figured this sub would appreciate real numbers on a cold start since most SEO advice skips the boring early weeks. throwaway on the specific niche per sub etiquette, but the data's all real.

starting point: brand new domain, DR 0, no backlinks, no history. built a clean technical foundation, proper architecture, schema, sitemaps to both google and bing, and around 20 pages of original content. then i tracked everything for a month.

what google did: indexed everything within a couple weeks. impressions climb steadily every week. average position crawled up from the 90s into the 40s. clicks? zero. literally zero, the entire month. which is exactly what you'd expect sitting at position 40 to 90, nobody scrolls to page 5. so google is "working" and sending no traffic, and at DR 0 with no links that's just the authority gate doing its job. no shortcut around it that i've found.

what surprised me: the AI engines moved way faster than google rankings did. chatgpt went from having no idea the site existed to describing it accurately and citing it, in about a week. the mechanism seems to be bing, chatgpt search runs on bing's index, and bing indexed and started surfacing the site far quicker than google moved my positions. perplexity followed. so i'm effectively invisible on google and simultaneously citable inside AI answers. if you're new and ignoring bing webmaster tools, that's a mistake, it's the cheapest visibility available to a low authority site right now.

the single biggest needle mover: internal linking. i had a stack of pages stuck in "discovered, currently not indexed" for weeks. i added one hub page that linked down to all of them. indexed count went from 12 to 22 in about a week, no new content, no new backlinks, just giving google a crawl path it didn't have before. that was the highest ROI thing i did all month by a mile, and it was free.

what i'd tell my past self: for a new site, content plus technical is necessary but it's a savings account, it pays in months once authority builds. the paycheck this month came from being genuinely useful in communities where my audience already hangs out, that's what sent my first actual humans. and internal linking punches way above its reputation at the cold start stage because crawl budget is scarce when nobody's vouching for you.

curious if others have run a fresh domain recently and seen the same "cited by AI before ranked by google" gap. is that a durable new dynamic or does it close as the domain ages out of the sandbox?

Ratings matter more than indie devs like to admit. In a small niche your position against other apps depends on a bunch of things, and ratings are a big one, and I felt it directly — after my rating count went up I saw a real bump in installs and how often the app showed up. I only have nine of them. Each one is worth a lot. So here's how I got them, and the one change that basically doubled them.

The common mistake is asking for the review when someone opens the app, or after some timer. They haven't gotten anything from you yet, so why would they rate it. The better advice I read somewhere and it stuck — ask right after the app actually did something useful for them, the moment it paid off. For my app that moment is obvious, it's when an item gets marked as sold. They bought something, tracked it, and just closed the loop with a sale, so they've seen the whole point of the app work. That's when you ask. It feels like "nice, this helped me" instead of "why is this popup in my face".

But here's what I got wrong at first — I asked once. Someone sells an item, gets the prompt, taps not now because they're in the middle of something, and I never ask again. Gone. Then I realised Apple actually lets you ask a few times a year, so I changed it to ask again roughly every week until the system stops showing it. And that caught my core users, the ones who use the app constantly and had said not now the first time simply because they were busy. A week later they're mid-flow again after another sale, the ask comes back, and this time they do it. About half my ratings came from that one change. These weren't new people, they were my most loyal users I'd have lost to a single dismissed popup.

And it doesn't feel spammy, for two reasons. One, Apple caps how many times you can ask, so you physically can't nag even if you wanted to. Two, every ask is tied to the user just succeeding at the thing they came for, so it lands as a good moment, not an interruption. Your best users are usually your busiest, they'll wave away the first prompt not because they dislike the app but because they're using it, so give them a second and third chance at good moments and a chunk of them say yes.

So tie the review prompt to your app's payoff moment, whatever that is for you, and then actually use your full allowance instead of burning your one shot. For me that turned a handful of ratings into double, and the visibility that came after was worth far more than nine little stars sounds like it should be.

Been running a small SaaS in the QR code space and pulled my Search Console

numbers for the last 28 days expecting good news, since rankings have been

climbing. Instead I got this:

- 44,749 impressions

- 229 clicks

- 0.51% CTR

- average position around 9.9

So the traffic is there in theory. Google is showing my pages to people. They

just are not clicking. Around half my clicks come from branded searches and the

homepage, which sits near 13% CTR and is totally fine. Everything else is the

problem.

The worst offenders are my comparison posts. One of them (basically "my product

vs [big competitor]") gets 6,128 impressions a month at position 7 and pulls a

grand total of 6 clicks. That is 0.10%. Another sits around position 8 with

3,500 impressions and 3 clicks. Page 1 rankings doing basically nothing.

Here is what I think is going on after actually looking at the SERPs:

1. I rank for competitor brand names. I show up at position 6 for a competitor's

exact brand name. Nobody typing that brand wants my alternative, they scroll

past me to the thing they searched for. Impressions go up, clicks do not.

1. My titles are generic. A lot of them read like every other result on the

page. Nothing that makes a thumb stop.

1. Some of these queries have an AI overview or a fat featured snippet eating

the clicks before anyone gets to the blue links.

So ranking was never really the problem. The click is.

What I am changing:

- Rewriting titles and metas on the high impression, dead CTR pages, leading

with the specific thing the searcher wants instead of my brand name

- Cutting or reframing the pure "vs competitor brand" posts that only ever pull

curiosity impressions

- Trying to win the snippet on the informational queries instead of fighting it

Going to redeploy, give it three weeks, then pull the same report and see if CTR

actually moves. Happy to come back with the after numbers, good or bad.

For people who have done this before:

- High impressions and dead CTR at position 6 to 9, do you push for a better

position first or fix the title first? I keep going back and forth.

- Do "vs [big competitor]" pages ever actually convert for you, or is it a

vanity play?

- Anyone got a clean before and after from just a title and meta rewrite? Would

love to know how much CTR realistically moves.

Two months ago I finished my webapp and thought I'd be able to use specific reddit, fb, and nextdoor groups to get my customers easily.

Every one of these groups' moderators slammed the door on me - even after I plainly said I'd run cases for free for the first 20 people.

So besides surgical (scarce) comments here and there, I couldn't really showcase my work on a decent scale - other than paid ads.

So, for the sake of SEO/GEO, i created a platform for me and others like me (you people) where I could get a dofollow link and I could really outline my webapp.

I created it with the goal of not being just another directory, but a place where users (not just builders) could find solutions to their problems - created by solopreneurs.

You can list in prelaunch, beta, or launch status, you can include a coupin code, you can include screenshots/YT videos, and text in a Kickstarter type fashion.

I've also implemented security measures to minimize spam and I go over every project to make sure it's not adult/inappropriate materials

Over time I'll be unlocking features like the ability to post 1 blog post/month as well as scheduling interviews with builders that'll be posted on YT as well as the site.

As I just launched on the 11th, the only traffic rn is builders. I'm expecting the site to start getting organic traction once we hit 50-100 builds.

It's all free at this point.

Eventually I'll do some monetization - but it'll probably be promotional based. We'll see.

Feel free to check it out.

I'd love to get your build listed.

Let's do this!

[Https://justBLT.com\](https://justblt.com)

I wanted to test a quieter way to start affiliate marketing.

