Cindy's Newsletter #5 - Written by an human

What's the place for us with all that automated content writing?

With the rise of ChatGPT and AI writing in general, I’ve been pondering about what’s the future of writing stuff on the internet.

I had a WordPress blog in the very early days, when all blogs were personal blogs. It was a recipe blog in French, and looked nothing like the slick recipe blogs you see today. Phones didn’t even take pictures then, I had to take them with my cheap digital camera!

My cooking was nothing like it is today either; they were beginner recipes, but everybody was on a big recipe feed and people would drop by in the comment section from time to time. 

Today, if you write a post on a blog you have to know why you’re doing it, or you’ll be going nowhere fast with zero readers. There are two kinds of articles you can write:

• An article that will be searched for in search engines with the best SEO techniques you can, to bring the traffic in. In that case, you’re looking to funnel the traffic somewhere: a product, an affiliate link, some display ads…

• An article like in the good old days to display your thoughts or show off something cool you did, as a portfolio or to put it out there in the world and open yourself to serendipity.

I believe that the second kind of writing is the future, even we are in a brief interlude where SEO was king. You can still make lot of money cranking out average content (with better knowledge of SEO than I currently possess) but I’m having trouble believing it will stick forever.

The generic content can (and will) increasingly be written by AI, and if you want to fully participate in the Great Online Game and create opportunities for yourself, you need to have something to share and not just regurgitate what’s already on the first page of Google. 

So resurrect that old blog and newsletter and write about something fun!

Side projects updates

Got completely side tracked and created two bundles of printables (downloadable PDFs) for my Etsy shop and published them. I’ve wanted to dip my toes into printables for a while, and since my shop is garden-related I needed to get them out now so they would be relevant for the upcoming gardening season. I did sell one already, so there!

I also started new batches of kombucha, tempeh and miso. I also sterilized grains to make more shiitake grain spawn. I will then make sawdust blocks from which the mushrooms will fruit.

Feeling of the week

I don’t what all those fungi mean, but…

Ways I can help you

• I can write blog articles for you on technical subjects around web development and mobile development. I can also write about hobby-level Arduino, 3D printing and home automation subjects.

• I’m now all setup to sell my handcranked wool socks on Etsy and my own site. Head to https://manibas.com for yours!

• For my Canadian friends, it’s time to start thinking about purchasing seeds for your garden. I have a nano business selling seeds from my garden at https://sentiersperdus.net/en. Sorry, due to various phytosanitary concerns, it’s hard to ship those outside Canada.