Tag Archives: content creation

Revolutionary Changes in the Generative AI Pricing Model Coming Tomorrow: How Will They Affect the Output?

It’s Saturday morning in California, and I’m a little bleary-eyed after a trip to Mexico City in connection with my day job. I was going to sleep in this morning, but I ended up reading a Forbes article that Mitch Wagner shared. Then I thought about it. Now I’m thinking about it some more.

Generated by Craiyon from the prompt “A powerful robot standing next to a weak robot, in which the two robots represent high quality generative AI vs. low quality generative AI”

What the Forbes article said

The article in question is ‘I’ve Never Hired A Writer Better Than ChatGPT’: How AI Is Upending The Freelance World. The credited author is Rashi Shrivastava, and it’s obvious that the article wasn’t written by a bot.

Shrivastava obtained the quote in the article’s title from Melissa Shea of Fashion Mingle, who has used (and still uses) freelancers to write marketing copy and perform other tasks.

Why did Shea say what she said?

At $0 an hour, the chatbot can crank out more content much faster than freelancers and has replaced three content writers (Shea) would have otherwise hired through freelancing platform Upwork.

From https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/04/20/ive-never-hired-a-writer-better-than-chatgpt-how-ai-is-upending-the-freelance-world/?sh=1d556b7262be

Shrivastava then goes on to say that this affects the Upwork, Fiverr, and related platforms in two significant ways:

  • People like Shea are less likely to go to Upwork and Fiverr to seek people for non-specialized tasks. After all, even the cheapest content creators from the most impoverished developing nations cost more than today’s free generative AI tools.
  • People seeking jobs on the platforms are trying to get an edge by using…you guessed it, AI.

In early April, business consultant Sean O’Dowd uploaded two job postings on Upwork and within 24 hours he received close to 300 applications from freelancers explaining why they should be hired. Of the 300 proposals, he suspects more than 200 were done by ChatGPT, he says. 

Obviously O’Dowd isn’t going to pay for something he can get for free, and others who hire freelancers caution in advance that they won’t pay for work in which the freelancer uses AI.

(I assume in this instance “use” means “generate the majority of the content automatically.” Shrivastava mentions a graphic designer from Nigeria “who uses ChatGPT to help him ideate,” and I’ve used the same technique myself. For this post, I asked a generative AI tool to describe the benefits of case studies for Inland Empire businesses. I threw out everything that the tool wrote except for five short bullets. Which I then changed to six short bullets.)

What the Forbes article didn’t say

Rashi Shrivastava was examining the relationship between generative AI and freelancing TODAY. That in itself is a handful to analyze, but there’s an entirely different question to address.

I addressed this other question in a Bredemarket LinkedIn post earlier this morning providing my thoughts on Wagner’s share of Shrivastava’s article. Now I’m going to be lazy: not by using generative AI to write the following paragraphs, but to simply reprint what I already said on LinkedIn. (I guess I could use generative AI to rewrite the post using different words, but…well, we’ll get to that.)

There are so many things to unpack here, but I will confine myself to one (for now):

What happens when (not if) the better generative AI tools are no longer free? What happens if the better tools cost MORE than a beginning writer in a developing country? Or the worst (best?) case scenario: what happens if the highest quality tools cost more than an experienced writer in a developed country?

As time passes, we will see significant differences in these tools.

Some will crank out basic work with outdated data; these will be “good enough” and will be cheap and may even continue to be free.

Other tools will be constantly be retrained and provide proper attribution of training data. Because of significant investments in R&D, the better tools will provide higher quality work – maybe even better than Mitch Wagner’s work (or my own). Perhaps you may even need to “program” them – an order of magnitude more complex than proper prompt phrasing.

At that point, someone requiring high quality content may decide that it’s cheaper to let a human do it.

What generative AI says

So that was what I’ve written about a future in which the quality and cost of generative AI tools will vary dramatically. But what would generative AI write about its own future? Since the service is still free, I thought I should ask.

In the past I posed a question to generative AI asking if it was after my job. If I recall correctly, I posed the question to Google Bard, and it diplomatically answered that humans can never be replaced. (But what was the source of its information? Google executives who want to minimize the chances that Congress will clamp down on generative AI use?)

In this case, I’m turning to ChatGPT. My prompt was “What happens to the economics and usage of generative AI when the higher quality services are no longer free?” The remainder of this section is ChatGPT’s response.

