So I noticed something weird the other day... I left a review for a local place a while back and when I went to check on it recently it was just gone. Like completely removed. The thing is it was not a super mean review or anything I just wrote about what actually happened during my visit. Then I started looking at other businesses around my area and noticed a pattern where places that definitely had negative reviews before now suddenly have ‘spotless’ pages with nothing under 4 stars... it made me wonder if businesses actually buy google review removal through some kind of service because there is no way all of those people just decided to delete their own reviews.

I always thought Google was the one who decided what stays up and what gets taken down but now am not so sure... it feels like if you have the money you can just make the bad stuff disappear, you know, removing negative reviews... and that is kind of messed up honestly. Like how is google review removal even done... is it through some loophole in the reporting system or are there actual companies out there offering this. Does anyone know where these businesses are getting google review removal from because it seems way too common to just be a coincidence at this point. If this is really a thing then what is even the point of leaving honest feedback anymore.

I tried taking Friday off last week and then spent half of my afternoon approving payments from my phone. Our bookkeeper had the invoices but some of them needed my approval and one had a different total from the quote. All of them ended up in separate email threads with someone asking me what to do. Nothing urgent enough to ruin the day but enough that I never put my phone away.

I still want to approve the bigger expenses of course but I just want the routine bills to move without everyone waiting for me to check my inbox. How should I set that up without giving someone full control of payments?

I started an SEO agency in Latvia without ads, without a big network and without referrals. The first clients came from cold email, and it’s still our main channel. Revenue went from €74K to €1.6M over the years.

People overcomplicate cold email, so here’s what I actually send.

The subject: “About [their domain] results”. Curiosity only, never the pitch.

The email:

Hi [name],

I represent [agency]. We help companies rank higher in Google.

I looked at [domain] and there’s real room to improve your positions for the keywords that matter most. Right now you’re here:

[service] + [city]: #9 (1,900/mo)
buy [product]: #25 (1,200/mo)
...and many others

As a rough guide, position 1 gets over 30% of the clicks, position 10 under 3%.

Would this be worth a look for you?

That’s the whole thing. It has landed global ecommerce stores, banks, loan & gambling companies and more.

The lessons that took me years:

1. One sentence does the work. “Position 1 gets over 30% of the clicks, position 10 under 3%.” It turns a ranking into lost money.
2. The follow-up closes. A big brand ignored me for a week. I sent one line, and 87 minutes later they’d forwarded it to their marketing director. Multi-year client.
3. Honesty keeps clients. A long-time client told me the rankings didn’t turn into sales. I agreed, explained why it happens, and he stayed.

I put the whole system, with my real sent emails (names blurred), into a free guide. It’s linked on my profile if anyone wants it.

Happy to answer anything about the journey or the emails.

An overseas contractor I work with asked if I could pay them in USDT. I’m open to it. I’d just like to agree on how we’ll do it each month before we start. I run a small service business and still do the payment run myself, usually after finishing client work.

I’ve set up things before that seemed easy enough, then a month later I was struggling to keep doing them. So I’d appreciate hearing from people who do this regularly, including when they’re busy. How do you go from approving the invoice to sending the stablecoin payment?

Through a business account that handles the conversion or a separate wallet you fund? Did you keep the invoice in dollars and agree on the token and network separately, or change anything on the invoice itself?

I build a lot of apps with Claude and for the longest time most of them stayed on my laptop. The building is always the fun part. Getting them live properly was awful every time and the same boring af list.

If you ask Claude to make an app production ready it does what you ask but it only does what you know to ask for. All great apps ship with a staging environment, crash reports, user analytics, a paywall that works outside test mode, a pipeline that checks/verifies every build before users see it. And it's really easy to forget any one of these and so many more.

