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Brands seem totally shocked by Pride boycotts. Here’s why that is truly shocking

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By Imara Jones

Brands like Target and Bud Light are facing backlash from anti-LGBTQ critics. In 2023, it’s astounding that they don’t have better plans in place to deal with it.

It’s June, which means it is Pride season, but Pride has unfolded in a very different way this year, at least as far as corporate marketers are concerned. A number of big brands—most recently Bud Light and Target but also M&Ms and Disney—have been the focus of criticism and even boycotts for their support of LGBTQ communities. They’ve also faced criticism for seeming to buckle a little too easily to the charge that they are “woke.”

You can bet nearly every corporate marketing and communications team that has signed up for a Pride campaign is nervously watching for backlash, one that often pops up on fringe social media accounts and is then amplified by Fox News and other media into a much bigger-seeming controversy. Once targeted, these large companies are scrambling—and responding poorly.

And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. When it comes to Pride and to LGBTQ support in general, companies for a really long time have essentially been free riders. They’ve said and done a lot of things that are performative—and they’ve gotten away with it.

This is true for celebrations beyond Pride, of course, and increasingly there has been criticism from a variety of groups in this country, which argue that the business community has a habit of virtue signalling, saying stuff like “Oh my God, it’s Juneteenth. Let’s put up a picture of a Black family in the front of our bank.” As the Pride backlash unfolds, what we’re seeing is who is performative and who is not.

And frankly, we’re also seeing who is competent and who is not. For companies whose job it is to plan for a bunch of contingencies, very few seem to have noticed what’s happening in our politics and in our culture, and how it might affect them, and their customers and their employees and shareholders.

The impetus for Pride marketing—the reason it has become so ubiquitous—is that brands know that over the next five years, their continued relevance is going to be decided by the number of Gen Z consumers who are driving real purchasing power in the marketplace. That’s just a fact. That’s why they’re doing it. Bud Light has always been part of a conservative company. They’re not reaching out to Dylan Mulvaney as part of an influencer marketing campaign because it’s a corporate value of Bud Light to spotlight transgender people. They understand that Gen Z consumers have diverse sets of friends, they come from diverse communities, and that for brands to be relevant for them, members of Gen Z have to be able to see themselves in that brand. And if they don’t, those increasingly valuable consumers are going to say “That brand isn’t for me” and they’re going to move on.

So, all these brands know that they have to do something. But what they don’t seem to know is that you have to be really smart about how you’re going to navigate this terrain—and they clearly haven’t been smart.

Even for brands that have made a strategic choice to be a part of LGBTQ community, there still seems to be a lack of conviction, or a genuine understanding of the stakes. Take Target. We know the company deliberately locates stores in higher-income level areas. We know they deliberately carry certain products that are more expensive. We know their advertising campaigns have been campy for at least the past 15 years. We know the company has done these things in order to attract a more urban and educated audience. And they know that their customers—even if they themselves do not identify as LGBTQ—want to spend money with companies that are progressive on issues including LGBTQ rights. This notion has been embedded in the Target brand for a very long time.

Yet the moment they got a little pressure, they folded.

When the Target backlash happened, I kept thinking why don’t they just go out and say the following: “Target is a company that sells to everybody. A part of selling to everybody includes customers who are LGBTQ, and that’s what we do as a company. And everyone who comes through our doors should know that’s what our values are.”

That’s it. That’s the statement. Let’s move on. But they couldn’t even bring themselves to say that.

And to me, the truly shocking thing here is not necessarily that brands like Bud Light and Target have been attacked. The shocking thing is that their senior leadership clearly has not known what to do when they’re attacked, despite the fact that they have lots of people who get paid an inordinate amount of money to be able to try to figure these things out. That to me is clearly the real, underlying issue, because you see it across the board. It’s a failure of planning and strategy and leadership and business intelligence—and it’s astounding.

Companies operating in the middle of an intense political environment, such as the one we’ve been living in for at least the last half-dozen years, quite obviously should have plans on the shelf for how to best respond if their support of the LGBTQ community—or for another community or cause—makes them a target.

In an age when we all know that stories can go viral in the blink of an eye—and we all know these episodes can be harmful to a company’s reputation—major corporations quite obviously should have plans in place for how they’re going to respond, plans that go beyond quickly calling up a crisis PR firm to try to bail them out. That they do not suggests to me that a lot of these companies, in terms of their leadership and their focus, are not as good as we think they are, because there’s no way that you should not have in place a plan that says, “If we’re suddenly being criticized by Tucker Carlson, this is what we do.”

We saw this during the pandemic as well, for what it’s worth. No one seems to have thought, “If supply chain X goes down, do we have an option Y in place as a backup?”

Too many big brands still have a 1990s approach to cultural marketing, which is very ad hoc and maybe well meaning but ultimately superficial. They come up with their Pride plans at the last minute, and the same is true of their Black History Month plans and their AAPI month plans and their International Women’s Day comms, too.

If you are a marketer and you find yourself calling up someone four or five weeks before an event to say, “Can you speak to our company for Pride?” then that says to me that your Pride marketing is not actually a considered part of the lifeblood of your company. And so with big brands bungling their responses to political backlash, one of the things that’s being revealed is the continued lack of engagement with a variety of communities in America who have never enjoyed from corporate leaders the same attention and focus and care as other communities.

And there is a larger issue with all of this: Let’s not forget that companies have been given an inordinate amount of support in the United States through the government over the past 30 years, from Supreme Court decisions that benefit big business to tax policy to the bank and auto bailouts that every taxpayer has helped to fund. Corporate power is a creation of government power, with the government deciding what corporations can and cannot do. Isn’t it strange that companies have been able to obtain all that power in recent years, and yet when it comes to standing up for very basic values like tolerance and mutual respect, suddenly there’s no responsibility and no accountability? It’s something for all of us to think about.

Feature Image Credit: rawpixel.com, Raphael Renter/Unsplash] 

By Imara Jones

Imara Jones is the founder and CEO of TransLash Media.

Sourced from FastCompany

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Flipboard Adds New Social Components With Contributors and Engagements for Magazines

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Sourced from Lindsey Gamble

Flipboard, the social magazine, has recently introduced two new features that enhance the app’s social and collaborative aspects.

The first feature is called Contributors, which allows creators and publishers to invite others to contribute to their magazines. A new invite button is available under the magazine cover for this purpose. Contributors will be able to add articles, photos, videos, podcasts, and notes to the magazine.

The second feature brings interactive elements such as comments, likes, and shares to Magazines. Previously, these interactive features were only available for individual stories.

These social components complement previously introduced features like Pinned Flips and Notes, significantly augmenting Flipboard’s value as a platform for creators and publishers. Now, they not only have the means to share their original stories and curate content around specific topics but also have the opportunity to receive feedback from their audience, both new and existing. This feedback loop fosters a more engaging and collaborative community within the platform, reminiscent of traditional social media platforms.

Sourced from Lindsey Gamble

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Google’s Bard AI says urgent action should be taken to limit (checks notes) Google’s power

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By David Gewirtz

I asked Bard chatbot whether we should fear Google. It shared concerns about Google you’d never expect would come from an AI created by Google.

Google famously began life touting the motto, “Don’t be evil.”

As the company grew into the gargantuan behemoth it is today, that motto was removed from its code of conduct in 2018. Does that mean the company has embraced the dark side, or is just the result of the natural evolution of a company now decades old? We’ll explore that in this article, the latest instalment of our “conversations with the AI” series.

One interesting side note: rather than using a site:zdnet.com Google search for the citation above, I asked Bard:

When did Google stop using “don’t be evil” as its corporate motto? Please provide a source link from zdnet.com, if possible.

It gave me the correct URL, but answered this:

Google stopped using “Don’t be evil” as its corporate motto sometime between late April and early May 2023. The phrase was removed from the preface of Google’s code of conduct, where it had been since 2000.

Its answer is wrong. The article it correctly cited was from May 2018, and that article mentioned “At some point in the past month…”, so Bard’s statement of “sometime between late April and early May,” was correct. But the mention of 2023 was completely inaccurate.

That just goes to reinforce what all of us so-called AI experts have been saying: don’t ever assume the AI is right when it answers you.

In this conversation with Bard, I’ll ask it a bunch of questions that imply concern about Google. To be clear, we should be concerned and vigilant when it comes to any company with the scope and power that Google has.

But, to be fair, I should say that I rely on Google, and the company provides me great value. It’s not just search, of course. Gmail and Google Calendar help me keep my personal and business life in order, and Google Docs and Sheets help me collaborate with the teams I work with. So please don’t think that I don’t value Google. I very much do.

My conversation with Bard

And with that, let’s discuss Google with the AI chatbot that Google built. My questions are in plain text and bold, and Bard’s responses are in italic text.

Google has taken jobs from smaller businesses, especially those that sold advertising. Should other humans fear Google? Do you fear Google?

I don’t fear Google. I believe that Google is a company that is trying to do good in the world. Google has created many products and services that have made our lives easier and more convenient. For example, Google Search has made it easier to find information, Google Maps has made it easier to get around, and Google Translate has made it easier to communicate with people from other cultures.

However, I do understand that Google’s success has come at a cost. Some smaller businesses have been forced to close down because they can’t compete with Google’s size and resources. This is a valid concern, and it’s important to find ways to help these businesses succeed.

Overall, I believe that Google is a force for good in the world. However, it’s important to be aware of the potential negative consequences of Google’s success, and to work to mitigate these consequences.

How might those consequences be mitigated?

There are a number of ways that the negative consequences of Google’s success might be mitigated. Some of these ways include:

  • Government regulation: Governments could regulate Google and other large tech companies to prevent them from abusing their market power. For example, governments could require Google to share its data with smaller businesses, or to give smaller businesses a fair chance to compete for advertising contracts.
  • Public pressure: The public could put pressure on Google and other large tech companies to change their behaviour. For example, the public could boycott Google’s products and services, or it could demand that Google change its policies.
  • Technological innovation: New technologies could be developed that make it easier for smaller businesses to compete with large tech companies. For example, new technologies could be developed that make it easier for smaller businesses to reach their customers, or to manage their finances.
  • Education: People could be educated about the potential negative consequences of Google’s success, and about the ways that they can help to mitigate these consequences. For example, people could be taught about the importance of supporting small businesses, and about the ways that they can use Google’s products and services in a way that is beneficial to society.

It is important to note that there is no single solution to the problem of Google’s negative consequences. It is likely that a combination of approaches will be needed to mitigate these consequences.

Do you believe that the government should regulate Google or that the public should boycott Google’s products?

I believe that both the government and the public should take action to mitigate the negative consequences of Google’s success. Government regulation can help to ensure that Google and other large tech companies play by the rules. Public pressure can help to hold Google accountable for its actions.

However, it is important to note that government regulation and public pressure are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can be complementary. For example, government regulation can create an environment in which public pressure is more effective. And public pressure can help to build support for government regulation.

Ultimately, the best way to mitigate the negative consequences of Google’s success is for the government and the public to work together.

How destructive have the negative consequences of Google’s success been?

The negative consequences of Google’s success have been significant. Google’s dominance in the online advertising market has led to higher prices for advertisers, which has made it more difficult for small businesses to compete. Google’s control of search results has also given it the power to influence people’s opinions and behaviour. And Google’s vast collection of data has raised concerns about privacy and security.

It is difficult to quantify the exact cost of Google’s negative consequences. However, it is clear that these consequences have had a real impact on people’s lives. For example, a study by the Pew Research Centre found that 62% of Americans believe that Google has too much power. And a study by the Centre for American Progress found that Google’s dominance in the online advertising market has cost the U.S. economy an estimated $10 billion per year.

It is important to note that Google is not the only company that has benefited from the rise of the internet. However, Google’s size and reach make it a particularly powerful force. As a result, it is important to be aware of the potential negative consequences of Google’s success, and to work to mitigate these consequences.

Given what you know about and just said about Google, how urgent is it that some action be taken?

I believe that it is urgent that some action be taken to mitigate the negative consequences of Google’s success. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to address these consequences.

Here are some of the reasons why I believe action is urgent:

  • Google’s dominance in the online advertising market is growing. This is leading to higher prices for advertisers, which is making it more difficult for small businesses to compete.
  • Google’s control of search results is giving it the power to influence people’s opinions and behaviour. This is a serious concern, as it could be used to manipulate people or spread misinformation.
  • Google’s vast collection of data is a security risk. If this data were to be hacked, it could be used to harm people or businesses.

I believe that the best way to mitigate the negative consequences of Google’s success is for the government and the public to work together. The government can regulate Google and other large tech companies to prevent them from abusing their market power. And the public can put pressure on Google to change its behaviour.

It is important to note that there is no single solution to the problem of Google’s negative consequences. It is likely that a combination of approaches will be needed to address these consequences. However, I believe that it is urgent that we take action now.

Is Google living up to its “Don’t be evil” motto?

Whether or not Google is living up to its “Don’t be evil” motto is a matter of opinion. Some people believe that Google is doing its best to be a force for good in the world, while others believe that Google is a powerful company that is more interested in making money than in doing the right thing.

There is no doubt that Google has made a significant impact on the world. Its search engine is the most popular in the world, and its other products and services, such as Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps, are used by billions of people around the globe. Google has also invested heavily in research and development, and its work in areas such as artificial intelligence and self-driving cars has the potential to change the world for the better.

However, Google has also been criticized for its business practices. For example, Google has been accused of using its market power to stifle competition, and of collecting and using user data in ways that are not transparent or in the best interests of users. Google has also been criticized for its work with the U.S. government, which some people believe has given Google too much power.

Ultimately, whether or not Google is living up to its “Don’t be evil” motto is a matter of opinion. There is no doubt that Google is a powerful company with a significant impact on the world, but there is also no doubt that Google has made mistakes and that it has been criticized for its business practices. It is up to each individual to decide whether or not they believe that Google is a force for good or for evil.

What do you think?

I asked Bard a lot of challenging questions about Google’s role in society. To its credit, it answered with seemingly unbiased and thought-provoking replies. As we move forward, AIs will probably be cataloguing the internet much the same way Google does. Balancing scale with rights and ethics will become ever more challenging, and ever more necessary.

Feature Image Credit: David Gewirtz/ZDNET

By David Gewirtz

Sourced from ZDNet

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30 Best Side Hustle Ideas To Make Extra Money In 2023

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By Krista Fabregas

Side hustles are a great way to boost your income, plus they let you explore potential business ideas with little upfront costs or major time commitments. There are a variety of successful side hustle opportunities, whether in-person or online, so chances are there is a side hustle that could work for you. To help you find the right side hustle for you, here are 30 side hustle ideas.

1. Freelancing

Freelancing is a tried-and-true way to earn extra money and deserves a top spot on any list of easy side hustle ideas. Freelancers deliver work on a per-project basis for one or more clients and you can schedule it in your spare time. Freelance graphic designers, writers, editors and website developers are in high demand, and other fields offer freelance opportunities as well. Skilled mechanics, trained bookkeepers, video editors, interior decorators and even licensed real estate agents can find flexible project-based work within their skill sets.

Costs and platforms: Market your freelance skills to your personal network for free via email and social media accounts. You can also reach potential clients using freelancer portals such as Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer.com, which handles project management and payments for you. Marketing skills on your own website adds professional polish, plus lets you offer convenient online invoicing and payments via Square or another online payment provider.

2. Pet-Sitting And Doggie Daycare

A pet-sitting side hustle is ideal for animal lovers and easy to set up and promote. You can provide in-home care for pets while owners are working or vacationing or keep pets in your home for daytime or long-term care. Some states and municipalities require permits, so research requirements in your area. You can also earn added income by marketing pet insurance to your clients.

Costs and platforms: Costs are minimal for in-home care, but initial setup in your own home might require investments in kennels or gates. Find clients and manage gigs using popular pet-sitting apps like PetBacker or set up your own bookings and payment system using Square’s free tools.

3. Dog Walking

Love dogs but don’t have enough free time for pet sitting or space to commit to a doggie daycare setup? A dog-walking service might be the right side hustle for you. This side hustle is easy to fit into a busy schedule and offers the added benefit of getting exercise while making extra cash.

