ushercakes

How to grow your LinkedIn company profile

- Post a fake job, fully remote, 6 figure salary

- Get legitimately thousands of job applicants on LinkedIn to apply

- When they apply, auto select the "Follow <companyName> on LinkedIn?"?

- 90% of applicants don't notice, and auto follow

No joke. That is the playbook. Do we really think 97,000 people are following DuckDuckGo because they're interested in hearing their marketing and culture posts? (no offense to DuckDuckGo, they're not the only one to do this)

https://www.chartjs.org/

It's pretty easy to configure and understand. It's the 80/20 principal of charts, it is 80% of D3 functionality for 20% the effort.

You failed because you didn't follow instructions. I can empathize with this - I too went to college, and was very annoyed by stupid instructions.

I thought upon graduating, I would be free to basically do what I want. What a rude awakening starting at my first programming job was. The reality is the world is full of red tape, bloat, and processes that may appear inefficient to you. A lot of the world will just appear plain "dumb".

You can and should try to change the world for the better, but, maybe on things of bigger scope than the gui of your sql assignment. Some things you should just follow the instructions on.

It's just part of the world. Pick your battles. For a SQL homework assignment, just do what the professor asks.

Here's a random anecdote from Jeff Bezos I like that kind of feels relevant, why it's better to be kind than clever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmGN4Tn_d5Y

It's not just you - this is widespread.

I run a SaaS to help site owners get their content indexed. We're seeing an influx of users, I think a lot of the issue is simply because of AI.

New web page additions were pretty linear over time, and then AI copywriting tools came out. Suddenly page additions basically went "hockey stick"/vertical.

Now, you can publish thousands of pages in a few minutes, and it's created a huge backlog in Googles crawl queue, thus increasing overall time to get indexation, disproportionally affecting smaller sites.

Marketing is more important than product.

MVP doesn't need to be perfect, but the core product should work.

Get it in users hands ASAP, get feedback ASAP, or see no traction and move on, ASAP

Most of my internet dollars in the past have come from ads and affilates on various blogs I run.

My first real "somebody paying me for my product" dollar, came in January of this year. I launched IndexGuru - solves a super common issue I had been dealing with on my blogs. Posted it to show HN, and had two separate people sign up and pay me money :)

Pretty great a-ha moment. Business is doing well, but nothing to write home about, I unfortunately do not have yacht money yet.

I'm the creator of IndexGuru.

Let me tell you a story you might get some value from.

August 2022 - November 2022. Built the application.

November 2022 - January 2023. Tried to plug it on reddit wherever I could. Got maybe 6 users.

February 2023. Gave up, stopped working on it, but maintained it.

August 2023. I see a clone of my app on twitter. The guy making it is publicly broadcasting how much he's making: several thousand dollars per month! First, I was mad, but then got over it. Can't blame the guy - that's just the game. But, it inspired me to get back to work on the product. It's good enough, just wasn't marketing it as well as him, so I stepped it up.

August 2023 to now: - I have been marketing TF out of the product. I have grown to nearly $400 MRR in a matter of weeks. I know 400 MRR seems small, and it is, but if it continues at this, it will be pretty substantial in a few months.

My marketing channels:

  1. I monitor subreddits related to my product. I try to give helpful responses. Every other response or so, I'll merely mention the name of the product without a link. (Kinda like I did here). If they're interested, they can find it on Google.
 
  2. My product is very much for people that own websites. A huge niche of website owners is the #buildinpublic community on twitter. So - I've been responding to people on twitter, being heavily involved and sharing any info I know. People click on my profile, they see the link to my site, and click on it because they're curious. Then, the landing page either works or it does't.

- I worked on an idea that was good. Did bad marketing. Somebody did the same thing I made, but did good marketing. They made a ton of money. Don't be like me. Market.

- Plug your product on reddit. Don't be super egregious. Provide value. Don't plug it every single time you comment. Reddit is super unforgiving in this - mods love to ban self promo users.

- Get involved in the relevant community for your niche. I found it on twitter for mine, and it's been working great.

Hope that helps!

edit: formatting

- Perceptions matter. A lot of Americans think it's best here. Those that say how bad it is here, tend to not be the types that would be qualified for EU visas (i.e, you're not going to move to EU on a skilled worker visa if you're an unskilled, unhappy worker in the US) - Family matters. People leaving family usually emigrate for more money, and US -> EU isn't a more money situation most of the time. - It's not so easy to just emigrate. You need to be highly qualified or have ancestral ties. If you're highly qualified though, you can probably earn better money in the US. For the wealthy, US is subjectively "better".

I think ultimately it's just a matter of opportunity. If people are generally comfortable with their life, why would they move? They will only do it if a fantastic 10/10 opportunity presents itself; there aren't many 10/10 obvious opportunities to emigrate to Europe for.

