Site Operator Managing 48 Websites: Paul Lemley (#288)

Paul raised close to a million dollars to start and run a portfolio of websites.  They have some solid processes put together for how they are growing these websites and choose which to invest further in.  Enjoy.

Connect with Paul here:  https://twitter.com/PALemley

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Disclosure:  I'm just a dude, and these are just my thoughts.  Verify anything I'm saying with other professionals out there.  Also, many of these links are affiliate links from Amazon and other companies, meaning that I will make a small commission if you purchase a product or service by using the link. Sometimes I’m able to get you an even better deal through my relationships!  No pressure to buy through my links.  Love you!

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Transcript

Paul Lemley: 0:00

have 48. total sites under ownership slash management.

0:05

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Brooks Conkle: 0:09

All right. So something you're doing that is crazy. I'm just gonna jump straight into it As of right now, you have like more than 30 sites or something that you are operating and you have like, growth on those sites and you're also adding more to that, right?

Paul Lemley: 0:22

Yeah. So as of right now, we as in multiple entities, okay, I, I should say I have 48. total sites under ownership slash management. 3 of them are personal. 15 are our original acquisition that my company Digital Authority Group acquired in three separate acquisitions. And then 30 of those are our new portfolio, which we launched in June. Called Legion Media One. So that is a separate portfolio of Digital Authority Group, with Digital Authority Group being the operating entity, the GP, essentially. And we're, we've been scaling those, you know, 10 per 10 every four months, since June and we raised$835,000 to do that Legion One portfolio. The goal was a million, but things slowed down at the end of the year and we were already launching sites. So, fundraising didn't end on the high note, but I think what the shortcoming of fundraising, is gonna allow us to do is hold back some of the launch capital for the reinvestment, time period, So just to give everyone a kind of an idea of how we structure this portfolio. We're launching 10 sites every four months. 150 seed articles get published within that four month period of time. That is kind of our home base of topical authority. The goal there is to get as, as quick to topical authority as possible. Whatever niche we decide on. And then we mature that, those sites for, 16 to 18 months, likely longer than that. But at the nine month mark, we will launch ads. And we're actually at that point right now. Or we will be next month, with the first cohort at the 16 to 18 month mark, or maybe even sooner, we will choose one or two of the top sites within each batch of 10 and, that one or two sites would get reinvestment capital. Focused on affiliate sales. So we would launch additional content on the sites, more info content, but also more, or the first, iteration of commercial content, whether that's buying guides or product reviews, what have you. And then, we will also look at some other strategic revenue opportunities depending on the niche. So some niches might have some legion opportunities, some might have direct brand sale opportunity. But it'll depend at that 16, 18 month mark.

Brooks Conkle: 2:34

So it sounds like you guys haven't really thought this through at all, on how you're gonna operate this thing. why don't you put some brainstorming into this man. I was hoping I could give you some ideas today. But you're running these sites in a more efficient manner than, so I have like a handful of projects and I run them completely, I shouldn't say completely opposite, but somewhat opposite. Okay. I've had a real estate license for about a dozen years. I don't, like, last year I did all of zero transactions cuz I was like, I don't have time to show someone like a property or whatever. Right. Just dawned on me, this is gonna sound dumb, but like, just dawned on me that, wait a minute. I own a local media like website and they talk to agents about like, Hey, you need to become a local media kind of person or whatever to like generate leads for like, for real estate. I was like, I'm going the opposite direction. Like I'm growing a local media brand. I was like, wait a minute. So this is something like brand new for me, man, that like I'm really excited about is integrating like the, it's called idx. So all the real estate feed, me being a licensed person, I can integrate that. Nice. So instead most people have like personal real estate sites. and they put the IDX feed in that I'm like no man, I'm gonna turn my media brand into a subverse. Like I'm gonna touch some real estate. There will be hundreds of posts. That I think I can rank for that are very long tail anyway, so it's just like a new exciting thing for me. I didn't plan that out though, like years ago. And it sounds like you guys have a very strategic plan, which is, amazing. Bravo to have that plan. My brain doesn't operate like that.

Paul Lemley: 3:56

Well, if we were gonna raise any money from legitimate investors. Yeah. Had to have our ducks in a row and, Yep. But knowing that, after we mature sites, it's really the, it depends on the niche we launch in. And so, I think that's the biggest experiment with this portfolio is because it's diversified niches. We haven't like picked a overarching niche like gaming or something to get into.