If higher quality generative AI services are no longer free, it is likely that the economics and usage of such services will be affected in several ways:

  1. Reduced usage: Some users may be deterred from using the service if it is no longer free. They may look for alternative solutions or reduce their usage of generative AI altogether.
  2. Increased cost: Users who continue to use the service may have to pay for it. This could increase the cost of using generative AI, which may limit its adoption.
  3. Competition: If one provider starts charging for generative AI services, it may create opportunities for other providers to offer similar services at a lower cost or with better features. This could increase competition in the market and ultimately benefit consumers.
  4. Quality: If providers start charging for their services, they may have more resources to invest in improving the quality of their generative AI. This could lead to better results and more satisfied users.

In summary, the economics and usage of generative AI may be affected if higher quality services are no longer free. However, the impact will depend on the pricing strategies of providers and the behavior of users in response to the change.

Postscript: a little more about Mitch Wagner

Why did Mitch Wagner share the Forbes article in the first place?

Because generative AI affects him. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Read his LinkedIn biography (as of today; writers sometimes like to edit themselves) and judge for yourself if generative AI threatens someone with his broad experience.

I’m a marketing writer and tech journalist, with more than 25 years of experience telling stories about companies using technology to deliver business value.

I’m expert at interviewing, researching, writing and editing articles and newsletters for audiences at all levels of technology understanding on daily, weekly, and monthly deadlines. I’ve worked solo, led a small full-time team, and large teams of freelance contributors. I’m skilled in hosting podcasts, webinars, and video.

Previously, I worked at Oracle, part of a team of writers, editors, and designers telling stories about how the company and its customers are innovating and inspiring.

Prior to Oracle, I was an executive editor and writer at top tech journalism publications, covering the early days of the Internet, social media, and wireless communications.

View my portfolio of writing samples here: https://authory.com/mitchwagner

Another postscript, this one on the post’s title

I did not write the title to this post.

I went through several titles, settling on “Tomorrow’s Generative AI Landscape Will Differ From Today’s.”

I then fed the following prompt to ChatGPT: “Rewrite the title “Tomorrow’s Generative AI Landscape Will Differ From Today’s” to optimize clicks”

ChatGPT returned this: “Revolutionary Changes in the Generative AI Landscape Coming Tomorrow – Don’t Miss Out!”

Unfortunately, ChatGPT had no way of knowing that BuzzFeed shut down this week. I was busy in Mexico City and missed the news, but luckily for me Mitch Wagner shared that news item also.

Even though Buzzfeed’s issues were in its business model and not its headline style (if you’re unfamiliar with the Buzzfeed headline style, read “7 Insanely Clickable Buzzfeed Headlines and What You Can Learn From Them“), I thought I should tone things down just a bit.

After some tweaks, I ended up with “Revolutionary Changes in the Generative AI Pricing Model Coming Tomorrow: How Will They Affect the Output?”

Although I kept the word “revolutionary” (even though it’s not sage-like). Because reasons. (Hint: my day job’s archetype is NOT Sage.)

Another reason to repurpose old content

Earlier this week I was asked about one of the posts that I wrote in the Bredemarket blog. I had to confess that I hadn’t thought about the topic much recently.

After this conversation, I realized that the referenced post was written back in July.

Because I’ve written over 200 posts in the Bredemarket blog over the past year-plus, some of them kind of get merged together in my mind.

And in this particular case, my thoughts on the original topic have evolved since the summer.

So if you see a future post that revises and updates something I wrote about four months ago, now you know why.

I hope that the new post won’t be dramatically different from the old one.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5515632

What if your business has no website or web page?

In January of this year, I wrote a couple of posts about websites with outdated content.

The posts were obviously self-serving (since Bredemarket happens to sell services to update website text), but the second post backed my points up with data.

Specifically, a study noted that when people want to research a solution, 53% of them perform a web search for the solution, and 41% of them go to vendor web sites.

I used this data to make the point that your website had better be up to date, if you want your potential customers to have a good impression of your business.

An outdated website looks bad.

But I just ran across something even worse.

Worse than an outdated website

I’m not going to provide specifics, but I just saw a Facebook post in a local business group that promoted a service. This happens to be a service that is popular with individuals and businesses. The Facebook post stated that the service provider was the best provider in the local area, and was better than the competition. The post then gave the company name of the service provider, and…

…a local phone number.

You can guess what I did next. Like 53% of you, I searched for information on this particular company. I started on Facebook itself; since the individual made the post on Facebook, I figured that the company had a Facebook page.

