Best AI Tool That Helps WordPress Freelancers and Agency Owners
Discover the best AI tools and services to streamline your WordPress freelance or agency owners. Boost productivity and efficiency with our top picks.
This show explores the best AI tools and services for freelancers and agency owners. Discover how these innovative technologies can streamline workflow, enhance productivity, and improve client interactions. From project management to content creation, we cover a range of solutions that can elevate your business. Don’t miss out on these game-changing resources.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
#1 – Open.ai / ChatGPT – Kurt Pick
Prices Start around $25 + per month.#2- Claude – Jonathan Pick
Prices $20 per month
#3 – Opus.pro – Kurt Pick – Video Editor,
Prices Starter $15 | Pro $29 per month
#4 – Koala – Jonathan Pick
Prices Essentials $9 | Starter $25 | Professional $49 | Boost $99#5 – Right Bogger – Kurt Pick
Prices Free | Unlimited $29.99 monthly
because I am lazy with AI, and it does what I want. I mostly create video summary posts with it.
#6 – Neuronwriter – Jonathan Pick
Prices Bronze $23 | Silver $45 | Gold $69 | Platinum $93 per month
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:02.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 945. It will be a chat between me and my fabulous co-host, Kurt. In this episode, we will discuss some of the AI tools and other stuff that we use daily, weekly, and monthly to run our agencies, our hosting, and whatever we are in the WordPress space. If you’re a freelancer or a small agency owner, you’ll get some great value from this show, or we hope you will. Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers quickly?
[00:01:48.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure, Jonathan. My name is Kurt, Kurt von AhnenI. I own a company called Manana Nomas, and we focus largely on membership and learning websites. We also work directly with WP-Tonic and the good folks at Lifter LMS.
[00:02:01.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Certainly does. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show and give you all the best AI tools and services we’re using, we got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out we have a great free resource for freelancers and small agency owners. That’s the list of the best WordPress plugins, services, and other stuff. Plus, we got some special offers from our sponsors. You can get all these free goodies by going over to the WP-tonic. Com/dills, WP-tonic. Com/dills, and you can get all the goodies there. What more could you ask for my beloved WordPress professionals? Probably a lot more, but that’s what you’ll get. It still brings a smile to Kirk, and I get more feedback about that little thing I do. Did anything else? I don’t know if I… That depresses me, beloved drive, but there we go. Let’s start with one of your picks, ChatGPT. What are your thoughts about this that you chose, Kurt?
[00:03:33.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
If we talk about AI, it’s the girl in the room, and it has to be mentioned. It’s like the forerunner. Everyone goes, Oh, ChatGPT, ChatGPT. Even if they’re not using ChatGPT, they’ll say ChatGPT. It’s like googling something. Someone will go to any other search engine and say, Oh, I’m just going to google it, right? Like a verb. My opinion is that ChatGPT changes a lot, and it seems like a lot of the other tools out there are just a wrapped version of a custom GPT off a ChatGPT, right? So it’s the big one. It’s the big one in the room. But I think at the rate that it changes and the idea that you have to become a prompt engineer to use it efficiently, I think it’s a lot for many people to bite off. I think it’s deceptively easy-looking when you get in and then realize I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, and my results are horrible, but you don’t know how to fix it right away. I think that’s where there will be room in the future for AI experts to pave the way for people.
[00:04:43.090] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s a great observation. How much do you spend? You don’t want me to ask. How much do you spend? Because that’s one of the things. How much do you reckon you’re spending on ChatGPT per month?
[00:04:59.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
I did the $ 20-for-a-month thing for a little while, and I discontinued it because, and I’m very clear about this, I was lazy. I wanted to find tools that did prompts for me in the background so I didn’t have to be the prompt engineer. I just wanted my results. When I pay for tools, I now take the easy way out. I pay for pre-prompted tools, and I get results more quickly for my particular use case. I always go back to the use case. Super important that your use case, what you’re looking for, and then you execute accordingly.
[00:05:33.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I totally agree with the great points you’re making out. I’m in exactly the same position. I think one of its strengths is for around $20 a month, it offers a number of AI tools, quite a large selection. I think in some areas, a lot of areas now, it isn’t the best tool in a specific in the combination of arrows in its quiver that it’s offering. But that’s one of the problems of a Swiss Army knife. That’s one of the problems in general when a SaaS product tries to become everything to everybody. And it doesn’t really… None of the tools that it’s providing are the best. But as a large language model, obviously the investment and the money that has been poured into this company and the support of Microsoft still means it will be a major player in the coming years. But on the other hand, which we’re going to discuss, which is one of my my choices. In general, I’ve moved away from ChatGPT because of the specifics of my own requirements. So I’m utilizing Clawed a lot more than directly or indirectly, because some of the third-party tools that I use, they give me the choice.
