ChatGPT and the art of blog tips

This week I’ve handed ChatGPT a virtual sledgehammer and asked it to do some renovating. Or more to the point, pumped it for some helpful blog tips.

Because it’s still not at ludicrous revenue generation yet after all this time (aka I haven’t bought a Lexus LFA with my earnings so far) and it’s either improve things or shut up shop. And if I opted for the latter, what exactly would I do with myself?

Start tearing down these walls then ChatGPT – let’s see what blog tips you can throw my way here!

So it turns out my virtual real estate wasn’t worth as much as I first thought

Times are tough as you undoubtedly are aware. Belts are being tightened, budgets being reviewed etc. And last week under the thought train of cutting cuts and freeing up some money, I wondered if it was high time I sold my other blog Drive Another Day.

Yes it’s been quite some time since I put my thoughts of second hand cars to keyboard and if I’m honest with myself, I’m not thinking about car content as much anymore. Part of the reason is possibly the fact that I now own the most reliable car I’ve ever had (2012 Mazda 6) and because the thing just works, it’s increasingly difficult to generate content from it when there’s precious little to fix. (‘How to fill the washer bottle on your Mazda 6’ would be a pretty lacklustre blog post I reckon.)

I’m also not at too many car events nowadays, all my friends drive normal cars and imports outside of the occasional Nissan Skyline seem rare where I call home now. Which is why I finally bit the bullet and decided to see what it was worth if I bundled it up for sale to say goodbye. The blog, the posts, the thoughts, my work, 11 years of on again off again content.

After a promising start with the general survey over at Flippa (Your site could be worth up to $1000 US!) I was very excited to dive deeper to find out exactly how close to that impressive number Drive Another Day could land. Annnnnd it turns out far from it. Even though I thought 11 years of existence on the world wide web without changing the location or title might be worth something along with the 200+ articles, my final valuation came around to….(drum roll please!):

Approximately $19-$22 AUD.

Good god was that anticlimactic. Hoping for a couple of hundred at least for me to part ways with my second hand car project for over a decade, I decided not to go with the listing in the end. 10 cents a blog post with some that have been read hundreds of time? Insulting at best. But it turns out because it doesn’t earn much (maybe nobody is keen on finding out more about Indian dental implants or pdf files there Google?) it’s not worth much.

Which means I either improve it’s earning potential or bury it in a digital recycle bin somewhere. And because Stars of the Border is now over for the year, I’m going to try and improve it. So I’ve asked ChatGPT for some blog tips… which I’m currently road testing here so see how things go.

Welcome to the renovation then!

Blog tips away then ChatGPT, start swinging that hammer!

From previous work with Google’s AI, I’ve found the more ground you cover in your questions, the better response you get. (I discovered this by firing pretty basic questions when trying to form a Supercoach team this year and then running into a limit wall..) And so I thought for a bit on what I’d like blog tips about and let it do the website crunching or however it works things out:

And provide some blog tips it did, pretty much generating it’s own pamphlet worth of content to help me here!

GeneratePress is a fast, flexible WordPress theme, and it’s great that you’re thinking about aesthetics and engagement. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how to make your blog visually appealing and audience-friendly:

🎨 Visual Appeal: Design Tips

1. Color Scheme

Stick with a cohesive color palette based on your niche:

• Background:
  • Light grey (#f9f9f9) or soft off-white (#fdfdfd) for readability.
  • Avoid pure white (#ffffff) unless your typography is excellent.
• Primary Accent:
  • Use 1-2 bold colors for links, buttons, and highlights. (e.g., teal #008080, royal blue #0056b3, or coral #ff6f61)
• Header/Footer:
  • Slightly darker or contrasting tones (e.g., dark slate #333, navy #1a1a2e)
• Use coolors.co to generate and preview palettes.

2. Typography

Use modern, readable fonts that pair well:

• Headings:
  • Poppins, Playfair Display, or Merriweather
• Body:
  • Roboto, Lato, or Open Sans
• Google Fonts can be added easily via GeneratePress > Typography in the Customizer.

Font sizes:

• Body text: 16–18px
• Headings: 24–36px (depending on the level)

3. Spacing and Layout

• Use ample white space. Don’t cram elements.
• Stick to a single-column layout for blog posts.
• Use containers and sections with padding (at least 30px) to give content room to breathe.

4. Featured Images and Thumbnails

• Ensure blog posts have high-quality featured images.
• Recommended size: at least 1200x630px.
• Use consistent aspect ratios (like 16:9 or 4:3) for thumbnails.

🔧 Recommended Plugins (for Audience Building)

1. Email Capture & Lead Generation

• FluentCRM (self-hosted CRM with automation)
• MailPoet (email capture + newsletter inside WordPress)
• ConvertBox (premium, but highly customizable opt-ins)

2. SEO & Discovery

• Rank Math SEO (lightweight, comprehensive alternative to Yoast)
• Web Stories by Google (great for snackable content with visual appeal)

3. Engagement and UX

• WP Show Posts (by the GeneratePress creator) – display custom post lists attractively
• Smash Balloon – embed Instagram, YouTube feeds dynamically
• Jetpack (for related posts, social sharing, and basic stats)

4. Speed & Performance (Visual Feel)

• WP Rocket or FlyingPress (caching and optimization)
• ShortPixel (image compression)

🌱 Other Tips to Build a Following

• Add a “Start Here” page or content hub for new readers.
• Use sticky nav + CTA button (like “Subscribe” or “Start Reading”).
• Add a reading progress bar plugin for blog posts.
• Install a Comment system enhancer (like wpDiscuz) to encourage discussion.
• Add Author boxes (e.g., with Simple Author Box) to build personal connection.

