Should you stop making websites because of AI? (podcast 004)
Summary
- I think creators should still make websites, even with the existence of AI, getting more prominent by the day.
- People like to hear from other humans with experience in the subject and ask for personalized advice.
- People like to connect with other humans on social media, comment sections, and online communities.
- The opinion of Experts will always be important even with AI being around.
- Google has been trying to make Expert content rank better on Search without success so far. But that's likely to improve in the near future.
- A website is your online home: you own it, you control it, and you make the rules.
- A website is a place where people can always find you without other platforms getting in the way.
Episode links
Podcast Transcript
AI is everywhere and giving answers to everything that people might ask. So should you still build a website? That's what I want to answer in this episode.
Hi, my name is Tiago and welcome to episode 4 of the Stack Junction podcast. So today I want to talk if people should still build websites, even if AI is coming and becoming more prominent by the day.
So should you, should you still make a website? Yes. And I'm not saying this because I get commissions by recommending platforms for people to build websites. No, I'm recommending this because there's several reasons that I want to discuss today. Reason number one is that people will always want to hear from other people and experts.
Even if you don't consider yourself an expert, if you are passionate about the topic, you might have something to teach other people, so you might be included in this expert category. So I see people tending to interact and like to hear from other people on places like communities, comment sections on articles and news and social media.
I also see people like personalized advice. So, for example, most of the advice and information is available on the internet. And even with AI now, it's incredibly easy to get personalized advice. But in the case that AI is not an expert in everything. And you might want to get a real expert if it's something important and with real consequences.
You might not want to trust AI. So, you might hire or pay someone for their expert advice or ask for expert advice on internet that. For example, there are some subreddits, that work kind of like this where people ask for legal advice and some people there that have, experience with that kind of cases that they went through, cases like that or people that are lawyers going through that.
For example, I'm also part of a subreddit where people ask for tax advice and that kind of stuff, and some tax advisors are there, some business owners are there sharing their experiences. So, Okay. Personalized advice is highly valuable and people might search for this personalized advice from you, from the content and the niche you operate.
And the next point, it relates with what I just said, that people like to talk with other people that have experiences in things, even if they are not the expert. So if there, if it is a place where conversation happen, like legal advice and text advice and that kind of stuff, other users like to talk with people that went through things.
So, this will tie together with me thinking that expert's opinion will be more valuable in the future. And I also think that experts will always have a place to have a website and share their opinion. Of course I think these experts should protect content, as I said in an earlier episode that people will have to put the content behind a paywall to protect from AI scraping the content and abusing copyright systems. But I think that experts will always have a place to share what they know. And for example, something that I've seen Google try over the last years is that they want to make expert content and even expert with quotation marks content rank better. They have still not figured out a way to do it successfully, but they are showing the intention to promote expert content. So, I think it's likely SEO will change in the future to promote this kind of content from experts. And if you are passionate and an expert about something, I think you'll find a way to thrive with your website.
As a counter-argument, I also think that it's true that people can create websites with AI content, with no edits and very light edits and put out a lot of content and make a lot of money in the meantime. But I don't think this will be sustainable, but I think it's possible to make a lot of money this way.
So, It's the counterargument I have for what I'm saying, that people should make expert content. And I think experts will have a place, for example, some places that people like to, to interact with other, other people is blogs and vlogs. For example, someone goes on vacation and they share their experiences and people ask about the place. How was the experience in the restaurant if they see some, some specific restaurant and they want the opinion of the person traveling of the restaurant. Those kind of things. Social media, it can be educational content where someone teaches you topic how to teach a trick to a dog and you make a question about, other things like, how to teach a different kind of trick or ask for a different kind of dog breed, that's all a kind of conversation that can happen. As I said earlier, Discord there are some communities, that people like to interact and Reddit.
Actually, I refer to Reddit, and Discord is the other, the other platform that is also for communities.
And there is also private communities where people interact with others In private communities, mostly, communities where you have to pay to access the content.
A website will be your online home. You will control it, you will own it, and you will make the rules.
So, with the website and email list, you will always have a way to reach your audience and your audience to find you. And this removes the problem of platforms changing the rules; and screwing your business model.
For example, something that happened recently is YouTube removed links from YouTube shorts and a lot of YouTube shorts creators depended on that.
Links to make affiliate commissions and that is going away and will hurt them, in a way that it's not even, it's not even out yet, but it'll hurt them and, yeah, the future is uncertain for those creators.
So, if you have a website and if you have a way to not depend on the platform, and building your business model 100% on a platform you don't control, you will be in the better place as a creator.
So to finish, I think creators should make their websites because it's a platform they control and this gives them so much control and stability for the long run as a creator.
So this is Tiago and this was The Stack Junction podcast. You can find me on YouTube and my blog, thestackjunction.com.
That's all, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