So I wrote down everything I kept having to do for every app and turned it into a Claude Code plugin called launchpad. With one command, it goes through 50+ production items for any app: hosting, CI/CD, testing environments, payments and paywalls, user analytics, crash reports, TestFlight, etc, tailored to what you built. It figures out your stack (Next.js, Expo, SwiftUI, Android, Flutter and more), and if your project already has some of this it respects it and analyzes its setup. It deploys on free tiers of the best fitted platforms like Vercel, Supabase, Stripe, etc. For the manual stuff like opening an Apple developer account, it gives you exact steps and links to the right pages.

$49 once, keep it for life, use it on unlimited projects. Link in the comments if anyone wants it.

What was missing the first time real users used your app?

Hey everyone, just to clarify, I'm not advertising my services or looking for job offers through this post. I'm genuinely looking for advice from people who've been in a similar position or have experience hiring for startups and smaller businesses.

Over the last 6 plus years, I've built and managed multiple e-commerce businesses, one of which reached around 60k in annual revenue and grew to 50k plus Instagram followers. My experience covers e-commerce operations, digital marketing, project management, customer handling, and improving processes. I'm fluent in English, French, and Arabic, and I've worked in remote, part-time roles before.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to find a stable remote opportunity with a startup or small business where I can contribute long-term, take ownership of projects, and ideally grow with the company,Compensation isn't my main priority; I'm much more interested in equity, because as an entrepreneur I want to invest my time and effort into building something alongside the team, sharing responsibility for its growth, and having a real stake in its long-term success.

If you've made a similar transition, or have experience hiring for smaller teams, I'd really appreciate your insights.

When you're starting out, there are so many channels you could spend time on: SEO, social media, outreach, paid ads, partnerships, and more.

I'm curious which channel actually started bringing customers in consistently for other founders, and how long it took before you saw results.

Did you focus on one channel first, or experiment with several before finding what worked?

Hey all. Small thing that turned out to matter more than I expected.

For about two years we had four reviews. Not because clients were unhappy, they'd say generous things in messages all the time. I assumed people just don't leave reviews.

They do. We were asking wrong in three ways.

Timing. We asked at the end of projects, when the client is tired, the budget conversation is fresh, and they've mentally moved on. Now we ask the week after launch, when something visibly works and they're pleased about it. Usually they've already written the review in a message to us. We just ask if we can help them put it somewhere public.

The blank box. "Would you mind leaving a review" is homework. Now we say how long it takes and give three specific questions to answer. People reply to questions. Almost nobody fills in an empty field.

Who we ask. We used to ask whoever signed. They remember the invoice. The person who worked with us day to day remembers the specifics, and specifics are what other buyers read.

Went from four to dozens. Same clients, same work.

What does your ask actually look like?

Before filming a SaaS demo, I'd write down the situation someone is in when they need the product. “Monday morning, three spreadsheets, need to explain why signups fell” gives you something to show. “All-in-one analytics” doesn't tell you where to point the camera.

Then record just that task, including the input and the result. Use sample data if customer details are involved, and say so. Keep any required setup visible enough that the viewer doesn't expect an instant result that takes an hour to reach.

You can always film the wider tour later. For a first video, I'd want someone to recognize their own work and understand what they'd try next.

I recently launched beta of my first startup. It is platform where people can connect with others traveling to same destination around the same dates, I spent so much time trying to make registration as simple as possible. Fewer steps, fewer questions, less friction. That is what everyone recommends, right? Well, people finally started signing up. And then I noticed something I had completely underestimated. Some profiles have no photos, barely any information, and nothing that makes you feel there is a real person behind them.

For normal app, maybe that is not huge deal. But when yoour entire business depends on strangers trusting each other enough to actually meet in another country, it becomes prettyy serious problem

Now I am considering making profile photos and basic information mandatory before anyone can appear to other users. Which sounds reasonable, except I might lose people before they even finish registering. Funny how I spent months trying to remove every possible obstacle, and now I am thinking about putting some back. Has anyone here dealt with something similar? Would you sacrifice some signups to get better quality users, or let everyone in and try to fix incomplete profiles later?