[00:07:11.170] – Jonathan Denwood
I can select different language models to choose from. But I do use Claude as well directly, and it’s one of the main competitors to ChatGPT. It’s still only got, I think, only 3 to 4 % of the usage base, but it is growing rapidly. And I think a lot of the online influences on YouTube and podcasting is some of the voices that I regularly listen to to keep myself up to speed in this area. Not in totality, but the majority of these influencers say that if you’re producing a lot of content and you’re using AI to help you write that content, that Claude is a better tool than Chat GPT. What’s your response to what I’ve just outlined?
[00:08:20.570] – Kurt von Ahnen
Personally, not a Claude user, and I should say, yet. Same boat as you. I hear people like Mark Zemanski mention Claude a other people on YouTube on different feedbacks, different things in the X feed. I’ll see that people are promoting successes with Claude. And where I’m seeing a lot of notes about people succeeding with Clawed is helping with making a plugin or helping with some coding or helping. They’re saying it’s better results out of the shoot than ChatGPT. So I think when I go back into a large language model overarching tool, I’m probably going to sample Claude next.
[00:09:04.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. On to one of your choices. So what is it? And explain why you like it.
[00:09:14.270] – Kurt von Ahnen
I assume we’re talking about Opus Pro.
[00:09:16.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Number three on our list.
[00:09:18.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Opus Pro to me is, and I’ve been on it for a while, but I found it to be a game changer. It was really fun. This is where I think some of the reward. When we use AI, I think there should be a ginniness or a sense of fun about it. And that’s Opus Pro gives me that ginniness and sense of fun. I can take a long form video. Let’s say I do a live and I talk for 30 minutes. I can take that video, put it into Opus, and Opus through AI will generate 18 to 20 different small clips with subtitles, and they have different templates that you can choose, so the subtitles can look different ways. But they’ll make these small clips anywhere from, I think it’s like 30 seconds to two minutes. And I take those clips and I literally just schedule them throughout my social media channels. And And it populates your shorts channel on YouTube. And that’s something that YouTube said that they were looking to actively promote with more shorts, right? And so you generate all of these shorts with Opus Pro, it does it automatically. And you can share socially directly through the Opus interface.
[00:10:35.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
You don’t have to download it and then upload it to something else, right? You can do it right through their interface. You can say, here’s my YouTube, my LinkedIn, my Facebook, my Instagram, and click, Click, click, click, share. Click, click, click, click, schedule. And you can schedule those posts out over time. So to me, Opus Pro is fun. You get a little bit of ginniness about it. And the post that it creates, it rates for you. So it’ll tell you right up front, like this one has a 99 % chance of virality. This one has an 82 % chance of virality. So it’s giving you hints on what to fix to make your content better. And you can edit the individual clips. So you can go in, you can edit them. You can shorten them, lengthen them, take words out, whatever you want to do. It edits video like Descript does. If you’ve ever used Descript, you can highlight words, delete the words, but it also deletes that section of words in the video too. So it’s a really fun tool.
[00:11:32.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Did you utilize Descript, and then you moved over to OPRAS?
[00:11:38.370] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. In true transparency, I still have a paid membership to Descript as well because some of the training material we make over at Lifter LMS uses Descript. All right, yeah. So I got stuck staying with it.
[00:11:52.540] – Jonathan Denwood
So what Oopris, it starts at around $15 if you pay monthly, and then the next, the pro is 29, so it’s not ridiculously expensive. Obviously, all these subscriptions are wad up, so you got to keep them under some control. I’m always looking for good special offers. But on the other hand, I’ve really got to think about it, especially when on purchasing annual special deals with these products because it’s ever-changing, and a product might be the leader for a six-month to a year period, and then it’s in decline. So you always just got to make a judgment call. So when you’re comparing Opus with the other tool that What’s it called Descript? Descript? Yeah, sorry, my mind went blank. How would you classify the strengths and weaknesses of both products?
[00:12:54.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Opus generates that short term content, short form content. Descript takes long form content and cleans it up. So if I’m making… We work in the eLearning sector. When I’m making eLearning videos, I use Descript. It adds studio voice. It makes you sound more It’s crucial. So it gives you studio voice, and you can clean up the ums and the ums and take some of that stuff out, and you get a much cleaner video for eLearning courses. And it’s long form. It’s the whole length of the video that it does. Whereas Opus takes that whole length video and breaks it into little clips. Now, speaking about AI, Descript launched an AI tool that also does shorts inside, which I haven’t used yet because I have Opus, but I plan on testing it out and seeing what that looks like over the next month.