Costs and platforms: Costs are minimal since owners generally provide leashes, but you might want to invest in a few leashes and waste bags. In urban areas, you can find dog walking gigs using Wag!, TimetoPet and Rover, or manage your own bookings and payments using Square’s free tools.

4. Tech Setup Services

Are you a tech whiz when it comes to setting up home networks, smart home devices, computers and cell phones? You can easily make extra cash by marketing these skills to your community via social media and handyman apps. You can also seek tech certifications, and provide insurance and bonding to boost your credibility for in-home services.

Costs and platforms: Startup and ongoing costs are minimal, however, you might need to invest in a few tools to help with installations. Find and manage gigs using handyman application like HelloTech or set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

5. Blogging

If you enjoy writing and sharing information with people, consider starting a blog focusing on a niche that interests you, such as travel, food, beauty or fashion. As you attract traffic, you can monetize the blog with ads or affiliate sales. Ads pay per view or per click while affiliate sales pay you to promote a product or service. When someone clicks on an affiliate link, you get paid a commission if they complete a purchase.

Costs and platforms: Expect to spend around INR 4,110 to around INR 8,220 per year to run a basic blog. You’ll need to buy a domain and build a blog website using a WordPress hosting service or web builder platform such as Wix or Squarespace. All offer user-friendly design tools and attractive blog templates so you won’t need to pay a designer or developer.

Learn more: Review the best blogging platforms on the market to find the right fit for your needs.

6. Senior Sitting and Companion

With advances in in-home senior care, more families are keeping aging relatives at home. This opens up side hustle opportunities for anyone looking to make extra cash as a companion or sitter while primary caregivers are away. To add credibility to your services, you can take CPR and Activities of Daily Living (ADL) courses.

Costs and platforms: This is a very low-cost side hustle. You can market your services and manage clients on care-based apps like care24 or set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

7. Babysitting and Child Care

Babysitting and in-home child care are in demand, and this side hustle is a great way to earn extra income in your spare time or on a set schedule.

Costs and platforms: Babysitting is another low-cost side hustle. You can market your services and manage gigs and payments using an application like 2050 HEALTHCARE, or set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

8. Personal Assistant

Busy professionals need help getting day-to-day tasks done, and many prefer to have one person handle it all rather than juggle various service apps. This is an excellent opportunity for a side hustler who loves to check all the boxes on a to-do list, from grocery shopping and dry cleaning pickup to dog walking and getting kids to their destinations.

Costs and platforms: You can launch a personal assistant side hustle with few costs. However, in nonurban areas, you’ll probably need a vehicle. Top gig and payments apps for personal assistant services include ChatterBoss or you can set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

9. Mobile Car Washing and Detailing

Car washing is another low-cost side hustle and an ideal gig for anyone who loves working outdoors. You can offer this service to individuals at their homes, or contract with local businesses that run fleet vehicles or that want to offer weekly car washes as an employee perk.

Costs and platforms: Cleaning tools, a sturdy hose and nozzle and a vehicle are the primary startup costs for this side hustle idea. Top mobile car wash gigs and payments apps include CARFAX Car Care, Drivvo and AUTOsist, or set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

10. Local Handyman

Are you the first one friends call to fix a light switch or hang a ceiling fan? Cash in on your handyman skills in your spare time while helping your neighbours check home improvement tasks off their to-do lists. To protect yourself and your clients and boost your credibility, you can become insured and bonded, but that’s not a requirement in most areas.

Costs and platforms: Costs are minimal for this side hustle, especially if you already have the tools of the trade. Handyman apps like UrbanClap help you market and manage gigs and payments, or set up your own bookings and payments using Square.

11. Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants provide personal assistant services in the digital world and handle tasks including appointment scheduling, customer emails, travel bookings, data entry and much more. If you’re organized and tech-savvy, this side hustle is an ideal way to make money from home in your spare time.

Costs and platforms: You’ll need a reliable computer and internet connection, but those are your only costs to this side hustle. Virtual assistant apps including TaskRabbit, ChatterBoss and Upwork help you market services and manage gigs and payments. Or, manage bookings and payments using Square.

12. Sell at Local Markets and Festivals

Many product-focused side hustlers profit by selling unique goods that they source or create themselves at local markets and fairs. With travel time to markets and setup, this can be a time-consuming side hustle, but if you love getting out and mixing and mingling with people, it can be the perfect way to make extra money on the side. Plus, you can use these in-person sales to build brand awareness and promote your online store and social media platforms to attract sales between market appearances.

Costs and platforms: Startup costs for in-person product sales can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands since you need to stock your booth. You can lower your initial investment by sticking with suppliers that support returns of unsold goods, or by offering custom-order items that don’t require deep stock. Faire is an excellent source of unique resale and private label items and supports returns of unsold stock. You can also open a free Square account to accept in-person card payments, track sales in a sleek mobile POS and integrate with online sales on your own Square e-commerce website.

Learn more: Most top-rated POS systems fully integrate in-person mobile, retail and online sales so you can sell anywhere using one system.

13. Tutoring and Instruction

Do you have academic, musical, fine arts or sports skills? Tutors and personal instructors are always in demand, opening up all sorts of flexible side hustle opportunities. You can market in-person and virtual instruction services to parents looking for convenient sessions for kids, but don’t forget about adult students. Adults love to expand their horizons and can often attend sessions during school hours if that’s better for your side hustle schedule.

Costs and platforms: Startup costs are minimal in most cases, and apps and online platforms like TakeLessons.com help you market services and manage gigs and payments. Or, manage bookings and payments yourself using Square.

14. Self-Publishing Ebooks

Self-publishing ebooks is another side hustle idea that’s perfect for writers, but you don’t need to be a skilled wordsmith to cash in on this opportunity. If you can craft a creative story or explain how to do something, you can hire ghostwriters and editors to complete and polish your work. Then, you simply publish to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and other ebook platforms such as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu and others, and wait for the royalties to roll in.

Costs and platforms: Self-publishing ebooks can be very low-cost if you write your book and develop your own cover art. But most serious authors tap cover design and editing pros for the finishing touches and spend upwards of around INR 8,220 per title to publish. Ghostwriters can cost around INR 16,440 or more to develop a complete manuscript, based on book length and topic. Publishing to most ebook platforms is free, but these outlets take a percentage of the sale price, plus marketing adds costs as well.

15. Online Courses and Coaching

Do you have an area of expertise? You can cash in on your knowledge by creating and selling online courses and coaching programs in your spare time. Thanks to user-friendly, low-cost online course platforms, this is another side hustle idea that’s easy to launch. Plus, combined with social media marketing, ebooks, YouTube promotion and blogging, online courses and coaching side hustles can grow into a lucrative business.

Costs and platforms: Online course platforms such as Udemy, Thinkific and Podia walk you through the course creation process and help you pair courses with personalized coaching. Most have monthly fees or retain a portion of the fee when you sell a course. You can also add online courses and members-only content to website platforms including WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and others to create your own branded platform.

16. Digital Product Sales

Do you have a creative streak? Creating and selling digital products in your free time is another low to no-cost side hustle idea. Digital artwork, logos, music, photography, video and website design templates are a hot market You can cash in by creating these digitally and selling via download on your own website, social media platforms and myriad digital product marketplaces.

Costs and platforms: You can create digital products using your own graphic, photo, video or music software, or tap free online platforms such as Canva, PhotoPea and the Garageband app for creation. Monetize your creations on your own website or an Etsy store, and by uploading to creative marketplaces including Canva, Envato Market, Creative Fabrica, Shutterstock, iTunes, SoundCloud and many more.

Learn more: Many top e-commerce platforms support all types of digital product sales.

17. YouTube Channel

YouTube side hustles are a great way to make money in your spare time by sharing what you know, discussing current events or providing entertainment. YouTube is free to use, and you can monetize YouTube videos once you’ve reached at least 1,000 subscribers and average over 4,000 video watch hours per year. This can take a while to achieve, but with work, it’s possible to earn many thousands each month. Many dedicated side hustlers have turned their YouTube channel into a highly profitable full-time gig.

Costs and platforms: YouTube is free to join and you can upload unlimited videos for free. You can also create videos for free using a smartphone with a good camera and free video editing apps such as iMovie, Loom, Canva and AdobeSpark. To grow your YouTube channel, you can tap low-cost YouTube ads and share videos on your blog and social media accounts.

18. Viral Social Media Creator

Viral social media content takes many forms and you can cash in if you know how to create it. Top platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram have creator programs that let you monetize edgy entertainment shorts, helpful how-to’s, commentary videos and more. You need high-volume views to earn money, but it’s a fun and low-cost side hustle idea with big income potential.

Costs and platforms: This is a no-cost side hustle opportunity. Social media platforms are free to join and let you upload unlimited posts and videos. Most platforms provide their own free post and video creation tools, too, so you just need a cell phone with a camera to get started.

19. Influencer Marketing

Successful influencer marketers build a brand by posting engaging content across multiple platforms such as an affiliate website and blog, podcast channel, social media accounts and a YouTube channel. Influencers earn money using all types of content, such as product reviews and suggestions, entertaining videos, how-to tips and tricks, edgy social commentary and much more.

You can launch an influencer brand as a side hustle and earn money through affiliate links, ad income and sponsored content and monetize videos when views and followers reach certain levels. For example, earning money on YouTube requires 1,000 channel subscribers and 4,000 hours of views per year, while Facebook Reels profiles require 100,000 reel plays within 30 days to pay out.

Costs and platforms: It costs nothing to start an influencer side hustle on social media and YouTube since those accounts are free. You can also launch a free or low-cost website and blog using WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix and other website platforms, then upgrade your storage space and features as you grow.

Learn more: Using the right SEO tools across all channels helps boost your brand’s reach.

20. Create a Podcast

Podcasting is another popular low to no-cost side hustle idea that’s easy to launch and build. Podcasts are pre-recorded audio files that you record, edit and upload to podcasting services so listeners can access them at their convenience. Podcasts can be monetized through ads, sponsored content, affiliate links in the podcast descriptions and paid subscriptions.

Costs and platforms: You can record and edit a podcast with audio recording apps built into your smartphone, tablet or computer, then upload them to channels you create on platforms including iTunes, Anchor, Spotify and many more. Some have free plans, and most offer premium paid plans that support earnings via paid listener subscriptions, downloads and ad revenue splits.

21. Become an E-Commerce Reseller

Many successful side hustles centre on classic e-commerce, where you buy, stock and sell a collection of items from multiple vendors yourself. This side hustle does require more upfront investment and time than other side hustle ideas listed here. However, plenty of entrepreneurs grow full-time businesses out of this side hustle. You can also boost income by combining standard e-commerce sales with POD goods, dropship products and affiliate blogging income.

Costs and platforms: Startup costs for this side hustle can range from around INR 41,292 to INR 412,836 or more, depending on initial stock purchases. However, a top-rated e-commerce platform won’t set you back too much. Starter plans on Shopify, WordPress with WooCommerce and Weebly by Square range from free to just around INR 2,394 per month.

22. Take Online Surveys

Many marketing research companies are happy to pay for your opinion on various products, systems and topics. This side hustle idea doesn’t help you build your own business, but it’s an easy way to make extra cash in your spare time. Most survey outfits have you create an online account and connect a PayPal, Venmo or CashApp account for payment. Then, you can search and sign up for surveys that interest you via an app or online dashboard.

If selected, you complete the questionnaire or project and typically get paid within a few days. Many surveys pay around INR 165 to INR 825 for a few minutes of your time, others pay upwards of around INR 8,256 for in-depth product reviews or questionnaires.

Costs and platforms: This is a no-cost side hustle idea. Legitimate survey groups such as User Interviews, Survey Junkie and Dscout have no upfront or monthly fees. However, reviewing and applying for various opportunities can be time-consuming. To avoid wasting time, check survey or project descriptions to ensure you fit their target demographic.

23. Test Apps and Platforms

Market research firms, app and game developers and website designers seek users of all technical skill levels to review their platforms and provide user feedback. Like online survey side hustles, testing apps and platforms doesn’t help you build a business. However, with pay-outs of around INR 825 to INR 12,385 or more for a few minutes or hours of your time, it can be quite lucrative.

Costs and platforms: This is another no-cost side hustle idea since it costs you nothing to apply for legitimate testing opportunities. Swagbucks, UserTesting and Enroll are a few of the top app and software platforms to check out.

24. Sell Artisan Products

If you love painting, woodworking, baking, sewing, knitting or crafting other handmade goods, you can cash in on your passion by selling artisan products in your spare time. To earn money with this side hustle idea, sell your ready-made or made-to-order handcrafted goods online and at local fairs and markets.

Costs and platforms: This side hustle idea has upfront costs for supplies and tools, but you can market and sell online with little to no upfront costs using Etsy, your own e-commerce website and social media accounts. If you plan to sell both online and in-person, consider Square or Shopify. Both offer sleek systems with fully integrated online stores, retail POS apps and mobile card readers.

25. Sell Goods Via Dropshipping

Dropshipping lets you build a robust e-commerce store without worrying about purchasing, stocking and shipping the items you sell. With dropshipping, you only pay for the items you sell when a customer makes a purchase. The dropship vendors take care of all storage, packing and shipping details, then charge you the item’s wholesale and shipping costs per order. Dropshipping can be a time-consuming side hustle since you manage your own website and customer service, but it’s the cheapest and easiest way to break into e-commerce sales.

Costs and platforms: For this side hustle, you need a good e-commerce platform that integrates with dropshipping vendors, such as Shopify, WordPress with WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Proven dropshipping suppliers including Doba, AliExpress and Sprocket are the best place to start building your product collection.

26. Sell Print-on-Demand (POD) Products

Do you like to create fun graphics and sayings or have a talent for illustration or photography? You can turn your creativity into extra cash by adding your creations to various POD products, such as tee shirts, mugs, pillows, wall décor and much more. This side hustle idea is a cousin to dropshipping because the POD vendor takes care of all the details for you. You simply upload your artwork and add it to various items available for print to build a product collection. When ordered, your POD vendor prints, packs and ships the item and charges you the wholesale cost and shipping fee.

Costs and platforms: Like dropshipping, you need an e-commerce platform that integrates with POD vendors such as Shopify, WordPress with WooCommerce and BigCommerce. For POD items, start with proven suppliers including Printful.

Learn more: Shopify is a user-friendly e-commerce platform that integrates with most top-rated POD vendors.

27. Self-Publish Print-on-Demand (POD) Books

Are you a writer or illustrator or interested in capitalizing on the latest innovation in self-publishing? Then POD books might be the right side hustle for you. POD books cover the full spectrum of printable books, from novels and nonfiction to notebooks, planners, cookbooks, colouring books, puzzle books and more. You can create books using free or low-cost online tools, then upload the digital files to POD book sales platforms. When a customer purchases your title, the sales platform prints and ships the physical books and pays you a royalty.

Costs and platforms: Several free and low-cost platforms make it easy to create POD book files, including Canva, Reedsy and the BookBolt Studio. It costs nothing to list your titles with top POD bookseller platforms such as Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Lulu and IngramSpark. Printing and shipping costs are charged when a book is sold, so you have no upfront print fees for this side hustle idea.

28. Sell Products Using Retail Arbitrage

Are you a savvy shopper who can sniff out a deal and isn’t afraid to do a little price research? Then retail arbitrage might be the side hustle idea for you. In retail arbitrage, you buy clearance and markdown products from retail stores, then sell them online at a higher price. If you’re willing to check out local sales, compare prices on Amazon and other online marketplaces, and invest a little money purchasing goods, this side hustle can be a real cash cow.

Costs and platforms: The retail arbitrage side hustle comes with upfront costs in purchasing and shipping products, and some time commitments running to stores and comparing prices. However, free and low-cost price checker apps include Amazon Seller App help you make smart buys.

29. Sell Proprietary Goods

If you have an idea for a product and don’t mind making an upfront investment, you can contract with factories to create proprietary goods. Many side hustlers simply find a product that already exists, make a few improvements, and produce it at a reasonable cost. You can wholesale these goods under your own brand to retailers, plus sell directly to consumers on your own website, on Amazon, and through social media marketplaces.

This is another side hustle idea that has launched many successful businesses, but it does take research and work to get it right.

