Tips Tuesday – Substack Blogging, AI Traffic Rise, Block OpenAI Operator Bot

Tips this week include:

• Going deep on Substack – and new training ebooks in the works
• Why I’m learning Unreal Engine for videos
• Why I’m relearning Camtasia for video recording and editing
• Why learning then producing works better and faster
• Blogging on Medium workshop this week
• EZ Metrix updates on the way
• AI Summary link clicks are rising – and how we’ll track them
• WP 6.7.2 bug release is coming soon
• Post Status was acquired by Joost de Valk – and what he did with it
• Blocking the new OpenAI Operator bot – and why this is bad news for all of us
• Summary of the 2024 Spam report

It’s the end of January, y’all. How are your 2025 plans going?

BlogAid Happenings

My 2 goals for new things to do in the first 2 months of 2025 were to kick off a marketing campaign for the courses on eCreators Hub and to get my production workflow going for a new relaxing video YouTube channel.

I had hoped to be publishing on both of these new ventures by the end of January. I’m not as far along as I want to be on either. 

Here’s why that is, and why it’s okay.

Going Deep on Substack

For the marketing on ECH, it took a whale of a lot longer to learn one of the platforms where I’ll be blogging – and that’s Substack.

Y’all know that I had not planned to blog at all, and instead make only videos for promotion of these courses.

Well, last year I joined a paid newsletter on Substack and then joined a related mastermind. And I’m finding Substack to be a good place for long-form content.

But, I’ve struggled with trying to figure out how all the different parts of Substack work, and where the content I post is going to show up, and how to even follow the folks I subscribe to there.

That’s because Substack has 3 parts:

• Personal Profile – for the social media feed part where you write short-form content called Notes and interact with other Substack publishers.
• Publications – like a blog, where you write long-form content called Posts.
• Website – home to your Posts, with more pages, like Home and About.

I think if someone had explained even that much to me I would have not struggled as much as I have to make sense of it.

I even bought a book that should have explained it, but it was laid out in a way that was just as confusing as the platform itself.

So this weekend, I started writing my own book on how to get started with Substack. I’m basically documenting my process from the beginning with fully defining all of the parts. And then going through all of the settings for each one.

A full 50 pages of screenshots and instructions later, I’m starting my first Publication and the associated Website.

The cool thing about Substack is that you can have multiple Publications.

Right now I plan to have a free one that focuses mainly on eCreators Hub topics.

But, I can see running a paid Publication there for the video mini-course instead of doing it as a membership on ECH.

I can also see running paid mastermind groups there too.

And now that I see what’s possible, I also see a series of ebooks on how to do it all!!!

So, I think I will split up what I’m documenting into at least 3 ebooks.

• Book 1 – getting started on Substack with Settings, Notes, and Posts
• Book 2 – creating a free Publication and Website
• Book 3 – running a paid Publication as a course or mastermind

And I may delve into more niche topics with these books – but they are a maybe:

• Book 4 – video on Substack
• Book 5 – strategy on Substack, especially if you already have a site

Learning Unreal Engine

For my relaxing videos, I tried AI video makers. They just don’t suit my purposes.

I want to make videos where you sit still and relax; not videos of short clips that have tons of movement.

The point of these videos is to be a backdrop to the music. (See this one I did for Christmas.)

A couple of years ago, when I first got into AI videos, I came across other non-AI platforms that were more cinematic. In fact, this is the same software that movie studios are now using instead of super expensive CGI for their green screen backdrops. 

The 2 most popular platforms are Unreal Engine and Blender and both are free!!

Both started as world and object-making platforms for games. Blender is still more focused on making 3D models. But UE has evolved into a full movie set studio maker.

The learning curve on both of them is super steep.

And 2 years ago, I had an insanely hard time finding tutorials that were up to date, as the platform versions evolve quickly. So, I dropped it.

But, I’ve been super lucky to return to UE just as a new version hit and there are several new tutorials showing how to build worlds with the new features.

I’ve been at it in the evenings now for 2 months and I’m still learning – that’s just how much there is to it.