Brooks Conkle: 4:17

And that's probably a part of your plan too, right? The complete diversification of what you guys went into.

Paul Lemley: 4:22

Yeah. Yep. we wanna see what works and double down on the winners. As a solo operator, you have that flexibility. I like that flexibility because I've built a career on that flexibility and, and it's only been in the last two or three years that I've more kind of formalized this into more of an investible, portfolio but those opportunities you see as a real estate agent, other operators like me, we don't get those opportunities because we don't think about'em. So, I think it's an interesting combination. Once you have the niche site operations model down, maybe you have a successful site or two or three that are on the up and coming. Now you can explore, what if I get my real estate license, what if I get paid exactly. You know, it's a different license that I can then become the expert in a specific niche or the, digital expert in the niche or consult for a specific. a solar company. If you get like a solar installation license, why don't I become the solar installer personality on TikTok?

Brooks Conkle: 5:13

Exactly man. And to me, that's actually all about like, building brand, right? So it's turning your media, I guess I call it a media site or a niche site, whatever, into an actual, like, business, right? Like, so, oh cool. I'm getting some traffic neat now. Like how can I monetize this? Not just ads, not just affiliate income, but like, man, can I, yeah, can I provide a service? Like exactly what you just said, or obviously like a product or something too. And to me, that's where this stuff gets interesting is like looking at like a multi-year plan of developing and figuring out what are the winners here. Something tells me, I could be wrong, man. Something tells me y'all have something like that in your game plan. For the biggest sites. Fast forward 24 months. I don't know. Let me just take it two years. I mean, let's say there's a handful of sites that are like, Rising to the top, or maybe it's three, I, I don't know. I'm just, I'm making up stuff here. But like, is there bigger plans for those looking in a couple years?

Paul Lemley: 6:00

You know, I have a feeling on like two or three of the sites, actually three of the sites. I have a really strong feeling that they're going to be the standout. Actually we have a name for'em barn burners. So obviously, you know, we were gonna launch 50 sites and we broke out. What are the, what's the probability of the number, how many will be a barn burners versus barking dogs? We call the bottom, 10% or bottom 15%. I like your code names. Yeah. Barn burners names exceptional average lagers and barking dogs. Those are five labels. But I think there's three standouts and what's really different about these three standouts is two of them are built around an expert. They're both being built around an expert. One was, we were going, we were launching in the space anyway. and we found an expert to work with us. And then the other was we found an expert that we were like, this is the perfect niche. It was actually already in our niche kind of vetting process. Mm-hmm. but I had an existing relationship with someone that's fantastic in the space, has an existing audience. We're more than happy to give up some revenue split to partner with these individuals. And then the third it's becoming more of a news site and a real kind of traditional media brand. So these three outliers I think are gonna be the outliers, the barn burners in the portfolio. For that reason that they're, we're building brands. But I think your question was 24 months out. I think our email list for all three in the next 24 month months is gonna be the most valuable asset in those three portfolio, or three assets, if you will. Very cool. So, yeah, we're, we're likely to invest heavily in paid acquisition of subscribers for one of the sites. Actually, we're gonna be launching that in the next couple weeks. And then the other one that's built around an expert, he has an existing audience that will tap, if we can get, 10% of his audience as email subscribers, we win. And then the other I think it's a smaller niche and so we don't need as many email subscribers and it's gonna be more of a lead gen email subscription model anyway. So, yeah, I think brand and email is really where those three are going to set themselves apart amongst the other 27.

Brooks Conkle: 8:08

Are you guys collecting email is that a part of the plan for every site? I guess you don't know which ones Ultimately are gonna rise to the top, but is that part of the plan email collection for everything.