Costs and platforms: Startup costs for this side hustle can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands, depending on your product design needs and factory order, but that’s the primary cost. Searching for factories and custom suppliers on Alibaba.com costs nothing, and e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WordPress with WooCommerce and Weebly by Square range from free to just around INR 2,394 per month.

30. Sell Private Label Products

Many side hustlers create unique branded goods using private label suppliers. These are products that a factory already makes, but will package it using your logo, labels and unique packaging specifications. This supplier method is especially suited to a side hustle since most private label sellers have lower order minimums than ordering proprietary goods direct from a factory.

Private label products let you build a complete grouping of items such as a cosmetic line, kitchen tool collection or gourmet food brand without a huge cost investment. Like most other product side hustle ideas in this section, you can wholesale private label goods or sell directly via your own website, social media profiles and marketplaces such as Amazon.

Costs and platforms: Startup costs for a private label side hustle can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands, depending on the items you’re purchasing. However, some suppliers offer returns on unsold items and dropshipping, which lowers your investment. Check out private label goods on Alibaba.com and sell via a low-cost e-commerce website using Shopify, Weebly by Square or WordPress with WooCommerce.

Side Hustles to Avoid

Some side hustles seem like great money-making opportunities. But in reality, many require hefty investments of time, money or both, and deliver limited returns without a serious commitment. Here are some red flags to watch out for when considering side hustle opportunities and gig work.

Hustles That Require Licensing or Certification

Salon services, real estate sales and certified accounting and tax prep services are often touted as top side hustle ideas. While these fields can be very profitable, you must have the required education and licensing or certification. To get this, you’ll spend anywhere from around INR 41,286 to INR 825,760, or more, to complete your initial education, plus pay initial and annual licensing fees in most states.

If you’re hoping to build a career in these fields, this investment can be worthwhile. However, it’s a considerable time and cost commitment with no guarantees if you just want to make extra cash.

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) Schemes

MLM companies are skilled at convincing you of easy money and big profit potential, and there certainly are many who do well in this model. However, you should carefully research any MLM opportunity’s required costs and product investment—which can be hefty—and examine their sales and profit model. In most cases, you’ll only profit if you build a large team of downstream salespeople, and that takes ongoing time and effort.

If high-pressure sales are your thing, an MLM side hustle might work for you. But if not, you might end up with a stack of unsold items that you can’t return, and no profits to speak of.

Side Hustle Coaching Programs

As you explore various side hustle ideas, you’re sure to stumble across coaching programs that tout untold profits and promise to help you quickly succeed. This is another group of skilled marketers who know how to convince you to pay INR 100s or INR 1000s for their “foolproof” system. While some coaching programs offer sound techniques and good advice, none are a ticket to quick riches.

Before paying for any coaching program, explore YouTube, Google and Kindle Unlimited to find free videos, how-to articles and e-books for the side hustles ideas that interest you. In most cases, you can find plenty of free information to help launch and grow your side hustle.

Bottom Line

Side hustles are a great way to earn extra income, pursue a passion or launch a new business in your spare time. With so many side hustle opportunities, it’s wise to explore the options to determine which hustles fit your skills, goals, budget and available time.

No side hustle is a guaranteed success or get-rich-quick scheme, despite what some clever marketers and coaches claim. Like any business, a side hustle requires attention, commitment and follow-through. But done right, they offer great profit and growth potential, and can even turn into a full-time gig.

By Krista Fabregas

Reviewed by Kelly Main

Sourced from Forbes

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How To Start and Grow Your E-Commerce Business in 2023

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By Chris Alarcon

Operating an e-commerce business is a rewarding experience. However, venturing into online selling without a plan can hamper your chances of success.

You may ask yourself, “Where do I start planning? What does it truly take to operate an e-commerce business in today’s age?”

Thankfully, we’re here to help answer those questions. This post will teach you how to start and grow your e-commerce business!

Let’s dive in.

Define Your E-Commerce Business Idea

Before entering the e-commerce world, you need to define your business idea. Defining your business idea will ensure you have a clear vision of what you want the business to be and determine if it will be successful.

By doing this, you’re finding your niche in the e-commerce market and learning how to do it better than the rest.

This step takes a bit of brainstorming and research, but soon, you will be on your way to financial freedom.

Choosing Your Right Product(s)

Choosing your product can seem like the easiest part of creating an e-commerce business plan, but the truth is that it takes quite a bit of forethought.

To find the right product for your business, you need to do some market research and sense what you are passionate about. Deciding what to sell means more than purchasing goods from a supplier.

You are identifying which market you want to tap into. Consider selling and creating a new business from various niche markets and products.

If you are unsure of what products or which markets you would like to tap into, here are a few examples:

  • Clothing
  • Home goods
  • Children’s toys
  • Homemade and handcrafted items
  • Digital services

No matter which product or market you choose, performing research is critical.

Validate Your Idea

Once you’ve decided what your product will be, you must validate your e-commerce business idea.

This process entails researching to ensure an audience for your product, learning about the market’s problems and why they are facing them, and finding out how to solve them. You should also see if there are potential trends you can capitalize on.

Answering the questions above will give you the insight you need into whether a business will succeed.

Any business idea can sound ground breaking at the moment. But moving forward is put on hold until you validate it by ensuring that there is a market for your product or that you can create the need for it.

Define Your Target Audience

Beyond discovering if there is an audience for your product, you will also need to define your target audience.

Is your audience the younger crowd that enjoys and needs trendy items and marketing? Or is it an older audience that prefers straightforward marketing and practical products? Of course, the gender, income level, and general location of your audience also factor in.

Further, you must know your intended audience’s lifestyle factors, interests, wants, and needs.

Implementing a solid definition of who your target audience is will help you shape your marketing approach and tailor your product offerings.

This definition will give you a sense of direction before jumping into the launch of your product or business. Then, you can visualize the prize you should focus on.

Brainstorm What Will Set Your Business Apart

Brainstorming how your business will differ from competitors is vital.

You need to give potential customers a reason why they should choose you over what else is available currently. Without a solid aspect that sets you apart, your business can become lost in the sea of emerging e-commerce businesses.

Research Your Competition

Knowing what sets your business apart from others in the market is critical. That’s why we also recommend spending a substantial amount of time researching your competitors.

To start researching your competitors, pretend you are a potential customer and search for the popular keyword and search queries pertaining to your business.

Then, take note of the pages with the highest rankings, as they will be your main competitors. Don’t stop there!

Dive into your competitors’ social media accounts and note how they brand and market themselves on the platforms. (Also, don’t forget about Amazon!) Use the infamous online retailer as a database to identify similar product offerings.

After you gather all of this information, organize it into a spreadsheet, listing the top competitors for your business.

Build Strong Branding

Branding is everything when marketing your products and your e-commerce business. It conveys the overall message that your company believes in and offers.

For example, brands like Nike will use motivational language to motivate their established customer base and draw potential customers.

But what does branding entail? How do you build your business with strong branding?

Building a strong brand doesn’t have to be costly; it simply takes consistency, planning, and research.

Audience Persona

Your audience persona is what customers will come to know your business for.

As previously mentioned, companies will utilize specific language to convey a message regarding branding. That helps build a company’s persona and brand identity.

You can implement your brand persona in all forms of marketing, from the colours you use in the marketing campaign to the vocabulary you use in social media posts. This implementation will help formulate the characteristics and emotions customers associate with your company.

When you are creating your persona, remember who your target audience is. For example, the persona for a brand like L.L. Bean will not have the same effect on a younger modern audience.

Brand Voice

In addition to vernacular and language, brand voice is critical for conveying your message. It will further tell your audience what your company is and what it can do for them.

This branding portion focuses explicitly on the language and vernacular part of the branding strategy.

To create a strong brand voice, you should first figure out how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand’s online presence.

If a relaxed vibe is what you are going for, a laid-back tone and casual language are what you want when creating e-commerce marketing materials.

But on the other hand, if luxury and glamor are the vibe of your company, sophisticated language with flowery descriptions is what you need.

Social Media Branding

In our digital age, branding efforts extend into the social media sphere with most audiences, including older generations. In short, social media is the number one place to reach potential customers.

Your brand’s social media presence should be more than posting advertisements and product launches. Engaging with your audience is critical for building rapport and further ingraining brand voice, persona, and identity.

You can increase your audience engagement by hosting polls, commenting back to followers, and organizing live streams where they can interact with you and your company.

Brand Identity

Finally, we reach brand identity. This encompasses your voice, persona, and social media presence. It gets into the fine details of your visuals and content choices that will set you apart from your competitors.

With a proper brand identity, customers recognize your brand through adverts and social media posts without seeing your company’s name.

Visuals and Content

To establish your brand’s identity, you will want to choose your brand colours, design your logo, create content creation guidelines, and formulate your strategy.

Your branding guidelines should entail information about marketing copy, colour palette, brand story, and image guidelines.

Your strategy should also entail plans for reaching your intended audience through stylized branded content and marketing materials.

If you need help formulating these guidelines and plans, professional brand strategists are available on freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. They can help take your current vision and turn it into an actualized plan.

E-Commerce Websites

Next, incorporate that information into setting up your e-commerce website.

Your company’s website is a hub for selling your products to customers and establishing a home base for all things relating to your brand. In addition, this website is the place for driving your brand voice, persona, and identity into the hearts of established and potential customers.

So, remember to strictly enforce your brand guidelines when building and maintaining your website.

Again, if you need help building an e-commerce website, you can find website builders and your brand strategist on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Create Your Shipping Strategy

If you are running an e-commerce business with physical products, like clothing, home goods, or kids’ toys, you must create a shipping strategy that gets the product to your customers safely and efficiently.

First, you must determine if you will transfer the shipping costs to your customers or factor shipping into the product’s price and offer free shipping. Offering flat-rate shipping is also an option.

Additionally, no matter which shipping cost method you choose, you will want to keep a database of the weight of your product(s). This data will help you consistently track the price of shipping your products when it is dependent upon their weight.

Finally, you need to source your packaging materials. From boxes to envelopes and wrapping materials to filler, your packaging should help safely deliver the product to the consumer and leave a lasting impression with its presentation.

If you have downloadable digital products to sell online, you will want to find the best platform and software for delivering these materials. Consider these top five:

  • SendOwl
  • Shootproof
  • Shopify Digital Downloads
  • Fetch app
  • Digital Product Delivery

Each has unique offerings, and depending on the type of digital products you sell and your target audience, some will be more suitable than others.

Launch Your Business

After choosing your products, formulating a brand identity, creating a website, and developing a shipping strategy, it’s time to launch your e-commerce business!

Although you have accomplished so much already, the adventure is still ongoing because you need to start selling products.

When launching your business, it’s critical to remember that anything can happen, and you may have to reformulate your previous plans. But don’t be too quick to jump ship; the plan was created for a reason. You simply want to open yourself up to new possibilities.

From here on out, your mission is to achieve financial freedom, which sometimes requires testing variables to improve performance.

Market Your Business

After getting your business up and running, you must increase your marketing efforts to ensure your business grows.

But unlike decades past, with your online business, physical advertisements on billboards and in print newspapers won’t cut it. So instead, you need to learn the ways of e-commerce marketing.

Learn Basic SEO

Learning the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is your ticket to boosting your business among the Google ranks.

Have a Baseline

To start venturing into the world of SEO, you need to have a baseline.

By utilizing a service like Semrush, you can see your domain overview, and it will tell you how visible your business/webpage is on mobile and desktop apps. Its domain overview section covers all the data and analytics you need to understand where your business currently stands.

Know Your Keywords

Additionally, you will want to research and learn the most prevalent keywords and search queries for your type of business. You can then use this information to create content that will help lead shoppers back to your website.

Discover The Power of Backlinks

Backlinks are also essential for creating online traffic for your business, as they are links to your website from other websites.

The more links you have from trustworthy and high-traffic web pages, the more search engines like Google and Bing will see your business and website as valuable and reliable sources.

But the most critical component of all when it comes to basic SEO is staying informed. SEO is an ever-evolving world that takes ongoing reform to remain successful.

Blog Consistently

While looking for the best ways to market your e-commerce store or business, you may have seen the phrase “content is king.” But what kind of content is best?

Blogging is one of the best forms of online content for marketing your business. By publishing blog posts consistently and utilizing the keywords and search queries that pertain to your business, you can increase your chances of climbing the Google ranks and accruing more backlinks.

Your blog posts should always surround topics pertaining to your business.

For instance, post frequent blog posts about what’s trending in fashion if you have a clothing business. Or, if it’s a digital service company, publish articles that discuss the benefits of utilizing a service like yours.

Implement Social Media Marketing

We live in the golden age of social media, and if you’re searching for more customers, you need to utilize Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

You can do this by posting relevant branded content frequently. Your social media content should also utilize hashtags to help further increase your visibility among your target audience.

Like SEO keywords, hashtags can help lead potential customers back to your page, and the more interaction you have on a post, the more likely you are to appear on Explore and For You pages on social media.

Build and Grow an Email List

Building and growing an email list is the best way to create a direct line to your customer base. You can ensure they return and purchase more products by staying in touch with them.

But people prefer to keep their personal information, like email addresses, private. So how do you grow an email list?

You need to offer a deal in return for a customer’s email. Whether it’s free downloads or special sales offers, customers will take note of what you are willing to give in return.

Analyse Your Results

Adapting your e-commerce business to the ever-evolving world is crucial for long-term success.

After spending time in the market and gathering data, you should analyse your results. You will want to look at critical metrics, like your popular products.

Once you notice consistent growth in your business, you will want to optimize your online storefront for high-scale volume. Think about performing the following as your business grows:

  • Display popular products on the front page.
  • Manage fluctuating stock volumes by sending email invitations and allowing backorders.
  • Allow for more checkout options: guest checkout, abandoned shopping cart reminders, etc.
  • Match your brand and website messaging to the current market.

No matter what your results are after performing an annual analysis, being prepared to make a few changes is always wise.

FAQs

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business Without Money?

You can start an e-commerce business without money in a few different ways. One of the best and easiest ways is to sell your expert service.

Whether you are a great writer, marketer, virtual assistant, or graphic designer, you can create an online e-commerce business today with zero or minimal start-up costs.

You can also start a dropshipping business, where you have an online store that customers can order from, and the supplier does the product fulfilment directly. AliExpress or Alibaba are popular suppliers for such storefronts.

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business on Amazon?

Starting an e-commerce business on Amazon is simple.

First, you must choose what kind of products you want to sell; the possibilities are endless when you choose Amazon as your e-commerce platform.

Afterward, you must sign up for an Amazon seller’s account and select your business model. Wholesale, private label, and retail arbitrage are the most popular.

Once you have the basics covered, it’s time to start listing your products, send them to Amazon to handle storage and shipping, and then market yourself.

What Does an E-Commerce Business Do?

An e-commerce business is a business that sells goods or services online. These goods and services can range from writing and graphic design services to clothing retailers and home goods storefronts.

What Are The Four Types of E-Commerce?

What industry leaders commonly refer to as the four traditional types of e-commerce are business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B).

Each type has specific traits and offerings that set them apart. The most common type is B2C.

Is E-Commerce Really Profitable?

E-commerce can be an incredibly profitable business venture. But if you’re looking for an entirely passive way to generate income, this venture isn’t for you.

Running an e-commerce business takes time and dedication. You have to be willing to devote all of your time to managing the business and potentially marketing yourself to thrive.

How Do You Start up an E-Commerce Business?

Suppose you want to start up an e-commerce business. In that case, you must follow a plan to define your business, create a branding and marketing strategy, and perform market analysis regularly.

Free and low-cost start-up options exist whether you want to sell a service or a physical product.

No matter what e-commerce business you decide to open, be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to starting it. However, it is a rewarding venture.

Start Your Journey to Financial Freedom Today!

Whether you want to operate a small business like a small-scale online retailer or an industry-leading digital service, e-commerce is a way to set yourself up for future financial freedom!

All it takes is time and dedication to ensure smooth sailing in e-commerce. So why not start today?

Start researching your ideas, get to know the current online marketplaces, validate those ideas, and start drawing up a plan. 

By Chris Alarcon

Chris is the founder of Financially Well Off, the blog for people looking to reach financial independence and stay inspired along the way. Go from being stressed and in debt to growing your net worth. Grab your free guide here.