[00:13:45.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Would you say Descript compared to the more traditional editing tools like Premiere or Final Cut, the more… Or there’s a whole host of video. Do you think Descript has really disrupted the video editing? Do you think it actually does save time and help with editing?
[00:14:06.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
For the type of content where you are, confessional video, use you, camera, talking, Descript is probably one of the best ways to go because it is super time saving. But if your training videos have any other material, stock footage or anything like that, then you’re back in a Premiere Pro version, right? So I have Premiere Pro also.
[00:14:30.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I tend just to keep using Screen flow myself. On to one of my picks, Koala Bear. This basically Basically, it’s a bit like what Kirk outlined at the beginning of this discussion. It’s a rapper. It provides the interface. But I found, because I’m producing which Kirk can back up, I produce a lot of content per week, do I not, Kirk? You do. The content that I’m producing with the help of AI, I just don’t give it a title and let it spew out. I actually do an outline, do the research, give koala an outline. I can choose which language, large language I’m going to be utilizing. I tend to utilize Claude because I found it to provide some of the best results. It’s got a number of other features. It can help you produce meta descriptions, and it’s one of the better… There are some other of these platforms that help you write content, and I’ll be talking about some of them in the show. But I’ve stayed with this one, and they do periodically offer quite large discounts if you pay, and you can get a large… It’s a token-based, but if you buy, they come up like twice a year.
[00:16:32.440] – Jonathan Denwood
And I’ve stuck with Koala, and I’ve been using it a lot, and I decided to take up one of their larger offers because I’ve been satisfied. Like I said, they are There are some cheaper ones, but I found for my particular case usage that I’ve stuck with Koala. And I think most of the influencers that I listen to who spend I spend a lot of time looking at these tools. Koala might not be on the top of their list because it’s one of the more expensive of these tools, but it’s always in the top 2-3 that they talk about. And through taking advantage of the special offers that Koala periodically offer, I’ve got it at a discount. So I think for the price I paid for what it provides, I would highly recommend it. If you’re not taking up its special offer, it starts at around $9 per month. These are month-to-month prices. It’s got the starter plan at 25, it’s got the professional at 49, and it’s got the boost at 99. Now, these prices seem a bit You can’t produce too many articles from the essential starter. You really have to start looking at the professional boost.
[00:18:10.560] – Jonathan Denwood
But some of the other all-embracing Swiss Army knife solutions out there, they’re very expensive. So I use a combination of tools. We are full lifetime deals, one of them I’m going to be talking about later on. Or I look for special offers, but I would highly recommend this because I just like the interface and I like the way the company is run. Any thoughts, It’s good.
[00:18:47.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, as someone that sees the content that you generate there, I can vouch for the quality of the stuff that I see. It uses a good variance of styles, bullets and sections and all those things. The content’s great.
[00:19:05.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but I want to stress to the listeners and viewers. I put a lot… It can take me a whole afternoon to produce an article even utilizing this tool because I look for articles, I read them, I take the titles, I formulate a structure of the article, and then koala helps me produce the article. Then we internally edit it, which Kirek helps me with. I do edit, Kirek does edit. We spend a bit of time on it, we just don’t throw it out. Almost all the articles that I produce for the WP tonic website to attract people to the website. We also add other content, video, audio. We throw the kitchen sink at it, basically.
[00:19:59.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Do we No, and I think that’s an important thing to bring up is these AI tools aren’t a replacement for human energy and human thought. They’re just tools. They’re tools to get us further down the road than where we might have gotten without them. Very important to keep your own voice and your own opinion and your own things intertwined into the content.
[00:20:23.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s my own. I totally agree with you. That’s the difference between writing and using a typewriter. That’s the difference between using a typewriter and a word processor. That’s the difference between using a word processor and maybe a tool. They’re just tools. I totally agree with you. I think this whole discussion between what we’re discussing in this episode, Kirk, and general AI intelligence has all got mixed up into a witches’ brew. Because general AI intelligence is interspersed with these specific large language models, it’s all become very confused and the conversations become very scattered. Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:21:18.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would agree 100%. I think there’s a little bit of AI burnout for the average user. I mean, every tool that someone… Let’s say you’re new to SaaS or WordPress or anything, it’s like every tool you download or look at is going to say, Oh, it’s AI-powered or AI-injected or AI-something. At the end of the day, what does that really mean? What is it doing for you? I think there’s a lot of confusion around that landscape.