Paul Lemley: 8:16

Gotten good at deploying just the email collection. Over the past, like two or three months we've, and so even if we don't like start a newsletter for the brand we can create some type of a value proposition. Like download the, give us your email and download this. Five part checklist or this three part mini video series or something. So we'll definitely even if, like, even if we have a barking dog, which we label as a site that never exceeds 10 K page views per month and will likely sell, merge or moth wallet, I think if we have the proposition of selling it, we'd rather have those even a Tiny 500 person email list is still a valuable asset to Yep. To sell alongside the, the site that might be churning 10 K page views a month or something, so,

Brooks Conkle: 9:02

yep, exactly. Yeah, totally agree. Like it doesn't hurt you whatsoever to be building the list and then, yeah. In the future, that's just something that's a part of it, whether you use it yourself or the next owner uses it. their content but obviously making crazy money cuz they have large sales teams and giant buildings with like cameras and stuff. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is nuts. Like this industry is crazy to me. And that's the media industry. So sounds like you kind of alluded to some of those big players that you worked with. kind of the same thing, like putting out tons of content. But not like having any seo, or I shouldn't say any, but not having much SEO thought behind it until you came on board. Is that the case for like a lot of big companies out there? Do you think that are like content heavy?

Paul Lemley: 9:54

I don't think it's the case. I think they find success. Like I mentioned they found success early on with social and video. Building their brands. I was working with the big publisher, I forget the name of it, but they owned like National Enquirer and like a bunch of celebrity trash magazines and stuff. Got it. They have these legacy brand, like. Magazine brands that they converted into digital properties, or at least enhanced with digital properties. And so they have all a ton of brand recognition. They have the social channels to bolster, you know, so they didn't necessarily need to rely on organic search traffic because they also saw it as a huge investment in the long term too. They're used to publishing a 500 word post and driving hundreds of thousands. Of page views to it, just from social channels, just from their email list, just from. Getting shared on tons of other platforms. So why would they even consider investing thousands of dollars into long-term organic seo, strategies if they're not gonna see the return? So the pitch from us was SEO can really bolster and make your revenue even more predictable, which was a challenge. They, a lot of these brands were seasonal in the health and wellness space, and then the celebrity space as well. They see peaks and valleys and they want more predictable revenue. And so if we can give them 1%, 2%. Increase in predictability. Your seo content may not be driving as much. It might be driving half a percentage point of traffic that your other channels are. But it gives you a little bit more predictability and it bolsters your sites. So it doesn't get hit by more Google penalties, which a lot of them actually ran into. Got it. So yeah, it was an easy sell, or I wouldn't say easy sell. It was a hard sell to get in, but then once we had six months under our belt to prove ourselves, it was like anything in marketing or seo, you gotta prove yourself in that proof is in the pudding.

Brooks Conkle: 11:42

Exactly. Yeah. Create a track record. And that picture behind you who is that?, with the beard. That's Marcus Aurelius. That's Marcus Aurelius. Okay. All right, cool. I didn't wanna go out, make an assumptions. Like is that Marcus? Is that Jesus? Is that some musician? I couldn't tell Marcus Aurelius. Very cool.

Paul Lemley: 11:56

Yeah, it's actually Italian license plates cut up. Really? Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I met an artist in, from Chicago and he does busts like these with license plates. And I was like, if you can do markers Julius and use Italian license plates, I'll commission a piece. So that's cool. Challenge accepted. So

Brooks Conkle: 12:13

that's cool. Yeah. Glad I asked. I had no idea. No idea. It was license plates. I can't tell that from here. Yeah. Okay. Those big brands, I kind of dig on that like slightly a bit more like it makes me think of a question like, so the content, and that's a great point. They have a huge, already a brand already, so a following. So they post something you were saying like tons of visits to maybe an article not using seo. In your opinion, can content be used? Both for like social and buzzworthy and be an SEO piece, or do you think they're like two different pieces of content? Always.

Paul Lemley: 12:44

I have a not safer work example of this that, okay. That was probably one of the most successful pieces of content that I've ever recommended and produced and published. And I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I think it was National Enquirer. Obviously Kim Kardashian is a big topic for them. And one of the biggest search terms, for Kim Kardashian is Kim Kardashian nude, or Kim Kardashian Nude picks or some something, I forget the actual phrase that, we were targeting. Yeah. And. They kept, like their news section always had some type of Kim Kardashian nude or pics article being published, every day essentially. Yeah. Because there was always back when that was the heyday of her sex tape and stuff like that. That was the big news that just kept going for years actually. So we did a roll up post of the best top Kim Kardashian nude pics and that bolstered that got so much organic traffic over a 24, 48 month period of time that, like that one article did more revenue during that period of time, I think, than a lot of their, like one-off posts and stuff. And so that's crazy. So it has the timeliness of news. and they could always link back to it. They could always republish it or bubble it up back to the homepage or share it again when another trending news story about Kim Kardashian's new nudity was out, but. I think a combination of that timeliness of the news and trendiness and I hate that I have this on my resume that was part of what I did for these companies, but it drove a ton of page views that Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Conkle: 14:20

I mean, it's part of the resume I have. No I have a couple of goofy articles out there that I have extreme. I mean, a couple of goofy articles that I'm like, eh, this, it is kind of weird. But whatever. It is what it is. Yeah. It is what it is.

