Article Smith - Designing, Building, & Preparing an Article Spinner SaaS

Introduction:

I've spent a lot of time playing around with the different supposed "best article spinners" and while I found one that was obviously better than the rest (the owner is a BHW member), none of them had all the features I wanted. So instead of just tolerating what exists, I figured I'll make my own and profit a bit off it, or at very least not have to pay for spinning my own articles. Haha.

In comes Article Smith. The premise is simple: Automatically spin articles based on switching out like phrases and words to sound the most human-like. Which spinner doesn't do that, right? Here's what I was wanting that none of the other spinners offered: The ability to see an available list of other synonyms to make the articles sound more human-written and dynamically change it.

Turns out because of all the available APIs, public GitHub repos, and open source db's and frameworks, building the raw article spinner was fairly straightforward.

But enough chit-chat.

The Plan:

Monday (today) - Finish design after client work
Tuesday - Code design
Wednesday - Create website content & spin 30 articles for the blog (Article Smith)
Thursday - Set up auto-responder sequence and social media profiles
Friday - Launch

Yes. That's a Week to build and launch a web app.

I'll post the logo and design later, along with outlining what software I'll be using and the methodology behind it. Now it's time for coffee and to get the day started.

For this project I'll be using WordPress. It's my favorite CMS, but there's several more reason why I favor it for an SaaS platform such as this. The reasons are listed below:

• WordPress has one of the oldest, most refined communities around. Because of its ease-of-use, thousands of talented developers have developed plugins that expand WordPress to be much more than a simple blogging platform.
• As with any SaaS, you need a way to manage your users. The way WordPress manages its users is already perfect for my needs and the needs of many SaaS apps. With a couple plugins you can have everything working seamlessly.
• While WordPress is specifically designed for public use, using plugins such as S2Member and WPMUdev's Membership plugin, you can easily lock-down access to certain pages so only logged-in, registered users can access it. I especially like S2Member because of its built-in brute force protection.
• With VaultPress, a service by the makers of WordPress, allows you to affordably back up and secure your website.
• WordPress has built in functions for CRUD (create, read, update, delete) actions allow us to easily update date with wp_update_post(), store and read options with get_post_meta(), and read the data with wp_query().

The design is now finished and after I get done with my client work for the day I'll write a more in-depth post on WP user management.

The design:

Loved the design man ! Minimalist design !!

all the best

Great design Man, hope to test out your service first before it goes life, i would suggest you checkout WordAI, they're the best, so try getting ideas from there and add yours.. wishing you success.

Hope i get a licence..

Way to go OP, looks slick and my type of design currently building a site myself but gave 30 days. Impressive you are completing a week - I hope you get much success.

Looking forward to trying your service out. Cheers!

legendking said:

Great design Man, hope to test out your service first before it goes life, i would suggest you checkout WordAI, they're the best, so try getting ideas from there and add yours.. wishing you success.

Hope i get a licence..

Click to expand...

I actually favor their service, but I wanted to be able pick from a list of synonyms to make sentences more human-sounding if needed. That's why I'm building this.

I've decided I will be giving out 30 beta keys. I'll send PMs to the people I want to have them and will post here when I have sent them out.

I just found out that I need to write a proposal for a meeting tomorrow, so I won't have time to write the post I talked about earlier, but will get to it after my meeting tomorrow.

Thank you!

I would like to have a BETA TEST

I would like to beta test it too, thanks

Update:

I'm running a bit behind on the schedule. I'm just now to writing all the content (blog posts, ebook, etc.). Will post more when I get caught up.

Looking forward to see how good your spinner will perform

BTW what theme is that? I love the minimalistic look!

Looks fantastic, and I'd love to try out a beta of your spinner! I know you want to make a dynamically changeable synonym list, what would be really cool is if your system could learn from users' choices. So if people continually rejected a synonym in context, it would learn to not offer that anymore.

Interesting journey! Good luck on your scheduled launch tomorrow. I'd love a beta key if possible.

It does look great bro, all the best for your future, if you need a tester here I am

Looks good.

I'd be intr. in a beta key.

All the best. Great progress in a short space of time!

Following. I and my VA would love to beta test.

Posted via Topify using iPhone/iPad

Looks good, I would also like a beta key, thanks.

UPDATE

I just finished the eBook, and it's 4:34am as of writing this. The reality of launching tomorrow just isn't there. When I started this project, I was under the impression I wouldn't have as much client work to do this week, but that changed Wednesday. Now, client work is both good and bad. It's great because it keeps my bills paid and funds my side projects (web apps, Arduino, playing around with hydrogen fuel cells, etc.), but it's bad because these side projects have to get put on hold until I finish client work.

