My Plan For Doug Cunnington’s Podcast YouTube Show

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#1) Don’t be a jackass.

#2) What Was My Intention When I Suggested That I Be A Guest?

I want to talk about the Content Site Creator learning curve that happens BEFORE you even write one word.

Because it shocked the hell out of me, and I had a hard time finding a resource to cover the most basic concepts.

Here are 9 Vocabulary Words for Beginner Content Site Creators

  1. Vocabulary
    1. Niche: a subset of a topic
    2. Niche Site: a website that addresses the topics within the Niche
    3. AI: artificial intelligence
    4. Plug-In: an add on to a software, used often in content sites because the website building software you use (such as WordPress) has a bajillion programmers working to enhance and improve the customer’s (us!) experience of building a site with lots of functionality even though we don’t know how to code
      1. Types of Plug-Ins
        • Optimizing to make your site faster
          1. Hummingbird
          2. SGOptimizer (comes on SiteGround hosted sites)
          3. WP-Optimize
          4. JetPack
        • Contact Collection/Email Sign Ups used to collect user’s details so you can collect a big fat list of people to market to
          1. Email lists are surprisingly still a big deal. Since they were a big deal back in my day (early 2000s), I figured they’d be long gone.
            • Email lists add monetary value to your content website that you could cash in if you sold your website or if you successfully sell things to your peeps via email
          2. The Contact Plug-Ins are astounding in their functionality, but I’m currently afraid of installing any because I haven’t researched which ones are “lite”
            • BTW…ALL of the Plug-Ins (and themes) you will choose from will say that they are “lite/light” meaning they won’t make your site slower to load
            • The people making the Plug-Ins are selling them to us…you are reading sales pitches when you read their features. Somehow I didn’t get this at first. I think because they are free. But they do angle to get you on their email lists (it’s a fractal of capitalism) and sell you the premium upgrades, which are usually very inexpensive.
        • SEO Plug-Ins to guide you through writing SEO-friendly content and setting your site up in a content-friendly way.
          1. These are freaking amazing. Again, it’s boggling to me that they are free. That underscores the value of having an email list of customers, doesn’t it?
          2. These Plug-Ins sit on your site and guide you through pretty much everything, at least the Yoast brand does.
          3. Some of these Plug-Ins can be linked automatically to your account outside of your website, such as Ahrefs and Google Site Kit.
          4. I’ve only tried Yoast and it was for a short time because, again I don’t know which ones are “lite” enough to warrant the features
            • It’s worth noting that since I haven’t used any on my sites lately, I don’t know where to put the Metatags, Breadcrumbs, etc. I also don’t know how to write structured data and some of these Plug-Ins help with that too.
          5. Brands
            • Yoast
            • Rank Math
            • All In One
        • There are many more categories of Plug-Ins, but these are the top three categories for infant content sites
    5. Cache/Caching: not ultra clear on this one yet but it has to do with how your website data is stored and it’s a tool used to, again, address “performance” issues, aka speed
    6. Theme: a theme is a pre-made template for your website that doesn’t require code knowledge to adjust
      1. Themes are a HUGE huge huge subject, at least they were for me at first.
      2. I had difficulty grasping that they were pre-made gorgeous websites that I got to use for free!
      3. I spent about 40+ hours understanding themes, and scrolling through them in all of their beauty, and I couldn’t decide because they are all so amazing looking
        • Part of why I am so flabbergasted by all the free and incredible tools out there is because of my age and my experience with building websites and email marketing “tools” back in the early 2000s. The hottest thing around then was “WYSIWYG” which I don’t think is even used as a term anymore. It stood for What You See Is What You Get, and it blew people’s minds, especially those that were pseudo-technical like me, because you didn’t have to know HTML in depth to create a half-decent website. You could just use a tool that translated your design into HTML. So you’d create these sites based on what they would look like instead of writing a ton of HTML.
          • Yes, I did also walk 7 miles in the snow every morning under threat of bears and moose to get to my bus stop. (Just kidding! It was only 2 miles).
