Online Business Idea: AI-Based Content Agency

In this week’s edition of Long Game Online:

• ⚡ Arena Group Signs Binding LOI to Combine With Bridge Media Networks

• 🤖 Online Business Idea: AI-Based Content Agency

• 😐 Long Game Online Update

⚡ Arena Group Signs Binding LOI To Combine With Bridge Media Networks

I’ve heard of 5-Hour Energy before. But, I had no idea that the Company’s founder, Manoj Bhargava, is now so active in the media space.

For anyone that isn’t aware, Arena Group holds over 250 different brands. Some are digital native, and others really have their roots in traditional media. Here are some of the brands they own: Sports Illustrated, TheStreet, Parade Media, Men’s Journal, and HubPages.

It will be interesting to follow the news on this one to see how things play out.

Disclosure: This is not investment advice. I just thought it was interesting news. So, do your own research.

🤖 Half-Baked Online Business Idea: AI-Based Content Agency

The business of running a content agency has been under a ton of pressure recently. There are reports that well-known agency Word Agents has seen revenue decline by 70% and that Make Lemonade (formerly Niche Website Builders) has been put into administration.

One reason that content agencies are struggling is that niche site builders are increasingly utilizing tools like Jasper and Koala to produce content.

Having said that, AI-produced content is not without issues. It’s fairly common for AIs to “hallucinate” and make up facts or to write things that just seem a bit off.

For that reason, I think there is an opportunity for someone to start an agency that produces a massive amount of content with AI, and also puts it through a rigorous editing process to ensure that it’s fit to publish and SEO-optimized.

🧑 Where To Find Clients

There are plenty of ways to find writing gigs online. A couple of my favorites are UpWork and ProBlogger. So, one way to find work would be to apply to writing jobs, and explain what your process is going to be.

It might take a lot of applications. But, this is a low cost way to get going.

If you have the budget for it, I would suggest running ads on Facebook and Twitter, and targeting niche site builders.

Niche site builders should recognize the value proposition: human quality content at a price that’s closer to what AI content costs.

📈 Why Do I Like This Model?

There is a lot to like about the content agency model. For starters, it can scale fairly quickly. Niche site builders invest a lot of money into content. So, if you do a good job, each client can generate a lot of revenue.

The revenue is often recurring or at least “re-occurring”. A lot of agencies offer monthly plans that provide a set amount of content for a certain price. Even clients that aren’t on a monthly plan will often make repeat batch orders on a fairly regular basis.

🏢 Is This A Sustainable Business?

The main question I contemplate about this business is how long the opportunity will last. The last thing that you want to do is to put all of the effort into getting a business off the ground, only to find out that in two years AI-produced content is so good that it no longer needs to be edited by a human.

While this is certainly a possibility, I don’t think that this is where the world is headed. At least not for quite some time.

As an AI-based content agency, you would probably have enough volume to justify paying for an enterprise grade subscription for your AI tool of choice. This would allow you to produce content at a lower cost than niche site builders that are only running their own sites.

You should also be able to build and maintain an edge by developing better prompts and standard operating procedures than the average site builder.

😐 Long Game Online Update

Last week, I ran a poll asking which type of content my readers preferred. I expected that it would be the weekly Online business idea that I write about. However, much to my surprise the winner was Interesting stories & news in the online business world.

Having said that, only a small percentage of readers replied to the poll. So, I’m not sure that this truly reflects my audience’s preference. If you didn’t vote last week, please go ahead and vote below (if you would like to help shape the direction of this newsletter).

Aside from the poll, there aren’t too many updates to report on Long Game Online this week. My Twitter ads have been performing a little worse. So, I’m pulling them for the time being, and will tweak the creative a bit before relaunching.

Aside from that, I’m simply attempting to put out some interesting content.

That’s it for now. Until next week…