But, I now have the lay of the land built with a nice lake in it. And I’m starting on the rocks and foliage for it.

Y’all will totally lose your minds when you see how real this stuff looks!!!!!!!

You won’t know that you’re not sitting in a real forest by the lake, with a little breeze blowing the vegetation, and with mountains off in the distance. Or I may have you sitting on a rock ledge overlooking a valley with a river. There will also be a beach with ocean waves rolling in. And gorgeous skies above all of it at all times of the day. Rainy day scenes are also possible too. And I’m still working out how to do waterfalls and creeks, but they are a bit harder to make look real.

Since these worlds take so long to build, my goal is to create one big one with slightly different landscapes all around it. And that way I can park the camera in any of those spots to make totally different relaxing videos in different environments. Or, maybe even the same environment, but from different angles and time of day or weather conditions.

At least that’s the plan!!

Relearning Camtasia

I’ve been using Camtasia for years as it is the premier screen recording video editor. Every tutorial you’ve seen from BlogAid was made in that software.

But they’ve added new things to make it faster for you to produce videos for social media and such too, such as quick layouts for vertical videos, and snazzy backgrounds and such too.

I had not really tried any of the new things yet, as I just needed to kick out the same screenshare layout over and over.

But, this past week I took one of their many free training webinars to get up to speed and WOW, that was so helpful. 

This is going to make my short, social media news or tip video workflow go so much faster!!!!

Learn Then Produce

I’m telling you all of this because I’ve spent the last 2 months in school, so to speak. Not to mention all the time I spent learning my new music setup and documenting all of the new voices and instruments, plus all of the new tools I have now.

But, once I’m done with school, my workflows will be fast!!!!

So many folks have the expectation of just jumping to the end with the production without learning the tools or strategies first.

And there are PLENTY of “gurus” who egg them on that way – saying everything is fast and easy.

The fact is, if you want to make money online doing something new, you’ve got to put in the time to learn that new thing.

Take a moment to appreciate how much you had to learn, one thing at a time, to produce every part of the content on your site – including:

• WordPress basics
• Hosting
• Plugins
• Images
• SEO
• Video 
• Metrics
• And every platform where you share that content

I hope by now that the one thing you’ve learned is that learning new things is the one constant in this business – at least if you want to stay in business.

We had a good run with blogging that made us think that we had already learned all we needed.

But things change.

Time to change with them.

What new thing do you want to learn today?

I hope I stand as an example of how energizing learning new things can be – and how many new doors it can open for you.

eCreators Hub started out last year with just one course – EZ Metrix. And look at it now! It has 4 courses and 2 ebooks and more on the way – all of which are selling.

And I had to learn all of the things that are in each of those products!!!

What 1 new thing can you learn that will help you sell the info you already have and write about?

Course Happenings

Blogging on Medium Workshop

This week in the DIY SEO course we will cover blogging on Medium. 

More specifically, we will address repurposing our existing content there. It takes minutes and costs nothing to do that.

And, we’ll cover joining their partner program and making exclusive content for Medium for which you will be paid.

Some folks say that Medium is dead.

I don’t think so.

And we’ll see how this experiment with bloggers in the course turns out, especially for those who have lost so much traffic from Google, and for those of us who have products to sell, especially digital downloads.

EZ Metrix Updates on the Way

I’m currently looking into adding new “Group Sources” to our GA4 so that we can track traffic to our sites from the various AI summaries like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more.

And, I’m working with one of my site audit Hub clients who is in the EZ Metrix Tier 2 course and who also has a Shopify store.

We’ll be setting up Key Events for when the link to her shop is clicked on her website, and adding that conversion metric to her reports.

Then we’ll be setting up a new report for traffic to Shopify.

Now, to be clear, these are not metrics once folks are in Shopify and what they click.

This is GA4 recording the traffic to the shop and where that traffic is coming from.

AI Summary Link Clicks Rising

A new report from Modern Retails shows that folks who use ChatGPT Search and Google’s Gemini Search are paying attention to what’s suggested in their AI summaries, and they are clicking to purchase items found there – as reported in this article from Search Engine Journal.