[00:21:46.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s go on to a tool that you like, and that’s right, blogger. Maybe give us an idea how it came on your radar, why you decided to try it out, and why have you kept with it, and why you like it.
[00:22:03.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I never would have known about Right Blogger if Ryan Roberts didn’t come and be a guest on the WP Tonic show. So I met him through the show, met the product through the show, And we had mentioned that I had been paying for ChatGPT and was wondering, why am I paying for ChatGPT? So it was right about that time. So I was in the perfect space to migrate to It’s a different tool. And write blogger for me, is it the best tool for writing? Is it the best? I’m going to have to tell you, it probably is not. I bet you your koala is probably much better at generating posts and content in that way.
[00:22:47.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, what do you read? Because you help me with the content that I’m producing, and then you look at the content. What’s your own judgment?
[00:22:56.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
My own judgment is I think write blogger needs Here’s why I use it, Jonathan. Let’s get to brass tax. I’m lazy. And because- I don’t think you are.
[00:23:08.190] – Jonathan Denwood
You seem a very hard worker. I think I’m a maniac. That’s the difference. I have no personal life apart I just have a few friends that I just live in front of my… I’m a sorry bastard, really. I’ve accepted my fate, though. It’s all in God’s hands, and I made my bed, I have to accept to lay in it.
[00:23:32.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Well, when I first got into Right Blogger, after the show that we did with Ryan, here’s what I liked about it. I didn’t have to be a prompt expert any longer. I didn’t have to write a paragraph to ChatGPT to tell it what I thought I wanted it to do. Now, I literally just put a subject line in, and this thing can give me an outline. Then I can review the outline and go, Do I want to change it or do I want to use it the way it is?
[00:23:58.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I interrupt just for a second? Second. I also think you’re quite a good writer. I’m not. Well, I’m a bit of a thinker, which is a two-edged sold, I think. But obviously, I’ve got a bit of dyslexia, so I need a really quality tool, but I think what this tool might help you with is get the stuff out, and then, because you’re a pretty good writer, you then edit it. So for your own, because you’re a pretty good and you like writing, what you’re looking for my tool is a little bit different from what I’m looking for.
[00:24:36.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s a really great way to say that, Jonathan. A really great way. The write blogger does more than write the articles, which is why I was so attracted to this tool. I go back to video. I make a lot of video content. I go live at the drop of a hat, right? Just I get an idea, I go live. Boom. With this tool, I can put a video in and it will make a transcription of the video. And most people have seen that and they go, Okay, a transcribed video, no big deal. But it’ll also take a video and write a summary, write a blog post out of that video. So now I’ve got two different ways to do that. Then I can take that blog post and I can break it into smaller social posts that this system will organize and get ready for me. So as you know, when we make these videos, it’s our content. You and I are talking right now. This is our content, our thoughts. But if I can take that verbal spoken content and have it broken down into usable pieces by this tool and inject it into different channels, then it works really well for me.
[00:25:41.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Hopefully, he will agree to come back on the show because he’s got enormous amount of experience in running online businesses and the marketing side. But he’s got a very nice personality, a nice way of coming across. He He’s very bright, isn’t he? He’s not gloomy like me, is he?
[00:26:04.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, he stuck out to me, and I was like, Hey, I’ll check out the product, and next thing, I’m a customer.
[00:26:11.160] – Jonathan Denwood
The prices are… He’s He’s got a free plan, and then he’s got an unlimited plan, which is 29.99. If you pay month to month, I can’t believe that it can be totally unlimited. But I would imagine you got to really hit it very old before they say anything to you. But that’s not a bad price, 29.99 unlimited, is it?
[00:26:36.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, and I use it a fair amount. I use it with the video a lot, and then I use maybe three or four articles a month.
[00:26:45.340] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. I think we’re going to go for our mid-break. We got a ton. We got through a fair, but we got still a ton of others. I had quite a few in reserve as well. We got There’s a ton of other tools that we regularly use for our second half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast of AI tools and services in the first half. A load of toys for you to go and try and waste tons of time on. But before we go into the second half, I just wanted to say, if you’re looking for a great hosting provider that not only provides great hosting, but all the best plugin technology and a lot more in one package, which you can white label and utilize to service your clients, why don’t you have a look at WP Tonic’s hosting? We offer some great deals for our professional partners. You can find more by going over to WP-tonic. Com/partners, WP-tonic. Com/partners. There’s a form to fill in, gives you more information. Then you can fill in a form, and then we can have a Zoom and a chat.