Paul Lemley: 14:32

Actually that's, that reminds me that in most niches, Not most, more niches than you would assume. The X nude keyword is always there. So for, for instance, like, I don't know, soccer or running, running is a niche that we're in. Nude running was a big, I mean, there's a huge search volume for nude runs and nude Marathons and nude running. And so that was always crazy. It always seems to bubble up in our topical maps of like, nude X or X nude.

Brooks Conkle: 15:01

Got it. Crazy. Yeah. All across content, all across the world. Nude is a part of that. Yeah. Nude is a part of that. Search hierarchy man. alright. Of the projects you guys are doing? What is your target for traffic? Are you targeting seo? Obviously you're putting a hun you said 150 seed. I think that's what you said. 150 seed articles. So that's obviously targeting seo, you're trying to get indexed and trying to get people to find you that way because no one knows about these brands. Right. So, right. So that makes sense. Does that shift later as a part of your plan? Do you shift into other types of content later?

Paul Lemley: 15:33

What we've done is we've modeled out the first two years Okay. We know based on our data as well as some third party data and advisor data, from other people that have launched similar portfolios, is we know we can pretty much predict what the first 24 months will do with the 150 Articles. Okay. After that, it all depends on the niche that we launch on what and what we decide is important to bolster that brand. Meaning, it could be a very basic niche maybe a reference content niche that talks about, like Wikipedia based information and it doesn't really have a brand around it, but maybe it does incredibly well. Drives a ton of traffic and we want to just, maybe it's not the top priority in investment, but we still wanna invest in it and see how big we can make it. We have to decide how much investment capital goes into new content, what we need to do with the site. Do we need to redesign the site? Because our basic theme that we launched with is inadequate and we can't really build a brand with the basic theme. Do we need to bring in an experts to be the face of the brand? There's lots of little angles we can consider. But that doesn't happen until 16 to 24 months later.

Brooks Conkle: 16:40

Makes total sense. Yeah. Here I am thinking about the, projects that I have launched, and it's the same thing. Like, you don't know. You could go into the future and do all this stuff, but it's overkill. You're investing in it. Like why are you doing it when you don't even know if you're gonna make it to step two, step three, right. Like, once you get to step three, then okay, then you're looking for step four adjustments or improvements or whatever.

Paul Lemley: 16:59

It's the hardest thing too because we have some sites that are doing really well. And my leadership team, we're chomping at the bit to be like, okay, this one's doing really well. We need a dozen new, more back links or referral referring domains. We need one to six new experts to interview and do lots of stuff. We need to build email, opt-in value prop. We wanna start a newsletter. There's a dozen things we could do with like the sites that are doing really well right now. But we have to essentially handcuff ourselves and say, okay we can't decide which are the winners yet. That's not our model. But we've also opened we've made it clear with our investors that if we see opportunity, we're not going to wait on it because for an example, I saw an opportunity in one of the niches we launched in september, our second cohort and the opportunity was potentially buy a Facebook group, a sizeable Facebook group. And, I went down that rabbit hole to strike up a relationship with the owner of the group. Propose some early partnership ideas. After that kind of proposed the idea or put a seed in his mind saying, Hey we are open to acquiring it. If that's an opportunity, he kind of balked at that. Came back to it, balked at it, came back to it. And, it wasn't until like last week that, or the two weeks ago that we finally said, no, we can't waste any more time on this. We can spend. The upfront capital that we were gonna, give to him on email growth which is much better long term investment. So our, investors know that if there's an opportunity, we're gonna capitalize on it right away. We're not going to wait 16 to 18 month mark just to see which ones the better site in each cohort.