Luckily I work fast, and create very thorough milestones for each day. After looking at these milestones for current projects and the projects I added yesterday (yes, the meeting went very well) and one I have to add tomorrow, I think a more realistic launch date will be the 15th. How does that sound to you all?

Here's what I have been able to do this week:

• Created design for homepage, inside pages, MailChimp template, and the app itself (you'll love the interface, which I've attached at the end of this post - it acts more as an app than a website)
• Coded the homepage, inside pages, email template and app pages using my custom WordPress framework
• Wrote eBook (need to add some flare to it though - it's just content right now)
• Wrote some sales copy (homepage and tour) that I will hit on in a post after this

What I still need to do:

• Spin about 30 articles to drip into the blog
• Setup the forum (the forum will be for all members to get together and share tips on spinning, kw research, etc.) - but that's still up in the air. Do you think that would be beneficial?
• Set up auto-responder sequence and social media profiles
• Test
• Launch

Alpha. said:

Looking forward to see how good your spinner will perform

BTW what theme is that? I love the minimalistic look!

Click to expand...

Appreciate it! The theme is custom. I'm a web developer/design. It's using one of my custom theme frameworks I built though. If you're a coder, look into Bones. It's what all of my frameworks are built off of.

pnvhq said:

Looks fantastic, and I'd love to try out a beta of your spinner! I know you want to make a dynamically changeable synonym list, what would be really cool is if your system could learn from users' choices. So if people continually rejected a synonym in context, it would learn to not offer that anymore.

Click to expand...

That's already in the plans. You know what they say about great minds? They think alike! haha.

Farcast said:

Interesting journey! Good luck on your scheduled launch tomorrow. I'd love a beta key if possible.

Click to expand...

I appreciate it. I addressed the launch at the top of this post.

IamNRE said:

Looks good.

I'd be intr. in a beta key.

All the best. Great progress in a short space of time!

Click to expand...

I appreciate it and will be PM'ing you with a beta key!

On writing website copy (and any sales copy for that matter)

Standard copywriting is hazy, indistinct and it's ugly.

We are all familiar with the websites that state:

"We are a full service company specializing in this and that. We provide ________. We are all about _______. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, etc."

This overtly-professional sounding copy that sounds like a lawyer wrote it doesn't speak to the heart of the person you want to attract. All it does is state why you're the best, and it's what your competition is doing too. So how do you stick out in a sea of unoriginality and dullness?

Show. Don't tell.

Now imagine a world just dull and grey. What if we pored just a tiny bit of color into this world; What happens when you become a splash of something interesting against an otherwise dull and uninteresting world? Don't limit yourself to just one answer for that question, because the possibilities are endless.

So we need to get strategic and stand out, but be relatable and hopefully unforgettable. So how can you do this?

Well, here's six steps to help show you.

1. Identify your format and objective: Are you going to be speaking to people using a computer, to business people, more casual customers, teenagers, etc. What's the one (1) thing you want to achieve with your message?
2. Explore: Interview yourself like you're on a talk show. Grab a tape recorder so you can listen back, and ask yourself who your target customer is and if you're speaking with him/her (not to him/her). What's something you can do to help them that makes you spectacular? If it's not something that benefits the end user, toss it out and start over.
3. Challenge: The hardest thing about writing about your own company is that you're too close to it to have true perspective. So the counter act is to challenge yourself. Ask yourself, "Does anything not line up with my objectives for this project" and if it doesn't, toss it out. Next toss out anything that is weak, obvious or cliched (overly-business, such as "we deliver exceptional service"). No one knows what that means until you show it. The questions that are important to the potential customer is "how" and "why."
4. Humanize: Copywriting is for humans. No matter if your audience is drooling 2nd graders or Fortune 500 CEOs, they all have minds that seek to understand, hearts that want to believe and they all have souls that are yearning to soar.
5. Support your case: Don't sound too good to be true. When you make a claim to innovation, superiority, or anything that sets you apart, back it up with data. Then state what that data means to them.
6. Edit: Throw out whole campaigns if needed and start again.

Every business makes its first impression with words, and sometimes those words are so captivating that you can't help but buy their product or service and tell everyone in the world about it. And then most of the time it's the exact opposite. Which one will you be?

Well, that's it for this tonight/this morning. I'm off to bed four a couple of hours before a meeting this morning.

Smart thinking and very strategic! Take your time with the project; it'll benefit you more. The app itself looks great as expected, and once again, good luck with this!

To make the app feel more native and increase user-friendliness, I'm adding Backbone.js to the app part. I'm not worried about indexing, since these pages will be hidden anyway.