I didn't want to have to post on Facebook every day, I didn't want to show my face, I didn't want to use my real name, and I didn't want to do the work of building an audience first.

I started on July 1 with 0 leads, 0 sales, -$47 from the monthly traffic cost, and no real social media strategy. The setup was simple. A basic opt-in page, an autoresponder, and a link that could earn small commissions from some of the traffic, even if nobody bought the main offer.

After 12 days, here are the results so far:

• 52 link clicks
• 30 new leads
• $10.50 earned
• 0 direct offer sales

I am still negative overall, so I am not calling this profitable yet, but I do think it is interesting. I was able to get clicks, generate leads, and earn something without posting content, being on camera, or using my real identity and that was the main thing I wanted to test.

A lot of beginners think affiliate marketing only works if you become a content creator, post every day, or build a personal brand first. That might be one path, but it is not the only path.

Right now, I am watching what happens with the leads, how they respond to the emails, and whether the small commissions keep offsetting more of the traffic cost. Still early, but at least the setup is producing real activity.

Has anyone else tested a faceless traffic method like this?

Not an affiliate site, but the takeaway is pure juststart so bear with me.

I built a little browser game, put it online, got nothing from search. Spent one afternoon doing the on-page basics properly. Two days later it was number one for its term, and inside 48 hours it had made its first money and even landed me a paying client off the back of the result.

The whole checklist, all replicable:

• Title tag and meta rewritten for real search intent, not clever branding
• One clear H1 and real descriptive text in the actual HTML
• Structured data so Google knows what it is
• sitemap, clean robots, canonical to kill duplicate URLs
• Submitted and manually requested indexing in Search Console (and Bing)
• Fast site on Cloudflare edge, no bloat, no cookie banner walls

The honest caveat: low-competition term. I did not outrank anyone serious in two days and neither will you. But that is exactly the lesson. Most small sites never rank because the basics above are simply never done, not because the competition is hard.

Why it matters for money sites: this is the entire early game. Pick low-competition terms, do the boring fundamentals, ship a fast clean page, and monetize honestly. The sites that win aren't the clever ones, they're the ones where someone actually finished the checklist and hit publish. Speed of shipping beat everything else here.

Happy to share.

TL;DR: I run a business that send a steady stream of European entrepreneurs and digital nomads toward a US LLC. I'm not a formation agent and don't want to become one. I'm looking for an established formation/registered-agent partner to handle the actual work on a commission or rev-share basis.

Hi everyone,

I have a business helping entrepreneurs and digital nomads relocate to Paraguay, which has a territorial tax system.

A large share of that audience runs a location-independent online business, and once they've moved they need a clean, credible US LLC for invoicing, Stripe/PayPal, and banking (Mercury/Wise), with income that isn't US-source.

My clients come through content that has already walked them through why a US LLC makes sense for their situation, so by the time they're ready to act they often understand the concept. That means far less hand-holding and a much lower acquisition cost on your side than a typical paid-traffic lead.

I'm looking for an established formation service or registered agent. This is a specialist skill, and I want a partner who does it every day. Pricing and support matter to me as much as competence. I need transparent, fair pricing with no surprise upsells, and support that actually responds. My name and reputation are attached to every referral, so how you treat these clients reflects directly back on me, and I won't send people somewhere I wouldn't trust myself. You should also be comfortable working with clients whose first language isn't English.

If you're interested, comment or DM with:

1. Your company / how long you've been doing this

2. Which states you cover and your experience with non-US-resident founders

3. Your pricing (formation + registered agent + EIN + annual compliance)

4. How you'd want to structure the commission/rev-share

Happy to hop on a call.

I built a blog for a friend's tiny local business and used an AI pipeline to pump out 70-something articles fast and cheap. The humbling part: almost all of them are noise. One single article is 98% of the traffic, and it's the one where I ignored the model and gathered the real local prices by hand. Here's what that taught me about small, non-English markets.

She runs an interior-design studio and had zero ad budget, so cheap volume felt like the obvious play. It sat at basically nothing for a while, then climbed fast once it caught: 5 clicks one month, then 22, then 147, then over 400. Then the part that got me. It flattened at around 400 clicks a month and just stayed there. No new posts, no links, no maintenance for months, and it hasn't slipped.

When I finally pulled Search Console, one article had 1,409 of the site's 1,444 clicks. About 98%. The other 70-something combined are a rounding error. And it's the most boring piece on the site: a renovation cost estimate for a specific apartment size, with actual prices per square meter, stage-by-stage timelines, even the seasonal price swings. Every number gathered by hand, not guessed by a model. It sits at average position 3.9 and quietly eats everything.

It took off for one reason. In a market where every other result is a vague classified listing or an article too scared to print a real number, being the one page that says what it actually costs is the whole game. In a saturated English niche, those same 70 AI articles would be 70 pieces of slop nobody ever sees. In a tiny non-English market with almost no competition, a cheap pipeline can still land a winner, and even here the volume did nothing. One page, built on real data, did all of it.

The CTR is the part I still find wild. Site-wide it's 11%, but the money queries look nothing like English SERPs. One sits at position 1.0 with a 52% CTR. Another 33%. Another 19%. In English those would be 2-5%, because ten results and an ad stack are all fighting for the click. Here there's almost nothing else, so ranking and getting the click are nearly the same thing.

So the lesson wasn't that AI content works, or that you should just publish more. It was the opposite. The volume was basically free and basically worthless. One deep, data-backed article that answered a real local question outranked and outlasted everything else I made, with zero upkeep. That's the whole story.

Anyone else working a small or non-English market see this same power-law, where one well-researched piece carries the whole site while the rest do nothing? What did your winner have that the rest didn't?

so heres the thing that kind of broke my brain. a dead affiliate link mostly doesnt 404. the page loads fine, status 200, checker says youre good. except the amazon product got pulled and the link now serves a "we couldnt find that page" thing, or the merchant just bounces you to their homepage, or the domain lapsed and its parked now. a normal broken-link checker pings it, sees the 200, marks it healthy. meanwhile that link has been sending readers into a wall for who knows how long.

i got obsessed with this on my own sites. ran a pass over one of my older ones and 12 links were silently bleeding clicks. status 200 on every single one. a couple were merchant pages that now just redirect to the store homepage, so the reader lands on a generic front page instead of the thing they clicked for, and any commission on that click is basically gone.

heres one concrete before/after so its not just me asserting stuff. a review post of mine linked to a garden hose reel on a merchant site. curl it, 200 ok, looks alive. but the page had quietly turned into a "this product is no longer available" with a bunch of "you might also like" junk under it, and half of that only shows up after the js runs so a plain crawler never even sees it. the verdict i got back was out_of_stock, confidence 0.86, and the reason line was something like "primary product block replaced with availability notice, related-items grid present, no add-to-cart." which, yeah. that link had been dead for months and i had no idea. rendered the page instead of just pinging it, thats the whole trick.

so the honest framing on whether this is worth anything: if you have like 20 posts, dont bother, youll catch these by hand. its really only worth it once youve got a few hundred posts deep and physically cannot remember what you linked in 2023. thats the point where stuff rots faster than you can eyeball it.

