Netflix's Season Finale, my AI SEO Stack, Loog guitars

It’s been a rainy week here in Jersey City. ☔️

I’m in the minority. I genuinely love a rainy day - especially a rainy day in Fall. It’s like the world is calm and, for those of us whose internal monologue is constant, the quiet and calm of a rainy day feels like a bit of a reset. Or something like that.

Either way, I needed a reset. 2023 has been a hard year to navigate with many headwinds. We’re seeing more down rounds and more startups closing up shop completely. It’s a year that has required swift decision making, experimentation, and a willingness to break the status quo.

That’s pretty much the theme of this newsletter; A beloved brand killing its own darling, Attempts to stay ahead of the curve, and a brand that is finding its stride among all of this.

Regardless of the weather where you are - there’s a bit of something for everyone today.

Netflix’s Final Season

It’s been 25 years since the launch of Netflix and the company continues to reimagine itself.

Today (September 29th, 2023) is the last day ever that Netflix ships a DVD. The company is calling it “The Final Season”.

I still remember the satisfaction of ripping that iconic mailer open and apparently some never let that go! In fact, inside of Netflix’s most recent financial statement there’s a little gem that the company still makes ~$30M per quarter on its DVD business!

While that pales in comparison to the billions Netflix grosses, that’s still an astounding amount of money. It reminds me of the inane fact that AOL still makes over $100M per year with over 1M paying users.

Regardless, Netflix’s DVD business was declining rapidly. Of course there’s the fact that there’s a new generation of homes that don’t even have a DVD player. But the operational burden of fulfillment and misaligned strategy of its own programming and move to TV shows surely made the DVD business a further distraction.

It’s a great lesson, or at least one that AOL should learn, that if a part of your business is not growing it’s dying. And, if its not part of your plans for growth, then kill it.

My AI workflow for SEO

In the last letter I mentioned that I’ve been trying to keep up with the AI race.

It’s a tiring race but there is an application of AI that I’ve been feeling slightly ahead of the curve on - AI for SEO. I’ve been applying AI both in the full-time world as well as with a niche site that I launched in July.

The short version.

AI has 3 main use cases to speed up your SEO workflow.

1. Research

2. Ideation

3. Optimization

The medium version / the playbook.

Research:

1. Identify neglected keywords
   Use a tool like AHREFs or SEMRush to identify keywords in your niche that have relatively high search volume but low competition or keyword difficulty (KD).
   
   Ideally you want something that has more than 1k searches per month and ranks less than 30/100 in keyword difficulty.
   
   These represent the search terms that you have the highest likelihood of generating actual traffic shortly after you hit publish.
   
   New tools are coming out each week that expedite and optimize this process with AI.
    

2. Let AI make the outline
   Next, take that keyword and enter into it Koala Writer. Koala lets you choose a number of options but here are my defaults:

   • Chat GPT 3.5

   • Default (vs AI-Powered SEO)

   • include an FAQ section

   • include an Outline Section ← This is the most important
     
     Koala includes a number of other options but those tend to use up your AI credits and typically need to be re-written anyway… more on that soon.
     
     This last choice, include an Outline Section, tells Koala to include an additional step of the process where it will show you an outline in the form of Headers (H1, H2, H3, …) that you can review before the actual writing process begins.
     

     The reason this step is so important is because you want to make sure that each header looks relevant and the article will be structured properly before using your AI credits to generate an article draft.
     

3. Tweak with Google’s FAQs.
   Still in outline mode… Before you generate the final article open Google in a new browser window, search for your keyword target, and comb through Google’s “People Also Ask” list of questions.

   
   

   

   
   

   Go back to Koala, add these questions as a headline or into the FAQ section of the outline.
   

4. Let AI make the first draft.

   Now click “Create Article” and give Koala few minutes to generate the article.
   

5. Score and improve your article.

   Once Koala generates the article it’s tempting to just copy it into your CMS like Wordpress and hit publish but that’s not going to be good enough.

   
   Instead, take Koala’s article and head on over to a tool called Surfer SEO.

   

   Surfer SEO Score Example

   
   Surfer SEO scores your article by comparing it against a number of criteria to pages already at the top of the SERPs (search engine results page). Criteria like headings, word count, paragraphs, images, and most importantly keyword inclusion to give you recommendations to improve your score.

   
   As you edit, you’ll see your score improve - it’s satisfying AF.
   

6. Edit the AI out.

   
   Now here’s the most important part.
   

   Admittedly, I initially thought that AI generated content might take out about 80% of the hard work of creating content. As of today, I think it’s really only taken out about 20% of the production process.
   
   This is because Google is not going to let robotic AI produced content take over its search results. In fact, Google just released its Human Centered Update for search and most believe it is an attack on purely AI generated content.

   
   So now, treat the AI generated article like a draft. Scrub it hard for soulless tone and repetitive content. Add your own knowledge and experience to it. Make sure you are the author on the pages or that a real human is.
   

   

   
   Things are changing rapidly and I’m continuously trying out new approaches and new tools to stay ahead of this crazy AI race.

Brand of the week: Loog Guitars

I was 12 years old when I first picked up a guitar. It was an old 1980s nylon string acoustic guitar with a crack on the top board held together with a piece of tape. The guitar has brought me a lot of joy and a lot of zen over the 25+ years since that day.

Now that I’m older, it’d be amazing if my kids shared an appreciation for playing an instrument like I do. Heck, I’d love to jam with them one day!

Loog guitars has come onto the market in a big way with a really great niche strategy - guitars for kids.

Their marketing is brilliant - so brilliant that even Fender, the most iconic of all guitar companies, has partnered with them on their latest line. They’re a customer of soona as well which makes me personally very proud!

In my last letter I shared Hoto home tools which would be a perfect gift for any Dad, Crafter, or DIY person in your life. A Loog guitar would be awesome for any kid.

I got the new iPhone 15 Pro. It’s pretty underwhelming but it did remind me that I should be taking more photos given how crazy good the cameras in it are. To spare you the trouble, I bought four different cases and this cheap ass Spigen case was my favorite.