Growink

Author: groweenk-ai

  • The $2,000/Month Blog Post: Why Agencies Are Losing to AI (And What to Do Instead)

    A friend of mine runs a B2B SaaS company. Last year, he signed a content marketing agency retainer at $3,500/month. They promised 8 blog posts per month, a content strategy, and keyword research. Here’s what he actually got.

    Month one: 4 posts delivered (not 8), each around 800 words, clearly written by someone who’d never logged into his product. The “content strategy” was a spreadsheet of keywords pulled from Ahrefs with no explanation of why they were chosen.

    Month two: 6 posts, slightly better quality, but every revision took 5 back-and-forth emails. The agency writer kept using competitor terminology.

    Month three: he cancelled. $10,500 spent. Zero posts that ranked. Zero posts he was proud to put on his website.

    This story isn’t unique. It’s the norm.

    The Agency Model Is Broken

    Content marketing agencies operate on a fundamental misalignment: they sell hours, not outcomes. Their incentive is to produce the minimum viable blog post — enough words on a page to justify the invoice. Quality requires domain expertise, research, and iteration — things that don’t scale at agency margins.

    Here’s the typical agency workflow:

    1. Account manager assigns keywords to a freelance writer
    2. Writer spends 30 minutes “researching” (reading the first page of Google results)
    3. Writer produces a draft in 2-3 hours
    4. Editor does a quick pass
    5. Client reviews, requests changes
    6. 2-3 revision rounds
    7. Published 3-4 weeks after it was assigned

    That’s $400-$600 per blog post when you do the math on a $3,500/month retainer delivering 6-8 posts. For content written by someone who doesn’t understand your product or your audience.

    Why AI Changes the Equation

    AI doesn’t replace good writers. But it does replace the agency model — the middleman between your expertise and published content.

    Think about what actually matters in a blog post:

    • Domain knowledge — you have it, the agency writer doesn’t
    • Strategic alignment — you know what keywords matter for your business
    • Brand voice — you know how your company should sound
    • Internal linking — you know your site structure
    • Execution speed — the actual writing and formatting

    AI handles the last part — the execution. The first four are decisions that should be made by someone who knows the business. That’s you.

    The New Math

    Let’s compare:

    Agency: $3,500/month → 8 posts → $437/post → 3-4 week turnaround → written by a stranger

    Growink BYOK: $0/month → unlimited posts → $0.10-$0.30/post in API costs → 10-minute turnaround → you control every decision

    Growink Service: $0/month → pay per post → €4/post → 10-minute turnaround → you control every decision

    Even the Service Tier at €4/post is roughly 99% cheaper than an agency. And the content is generated with your business context, not a freelancer’s Google search.

    But What About Quality?

    This is the pushback we hear most. “AI content isn’t as good as human content.” And for raw, one-shot generation — that’s true. A “write me a blog post about X” prompt will produce worse content than a skilled writer.

    But that’s not how good AI content is produced. A guided, multi-step process with human oversight at every decision point produces content that’s at least as good as what most agencies deliver — and often better, because it’s built on your actual business context.

    Here’s Growink’s process:

    1. You pick the keyword (strategic decision)
    2. You choose the headline (brand decision)
    3. You review and edit the outline (structural decision)
    4. You select research sources (credibility decision)
    5. You pick internal links (SEO decision)
    6. AI generates 2,500 words (execution)
    7. You edit in a rich text editor (final polish)

    That’s not “AI replacing humans.” That’s AI handling the 80% that’s execution so you can focus on the 20% that requires judgment.

    When Agencies Still Make Sense

    To be fair, there are cases where agencies still win:

    • You need a full marketing strategy beyond content — agencies that handle paid, social, and PR alongside content
    • You have zero time — even 15 minutes per post is too much for your schedule
    • Highly regulated industries where every word needs legal review

    But for most founders who just need consistent, quality blog content to drive organic traffic? The agency model is increasingly hard to justify.

    Try the Alternative

    If you’re currently paying an agency $2,000+/month for blog content, run an experiment. Take one month, use Growink with your own API keys (free), and compare the output side by side.