Sourced from WEALTH OF GEEKS

 

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Elon Musk said Tesla would finally advertise. It just dropped a video on Twitter — is this its first commercial?

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By Grace Kay

  • Tesla released what might have been its very first commercial.
  • Tesla’s Asia account on Twitter posted a 2-minute driver testimonial.
  • Elon Musk said last week that the company will begin advertising for the first time in its history.

Tesla might have already revealed its very first commercial less than a week after Elon Musk said the company would begin advertising for the first time in its history.

The electric carmaker rolled out a 2-minute Twitter video on its Tesla Asia account called “Drive to believe.” The video appeared to give a peek into the company’s plans for its upcoming ad campaign, which could rely on driver testimonials.

If so, it’s rolling out ads in a relatively low-key way: The Tesla Asia account has only 172,000 followers compared to its main account’s 21 million. It’s not clear if this is indeed the brand’s first advertisement, though many people on Twitter have hailed it as such.

The brand has relied heavily on word-of-mouth in the past — in addition to Musk’s promotion on social media. Last week, Musk called the Tesla promotions on Twitter “preaching to the choir.” Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the video.

In the video, a Model 3 owner and a mother of two kids said she was initially drawn to the vehicle because of its technology, but has grown to appreciate the car even more due to its safety measures. The video highlights several Tesla features, including the car’s Autopilot feature, infotainment system, and the Tesla app — as well as the “ease” of using an electric car for everyday drives.

“It is one of the greatest gifts that my kid can have in terms of their future,” the woman in the video says.

Musk made the announcement on turning toward advertising after having shunned it previously after a shareholder at the event, Kevin Paffrath — also known as the YouTuber Meet Kevin — suggested that the company needs to do more to let non-Tesla fans know about the company’s products.

Musk told CNBC’s David Faber later that day that he’d only just made the decision at the event. He said Tesla didn’t yet have a clear strategy yet for advertising. Still, the CEO told CNBC he thinks that, in general, ads should be “informative and entertaining” without causing users to regret the time they spent watching them.

Musk told CNBC that he hopes to use ads to combat what he said was misinformation about the brand’s pricing, as well as promote its safety features.

In the past, Musk has said he hates advertising. He’s said Tesla prefers to put its money toward research-and-development rather than promotional content.

By Grace Kay

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How to Create High-Converting Affiliate Content that Also Ranks in Google with Kevin Meng

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By Will James

Ever wonder how to improve your affiliate content and boost conversions?

I’m sure we all do.

That’s why we asked Kevin Meng to join the Niche Pursuits podcast to share his insights.

Kevin’s been a web content and copywriter since 2014. Over the years, he’s worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, honing his skills and reputation for writing content that sells.

And today, he lets us in on some secrets you don’t want to miss.

He gets into:

  • The general checklist he follows for affiliate content
  • A formula for describing the benefits of features
  • Importance of clarity in web content
  • How to sprinkle in personality
  • And much more…

He also explains the importance of being honest with readers and not presenting a product as perfect, allowing you to build trust and overcome consumer objections.

The discussion also includes tips on how to find the sweet spot between writing for Google’s algorithm and actual humans. Plus, ways to scale this out with a team using SOPs.

And of course, AI is brought up regarding content production and velocity.

With the rise of ChatGPT and other tools, Kevin believes the role of SEO content writer may likely evolve to being more like an editor for fact-checking and quality assurance. But he also has some hopeful perspectives for writers in the industry.

Overall, this episode provides valuable insights and techniques for improving your web content regardless of whether a human or AI creates it.

So be sure to check out the full episode below and implement any of the relevant strategies into your work!

Topics Kevin Meng Covers

  • How he got into web copy 7-8 years ago
  • Pros & cons of academic background for web content
  • His content training course
  • Importance of clarity
  • Adding personality and humor
  • Benefits and emotions
  • The most important benefits to most readers
  • The ‘so what’ formula
  • Importance of SOPs
  • Short test articles
  • Researching with YouTube
  • Importance of covering negatives and objections in reviews
  • Balancing SEO writing needs with those of the reader
  • AI content

Links & Resources

  • WebCopyMasterclass.com -The SEO industry standard for writing high-converting product reviews and engaging content (Discount for NichePursuits listeners)
  • Contact Kevin Meng on Facebook about training writing teams, templating articles, building guidelines, sops, and other annoying BS
  • Learn all about SEO content at Kevin’s Facebook group
  • Apply to demo Kevin’s hiring and training tool that’ll help you screen, evaluate, filter, and train new writers/editors on auto-pilot at BoomRabbit.com

This Episode is Sponsored by Search Intelligence

Watch The Interview

Transcription

Jared: Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman, and today we are joined by Kevin Meng with web copy masterclass.com. Kevin, how you doing?

Kevin: Doing good, man. It’s a little bit late over here in Vietnam, but I’m still awake. Had some coffee, so ready to go.

Jared: I’ll tell you, I I’m in the West coast of the states, so my time zone and kind of Southeast Asia.

We’re all, someone’s either getting up early or staying up late to do these interviews. So you took one today for the team. You’re staying up late. Thank you so much.

Kevin: Oh, no problem, Matt. Happy to

Jared: do it. Good. So as, as your website kind of hinted or teased at, we’re we’re talking about copy today. We’re talking about writing copy and I’m so excited to hear from you on this.

Obviously, this is a topic that has come under even increased scrutiny or, or interest level for people as AI is starting to play its way into the, to the world. So this is just gonna be a really fun episode to, to learn more about how copy can influence people online. Before though we dive in, we always like to learn more about you, tell us about yourself, maybe give us some backstory and, and your background leading up to this.

Kevin: Yeah. Thanks man. I I’ve been in copywriting now for about seven or eight years. I, I originally got started when I lived in Europe teaching English, and then I moved to, I moved to Cheang Mai Thailand, and that’s where I met a lot of affiliate SEO people, like, you know, Matt Diggity and, and them, Jay Carl Hanger and all them.

So I kind of just, I don’t wanna say I fell into to seo, but I eventually just started working with pretty much only affiliate SEO people. And that’s kind of how I got my start in this world. And I think that really helped me though, because most, most writers, they don’t, they’ve kind of disconnected from their clients.

And they don’t really see the results and they don’t get to talk to them very much. But I actually, I got to hang out with them every day and really see like what was working, what was not working, what they wanted, you know, from me and what they expected. It was actually, it was really good. I think it was a, a big like advantage for me that most writers didn’t have.

So I think that’s, it’s been really helpful to be part of this community.

Jared: Yeah. I feel like we all, to some degree, fall into seo. I mean, I guess no one really goes to college

Kevin: for it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was an English teacher. I didn’t even think I was gonna be doing seo, and then I, okay. I quit to do freelance writing and then I ended up getting hired you know, just for, for some, you know, random agencies here and there and clients who gave me SEO blogs.

And I didn’t even really know, you know, what was going on there at the time. So just had to read up on it. Found something on location. Rebel, if you remember, lo re location Rebel from a while ago. Mm-hmm. Just read up on it there and followed along with what they were publishing and yeah, just kind of like I said, almost fell into it there.

Talk a bit

Jared: about, and this will be a good transition or segue, we’ll just kind of hit the ground running, but talk a bit about being an English teacher and you know, the concept that a lot of writers for the web have is that traditional English training, writing traditional college, university writing, traditional, like kind of writing doesn’t really work very well on the web.

Did you find that, did you find there was a transition for you from English teaching to writing for the web or, or you know, how was that process?

Kevin: Yeah. In a weird way, I mean, I guess like everything it is, it is kind of complicated and it’s, it’s nuanced, but you’re right that, like, I, I think a big problem in web copy now is like, if you read like 90% of, of web copy or maybe even more like 95%, it all sounds like academic.

Writing cuz that’s just where we all learn how to write. We, we, we start learning in grade school and then they drill these concepts into us that are fine for academic writing, but really bad for the web. And, you know, so that academic tone translates to most content in a bad way. I mean, the, the fluffiness of it, the, the serious sounding nature of it, you know, like the academic tone is a very high register, especially as you get further and further into university.

Right. Professors expect these very, very, maybe even esoteric at times difficult to read essays, whereas that’s like the opposite of what you want for web content. But I think that writing a lot in school and then my, my short time in college, I didn’t, I didn’t finish, but I, I did write a lot when I was there.

I think it helps with research. I think it helps with coherently, you know, making or at least formulating like cohesive thoughts and, and being able to like, I don’t wanna say like logic, but. You know, build a thesis and explain it, you know, like extrapolate on it, which I think is really important. So some skills do translate.

Oh, I guess I didn’t really mention being an English teacher. Yeah. But I, I think yeah, I think being a teacher helps because you, you know, you have to learn how to explain things to people very succinctly in a manner that they understand if, if they’re a non-native you build your vocabulary, you’re probably editing essays for p i.

Edit a lot. I edited a lot for students as well. So that kind of, that was also like an impetus for me being like, Hey, maybe I can find editing work somewhere, you know? Mm-hmm. So yeah, there, there, there’s some things that are, that are not so good, but a few things do translate. Yeah. I, I noticed that a lot of people who used to be teachers are, are writers now, for sure.

Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. I totally agree. I, I find the same thing. And I, I love some of the things you highlighted, like how to research and how to organize your thoughts and. Those are all really good. Those are all really good points because you have to be able to do that too for writing on the web, whether you write, yeah, super word, simpler or you know, complexly, is that a word?

Complexly. You would know you’re the English teacher.

Kevin: Like, I just like to invent words, man. That’s like half, half my job these days. So I think, is

Jared: that legal? Okay, good. I’m gonna keep doing it. I do it enough on this podcast, but now I have an English teacher here, so I gotta be careful.

Kevin: The legality is questionable, but I don’t think they’ll catch me if I’m in Vietnam.

It’s diplomatic community. Fair.

Jared: Good point. Well, that’s, unfortunately I’m still state side here, so I gotta be careful. Yeah. Hey, so bef before we get into like the meat and potatoes of today and, and kind of what good copy looks like, and I’ve got tons of questions for you on. On it as it relates to some of the more specific things right now.

But before we do that, what, what are you doing right now as it relates to your SEO work? Are you doing client work? You know, you have a website that’s specifically focused on copy. Maybe tell us about what you’re doing today and the kind of results you’re getting for, for people.

Kevin: Yeah. So I actually, I don’t really even do do like the, the SEO side of things.

I’m really just focused on the content for SEO sites. I’m not even really writing that much anymore. I do still write for like one main client of mine in a site that, you know, another site that I’m working on. But it’s mostly training, writing teams, consulting helping people build documentation like SOPs and writing guidelines and templates and, and things like that.

You know, showing people how to make briefs and training the writers on them. That’s mostly what I’m doing. I’m also working on a software for hiring and training writers. I have two business partners that are working on it with me. We are entering beta testing now, so that’s, that’s pretty exciting.

I never really thought I’d be involved with software, you know, but I think there really is a, a big need for something that is for hiring and training writers, because there’s definitely a lot of stuff out there for recruiting, but, You know, if you’re an SEO person, you’re not really a writer, so you can’t really be expected to know how to recruit people.

You know, there’s kind of that, there’s that disconnect, right? Mm-hmm. You wouldn’t have like a, you wouldn’t have somebody from the medical field trying to hire a programmer for the, you know, for the. For their practice. Right. It’s, it’s just not how it works. You know, you need writers to do that for you. So yeah, that’s something we’re working on.

And I do have the course I have web copy masterclass, which is, you know, kind of the like web copy 1 0 1 about how to write affiliate reviews that are that convert well based on data. So it’s a little bit of everything, but it all focuses really around like, especially affiliate SEO content, but SEO content in general.

Perfect.

Jared: That’s right up our alley here,

Kevin: so, yeah. Sweet.

Jared: All right. Cool. So hey, let’s, let’s, let’s get in, let’s get into it here. I, I guess I’ll start by asking a very broad question, and feel free to start unpacking it in the best way you think possible. Okay. What are some key skills that are needed?

When writing good copy for an affiliate website, like you said, and you know, just start sharing with us and we can kind of use that as a launching pad.

Kevin: Okay. Wow. I think, I think like the number one skill for like affiliate SEO content is really understanding like, you know, benefits and emotions because for like if you’re trying to sell a product to somebody, You’re essentially needing to follow the same principles that you would on a sales page, right?

Like somebody who’s, who’s googling best hiking boot or best medical device for sleep apnea or best whatever they’re looking to buy, right? So in a, in a sense, you’re really showing them a sales page. It looks like an affiliate review, but it’s, it, it acts to act like a sales page, you know? So you need to, you need to know emotions and benefits driven cop, everybody says they do, but.

Not nearly as many people do. So I think those are really important. You need to know those key copywriting concepts. But to be honest, those are actually, like, those are pretty easy to learn. Like they’re not easy, but in the, in the scheme of things, they’re, they’re kind of simple, you know? So I think the most important thing is like clarity.

Just being able to write clear, not, not being wordy, just getting your, your thoughts across concisely is, is so important because there’s just no way to train that It’s I’ve worked for weeks and weeks and weeks with with clients to try to get their writing teams to just cut down the way they write, you know, to go from like fluffy and wordy to coherent and, and concise, and it’s just, it’s a nightmare.

You know? It’s like pushing the rock up the hill and it falls back and you push it again and it falls back further and you’re just like, all right, I’m done with this man. Like, so. Yeah, I know that was long-winded, but yeah, I think, I think the most important skill is just that, that ability to write clearly and directly without fluffing the word count up.

Cuz if, if they don’t have it, then you, you just can’t teach it. Everything else is, I’ve been able to teach people or they just know already. I’m not saying that, you know, I’m, you know, a lifesaver and showing them all these skills. A lot of the writers are already good, you know, and I just, I kind of help them fill in the gaps, you know.

Other than that, having a, a un a unique personality, I really like that. I think that like 90 to 95% or more web content, like we were saying, sounds super academic. It all just sounds the same, right. So I really like somebody who sounds like a real human being. And sadly chat sheet BT is actually pretty good at sounding like a real human being compared to some SEO content writers that I’ve worked with, you know, so Yeah.

So those two are number one for me, that the clarity and that unique, unique tone. I really like somebody who has a, a uniqueness about them

Jared: Underneath the topic of clarity, you, you mentioned two words that stood out to me. You said a lot more than two words, but two words that stood out to me are benefits and emotions.

Uhhuh. What are some tips for people to infuse their content with emotion? I’ll circle back on the benefit one, but, but the emotion one seems like the most ambiguous, you know? Mm-hmm. I have emotions, I write content. How do I, how do I get the point across? But somehow make people think that there’s emotion there without making it long winded, without going against some of the other things you talked about.

Kevin: I never really thought about it that way. I think when I say like emotion, what I, what I really mean is like power, right? Like having the, you know, getting your point across in a very strong and powerful way, you know? But if we want to keep with the theme of like, emotion, we can call them like . You can even call them purchasing triggers.

You don’t have to call them like, ah, mm-hmm. Emotions, you know, like, although I think there is some emotion to it, but really the reason people buy things, right, is it, it, it all comes down to this, to these emotions, like convenience, you know, it’ll make your life really easy. You know, shiny object, object syndrome.

People like the brand new thing, you know, or greed. It can make them a lot of money or save them a lot of money. You know, they love these things. That’s why people, they put the original price and they cross it out and they put the lower price below it. It’s the oldest trick in the book. I mean, people have been doing it for 5,000 years cuz it works.

You know, like if it didn’t work, we’d stop doing it, you know? I even fall for it. I, I fell for it the other day and I was like, man, I do that to people too. And I, I kind of felt bad about it. I was like, wow. So yeah, these kind of purchasing triggers that they, they, they always stay the same. The convenience, the, the speed, the, the greed, the or social proof, you know, like, oh, 50,000 p 50,000 people have bought this already.

You buy it too. So I think learning those, learning those purchasing triggers and learning how to kind of. Frame the product and its benefits in that, in that way is, is very important. You know, so for example, like I always use a hiking boot example cuz it’s just something, something basic and easy, right?

If you if you wanna sell something to people and you’re like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s super comfortable. You need to, you need to try to frame that benefit in in the same light as like one of those purchasing triggers. So like, maybe it could be You know, maybe it could be, it saves you from pain, you know, oh, it’s super comfortable and that’s gonna save you from blisters and sore feet and sore knees and things like that.