I suggest you read the article for yourself and see just how fast folks are adopting AI summaries and not bothering to look at the rest of the Search results.

And if you’re not in that summary, you can forget getting a click.

THIS is exactly why I’ve been saying that blogging for Google traffic is over.

And, this is why I’ve changed directions in the DIY SEO course to cover blogging on other platforms like Medium and Substack, or focusing on Pinterest.

This is also why I’ve been telling you to move into products instead of relying on ad revenue because folks can purchase something from so many other places than your blog, or you can get paid directly for publishing content on these platforms. 

In other words, people don’t have to visit your site for you to make money.

If you haven’t already started moving away from only blogging for ad revenue, let this be your wakeup call.

WordPress Tips

WP Bug Release Coming

WordPress 6.7.2 is scheduled for final release on Feb 11. The RC for testing will b eon Feb 4.

This is a bug fix. And as a minor point release, it should auto update for you.

FYI, when that release first hits your site, it may not auto update immediately, even though you see the notification for it.

Keep in mind that WP has a scheduler for tasks called the cron. And it will do that update, and any other minor plugin and theme updates, when their task comes due in that cron. That task my be set to run daily or weekly.

Post Status Sold to Joost de Valk

I’m super happy about this acquisition.

Joost and his wife Marieke have been part owners in the WordPress news outlet, Post Status, and its associated community for WP professionals for a few years.

And now they have fully acquired it.

They then promptly turned it over to the non-profit organization they run to ensure it remains a community-driven publication.

This is the one place I’ve been able to get balanced news about what’s happening all over the WP world and I know that will continue, plus we’ll hear about any new moves with where WP is going.

Post Status has a free and paid version.

And it looks like the paid version might turn into a paid Slack channel.

Security Tips

Blocking the New OpenAI Operator Bot

OpenAI has introduced a new AI agent called Operator.

It will be able to take actions for you online, like filling out forms, scrolling, and clicking on websites and such by using its own browser.

This is going to turn into a spamming nightmare super fast. 

I’m already developing ways to detect and block it from our sites.

On top of this spamming issue, there is another concern about rankings and reviews and such.

There are already MASSIVE bot farms around the world that are paid to have their hundreds of thousands of bots act like humans using mobile devices.

They scroll through YouTube and other sites that pay for views and likes and such and click give watchtime and likes to the creators who pay them in order to get their content to the top of search.

It costs a TON of money to run those farms, as they require a lot of phones and IP addresses and internet bandwidth to pull all of this off, not to mention the cost of the software.

My bet is that some small startups will turn to this new OpenAI Operator to simulate the same process.

But, I’m also betting that all of these platforms will do what I’m going to do for me and my clients, and block this bot.

The problem with all of this is that there are multiple Open Source LLMs that anyone can download and train to do the same thing. Meta even makes one of them.

Folks, there are millions of dollars on the line for getting some videos or music or other such content to the top of a platform.

There are multiple agencies that artists can pay to run up watchtime and ranking on these platforms to launch their careers too.

And here we are trying to play by the rules by getting organic watchtime and reviews and likes and such while we are competing with these agent farms.

OpenAI says they are rolling Operator out slowly. But even so, I bet it won’t take long for it to be used in ways they did not intend.

You better believe I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open about this.

2024 Spam Report

The OOPSpam report for 2024 is out.

I suggest you have a look, even if you just scroll and read the graphics.

One of the sections you need to pay close attention to is the Most Common Spam Words.

And here is that list, as you will want to leave these out of your email subject lines so they don’t get filtered as spam:

• Bank
• Fund
• Money
• Payment
• Atm
• Address
• Account
• Card
• Information
• Million
• Email
• Name

You might also be interested to know that the Formidable contact form I recommend is not even on the list of most targeted WP form builders.

We also use Cloudflare Turnstile to help protect that form from bots too.

See my Formidable tutorial to switch to it, if you’re not already using it.

That’s a Wrap

I hope you have a good week.

And I’ll see you online!

MaAnna