It didn’t. The company had no Facebook presence.

So I got out of Facebook and went off into the World Wide Web and (like 41% of you) searched for the company’s web page.

I found no company web page with that name in California, but I did find a company with that name in another part of the country that coincidentally provided the same service. But I could tell that this was a separate company.

So I went back to the original Facebook post and asked a question.

Does [COMPANY NAME] have a website, or just a phone number?

I received a response from the original poster.

Bredemarket, no, just a number.

I made no further comment, but it got me thinking.

What’s worse than a website with outdated content?

No website or web page at all.

And I’m not talking about a fancy-dancy website. If you’ve seen Bredemarket’s website, it’s not fancy-dancy.

I’m just talking about a simple page. It doesn’t have to be on your own domain; it could be on wordpress.com (like my jebredcal site) or wix.com even facebook.com (Bredemarket has one of those too). Just something that ideally tells you the company name, the person who runs the company, the address of the company (yes, UPS Store addresses are acceptable; I know), a phone number, and an email address.

When all of these elements are available, and they’re present on a website, you have at least some assurance that the company is a viable concern. (I’ll grant that this can be faked, like Abdul Enterprises was faked, but at least a name, address, email, and phone number suggest that the company is real.)

A company name and a phone number with no website, no email address, and no company ownership information is…well, it’s sketchy.

So how does a company without an online presence establish one?

There are a variety of ways to establish a company online presence. You could pay for a website, you could set up a free website via a variety of service providers, or you could simply set up a social media page such as a Facebook page.

Now Bredemarket doesn’t create websites, and Bredemarket doesn’t create Facebook business pages. Facebook offers step-by-step instructions on how to create a Facebook business page, and there are guides on how to create complete websites such as a Wix site (and you can do it for free if you don’t need a custom domain and use accountname.wixsite.com/siteaddress).

Creating the site, however, is only part of the story.

Bredemarket can help you establish the initial content for a website or a Facebook page. (And if you desire, I can help you refresh the content also.)

Let’s look at the simplest example, where you just want to establish a presence with a few hundred words (say 400 to 600 words).

I’ll start by asking you a bunch of questions.

  • Topic. Well, the topic is your business, of course, but how would you summarize your business in one sentence?
  • Goal. What is the goal of your site or page? Do you want people to immediately buy something online? Do you want people to rush to your business location and buy something? Or do you just want people to talk to you about your product or service?
  • Benefits. I’ve talked about this ad nauseum, but it’s important to explain why people should want your product or service. If your explanation results in a “so what?” from the potential customer, then you need to refine your benefit statement.
  • Target audience. The message on your site or page is obviously affected by your target audience. A page intended for forensic scientists will have different messaging than a page intended for high school students who want an after school snack.
  • Other questions. These are going to vary from engagement to engagement, but it’s important to ask these questions up front to minimize any misunderstandings later.

After you and I have talked through these questions, I’ll start creating the text to place on your website. By the time we’ve gone through the process and we’re done, you’ll have an initial website presence for your business. People will be able to find your business, find out what it’s about, contact you, and give you lots of money.

But that won’t happen until the people can find out what you offer.

And it won’t happen if they only have a business name and a phone number.

If you want Bredemarket to help you establish an online presence with the correct words to woo customers:

Inland Empire West businesses should visit https://bredemarket.com/local/ for a special “locals only” discount.

Coffee and hair styling in Ontario, California

My local area is undergoing a transformation, with a number of new businesses appearing in the area. Oddly enough, I keep on seeing two distinctly different types of businesses appearing here.

Over the last couple of years, a number of coffee shops have opened in downtown Ontario (California, not Canada). I’m unintentionally going to leave many of them off this list, but a few of the new coffee shops include Mestiza Cakehouse and Cafe, Special Needz Coffee (with a second location inside 4th Sector Innovations), and Starbucks.

At the same time, a number of new hair stylists and barber shops have opened in downtown Ontario. Trust me, there’s a bunch of them.

I don’t know if this is public knowledge (it’s been discussed at the Ontario IDEA Exchange and other B2B forums), but downtown Ontario is even on track to have an establishment that combines the two business types. (Of course, a few of you have already figured out who I’m talking about.)

I guess that’s real life.

From https://www.discogs.com/release/3663572-Spermbirds-Coffee-Hair-And-Real-Life

If you have a business and need to stand out from the crowd:

Also see https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-2800-medium-writing-service/.

What is a bridge?