Brooks Conkle: 18:29

Also makes sense. It's like you have a two year plan. You have a plan. Mm-hmm. But if something beautiful presents itself, by all means don't keep going after the sorry. We can't even look at that opportunity because we have a plan. You're willing to say, Hey man here's an op. We're gonna look at this op this opportunity.

Paul Lemley: 18:44

Right, and that was the same niche. We decided we're going to cut the amount of seed articles that we publish and then launch a news, editorial. Got it. So because there's an opportunity in this niche, we felt that we could split the editorial a little bit and grow in multiple ways and set ourselves up for a longer term success. So, so yeah it depends on the site. It depends on the niche. But yeah, we're very opportunistic when it comes to these types of things.

Brooks Conkle: 19:08

Love that you guys are looking at buying a Facebook group. I like creative business people. You're obviously a creative business guy. I have never purchased a Facebook group. I have tried, I have made a few offers on Facebook groups that have not worked out. Honestly. It's probably better. It's probably better. It didn't work out, but, if it had, it would've been cool. it would've been related to my in-laws, have a local business, like a retail business. It would've been kind of related to that, like in the outdoor hunting and fishing. I'm like, oh man, this would be a cool way to like y'all's business be the kind of face or sponsor of this group that had like crazy interaction in our city. And so, yeah I feel like that's a very like, I could be wrong, man, but I feel like that's very high level. I feel like most people that are like launching, oh, I'm trying to launch a niche site, like, or whatever, like they're not thinking about like, how can I get this Facebook group to add collaboration and build this brand? Or am I, am I way off base? Like, am I wrong on that? Maybe in your circles everyone's talking about that. I'm not really sure.

Paul Lemley: 19:55

Well, I think if you're a solo operator in one niche, you're spending a lot of time in that niche. And so, participating in the community maybe even you being the face of the brand, if you're not the face, then somehow still participating in the overarching industry is important. And so a Facebook group or community outside of Facebook, acquiring email lists is another tactic as well. I mean there's a lot of people having these conversations of what are the alternative assets that can bolster a brand or at least niche site can be built upon, or vice versa. And so I think it just depends on the niche you're in and your appetite to be. The, if you're solo operator, your appetite to be the instigator, go interview experts even if you're not interviewing them, strike up relationship with them. Think of the long term potential of your niche site becoming an authority in the space, not just the organic search authority in the space.

Brooks Conkle: 20:47

Totally, totally with you. Do you think more people are having these conversations now due to AI and what's happening, maybe reduce Google search or do, or has it, like, is it amplified now or has it have the same amount of conversations? Always been had.

Paul Lemley: 20:59

I'm having them more now I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not new to the, or I'm new to this space. Niche sites have been around for sure. 15, 20, 25 years now. So, I think people have been building great brands for a long time on the back of communities and on the back of alternative assets besides school organic traffic. Yep. And they've been successful. I think the, the conversation now with AI, I think is just even more important to bubble up in these communities is, or in our kind of circles are just what value proposition are you bringing to the audience that you're trying to attract and build is, having your own ai. Bots on the site that can answer any question about taking care of kittens or something. Yeah. Is valuable. But what's the real value proposition to build? Why should people care? We keep asking ourselves that why should anyone care about the information we provide, the insight, the expertise, and how can we super serve them?

Brooks Conkle: 21:54

That's actually a really good question. I think probably a lot of people, I mean probably, you know me, you probably a lot of people included. If you don't like, that's probably a question you could ask yourself almost daily when you're like working your business. Like why should people care? About this specific that, that's a good question to ask. And tell

Paul Lemley: 22:06

your That's really cool Editors too. Do what now? It's a good question to ask your writers and editors too, is like, if you can't frame an article in a way that makes someone really care about that topic, then why are you writing that piece? Good point.

Brooks Conkle: 22:20

Yeah, very good point. Me. Yeah, I mean, I just wrote that down. That's a great thing. I'll probably go back to my team and say, hey, why do people care about what we're doing guys? Why does anyone care? Why does anyone care? No, it's a great question. Alright what made you go the route you're going. Versus being, say, a solopreneur and have a hand, you know, have a team of whatever like I do, I have like six or seven people that work with me. You probably have like a million people that work with you. Why did you go your route and grow an expansive portfolio?