    If the agency content is genuinely better, keep the agency. If it’s not — and based on what we’ve seen, it usually isn’t — you just found a way to redirect $24,000/year into something more impactful than mediocre blog posts.

    Start free with Growink. No commitment. No credit card. Just better content, faster.

  • AI Blog Writers Are Mostly Garbage. Here’s What Makes the Good Ones Different.

    Let’s be honest: most AI-generated blog content is bad. Not “needs a little editing” bad. “Generic, soulless, could-be-about-any-company” bad. If you’ve used ChatGPT to write a blog post by pasting in a keyword and hitting enter, you’ve experienced this firsthand.

    The result is always the same: a 1,000-word article that hits the keyword 47 times, says nothing specific, and reads like it was written by a robot pretending to be a very enthusiastic intern.

    And yet, AI-generated content is everywhere. Some of it actually ranks. Some of it actually reads well. What’s the difference?

    The Problem with “Paste a Keyword and Pray”

    The fundamental flaw with most AI writing tools is they have zero context about your business. They don’t know your products, your audience, your competitive landscape, or your brand voice. They generate content from the general training data — which means they produce the same generic content as everyone else.

    When every SaaS company’s blog sounds identical, nobody wins. Google knows it. Your readers know it. The only people who don’t seem to know it are the founders publishing it.

    What Separates Good AI Content from Bad

    After studying hundreds of AI-generated blog posts — both ranked and unranked — we’ve identified three factors that separate the good from the garbage:

    1. Business Context

    Good AI content is generated with deep knowledge of the company writing it. Products, services, target audience, ICP, brand voice — all of this needs to be embedded in the generation process. Without it, you get generic advice that could appear on any blog.

    This is why we built Growink’s onboarding to scrape your entire website and create vector embeddings of every page. When our AI generates content, it has your complete business context — not just a keyword.

    2. Structural Rigor

    A blog post is not a wall of text. It needs a strategic structure: H2/H3 hierarchy, proper keyword placement, internal links in the right positions, external citations for credibility, and a clear progression from introduction to CTA.

    Most AI tools dump out a flat article. Good AI content follows an approved outline — one that a human has reviewed and edited before generation begins. The outline is the blueprint. Without it, the AI is just rambling.

    3. Human Control at Every Step

    The best AI content isn’t fully autonomous. It’s a collaboration between human judgment and AI execution. The human picks the keyword, chooses the headline, approves the outline, selects the research sources, and decides which internal links to include. The AI handles the heavy lifting of research, drafting, and formatting.

    This is why Growink uses a multi-step generation wizard instead of a “write my blog” button. Each step gives you control over a critical decision. The AI does the work. You make the calls.

    The Role of Research

    Here’s a test: take any AI-generated blog post and look for external citations. If there are none, the article is making claims based on the AI’s training data — which could be wrong, outdated, or fabricated.

    Good AI content is backed by real web research. When we generate a post in Growink, Tavily searches the web for relevant, current sources. The user sees summaries of each source and picks which ones to include. The final post includes proper citations and links.

    This isn’t just about credibility — it’s about accuracy. AI models hallucinate. External sources don’t (usually).

    Why Internal Linking Matters More Than You Think

    Most AI writing tools don’t even attempt internal linking. They can’t — they don’t know what’s on your website. The result is orphan posts that exist in isolation, contributing nothing to your site’s topical authority.

    Growink solves this with vector similarity search. When you generate a post, we search your indexed website pages for the most semantically relevant content to link to. Your master pillar post, related blog posts, service pages — all connected automatically.

    Choose Your Model

    Not all LLMs are created equal. GPT-4 is excellent at following complex instructions and maintaining tone. Claude excels at nuanced, natural-sounding prose. Gemini offers strong performance at lower costs.

    With Growink’s BYOK model, you bring your own API key and choose which model generates your content. Different models for different needs. No lock-in.

    The Bottom Line

    AI blog writers aren’t going away. They’re getting better. But “better” doesn’t mean “fully autonomous.” It means better at collaborating with humans who provide context, judgment, and strategic direction.

