Tips Tuesday – Brand Deals, Revenue Drop, Social Report 

Tips this week include:

• My new YouTube channel is doing well
• IMA Shorts making maniac
• New CAD tutorials coming
• Launching new and sunsetting old sites
• Sudden drop in revenue and blocks of legit bots
• Adobe to buy SEMRush
• GA4 is all about ads
• Why you should look for brand deals
• Social platform use and demographics report
• Has TikTok been sold?
• Turn off AI Slop videos
• My video-first approach

Happy week of Thanksgiving, y’all.

I am so grateful for you allowing me to be a part of your site and online success!!!

It’s a short, but busy week for U.S. peeps. 

And safe travels if you’re venturing far from home.

Happenings Around Here

New YouTube Channel is Doing Well

Each week I’ve been sharing screenshots of the analytics of my new YouTube Channel with folks in the DIY SEO Everywhere course via our Facebook group.

And those graphs show immediate and consistent organic growth. That growth is getting faster now that the meat and potatoes tutorials are starting to publish. There are 11 tutorials in this series and I scheduled them to post every 2 days. So, we’re about half way through them.

Everything I’m seeing in the analytics points to the sheer power of doing good SEO in the video itself as well as for all of the metadata and channel info on YouTube.

Keep in mind that there are 20 million videos uploaded to YouTube every day.

So, no matter how small my numbers are right now, the fact that my videos are already showing up in YouTube Search and as a Recommended Video is a huge deal.

And the fact that viewership is doubling every week is a big deal too.

IMA Shorts Making Maniac

Two weeks ago, after I got all of the long videos scheduled to publish on the new channel, I immediately started making Shorts with quick tips that will point to those longer videos. I have 31 of them on my outline and I’ve completed about half of them. I should finish up the rest this week.

And then I’ll upload and schedule all of them to publish every two days as well.

That will take me through the end of January with consistent activity on YouTube, which is a key factor in getting a new channel ranked.

Shorts get shown, honey!!! So, I’m expecting to see a big boost in Impressions. I sure hope there is a big boost in CTR with it too!!! But that will depend almost entirely on who YT chooses to show these Shorts to, as they are still trying to determine the right audience for this new channel.

I’m betting my analytics will start fluctuating wildly when the Shorts start publishing.

New CAD Tutorials Coming

I usually close my woodshop from December through March, so no new builds for winter.

But, since I will have my new YouTube channel set for publishing for at least the next 2 months, that will free up my time to start creating a new series of tutorials on Heartwood Art.

There are 2 very popular CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs that woodworkers use. But there aren’t many up-to-date beginner tutorials on them anymore.

So, even though there are already established channels on this topic with huge Views and Subscribers, I’m betting their watchtime is low simply because they are out of date or they are far too complex for beginners.

I see that as a niche opportunity and one that I can do well with – y’all know how much I like to teach!!!! And screensharing video tuts are my fave to make.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing all winter.

And because this channel is already monetized, every view will make me money.

Launching New and Sunsetting Old Sites

A few of my clients chose to shift topics or try new things during the Covid coop-up time and/or they have had major life and business changes recently.

I’m helping them either launch new sites to expand their endeavors or sunset sites that they no longer want to pursue.

You most definitely want to hire help to do either of these things, as there is a LOT to it, and that includes plenty of things you would not have thought to do!!!

So, please do contact me to help you with it – and both services are pretty fast and cheap too.

Monetization Tips

Sudden Drop in Revenue and Blocks of Legit Bots

I’m currently working with a couple of clients who have seen a big drop in revenue from their ad agencies.

There is an issue with how the ad code is appearing on the site, and another issue with bot rejection.

The code issue has been tough as the vendor is not being all that helpful – actually, they don’t know the coding well.

The bot rejection issue from the other vendor likely involves a change in Cloudflare security. The vendor has been helpful and we’ve taken logical steps to test and resolve the issue. But the problem lies with Cloudflare’s hidden rules that I cannot access nor change.

