Alston stumbled across a website that claims to produce fully SEO-optimized, AI-generated blog posts that can be imported directly into WordPress and, according to the company, are undetectable by Google’s crawler. The tool is called Content at Scale (contentatscale.ai), and instead of just reviewing it on paper, Alston is launching a real blog using the tool to document exactly how much traffic and money it can generate.
This video is the starting point of that experiment. It covers every step in the setup: picking a niche, locking down a domain and hosting, finding low-competition keywords using Ahrefs, feeding those keywords into Content at Scale to get 2,600-plus word posts, and then building out an affiliate revenue layer using programs beyond just Amazon. If you have wondered whether AI blogging is still a viable path in 2023, this series answers that with live data instead of speculation.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- A clear method for picking a profitable, non-saturated niche directly from Amazon’s category browser
- A simple system for finding a domain name that is relevant without obsessing over exact-match keywords
- A repeatable Ahrefs workflow for targeting keywords where competing sites have a domain rating of 40 or below
- A real look at what Content at Scale does differently from tools like Jasper.ai
- A strategy for stacking affiliate programs beyond Amazon to increase commission rates on the same traffic
- An honest frame for deciding whether AI-written blogs deserve a spot in your business in 2023
- A starting point for finding the specific platform and income model that fits your current skills at finder.platformproof.com
The Premise: Write 20 Blog Posts a Month Without Writing a Single One
The core idea behind this experiment is simple: affiliate marketing via blogging works, but the bottleneck has always been content production. Writing one high-quality 2,000-plus word review takes hours. Doing that 20 times a month while working a full-time job is not realistic for most people. Content at Scale claims to collapse that bottleneck. You supply the keyword, and the platform handles research, structure, writing, and SEO optimization at once, with no human in the loop between keyword input and finished draft.
This is different from earlier AI writing tools that required a human to prompt each section, review output, and keep the tool running. The claim here is push one button, get a full publishable article. Alston’s test is designed to find out if that claim holds up in the real world, measured in actual Google impressions and affiliate commissions rather than demo screenshots.
Step 1: Find a Niche Using Amazon’s Category Browser
The most common excuse for not starting an affiliate blog is that every niche is already taken. Alston pushes back on this directly. The method he uses starts at Amazon.com, the largest product catalog most people have free access to. Go to the “Shop by Department” menu, click on a broad category like Home and Garden, and then drill down one level to a subcategory like Appliances.
Within Appliances, there are specific product types: ice makers, beverage centers, wine coolers, dishwashers, chest freezers, upright freezers, and so on. Each of those product types represents a potential niche with its own audience, its own search traffic, and its own set of affiliate programs. Alston already has a site covering small appliances, so he sets that one aside and plans to build in the larger appliance space as his new test ground.
The reason Amazon is the right starting point is that the product categories map directly to buyer intent. Someone searching for “best chest freezer for a garage” is not browsing for entertainment. They have money to spend and a decision to make. That intent is exactly what affiliate content is built to serve.
Step 2: Secure a Domain Name and Web Hosting
Once you have a niche, you need a home for the content. Alston recommends going to a domain registrar, typing in keywords related to your chosen niche, and iterating until you find something available. He tried “home appliances” as a domain and found it taken, then experimented with variations. The key insight he shares here is that exact-match keyword domains stopped being an SEO requirement five to ten years ago. Google is smart enough to read your content and determine relevance without the keyword living in the URL. Pick something memorable and related rather than spending hours chasing an unavailable perfect-match domain.
Web hosting is non-negotiable. To publish a WordPress blog, you need a hosting account. Alston points beginners toward the first link in his video description for a recommended provider. The principle is to get something reliable and affordable that lets you install WordPress in one click, which is the industry standard for beginners. Do not let this step become a weeks-long research project. Pick a reputable host, buy the cheapest tier that includes WordPress support, and move to step three.
Step 3: Build a List of 20 Target Keywords Using Ahrefs
This is where most beginners skip ahead and regret it. Writing content without first confirming that real people search for it, and that you have a realistic chance of ranking, is the number one reason new blogs get no traffic. The keyword research step is the insurance policy against that outcome.
Alston uses Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. He types in a product type from his niche, for example “freezers,” adds a modifier like “best,” and looks at the matching terms report. He then filters results using a specific rule: he only targets keywords where at least two of the top-ranking pages come from sites with a Domain Rating (DR) of 40 or below. Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ measure of a website’s authority on a scale from 0 to 100. A DR of 40 or below signals a small, independent site, which means the keyword is winnable for a new blog.
Real examples from the video: “best deep freezers for garage” showed competing sites at DR 36 and DR 39, both well inside the target zone. “Best freezers for breast milk” had the number-one result from a site with a DR of just 4, and several others in the 35-to-40 range. These are realistic targets for a new domain.
He mentions a practical workaround for the Ahrefs cost: subscribe for one month, extract all 20 keywords you need, and cancel. Ahrefs is an investment, but a one-month subscription is a one-time cost to get enough data to run a 20-post content plan for months. Alternatively, use a Fiverr keyword research gig and give the freelancer the exact parameters: DR 40 or below for at least two competing pages in the top results.
The goal is 20 total keywords spread across your product subcategories: ice makers, beverage centers, wine coolers, dishwashers, and freezers. Twenty posts at roughly one per week is a six-month content runway.
Step 4: Feed Keywords Into Content at Scale
Once you have the keyword list, Content at Scale takes over. The process as Alston describes it: enter your keyword, give the platform a bit of context, and it generates a 2,600-plus word blog post with no further human intervention. The output is designed to be SEO-structured and, according to the company’s claims, to pass AI content detection tools.
The contrast Alston draws is with earlier tools like Jasper.ai. Jasper is a strong AI writing assistant, but it requires active participation. You prompt it section by section, review what it produces, keep it on track, and refine the output before it is ready to publish. Content at Scale claims to remove that active participation entirely. The pitch is that you can scale to 20 posts a month on the strength of 20 keyword inputs, not 20 hours of supervised writing sessions.