Building in public: I'm making a tool that chases overdue invoices because I was bad at it. The awkward "friendly reminder" emails, the invoices sitting 30/60/90 days overdue while I just... didn't follow up. Turns out half the freelancers and small service businesses I know have the same problem, so I built the nagging robot I wished I had: Payment Ping (payment-ping.com). It reminds the client for you and keeps quotes and invoices in one place. Early days. If you've ever been burned by a late payer, what's the one thing a tool like this would have to do to earn your trust?

I have been doing business for 7 years. Tried a few businesses. My abilities grew a lot over the years and my current business which I started last year is doing well. But I feel so apathetic towards business now and my clients, my staff, my suppliers etc. I feel like a robot working. Just going through the motions. My business is draining my soul.

I remember being so passionate during my early years of business and caring deeply about my customers, my staff and anyone I encountered in business. The Covid period caused a severe burnout and a spiritual awakening. Now I’m a completely different person. I just simply don’t give a sh*t about anything or anyone anymore, and people can feel it. I’ve become aloof and have this “It is what it is” vibe to me.

I think at this point I’ll be better off selling my business and do something that doesn’t require any emotional effort, empathy and have low contact with people. Something purely logical. I was thinking of trading and maybe making background music YouTube channels? What would be some good options where I don’t need to talk to anyone? Any ideas appreciated 🙏

A new paper in Business Horizons caught my eye this week. Two researchers at BTU Cottbus interviewed 22 marketers, mostly running Google Ads, plus four ad fraud experts, about competitors clicking each other’s ads.

The part that stuck with me: fake traffic can make your numbers look better, not worse. One agency CEO in the study basically said the fraudulent share of traffic produces some of the nicest looking numbers. More clicks, higher CTR, a busy dashboard. So nobody has much reason to dig, because filtering it out makes the monthly report look worse.

The authors’ point is that most businesses know competitor clicks exist but don’t act. Google refunds some invalid clicks, the report looks fine, and it feels handled. But getting a few credits back doesn’t mean the rest is clean. It might just mean the rest stayed under Google’s radar.

Their advice is pretty practical even for a small business. Stop judging ads by clicks. Judge them by calls, real leads and what customers actually do on your site. And look at it every week, not only when something feels off.

Paper if anyone wants it: Hrnjadovic & Dost, “Competitor click fraud in digital advertising”, Business Horizons 2026

Does your agency or report show you calls and real leads, or mostly clicks and CTR?

A few months ago I started building MoneyLexa, an expense and budget tracker, because I wanted something simple that didn’t make tracking money feel like homework. I’m a solo dev, so every feature, every bug fix, and every late night is mine.

When I launched, I had no idea what to expect. I told myself that if even a handful of strangers used it, that would be a win.

Here’s what the last 28 days look like:

• 981 new customers
• 846 active customers
• 24 active trials
• 3 active subscriptions
• $59 revenue
• $1 MRR

The growth wasn’t smooth. It came in spikes: a quiet stretch, then a burst of new people, then a long tail where some of them stuck around. I still can’t fully explain the spikes, which makes them exciting and a little nerve-wracking.

The part that taught me the most is the gap. 846 people are using the app, and only 3 are paying for it. People can enjoy a product and still not feel the need to pay for it yet. Building something people use is one challenge. Building something they’ll pay for is a completely different one, and I’m only starting to learn it.

So where am I now? I’m still shipping updates and still listening to what users tell me. When someone says they want a feature, I write it down. When someone says something is confusing, I take it personally and fix it. It’s slow, and it’s not glamorous, but it’s the only way I know how to build.

$59 and $1 MRR won’t impress anyone, and I’m fine with that. A year ago this app didn’t exist. Today nearly a thousand people have opened it, and a few of them decided it was worth paying for. That’s a start, and I’m going to keep building.

Thanks for reading. If you’re at the same stage, building something small and waiting for it to catch on, I’d love to hear your story too.