      4. THEMES ARE TIME VAMPIRES. If you are a graphic art oriented-person, resign yourself to sacrificing a certain number of hours per week just looking at them
      5. Themes can make or break your site’s success.
        • This I learned after spending hours picking the most beautiful theme in the world.
        • Most themes with seriously fuck up your site’s speed…especially the fancy and pretty ones.
        • Figuring out which ones were truly “lite” took me a surprisingly long time. Here are the two that I know, at this point in time, are actually good for speed:
          • Generate Press
          • Kadence
        • It doesn’t matter how fast your theme is if you load it down with heavy Plug-Ins or if you neglect to compress your images.
    7. Image Compression: reducing the byte size of an image by either reducing its actual size, its format (jpg, png, heic) and/or its quality/crispness.
    8. Host: the company that houses your website and all its data and somehow “puts it on” the internet
      1. There are kajillion hosting options, and if you are like me, you’ll be checking to make sure you are on the English version of the host’s site when you read the features & benefits. My advise is to just close your eyes and pick one of the biggies, because you simply won’t understand why it’s good or bad until you are further into the process. Then you can switch.
      2. Brands that people use:
        1. BlueHost
        2. SiteGround
    9. Domain Name: I even understood this one from the get go, but what I didn’t know is there is yet another capitalism fractal in the world of domain names
      1. Content Site Creators who start with some knowledge seem to prefer to buy an existing domain instead of create a new one, and YES there are a thousand suppliers from whom you can purchase these existing names:
        • Go Daddy
        • Odys
        • Flippa
        • Sedos
        • Spamzilla (helpful because you see all the sites for sale, regardless of the vendor but it costs money, so find a free comparable one)
      2. Creators purchase existing domain names, rather than make up a new one, in order to gain the Domain Ranking Authority (DR or DA) number. There are several DR/Authority number rating systems. 0-100. 100 is the best. My personal best of all my sites right now is 2.
        • Domain Authority means that the search engines believe that the domain name is an Authority in its niche.
          • They assess this based on backlinks and supposedly content as well, though that seems a bit sophisticated. It’s a lot like middle school which supports my theory that Google is a precocious 12 year old.
            • If you sell motorcycles and Harley Davidson has a link to your website, your Authority score increases. “Bob likes Fran so Fran must be cool”.
            • Backlinks are wicked hard to get, or as Niche Site Lady said, “backlinks suck balls”.
            • There are techniques and products you can buy to make your backlink profile stronger. I’ve done nothing with them yet because it sounds like a pain in the ass and chasing popularity makes my soul feel rusted.
      3. On the other end of the spectrum, investigating NEW domain names to see if they are available makes my soul feel manic!
        1. They are cheap, like $20/year cheap.
        2. It is really fun and easy to follow your inspired idea for a website and purchase the perfect domain name for it.
          • If you’re creative and impulsive, which you are, then just proceed with caution. My collection of over 20 domain names which I’ve bought since June are a great record of how much I knew about Content Sites when I purchased them. I still love a couple of them though and if someone asked me to cough up $400 for a curated list of half-baked domain names I would NEVER have done it. It adds up.

#3) Ask these questions, then DUCK, because the answers are probably somewhere in Doug’s awesome documentation already

  1. Why are the traffic scores so different between my host and google?
  2. Can you break down ultra slowly, what the traffic numbers are that matter vs the ones that don’t? “hits” “clicks” “impressions” “rpms” “users” “views”
  3. Do you think the AI tools that people are using are using the content we put into them to better their tools?
  4. Which parts of this field still get you excited?
  5. Do you think the people who gravitate to wanting to build sites for money tend to be the types that want shortcuts? Because I am like that and it’s a deficit I want to see and acknowledge and then TRICK into working for me!
  6. What’s your most favorite and least favorite part of your job as it currently is?
  7. Which times in your career of doing affiliate marketing, do you look back on with the most fondness for how alive and inspired you felt?

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