[00:28:17.580] – Jonathan Denwood
And we love you to come on board, and it really would support the show if you decided to become a partner as well. Right, on to the next one. That’s one of my stars, Neurowriter. Basically, it came on my radar by one of the online influencers that I follow. And I bought I bought the Asuma deal, and I’ve had a mixed track record with Asuma. I’ve had some great deals products, and I’ve been totally ripped off by Asuma and some of its partners as well. I’m a bit wary, so I do more research. But these people, they’re based in Poland. I bought and Then it’s really helped me with the organization and the research that I do for my articles because I use a number of tools in the professional SEO space to research. That takes up a couple of hours. Then I have a set process that I go through a quiver of AI and other tools. One of the main tools is Neuro It compared to… What it does is it basically looks at the competition and looks at the word patterns because this is what Google is using. Google was using its own internal large language processor to determine the quality of articles in ranking.
[00:30:10.970] – Jonathan Denwood
They used to just So one of its main criteria was external links, people linking, and it still is quite important, but it became totally abused by professional SEO experts and using link farms and other techniques. So Google was aware that they were being played, and so they had to back off, but there was no way of backing. But then these large language models came, and they’ve invested billions and billions and billions, and they were utilizing that technology to assess the quality of articles about three, four years ago, and they were diminishing their need to utilize link authority, basically. Hopefully, I haven’t lost most of you, but being at your professional WordPress, I would imagine a lot of you have some knowledge around SEO. So NeroWriter, there’s a number of these tools out there. Some of the competitors are extremely expensive. I got this, and then I bought even more lifetime time, tokens, and I use it a ton, and they’ve never hit me for any more money, and they continue to improve it. When it comes to the actual interface, it is not as polished as some of the other players out there that doing a similar thing, but the power is there, so I would highly recommend it.
[00:31:54.500] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your response? Have I totally lost you, Kurt?
[00:31:57.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
A little, but that’s okay. I lose you quite regularly, don’t I?
[00:32:02.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I’m such a maniac, can I?
[00:32:05.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, but so when I look at you- I’m a friendly maniac, though.
[00:32:09.480] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m a friendly maniac. I could have a few moments where I’m not very friendly, but in general, I am, and No, for the most part, you’re Teddy Bear.
[00:32:18.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Neuron writer. When I looked at Neuron writer, I had this weird sensation that it wasn’t for my use case. I had the sensation when I went to their site that it was more geared to a publication house. It was geared for a team of writers making tons of content for an online magazine or paper.
[00:32:40.670] – Jonathan Denwood
It just seemed-Well, you can use it for that. You can use it. It does provide writing. I personally choose not to use it. I use it snippets of its writing to add maybe some additional content to my articles. But I use Koala for the majority of the content.
[00:33:02.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is more like the research tool, and then you take that over to Koala?
[00:33:07.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Then, well, I do manual research as well, and I use Neuron writer to actually do additional and provide insight and a list of keywords and that, which I can then put into Koala, and Koala will take those words. Basically, it does what a very, very experience SEO content writer could do, because it was a art form. Most writers couldn’t do it effectively, and only the most powerful experienced team of content writers could do this in an effective way. The time it would take, I’m not going to name them. There’s a few… How shall I put this diplomatically? Because I I want to be more diplomatic because everybody else is getting extremely rude to one another in the WordPress space. I’ve never seen a level of toxicity in the WordPress space that we are observing at the present moment. I don’t want to totally back off and lose credibility. But on the other hand, I don’t want to engage in it at the level that we’re observing because I don’t think it’s helpful either. So it’s finding the right balance, and I’m struggling, but I’m trying to find that balance. But get back to it.
[00:34:41.590] – Jonathan Denwood
To do this, there’s a few There’s a few companies in the WordPress space that did it very effectively, and they spent a ton of money on it. And if you were a smaller player, you couldn’t produce the volume. Now, with all these tools and that, a one, two-person team can produce a lot of good content, and this helps. But I do use the writing functionality a bit. But I don’t… Only about one-fifth to one-fourth. The rest of it, I’m using other tools, Kurt.
[00:35:22.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
In terms of a learning curve, on a one to five scale, where would you great neuron writer for a pain in the butt to learn?
[00:35:34.180] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not a pain. You’re just going to have to do a dive on YouTube and on the internet because some of its key functionality, some of its real power, depending on the case use is really hidden in the interface. The interface is not top-notch. It just isn’t terrible, but I’m a UX snob.
[00:35:57.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you answer my question, it’d be a four out of five.
[00:36:00.700] – Jonathan Denwood
You will have to do a bit of a dive and watch it. There are resources out there that really give you some tips about utilizing your own writer, but it’s an extremely powerful tool. But you do have to understand more than the fundamentals with SEO to really get it. But it’s well worth the investment, folks.