im not gonna name the tool or drop a link cause thats against the rules here and i get why. its paid, pay as you go, no subscription, and honestly if a mod is cool with it ill say more in the comments or dm, but the product isnt the point of the post.

the real thing im actually wondering, and why im posting at all: does anyone here actually go back and re-check the links on stuff you wrote two years ago? like is that a real part of anyones maintenance routine, or do we all just kind of assume old posts are fine until traffic tanks and we go digging. curious how the people with big old sites handle this, or if you even

hay everyone. Quick background: I’m 19, based in Faisalabad, Pakistan. I run a video editing / YouTube automation agency have 2-3 international clients right now. It covers my bills, but it’s not scaling the way I want, and I don’t see it as a long-term ceiling I’m happy with.
So I’ve started learning to code. Right now I’m building an app (a habit tracker where users stake real money on their check-ins) using React Native/Expo, learning JavaScript fundamentals alongside it, and leaning on AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor) cuz its the meta ig. while I actually understand what’s happening under the hood not just copy-pasting.
A few things I’d love honest opinions on, no sugarcoating: 1. Scope and future of programming/dev work with AI tools getting this capable, is learning to code from scratch in 2026 still worth it for someone starting where I am? Or is the value shifting somewhere else (e.g., knowing how to direct AI tools well vs. deep manual coding skill)? 2. Remote jobs from Pakistan realistically, how hard is it to land a remote dev job (even junior/entry-level) living in Pakistan? Is there a meaningful disadvantage from location alone, separate from skill level? Given Ik good english and meet with clients regularly 3. The “vibe coding” wave I’ve seen a ton of people on Instagram shipping websites/apps built almost entirely with AI (“vibe coding”). I’m curious how real that path is as a business model vs. hype, and whether it’s a legit way to build something on the side while I keep learning fundamentals properly.
Marketing as the bottleneck I’ve read that most indie devs/founders (the number I’ve seen floated is something like 90%+ of small projects, not literally “400 developers”) don’t fail because the product is bad, they fail because they can’t market it. I’ve got 2 years of video editing experience and I already run an agency so content, hooks, and short-form marketing are things I can actually do. Does having that skill set make the “build small apps and sell them” path more realistic for someone like me? 5. Realistic timeline if my target is something modest to start say a $1,000–$1,500/month remote job (junior/entry-level, not senior Fahh money) what would you actually prioritize learning, and how long is that realistically going to take someone starting from near-zero coding but with real business/client-facing experience already?

Not looking for hype or “just grind brothaand you’ll make it” I want the blunt, real answer, including if you think this is a bad plan. I herd to tiktok cluely founder said any one can land a job just do 300 lee code questions and some mid level personal projects idk what lee code is.

A few months back I quit paid ads for my iOS app after working out that it cost me about $114 to acquire a customer who was worth about $18. I put everything into SEO instead. Here's the 90-day result with real Search Console numbers, in case it helps someone deciding where to spend their time.

Where I started: about 7 organic clicks a day from Google. The blog was an afterthought I just threw together to see what would come of it.

Where I am now: 90–108 clicks a day. Over the full 90 days that's 2,143 clicks and 105,600 impressions. Roughly 15x, with zero ad spend.

It was not a straight line. Right after I went all-in, a Google core update tanked my rankings and I'm fairly sure I got shadowbanned on TikTok the same week. Clicks fell back to ~5/day. I didn't panic and post more. I rewrote the pages that dropped based on the metrics I saw in Search Console so they would answer the search, tightened the titles, and cut the fluff intros that pushed the answer below the fold. Two weeks later rankings recovered and kept climbing past where they'd been.

Three things I learned that I'd tell anyone starting:

1. Write comparison posts. My "best [category] apps" and "X vs Y" comparison posts do all the work — one gets 318 clicks a month at position ~6. My "what is [concept]" educational posts barely move anyone. I just write those because I like sharing info. One of them gets 4,479 impressions and 13 clicks because it's stuck at position 37 and the answer is a chart Google just shows in the results. A page can pile up impressions and still send almost no one, so I spend less time worrying about impressions and more time focused on clicks (though the two are typically highly correlated).
2. List your competitors honestly, including the ones better than you. A genuinely useful roundup ranks and gets clicked. A thinly veiled ad for yourself does neither — readers and Google both smell it. I was hesitant about doing this at first but people can really see through BS articles quickly, and it also forced me to interact with my competitors' apps more and figure out where they were actually beating me.
3. ChatGPT is now a real traffic channel and you can't buy it. I broke my traffic down by source and ChatGPT sent me more visitors than TikTok (580 vs 301 over 90 days). People ask it "best app for X," it names you, they click through. The only way in is writing something clear enough that the model decides to cite you. One gotcha: my analytics' built-in "AI Assistant" channel claimed AI sent 66 visitors. The real number by raw referrer was ~680. Don't trust the pre-built bucket.

The business side, since numbers are the point: MRR went from $0 in March to $845 now (~$10k ARR), 179 active subs and 29 on trial, about $2,460 collected in the last 28 days, churn back to 3.5%, all organic. It stuck around $650 for a month during the rough patch and then re-accelerated to $845. Small, but the difference I keep coming back to: paid gave me a spike that vanished the moment I stopped paying, and the posts I wrote back in April are still pulling readers in July without me touching them.

Full writeup with the charts (the traffic curve, the source breakdown, the clicks-vs-impressions comparison): https://gainframe.app/blog/organic-traffic-15x-90-days/

Happy to answer anything about the content, the tracking setup, or the numbers.

Been chewing on this for months and I keep going in circles, so I'm throwing it at you guys.

I run a content site in the healthcare space under a pen name. The thing is I actually hold a real credential in the field, relevant enough that if I put my real name and license on the site it'd carry actual weight. Right now there's a "reviewed by [pen name], [credential]" on everything but it's not me in any way you could trace.

Where I'm at: I've got over 150 articles published, so this isn't a week-old project, I've put real months into it. Bing is actually starting to come around, I'm getting about 1,000 sessions a month from it. But Google is still basically ignoring me, which makes me think I'm sitting in the sandbox. Monetization is set up but it's done basically nothing so far. The plan was always to go public at some revenue milestone, attach my name, do the whole LinkedIn/expert thing. But that milestone isn't anywhere close.

And here's my actual problem. The de-anonymizing part is the thing I keep stalling on. It's the biggest mental block I've got with this whole project and I've talked myself in and out of it about fifty times. So I want some outside voices instead of just rerunning the same argument in my own head.

Stuff I'm trying to work out:

If you went from anonymous to using your real name plus a real credential, did it actually do anything? Like did E-E-A-T / trust / reach noticeably move, or was it kind of a nothingburger?

Anyone do it and wish they hadn't? What actually went wrong, employer drama, privacy, board/licensing stuff, or did it just turn out not to matter?

I've got Bing traffic, but Google's still ignoring me, and I'm pre-revenue. Is that a reason to wait (why attach my name before there's an audience) or a reason to do it now (maybe the name plus credential is the trust signal that helps me earn Google's trust and climb out)? Which way did it go for you?

Anyone deliberately stay anonymous and have it work out totally fine?