Paul Lemley: 22:45

I mean I have personal sites that I, you know, invest in my, my time and capital to grow. Got it. And so I'm not just in this scaled operations with Digital Authority Group and Legion Media, I dabble with in both worlds. And I see value with both. I like solo operators that can focus on one site for six plus years and see that grow. And I even have more respect for those that those solo operators can, that can see. Dive into a niche site or some type of a model, but then quickly quit because it's or not quit, but move it off to the side because it's not growing at the trajectory it nee needs to be. I think that's a very difficult thing to do if you're a solo operator. Good point. But I see the value in these alternative assets. There are many, many new investors coming into the alternative asset marketplace, looking for acquisitions, looking for operators like us, looking for investment opportunities. And so super serving that market with great assets like our portfolio. It's just an easy, we thought it was an easy thing to do because there's a growing demand for acquisitions. There's a growing demand for invest investible opportunities like ours. So why not fill that demand, with some high value sites that people can actually acquire at a later dates and feel confident in. We felt that there was, the assets being, listed on the marketplaces are not as great as they could be or should be. especially for as an investment investible asset to acquire or, invest in. Gotcha. And so filling the need in the marketplace for high value assets and then also increasing the value of those assets I think is why we launched or why we focused on this. Ground up strategy.

Brooks Conkle: 24:25

Nah, that's cool. You talking about the stuff listed on marketplaces, are you like specific marketplaces or just kind of across the board, you're saying? Not across the board. I mean,

Paul Lemley: 24:32

Yeah, from flip A to even on quiet light with which are more vetted, FE International, a lot of the small dollar acquisition marketplaces are really what we're, we didn't see much value that we could acquire and so mm-hmm. I think there's an opportunity to grow. There's still an opportunity because there's people that have been doing this for years now, but grow or seed. Smaller sites, grow them for six to 12 months and then sell them. Mm-hmm. But then see what, comes out as a barn burner and. Invest more capital or even invest the capital that you, the return you get from the sale of those barking dogs or the smaller sites, into the barn burners that you have in your portfolio, which is exciting for us, is like we've, we will have 30 sites at the end of launching this portfolio. 15 probably are gonna be sold within the first, 12 to 18 months and all of that capital, we can return some of it to our investors to so they can see a return or we can invest directly into the barn burners.

Brooks Conkle: 25:30

Who makes that call? Do you guys make the call or do the investors? Get to vote on that.

Paul Lemley: 25:36

we as the GP get Yeah. To make that call. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But our number one priority is get an investor return. Sure. At least get their money back, but then Yeah. 2X 3X 4X their money in the next, 12 to 48 months, so

Brooks Conkle: 25:50

Totally. Yeah. That's a pretty short, I mean I would say pretty short window actually, you know, 24 to 48 months. In AI, what has changed for you guys that, you know, when you started this, obviously I guess you knew about AI, but what has changed in your process, if anything, regarding AI? I mean this, it's moving crazy fast, right? So how has that shifted strategy or tools you use or anything about y'all's business model?

Paul Lemley: 26:15

Yeah, the, so in August of last year, I made a mandate to our entire organization that no AI tools could be used cuz we

Brooks Conkle: 26:22

saw, I saw this on Twitter. You just posted this on Twitter recently. Sorry, I, I, sorry. I jumped in. Excited. Alright, go ahead Yeah.

