is an over-the-top way of saying "did not renew domain."
There's a HUGE difference between payment failed and chose not to renew.
The first time I saw that, I dropped everything to ensure my payment methods were working. They are.
Hence, my choosing to not renew a domain was NOT a "billing failure" but a choice to not renew.
Domain registration is one of the most sensitive services in our World. Losing a domain could cost someone everything.
IMO, GoDaddy needs to choose its words more carefully.
I added 1,480 additional email subscribers simply by adding gamification features to my sites.
Initially, I designed and deployed gamification to increase dwell time. I did not expect that with a single tweak it would be my second best lead source.
What’s gamification?
It’s anything that adds some sort of engagement features on websites. In my case I set up an incentive for visitors who engage in anyway twenty times during a visit they get one of my info-products for free (give their email).
What’s an engagement?
Any tap on an up or down vote, save an article (every visitor has their own library for saved content), emoji responses and of course signing up for the email newsletter.
Why do this?
It’s proven to be one of the best things I added because it adds a tremendous amount of time on site PLUS attracts email subs.
9,435 email subscribers over the past 30 days reveals the following:
Context:
1. Every subscriber signed up to a form that offers to email them the article they were on.
2. Every article was AI-assisted.
3. The two publications are in very different niches.
Conclusion: AI-assisted content can be so good that 9,435 people over the past 30 days were willing to give me their email so that the article they read is emailed to them for future reference.
Not all internal links are created equal. Some can double time on site and others not.
The ultimate internal linking system self-improves by split-testing and then changing up link destinations based on results.
It's a system I've wanted for years. AI finally made it possible.
This is how I added over 6,000 additional page views over the last seven days.
A few weeks ago I asked Claude how to get more page views per website visitor. Claude in all its brilliance suggested "build more internal links."
Internal links are not new to me but I must admit I've disregarded all these years how effective they can be for additional page views.
I decided to take Claude's advice.
I built thousands of surgical internal links across my sites that morning with the help of a custom script AI helped me with.
Lo and behold... Claude was correct. Internal links built right got me a lot of additional page views.
Quick heads up if you're in the San Diego area this Wednesday, May 22...
@tonythill , @jaredbauman and I are meeting up up this week in SD for a project and thought it would be fun to meet others in the area to talk shop for a couple of hours at a local watering hole.
If interested, here are the details and an RSVP form (so we know how much space to set aside):
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
lol. That’s a novel theory. Recovery requires more ads, not fewer. Sounds like Denis Leary’s more drugs is the solution youtu.be/2mIGlPvXqes?si=rqf3…
Google has gone off the logical cliff. I'll be proven wrong if their profits grow. After all, that's their primary mandate. Time will tell. For now, stock price is performing well.
🤣🤣🤣 . I second this... just straight up tell us nothing we do will ever help instead of giving cryptic guidance that's actually a big waste of time.
Google's guidelines are meaningless.
Do X and as long as you don't do Y or Z you can rank in search.
Okay Google, we can do that. Thanks for telling us.
Outcome: deindexed.
It must be our fault, right?
Wrong.
It's not an even playing field.
The problem is that some sites don't get penalized doing Y or Z. Instead, they keep getting piles and piles of traffic.
Example:
Apparently artificially refreshing a blog post date is against Google's guidelines:
xitter.cf/lilyraynyc/statu…
Fair enough. Makes sense, right??
Except, those rules are not applied equally.
I just wish it were an even playing field.
The egregious kick in the teeth here is that other sites, such as Forbes, do what appears to be artificial refreshening enjoying top rankings. See attached screenshot.
Is anyone else confused as to what we should do?
Do the rules apply to some sites and not others? It seems clear to me that's the unfortunate situation.
@JohnMu and @searchliaison , suggestions?
Here's a real-life example of how studying Google's documentation can prevent you from doing something that "everyone else is doing" to drive SEO performance, maybe with early success:
Everyone: *creating and using WP plugins to automatically switch all content's publication date to the current year, without editing the content. And/or using AI to "rewrite" the content across all pages.* Thousands of sites now doing this at scale.
Google's spam guidelines: doing these things is the textbook definition of "artificial refreshening" - and can lead to a manual action specifically for that.
Just because you may see a surge in traffic temporarily, or maybe a boost in CTR, this doesn't mean Google won't eventually ding your site for violating its guidelines.
This "dinging" doesn't always come in the form of a manual action, so you won't always know what's the exact cause if and when an algorithm update hits your site.
But doing these "spammy" tactics that go against Google's guidelines - and continuing to layer them on top of each other over time - it all adds up, and in my experience, these things often cause problems later on.