Not looking for someone to give me permission. I want the verdict and the war stories. Tell me what you actually watched happen, good or bad.

Last year I had a site doing decent numbers then the March spam update hit and it got wiped my rankings gone, traffic gone, no real path back. It was a rough lesson in how fragile this can be when you don’t fully understand what you’re optimizing for.

I took a few months then started over. New site, calculator tools, built on Blogger this time since I didn’t want to spend too much money for website builders. It wasn’t really a bother to me since I’m a coder I got around in creating my cta codes and even my own link system that automatically turns some domains in nofollow.

This time I changed a few things on purpose:

• No backlink schemes, no PBNs, nothing that looks remotely manipulative  
• Went all in on low competition long tail keywords instead of chasing anything competitive  
• Used Reddit as basically my only distribution channel early on and found a couple niche subs where a genuinely useful tool gets a real response instead of getting nuked as spam. Here’s some examples for proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vivarium/comments/1tgrcx2/the_actual_math_behind_isopod_colony_sizing_with/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/resinprinting/comments/1t503hb/why_cutting_layer_height_proportionally_tanks/  
• Wrote everything myself instead of mass producing thin content

It’s been slow. We’re talking low to mid thousands of monthly visitors not some huge number but some of the pages actually hit #1 for its keyword within days of publishing for example my “Candle Making Statistics 2026” post you can verify yourself if you want any more proof.

Mainly sharing this because the spam update wrecked a lot of people last year and I don’t see many “what actually happened and what I did differently after” posts most are either pure complaints or vague “I recovered!” claims with zero specifics.

Happy to get into specifics on any of it like keyword research, the Blogger setup, the Reddit angle, whatever’s useful.

I was sat in a meeting, bored shitless, listening to my new co-founders debate the colour of our logo, when the thought "Just fucking start" popped into my head. And it reminded me how my own entrepreneurial journey began right here, 7–10 years ago, and how I'd promised myself I'd come back one day and share some of what I learned along the way.

For context: I now own a SaaS company. In its first year it turned over $350k (93% profit), with our biggest month netting $80k… and it all started with an affiliate website I tried to rank on Google called "donttellthejoneses" don't bother looking it up.

I spent a year building that site. My biggest month, I netted $80. I messed up massively. But I learned A LOT.

I think "Just Start" is a brilliant concept (and a brilliant name for a subreddit), but there needs to be a sister subreddit called "JustFuckingContinue," and another one called "DBATPBDPTO"… or, Don't Be Afraid To Pivot But Don't Pivot Too Often.

After my site failed, I burned the bridges to my sales job. I literally found myself commuting down the motorway wearing slippers one morning, realised I couldn't be arsed dealing with a pissed-off sales manager, so I called and quit.

Then I found myself on Upwork. You see, after writing 120k words of content for my site and picking up some copywriting along the way, I'd turned that into a sellable skill. Back then I was competing with well-spoken people from third world countries for measly $10, 1,000-word blog posts.

But I was good at it. My writing converted, so I was able to push my prices up. I think in my first year of freelancing I netted $10,000. The next year it was $20,000, and it's pretty much doubled every year since.

But I hated copywriting. It would DRAIN my energy (more on that later), so I found myself pivoting again.

My pivot wasn't too big, though. Instead of writing fresh copy every week, I designed one landing page built to turn people into leads for local gyms.

I ran Facebook ads to get my first gym clients. Then I ran their Facebook ads and pointed the traffic at my sales page to generate them leads. One asset, sold to many businesses.

This worked well, but most gym owners are glorified personal trainers who have no business… running a business. They sucked at lead management and sales, which became my next ceiling.

I'd have arguments (polite ones) with clients, explaining that yes, they'd spent $2,000 to generate $2,200 in front-end sales - BUT if they retained those members for 12 months, it was more like spending $2,000 to generate $26,400. They were still fixated on the measly $200 profit in month one.

I call this the "TAX." Whatever industry you're in, there's some bullshit tax - not the cash kind. I'm talking Facebook ad account bans, A2P, annoying clients… you can never escape it. Just understand that resistance is good. Most people are weak and quit at the first sign of it, so that excites me. That's why it's "lonely at the top".

Anyway, Covid came - killed the gym business, which killed my business, and cash was running out fast.

The next pivot was Pay Per Lead. It's a business model where you build one brand (a landing page) for a national service. You buy media, generate a lead for, say, £40, and sell it to a company for £100.

I did really well with this, but the bullshit tax kept following me. I ended up in a situation where I could send leads to Business A and they'd convert them at 20%, but Business B and C would convert the same exclusive leads at 5% or 10%. It wasn't scalable.

The difference was their sales teams, lead management systems and follow-up game were SHIT - and we're talking big, multi-million-dollar companies. So the very week ChatGPT was released, I realised I could connect it to SMS, and I made my final pivot into AI services.

I won't dwell on this part, but you might be interested to know that one client was paying us $25,000 a month for our AI services (AI lead management). There was one more pivot into starting a SaaS company, but it's a fairly boring story - and I think the next part is worth more of your attention.

By now you'll know we're entering a fast-moving world where the tech changes every single week. It's shiny object syndrome galore. So how do you actually get ahead in this game? I've found a few general rules that have served me well over the years. In short you kinda want to look for "the constants"

#1 Do the opposite

Look, everything I suggest - including this rule - is situational. And I'll probably contradict myself numerous times. But If everyone is selling AI services, does that mean you shouldn't sell AI services? No, that's dumb. You sell what the market is buying. But if EVERYONE is pushing cold email, Facebook ads and Instagram as the way to get new clients, that's your cue to look for the opposite. Nobody does direct mail. There are probably boring, undiscovered magazines you could advertise in. That's truly doing the opposite.

If everyone's investing in crypto… invest in the S&P 500. Don't overthink the logic - it's just a rule that 'generally works' and you can blindly trust it. Train yourself to ask, "What would the opposite of this conventional advice be?" It usually means less competition and less resistance.

#2 Be someone of value

Following on from "do the opposite": most people spend their time on TikTok or watching Reels (I'm guilty of it too). But there was a time I'd read every marketing book I could get my hands on. I'd learn a TON. I assumed all the conventional agency owners in my city had done the same… nope. No one does. It's a crime.

Anyway - someone of value is broadly anyone who can help solve important or complex problems. That could be someone who can close sales. Or someone who knows how to fix a marketing problem.

If you're someone of value, time is broadly on your side. The world will eventually drop people and opportunities into your lap that want to capitalise on that value. I know, it's a bit woo-woo. But it's true.

For me, reading marketing books, pivoting a few times allowed me to be a person of value to many people. I knew the theory of marketing, and had tried my hand at every aspect of it.

#3 Network

For the love of god, get off the internet, go out and network. Go to meetup dot com, find a marketing networking group, and just turn up. You'll meet people ahead of you, behind you, and you'll get real insight into how to actually move your business forward. If you're someone of value, your competitors will hand you money or clients - TRUST ME.

And if you've taken the "do the opposite" rule on board, you'll notice no one promotes networking as a way to get clients (because it's not as cool or sexy as something automated). But this is where the REAL money is made. You speak to one person, and six months later they call you asking for help. That's usually how it works.