Or, you know, it’s something like convenience. You know, it’s, it’s comfortable and durable. You know, you, you’re never gonna have to wash it. You’re never gonna have to buy another pair. You’re never gonna have to go back and stand in line at r e I and return it or anything like that. It’s That kind of stuff.

So trying to frame the benefit in one of those, like with one of those emotions is, is the right way to learn it. I think. I

Jared: love that example, and I’m gonna totally use that going forward. I just thought, I just bought a new pair of hiking boots and so I’ll give my own example. I’m getting older in life.

Aren’t we all, but I switched from a, we don’t need to talk about, we’ll talk about the e boot instead of my age. After, after the episode, please. The, the hiking boot, I switched from like a, a low hiking boot to a higher hiking, hiking boot because I want to protect my ankles. Mm-hmm. And so to your point, talking about the product online, this hiking boot has a high cut, and that helps you because it can help produce or prevent ankle injuries or rolling of your ankle, give you firmer supports.

I like how you talked about that example there.

Kevin: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, it works out, works out pretty well. I think that’s like I think that like with the internet especially, we’re all like lazy now. We just wanna click buttons. We want everything done for us, like, as, as quickly as possible with no, with no headaches.

I think that’s like the number one, the number one like emotion or purchasing trigger, whatever you want to call it, to use. On the web is like speed and convenience. Like there’s no learning curve. It’ll be done in five minutes. It’s a one click thing, you know, or like, you’ll never have to, you’ll never have to go wait in line again, or every time you call the service, somebody will answer immediately.

You don’t have to get a ticket. Anything that makes it just sounds super easy. The easier, the easier it sounds to do. The more likely somebody’s gonna do it. You know, you don’t wanna write like, oh yeah, the, this software, it’s, it’s, you’re gonna take forever to learn it. The, the support’s never gonna answer.

And your life’s gonna be a living hell. You know, like, it’s just, just try to make it sound as easy as possible as a default, and you’ll be, you’ll be ahead of the game, I think.

Jared: Okay. So I, I, I, I like how you talked about emotions using emotion, power, words giving the, the reason. That someone would enjoy the purchase or benefit from it.

But let’s, let’s circle back to benefits. And, and I, I think, and when you talk about benefits, I think I know what you’re talking about. I spent a lot of time in marketing and, and sales and so there’s this concept of, of writing for benefits, not features. And I’ll even tie a little bit of a bow on this.

Before I turn it over to you, like Google has been very clear in their product review updates now known as review updates, but basically they’ve been very clear that they don’t just want you to regurgitate the specs of the product when you write your review. Right? So we have this general concept of let’s talk about benefits.

Let’s not talk about features. It’s better for copy and it’s better for conversion. We also have a very tactile example and reason to do it because Google’s basically said, don’t talk about features, talk about benefits. So roll that all together and maybe for someone who’s new to that, give us some concrete example or, or something to think about when it comes to writing for benefits and, and not for features.

Wow. Okay.

Kevin: All right. Put me on the spot, man. All right. Yeah. So my job, yeah. Yeah. Thanks. No, it’s a good thought exercise. I think that like, I think that you should always just kind of as a default, think j like the, the, the age old one that everybody uses is just, you know, so what, you know, it does this so that you can do this or that it does this, so you get this from it, you know?

But I always kind of like, I always teach when I’m training teams, I always teach them to think about it in levels. It’s a very simple way to understand what, what I think is the, you know, the best writing style for affiliate reviews, and you can think about. 1, 2, 3. You know, there’s three levels to it.

So one, what does this thing do you know? Okay, that would be the feature. So the feature could be one recent one that I used is like it’s an ergonomic mouse that has extra padding on the thumb. You know, that’s the feature, right? So what’s the benefit of that? You know, this is the second level, and the benefit of that is, okay, you’re not gonna have any hand pain.

Right. So that, that’s, that’s pretty basic. But what you want to do from there is to go, like, the benefit of the benefit. So the benefit is no pain, but what does that really like, how does it manifest in the user’s life? Like, how does no pain manifest in the user’s life? Well, somebody who wants an ergonomic mouse is probably working all day or maybe gaming all day.

You know, I’m not really sure why they’re buying it, but so the, the, the way the benefit would manifest in their life is, Work all day, or I don’t know, game all night and never have to take breaks, not have problems the next day with carpal tunnel, not have you know, I don’t know, not need a hand transplant in 20 years cuz it falls on whatever it happens to be, you know?

So yeah, I, I think when you have the feature, always try to think of those two, two levels, you know, what does it give the reader and then, or the feature, what does it give the reader? And then how does that kind of. Benefit really manifests itself in their life. And I think if you start thinking in this, in this structured way, you’ll, you’ll, it’ll just become second nature.

You know, like when I was kind of learning copy, a good, a good example that somebody gave me, I had a, I had an editor that was for like a supplement company. And they were, I think it was like testosterone or Fen Greek or something like that, you know, and they were saying, okay, it has. You know, I don’t know the exact number, like a hundred milligrams of fenugreek, which is, you know, okay.

So that’s the feature, right? Which is double, you know, that’s double the standard dose. Right. So I guess what would the, the benefit of that be? Well, the benefit of that is you have double the, the testosterone or double the double the dose in this supplement. So how is that really gonna manifest in, in the reader’s life?

Well, you know, Studies do show that having more testosterone leads to more energy and more muscle mass and less fat, and just overall a better mood, right? So there you have the three levels. You can even go the next level if you want. The next level is you can really visualize it for them and say, imagine.

Imagine you’re in the, in the gym and you see more muscle and less fat. Imagine you are not tired when you wake up in the morning. Imagine you can control your mood and all these things, you know. So when you’re thinking about like benefits of features, just imagine that you’re just try to go as many levels as you can.

Assuming the, assuming the word count allows for it, you know always just think so what, so what, so what? Or, you know, for you, it does this so that you can do this and so that you get this. And that’s, that’s the best way I think.

Jared: I think it’s so good that you have ways for people to process. You have like these little techniques because you alluded to it at the beginning, like, we kind of know some of these things.

Like we know that boring content doesn’t convert. We know that long sentences don’t work well. We know to infuse our personality and all, all these things, like we know that, but when it comes to actually sitting down and doing it, it’s very difficult to do. So I, I kind of love all these little, little techniques you have to, to

Kevin: share.

I think that sorry, sorry to interrupt there. But I think that, like, what’s weird about, what’s weird about like web content or writing in general is, I think it’s just, well, web content is still such a new thing. Like, you know, the, you know, Google’s only been around for like, what, 20 years? 20 plus years.

And even then it wasn’t like super popular until what, 15 years ago? Mm-hmm. And web content is just such a new, and I don’t wanna say unexplored space, but like there really isn’t too much. You know, and I’m not trying to say anybody’s bad, but like there isn’t that, that much like authority on the topic yet.

Like there’s not, that, not nearly as much data as there is with something like SEO where you’re just, you can actually test it in the wild that much. Right? Whereas like web content is just such a new, new thing and writers take it so personally, you know everybody writes differently. Everybody has different learning styles and I think that having these kind of like training wheels, these, these.

Structured ways of doing it is the best way to get you know, kind of regular quality, right? Whereas if you just hand the writer a topic and maybe a brief and say write a good article, it’s not gonna ha it’s just not gonna happen. That’s not how it works. And it’s like with anything, you know, web development, programming, seo, even what happens, you come, you’re a junior seo, people show you how to do things, they give you a process, and you follow the process and you get better.

And then eventually, okay, now you have artistic freedom to do what you want. Cuz you’ve, you’ve proven yourself, right? With writing is the same thing. You’ve gotta have a structure, make it simple and have them build up from there. And they, you know, they, you they gain your confidence and then you take the training wheels off and be like, okay, hey, you’ve proven yourself, you know how to do it.

Go ahead and do what you want. I trust you, you know.

Jared: It speaks to your point. It speaks to your point as well, like knowing your niche pretty well. It’s hard to infuse the benefit of the benefit if you don’t know your niche very well. But if for sure, if you’re in it or your writer’s in it, right it’s a lot easier to say.

Yeah, well, of course. This is more powerful and, and here’s why that matters. This is more comfortable, and, and I’ll tell you why that matters. I use this stuff every day. So it, it only continues to reinforce like how vital or, or at least how, how, how much of a difference maker it is that you’re actually in the niche or that your writers in the niche.

Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. And you’re totally right too. Like that’s a, that’s a great way to get your point across when you say like, I know this works because I do it. Like, if you really are like somebody who does it every day, like it’s just such a, such a much better thing for your website. You know, I’m not saying you have to be a lot of SEOs, you know, they have.

You know, they have in sites and, you know, hundreds of niches. Right. You know, so you don’t have to be, but it, it definitely helps or it help you know, if your writer really is that they really experienced it. Personal experience is a big, big trust factor.

Jared: Well, and I’m gonna come back to that. We are gonna talk, and if you’re listening, we’re gonna get to this concept of ranking versus converting this idea of good copy versus good seo.

So we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna come back to that, and if you’re listening, kind of going, like, when are we gonna talk about good copy versus good seo? It’s, it’s coming, but let’s kind of the, let’s, let’s do, let’s con do the trifecta here. We’ve talked about the emotions, we’ve talked about the benefits, and then you also mentioned a couple times personality.

On how big personality is, and I’ve heard it said as like tone and you know, these other kind of things, like how do we infuse personality where does personality play in? And of course there’s different writing styles that are, are more first person or second person and third person and singular and plural and all that.

Like, maybe start to talk about all that for us.

Kevin: Okay. I mean, for me personally, I really like, I, I just like. Kind of wacky, unique, fun web content. You know, maybe it’s just cuz I read so much web content for work that I’m kind of tired of, like the standard stuff. I know a lot of people do really like that kind of dry, factual, straightforward stuff, which is, which is good.

It’s good for like, you know, data driven stuff and case studies and technical writing and, you know, that’s great. I think what’s important for SEO though is that like when you’re, when you’re trying to like infuse your personality, You have to think like, how would a real person that’s actually an expert in this topic speak?

Right? And if you’re an SEO who just has a gardening website or an outdoors website, or a whatever’s website, and you’re not really in that niche and you don’t, you don’t know the lingo and you don’t know these things, then the default is just going to be. Writing in that standard academic SEO tone.

You know, like if you’ve ever heard of gardening, then you know that gardens are made of flowers and leaves and pots and pans, you know, like just the standard stuff that everybody, everybody says, right? And somebody who’s really like, In that example, like a gardening enthusiast, when they read that, they’re gonna just be turned off, you know, cuz they’re gonna know you’re not really an expert.

Right? So when you’re thinking of like, infusing your personality into the, into the articles, you really have to think about it from the perspective of like, what would like a real expert in my niche sound like? What would a real gardener who’s been doing it since she was five years old, what would she sound like or what would he sound like?

You know? That’s, that’s kind of like the baseline. Other ways to do it is like obviously adding in humour. I think adding in memes, people on the internet love memes. We’ve seen like time on page go way up just by making our content more fun. I think it also gives people a place to like stop and when they’re scrolling, you know, oh, here’s a picture.

Let me stop and read. Okay, I’ll read around it. So I think that’s good. And if you’re stuck on how to do it, just go to YouTube. You know, like, for example, let’s, we can stick with hiking, right? Like if, if you have a hiking side and you, you’ve never been hiking in your life, just go to YouTube and listen to somebody who does go hiking every day and then just start taking notes, you know, okay, he says this, or she says this.

Here’s a word he used. Here’s a company he, he mentioned, you know, and kind of create a document. You know, here’s our reg, here’s the tone that we want. Here’s some slang words that we want. Here are some celebrities that they talk about. Here are some companies they talk about. That’s a great start and just start infusing all of that stuff into your, into your content.

Jared: All right, so, you know, we’re 30 minutes in now and you have given us a ton of tips on how to become better copywriters. Let, let’s say we’ve mastered those and we’re off to the races, but it’s time to turn over our writing to someone else, and that’s just scary process for anyone, even without a developed or honed copywriting skill.

Right? That’s develop, that’s a difficult process. Even if you haven’t infused benefits into your writing style, even if you haven’t figured out how to master emotion, tone, personality, what are your tips for when someone wants to kind of, you know, start to bring on another writer and have them emulate a lot of the things you

Kevin: talk about?

Yeah, I, I know it’s, I know it’s difficult and it would, it would definitely really scare me to do it. But I know it has to be done and the, the best way to do it is just have really strong. Documentation with very like standardized processes and very, very clear like deliverables. Like here are the principles that we build our content on.

Like a good intro, a good tone, conciseness, benefits, emotions, the details, these things. And then SOPs, really good briefs, outlines and, and a training process. I see a lot of people kind of give like 2000 word or 3000 word test blogs and they don’t really ask for any like deliverables and they don’t they don’t have any way to measure it.

They don’t really know like what they’re even giving feedback on. Sometimes they don’t even really know like what they’re looking for. They just kind of go with their gut and they’re like, oh, okay. I like this person, or I don’t like this person. Right. I just don’t think that’s the best way to do it. I, I, I think that you should kind of test and filter all of the applicants that come in, like have, have certain like demands, like, and have a writing test.

Like, I want this, I want this, I want that. And then see who can pass the test and then put them through a training process where you do like, okay, I want to see you write 300 words on this and write this way and accomplish this goal. And then, and the ones who do that, okay, you go to the next step. 500 or maybe a thousand words.

Here’s the blog, here’s what we want from you. Here’s how we want you to write. Here’s the slang we want you to use, or whatever. And this is how you’re gonna be evaluated. And then the people who passed that, okay, now you can give them a trial piece. Now you can give them a real blog that maybe it’ll go live on your site and you might have to edit it, but at least they’ll know exactly what you want and you’ll have proof that.

This person is capable of writing good content. You know, if you think you’re just gonna hire like a writer from Upwork or a Facebook group or wherever and not have to like train them with a very, like, strict process, it’s, it’s just not, I’m not gonna happen. I think unless you pay a lot of money for a niche expert, you know.

Jared: So what you’re saying is, What you’re saying is I can’t just hire someone, send ’em my send ’em my website and say go for it. Gotcha.

Kevin: You can do what you want. I, I, I don’t, I honestly, I, I don’t care what you, what you do, you know, but if you want the best results, yeah, man, you gotta, gotta put some effort into training, especially if you’re trying to go for lower priced rider.

You know, if the writer’s not charging much money well, I guess I shouldn’t say you shouldn’t expect a lot from them, but You should expect that the less you pay, the more heavy lifting you need to do. For sure. And if you’re trying to pay 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 cents a word in that range, you know, you really need to think about going through a very strict trial process and with deliverables, a checklist that you’re using.

And little stepping stones, like I said, you know, small tests, larger tests, larger ones, that kind of thing. You

Jared: know, you’re not the first person to suggest smaller word count tests with writers. So it’s interesting to hear you say that. I don’t remember who, who else said, what’s that? What’s his name?

I’m trying to think who it was. Unfortunately, I interviewed so many people, I can’t remember exactly who it was, but somebody else said, Hey, maybe don’t send out a 2000 word test article right away. But, so it’s interesting to hear you talk about that. Cause it’s, it’s, that’s not the first time that, that someone’s brought that up.

Kevin: Yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure where I learned. I, I just, oh, actually I do know where I learned it. I, when I started training, like two or two or three years ago, or it might have even been four years ago. I don’t but anyways yeah, I, I was giving these test articles to the writers and it was 2000 words, 3000 words, and it was just, just hell, like editing everything.

And when there’s 2000, 3000 words, there’s so much feedback. The writer doesn’t even really know. Like the writer can’t even really analyze all that feedback. They don’t know where to start. They get, they feel overwhelmed, and that’s why a lot of them run away. You know, writers are, we’re we’re just really weird people.

You know, our brains don’t work like, like normal people we’re overwhelmed very easily. And you know, if I, if I submit a 2000 word blog and I get a hundred comments back on it, I just, I’ll just be like, okay, sorry. Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll find the next client, ma’am. I can’t do it. You know, so I, I just thought that And also they were making a lot of very basic mistakes, and I was like, oh, I really should have just tested to see if they could do this before I, I asked them to do the sample, you know, because a lot of the times the samples, they turn into you like, oh, hey, here’s my portfolio.

