How AI is impacting Stress Baking and how you can helpπŸ™

Published about 1 year agoΒ β€’Β 3 min read

Hi, Reader πŸ‘‹

Can I ask a quick favor?

If you've made one of my recipes recently, it would make a world of difference if you left a comment and star rating (5 is the best ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) on the recipe's blog post!

When people come to Stress Baking to make a recipe, they dive into the comments to see how it turned out for other people - and I'd love for them to read how much you loved it!

Thank you for supporting small businesses like Stress Baking - your engagement is crucial to our success ❀️

Why this is so important

Want more context? If you're unfamiliar with what AI is and how it's impacting independent publishers like myself and would like to learn more, I thank you in advance for taking a moment to read the following summary I've put together. Things are really tough right now, and I want to be transparent about what's happening and how you can help.

The increased prevalence of Artificial Intelligence, or AI (especially Google's release of their Generative AI search results), is having a tremendous impact on small businesses and creators like myself.

Without getting too into the technical weeds, the Google Search Generative Experience answers search queries with a lengthy attempt to summarize the information it's found across the web at the top of the page.

In other words, it's scraping relevant posts across the internet and then using that as part of its "answer" to your searches, and using that information to train its AI engines (also called "content mining").

tl;dr: Less traffic goes to publishers like Stress Baking. And that means it's harder to rank high enough on the page for people to find me, which means fewer eyeballs on those recipes I've worked so hard to create for you, which means less ad revenue, which means it's getting harder and harder to stay afloat.

How you can help

Most recipe creators are developing our content for free (aside from sponsored content if we're lucky enough to get the attention of a brand that has the budget to pay us), but it's not a matter of tossing dollars our way. It's all about engaging and sharing what you love - and that's free! πŸŽ‰

Here are a few examples of things you can do for Stress Baking and other creators to help us become more visible in the eyes of Google:

  1. Go to us first. Go directly to the sites you love and trust the most when you're looking for recipes (or really, anything!) and see if they can help you find what you need before you jump to Google.
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  2. Follow along. Follow us on our social media channels and engage with us there, and sign up for our email lists (you can check that one off your list for SB!).
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  3. Engage, engage, engage!
    • Ratings/comments on blog posts are one of the biggest indicators to Google that we have relevant content that people want to see.
    • Comment on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and whatever other platforms might be out there that I'm too out of touch to know about πŸ˜…
    • Save recipes on Pinterest, and click through to the blog posts themselves. The actual clickthrough is the most important part for publishers, but I'll still never be mad that you're creating a Stress Baking recipe favorites board!
    • Share your favorite recipes with friends and family that you think might like them! Share a link on Facebook, forward them an email like this one, send it via an Instagram DM, drop them TikTok videos as hints that they should make it for you πŸ˜‰
  4. Just click around. Have a few minutes of downtime? Instead of doom-scrolling through your feed, take a couple of minutes to check out some of our recipes to help us get pageviews and turn that into ad revenue. Read through those tips and tricks we've added to the body of the posts, and check out those pretty process pictures and videos. It's all there to help you!
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  5. Low on time? If you still want to help but know that you won't have the time or energy for any of the above (I know we're all so busy and so tired), you can make a donation via Ko-fi to help pay for ingredients, site hosting fees, and other business expenses. But I want to emphasize that I am not actively seeking donations - just including the option for the people that prefer monetary donations.
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Again, thank you for your support of Stress Baking and other small businesses - every little bit counts to us! ❀️
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Gratefully,
​Leslie

I'm a self-trained baker and chronic illness advocate who believes there’s no such thing as too much whipped cream, and will drop everything to pet a dog (true story).

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Sharing is caring ❀️

If you've made one of my recipes and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment and star rating on the recipe post! Sharing your experiences encourages other readers to jump aboard the stress baking train.

Stress Baking is a food blog full of 100s of easy baking recipes and baking tips for everyday cooks! Creative desserts, dinners, snacks and drinks crafted by Leslie - a self-trained baker and chronic illness advocate who believes in realistic expectations and shares her unique and approachable homemade recipes with a sense of humor to help others realize that practice doesn’t have to make perfect - just progress.