A bridge helps you get from one place to another.

By Anneli Salo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15716878

Without a bridge, you’re stuck at one place and can’t get to the other place. Or you can try to get to the other place, but you may get very wet.

Businesses need bridges to connect with their customers. When the bridges are erected, the customers understand what the businesses can do for them. If the customers need those particular services, they can buy them.

In two hours, I plan to attend the Ontario (California, not Canada) IDEA Exchange at 4th Sector Innovations.

And if some of the attendees ask, I can explain how Bredemarket can be a bridge.

Calendarizing content

(And verbing nouns, but that’s an entirely different topic.)

You may have heard of the acronym WiFLi, which stands for Wider, Faster, Lighter and is used by one manufacturer within the bicycling community.

WiFLi is SRAM’s name for a 2x drivetrain with wide-range cassette. The short cage eTap rear derailleur officially maxes out with a 28-tooth cog; the eTap WiFLi rear derailleur can take up to a 32-tooth cog. This provides lower gears—for higher cadences and easier hill climbing—than a traditional 2x drivetrain, without needing to sign up for a triple-chainring drivetrain.

(Um, has anyone in the bicycling industry heard of benefit statements rather than feature statements? Is the 28-tooth cog missing the wisdom teeth?)

So maybe you’ve heard of bicycling’s WiFLI. But you may not have heard of MY acronym WIFLI, which stands for “when I feel like it.”

For the most part, my blogging at Bredemarket and other places is conducted in a WIFLI fashion. I’ll get an idea, jot down some things about it, sleep on it (sometimes), and then distribute it to the world at the Bredemarket blog and other online locations.

More often than not I DO “feel like it,” so my social outlets don’t necessarily suffer from lack of content. But do my momentary whims lead me to create the RIGHT content?

And this, my friends, is why people suggest content calendars. Although you don’t need to keep them on paper these days.

A calendar from the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad. By Visitor7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26340569

Content calendars exist not only to make sure that you’re generating enough content, but that you’re generating the right content.

One of my goals at Bredemarket is to assist general technology customers, so this, my first post under my new Bredemarket content calendar schedule, is supposed to be a technology post. (I can’t post about identity all the time, after all.)

And I chose to write this technology post about content calendar technology.

I think that’s cheating. (If it were identity day, would I have posted an autobiography?)

But there ARE technology issues to consider when creating a content calendar. You can either adapt common tools such as Excel (example) or Trello (example) to create your content calendar, or you can use special-purpose applications such as Agorapulse or DivvyHQ or Loomly or Monday to do it.

As of now, I’m leaning toward the “adapt common tools” route, and the common tool that I adapted was…Google Calendar. I just created an additional calendar, called it “blog/social content calendar,” and marked the days on which I wanted to address different topics. I’m putting notes in the calendar entries as needed to spur my creation, distribution, and so forth.

Perhaps I can get fancy later, but for now this is getting me started. In the future I may iterate toward something more complex, or alternatively I may iterate away from the entire idea of a content calendar altogether.

The important thing is to start, evaluate, and then adjust.

Now I obviously can’t go to clients and tell them that I am an expert at content calendars, with deep knowledge of the topic. But I at least know the questions to ask.

  • What are the important topics that your company wants to address?
  • How will you address those topics? Blogging? LinkedIn? Paper planes flown through potential clients’ open windows?
  • How often do you want to create content?
  • Can you truly create content at that pace?

If you want me to fire a bunch of these and similar questions at you, and possibly to help you create content that aligns with your content calendar, contact me.

Revisiting my “have fun” goal

When thinking about content to create, there’s one idea that I’ve had. “Over the course of 2021, why don’t I make a point of revisiting my 2021 goals and seeing how I’m doing on them?” (Content repurposing and extending for the win.)

I hope to soon revisit my multiple income streams goal. But for now, this is an ideal time to revisit my “have fun” goal.

I’ve already talked about how I snuck iguanas into a proposal for a potential client.

Well, I just had the opportunity to write a proposal for a particular opportunity.

The title of the opportunity?

“Funny and Witty Creative Writer.”

The potential client needs to create some content, but fears that if the content is too dry, it won’t be digested by the people who read the content.

So the opportunity description talked about how the content needs to be funny and witty.

I certainly had fun when I wrote my proposal to this client. Iguanas made another appearance, for example. But I also pointed out that funny and witty is NOT enough.

Here’s how my proposal began.

