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I’m an SEO content specialist. On a full workday, I might be handling a long-form B2B blog, landing pages, case studies, some copywriting, and keyword research. All at the same time. That’s the job.
The content brief is where I lose the most time.
A good brief for a topic I know well takes about 1.5 hours. A brief for a B2B topic I know nothing about, like healthcare compliance software for enterprise teams, might easily take me 2 to 4 hours. This involves opening multiple research tabs, skimming articles, checking competitor pages, and compiling notes. By the time I have something structured enough to write from, half the day is gone.
So I built an automation to handle it. On Make.com. In my first month of using the platform. Without any prior experience building automations.
Here’s what actually happened.
What the automation does
The workflow starts with a Google Form. I fill in seven fields: blog topic, target keyword, target audience, word count, funnel stage, competitor URLs, and any notes I want the brief to address.
Once submitted, Make.com takes that form data and sends it to the OpenAI API. GPT-4 processes everything and generates a structured content brief. That brief then lands as a Google Document in my Drive, automatically.
Start to finish: under 15 minutes, for a brief that used to take me a morning.
I first ran it properly on a real brief for a B2B healthcare SaaS client. A topic I knew almost nothing about going in. The brief came out detailed enough that I used it as the foundation for an article that ranked within four weeks. The full scenario is public if you want to see how it’s built; click here. For the case study, read this.
If you want to try this yourself, Make.com's free plan needs no card. Sign up here and clone both scenarios directly into your account.
What nobody tells you about building this
The Make.com marketing will tell you it’s drag and drop, no code required. That’s mostly true.
The HTTP module is a different story.
The HTTP module is what connects Make.com to any external API. In this case, OpenAI. You’re building a custom API call from scratch inside Make’s interface. You have to get the JSON body structure exactly right. The field tags from your Google Form have to map precisely to the variables in your prompt. One misplaced bracket, one misaligned tag, and the scenario fails silently or throws an error that tells you almost nothing useful.
I spent more time on that one module than on every other part of the build combined.
This isn’t a reason to avoid Make.com. It’s a reason to know what you’re walking into. If you’ve never seen a JSON body before, budget an evening for it. Validate your structure with JSONLint before you test the scenario. And check the Make community forum when it breaks. The error you’re seeing, someone else has already posted about it.
Once you get through it, the HTTP module is genuinely powerful. You’re no longer limited to the apps Make natively supports. You can connect to anything with an API. That’s a significant shift from most no-code tools that only let you work within their approved app library.
The free tier math, and where the cost actually comes from
Make.com’s free plan gives you 1,000 credits per month and 2 active scenarios. Each module in a scenario costs one credit when it runs. A typical content brief run touches 4 to 5 modules, so Make’s credits are not the constraint here.
The real constraint is the OpenAI API.
When you call GPT-4 to generate a full content brief, you’re burning tokens. Those tokens cost money, and they come from your OpenAI account, not from Make. A detailed brief with competitive context and structured sections consumes a meaningful amount of GPT-4 tokens per run.
For my workflow, 2 to 3 briefs per week is a comfortable cadence on a modest OpenAI credit balance. That’s plenty for a single writer managing multiple clients or projects.
One thing worth understanding: Make.com itself is free to start and stays free at low volume. The cost variable in an AI-powered automation is almost always the AI API you’re calling, not the automation platform. Budget accordingly.
Who this is actually for
A content writer, copywriter, or SEO specialist who is managing multiple content formats and spending serious time on long-form blog research from scratch. Specifically, someone who is also the one writing the content, not just commissioning it.
That last part matters more than it might seem.
The brief this automation produces is a solid starting point. It is not the final word. A writer reads it, challenges it, and deviates from it where their knowledge or judgment says the brief is wrong. That’s how briefs work. They’re scaffolding, not scripture.
If you’re a content manager thinking about running this and handing the Google Doc to a writer as a complete finished brief, stop. The writer reviewing and adjusting the output is part of the workflow. It’s not an inefficiency you’re eliminating. Skipping that step produces low-quality content and wastes everyone’s time, including the writer’s.
The automation is for the person doing the writing. Not for the person managing the person doing the writing.
The other thing I built: a Telegram expense tracker
This has nothing to do with content work, but it says something important about Make.com’s range.
I connected Telegram to Google Sheets. Now, when I go out, I text my Telegram bot: “Dining 1200” or “Rapido 70.” Two words. The bot logs it, categorizes it under Food or Transportation, and adds it to my expense spreadsheet automatically.
I used to avoid tracking expenses because every app wants you to open it, navigate to the right screen, select a category, enter an amount, and confirm. My Telegram bot is just texting a friend.
The same visual builder that handles a GPT-4 content brief pipeline handles this. Make.com scales from simple personal automations to complex multi-step AI workflows, and the free plan covers both. That range, at zero cost, is something Zapier does not match.
The scenario for this one is public as well. Click here to learn more.
Make.com vs Zapier: The Honest Comparison
I tried both before settling on Make.com.
Zapier is easier to start with. If you need a simple two-step automation, Zapier gets you there faster. The interface is cleaner for beginners, the templates are better, and the app library is larger. For quick, linear automations, it’s the right tool.
Make.com has a steeper learning curve but a better free tier. 1,000 credits per month and 2 active scenarios versus Zapier’s 5 Zaps and 100 tasks. For a non-developer building multi-step AI workflows that involve data transformation and API calls, that gap matters significantly.
The visual canvas also makes it easier to debug complex scenarios. You can see exactly where data flows through your modules and where it breaks. When an error happens, the visual layout helps you trace it back to the source.
Also worth knowing: Make.com is around 47% cheaper than Zapier at comparable paid tiers. At the Core plan level, you’re getting 10,000 credits a month for roughly $9 versus Zapier’s 2,000 tasks for $20. If you eventually outgrow the free plan, the upgrade math is significantly better on Make.
For a non-developer building genuine multi-step AI workflows on a tight budget: Make.com is the right starting point.
Pricing if you need to scale
The free plan covers 1,000 credits, 2 active scenarios, and a 15-minute minimum scheduling interval. Enough to learn the platform and run light workflows at real volume.
Core ($9/month) gives you 10,000 credits and removes most of the free tier’s limits. This is where most solo operators land when they need more than two active scenarios or more frequent scheduling.
Pro ($16/month) adds full execution history search, which matters when you’re debugging a complex scenario that failed three days ago and you need to trace exactly what happened.
Teams ($29/month) is only relevant if multiple people need to edit scenarios. Solo operators can skip it.
One thing to know: Make.com switched from “operations” to “credits” in August 2025. The pricing structure is the same in practice, but if you’re reading older guides that use operations language, that’s what’s changed.
My verdict after one month
Make.com is the most useful thing I added to my workflow this year. It costs me nothing right now beyond my OpenAI API credits.
The HTTP module learning curve is real. I won’t pretend otherwise. But if you’re a content professional with genuine multi-step automation needs, that’s a curve worth climbing. On the other side of it, you can connect your tool stack to any API in the world and automate things that no pre-built Zapier template will ever handle.
For a stretched content writer or SEO specialist who is losing mornings to research and brief work, this is worth a serious look.
Make.com's free plan requires no card. You can start building today, and both scenarios I built are public and can be cloned. Try Make.com free.
If you've built anything on Make.com, drop it in the comments. I'm curious what workflows other people are automating.
Published by Rahul David Mondal, SEO Content Specialist.