💡 Pro Styling Bonus (CSS tweaks for GeneratePress)

You can add this via Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS:

cssCopyEdit/* Make featured images rounded */
.featured-image img {
  border-radius: 10px;
}
/* Add shadow to post cards */
.wp-show-posts-inner {
  box-shadow: 0 4px 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05);
  border-radius: 12px;
  transition: all 0.3s ease;
}
.wp-show-posts-inner:hover {
  transform: translateY(-5px);
}
/* Improve readability */
body {
  line-height: 1.7;
  letter-spacing: 0.2px;
}

If you’d like, I can mock up a sample layout or help you style specific pages like your homepage or blog index. Just let me know! -ChatGPT

And so with those blog tips as a reference, off I went!

Changes made with the blog tips:

-No guesses necessary as to what shade of white both here and Drive Another Day was sporting (I never thought to change it ever!) so that was the first change. Light grey then it goes!

-I overlooked the blog tips about header/footer colours until I wrote this post so I went back and updated things. Now it’s rocking the lovely Navy top and bottom.

-Playing around with the fonts I went with Playfair Display for the headings, Lato for the post text. They’re subtle changes to the usual but I’m enjoying them so far.

-I changed the font sizes to the blog tips suggestions from ChatGPT even though they weren’t far off those sizes originally. If it keeps people reading, so much the better!

-It’s already a single column layout for the posts so no changes needed there.

-Out of all of the plugins it suggested, I’m giving Mailpoet a run. I might have to fine tune the pop up though because I haven’t seen any evidence of it yet (and I may not when I’m logged in as admin I guess).

-I did add a reading progress bar as suggested. I thought it was a timed thing (ie 2 mins reading left) but it’s that subtle little bar scrolling at the top of the page. Nifty.

Now they were implemented, it was time to fix the ad side of things. More importantly, stop Adsense from sticking right in the middle of my opening spiels.

Can you fix my ads too?

Once again ChatGPT was right onto the blog tips suggestions in relation to this:

To stop Google AdSense ads from appearing before the “Read More” link on your WordPress blog posts when using GeneratePress, you’ll need to control where AdSense automatically or manually inserts ads. Here’s how to handle it:

✅ 1. Disable Auto Ads or Control Placement

Option A: Disable Auto Ads (Recommended for Precision Control)

Auto Ads place ads automatically, often in bad spots like above the “Read More” link. To disable:

1. Go to Google AdSense
2. In the left sidebar, click on Ads > Overview
3. Click on the edit pencil icon for your site
4. Toggle Auto Ads to OFF
   • Or click Ad Formats > In-Page Ads > Disable specific formats (e.g., “Anchor”, “Vignette”, “In-article”)

Now, use manual ad placement (recommended for better UX).

✅ 2. Use Manual Ad Placement Instead

Insert ads after the “Read More” tag, or in custom areas using hooks or shortcodes.

Option A: Manually insert ad after the “Read More”

In WordPress, you can place the AdSense code after the Read More tag in your content:

htmlCopyEdit<!--more-->
<p><!-- Your content here before the ad --></p>
<!-- Google AdSense Ad Code -->
<div style="margin: 20px 0;">
  <script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
  <ins class="adsbygoogle"
       style="display:block"
       data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXX"
       data-ad-slot="YYYY"
       data-ad-format="auto"
       data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>
  <script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script>
</div>

You can insert this via code editor view when writing posts.

Option B: Use GeneratePress Hooks for Control

Use Elements module in GeneratePress Premium:

1. Go to Appearance > Elements > Add New
2. Choose Hook
3. Add your AdSense code inside the content box
4. Choose Hook: generate_after_entry_content or generate_after_content
5. Set Display Rules: Posts, Specific Categories, etc.

✅ 3. Hide Ads from Excerpts (Archive Pages)

If you’re placing ads in content and they’re showing up in archive pages (before the Read More link), then restrict them using this conditional check:

phpCopyEdit<?php if ( is_single() ) : ?>
  <!-- AdSense Code Here -->
<?php endif; ?>

Add this in a hook element, a child theme file, or via a shortcode in your theme.

Bonus Tip: Use a Plugin for Visual Ad Placement

If you prefer not to edit code:

• Ad Inserter (free/premium)
  • Allows you to insert ads after specific paragraphs, before/after content, conditionally.
  • Also supports shortcodes, alignment, and device targeting.

THANKS CHATGPT!

Rather than completely turn Auto-ads off in Google Adsense, I kept the side rail and vignette options on and then manually put everything else where I wanted it.

I’m very happy that it suggested Ad Inserter because I’ve used it before and find it a smashing program. Although it did take me a little bit of time to work out what I needed for it to put ads before every headline like you see above. (Turns out it’s not that complicated:)

All in all these blog tips took about an hour…

And a fair bit of that time was spent umming and erring over which font I preferred as well as waiting to see if the ads generated in the right place (it’s rarely instant, especially with new code). But that’s a single hour of work that helped me change at least 7 aspects of the place visually, hopefully making it a little easier to read and more inviting to stay around.

Now in case you’re wondering – I made these changes a week ago. So have these blog tips raised my revenue, brought in the millions and turned the site into a website powerhouse? Er…no. But it looks a bit nicer and that’s a good start. So if you’re wondering it it’s worth ChatGPT swinging its reno sledge to improve your site, I’d say you have nothing to lose.

Now to pick it’s virtual brain on how to get millions here to check out my work and my advertising sponsors..

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