[00:36:28.310] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s fair.
[00:36:29.780] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, let’s go on to our bonus stuff. I’m looking at your list. You got one called from X, or I still call it Twitter. I’m not calling it X. It’s always good. I don’t care if you want to call it X. It’s Twitter for us, I’m concerned. I’m having a go at you, aren’t I? How do you pronounce it? Groch? Groch, that’s how I say it.
[00:36:57.610] – Kurt von Ahnen
I assume I’m right.
[00:37:00.390] – Jonathan Denwood
It never stops me from saying something, does it?
[00:37:05.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Grok to me. How do I explain this adventure? I wasn’t really looking for an AI tool when I signed up for Grok, but here’s the deal. I have a few different X accounts. One of them, I was like, maybe I should put the blue checkmark on that. Then I’m like, do I really want to pay for a blue checkmark? That’s stupid. And then it turns out you get all these premium services, you get the analytics, you get all these things, and then you also get access to Grok. And I thought, you know what? Let’s just do it. So I paid for it for the year. Got it. And then you get that, hey, if I paid for it, I might as well use it syndrome.
[00:37:41.180] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t even looked at this. I just paid. I upload a ton of video to my Twitter accounts, and that’s why I pay. And I don’t care about him. I’m just a small flyer. I can’t be very more I just go and use it and I accept the realities of the situation. So tell us more. I interrupted as I normally do. This is my main use, and I’m sure there’s going to be some comments that come in that say, That’s all you’re doing.
[00:38:14.430] – Kurt von Ahnen
If I already have these other tools, right? So I’m already using Write Blogger, I got access to ChatGPT, I got all these things. So when I go into Grok, sometimes I’ll be in my ex-account and I’ll just want to ask a question or something. Grok is there, I hit it, boom, done. But what I do use it for is I create a lot of images through it. It’s image creator is pretty vibrant. And I don’t have, I’m not on Magi or any of these other tools for image creation. So I go into Grok and I say, hey, Grok, create me a picture of this, this and this. And it might be for the featured image of an article I wrote or something. And it does a really good job. It kicks out. And what I really like about Grok is it has what Whatever it generates for you, whether it’s a typed answer or a picture or whatever, whatever it generates for you, underneath whatever the output is, is a little icon for regeneration. And so you can just click that and it instantly gives you another stab at it. Let’s say I want a picture of a guy on a mountain.
[00:39:19.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
So it sends me four pictures of guys on mountains. And I’m like, No, don’t like any of those. Just click regenerate, and there it is. And that makes it really easy. Whereas in ChatGPT, you find yourself copying and pasting your request and changing things and trying to reprompt it. I think I’ve already been really clear, I’m not a prompt engineer, and so I lose patience with having to always change the way I’m asking ChatGPT for something. Whereas with Grok, I just go, I ask the question, If I don’t like the answer, I hit regenerate, we take another stab at it.
[00:39:48.860] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. All right, I’m going to talk about Word Hero. Now, Word Hero was another Apsuma deal, and I bought the lifetime. I think it does for me a little bit of what write blogger does for you is that it provides a whole interface of different scripts prompts that I can utilize to generate content for various scenarios. It provides 40, 50 different prompt interfaces for different stuff. I use it on on a regular basis. The actual writing it produces. I wouldn’t use it for key stuff because I don’t think Google really loves it because it’s utilizing a cheaper language model to produce some of it. I’ve got other tools that I use to do it, but it just saves me a ton of time. Now, I got it on a lifetime deal with AppSuma, and they never hit me up for more money. But would I pay it normally, monthly? Probably not because they want $49 a month or 99. I could probably consider the 49, but I definitely wouldn’t pay 99 a month for it. But I think periodically they’re on Appzuma. I can’t remember how much I paid for the lifetime deal. I chose I’ve been lucky on the AI tool.
[00:41:31.590] – Jonathan Denwood
I bought about three or four on AppSuma, and only one has hardly ever been used. The others have become key parts. But that generally doesn’t happen. If you get one out of 50 % usage out of that sooner buy, you’re doing well. I would definitely say it does the job and look at it, and it depends on your case scenario. It’s just the price to value metrics. I think it’s one of the weaker of my choices. What’s your response, Kerr?
[00:42:12.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
I really don’t have an opinion because I haven’t used All right, fair enough.
[00:42:17.630] – Jonathan Denwood
On to the next one, your one, I think, 0GPT. I think that was one of your choices. Tell us more.
[00:42:25.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think that’s one that you popped in the list, actually, but 0GPT to me was It is like a… Oh, how do I say this? It seems like it’s wrapped around ChatGPT, but gives you a more affordable way to use it. And I’m not sure how they really get away with doing that. But it’s pretty direct and it gives you-Oh, sorry, I’ve had a brain fart.