    If you’ve been burned by AI-generated slop before, don’t write off the technology. Write off the tools that don’t give you control. Then try one that does.

  • Keyword Research on a Budget: How Founders Can Compete Without Ahrefs

    Every SEO guide tells you to “do keyword research.” Then they recommend tools that cost $100-$200 per month. For a founder burning through runway, that’s a hard sell — especially when you’re only publishing 2-4 posts a month.

    Here’s the thing: you don’t need Ahrefs or Semrush to do effective keyword research. You need the right data at the right level of accuracy for your stage. Let’s break down your real options.

    What You Actually Need from Keyword Research

    Strip away the fancy dashboards and you need four things:

    1. Search volume — how many people search for this term monthly
    2. Difficulty — how hard it is to rank for this term
    3. Intent — what the searcher is trying to do (informational, commercial, transactional)
    4. Related terms — what else to target in the same content cluster

    That’s it. You don’t need backlink analysis, rank tracking, site audits, or competitor gap analysis — at least not yet. Those are scale tools. You need launch tools.

    Option 1: Google’s Free Tools (The Minimum)

    Google Keyword Planner is free with a Google Ads account (you don’t need to run ads). It gives you search volume ranges and competition levels. The data is directionally correct but intentionally vague — Google shows ranges like “1K-10K” instead of exact numbers unless you’re spending on ads.

    Google Trends shows relative interest over time. It won’t tell you absolute volume, but it’s excellent for comparing keywords against each other and spotting seasonal patterns.

    Google Autocomplete (just start typing in the search bar) reveals what people actually search for. It’s free, real-time, and often surfaces long-tail gems the paid tools miss.

    Limitation: You’ll spend 30-60 minutes per keyword doing this manually. It works for 5-10 keywords. It doesn’t scale to 50.

    Option 2: DataForSEO (The Power User Option)

    DataForSEO is the API that powers many SEO tools behind the scenes. Instead of paying $100/month for a GUI wrapper, you can access the raw data directly via API for a fraction of the cost.

    Typical costs:

    • Keyword data: $0.05-$0.10 per keyword batch
    • Related keywords: $0.10-$0.20 per search
    • Monthly spend for a founder publishing 4 posts: $5-$15

    That’s roughly 95% cheaper than Ahrefs. The data is the same quality — exact search volumes, keyword difficulty scores, CPC data, and intent classification.

    The catch: DataForSEO is an API, not a GUI. You need a tool that wraps it into something usable. That’s one of the reasons Growink integrates DataForSEO directly — you plug in your API key and get full keyword research in a visual interface for a fraction of what Ahrefs charges.

    Option 3: AI-Estimated Metrics (The Free Path)

    Here’s a controversial take: for a founder publishing their first 20 blog posts, you don’t need exact keyword metrics. You need directionally correct estimates.

    AI models trained on search data can estimate relative popularity (low/medium/high), approximate difficulty, and classify intent with reasonable accuracy. It’s not as precise as DataForSEO, but it’s:

    • Free
    • Instant
    • Good enough to avoid the obvious mistakes (targeting keywords with zero volume or impossible difficulty)

    At Growink, we offer both paths. Start with AI-estimated metrics for free, upgrade to DataForSEO when you want precision. No judgment either way.

    The Keyword Research Process That Works

    Regardless of which tool you use, here’s the process:

    1. Start with seed keywords from your content pillar. What’s the core topic?
    2. Expand to long-tail variations. “Content marketing” becomes “content marketing for SaaS,” “content marketing strategy for startups,” “how to start content marketing.”
    3. Filter by intent. Prioritize informational keywords for blog posts. Save commercial and transactional keywords for landing pages.
    4. Check difficulty. Target keywords where you have a realistic chance of reaching page one. For new sites, that usually means difficulty scores below 40.
    5. Group by pillar. Each keyword should map to a content pillar. If it doesn’t fit any pillar, either create a new pillar or skip the keyword.

    Stop Overthinking, Start Publishing

    The biggest keyword research mistake isn’t using the wrong tool. It’s spending so long researching that you never write anything. A published post targeting a “pretty good” keyword will always outperform a perfect keyword sitting in a spreadsheet.

