Tai’s biggest benefit to me is the time saved. An hour or two (or ten) here and there can make all the difference come the end of the month and I’m multiple posts ahead.
Eran Fulson, tourmygermany.com
On his site’s About Me page, Eran calls himself a “jack of all trades and master of none.” In his previous careers, he’s been a ski-lift operator, welder, bartender, and a builder in three countries.
Now he can add writer and online business owner to his résumé. Together with his mom Gerhild Fulson (of “Just Like Oma” fame) and niece Lydia, Eran has created TourMyGermany.com, where he and his team share all about his parent’s home country Germany.
Tour My Germany is — at the time of this writing — less than 1.5 years old and already shows impressive traffic growth. It wasn’t impacted by Google’s Helpful Content Update in September 2023 or the March 2024 Core Update.
We wanted to know how Eran and his team did it, and specifically which role Solo Build It!’s AI assistant Tai played. Let’s dig in and hear from Eran himself!
1. What is your process for deciding which topics to write about? Has your AI assisted content creation process changed since Tai launched?
We started the website with two topics in mind, German cities and castles. After a dozen or so pages we began picking sub-topics from the content we had already written. This led to easy cross-linking across the site as every new topic can reference back to one or more previous posts.
I’d be very keen to see how Tai can influence the initial creative process if we were starting from scratch. At the moment, we still have a plethora of ideas to work through, but Tai is helping by drastically cutting our writing times down with Boxchain.
Why? Because if you just go with your gut, you’ll write about what you find interesting, and you may miss lots of topics your audience wants to know about.
On the flipside, your human judgment is necessary to weed out keywords generated by a tool like SBI!’s Brainstorm It! that simply don’t make sense.
Eran’s story exemplifies this perfectly. His initial inspiration came from his niece’s desire to write about German castles. Brainstorm It! then helped them identify the main keywords for their launch content.
They branched out to cover German cities as well, a logical choice for a travel site. Once again, they used Brainstorm It! to discover low-competition keywords, which they then turned — with Tai’s help — into high-quality web pages.
2. When you have your topic, what happens next? Can you briefly explain your step-by-step process from topic to published page?
Here’s how I do AI assisted content creation using Tai. After using Brainstormer to find the new page’s main keyword, I then use RankIQ for the main keyword’s related terms. This gives another 100 keywords to use in my post. I’ll break these down into headings (location), subheadings (points of interest in said location), and filler words (e.g., best time, good idea, amazing, etc.).
From there, I work my way through the “six P’s” in Tai’s Prompt Build It! until I get to P6, Pertinent Connections or Sentiments. There I insert all of those previously sectioned keywords.
After researching the content for accurate information, along with official websites to link to, I’ll arrange, rewrite, and pad out the content as needed to suit the overall direction of the post.
I’ll go section-by-section in SBI!’s BlockBuilder, filling with images and text as I go. Analyze It! ensures all the necessary boxes are ticked before building the page.
By the way, if some of what he describes feels like it’s way over your head, don’t despair.
Building a website or online business involves a learning curve, but Solo Build It! helps you shorten it. With step-by-step guidance and a supportive community, you’ll gain the knowledge and skills you need for success. SBI! also provides a comprehensive set of tools under one roof, minimizing the initial need for external services.
Eran’s experience is a great example. I was curious if he had ever tried using Tai Freestyle (one of Tai’s core modules) instead of RankIQ to discover the 100 related keywords he likes to use in his blog posts.
He told me: I hadn’t, but I will now.
A couple of hours later, he came back with the results:
So, I tried Tai Freestyle to see if I could mimic the results I’m used to seeing with RankIQ. With a bit of prompt wizardry, I can get pretty close. The key is not asking for 100 related keywords, but specifying a certain number of keywords for headers and paragraph topics. And then complementary keywords to those topics, which will help round out the overall post.
I like it when things I suggest turn out so well. 🙂
3. AI generated content can sometimes sound robotic and/or contain errors. How do you ensure that your final piece is error-free and “uniquely you”?
Instead of copy-and-pasting the whole AI content, I’ll rewrite it word-for-word(ish) while “hearing” what it sounds like and making changes to sound more like my own voice. Given the prompt process in Tai, the output is easier to rewrite when it already sounds like me to begin with.
As for ensuring error-free content, I check every single paragraph. If one states some information about a particular location, then I’ll do a quick search on that location’s official website to ensure that it’s 100% correct. It also helps me to collect outbound links to scatter throughout the post.
Yes, it takes a little bit of extra effort, but correcting published misinformation is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Once you’ve created your draft in collaboration with Tai, it’s crucial that you:
- check the content for errors (generative AI tools still tend to “hallucinate,” i.e., they make up facts) and
- edit it extensively, so that it sounds like you.
Tai includes a handy little tool called StyleBuilder. In a few simple steps, you can train Tai to write in any writing style you like, by using samples either from your own writing or from an author you admire.
StyleBuilder ensures that the content Tai generates aligns with your voice. But it still needs your expertise, experience and stories to truly resonate with your audience. And that’s why it’s called “AI assisted” content creation.
Watch the short video below to see StyleBuilder in action.
4. What do you see as Tai’s biggest benefit for you as a website owner / blogger?
When Tour My Germany began, I started off primarily writing articles and creating social media content. As time went on, my job description evolved into a more administrative role, but one where I still had to try to find time to write.
Tai’s biggest benefit to me is the time saved. An hour or two (or ten) here and there can make all the difference come the end of the month and you’re multiple posts ahead.
It’s also the big promise of artificial intelligence, that it helps us become more efficient, faster and better at what we do. Personally, I still feel that AI often costs me more time than it saves me. But I guess that’s because there’s so much going on in the AI world and I’m trying to keep up with it all.