[00:42:53.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I apologize. I had a total brain fart this morning. I haven’t had enough coffee. What this does, so I’ll interrupt. Do you want to continue?
[00:43:03.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
It seems to have some prebuilt prompts in it, like a plagiarism checker and grammar checks and AI translator and things like that. It seems like it’s a partially-programmed ChatGPT to get you further down the road than using ChatGPT by yourself.
[00:43:21.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, you’re totally correct, but I don’t use it for that. But you’re totally right. No, it has all those tools which I don’t use because it’s got much better stuff. What I use it is it detects AI content, and it’s one of the better checkers. There’s a whole suite of these checkers Because Google’s in a little dance with the SEO world and the content. It’s a highly… I’m looking for the right word. I did have it. It It’s a very two-face company. They are the biggest hypocrites of the internet, Google. For years, they’ve been using large language models as part of their ranking behind the scenes. But they also know that ChatGPT and these other technologies, their total domination of the online world of the economics. They totally dominate it apart from Facebook and some other social media platforms. It’s slightly under threat. I think some people say they’re finished. I don’t believe that myself. I think if they did nothing, it would still take a number of years. I think people in the technology bubble have gone to ChatGPT to do search. But I think there’s some which you have expressed. You can waste a lot of time on these prompts I think it’s changing, but I think there’s a lot of people.
[00:45:21.400] – Jonathan Denwood
But they felt under threat. It’s affected me a bit, but I’ve I’ve responded, and it’s coming back for me a bit, but they really have hit the professional blogging online scene and hit people that were using AI to produce blogging content to some degree. This particular tool, you put your content in and it will tell you if it’s been written by AI. I do a bit of it, but on the other hand, I’ve had content that is clearly seen as AI generated, but because I’ve added a lot of additional quality elements to the content, Google’s been fine with it. I’ve I’ve added stuff that I’ve put in for checking, and then I’m going to be talking about a couple of tools that is called humanization. There are some tools out there now that Google can’t detect. I’ve done that, but they still haven’t ragged. It’s all up in the air, folks. But this is one of the leading tools, and it basically goes to a number. It’s interface, and then you put your content in. Depending if you’re using the free or one of the paid levels determines how much content you can put in.
[00:46:55.540] – Jonathan Denwood
It just tells you if it’s AI detectable and percentage, and that’s what I mainly use it for. Have I explained that currently? Or have I just- No, no, no, you nailed it. Right. So Let’s look at when you want to talk about Microsoft Copilot.
[00:47:20.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, but you’re going to make me say this on the air. Microsoft Copilot. I just got a new computer, and everything you touch on this computer is recommending that you run copilot with it. And again, that’s talking about that AI burnout, right? What does this thing really… Do I need it in Word? Do I need it in PowerPoint? Do I need it in all these things? Apparently, Microsoft thinks I do. So I thought, I got it, I might as well try it. So the first time I went to use it, it said, Sign in. So I signed into my Microsoft. Oh, there. Then it said, Do you want to use it anonymously? I said, Well, you just made me sign in, and now you know what computer I’m on. It doesn’t matter if I’m being anonymous or not.
[00:48:07.090] – Jonathan Denwood
This is all good science, isn’t it?
[00:48:11.390] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m having Gemini flashbacks about how bad this experience is going to be. And so then I said, okay, it says, do you want to use it for work or do you want to use it for personal use? I said, well, let’s click on work. I’m going to write an article for Mañana Nomás. So let’s use work. I click It doesn’t work, and it just refreshes and goes back to the same screen with the same two buttons. So I said, that’s ridiculous. So then it says, do you want to use it anonymously? So I click on that. That’s the only button on the page now that works. And when I click, do you want to use it anonymously? It takes me back to the login. On screen. And it just goes around and around in a circle and it doesn’t work. The next day, I click on Copilot, and it goes right to a page in Microsoft 365 that says, Ask a question, what do you I want to know today. And I’m like, Okay, well, that was pretty cool. And it’s like a grok or a ChatGPT type interface, right? The idea that this tool is meant to be woven into every basic thing in your computer, meaning word, PowerPoint, Excel, into your Android phone, into your whatever.
[00:49:23.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s overkill for me, Jonathan. It seems like you’re being kidnapped. I’m not exactly sure I play in this field.
[00:49:31.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I’m just thankful for my Mac. I’m not saying Apple or any better than Microsoft. It’s a bit like the days of Explorer where there was…
[00:49:44.290] – Kurt von Ahnen
But Everybody gets Explorer.
