How I Run Three Websites With a Team of AI Helpers

I have three websites, more ideas than time, and the same 24 hours as everybody else. So a while back I stopped trying to do it all myself and built a small team, which just happens to be made of AI.

I’m not the most prolific writer, so when AI tools started getting good, I thought that sounded helpful. Little did I know I’d still be the bottleneck.

The three sites

GrowWithEric.com is where I write about support and self-improvement for people 40+. I find that I’ve been pretty fortunate and this is a way of giving back.

SqueakersPlace.store is an affiliate marketing website I started based on my cat. I thought it would be fun.

Just Call Me Tuba is the site you’re reading right now. It’s my personal blog, a place where I think things through. I write about whatever is front of mind, mostly me processing, and lately I’ve also been writing about what I do day to day building websites and small SaaS applications, plus what I’m learning about AI.

If you know me, you know I play the tuba. The name came from an old friend, Poncho. Tuba was a nickname in his family, and he was the one who started calling me that. I’d never heard it used as a nickname anywhere else.

They all have different audiences and different voices, so I keep them completely separate. Same helpers, different rulebooks.

Who does what

Think of it like a tiny office where everyone has a job title and nobody steals the stapler.

• A writer drafts posts and keeps the voice casual and, on a good day, funny.
• A strategist plans what gets written and why, so I’m not just throwing posts at the wall.
• A social media manager turns finished posts into the daily Facebook posts and Pinterest pins.
• A designer works on how the sites look.
• A tech person handles the hosting, backups and the stuff under the hood that I’d rather not touch.
• A project manager keeps everybody pointed the same direction.

My job is the part I’m actually good at: deciding what’s true, what sounds like me, and what goes live. Nothing publishes without my okay.

How the content stays organized

This is the part I had to learn the hard way. AI can make a lot of content fast. The hard part is keeping it from turning into a junk drawer. Here’s what keeps mine tidy:

• Four main categories. GrowWithEric has four pillars that run the site navigation. If a post doesn’t fit one, it waits.
• Regular audits. The team goes back through what already exists and flags what’s thin, outdated or duplicated, before anyone writes anything new.
• A weekly rhythm. Monday is text, Tuesday is the visual cards, Wednesday I approve and schedule. It’s boring on purpose. Boring is what gets things done.
• One shared backlog. Ideas live in a single spreadsheet, so nothing lives only in somebody’s head (or somebody’s chat window).

What went wrong
(because something always does)

On GrowWithEric, one whole category got pulled before launch. A spot-check turned up quotes that sounded great but weren’t real. AI will happily hand you a confident quote nobody ever said. So now I check, every time.

On this blog, we cleaned out hundreds of old posts that had nothing to do with who I am. One batch got deleted before we meant it to. It all came back with nothing lost, and it taught us to test a risky command on a few posts before running it on all of them.

What surprised me, and what I’d do differently

I was surprised at how fast the AI helpers can do the work you give them. It’s crazy fast. If I could do one thing differently, I’d plan more, and plan in specifics. Just like my day job, things can get off track really quickly if you don’t have a well thought out plan.

If you’re thinking about trying this

1. Give every helper one clear job.
2. You stay the editor. Read everything before it goes out.
3. Check anything that sounds like a fact, a quote or a story about a real person.
4. Test small before you go big.
5. Keep a shared list of ideas so the team (and you) can find things.

Is it worth it?

If you want practice being a manager, this is good training. You learn to be clear with your ask and you learn that you can’t assume people or agents know what you’re talking about. If a friend asked me whether it was worth it, I’d say yes. I like learning and growing, and working with AI helpers teaches you things about yourself and the technical world we live in.