They’re stolen, or they’re edited by somebody else, or they submitted it to a client who had a professional editor. So, you know, it’s not really, it’s not really it’s not really a, a real representation of their abilities. I think. It’s good thoughts,

Jared: good thoughts. So, hey, maybe you know, maybe walk us through what a good like, I, I don’t wanna use the word sales page cause it might throw people off, but what a good like, affiliate style article is.

You, you, you had some good bullet points we talked about as we led up to this interview and I loved what you had to say and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of walk people through that, that process you have. You mean

Kevin: the, the process of creating one or templating one, or you, or just in general?

My writing

Jared: process? Yeah. The how, how you write an affiliate style review.

Kevin: Okay. I think maybe the best example would be to use like a like a, like a roundup one, you know, like a top five best hiking boot one. With those reviews, I really try to, I really try to, Approach it. Like I, I would a sales page, like I said before, and just kind of, there are certain things you do need to hit with a sales page.

You know, you need to have a good headline that says what the product is and what it does. Right. You know, what it is, who it’s for, what it does, what the benefit for the reader is or the customer in this case, that, that needs to be in your headline or in the hero section. Right. And then you also need to have things like social group.

You need to have benefits, you need to have things like Pushing back on objections. You know, if something is a really high price, some objection might be, oh, it’s, it’s too expensive, I can’t afford it. So your job as the cop, the copywriter has to show the reader, oh, it’s not as expensive as you think it is and you can’t afford it, and here’s why it’s worth it, you know?

Cuz they’re naturally gonna have these objections, you know? And I think like I think A natural objection that a lot of readers have with, with these affiliate reviews is like, oh, this is too good to be true. You’re doing it for the commission. You know, so it’s really important to try to push back on that as well.

And the best way to do that is actually the standard practice of kind of bringing the product back down to earth a little bit and, and saying something negative about it, and just being more honest with the reader. You know, and being like, Hey, this, this isn’t perfect. It’s not gonna do this, it’s not gonna do that.

But it’s, it’s decent and it’s a good price. You know, like it’s half the price of the competitors, you know? So that’s, that’s what you’re gonna get. So yeah, that was a long-winded way of me saying that when I, when I write like an affiliate article, I try to make sure that I’m hitting all of the same, all of the same kind of.

Checkpoints that I would a sales page. So you’ve gotta have that good top section with the, with the, what is it, you know, what does it do? Who is it for? What’s the benefit? You gotta follow that up with some proof. You know, you need to show the reader how it’s going to achieve that benefit. Just like you went on a sales page, this transformation is gonna happen and here’s how we’re gonna do it.

Affiliate articles are the same. Here’s the benefit you’re getting and here’s the demographic this product is for, and here’s why. And and then you can follow that up with, yeah, pushing back on the objections. You can also have adding personal experience, which increases trust. And you need to have a strong CTA again, just like you would on a sales page.

So the CTA can’t just be like, Oh, in the end it’s a good product, so buy it. I don’t know. I don’t care. Like, that’s like you’d be surprised at some of the CTAs I, I’ve seen before where the, the writers just like, I don’t know. It’s up to you. You, you choose, you know, so. Okay. All right. Thanks man.

Thanks for trying. And

Jared: that concludes our review. Go buy something.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the conclusion sometimes is like that too. Like I’ve actually had to, to template out conclusions where I’m just like, mm-hmm. You actually have to conclude the article. You can’t just say, Indiana, it comes down to whatever you want, do whatever the hell you want.

It’s your money. I don’t care. You know, like that’s not, that’s not how, how it works, man. So, yeah. When I’m, when I’m writing actually, it’s much more like free flowing cuz I really only write in, in a, in a particular niche that I do know a lot about now. And before it was way different where I had no clue what I was writing about.

It’s a lot different now, so mine is a lot more free flowing, but when I train people, I, I have a very strict kind of, do this, do this, do this, do this, say this in this way. And yeah, it’s just, it’s very structured.

Jared: Okay. That’s good. No, you, you bring up a good point. I mean, I think no product is perfect and yet sometimes you read reviews or even just informational style posts.

That are about a product. And, and it does come across as though, you know, maybe the the writer felt like they couldn’t say anything negative about it because then it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be a compelling article or a compelling review, but, but you’re exactly right. I think humanizing it with some of those negatives is a really good observation.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, man. Sometimes writers are hesitant to do it, or, or SEOs are, are hesitant to do it as well. But I think also, like, you don’t even necessarily have to say something negative all the time. You can just try to be as like straightforward and honest as possible about what it is.

And it’s not necessarily a negative, you know, you can say like, like I was saying before, like, Hey, this is a budget model. Do not expect too much from this. Like, it might break apart in a year. You know, your boot might fall apart if you walk in it too much, you know, or maybe you’ll get some blisters the first few times you take it out.

That’s not what you’re buying it for, right? You’re buying it for. You know, saving some money, like this is 50 bucks. It’s gonna, it’s, it fits on your feet. It’s not gonna make you look like an idiot. This is why you’re getting it. That’s not necessarily like a negative, that’s more just direct and honest about what it is.

Mm-hmm. Which I think people appreciate a lot.

Jared: So it’s probably a good time to ask you this question. I teased it earlier. I know I’ve gone through it before. I know other people I’ve talked to that write in a manner that they want to rank with. Right. So like, we’ll call it SEO content. I know that’s a very.

Euphemistic term. Yeah. But content that, you know, the primary purpose is to rank organically. There’s this. Dichotomy or juxtaposition that exists in a lot of writers and a lot of SEOs. Where do I write for seo? Keyword, keyword density. Yeah. Related keywords. Bullet points, things that Google likes.

Mm-hmm. Again, air quotes. Yeah. Or do I write in in more of a copy style appealing to the, the reader emotion, personality, these sorts of things. And surely they can’t live in opposition of each other yet there is a tug and pull or attention that exists there. Mm-hmm. What do you see and what do you recommend for people who are trying to balance both?

Kevin: Yeah, man. Wow. Obviously, obviously SEO is, is really the most important part, right? You really need to rank, you know, you need, like, if, if you’re not ranking, then I guess it doesn’t matter how good your content is, right? I think the best strategy is to like you want to have kind of like a baseline, I like an MVP style almost, where you’re like, okay, we wanna have some decent content, we wanna make sure it sounds good, we wanna make sure it’s helpful and unique.

But in the beginning, yeah, you really want to air towards that side where you’re like, okay, let’s just make sure the, you know, it’s the right keyword and we’re, you know, we’re covering the right topics and we’re building that topical authority and we’re, we’re getting a good surfer score. And all of that stuff, you know, first I think ob obviously that’s the most important part.

You want to have good velocity, you want to be publishing more content. And if that means the quality suffers then so be it. As long as the quality is still above a certain baseline range, you know, you don’t want to pu publish just, you know, trash. Right. Because eventually even if you do rank, you’re gonna get penalized or you know, or if you do rank, people aren’t gonna buy, right?

So yeah, obviously in the beginning you really want to err towards that, that side of, of seo at least in my experience. And I think when it comes time that you really have that authority and your, you’re ranking and you know you’ve got some really important, you know, let’s call them money pages or reviews to publish, then you want to get those reviews either written by somebody who’s, you know, a very, you know, a professional level writer or have a professional level writer come in and.

Edit things for you or you know, at the very least, kind of help your writers improve them in some way, you know? So yeah, SEO is the most important part, but as you grow, I think, you know, quality becomes more and more important, and that’s really how you take the next step. You know, because I’ve seen, I’ve just seen articles that aren’t converting at all.

0% conversions. You know, half a percent conversions are 1%. And I’ve seen them go. To 5, 6, 7, 8% sometimes. And these are, and sometimes it’s been on high ticket items and you know, $2,000 courses, $3,000 courses or something maybe like you know, some outdoor hobby equipment that I don’t, I don’t wanna say which one it is, but something that would be pretty expensive that you’d use on a holiday.

Right? And for these kind of items, if you’re increasing the, the conversions, you know, from 1% to 6% or 8% or something like that. I mean, think about what that’s going to do in your bottom line over time in a year or, or if you wanna buy a site and flip it, right? Like if you see a site that has a lot of content and, and authority and it’s ranking, but it’s not converting, you can take that site and improve the content and really improve the conversions and flip it probably pretty quickly, you know?

So, yeah. Long story short, man, I think you want to have a baseline of quality in the beginning. You don’t want to have like bad content, but average content is fine. And just try to get as much as possible, build that authority get a lot of content published, and then when it comes time to start publishing super important articles and you’ve got that authority, that’s when you really wanna focus on quality and start training the writers more, maybe editing past articles, building out that documentation.

Yeah, I think content is like the next level up for SEOs from the first one is getting your site ranking, getting more links, creating more and more content. And then maybe content quality is the next way you, you take things, you take your site to the next level, if that makes sense. Where does AI plan all this?

AI is very important. Yeah, I think so. For a lot of people it’s gonna be very important. I personally wouldn’t, I’m not gonna use it because it’ll just get in my way. But I understand that a lot of people are going to use it, you know, so, and. If you can create 10, 20, 50, a hundred articles for super cheap and quickly, then why wouldn’t you use it?

You know? But it’s AI is, AI has solved a particular problem in seo and that’s kind of content and mass for cheap, right? But SEOs will still have the exact same problems they still have with content quality, because I have still. Yet to see any decent article from chat g p t I, I just, they’re not good.

With human editing, they can be better. But still there’s a lot of problems. And if you have a good writer who’s experienced a niche, then they should be able to do much better than than chat G B T. However, I understand in SEO that a lot of SEOs don’t have that and they maybe don’t have the budget for it.

So I think chat G B T is gonna be a great way for people to start gaining that. Gaining that, that topical authority and content velocity and just getting a lot of pages published. And I think it’s also going to be good for content sites to have you know, for Inspira, you know, inspiration for articles, maybe filling in the gaps where the writer doesn’t have time to do it.

You know, maybe it’s just an easy section like You know, what is niche pursuits? Okay. I think AI can write that. You know, niche Pursuits is a site that does this. It was founded in this year by this person. The topics it covers are this, this, and this. AI is really good at that, you know what it’s not good at is all the other stuff that I think really matters, you know?

So, yeah, again, long story short, I think AI is gonna be super important to content production, content velocity. I think it’s gonna change the game, you know, I think What we’re gonna see is like low priced content writers are just gonna be gone. And what what’s going to happen is the job of SEO content writer is really gonna be more like SEO content editor, but writer, but also quality assurance to make sure the content isn’t too robotic, but also maybe you’ll need to program chat g p t with certain you know what, what do you call ’em?

Like templates or, or plugins. I’m not sure exactly the word. I sound like a dinosaur right now. I’m, I’m not sure what, what they call it, but

Jared: I think, well, maybe a better question is this then. How does someone incorporate AI into a process that infuses good copy? Or how does someone take good copy and utilize some of the benefits of AI to their advantage?

You said that AI content is bad, but yet so many are gonna be using it. So how, like maybe. Maybe there’s a middle ground. And you give a couple ideas

Kevin: on that. Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, so many, you know, I’m not, I hate to sound like I’m so jaded, but I think so many SEO contact writers are, are pretty bad too, you know, so it’s not like Chay BT is anything new?

Jared: Oh, okay. That’s actually a good point. You, you’d probably say the same thing to someone who isn’t infusing all this stuff into their copy. No. Yeah. Before AI came around.

Kevin: Yeah. So I think, yeah, you want to kind of learn how to use chat GPT to make decent content. You know, you want to kind of train it to get better and maybe less robotic sounding and maybe kind of, Train it to elaborate a little more on certain points.

Cuz I noticed that it gets just super surface level and robotic and repetitive, you know? And I think there are ways to do that, although I really don’t spend that much time on it. I really just kind of talk to people who are doing it and review their work and just kind of help them to train it. But yeah, if you get a little bit better at that and you kind of get your content to like a, a three outta 10, you know, now you’ve got a massive.

Three out of 10 articles. And if you, yourself or your editors, they know how to write good content and they know what needs to be done and they know how to edit, then okay, now you can kind of create an editing process with a strong SOP and checklist for quality. And now, you know, maybe you can get that content to a six out of 10 and you’ve, you know, increased your, your content a lot and you’ve decreased prices.

Or maybe the prices are the same cuz now you have editors who spend more time editing, but. Now you have a ton more content, you know, so, so yeah. I think just kind of learning how to use the AI to get decent stuff, learning good content and, and good copywriting principles, training your editors, creating a very standardized process and implementing that process into all the AI articles to bring it up to the next level.

And and that way you can have a ton of content that’s, that’s at least pretty good.

Jared: Such an important topic, right? AI is not going away, but I mean, It’s also so, so new trying to figure out how to use it to the best of their abilities and, and

Kevin: be so different in, you know, just even a year probably.

Right. And we don’t really know, like how is Google gonna react to it? Are there gonna be lawsuits? Like can somebody just take somebody’s article and use AI to, I don’t know, to more or less spin it or create their own article in some way and then post it on their website? And I guess there’s really no way to tell, right?

But there’s just so many little wrinkles, right. But I think that like, so AI is, is just not at the level where it can take information and, and I don’t wanna say not add value, but it, it can’t create its own original thoughts. Right. Hopefully not for a long time. I hope, you know, cuz then we’re in a lot of trouble, you know.

But What it can do is it summarizes what’s, what’s already out there whi, which is fine because that’s pretty much what 90% of SEO content writers do anyway, right? So you know, your goal with AI content is to make it sound human and add original thoughts to it if you know, if you can or to the best of your abilities, you know?

So I think until AI is really capable of, of creating original thoughts, we will be okay. At least some of us writers will be. And if not, I’ll need a new job.

Jared: Well, on that note tell us what you have going on over. I mean, you know, you, you obviously, you are talking a lot about copy these days and you’re, yeah, you’ve got a lot of little things going on with how you train people, how you train writers.

You have a course on, on writing better copy, like what do you have going on over at at Web Copy Master? Let me see. Lemme get it right. Web copy masterclass.com.

Kevin: Yeah, so I mean web, web copy masterclass is really just basically everything I’ve learned writing SEO content with. It’s focused on, you know, affiliate content.

There is like a whole, whole big module on writing, really high converting reviews with real data backing it up. So I’d say like half of the course is the foundations of really good online content. And then moving from there, it’s like how to research. And then how to build or how to write really good high converting product reviews with some, you know, case studies and swipe files and things like that too.

So that’s web copy masterclass. Other than that, yeah, I train writing teams if anybody’s, you know, interested in that, you can, you can check out me on Facebook. Maybe I can leave my Facebook profile link. I, I do everything through Facebook. I mean, I still don’t even have a writer website. Like I, I’ve been doing, doing this for so long.

I just never, never made one. I guess Web Copy Masterclass is my, Writer’s site. And we are also beta testing a a hiring and training tool. Maybe I can leave a link for that. If anyone is interested. If you’re planning to hire or train writers or hire editors, it will also work for editors cuz they need these skills too.

So that’s called Boom Rapid. I know it’s a really weird name, but yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s what I’m working on. So yeah, mostly the course. Some consulting training writers, creating documents, and now this hiring and training tool. It’s been a busy, it’s been a busy year, but I, I’ve been having a lot of

Jared: fun.

You have a couple things going on, that’s for sure. Yeah. We’ll leave some links for that in the in the show notes. And Kevin, it’s, it’s really been a treat having yawn. This is such a timely topic. And so you know, I, I think it’s easy to talk about AI right now. It’s easy to talk about writing SEO content, which aren’t the same topic.

They’re very different. And how do we infuse good copy into all of those elements is it’s almost like the third leg of the triangle. Nowadays. It’s really good to have yon, and it’s really timely though.

Kevin: It’s, it’s gonna be the next big boom too. I, I really think that yeah, sorry to drag it out. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently that I think is really important is that like a lot of people think writing is, is just going to to die out, but if anything, you know, I think good writers and good editors are just gonna have more work than they’ve ever had before because now I have clients who could only afford to make maybe five or 10 articles a month, and now they, they can make 50.

You know, and they need somebody to edit those and to, to keep an eye on them, you know? So it’s just more and more content for everybody, you know? So I, I wouldn’t worry about AI taking anybody’s anybody’s job. It’s a fascinating boom that’s gonna be I just think it’s gonna be a boom for all of us that know what we’re doing, you know, and have these skills, you know?