[00:49:46.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s about it. On to my next one, which is Happy Scribe, another AppZuma purchase a while ago. I use it every week because it helps me subscribe the transcription of these podcasts. The problem is it’s improved, it’s not perfect. You can ask them to use a human being to help you do it, but that’s like $2 a minute. I just use it. If I use it heavily, they do ask me for a bit more money, but you get a big discount because you’ve bought the lifetime deal. They’re not asking a ridiculous amount, so I think they’ve done it in a good way. The deal I got, I could have bought more tokens, but I just went for the middle road and made the assumption. It covers me most weeks, but there are the odd week where I have to give them a little bit more money for the month, but they’ve done it in a good way, in a legitimate way. I couldn’t afford to have an outside person using some of the other The conscribing tools were a lot more, and they weren’t offering that sooner or deal. The interface works really well, and it does the job.
[00:51:27.220] – Jonathan Denwood
I know the quality isn’t… I I go in and sometimes clean it up a little bit myself, but it just does provide a transcript, and it’s a tool that in my own particular need, because I love podcasting, probably too much, I’ll probably be better off using my time on something else, but I do love it. It does the job. What do you reckon, Pierre?
[00:51:54.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
I reckon, with your permission, I want to shift the conversation a bit on some of the content you just said. I think there’s a lot of people that listen to this show and they hear what you just said, and it’s bothersome or worrisome. So I’m hoping you can explain this. Even though you bought a lifetime deal, they come to you for more money and you seem happy to pay it. People, I think, don’t understand this token model of usage and payment. Can you describe that a little for folks?
[00:52:23.390] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s a whole… Hell’s Kitchen, isn’t it?
[00:52:28.570] – Kurt von Ahnen
How far does a token go?
[00:52:30.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, well, that’s the whole point. That’s the whole point. It’s there to be… Because Koala uses a token system. They’ve given me a enormous pool of tokens in there. I’m not a great Amara of this particular bit, but it’s a reality. They’re having to buy usage from- The LLLMs, right? From Claude or the others. They’re just providing tools interface, but the engine they’re having… It’s a bit like hosting. Now, the hosting world, there are some hosting providers that provide bare metal. You’re buying a server in a data center. You’re actually buying, and you’re buying bare metal, and you can then either get You can buy resources from some of these bare metal hosting providers, a part of a Linux administrator’s time. I did train as a Linux administrator many years ago, but I found it so boring. I got a love affair with Linux, but I also hate it because they never… I’m not going to go there. We spent a whole I know about that. You buy this bare metal and you can buy it, or you can buy, or some of them don’t provide any admin add-on services. You have to go somewhere else to buy admin or provide it in-house and find in a really good Linux admin.
[00:54:21.470] – Jonathan Denwood
There are a lot of WordPress developers; I’m going to get some heat mail here that think they can administrate a bare metal or a droplet situation. In my experience, it always bites them on the ass. Always, right? But that’s my opinion. It’s my honest opinion. But most people are using the cloud. They’re using cloud systems. They’re using Docker or the droplets from various providers. This is the same in this world. A lot of these providers are buying a bear met or a provider, and they’re putting the interface on it. That’s why they have to use the token system. I did get it back to the actual thing. I didn’t go off on a big bend, did I? You did get there. I did get there. It was a bit unwinded, but I got there, right?
[00:55:23.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Is it like these automation tools where you sign up for Zapier or WP Fusion, and then sometimes your usage, your zaps, your connections, you have a certain amount, then you go over, and then you have to pay extra?
[00:55:36.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly right. It was much better. Rather than my five-minute- No, it’s okay. But I’ve got better. I could go all with it, as my beloved listeners and viewers would testify. But hopefully, I don’t think I get there in the end. There are some values. We must wrap it up because you must go off and do your other jobs. It’s a busy man, Kirk, and I have to edit this video and that. What’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to, Kurt?
[00:56:11.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for business, it would be mañana no mas. Anything that is Mañana No Mas, back to me, mañanaNoMas. Com and MañanaNoMas on X and Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn if it’s personal or you want to connect. I’m very active on LinkedIn and the only Kurt von Ahnen there, which makes it easy for me.
[00:56:28.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, and remember my WordPress professionals. Yes, it can be stressful. It can have its ups and downs, but anything is better than working for the man. Just remember that my beloved WordPress tribe and my bootstrap-sass people as well. We will be back next week with a great guest. I think our roundtable show is coming up the week after. That should be interesting. I should get myself in a lot of trouble there. But no, I’ll try and be reasonable. We will be back next week, folks. Bye.
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