The Challenge
Software review sites earn from roundups and comparisons. Best CRM, Shopify versus Basecamp, alternatives to whatever a vendor just raised the price on. Those articles convert and they have one flaw: they age. A roundup of last year’s best tools stops earning the day somebody publishes this year’s version, and a site living on those alone goes quiet between updates.
News does the opposite. A Zoom vulnerability or an app store ruling brings traffic the day it breaks and earns almost nothing directly, but it keeps the publication current and gives readers a reason to return before they are ready to buy anything.
Adrian needed both running in one publication across AI, business software, design tools and marketing platforms. Doing that manually means publishing several times a day, every day, in a subject that moves constantly, which is a full newsroom’s output for a category with one owner.
What We Built
The site runs on an automated publishing system. RSS feeds bring in source material, a Make scenario routes it through an AI writing step, and the finished article is pushed into WordPress under the right category with its SEO already attached. Meta title, description, focus keyword and image alt text are generated as part of the same run rather than added later, and internal links connect each new article to related pieces already published.
Distribution runs on the same pipeline. New posts push out to the connected social accounts with links and images, and the newsletter sends automatically. The chain from source to reader has no manual step in it.
The front end was designed around what that pipeline produces, which is a mix of two very different things. Breaking tech stories carry the top of the page, a Latest Articles stream runs through the middle, and an Editor’s Choice block sits lower down holding the roundups and comparisons.
That block is doing the commercial work and it exists because automation creates a specific problem. When a system publishes three stories a day, the articles that actually earn get buried within a week. Editor’s Choice pins them in place regardless of what publishes on top, so the pipeline can run at full speed without pushing the revenue off the home page.
Four categories carry the structure: AI and Automation, Software and Apps, Design and Creatives, and Marketing Tools. Every incoming article is routed into one of them on the way in. The split follows how buyers search, since nobody looks for business software in general, and it lets the site build authority in each area rather than becoming a general technology blog that ranks for nothing.
A Topics page sits in the navigation beside the blog, giving readers a route into the archive organised by subject rather than by date. On a site publishing daily, the chronological feed stops being a useful way to find anything within the first few months.
Affiliate disclosure, privacy and terms sit in the footer as their own pages, and a newsletter block runs above them. On a site where every visitor arrives from a search and leaves for a vendor, the list is the only part of the audience that returns on its own.
Where the Work Actually Is
Nobody opens the editor for a routine post. Articles arrive, get optimised, get linked, publish, go out to the list and hit social without anyone present.
What is left to decide is what the pipeline is pointed at and which articles get promoted into Editor’s Choice. On a site like this those two decisions are the entire job, and everything else runs underneath them.