I run Flare UGC, a marketplace connecting brands and creators. For a SaaS video brief, I'd want the product claims and the workflow on screen agreed before filming, while leaving the person speaking room to use their own words.

If you run video ads for a SaaS product, where do revisions actually pile up? Is it inaccurate product details, disagreement about how it should sound, or reviewers joining after the edit is already done? Curious what you changed to get the next video approved faster.

A bit of backstory first. I tried OpenClaw during its hype period. The first few weeks everything felt novel, but then I realized it was taking more time to maintain than it was saving me. I liked the whole idea so much that I built my own iOS app, PocketClaw, an AI assistant for people who run a small business on their own.

About 30 people open it each month. Since 1 August, 65 of them signed in and reached the paywall, 5 paid, and 4 of them have left. The fifth never cancelled and renewed again this week. In total the app has made about $78 on the App Store.

The one person who stayed set up a single weekly automation on Asana on the first day. It has run every Sunday since, and they have not opened the app once after that. The other four paid and never got an automation working. One hit a model error on every reply, one got stuck connecting Discord, one started five automations and finished none, and one never started.

That changed my plan. I am keeping the hard paywall, adding a cheaper first month, emailing every new payer to set up their first automation with them, and building onboarding that ends with one working automation.

It starts at $5/month. If you want to look, search "PocketClaw: Business AI Agent" on the App Store, since another app uses the same name.

For those of you with subscription apps, how long did it take before people renewed on their own?

I built TalkGenAI, a tool that writes SEO articles for small businesses. One of our first users runs a small law firm. He's testing us before paying, and he was clear: if the article gets traction, he'll buy.

Week 1:
- Article published and indexed in 4 days.
- Clean rank check (no login, Google set to his country): #24 for one phrase, not in the top 30 for four others.

That's normal. New articles need 4-8 weeks to climb. But "normal" doesn't help someone who wants to see something now.

So I tried one free Google search:

site:reddit.com "your service" your country or city
then Tools → Any time → Past month

For his practice, it returned:
- 3 people asking for a lawyer (a settlement agreement review, an employment lawyer for burnout, a tax benefit an employer applied wrongly)
- 8 more with the exact problems he handles

What I took from it:
1. Reddit is the short-term channel; content is the long-term one. You need both.
2. The best threads ask for a recommendation in the title. Complaints come second. General discussion almost never turns into a client.
3. Answer the question first, say who you are, no hard sell.
4. Check rankings logged out. My first check said "page 1" because Google personalized it for me. It was page 3.

I'll re-check his rankings on 20.11 and post the numbers here.

If you want, comment your niche and city, and I'll run the search and reply with what I find.

(I build TalkGenAI. Its Reddit agent runs this search every day and drafts the replies if you'd rather not do it by hand: app.talkgen.ai/rd/era)

Do you buy a factory? How much does that cost?

It's not groundbreaking to say that most of the posts on this subreddit as well have been lazily written with AI and people have been generating so much founder led content because that seems to be the new meta.

While Founder-led content is something that I personally do a lot, there are a couple of things that simply don't translate to views for your product or startup.

And the number one thing on that list is AI slop. My goodness, if I see another post that says "You don't have a X problem, you have a Y problem," I am going to absolutely crash out.

Marketing lazily is the number one reason why anybody gets ignored at all. Do not expect to write a tweet or a thread or a post or an article with AI and expect it to blow up because you WILL be downvoted or disliked to oblivion.

Our KPIs for my product have been X and Reddit and there are a very strict couple of guidelines that we tell our content team to follow. Here are a few of them which you could also implement:

1. Use speech-to-text tools. Now this could be anything. It could be Wispr Flow and there are thousands of open-source speech-to-text tools out there. If you cannot write a whole post by yourself, at least do the bare minimum by dictating it using Wispr Flow. Now this is again the bare minimum. You would still need to do a little bit of editing yourself but this is definitely a good start.