Paul Lemley: 26:28

Yeah. And it, there was little response or negativity from our team because, there was only a few bad actors, bad writers, that were just relying on AI and it was easy to catch. So that was the middle of August. Obviously the fall saw some, some new AI things come in. Nothing that ped our attention. And then GPT 4 came out in the last couple weeks. And I've been playing with it myself as well as some of our team members. And we did a test with, two of our editors. One editor just did a handful of, or like one or two articles without us, without me telling them that they are AI written and the other did like eight articles. And so the, what we need to see as an organization before we can endorse any AI tools is, does it get us the, 70 to 80% done quality article that a human, can get our editors. and does that 70-80% done article take more or less time for our editor to get from that 70-80% done and quality to a 95-99% done in quality article. Right? Because if we're not saving our editor time and on the communication with the writers and. Core editing and publishing. Then we have to gauge whether or not the extra savings is that we get from not using a writer. A human writer is worth it. That's the what it boils down to us. Like we know that AI's gonna be a tool that will be leaning on more and more in the, in the coming, you know, months and years. But we need to decide and figure out. Can our editors, our current editors or future editors, take an AI written piece of content and turn it into a fantastic, regular, information article and how much money does that save us? so we made some tests. Half of the content we received from AI to the one AI tool that we leaned heavily heavier on, which I'm not gonna tell anyone who would what it is yet, cuz I don't think I've seen anyone talk about this one. Interesting. It's a piece of crap, but it's produced, better, uh, I think better content. Half of the, the content though, was. Our editor was not happy with it and wanted to send it directly back to the, to the writer. So it's really a question of, can an editor change their, process efficiently to, we know there's gonna be human intervention for all the content that we write. There's, we're not gonna take it a hundred percent written piece of content and publish it. That's not gonna happen for a long time. I think. So it really just depends on the editors and can they change their processes? Can they under they understand that one. We still need to train them on the use of tools like submitting queries to AI tools. That's a whole new talent that's gonna be forming over the coming months and years. So I think for a cost savings and a testing purpose, we were excited about it. Oh, and then the other, the other aspect completely different is all of our existing content. How can we use AI to enhance it based on search results? So we've already publish, say we've already published 150 articles on a site. It's matured 16, 18 months or 24 months, and we're at the, like, CRP 2, 3, 4, 4 50% of our articles. How can we use AI to, you know, quickly enhance and test optimizations for all of our content? So I think that's the most exciting part for me, is like, we won't necessarily need to hire a writer or an editor to, quickly enhance a piece of content. We can test enhancements, one month with AI, see how the performance goes, and then have an editor come back in and, flush things out more if we need to.

Brooks Conkle: 29:59

Always changing and it's gonna continue to change, right? Like your process will continue. Like tools will continue to come down the pipeline and like will I say we, like the industry will adjust what it decides to do. And do and use. And so, yeah. Actually that's interesting to me. Yeah. I saw that story. I just realized that when you were saying on Twitter, that you had posted that is Twitter. If people wanna like, find you, is Twitter like the best way to link up with you?

Paul Lemley: 30:20

Yeah, I like growing the Twitter following because I continue to get writers and editors and investors, reaching out to me. So it's been the most valuable asset, for us as a business and me personally. So, Twitter's great. Pa Lemley, L E M L E Y, if you wanna search for me. So

Brooks Conkle: 30:36

PA Lemley. Perfect. And then is there something that, when you hop on a chat, like. that you wished you wish you were like, dad, gummit. I wish someone would ask me this and no one asked me this and I didn't get a chance to say whatever. does anything come to mind?

Paul Lemley: 30:48

Man, I wish I had a good answer for that because it's. Because I've said this before we record it is I've done two or three of these, and not that they're all the same, but I feel we could go real deep if we had Joe Rogan three hour conversation here.

Brooks Conkle: 31:01

Yeah, exactly. One of these ideas I had is I thought it would be cool to get a handful of people in our industry. Like, come on. I mean, it doesn't have to be live, but like record it with everyone on there and just like literally today's industry. And in fact I'm about to do that. I think I got confirmations from both Ezoic and Mediavine. I wanna rep from both of them. We're gonna hop on, we're gonna talk about the state of content, really. Yeah, man. We're gonna talk about the state. We're gonna talk about the state of it in 2023. My goal isn't to get them to like, Right, right. Throw punches at each other. I won't talk about the state of the industry, but there may, I'm sure obviously their business models are different. Who they target is different, how they operate. And I think if I can pull that off, which sounds like as of today, I will be able to, I just have to find the right people and find the dates. I think it'll be a neat conversation. I just think it'd be cool. So I think it'd be neat to find like, A handful of people that were willing to come on at the same time and just like, have a chat. More of like an industry, not like interview, but more of like, here's what's happening, here's to, here's what we're seeing. And I just think it would be fascinating

Paul Lemley: 31:51

personally. Well, in that regard, I'll, and I'll, I'm not throwing anyone under the bus, if any of the guys are watching this, but, Back in August, September, Actually more like July, August, September, I reached out to probably 25 to 30 niche site operators and with the invite of like, we're gonna do a mastermind. But part of the Mastermind is we're all going to invest a small amount of money, but the total would be larger with the number we bring in and we're all gonna launch a site together. Everyone gets the, an equal cut. But we're gonna do this mastermind once a month and we're all going to, to going to, do some minimum amount of work for the launch of this site. So the idea was a mastermind that actually could make money instead of, paying for, to be in this Mastermind. Mm-hmm. I like that idea still. And I know some of the guys, it kind of fizzled because we all had have, our busy lives and, stuff to do, But I think the idea of a handful of niche site operators coming together to launch a site and grow it over the, span of, 6 to 18 months to and do it publicly, I think would be interesting. But even if you don't do it publicly, I think it would be just be a great kind of small group mastermind.