When you’re focused on just one thing (creating outstanding content for your website or blog) and one user-friendly tool (Tai), then you’re much more likely to benefit from AI’s time saving promise, as Eran’s example impressively shows.
5. Do you see any downsides in using AI assisted content creation?
In a word: complacency.
Just like any new technology that saves time, there are inherent risks that go hand-in-hand as soon as one becomes too comfortable with it. Especially in an industry where we impart our knowledge.
The more we entrust a fallible entity to create content, the greater the risk of misinformation slipping through and under Google’s ever-watchful eye.
It sounds as if you press a few buttons and — mere seconds later — your perfect 2000 word, search engine optimized article is ready for you. All you have to do is publish it and wait for the traffic (and money) to roll in.
And at first glance these AI-generated articles sound impressive. But once you look closer, you realize that they contain a lot of fluff, tell-tale buzzwords (unlock, unleash, empower, etc.) and flat-out errors.
Sure, there may be people who have short-lived success by publishing hundreds of AI-generated articles per day. But if you’re in it for the long term, and want to be proud of your content, don’t become complacent.
Use AI as it’s meant to be used… as an ever helpful, knowledgeable assistant, not as a replacement for you, the writer.
6. What else do you use Tai for, apart from helping you write new pages?
As I alluded to earlier, at the moment, the Tour My Germany foundation is pretty well set, and having more time is our holy grail.
That said, I recently bought another site through SBI!, and I will undoubtedly be making full use of the Tai toolkit to create the framework for an exciting new venture.
For example, you can use it to explore your audience’s pain points, discover topic ideas, find a keyword’s search intent and plan your monetization.
When you combine Tai’s creativity with Solo Build It!’s keyword brainstorming and analysis tools, you’ll nail down your niche in record time.
7. How important is the newly added Tai Images module for you? Do you plan on using AI-generated images on your site?
Being in the travel niche, we can only use real-life photos on the site. Much as I’ve tried finding a way to implement AI images, sadly, there isn’t a capacity for us to use them.
Always prioritize the expectations and needs of your audience when deciding on content elements. If your niche requires genuine visuals, focus on creating or sourcing high-quality, original images.
In addition, the need for having to take pictures is the perfect “excuse” for visiting all those beautiful places you’re writing about! You might even get free stays in luxury hotels and lodges if you have a well established travel blog.
8. Have you tried other generative AI tools, e.g., ChatGPT or Gemini? If yes, how does Tai compare to them, from your experience?
I used ChatGPT in its infancy, albeit with mixed results. Perplexity.ai has been good for research, as it often comes back with fairly credible content references that aren’t solely Wikipedia links.
Funnily enough, I’ve primarily used Claude.ai, and now it’s part of the Tai family.
I’ll give full kudos to Tai’s prompt-creation process. The results that come back are on par with being a prompt engineer, but without needing a full understanding of how to build a prompt in the first place.
P1: Purpose: What is the primary goal of your content?
P2: Profile: Characterize your ideal reader or audience.
P3: Page Length: Set the desired scope of your content.
P4: Personality: Determine the style, tone, voice, and reading level of your piece.
P5: Preconditions: Outline the specific context or scenario for your content.
P6: Pertinent Connections: Associate desired keywords and express sentiments that resonate with your content.
This structured process ensures that you’ll draft prompts that will result in excellent output from the generative AI tool, saving you time and frustration.
Give it a try and see for yourself. Signing up to Tai is free, and you’ll get 20,000 credits to experiment with it.
9. Your Google traffic has increased since you started using Tai (congrats!). Did you also notice a positive impact on your earnings? If so, how big was the impact?
I wish I could answer this one in more depth. We’ve applied to Mediavine’s Journey program and have just been accepted! Obviously, it’s early days, and the ads are still adjusting to the site.
I’ll be making much more use of Tai outside of blogging content as we begin a slight shift in SEO practices. With Pinterest traffic offering a higher RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) than traffic from Google, Tai Freestyle will help with writing the multitude of headlines and pin descriptions already in my tone of voice.
If it works like it sounds like it should, then Tai’s impact on our earnings will be measurably positive.
It also comes with higher requirements though. To join their main program, your blog needs to have 50,000 sessions per month (i.e., quite a lot of traffic). In early 2024 they introduced “Journey by Mediavine,” a self-service program that requires only 10,000 monthly sessions.
This allows newer and smaller sites to benefit from Mediavine’s high quality ads inventory.
Before you can expect any earnings from your site or blog, you need to build up its presence first. We typically advise SBI! members to start monetizing when they have at least 30 pages of high value content and a steady stream of about 100 visitors per day.
Another important piece of advice is to diversify your income streams. Once you have some experience with easy monetization options like ads and affiliate marketing, branch out into more active methods, for example creating and selling digital products, offering coaching or consulting services or adding an e-commerce store.
10. And finally, what advice would you give someone new to using generative AI in general and Tai specifically?
For me, AI is an essential tool to have in my toolkit. While some view it as a threat to creativity, I look at it as a way to expand on my creative output. However, I also take AI content with the same level of trust as a door-to-door snake-oil salesman.
Specifically on Tai, study the Tai Guide with the same vigor you put into writing your wedding vows (provided you didn’t use AI for that as well). And take your time through the Prompt Build It! process. This lays the foundation for the bulk of your content.
So far so good, and the future is looking bright.
- Use Tai or any generative AI platform as a tool to help you with your creative tasks, not to replace you. You’re in the driver’s seat!
- Critically review AI-generated content. Never publish it without editing and fact-checking.
- Invest enough time to really learn how to use AI assistants. With Tai, you’ll get access to our in-depth Tai Guide, giving you the knowledge you need to use AI to your advantage.
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