AI and experience are not opposites — they reinforce each other.
If you think AI is only for the young — it’s not.
If you think it’s too late — it isn’t.
If you think you need to reinvent yourself completely — you don’t.
AI is not here to replace your experience.
It’s here to amplify it.
Below, I share my own story — how, at 66 years old, as an independent creator, economist, and lifelong generalist, I used AI, SEO, and real-world experience to compete with some of the biggest platforms in the global travel industry.
A few days ago, I did a simple Google search:
“Europe travel guides free ebooks.”
What I saw surprised me — and honestly, moved me.
My site, AmerExperience.com, appeared not only in Google’s traditional search results, but also inside Google AI Overview, mentioned alongside platforms like Wikitravel.
No paid ads.
No big media company.
No VC funding.
Just years of work, curiosity, and adaptation.
Competing with the giants — as an independent creator
For context:
I publish 37 Europe Travel Guides, offered completely free as downloadable ebooks.
They are written by one person — me — based on decades of living, working, and traveling across Europe.
These guides now appear:
- In Google AI Overview
- High in Google SERP
- Visible in Bing
- Quoted and summarized by AI systems
This means my content is competing with — and being trusted alongside — some of the biggest names in the global travel industry.
As an independent creator in his sixties.
I am not an AI nerd — and that’s the point
Let me be clear:
I am not a programmer.
I am not a data scientist.
I am not an SEO “guru” selling courses.
I am:
- A 66-year-old economist
- A polyglot expat (Finnish, German, Spanish, English, Swedish)
- A lifelong entrepreneur
- A generalist, not a specialist
And that turns out to be a strength — not a weakness — in the age of AI. My journey shows how AI and experience, when combined, can create authority that neither could achieve alone.
Why AI rewards experience and generalists
AI systems don’t just look for keywords anymore.
They look for:
- Consistency
- Topical authority
- Clear structure
- Real experience
- Human context
- Trust signals
In other words, AI favors people who understand the whole picture.
That’s exactly what generalists do.
If you’ve lived, built businesses, failed, adapted, traveled, learned languages, and worked across cultures — you already think the way AI systems evaluate information.
I explore this more deeply here:
👉 The return of the generalist: how AI is rewriting the rules of expertise
Practical lessons from my SEO + AI journey
What worked for me was not tricks.
It was:
- Writing deep, complete guides, not fragments
- Keeping one clear pillar (37 Europe Travel Guides)
- Supporting it with focused articles
- Writing as a real human, not for algorithms
- Using AI as a partner, not a shortcut
- Improving structure, clarity, and intent — not just keywords
AI didn’t replace my experience.
It amplified it.
A message to professionals over 50 (or 60)
One important lesson I’ve learned is that AI doesn’t reward noise — it rewards coherence. Years of experience help you recognize what matters, what connects, and what can be ignored. That clarity is difficult to teach but invaluable when working with AI systems. In that sense, experience is not legacy knowledge — it is active capital in the digital age.
AI is a force multiplier for people with:
- Perspective
- Judgment
- Context
- Ethics
- Experience
In many ways, this may be the first technology era where age is an advantage.
Final thought
Seeing my work surface inside Google AI Overview was not just an SEO win.
It was a reminder:
Adaptation has no age limit.
Curiosity has no expiration date.
Experience still matters — maybe more than ever.
And yes — a 66-year-old independent creator can still compete with the biggest companies in the world.
