Hello! I’m Dan Schoonmaker, the founder of SchoonLabs, and a software engineer by profession. I graduated from Coastal Carolina University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Ever since my childhood days playing “office” at my grandparent’s house, I’ve been passionate about entrepreneurship. This enthusiasm has always fueled my interest in software development and my obsession with creating new products.

Over time, I realized that while building cool software projects is great, a broader skillset, including sales and marketing, is essential to selling others on your vision and long-term dreams. This realization prompted me to learn more about the core fundamentals of digital marketing, SEO, content creation, and more. While researching these topics, I aimed to approach them with a forward-thinking, early adopter mindset and innovate on new methods. This led to the creation of BuildNiches.com.

I’ve spent the last three-plus years deeply immersed in the crypto web3 world, and in the summer of 2022, I became fascinated with artificial intelligence services like OpenAI’s GPT/Dall-E/Whisper and image generation services such as Stable Diffusion and MidJourney. My goal is to apply the technical insights gained from these experiences more broadly to the world of marketing, specifically focusing on micro-niche websites.

I believe, contrary to popular belief since the release of ChatGPT, that content will become even more critical in the future, even if it’s generated by AI. Niche websites are particularly interesting to me because AI will enable humans to learn and focus on more specific skills and areas of life. Advancements in AI like ChatGPT‘s ability to curate and summarize large amounts of data and improvements in text-to-speech services are transforming the way we generate and consume content. This excites me for the future of learning, education, and content consumption.

That said, I could be wrong, and people (or search engines) might consider the content generated by my army of AI bots spammy and cold. Once Google blacklists your website, it’s essentially dead. However, I’m betting I can provide significant value with this type of content. My long-term vision includes productizing what I’ve been building behind the scenes and releasing it as a standalone software product.

Years ago, when Gary Vaynerchuck released his popular Content Model presentation, a lightbulb went off in my head. I came up with an idea slightly different from his approach and spent a weekend writing up ideas for what I call a “Content Flywheel.” Although this concept isn’t entirely new, the marketing world has utilized similar ideas for years. However, with AI’s power to summarize and repurpose content, these approaches will become significantly cheaper and faster for everyone. I believe that BuildNiches.com will be a shining example of this vision coming to life.

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The “Team”