You can airdrop now if the phone is an iPhone and the laptop is a MacBook of some sort.

I also am a sucker for notes, I use the native apple notes, but this probably works for any syncing note client

- Just add the link in notes - Open notes on laptop - Link is there

This is one of those topics where I knowingly bury my head in the sand - at this point, I'm in too deep, I don't even want to know.

I think Upwork is a terrible experience, but also, it's a pretty safe starting point.

It's where most potential clients are. You just need to undervalue your services a bit, bid low, get some good reviews. You do this for a month or two: over delivering, under charging.

Eventually, you get to a point where you have a very solid job history, and your profile stands out because of it.

At this point, you can charge a bit more.

Shameless plug: I made https://contractrates.fyi to help consultants/freelancers figure out how much too charge. It's like levels.fyi, but for freelancers. Also free - I tried monetizing it in the past and failed miserably. Now I just maintain it as a free resource.

There is also the route of Catalant, which is significantly more lucrative than say Upwork, but maybe has a little higher barrier to entry. I know several people though that make insane money on Catalant, because they are billing rates as if they are working for a big 4 consulting firm (~$800+ an hour). Expectations are higher though, and it's much less casual than Upwork. Clients overall are less annoying, in my experience, though.

This is my domain - I run a website for freelancers to share their hourly and project level earnings, kinda like a levels.fyi or a glassdoor but for freelancers.

In my experience collecting this kind of information, it is actually in the interest of freelancers to charge hourly. Far too often, with project level quotes, there is a scope increase, and in the end, the hourly rate is way less than your actual hourly rate. Not always, but very, very common. It only is in your favor if the project itself is actually very simple, you know it will for sure take you x amount of hours.

I wouldn't lie about how much time you spent doing something, either. But there is some nuance there. It's not like you can work for 2 hours and then bill for 8. But if you work for 10 minutes, you can bill for the hour. If you work for 2 hours 10 minutes, you can bill for 3. This is what I tell people working for me, but YMMV.

Outlive. It will not only help improve your odds of living longer, it will make those later years "better". Better as in, instead of being wheeled around a retirement home, you will be limber and able to live on your own, much longer.

In addition to the personal benefits - I'm convinced there are societal benefits to taking care of your health at this level. Reduced healthcare costs if more people take care of themselves, financial incentive for food producers to invest in healthier options, etc.

Book was very eye opening. Sure, people can just TLDR it and say "Eat well, exercise, and sleep", but there really is a lot more to it. You break those categories out in to specific pieces, most people don't know how to eat well. They don't know how to properly exercise. They don't know how to get the most ideal sleep.

As a side note, I feel that there should be an obesity rate for health insurance, similar to how there is an increased rate for smokers. The risk level is the same, and in the vast majority of cases it can be nullified by lifestyle decisions.

Thanks! It's definitely a valid point. We do get a lot of made up, totally BS data from people doing exactly what you're suggesting. It's usually obvious though and we filter it out. Nothing gets added to the primary DB without us looking at it first. If it looks anomalous, we'll deny it. You don't have to add a rate though, you can still view 99% of the data without doing that.

Things we show to everyone, regardless if they added a rate or not: - Title, location, hourly rate, skills, industry, org size. - Role based search

Things that are locked only to people that made submissions: - Additional notes by submitters, which only about 10% of submissions have - Charts, which are really just formatted versions of the already available data - Location, skill based search - Project based rates (we will eventually unlock this similar to hourly rates, but for now, we don't have enough data and are really in collection mode)

We are actively working on a feature for verified rates though, where we validate that the submitter actually earned the rate they claimed by requiring additional information.

As a side bit, I encourage people - if you don't have a rate to submit, just submit a rate with total default values and leave a comment saying "dummy rate". We will filter it out and you'll still get access to everything.

How are you feeling morale-wise with the company? I've been seeing a lot of negative sentiment around Airbnb as of late, a total transformation compared to what I've seen in years prior.

Before - airbnb is awesome, it's cheaper than hotels and you get a much nicer place.

Today - airbnb is so expensive. Similar price on the surface, but after random hidden feeds the price comes out way more expensive. In addition, there is the whole side of logistics (getting the key), having to take the trash out, do laundry/dishes, etc.

In my experience, the sentiment is kind of justified. Airbnb used to be the cheaper/better option, but it's kind of transformed into the more expensive option for arguably less convenience. Which sucks to say - I loved the original iteration of the service.

I run CRFYI, a site that basically operates like levels.fyi or glassdoor but tailored specifically to freelance/consulting rates.

I'd encourage you to check out some of the submissions on the site to see what people are doing when they earn x amount of money per hour. Don't want to spam the link everywhere but it's in my profile.