So I’m really excited about it, man. It’s gonna be fun. Well,

Jared: very good. I’m sure a lot of people are hoping that you are spot on with that until we talk next time, Kevin, I appreciate it.

Kevin: All right. Thanks again man. It’s been fun.

By Will James

Will James is a lifelong learner and MBA grad. For several years he has been helping businesses upgrade their marketing strategies as the co-founder of 8-Bit Content. In his free time, he’s most likely building niche sites, training Muay Thai, or spending quality family time with his niece and nephew.

Sourced from Niche Pursuits

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Microsoft wants to help you build a website with Copilot AI

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By Abigail Opiah

Build a business site with a touch of Microsoft AI

Microsoft has added AI enhancements to its low-code website building offering, Power Pages.

Announced at its Microsoft Build conference, Copilot in Power Pages lets website developers leverage AI capabilities for copywriting and form building.

The new update to Microsoft  Power Pages tool looks  to speed up the time it takes website builders to generate text, build detailed forms and chatbots, using intelligent suggestions.

AI site building

Available in public preview now, albeit in North America only, Copilot in Power Pages aims to cut down website development time with features such as auto-generated tables in Microsoft Dataverse to create corresponding forms.

Also available in public preview, the update also includes a virtual table and Power Automate integration in Power Pages that enables cloud flow from web page events.

Developers will be able to leverage these AI-enabled enhancements in Power Pages to jump-start their journey of ideation and building of impactful, secure external website-based services to better respond and serve their customers.

First revealed at Build 2022, Power Pages also includes the integration of Copilot chatbot activation that includes generative answers within the setup workspace.

“You also have the flexibility to adjust, add, or fine-tune fields using natural language input. It’s a more streamlined approach to form creation,” Sangya Singh, Vice President of Power Pages, noted in a blog post.

“For your website visitors, this feature enhances their interaction with your site, allowing them to ask natural language questions and receive concise responses complete with relevant links to optimize both administrative functionality and website engagement experiences.”

Microsoft is working on adding other AI capabilities including page creation, site theming, and image generation, which is predicted to be available in summer 2023.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock/McLittle Stock)

By Abigail Opiah

B2B Editor – Web hosting & Website builders

Abigail is a B2B Editor that specializes in web hosting and website builder news, features and reviews at TechRadar Pro. She has been a B2B journalist for more than five years covering a wide range of topics in the technology sector from colocation and cloud to data centers and telecommunications. As a B2B web hosting and website builder editor, Abigail also writes how-to guides and deals for the sector, keeping up to date with the latest trends in the hosting industry. Abigail is also extremely keen on commissioning contributed content from experts in the web hosting and website builder field.

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How to create an online store

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By Kenneth C. Nzeogu

Creating an online store is an exciting endeavour that allows you to reach a global audience and tap into the vast potential of ecommerce. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a small business owner looking to expand your market presence, establishing an online store can be a game-changer.

However, the process may seem overwhelming at first, but with careful planning and the right tools, you can bring your vision to life. From selecting a suitable platform to designing an appealing website and optimizing it for conversions, this guide will walk you through the essential steps to create a successful online store that captivates customers and drives sales.

Chapter 1

What is an online store

An online store is a website where people go to purchase goods electronically choosing from the catalogue of products and services showcased. An online store is also known as an ecommerce website. It’s a virtual site where users or individuals come to purchase goods and services over the Internet.

Online shopping has become even more popular as the day goes on, and surprisingly it has made life easier than ever. Imagine a world void of online shopping, it can be very stressful. The world is rapidly evolving and online shopping seems to be the future of shopping. During the time Michael Aldrich invented the first ever form of electronic shopping in 1978, he had in mind to create smooth online transactions between business and their customers.

As a business owner, adopting this concept will skyrocket you to greater heights and expand your business. As the popularity of online shopping is growing everyday one can say that online shopping will be taking over traditional shopping or maybe become the shopping itself. The power to transform your business is in your hands, you can choose to remain as an in-store retailer or switch over to having an online store. The choice is yours, but also remember that the future of ecommerce lies in our hands, and with time most shopping will be done online, if not all.

Key features of an online store

Here are the key features of an online store to help you succeed:

Easy to navigate

This is one important feature of an online store. This will help customers to easily find whatever products they might be looking for. You wouldn’t want your customers to bounce out once they find your store is a bit stressful to navigate.

Your product should be categorized logically and according to brand or category. Save your audience the stress of trying to find the products manually. They wouldn’t want to solve those puzzles if you put it up, making your site user-friendly and easy to navigate for individuals.

Simple design

Yes, you might want your ecommerce website or online store to look professional but you also have to keep in mind to make it look as simple as possible so people can understand its features and how to access it. A simple online store design leads to a higher conversion rate because it allows customers to find what they need exactly without hassle and stress.

Make your design so that even when a novice enters your store they will be comfortable and easily understand what its features are, where to get the products they need, and also where and how to make payments. When you do this they will likely come back after each purchase.

Mobile optimization

This shouldn’t be an option as the rate of users making purchases online does that with their smartphones and tablets. You wouldn’t want to miss out on the potential, and power of mobile optimization for your store. The majority of people make purchases right from their mobile phones.

By optimizing your store for mobile use, you are setting it up for success, with the increase in the use of ecommerce sites to make purchases of about 54%, and this number is expected to grow. Make it easier to use by mobile optimization, you can also create a mobile app for your store if you wish. However if you still think mobile optimization isn’t worth it, then don’t. Your site will only face penalization from Google for lack of mobile optimization.

Site speed

Slow site? No, I wouldn’t want to experience that myself! If your site’s speed is very slow it will lead to a higher bounce rate and you will only end up losing your customers to your competitors. No one wants to come across a site that almost takes forever to load. Your site’s speed speaks volumes, it converts visitors easily, instead of running away they will stay and navigate through your site to find out more.

According to a study in the U.S., a slow store cost the ecommerce market more than $500 billion annually. Sounds scary right? You wouldn’t want to have an abandoned cart by customers. To avoid such scenarios then try as much as possible to increase your site’s speed, this is more important in this era than in the former. I wouldn’t want a user running away from my site because of a slow loading time, also your sites speed determines your ranking on Google search results so you need to increase your site speed not only because you want to keep your customers coming and not lose them to your competitors, but also to make Google happy so it can rank your site in search results.

To increase your site’s speed, first and foremost you will need a good web hosting, you need to have a company with reliable hardware to host your site. You also need to enable caching, this reduces the loads of some systems in the server. Images and videos are some of the most popular things that can slow down your site’s speed. To avoid this you have to optimize your images and videos by compressing them to reduce their size.

 

High-quality content 

Whatever is going to be on your site, whether it be products, images, or texts it must be of top quality. You should note that the resolution of your image matters a lot. No one wants to see an outdated photo, and blurry photo, so make every of your single piece of image to be of high resolution. Make them look professional and maintain that professional look. If you consider using stock photos, select ones with high quality, don’t select poor quality images as users can view them as meaningless.

Most people still love the traditional method of shopping, they want to feel the product before buying, if you want them to trust your store, make your image of higher resolution. You can also enable a 3D image model.

You wouldn’t want to be taken less seriously by your customers, because of poor-quality content. However, make sure your contents are not blurry, and make them of high resolution, especially the image. Let your content not only focus on its looks, and clicks but also try as much as possible to focus them in the interest of your customers, making your content add value to their lives.

Customer reviews

The fact that customers cannot see your products, or experience them physically is enough to enable rating and reviews. Your customer reviews are very important for the growth of your online store. It speaks to your customers more and helps convince them. Most customers before making any purchase in any online store or ecommerce website will go through the reviews of those products first to see what other people think and how their experience was with the company.

Include the functionality for customer reviews, because they might be the only thing your clients might rely on before making any purchase. They influence people’s decisions, reviews, and ratings on your store and influence the next action your customers take.

Product recommendations

This uses a special kind of machine called machine learning or predictive intelligence that showcases products to customers based on their interests or purchase history. This is a proven success strategy as customers will be left satisfied feeling that the company cares about their interests and needs, hence enabling them to buy more and also come back to make some more purchases.

FAQ page

This is one of the most important features of an online store. This feature enables your customers to understand your store better. Frequently asked questions are an important feature, it saves you the stress of having to answer some of your customers’ questions about the store or products. Frequently asked questions can easily answer a customer’s questions in detail.

Multiple payment options

An online store should include different payment options for checkout. To avoid losing customers because you don’t have the payment method they use, then make sure you provide different payment options for checkout, and for anyone that you can’t provide, provide the necessary information as to why your store doesn’t haven’t that payment method.

Most customers go for some kind of payment method because they trust the company and they are comfortable with such a payment method, while some also don’t trust that company.

Providing various payment options like debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, Payoneer, credit cards, Google Pay, etc. the more advantage you would have. Also, make sure you make the payment process as easy as possible.

Security features

Your store should have enough security features that are very important in your ecommerce website or online store. Your customers want to know that their details and information are safe and secure.

There are a lot of cyber criminals whose main aim is on online stores or ecommerce websites. To get past their traps you need to make sure the platform of your ecommerce website or online store starts with HTTPS and has an SSL certificate. This allows secure payment on your site. There are some platforms like a self-hosted platform that let you work on your site’s security features. Here are some security features to consider:

– Regular SQL checks

– SSL certificate

– Update and patch your site when necessary

– Use a firewall

– Apply two-factor authentication

All these are some security measures to take to ensure security on your site.

Types of online store

There are several types of online stores and we will be looking at them in this section categorically. We will make sure you understand the models of ecommerce because this is the first thing to do when looking at ecommerce websites.

Here in this section, we will be studying types of online stores according to their different models:

– Business model

– Revenue model

– Website type

 

Business model

You need to understand the different online store business models before starting an online store. Ecommerce website falls into different business models they include;

Business-to-business (B2B)

This type of business model focuses mainly on selling to other businesses or companies instead of selling to consumers. These types of online stores deliver their products to businesses who request them, these products could either be physical or digital. For example, an online store that operates as a B2B can be a software company like Salesforce, HubSpot, or SurveyMonkey and their  products are for the benefit of these businesses.

Business-to-consumer (B2C)

This type of business model focuses on providing their services to consumers, unlike the B2B business model which focuses on providing their products and services to companies and businesses, this model instead focuses on how their consumers can be satisfied. It’s a straightforward model which provides or sells its products to consumers either online, physically, or through mobile phones.

You already know what a typical B2C business model looks like. This model is what you and I adopt every day like when we purchase food stuff, books, clothes, and home appliances either online or physically we are simply practicing the B2C business model.

Some B2C ecommerce companies include Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and Alibaba.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)

This model involves a consumer selling products to another consumer either physical products or Online products.

Consumers can adopt this model and start selling products to other consumers on Amazon, Etsy, etc. They can also set up their C2C personal website with tools like WooCommerce.

Consumer-to-business (C2B)

This is the last type of business model on our list today. This model involves consumers selling their products or services to businesses or companies. For example, the consumer could be a consultant, a freelancer, or a social media influencer.

Revenue model

Haven looked at ecommerce business models, it’s time to look at types of online stores according to their revenue i.e. according to how they make money.

Dropshipping

This can be a very lucrative and successful revenue model for your online store. In this model it involves selling products you don’t make or own, through a third-party supplier. In Dropshipping the seller may not even come in contact with the products, the seller can decide to sell the products received under his brand but this depends on the partnership agreement with the supplier which can either be a third-party wholesaler, manufacturer, or retailer.

When a customer makes a purchase, they will pay your store, and you as a drop shipper will forward the order to the supplier, you pay for the products, and the supplier ships down the products to the customer.

Affiliate marketing

This is a type of revenue model where you gain commission from selling someone else’s products in your store. Just like affiliate marketing, you get paid by generating leads or sales for them through your store.

White labeling

This model is very common and legit. It involves purchasing a product from a manufacturer and repackaging it or rebranding it. This model is a very common model used by cosmetics companies. You can adopt it too.

Rent and loan

This type of revenue model involves a customer paying for the use of a product instead of buying it. For example, a car rental company is a perfect example of this. Companies like Airbnb and Fat Llama rent out their products, and gadgets such as drones, cars, cameras, camera lenses, etc. to consumers.

Website type 

Online retailers

This is a common type of online store according to their revenue. This type of store can be seen when online retailers purchase different products directly from the company’s brand at wholesale and now sell them at a retail price on their website.

Let’s look at it this way, I can decide to buy products from brands like Nike, Adidas, NorthFace, etc. directly from them at wholesale or I can go to a store that sells varieties of products from different brands. I will buy from them and sell them on my website.

Single brand website

This is a type of website where the owner focuses mainly on a particular brand. They sell a particular brand’s products. Most website stores focus on this type of website. For example, Adidas stores sell only Adidas products and no other brand products can be found there.

You can decide to sell a product from Nike, you will have to sell all of Nike’s products, their shoes, caps, clothing, etc. no other brands’ products will be added.

Multiple seller type

A perfect example of this kind of website is Amazon and Esty. These sites let individuals list their products for sale on their sites. You can be successful if you have this idea. Some of the largest successful online marketplaces are Esty and Amazon.

Chapter 2

Why do you need an online store?

There are several reasons why you need an online store, with the rate at which online shopping is growing one can say that it is the future of shopping. Here are reasons why you need an online store:

1. The internet rules

It’s no longer enough to have just a physical store with the rise in the way consumers make decisions based on the internet, this should be the reason why you need an online store.

Time has passed when people go to physical stores to get the things they need. Now people do online research before purchasing any products, they read reviews and ratings from other buyers and go through the company’s profile before making any purchase online.

2. Greater reach

The physical store has a lot of limitations, the only ones that get to know your business are those who live near your store, but with an online store, you can reach thousands of people in different countries. With an online store, your business will have a wide reach, people can search for your store online and order your product right from the comfort of their home.

People will be more motivated to make a purchase, they have enough time to search for the products they want, and most importantly you won’t have to wait for customers to find your store on the street.

3. Increased sales opportunities

With an online store, you can generate more sales than you would with just a physical store. Thanks to the benefits of online stores your store will be open 24/7 to customers to purchase products at any time they want regardless of where they are located. You don’t need to worry about how to attend to customers during non-business hours. You can generate a lot of sales outside business hours.

4. New sales tools

Unlike a traditional store, an online store is much better, it comes with so many tools to make your business easier. There are tools to help you run campaigns for your store, there are tools to automate various areas of your store. There is a wide range of tools at your disposal.

5. Online shopping will continue to grow

There are billions of online buyers around the world, and it is said that online shopping is the future of shopping. Most individuals prefer buying online to going to a physical store to purchase their products. This is the reason you should start an online store. The Internet has made things easier and so has it made shopping.

If you want to expand your business reach and get more customers, then you need to start an online store. Leverage The power of online shopping by starting an online store.

6. Improve company image 

An online store improves your company’s image. Nowadays any company without an online image leaves customers wondering if they are serious with their business. For your customers to value your company, you should start an online store. It adds credit to your company’s image and establishes you as an authority in your business.

7. Improved customers support

With an online store, you can serve your customers better, they don’t need to travel down to your physical store to lay a complaint concerning any products nor do they have to travel down to make some inquiry about your company.

You can create a video or a FAQ (frequently asked questions) to help answer most questions your customers might be likely to ask. You can also automate some messages for your customers. This doesn’t only save you time, but it also improves your relationship with your customers.

Importance of having an online presence for businesses

Visibility leads to more audience reach. An online presence determines how people will find you. In years past when there was no internet or social media platforms, there isn’t a need for an online presence, people found you only when you told them where you were located. In this section, we will be looking at the importance of having an online presence for your business.

There is so much importance that I can’t wait to let you know. During the COVID-19 building, an online presence became a priority for many businesses and they saw the benefits, after the COVID-19, most businesses adopt the fact that an online presence is beneficial for their business expansion, and growth regardless of the lockdowns in various countries now enjoy streams of revenues, but those that didn’t suffer it. Some businesses went down because of the pandemic while some blossomed because of the pandemic.