Brooks Conkle: 32:59

What happened before? Like, why didn't it work out? That sounds so interesting to me, man. Like, I'm intrigued. I'm sitting here like, Hey man, let's get off and let's go ping some people and let's make this happen. Like what happened? Why?

Paul Lemley: 33:07

Well, I think my first mistake was that I was pitching this idea in tandem with, like this would be. This Mastermind and site launch would be within a community that we, a paid community that we would launch and everyone could get a cut up to. So like that kind, like made it really, challenging to sell this idea of like, okay, we're all gonna be. Co-owners of a community, but also co-owner owners of this niche site launch that we do in the community, so, got it. It's, it was really difficult and I cut that out pretty quick after I having some difficult conversations, but we did kick off the mastermind. Kind of with like a monthly call that just turned out to be like me fumbling to try to get the conversation started. Right? And not much participation, which is like, I, everyone was still hesitant of what this would be and stuff. And then it turned out that like the holiday season hit and everyone was, working on their own thing. There's some interest yet to re restart it. But we'll see. And I'm not saying who else is was in it. I'm not gonna,

Brooks Conkle: 34:06

you know, the flame, the flame's still there, man. The flame's still there. just gotta rekindle that bad boy. Like,

Paul Lemley: 34:12

I love the idea of like, okay, 10 of us, 5 of us, I don't get 3 of us. If we just came together to quickly launch and grow media brands. I think it has legs because it kind of reminds me of. I think it's on the, my first Million podcast, Sam and, Sean, they talked a while back about this idea of that state of work. It's not going to be, you work for a company, it's gonna be. I'm an operator. I do SEO really well. Mm-hmm. And then another person who's an operator does email really well. And then another person who's an operator does design really well. And so these disparate skills come together for a short term project. And the goal of that project is to get as much, earn as much revenue as possible. They, Sam and Sean talk about that being like the state of. Employee employers. So like, a brand comes in and they hire 10 operators all with different skill sets to do one thing really well and really fast, and then they just go and they're separate ways. I like that idea, but let's do it. As niche site operators, we all have different skills and varying skills and experiences that we can tap into. I think what the hard part is everyone wants their own community and email list. Everyone's launching their own. I had dreams of doing that too, and maybe still will, but like everyone's got their own ego as me most, the more than others I think. But like getting people in the same room, or zoom to tackle or to discuss debate, decide on what's next steps need to be taken then, and actually go and tackle those next steps. is the big challenge of making that happen.

Brooks Conkle: 35:43

So it's, it sounds very challenging to me, but do you know what? It also sounds like it sounds like fun, man. That sounds like it sound, dagum it. Like let's have fun. I mean that sounds like a lot of fun. If you could get the, I think the right people and like set the parameters correctly of like, Hey, okay, what is everyone doing? How the finances flow, like that side, if you can handle that, I think it'd be a lot of fun, honestly, I think one of the keys may be people that want to build a brand actually like that, want to kind of put some stuff out in public because a lot of, probably the majority of site creators have zero interest in like doing this. Any kind of on chat that's gonna be published. Yeah. So it's like the small percentage that do want it, and that have the right mindset because the people that are building their own email list, well, geez, how much smarter is it to like, share that within all of your list and maybe you build something even bigger. Possibly. I don't know. Great idea. And I don't know, add me to a list, man. I'd be totally open to chat about it. And, I know you gotta go, so stick around for just a, And I'm gonna let the people that are hanging out, if you're watching this, you can watch the next video. But, Paul, I appreciate you being on, man. Thanks so

Paul Lemley: 36:43

much. My pleasure. This is a lot of fun. Let's do it again.

Brooks Conkle: 36:45

Yes, sir.