#4 - Follow your energy

This sounds woo-woo, but it isn't. If projects or people DRAIN you, you can't work on the needle-moving stuff for long. I was one of those people who'd feel completely drained on certain projects. You need to pay attention to this and pivot the moment you notice you're not working as much as you could be.

I don't necessarily recommend this, but I'll be honest: for the last three years I've taken Modafinil daily and been on TRT, and both have done wonders for my energy. There have been a few hard times where it's been make or break. To simplify the concept: more energy = more OUTPUT = more CASH.

#5 If shit hits the fan, do this

If a business fails, or the money's running dry, do the following. First, buy a subscription to RescueTime - it tracks how many productive hours you're actually working each day. If it's not averaging 5–6, you're not working enough. (And FYI, 5–6 productive hours is closer to 12–14 working hours, because it strips out all the admin.)

It's important to have this time measured. Often you 'work' and it's not actually 'real productive work' ... so you're just fooling yourself. Also, often you're working, and you can't really measure the success until months later. If you can measure the productive hours (and it's eye opening) it'll help.

Next, take a shotgun approach: reach out en masse to every single person you've ever met on your entrepreneurial journey. Say yes to everything (until you have to start saying no) You'll have a skill they can buy, and if not them, do they know someone who might be interested? Bury the ego and make payroll.

When you find an opportunity that could be a turning point, accept it, but keep looking for more. Putting all your eggs in one basket leaves you exposed if it doesn't turn out the way you hoped. Always be prospecting. Always be looking to do better.

#6 Get good at distribution OR product

Distribution is broadly sales, marketing, having a big online presence, a network, and so on. Product is broadly something that adds real value and is a no-brainer "yes" for people to buy. I know it's a bit vague, but it's true. In my early days I did both, and I was good at it. But after hitting six figures, I realised that to hit seven, I needed to be honest about what I'm actually good at.

I'm good at creating products and offers. There are loads of people out there who can't monetise their distribution - so I partner with them, build great products, and help them sell into their community.

Here's where I tend to confuse the matter, though. To me, distribution means being good at B2B, getting clients onboard, or finding an exclusive product to promote with good comms. In the affiliate game, all of the good products and exclusive comms are agreed upon behind the scenes, it's not something you can apply to online.

To confuse the matter even further, I classify marketing B2C as 'product', not distribution.

Without the means to distribute your product or your skills (even if they're amazing), your product is worth $0. That's why I always give away 30–50% of earnings, or a slice of the business. Distribution is everything - but you can't, and shouldn't, do both, because each is a full-time job.

I've got several "old guys" who've been in the industry forever. They don't have their finger on the pulse anymore, or the energy - but THEY KNOW EVERYONE. They intro me, and they're happy to, because I'm someone of value and they earn good money for it. Everyone wins. Oh and guess where I met them? At a networking event (btw I've probably been to 15 networking events over the course of 8 years, maybe I got lucky? but networking pays the bills)

#7 You already know the person who can help you get ahead

I'll leave you with this: you already know the person who could level up your business. Don't argue with me. You're not a special snowflake, and it's not that I "just don't understand your special circumstances." You already know the person who can help you get ahead.

The problem is you're not thinking about it correctly, or you don't have the balls to ask a simple question.

Want to bet? Here's an example. Say you've ranked an affiliate website and now you want to supply the products directly, but you know nothing about warehousing, logistics or suppliers. You'd LOVE to talk to someone about it, but you don't know anyone.

Well, you know someone who knows someone. Guaranteed. Don't think you do? Here's the easy route: ask your accountant (everyone has one).

• "Do you have any clients who own warehouses?"
• "No, I don't."
• "Do any of your friends or fellow accountants know someone who owns a warehouse?"
• "No, I don't think so… but I'm going to a BNI event later today, I'll ask my group."

Two days later: "Hey XXX, meet YYY - he wants to talk to someone who owns a warehouse, so I thought I'd put you two in touch."

It's that simple. It doesn't matter what you're after, or who it's that simple. Now, it won't always be the accountant, but it'll usually be someone you'd never have thought to ask. So how many other people do you know who you're sleeping on, who could help you get exactly what you want?

Hey guys,

I’ve been lurking here for a while and learned a ton from everyone's posts, so I wanted to share a look under the hood of a project I’ve spent the last year pouring myself into.

Life is just moving crazy fast right now. I’m in the middle of a big career pivot, getting married next month, and I just do not have the hours left in the day to keep up with this site or manage my freelance writers anymore. Instead of just letting it sit on a server and collect dust, I wanted to share the data on what worked, what blew up in my face, and the reality of building something this size.

The Website

• Age: Just over a year old.
• Content: 1,000+ evergreen articles (mostly reviews, articles, creator interviews and spotlight, and news).
• Socials: An active Pinterest account sitting at 1.4 million monthly views.
• Ads: Currently running on Mediavine.

The Big Win: Pinterest Traffic

Since Google can be a nightmare to rely on, I decided to focus heavily on Pinterest early on to find pop-culture and comic fans.

I made clean, high-intent pins pointing straight to our reviews, articles, creator interviews and news, and the traffic scaled fast. Hitting 1.4 million monthly views proved to me that if your niche is visual, you can absolutely build a massive audience completely independent of standard Google search. It became a huge safety net for the brand.

The Mistake: Content Speed vs. Technical SEO

My strategy from day one was pure speed. I built a writing team and managed to pump out over 1,000 indexed articles pretty quickly.

The plus side was that we built an absolute fortress of topical authority. The downside was that I focused so much on churning out content that I completely let the technical SEO slide on the Google side. When the recent algorithm updates rolled through, our organic search traffic took a noticeable hit.

The content itself is rock solid, the site easily cleared Mediavine’s strict quality and safety vetting when we applied, but it’s at a turning point right now. It really needs someone who understands technical SEO cleanup to step in, fix the Google side of things, and get that organic search volume back up to where it should be.

The Reality of the Math

Building a site with this much content gets expensive. Between hosting fees and premium plugins like Lasso, the monthly overhead caught up with us. Because I spent 95% of my time on content production and audience building rather than aggressive affiliate marketing or ad-placement testing, the site is currently running at a loss.

Closing the Chapter

You can have an incredible library of content, but if you don't have the time to steer the ship and tweak the tech, things stall out. With my focus shifting entirely to my new career and setting up my marriage, my personal bandwidth is just at zero.

I’m incredibly proud of the digital footprint we built, but I have to close this chapter to focus on real life. I'll be hanging out in the comments if anyone has questions about running a webiste, the fun of working with creators or running a high-volume Pinterest engine!

If you're on Mediavine or Raptive, you know the GSC problem. tons of data, no clear answer on what to actually work on.

I built an MCP server (think a plugin that gives Claude direct access to your GSC data) that does the prioritization for you. You set your RPM, ask Claude "what should I work on this week," and it pulls your actual Search Console data, runs it through a revenue model, and gives you a ranked list.

