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“I’m not a fan of AI,” says Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by acquiring abandoned media outlets and other websites and filling them with algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model bothers both writers and readers, he says that he is simply adopting an unstoppable new tool (large language models) in the same way that people rationally switched from horse-drawn carts to powered vehicles. for gasoline. “I hate cars. “They are ruining my planet,” he says. “But I’m not going to ride horses anymore, am I? “I’m driving a car.”
I connected with Vujo after digging into the strange afterlife of independent women’s blog The Hairpin, which closed in 2018. Last month, its website reawakened. Instead of the loud, fun blog posts it was known for, the site began churning out search-engine-optimized, AI-generated pablum on dream interpretations and painfully generic relationship advice like “effective communication is vital.” .
When I sent an email to an address listed on the zombie site’s About Us page, Vujo responded, claiming it was just one of more than 2,000 sites it operates, in an AI content-driven fiefdom built through acquisition of once-popular domains that have fallen on hard times. . He’s the CEO of digital marketing company Shantel, which monetizes its AI-laden sites through programmatic ads, sponsored content, and selling “backlink” placement to website owners trying to boost their credibility in the marketplace. search engines. He often targets struggling media sites because they have built-in audiences and a history of ranking highly in search results.
The basis of that business is a long-established practice known as domain squatting: buying web domains that once belonged to established brands and profiting from their reputation on Google and other search engines. Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at marketing agency Ampsive, calls it “the underbelly of the SEO industry.” But Vujo is part of a wave of entrepreneurs putting a new spin on this ancient craft by using generative AI.
It’s getting dark where I live in Chicago when I speak via Zoom with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. (Although that is the name he gives me, he is sometimes just called Nebojša Vujinović, even in the registration information for some of his domains.) He is midnight in Belgrade, Serbia, where he lives with his girlfriend and his young son, but he is wide. awake and talkative. Vujo attributes his erratic sleeping schedule to years of working late into the night as a DJ and still making music; He likes to mix pop with Balkan folk and is working on a new song called “Fat Lady”. But now he himself is eager to talk, human to human, about his AI-powered activity.
Understand why writers aren’t happy that their work has been deleted and replaced by clickbait. (The Hairpin’s founding editor, Edith Zimmerman, calls her version of the site “bleak.”) But she defends his choices, pointing out that his life has been harder than that of the average American blogger. Although ethnically Serbian, Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars that I escaped from. I changed nine elementary schools because we were moving. “We were immigrants,” he says. “It was terrible growing up in this part of the world.” He says that his financial options have been limited and that this was simply a path available to him.
Vujo also insists that it has editorial standards; Although most of the blog posts he publishes are created with ChatGPT, he employs a team of about a dozen human editors to verify his work and avoid anything overtly offensive. “Maybe it would be better for you if I were a bad boy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just a normal guy.”
Easy, fast and crazy
Vujo’s first big domain squatting win came in 2017, when Italian chef Antonio Carluccio died, and it appears someone forgot to revamp one of the websites associated with him. Vujo still talks about his good fortune in taking over the domain and turning it into a cooking-themed content factory. “Now it’s mine,” he tells me happily. “He Almost invented carbonara. He’s a huge celebrity!” Vujo has since also acquired Pope2you.net, formerly an official Vatican website intended to connect Pope Benedict XVI with younger believers, and TrumpPlaza.com, named after residential towers in Jersey City, New Jersey. co-developed by former President Trump.
Vujo says its biggest (and consistently profitable) purchase is women’s media outlet The Frisky, which it acquired shortly after landing the Carluccio site. “It cost me a lot of all the money I had, but that was my chance,” he says. “It was life-changing.” (BuzzFeed News reported upon purchase in 2019.) Vujo says the site generated more than $500,000 in the first year it purchased the domain. In addition to healthy revenue from advertising and customers willing to pay for backlinks, the brand was a magnet for companies willing to pay for sponsored posts. Because the outlet had long tackled risky topics, Vujo says sex toy companies are eager to do business with it.