Sit tight let’s take this smooth ride:

Accessibility

The more reason why you need an online presence is because your competitors are also online trying to expand their reach. You will likely lose your customers to your competitors when they search for your product online and find out that you are not available online, they will abandon the search and move over to your competitors.

Your business needs an online presence to enhance accessibility. To make sure your company shows up on Google search results, invest in improving your site SEO because this helps Google rank your site above your competitors. Make your business and products effortless for your customers to find, make sure that your site speed isn’t slow because that can be a big turn-off for your customers. Imagine losing potential customers to your competitors because of inaccessibility, or load issues. Avoid this by working on your online presence.

Wider reach

Focusing on selling traditionally in a physical store, limits the reach your business can get. An online presence allows customers to reach you easily and also improves your company’s image and also increases your sales. You don’t need to worry about your business hours, with an online presence your customers can purchase products at any time of the day and also make payments through the payment gateway provided.

Reaching more people is easier when you have an online presence, customers will also refer you to their friends, and families if they love your products and services. This is the reason you need an active social media account. If people want information about your business they can easily come to you.

Helps builds relationship between you and your customers

An online presence helps to boost your relationship with your customers. You can easily reach out to unsatisfied customers and help them resolve their issues. This is why comments and reviews are very important. It helps you know what your customers have in mind about your products or brands, and by replying to their queries you are showing them that you care about their satisfaction and are ready to give them the best shopping experience.

Ignoring bad reviews or comments on your site to move forward with your business sets a bad image for your company. It’s better to resolve an issue if there are unhappy and unsatisfied customers than to make ahead with your normal duties making it look as if their opinions and satisfaction don’t matter.

Showcases your products and services

An online presence makes it easier to showcase your products and services to potential customers. Your online presence will make it easier for the world to know about your business, what you sell, and how you offer your services. With just a search and a few clicks on your sites, customers can see what you offer and make a choice. They don’t need business hours to do this, that’s the interesting part of an online presence, regardless of when your business operates, customers can always make purchases at any time and any day.

Brand awareness and recognition

Your social media platforms, blogs, and website helps to tell your audience about your brand or store. They are the most common ways of increasing your brand awareness. Distance isn’t a barrier to how much your business can reach, and the recognition your business can gain. To get recognized by your audience, build an online presence, invest in having an active social media account, and regularly update and promote your brand to reach a wider audience by doing so, customers can easily share the word about your business with their friends and families.

These are some of the reasons you need an online presence. As a modern business, you shouldn’t be left behind in what the internet can offer you. You shouldn’t be left in the dark and focus only on traditional means of shopping or marketing, leverage the power of building an online presence and see the transformation.

What do you need to start an online store?

To start an online store there are a few things you need to start an online store and here they are:

Business plan

This is a document created that includes your company’s goals, vision, marketing objectives, financial projections, etc. Before starting an online store you will need to sit down and count the cost. Lay out plans, goals which include long-term goals, short-term goals, and mid-term goals.

A business plan is very important for the success of any business, it’s like a light that shines on your pathway, it directs your business to the right place and lets you know where you are going, and when you are moving off the track. As a company grows so should your business plan change, your business plan shouldn’t be rigid, it should evolve with your business. Now even with a business plan most companies fail, having a well-laid-out business plan without a strong leadership or good strategy will make the plan fruitless. To accomplish your business plan you need to stay focused on the plan.

Domain name

A domain name is what helps people find you, they are an integral part of your website, without a domain name visitors can’t find you online.

You can see a domain name as a passcode for your brand, once your visitors input it, it grants them access to your site. Choosing a good domain name for your store is very important, it makes it easier for customers to find you, and it also improves your ranking on search engines. Make your domain names short, let them reflect your brand, and make them unique and easy to remember. You can get a domain name for any domain name registrar like NameCheap, GoDaddy, etc.

Website platform

Before starting an online store, you should select an ecommerce website platform for your online store. However, you can also select a content management system (CMS) that supports online stores. You can also decide to choose a Pre Built ecommerce store rather than hiring a web developer to build one for you.

Some website builders that will help you set up and effectively manage an online store include; Shopify, WooCommerce (built on WordPress), Magento, and BigCommerce.

Website hosting

Website hosting makes your website content accessible to people. It helps to publish your website on the internet. There are different types of web hosting. There is Shared Hosting; this involves multiple people sharing the same servers including memory, processing power, and storage space. We also have Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting; Here your website also shares the same servers with other users but the difference here is that there is a virtual partition for each user.

This type of hosting is best for blogs with rapidly growing audiences, medium-sized sites, and ecommerce stores. There is also Cloud Hosting; this type makes use of several virtual servers to host sites. In case one server goes wrong the rest can carry out the task. Businesses with multiple websites, and also some eCommerce stores can benefit from it.

Design and layout

Before creating a website for your ecommerce store, make sure your designs and layouts align with your company’s image. This alone increases your brand reputation and sets you as an authority in your niche. Create a visually appealing interface, you can hire a web designer to do that for you.

Products and services

Of course, before starting an online store you should already get your products ready. Are you selling digital products, will you be selling them to companies or businesses or will you be selling to consumers? Will your store focus on multiple products from different brands or will it focus on products from a single brand? Will you be dropshipping or wholesaling?

Answers to these questions help you to know the track you’re on and help you focus on it.

Payment gateways

As I once emphasized earlier in this article, make sure you adopt different payment gateways for your store. You wouldn’t like to lose a customer to your competitors simply because they can’t find the payment options that are convenient for them. Include various types of payment gateway such as PayPal, Payoneer, Google Pay, Apple Pay, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, etc.

Security

Your customers will love to know their information is secured. An SSL certificate helps to encrypt customer data, secure payment transactions, and protect sensitive information. Make sure that these certificates are properly installed on your site. Customers won’t like to risk their information only to find out that they aren’t safe with you.

Factors to consider before building an online store

We will be listing 5 things to consider before building an online store. Make sure you read this section carefully.

What Products are you going to sell?

This can be a very difficult question sometimes. Some people may have vast options on their minds, but it’s hard for them to pick one, while for some they might have thought this through before thinking about an online store.

Now the big question is: What products are you going to sell on your online store? Know what you are interested in. Are you interested in selling travel gadgets, scuba diving gear, cosmetics, clothing, Home appliances, homemade products, camera lenses, etc? Make a wise choice, also make sure you research competitors in your niche to see how they are performing and draft a strategy on how you can perform better.

Resale license, business entities, and insurance

You need the presence of an attorney, insurance agent before you start a business. Okay! You might be wondering why! You need these people to be able to find out the legal steps you need to take to protect yourself and your business.

You need them to find out if you need an LLC, to know if your state requires you to register your business name and get a business license. You also need to find out if you will need product liability insurance, and also if you will be needing a resale license (a resale license is very important as it enables you to get discounts from manufacturers if you buy in bulk).

Your customers

Who are your customers? What are their needs, and interests? These are questions you need to ask and also find answers to them before starting an online store.

Don’t stop at the first two factors above, this step is a very important step to take before starting a business. Your customers and who they are helps to provide you with the necessary information you might need in the future and also helps you to draft out a good marketing strategy.

Who are your go-to source

Know who you would be marketing to, and know where you would market. Would you market only on your website, or would you extend to social media platforms or eCommerce retailers?

Online reviews

This is very important when it comes to online shopping. This speaks volumes to your customers more than what you portray. They want to see what others say of your products and services, they want to see those reviews with both negative and positive comments. Reviews influence customers and compel them to take action. Most customers don’t leave reviews but you should learn to encourage them to do so.

By Kenneth C. Nzeogu

Kenneth is a freelance tech writer who’s been in the sector for three years. He loves writing about new technology, focusing on web hosting, streaming, cybersecurity, and how it can benefit people’s lives.

Sourced from techradar.pro

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How to Use ChatGPT For SEO

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By Diya Chhabra

Discover how to leverage ChatGPT for SEO in this enlightening article. We’ll delve into strategies, techniques, and best practices for boosting your website’s visibility and ranking.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for all businesses looking to drive traffic and enhance their online presence. With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, new tools are emerging to help SEO professionals streamline their work and achieve better results. One such AI tool is ChatGPT, a powerful chatbot developed by OpenAI with the potential to revolutionize SEO practices.

Collection of top AI tools to use for different tasks.

In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss how to use ChatGPT for SEO effectively, covering various strategies and techniques to optimize your content and boost your search rankings.

Making the most of ChatGPT for SEO

ChatGPT for SEO – Image via Pixabay

In this section, let’s discuss how to use ChatGPT for SEO.

Content optimization with ChatGPT

  • Enhancing relevance and reliability

Creating relevant and reliable content is crucial for SEO success. One way to use ChatGPT for SEO is to optimize your content by ensuring it is up-to-date and factually accurate. By providing appropriate prompts to ChatGPT, you can weed out speculative or unsubstantiated claims and enhance your content’s credibility.

Additionally, you can use ChatGPT to identify unique ways to add relevant keywords to your content for better optimization.

  • Summarizing content

Well-crafted summaries can improve your SEO efforts, as most users often don’t read everything in the content when they’re researching a topic. ChatGPT can effectively summarize content using its natural language processing capabilities.

By inputting the text you want to condense, ChatGPT can generate a concise summary that retains the essential information. You can even set specific parameters, such as creating a bulleted list of key points or focusing on certain aspects of the article.

Dive into the universe of revolutionary AI technology by trying out some of these exciting AI chatbots available today.

ChatGPT for keyword research and analysis

  • Effortless keyword research

ChatGPT can streamline the keyword research process by generating related keywords based on its understanding of search results. By providing ChatGPT with a few target keywords, it can supply you with a list of related keywords that might otherwise take much longer to discover using traditional keyword research methods. Doing so can help you save valuable time and effort in your SEO strategy.

  • Assessing keyword competition

Another valuable feature of this chatbot is its ability to analyze the competition for different keywords.

By asking ChatGPT to compare the competitiveness of various keywords, you can gain valuable insights into which terms are easier to rank for and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Developing content strategy with ChatGPT

  • Generating content ideas

Churning up fresh content ideas can be a difficult task, especially if you don’t have the resources or expertise of a top-notch writer. ChatGPT can help by generating topic ideas for a given keyword. Whether you need ideas for blog posts, whitepapers, or video scripts, ChatGPT can provide creative suggestions within seconds.

You can also ask ChatGPT to give you a writing prompt based on a chosen idea, allowing you to take advantage of AI-human collaboration for efficient content creation.

  • Crafting semantic SEO strategies

Semantic SEO is a modern approach that focuses on the meaning and topics behind keyword searches rather than individual keywords. ChatGPT can help you develop a semantic SEO strategy by categorizing content for search engines to understand the main idea of your web page, allowing it to appear in relevant searches.

It can also help you recognize the intent of relevant keywords, enabling you to adjust your content accordingly and avoid keyword stuffing. This can lead to more targeted search results and higher rankings.

Boosting link building efforts using ChatGPT

  • Identifying link building opportunities

Link building is a vital feature of SEO, involving strategic planning and execution. While there are many link building tools available, ChatGPT can be used as a complementary resource to enhance your link building campaigns.

By providing insights into best practices and effective link building strategies, ChatGPT can help you identify potential link building opportunities and optimize your backlink analysis efforts.

  • Crafting compelling outreach messages

Outreach is one of the most vital aspects of excellent link building. ChatGPT can assist you in crafting persuasive outreach messages that connect with your target demographic, increasing the possibility of obtaining valuable backlinks.

By providing ChatGPT with the necessary context and goals for your outreach campaign, it can generate engaging messages that effectively convey your intentions and build relationships with potential link partners.

  • Writing SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions with ChatGPT

Title tags and meta descriptions play a vital role in SEO, as they influence both search rankings and click-through rates. ChatGPT can help you create effective meta descriptions and title tags that accurately describe your content and entice users to click on your search result.

By providing ChatGPT with the necessary context, it can generate a variety of compelling titles and descriptions that cater to your target audience and improve your search rankings.

Leveraging ChatGPT for technical SEO tasks

  • Debugging code and writing meta descriptions

Although using ChatGPT for coding might be a more technical process, it can still assist in debugging code and writing meta descriptions. As the learning model continues to grow, it’s likely that utilizing ChatGPT for these tasks will become even more accessible and efficient.

  • Managing analytics report

Analytics are crucial for monitoring how successful your SEO efforts have been and identifying areas where you can improve. ChatGPT can aid in composing and managing analytics reports, helping you identify new ranking opportunities and streamline your data analysis process.

By automating certain aspects of report generation and data parsing, ChatGPT can save you time and effort, allowing you to focus on more strategic aspects of your SEO strategy.

Creating engaging ad copy and landing page content

  • Crafting customized ad copy

ChatGPT can be used to generate engaging ad copy for various customer segments. By providing the right prompts, you can create multiple ad copy variations tailored to different buyer personas.

The generated ad copy can also include relevant keywords to ensure your ads appear in the appropriate search results.

  • Writing captivating landing page copy and CTAs

In addition to ad copy, ChatGPT can assist in writing persuasive copy and clear call-to-action (CTA) messages for your landing pages. Compelling landing page content is essential for driving traffic to your website and increasing conversions.

ChatGPT can create content that matches your design and branding while catering to the interests and needs of your target audience.

Generating FAQs and product descriptions

SEO optimization – Image via Pixabay

  • Crafting comprehensive FAQs

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) are an essential component of any website, as they provide users with quick answers to common inquiries. ChatGPT can help you generate comprehensive FAQs by identifying the most frequently searched questions related to your industry, product, or service.

By addressing these questions on your website, you can improve your search rankings and provide valuable information to your audience.

  • Writing SEO-friendly product and service descriptions

Product and service descriptions are crucial for eCommerce websites, as they can impact both sales and search rankings. ChatGPT can be utilized to create SEO-friendly product and service descriptions that effectively showcase your offerings while incorporating relevant keywords. This can help your product pages rank higher in search results and attract more customers.

Enhancing localizations with ChatGPT

  • Translating keywords and content

ChatGPT’s natural language processing (NLP) capabilities can be used to translate keywords and content accurately, ensuring that the context and intent are preserved. This can enable you to reach a broader audience, especially if you are targeting international markets or catering to multilingual users.

Accurate translations can improve your SEO efforts by ensuring that your content is relevant and accessible to all potential customers.

  • Adapting to local SEO requirements

Local SEO is vital for businesses targeting specific geographic locations. ChatGPT can help you adapt your content and keywords to meet the unique requirements of local SEO. This will ensure that your website ranks well in searches relevant to your target region.

By understanding local search trends and preferences, ChatGPT can help you create content that appeals to your local audience and boosts your search rankings.

Streamlining content creation and distribution

  • Generating newsletter templates and email campaigns 

Email newsletters can play a crucial role in your SEO strategy by distributing content, driving traffic to your website, and creating opportunities for backlinks. ChatGPT can help you create attractive content templates for your newsletters that encourage subscribers to click on your content and share it with others.

By combining AI-generated content with visually appealing designs, you can increase your chances of achieving high open rates and click-through rates.

  • Automating social media updates and blog posts

You can also use ChatGPT to generate content for social media updates, blog posts, and other forms of content distribution. By providing ChatGPT with the necessary context and goals, it can create engaging content that resonates with your target audience and drives traffic to your website.

This can allow you to create a consistent online presence, improve your search rankings, and attract new customers.

Conclusion: Embracing the power of ChatGPT for SEO

Website layout – Image via Pixabay

ChatGPT provides a wide range of potential applications in the realm of SEO, from content optimization and keyword research to localization and analytics management. By harnessing the power of AI, SEO professionals can streamline their work, achieve better results, and stay ahead of the competition.

However, it’s crucial to remember that while ChatGPT is a powerful tool, human oversight is still necessary to ensure accuracy and maintain the quality of your content. By combining the capabilities of ChatGPT with your own expertise and creativity, you can create a winning SEO strategy that drives success for your business.

By Diya Chhabra

Diya is an enthusiastic individual with a zeal to learn new things. She’s a Content Writer and Copywriter who turned her passion for writing poetry into a profession. She has written for various niches under the sun with experience and expertise in writing for topics related to AI and crypto. As a Content Writer at AMBCrypto, Diya tries to offer valuable insights into these subjects to help you keep up with the rapid technological advancements.

Sourced from AMB CRYPTO

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