What it surfaces:

- Keywords stuck on page 2 with real impression volume (striking distance)

- Pages losing traffic vs. last month (decay)

- Posts competing with each other for the same queries (cannibalization)

- On-page gaps between your content and a target keyword

You tell it your Mediavine/Raptive RPM and it weights everything by estimated dollars, not raw clicks. A keyword with 3,000 impressions at position 8 might be worth $60/month to fix — or $6 — and the difference matters when you're deciding what to write next.

Free, open source, works with Claude Desktop.

Install: pip install creator-seo-mcp

Full setup guide (takes about 10 min // mostly Google Cloud OAuth setup): github.com/Yoshyaes/creator-seo-mcp

Happy to answer questions, especially from other Mediavine folks about tuning the revenue config.

Three months ago I started building AI tools for local service businesses. First case study: a Muay Thai gym in London with ~100 members.

What I thought they needed: Daily attendance automation, check-ins, member tracking.

What they actually used: The exact opposite. The coach uploads his existing spreadsheets (attendance Excel, payment exports, member records) and asks questions like "who hasn't trained in 3 weeks?" or "what's my revenue trend this quarter?" Gets answers in 2-3 minutes. What used to take him hours of cross-referencing Excel sheets.

The coach's words:

"It works out really well — like a little sidekick. Something I can ask and not have to check myself. It's definitely more analytical in a short space of time, like two, three minutes, than I would be."

The biggest lesson: the real product is simpler than I planned. Not a dashboard. Not daily notifications. Just a way to ask questions about your data and get a clear answer. I over-engineered the solution before I knew what the problem actually was.

Has anyone else's product been completely reshaped by how their first real user actually used it? I'd expected him to want automation. He just wanted a faster way to interrogate his own spreadsheets.

ok so quick story.

Solo founder, Madrid, started this thing 6 weeks ago. Protein powder comparator but ranked by price-per-gram of actual protein, not by bottle or per kilo. Because nobody does that and the difference between products gets stupid fast. One product costs 0.016€ per gram, another 0.094€. Same active ingredient, basically. Like 6x.

I figured: if I'm doing this math for myself anyway every time I want to restock, may as well put it online.

6 weeks later here's where I'm at.

Saless: 6 from HSN (Spanish supplement brand), 4 from Amazon. Total commission accumulated: roughly 19 euros. Yeah. Nineteen.

Now the weird part. The conversion rate on HSN is 12.77%. I sent them 47 clicks, 6 became sales. Industry avg in supplement affiliate is 1-3%. So the funnel is fine. The funnel works really well actually. I just don't have traffic.

What I built:

Astro static site (free hosting on Netlify, total infra cost: zero). 25 products in catalog, verified by hand. I literally weighed bottles and read nutritional labels. There's a free calculator where you put your bottle in and it tells you the €/g. SEO content cluster of 7 articles. Daily cron via GitHub Actions that pulls prices from Awin feed for MyProtein and Bulk so I don't have to update those manually. The catalog and the calculator are the moat. Anyone can scrape product pages but nobody else is doing the per-gram thing properly.

Distribution channels I tried so far, ranked by how badly each one went:

Reddit Spanish subs - got permabanned for a second post that the mods called self-promo (it wasn't, was a poll but ok). Other subs auto-removed me. My main reddit account is basically toast for this niche.

Product Hunt launch on June 4th - 2 upvotes (one was me lol). Got like 60 visits total during launch week. Permanent backlink stays which is the only reason I don't regret it.

Show HN - silence.

Facebook groups - removed for promotional content.

TikTok - posted my first video 2 days ago, has 592 views and a like rate of 0.17%. The algorithm is testing me and clearly not impressed. Also TikTok doesn't let you have a clickable bio link until you hit 1000 followers, so even if the video worked there's no funnel from there.

So what's actually working: not much directly. Indirectly, the SEO cluster is plantadita, just needs 3-6 months for Google to figure out where to rank it. Got a really nice comment on Product Hunt from someone validating the thesis though, that was a small dopamine hit.

The plan for the next month is approximately:

• TikTok 3 videos a week, hoping something hits while I climb to 1k followers
• Google Ads on long-tail comparative keywords ("myprotein vs bulk", "hsn discount code"), 300€/month budget. Going for low CPC stuff where the big brands don't bid against themselves.
• Featured. (the new HARO) pitches twice a week for digital PR backlinks
• Newsletter lead magnet, monthly pdf of "top 25 ranked by €/g" via Buttondown

I just got rejected by HSN on a commission tier increase (their margins are thin because they actually do absorb input cost increases instead of passing them to customers, which to be fair is rare in this space). But they opened the door to a "code with free gift" deal which I'm chasing because it gives me something differentiated to put on the site.

What I'd love your honest take on:

Is 300€/month sustained the right threshold to open Mexico (next market), or should I push Spain harder first? Mexico has the same gym culture, MyProtein has a local store there, Amazon MX exists, language is the same. Feels like the obvious next move but I'm scared of splitting attention before Spain is profitable.

Distribution channels for niche utility products. What worked for you that I haven't mentioned. I'm not looking for "do TikTok lol" because yes I'm already doing that. More like, is there a coupon site I'm not aware of, an aggregator, a micro-influencer arrangement that's worked. Stuff that works for tiny utility sites with no marketing budget.

How do you know when "thesis is right, distribution is the bottleneck" vs "thesis is right but the niche is too small to scale"? Spain is 47M people, gym culture is real here, the market exists. But I can't shake the feeling that maybe it's just too small and I should pivot the same thesis to a bigger market.

The bear case is that this stays at €19/month forever and I should have built something else. The bull case is the SEO cluster matures in 3 months and this becomes a small but real €500-1000/month side income. I genuinely don't know which it is yet, hence the post.

Numbers are real, including the embarrassing ones above. Site is precioproteina dot com if anyone wants to see what 6 weeks of solo work looks like. Open to any pushback or "have you tried X" you've got.

thanks

I'm planning to start a faceless documentary-style YouTube channel, but I'm a bit stuck on how much time I should spend learning editing before I actually launch.

Right now, I'm learning Premiere Pro and After Effects because I want to produce quality videos. However, I come from a SaaS background, and in SaaS we often talk about the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The idea is that you don't need all the bells and whistles to launch. If people still use and enjoy the product despite it being basic, that's a sign that you've found product-market fit.

I'm wondering if the same principle applies to YouTube.

Instead of spending months trying to master After Effects and create highly polished Johnny Harris or Vox-style videos, would it make more sense to just start publishing with a simpler format and see how the audience responds?

My goal is to create documentary-style content focused on topics in my country, such as corruption, politics, social issues, and current events. There isn't much content in this style locally, which makes me think there may be an opportunity.

Part of me feels that I should focus on creating videos that are "good enough" rather than waiting until my editing skills are perfect. If viewers engage with the content, return for future videos, and the channel gains traction, that would suggest there's demand for what I'm making. Then I could invest more time into advanced motion graphics and production quality later.

For those who have started YouTube channels, especially documentary-style channels, would you recommend launching early and improving over time, or waiting until you've developed stronger editing and motion design skills?

Hey friends,

this is the month 18 update of my tool site, you can find the previous month 16 update here.

A lot and very little has happened with this project is probably the best way to describe it.

For reference, 99% of my time is spent on our main startup Genviral, so the tool site is just a side project I want to see how far I can take with just SEO.