At this point the vendor will have to appeal to Cloudflare to get their bot on the Verified Bots list.

For over a month I’ve been saying that something fishy is going on with Cloudflare’s bot fight security and I believe it is affecting all types of legit bot crawls on some sites.

FYI, a change to that bot security is what took Cloudflare down last week.

And it may be impacting some AI bot access too. Keep in mind that each AI service has multiple bot types, including crawlers, search, and user-generated queries.

And the list of bots/IPs that Cloudflare blocks is not publicly available, so it’s tough to sort out what’s getting through and what’s not.

I’ll stay on it until I get to the bottom of it, and I’ll inform my clients and webmasters, and provide tutorials if needed.

SEO Tips

Adobe to Buy SEMRush

Pro SEO folks are having a field day with this news.

Adobe is acquiring SEMRush for $1.9 billion.

They plan to add it to their Creative Cloud suite.

At first, this acquisition made zero sense to me.

But then, a lot of ad agencies use Adobe products, and maybe they were asking for a better way to track effectiveness.

This deal won’t finalize until Q1 of 2026.

Pro SEOs see this as the undoing of SEMRush, and I agree if Adobe doesn’t keep the SEMRush staff. We’ll see what happens.

GA4 is All About Ads Too

There hasn’t been much focus put into improving the free version of GA4 since the last big update they did about 1.5 years after everybody had to switch to it – and that was about 5 years ago.

Most all of the improvements have been on the paid version, and 90% of those have been for better ad tracking.

Look for Brand Deals

AI has made content a generic and free commodity now. By “free” I mean that blogging for dollars/ad revenue is way down. Folks don’t need to visit sites with ad bloat if they can get their answer from AI.

That’s why the whole site focus has shifted to products.

And that shift includes blogging and vlogging about products.

Brand awareness and visibility are the new SEO – that includes getting content creators to mention the brand.

As I mentioned in a recent Tips Tuesday, one of my clients has a newish YouTube channel and she did a review on leggings that she loves. The brand picked her up immediately to do sponsored content.

So, if you blog, very seriously start looking to brands who sponsor creatives and start doing reviews.

The whole internet is going to turn into one big mall, as product ads are coming to AI platforms too.

Being a trusted voice for products is a way forward for you, as no other advertising is as powerful for the brand than word of mouth.

Visibility Tips

Social Platform Use and Demographics Report

For all of 2025 in the DIY SEO Everywhere course we focused on ways to get eyeballs that weren’t Google.

Read that again – we are no longer focusing on Google as the primary source for eyeballs.

Then go read this report from the nice folks at Search Engine Journal to see where you can get seen – and what platforms have the demographic of the audience you are trying to reach.

Has TikTok Been Sold?

I have seen news that a TikTok deal was agreed to at the end if Oct, but I haven’t seen an official announcement about TikTok actually being sold to U.S. investors. However, I am seeing the rumors fly that the algorithm has changed, especially with political posts being flagged. 

We’ll see what else changes.

Turn Off AI Slop Videos

I’m hearing rumors that TikTok has a setting to turn off AI Slop videos in your feed.

As much as Meta and YouTube have tried to copycat TikTok, I don’t expect them to follow this trend. They’ve invested millions into developing AI video generators.

And those videos get a LOT of play.

However, I bet those channels filled with +AI Slop don’t make a lot of money, especially on YouTube.

Did you know that the pay is not the same for all monetized channels? Some niches attract much higher-paying ads than others.

My Video-First Approach

FYI, my new YouTube channel has no website associated with it because that would be a complete waste of time. This topic is a see-then-do thing, and video is the ONLY viable way to get eyeballs. 

Most folks will go to YouTube first for help with this software. Those who go to Google will see YouTube videos at the top.

Reels and TikTok videos will be perfect companion marketing – and my link-in-bio will be to YouTube.

The report above confirms that these platforms are where my target demographic hangs out too.