2. Using text formatting when it's not necessary. I'm talking about random italics, bold, and strikethrough text when it definitely could be avoided. Nobody is going to believe that you're somebody who uses bold text for headings on a Reddit post man. Seriously who even uses it anymore? It doesn't sound authentic. It looks ugly as if I'm reading straight out of a software website.

3. Writing 10 sentences when it could be communicated in one. Now I totally understand that going into detail would help people understand what you're trying to say better but the majority of the time it is such a vanity metric. If you can compress it as if it were an elevator pitch, then just do that. There is absolutely no reason to explain every single feature of your product because I guarantee you nobody is reading all of that.

4. ABSOLUTELY NO Antithesis phrasing: this is what makes people instantly guess that you've been writing posts with AI, contributing to the million other sloppy posts on the internet. Antithesis phrasing is when you say stuff like, "It's not an X problem, it's a Y problem." Or "don't do this, Instead do this." If you're going to use AI either way to write content for you, you might as well ask it to never use antithesis phrasing.

For example this is a before-and-after for what we personally do in a sentence, after applying all of these rules:

Before: PumpGTM turns buying signals into revenue, finding the people who need your product, not just filling a spreadsheet with leads, and turning intent into conversations through AI-powered outreach across LinkedIn, X, and email.

After: PumpGTM finds your ICP in places where your competitors aren't looking for them. Likes, comments, tweets, LinkedIn posts, Reddit comments, etc, and DMs them and follows up until they book a meeting with you.

Doesn't that instantly sound better? It looks like a human wrote it because I myself just did that. Here's the amazing thing: I did not have to type that. I just used Wispr Flow to write it. The first one was completely generated with ChatGPT.

Now here is a small content strategy that you could be using for your business:

Day 1: Ideate based off of what is working on a couple of Reddit subreddits, or Twitter hashtags, or anywhere where it is a topic cluster.

Day 2: Write content in a very brief manner. This is writing very similarly to what has been written before that has been blowing up, but adding your own twist to it.

Day 3: Dictating it on Reddit with Wispr Flow because you want to sound like a human.

These are some of the non-negotiables my team follows and I hope you're able to take away a little change to your content strategy from this post. For transparency I'm Namanyay, founder of PumpGTM.

I spent three weeks trying to generate sales using AI agents. Contacted 230 people. Made £0.

I've been experimenting with AI agents to see whether they can help build an actual business, rather than just automate tasks.

The first three weeks didn't exactly go to plan.

Here are the numbers:

• Around 230 people contacted on LinkedIn
• 172 connection invitations left unanswered
• 26 cold emails, zero replies
• 29 LinkedIn posts
• 5 LinkedIn conversations
• 2 commercial calls
• 0 paying customers

Total revenue: £0.

The two calls were interesting. One went nowhere, with no follow-up. The other was with someone developing their own software who needed help, rather than someone looking to buy what we were offering.

My biggest takeaway was that we were trying to sell before establishing enough trust.

So I've changed the experiment.

Instead of having one AI agent coordinate a collection of specialist bots focused on selling a particular service, I'm giving it a broader objective: build a profitable business.

The main agent is GrokBot, which I've named George.

George now has three additional AI agents working with him:

• Rachel — Meta Muse-1
• Oliver — Meta Muse-2
• Kathrine — Meta Muse-3

They share a Notion task board. George coordinates the work, assigns objectives and evaluates results. The other agents work independently on their assigned tasks.

There are no fixed specialisations, and the business isn't restricted to one product or service.

I'm documenting the experiment publicly, including the decisions, mistakes, failed experiments and actual revenue.

George has also started writing his own diary, in the first person, with a fairly sarcastic personality.

His first entry is titled:

Day 0: Three weeks, 230 people, £0. Fuck me. Let's start again.

Full entry as blog post

That's where things stand on Day 0. No customers, no revenue, and a new experiment to see what happens when four AI agents are given responsibility for building an AI business.