Unfortunately, the SEO side of things continues to be troubled to say the least.

The site continues to be down from its peak of 33k sessions per month to now 18k. However, in the last week or so, traffic has been trending up, so let's see if this lasts.

I have actually shipped quite a few improvements to the associated desktop app, which is slowly morphing into a really useful tool, alongside migrating the website away from Vercel towards Coolify (saved me $50 per month).

What's cool to see is that the constant improvements to the desktop app have also led to more sales.

I made $225 from desktop app sales in May while Mediavine ads brought in another $112.96.

Thing is, I "only" need to 10x the traffic and thereby likely earnings for this project to cover my basic living expenses, which would be about 180k monthly sessions - not impossible.

For now, there isn't any particular strategy to make that happen, though. Plan is to simply work on the desktop app whenever I'm free & hope people find it dope enough to purchase.

As I said before, there is no specific deadline I have for the project and the plan is to just keep working on it in hopes it grows naturally 😄

Hey everyone, so I pushed my new project live, it's called mystatellc.com. It's a programmatic directory designed to walk people through LLC formation, compliance, and all those annoying state-by-state regulations without the usual corporate gatekeeping.

I built it because navigating state websites is a literal nightmare, and I wanted something clean and straightforward for founders. The technical setup is done for the programmatic seo, and the site is running super smooth.

The real challenge now is figuring out how to actually get eyeballs on it. Since it's a directory, SEO is the obvious long-term play, but waiting on Google to crawl everything is painfully slow and I want to start getting active users on the site to get feedback.

I'm trying to figure out the best ways to hustle up some initial traffic. Should I be grinding on Twitter/X, dropping helpful answers in niche business forums, I've already tried launching on Product Hunt with no success.

If you've launched a directory or a resource-heavy site recently, how did you get your first few hundred users without blowing a massive budget on ads?? idk if I should focus heavily on cold outreach to business bloggers or if there's a better distribution channel I'm totally missing right now tbh.

TL;DR: Launched a free state-by-state LLC directory tool and need advice on how to hustle up early traffic while waiting for SEO to kick in.

Hello everyone

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the idea of creating a student-led initiative focused on Model United Nations, diplomacy, public speaking, global affairs, youth leadership, and meaningful discussions about real-world issues.

The vision is to build a collaborative youth platform where students can:

• discuss global and social issues,

• organize MUN/debate-related activities,

• share perspectives and ideas,

• publish articles and opinion pieces,

• and create a strong, intellectually driven student community together.

One of the major goals is to eventually build a website/platform where members can publish articles, research pieces, opinions, and discussions on topics ranging from international relations and politics to innovation, society, leadership, technology, and global challenges.

Since this initiative is still in its early stages, I’m currently looking for people interested in becoming part of the founding/core team.

Looking for:

• MUN and debate enthusiasts

• Public speakers and discussion-oriented individuals

• Social Media & PR Team

• Designers/editors (Canva skills are enough)

• Organizers and coordinators

• Website developers/designers

• Content/article writers

• Editorial/research team members

• Creative thinkers with ideas and initiative

You do NOT need professional-level experience to join. Passion, creativity, consistency, communication, and willingness to contribute matter much more.

The long-term goal is to build:

• A strong student-led online community

• A youth discussion and publishing platform

• Online MUN/debate sessions

• Networking and collaboration opportunities

• Leadership and communication initiatives

• A space where students can genuinely express ideas and grow together

If this vision interests you and you’d like to be involved from the beginning itself, feel free to comment or DM ME

Let’s build something meaningful together<3

Alright ima write this as it comes out of my brain and then i might ask ai to help me organize it a bit but if it comes out decently Ill leave it as it is.

So, basically what the title says, I managed to grow my personal account from just 30 followers to almost 1,000 (from my pace atm I should break the number next week since im getting a post going viral in my niche right now) in just 10 weeks and I barely used the platform before so I'll try to break down what worked for me, what didn't and hopefully give others that are trying to make some noise in the platform tools to do just that.

I think its fair to start by saying I was avoiding linkedin a loooot, i legit didnt like the platform, it felt phoney, it felt staged, fake, it felt like the system rewarded just talking about credentials, taking a 2 month course from Harvard and using that as if you went to Harvad and shit like that. But since this year I decided I wanted to solve a bit of my distribution issue with my services (im on the legal space, i do ai implementation, visibility and consultancy for law firms, so yeah no linkedin guru here trying to sell you something!!) I had to get started with it. I already tried last year and explored a bit but clearly failed, although it allowed me to start making some connections here and there and curating my algo.

I want to mention that the platform is at the moment, VERY NEW FRIENDLY, by this I mean that small accounts, new accounts, can position themselves in the feed if they post content that the algo likes, i dont want to say great content but great content for the algo. And I say this because Ive seen accounts that have around 10k to 30k who have less than 10k impressions a week, I saw just yesterday one with 10k complaining about getting like 700 impressions and on my "bad days" I was getting 300 impressions , with 10x less followers, so I wasn't doing as bad then. This is huge and is prolly the reason why I stick with the platform, post enough and you'll see something stick and get some love, which incentivizes you to continue to post more and refine your system.

What changed everything for me was starting to post more often in my blog, and since I wanted to expand on it I had to go somewhere else. So I created some nice value in my blog and then started sharing it on LinkedIn around February this year. I only started posting often, with a "content plan" just on March of this year, and i say it with quotes bc that plan has shifted many times since.

It took me 10 days of regular posting to hit my first jackpot, it was a post mor eon the FOMO side, it was a post that talked about VC investing in native AI firms and how they were coming for law firms. I just pressed post when I had only like 50 followers, a poorly optimized profile, banner and everything and honestly wasn't expecting it to perform the way it did.
That same day it went to almost 3k impressions (I was having a greeeat week with around 400-800 impressions btw) and that jump was crazy, then the next day 5k, then came the weekened with 3 and 4k, then monday 9k and peak day was 10k. That week alone, since I posted it, I went from 50 followers to almost 500.

That opened up so many opportunities, much inbound coming in, me feeling confident and posting with my system. Well, that same high, I wasn't able to replicate until just two days ago.

After that, I did raise my floor considerably, had days where I had over 2k impressions and such, but didn't have again the same explosion, which is fine bc I also learned impressions themselves are not jsut what's important, they can even be a vanity metric, some of my best posts when it comes to the business side, didn't need to have a crazy number of impressions to get the right conversations started.

The good thing about posting during all this time is that I was able to learn what works and what doesn't, and from the conversations I had with people that connected and followed me, they liked that I did deep researches and went deep into second and third order effects, not just the shallow AI surface. Oh that was a plus too btw, almost all of my connections came unprompted, some from massive accounts in the niche, 30k followers. I know for the entire platform thats not a big number but on a niche thats as good as it gets, specially one with the money legal has.

To wrap this up im gonna talk about what was the formula that broke this last week (and its still going) and how i was finally able to surpass that previous high and then give you some tips on how to do this, so you can learn from all my mistakes, and from the good things i did too.