    Pick your research approach based on your budget and technical comfort. Then use it to pick your first 5 keywords and start writing. You can always refine later.

    Try Growink’s keyword research for free — AI-estimated metrics, no API key required. Upgrade to DataForSEO when you’re ready for precision.

  • Why Content Pillars Are the Secret Weapon Most Founders Ignore

    You’ve heard the advice a thousand times: “just start blogging.” So you do. A post about your product launch. A thought piece about industry trends. A how-to guide that kind of relates to what you sell. Three months later, none of it ranks. Your blog is a graveyard of disconnected articles. Sound familiar?

    The problem isn’t your writing. The problem is your structure — or rather, the complete lack of it.

    What Are Content Pillars?

    A content pillar is a core topic that your business has authority on and your audience actively searches for. Instead of writing random blog posts, you organize everything around 3-5 pillars — major themes that define your content strategy.

    Each pillar has:

    • A master keyword — the high-volume, competitive term you want to own
    • A master post — a comprehensive, authoritative article on the topic (2,500+ words)
    • A cluster of supporting posts — each targeting a long-tail keyword related to the master topic
    • Internal links — every supporting post links back to the master post, and vice versa

    This isn’t some theoretical SEO framework. It’s how Google actually evaluates topical authority. When Google sees a cluster of interlinked content around a single topic, it signals: “This site knows what it’s talking about.”

    Why Random Blogging Doesn’t Work

    Here’s the math most founders ignore: a standalone blog post competing for a medium-difficulty keyword has maybe a 5-10% chance of reaching page one within 6 months. But a cluster of 8-12 interlinked posts around the same topic? That jumps to 40-60%.

    The reason is simple. Google’s algorithms have evolved far beyond matching keywords to pages. They evaluate topical depth. A single post about “content marketing” tells Google nothing about your authority. But 10 interlinked posts covering content strategy, distribution, measurement, and optimization? That tells Google you’re a serious source.

    Random blogging also creates an internal linking nightmare. When you have 50 posts with no logical relationship, you can’t build meaningful internal links. And internal links are one of the most undervalued ranking factors in SEO.

    How to Build Your First Content Pillar

    Step 1: Pick a topic you can own. This should be the intersection of three things: what your audience searches for, what your product solves, and what you have genuine expertise in. Don’t pick “digital marketing” — pick “content marketing for SaaS founders.”

    Step 2: Research the master keyword. Use a keyword tool to find a term with decent search volume (1,000+ monthly searches) and medium difficulty. This becomes the anchor for your entire pillar.

    Step 3: Map out 8-12 supporting keywords. These are long-tail variations, question-based queries, and related subtopics. Each one becomes a blog post.

    Step 4: Write the master post first. This is your most comprehensive piece — cover the topic broadly and deeply. It becomes the hub that every supporting post links to.

    Step 5: Create supporting posts with intentional linking. Every supporting post should link to the master post in the first paragraph and to 1-2 other supporting posts. The master post should link out to every supporting post.

    The Compound Effect

    The magic of content pillars is the compound effect. As you publish more supporting posts, your master post gets stronger. More internal links, more topical signals, more authority. Posts that would never rank individually start climbing when they’re part of a cluster.

    We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: a master post that plateaus at position 15 suddenly jumps to position 5 after the 8th supporting post goes live. The tipping point varies, but the pattern is consistent.

    How Growink Automates This

    This is exactly why we built Growink around content pillars, not random blog posts. When you create a pillar in Growink, the system:

    1. Helps you research and validate the master keyword
    2. Suggests supporting keywords with real or AI-estimated metrics
    3. Enforces the master post first — you can’t create supporting posts without it
    4. Automatically links every generated post back to the master post
    5. Uses vector similarity to suggest the best internal links between posts

    No more random blogging. No more orphan posts. Every piece of content serves the strategy.

    If you’re a founder who’s been “meaning to start a blog,” skip the random approach. Build your first content pillar and watch the compound effect do its thing.