You probably know that I’ve been playing around with writing apps with the AI tools for a while now.
I’ve had some successes and lots of failures.
Most of the AI tools work pretty much the same way so you can use whichever one you like.
They all seem to favour using React as their Javascript framework. but that’s a PITA to use for a website because you have to install it on your server and most won’t allow you to do that.
So, if you want to do tricky stuff on your web host, use Perl for the backend if you can’t get the AI to do it all with PHP and vanilla Javascript.
You do not have to know or understand these languages to use them, the AI tools will tell you what you need to do to make it all work.
Modularise your work, again the AI tools will help you here if you ask them to make the code in modules.
Your web host or your operating system on your PC, tablet, or ‘phone wouldn’t work if the software wasn’t modularised.
Try to keep the modules down to 200 lines or so.
That’s not a hard rule, but I’ve found that once you get over 300 lines the AI gets pretty flaky.
Keep your apps simple, preferably one solution to one problem.
Project creep is the bane of programmers and it’s no different here.
Get the core of your app working before you try to pretty it up.
You do not have to be an expert because as you do the work you’ll naturally learn more and more about that niche, and the bulk of your visitors will know far less than you.
Usually, when you focus on one thing for 30 days you will begin making a trickle of income that will encourage you to keep going.
If you have something started and you decide you don’t want to do this any more, sell it.
I know it sounds like a dumb thing to do, but those cat and dog videos and memes get tons of traffic.
The thing about bulk random traffic is that there are always people in there who are your target market.
We keep forgetting that.
Sure, 1, 000 targeted visitors might be what you want, but there is probably 1,000 or more in every 100,000 random groups.
Getting the bulk random traffic is much easier because no marketer is trying for those, they’re all going for the same keywords and the competition is fierce.
Get the unwanted traffic in bulk and flip them to what you want.
It can, but you’ll need to be strategic about this.
Do you think that you have the skill set required to make a one or two page website that will generate $7 average daily?
Can’t be too hard now can it?
Almost any sub-niche with traffic from FB, Instagram, Pinterest et al can do that, even if it’s only with Adsense.
The old school training was all about only having one link for the visitor to click, and that was their affiliate link.
Today I’m suggesting that is an incredibly short-sighted concept.
Provide a page with good and useful content.
On that page you have various links to your affiliate bridge page (that’s the second page) in the body of the text, but you also have ad blocks with adsense or banners on the page.
You also have an exit pop for your affiliate bridge page, or an alternative.
We know that most sales pages convert at less than 10%, you might as well tempt the other 90% to click something else that can make you money.
Once you’ve got one of these dialled in it’s pretty simple to repeat the process with another simple site.
Some of these will make more or less than $7 daily, but when you have multiples of them ticking away the riches begin to look real.
That reminds me of a farmer I knew who was on a pretty poor bit of land.
He invented a machine that bent bits of wire into clips for a particular type of fence.
The machines ran 24/7 and he told me that he had retired from farming because he found he preferred to stand in his shed watching the machines make him $1,000 a day.
One way is to start writing faster as if you’re in a rush to get the ideas down before you lose them in the constant stream of consciousness that we all have.
The other is to do something physical to get the blood pumping because enthusiasm is usually associated with an increased heart rate.
When you have an idea or product to share it always works better when you get excited about the possibilities for the person reading your work.
You’re sharing something valuable after all, you should be enthusiastic and excited to share because you know that this could be life-changing for them.
You will remember, from my last email that I was going to share with you the revelation (epiphany?) I had recently about sotware development.
My software goal has always been write once, deploy anywhere.
Despite the promises there are very few tools that can do that.
While many of the languages can run on any computer, they have to be compiled (made into apps) on the target operating system or they don’t work.
You know that the software market is massive, in the region of $750B last year and growing at 11% per annum.
You probably don’t need a billion dollar idea to make a great living supplying useful tools to people.
It’s the goal of being cross-platform that drives the SaaS market and development, but there are many people reluctant to rely on someone else’s computer to store their data.
Those people will be the ones who will buy an app to do things for them on their computer.
This could be as boring as bat excrement for many of you, but you might find something exciting here as well.
For years I’ve been a mostly self-taught programmer.
Most of what I’ve written has been for my benefit with no intention of selling what I’ve made.
Some of what I’ve written was superseded by developments in the WordPress world because much of my work has been to more easily manage all the my websites.
You know there are constant updates to themes, plugins, and the core.
When you have hundreds of sites that gets tedious in the extreme.
Now WordPress updates itself so what I created over 10 years is pointless.
Except, the reason people migrate to WordPress is that it’s so much easier to create a website with that free CMS than it is to build a multi-page website in HTML or PHP.
Unfortunately, the hackers love WordPress because there are always more security holes to find and use to infiltrate your site.
The most secure website is the one that lives on your local server and isn’t connected to the Internet, not overly practical.
However, with the advent of AI it is now possible to build a 50, 80, 200 page website using only HTML, or PHP, with Javascript and CSS (don’t panic if you don’t know what they are) in days without knowing any more than how to copy paste text.