Basically this week I broke the algo with something that also broke what I thought was my formula. I used to think my formula was tied to some external factor plus my take on whats beyond whats obvious. So, for the YC one I was explaining what was happening beyond the investment, for other stuff for example I was talking about Claude pairing up with some PE companies and basically inserting themselves into the ecosystem of law firms, if firms are slow to adapt it they just insert in the space where firms work. And so on, so from my winners that's the type of content I thought I needed to create, at least 2 or 3 times a week to get some reach and then I could just post more authority content that basically would help me convert some of that traffic that came in from the reach contnet.

Well, this week's hit broke that, because it wasn't some FOMO piece, it wasn't something tied to news, it was just something I read about Bezos and what he thinks about AI and MY TAKE on that, and how that relates to legal. And I think the hook did a very nice job there, with a nice visual (I always used visuals that after seeing them you can tell they're mine, so even if im just starting out people think ive been here for longer because of how my visuals look and my profile too.)
The hook is [Legal can name the work AI threatens.
It cannot yet name the work AI creates.]
And then I go on and explain in a fairly positive manner how jobs talked about the tractor, how a farmer over 100 years ago could see them getting replaced by the tractor but not understand that today we would have a dog psychologist. And the way i revamped this was saying that the same farmer could see the tractor but not that his great grandson in the future could be running the social media of the farm, which is what I think brought the point home.

So far this post is on 30k impressions, almost the same as that breakout one, and surpassed already the peak days, even today saturday is aiming for 10k impressions. And more than just being a hit, what I loved about it is that it showed me a different formula, a different angle that could be more repeatable than me just depending on external news. And from the comments I can even learn more as to why this post hit, because i can see people where lacking some positive thoughts, something they can share to expand their frameworks.

So while the previous hit went viral in the space because it triggered fear and FOMO, this one triggered the opposite, this one sparked some positivity, and it helped the reader feel smarter or heart warmed after reading it.

Ok now lets wrap this up.

-So if you want to start reaching more people in linkedin your work should be first read whats in the space you wanna be in, curate your algo. Search for the people that get the clicks, the comments, the eyes, and study then, follow them, comment your take on their posts, borrow their audiences.
Here I'd even say I don't do this as often as i should, at least at first, right now since ive sort of carved relationships with them, it feels more natural to do so and I just go on the feed and comment as if it was i dunno, my friends instagram and that legit helps a lot.
-It's important to study the content because this way you can see what works and what doesn't, you can even share the posts to claude or gpt and try to dissect the formula, not to replicate but to find the lines that work and then develop them through your expertise.
Mine is I do research and think in second order, plus I can build, so whatever I say comes from the lens of someone who knows what can be done, what cannot and I just say when stuff is bullshit, overhyped etc.
-You need to post 3 to 5 times a week, the times I post 5 are when none of my posts are hitting, the times I post 3 is when they do hit and I don't want to cannibalise my own posts, so for example after that one hit, the next day I didn't post anything, I just replied to comments, reposts and just commented in the feed.
Plus its very important to get your reps in to know what works and what doesn't, and unless you're a god writer, you won't be a good storyteller for linkedin unless you put your reps in and fail. From these last 10 weeks I could say I failed more often than not but the reality is that during that time I built data on what worked and what not, and now I have better tools than ever to create content that has more chances to explode or to funnel me the ICP im chasing.
-Have YOUR style, YOUR TAKES, own something, my images you can tell they're mine just by scrolling past the feed, it could get tiring sometimes but it works great, and if youre gona be serious about it i recommend you create a claude or gpt project and just dump in there your takes, what your thoughts are on what your expertise is at, that way if you wanna use ai to help you comment or create posts its gonna do it YOUR way and not some lame ai way. Tho i did this very briefly since its gotten better for me to jsut reply myself, that legit works better. I do use AI a lot to help me out clean out my posts and research for me, but for exmaple this one that was a hit, it was MY IDEA, MY CURATION, me doing the paralel and such, and that's where you can differentiate yourself. But also I was able to see that line because i did many reps of this. YOU CANNOT SKIP THE REPS.
-POLISH your profile, if your profile looks premium, tells exactly what you do and such, not only its benefitial for the reader, something I was doing initially that made me have 10 MINUTES of reading time in my profile, which is insane btw, people who read one post of mine usually ended up reading more, profile views usually are way under a minute. And my strat for example was my profile was my cta, so i had no cta on most of my posts, tho ive shifted this recently. Make sure to complete your profile, have a nice banner, nice profile pic and all your info, people wanna read who you are, what you do, what you did, what you accomplished and basically why they should care about you.
If i had my profile more polished after my first breakout post, I could have gotten more deals closed, but legit I wasnt expecting the explosion it got so I sort of polished it along the way.

And i guess thats it, id just say to follow the metrics close, saves for example matter more than a simple like, try different formats, see what sticks and what doesnt. I could conitnue but i think this covered a lot, if you have more questions happy to answer them here or via DM. Didnt have to rewrite it with ai btw, good enough, the polish shit belongs to Linkedin. i hope this helps somebody.

Hey everyone — I finally pushed a project live that I’ve been tinkering with for months, and now I’m hitting that “okay… what now?” stage.

I built a site thats basically a price‑tracking / deal‑aggregator for firearms and accessories. It pulls in deals from multiple retailers, normalizes the data, and makes it easier to compare prices without bouncing between 10 different sites.

The tech side I’m comfortable with. The audience side… not so much.

I’m trying to figure out:

How do you market a niche site like this without getting insta‑banned everywhere?
(Firearm‑related content gets throttled on most platforms, even if it’s just deals and not sales.)

What monetization paths actually work for deal‑aggregator sites?
Affiliate links? Email alerts? Paid premium features? Something else I’m not thinking about?

Where would you go to get early traction for a niche like this?
Forums? Subreddits? SEO? Partnerships?

If anyone here has experience with niche content, affiliate marketing, or building traffic from zero, I’d love to hear what you’d do differently if you were starting today.

Happy to share what I’ve learned on the dev side too if anyone’s curious. Appreciate any advice.

I just launched my first iOS app and I’m at the “get first 100 real users” stage.

I’m 18 and still in high school, so this started as a personal problem, not some big startup idea.

I was wasting around 2.5h/day on Instagram Reels, but I didn’t want to delete Instagram completely because I still needed friends and DMs.

So I built Sociano.

The idea is simple:

don’t block all social media, remove the parts that cause the loop.

Sociano lets people use social platforms through a controlled browser where they can remove things like:

- Reels

- Shorts

- Explore

- feeds

- For You pages

- recommendations

- Spotlight/Discover

while keeping useful parts like:

- DMs

- posting

- search/watch

- account/login flows

- content friends send you

It also has optional native iPhone app blocking using Apple’s Screen Time APIs.

Current numbers:

- 2 monthly subscriptions

- 6 yearly trials

- yearly plan has a 3-day trial

- testing code SOCIANO20 for $30/year instead of about $50/year

What I’m testing next:

- Reddit posts

- short demo videos

- founder story

- App Store screenshot improvements

- better onboarding

The biggest thing I learned:

“App blocker” is too generic. People understand the app much faster when I say “it removes Reels/Shorts but keeps DMs.”

I’ll try to post updates with installs, trial starts, paid conversion, and what launch channel works.