Having read your description of the work needed, I believe that I can provide the balance that you implicitly requested – namely, a balance between conveying the necessary content, but conveying it in an interesting manner. A service provider that can only do one without the other is as useful as a two-wheeled automobile – you’re not going to get anywhere.

My proposal continued by describing the types of content that I could provide before veering into…iguanas. (I’m going to need to find another example. The poor iguana is getting tired of being used over and over again.)

My iguana content started with a story about my former coworker who despises the cliché “best of breed.” She managed technical proposals, not entrants to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

By Kjunstorm (Lori) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjunstorm/3346671755/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6605832

This example served to explain why one of my 2021 goals was NOT to “eat my own dog food.” Continuing my story, I then reproduced some of the text that I’ve already reproduced in this post.

After some more of the same, I changed from a yuk-yuk tone to a more serious tone. Leaving out some of the “fun” text, this is what I said to my potential client.

So what have I done here?

I have satisfied the requirements in your description by using a conversational tone that employs storytelling.

I’ve provided you with links to my web and social media content, and given you an incentive to explore them….

I have ensured that you understand my distinction between “fun writing” and “fun writing with a purpose.” You still need to convey the content.

The examples that were provided, including the attachment, exhibit different facets of my writing style, and also exhibit the breadth of topics that I can address.

We’ll see if my conversational, iguana-infused tone will actually help me get business with this particular client, and if the client is prepared to address more serious topics, such as the overall goal of the content that the client wants me to create.

While it’s important to have fun, it’s important that the fun contributes to the overall goal. Remember when I told a group of people at work that I was going to “play” with something? Some of my coworkers understood that I wasn’t going to play for play’s sake. They understood that I was going to play and ensure that the item in question achieved the goals set by the corporation.

Have fun…with a purpose.

And remember that different clients have different needs and require different conversational tones. Perhaps I may have fun while RESEARCHING the benefits and risks of using temperature sensors as a COVID-19 response, but I may choose NOT to exhibit a “fun” tone while WRITING about these benefits and risks.

(Oh, and if the “funny and witty creative writer” potential client happens to read this particular post while reviewing my writing examples, I’ll give you a bonus iguana color: orange. Let’s talk about that…and other things.)

If your marketing channels lack content, your potential customers may not know that you exist

[Update, January 27, 2021: a July 2020 study from Demand Gen Report explains WHY up-to-date content is important. I addressed that study in this post.]

One of Bredemarket’s most popular services is the Short Writing Service. It can help small (or large) businesses solve the content problem.

You know what the content problem is. Your business has established one or more marketing channels: a website, blog, email list, Google My Business site, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter…or many others.

But the marketing channels are useless IF THEY HAVE NO CONTENT.

Or old content.

Or poorly-written content.

Maybe the information on the marketing channel is six months old, or a year old, or nine years old. (Trust me, this happens.) Or maybe there’s content on one marketing channel, but it’s never cross-posted to the other marketing channels for your business.

What are the ramifications of this? If your channels lack content, your potential customers may forget about you. And that’s NOT good for business.

I’ll use myself as a BAD example. In addition to my business blogs at Bredemarket (https://bredemarket.com/blog/) and JEBredCal (https://jebredcal.wordpress.com/blog/), I maintain several personal blogs. One of those personal blogs is Empoprise-NTN (https://empoprise-ntn.blogspot.com/), and that blog is obviously the ugly stepchild of the bunch. Between 2016 and 2019 I authored exactly ZERO posts on that blog. So if someone is looking for authoritative commentary on NTN Buzztime games, they’re obviously NOT going to look to me.

The obvious solution to the content problem is to CREATE CONTENT. Some people have no problem creating content, but others may need some help. They may not have the time (https://bredemarket.com/2020/09/25/when-you-dont-have-the-time-to-craft-your-own-text/), or they may need some help in selecting the right words to say.

Bredemarket can help you solve the content problem, one post at a time. The Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service (https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-400-short-writing-service/) uses a collaborative process, in which you and Bredemarket agree on a topic, Bredemarket provides a draft of the text, and the text goes through two review cycles. At the end of the process, you have the text, you own the text (this is a “work for hire”), and you can post the text on your blog or Facebook or wherever you please. Your content problem is solved! And if the post includes a call for action, your potential customers can ACT, potentially providing you with new business.

Speaking of a call for action…

If you would like to talk to Bredemarket about ways to solve your business’ content problem, contact me!

If your marketing channels lack contentDownload

Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service

(new text of approximately 400 to 600 words)