Over the last 3 weeks I have been experimenting with a number of online portals to help create content for this blog.

I am sure that you can guess the type of portal / software without me having to write it down because I don’t want to mention their names for reasons that should become apparent.

In the last 3 weeks I have published a number of pieces exclusively to help with ranking and web traffic – some of the articles are exclusively about sales and some are about recommendations for sales books and books that might help with content writing.

On Tuesday I recorded a podcast and when the explode was complete, I uploaded the file to a site that would tidy ups the recording and help remove ‘ups…ahs’ and any background noise and hissing etc.

Early this morning I checked up on the stats for the website, Soundcloud, iTunes and Spotify to give me a better sense of how the content has been received and if it has stimulating any traffic.

I know that there is much at play when you consider audience growth figures and taking a snapshot of 4 weeks may not be the best way to measure growth.

Even with a small sample size there are some stark facts – the main one being that since using a non-human approach to content creation all metrics have plummeted.

With the podcast I usually get 1000+ listens every time I post new content. This week that figure was down to 20…the lowest ever for a 7 day period.

A crazy number.

Traffic on the website over the last 2 days has been at an all-time low – a decline that is making me think about pulling all content from over the last 2 weeks and starting again.

Strange stuff.

Excuse the paranoia – for all the speed and efficiency of non-human created content, the detrimental impact on search is enough to make anyone reconsider.

Will certainly keep you posted on this – just when I was getting excited about image creation too, it appears there is no substitute for experience, hard work, a Thesaurus and The Elements of Style.