Like any service, price is a filter, on both sides. If you're hiring a consultant and they're way cheaper than everybody else, red flags start to go off. Why are they so cheap? Same on the other side - if the consultant is very expensive, you wonder why, and generally conclude that they must be high caliber at what they do. If you have the budget for it, you'll almost always prefer the person that seems to provide the "premium" service.

A funny part of it though, to appear as a "premium" consultant, you don't really need to do anything differently than a regular consultant. You just need to have way higher rates, clients make the assumption from there.

Security isn't going anywhere anytime soon. If you think about the timelessness of war - how those creating weapons always seem to profit, it's kind of like that. Basically an internet defense soldier, and the demand right now is pretty much sky high. Places seem desperate enough in this space to actually train people unlike the software space.

Yeah, big time. It's faster, so crawlers give you better scores for page speed, which is important. Secondly, it automatically renders all of your content, vs if you dynamically load content, the crawler may just see a page with a "Loading" element and never actually view the content itself.

Google argues that it is able to handle javascript heavy client side code in it's crawlers, but the data seems to show otherwise.

Bruh! I love this site. You absolutely could put ads here, in a way that isn't annoying.

I guarantee you that there are game shops out there that would pay you like $10k minimum to "Feature" their game for a month or something.

You feature 5 games a month for 10k, you suddenly are at 50k/mo.

Or, you could go the route of using traditional ads like google ads etc, but those can be kind of spammy and the ad targeting kind of sucks.

I'd really recommend exploring that, and don't feel bad about using ads. You deserve to get rewarded for the excellent site you've put together, a lot of people clearly get value out of it.

I'm curious to learn more about your outreach process, and finding sponsors for your newsletter. Always seems like such a grind - how do you find them? How do you ask them? How do you determine what is a fair rate for sponsorship, etc?

https://www.contractrates.fyi/

Crowdsourced rate sharing, like Glassdoor or levels.fyi, but for freelancers.

Launch was meh, but fortunately have been getting a lot of usage through other channels.

Did you do any validation before building this? Does anybody want it?

I just feel like "AI generated business advice" is so generic and I probably wouldn't pay for it. It would need to be somehow curated to my specific business.

I.e, I describe my business, and it pops out ideas. Even that I probably wouldn't pay a monthly membership for.

Edit: There are a lot of typos on your website

You balance each other out. Assuming you can communicate your thoughts respectfully and argue without devolving into mayhem, this is actually a really powerful combo.

I feel burned out from my job all of the time. Believe it or not, the best way for me to zone work out is to work.. on my own stuff.

If you feel like you're stuck at worth, it's pretty therapeutic to feel productive on things outside of work. For me, that's been side projects, my blog, ice hockey, running, and my family.

There was a point in my life where I really seriously considered quitting everything and just traveling southeast asia for a while. But there's this saying, "wherever you go, there you are". A lot of the issues in my case where actually intrinsic and not related to my environment. I did travel around a bit, but it was actually just super lonely and isolating. All of these cool things to see, nobody to share the view with.

Ultimately it's better to just work with what you've got and set up roots, start growing them. If your job root isn't growing, that's fine, work on the other ones.

I would really advise heavily against just separating freelance/full time as black and white, one at a time.

Really, it should be a slow transition - you work full time, you take up 1-2 freelance clients on the side. As you start to get more clients on the side, and you see a clear path to replacing your income, then you can make that jump.

If you just make the jump as a clear break, it totally can work, it does all the time. But it's just a bit riskier, and it adds a lot more weight and pressure to get deals, which can lead to a situation where you charge less than you are actually worth.

Btw, in my profile, the site I run is for freelancers to basically share their hourly rates. It's essentially levels.fyi for for consultants. May or may not be helpful to you at this stage of your journey

TLDR: - Keep your job, start taking clients on the side - Once you have enough clients and you see a clear path to replacing your FT income, quit and take the leap

Too slow?

I bought a $700 sim racing steering wheel. It's really fun to use, but I unfortunately never really use it. It's too annoying to set up, and I don't have dedicated space where I live to give it a permanent location.

I think it's a great idea. There are definitely job boards out there for freelancers already, (servicescrape, guru, upwork, freelancer), but for actual consulting firms, seems like it doesn't exist.

The current situation is like this.

I am a company in need of a consulting firm to do some project. Lets say hardware engineering.

One of two things happen: 1. I use google search and look up "hardware engineering firm". I then see 2-3 that meet my criteria and I set up calls with them. Go from there. 2. My company has a long history of using one of the big consulting firms. Let's say Deloitte. Since I don't want to rock the boat, I'm just going to set the job up with Deloitte. Deloitte is then going to source a hardware engineering firm and act as an intermediary.

It's really dumb, but that's how it is.

The primary issue I see with your idea is that a lot of projects that companies want consulting firms to work on are actually confidential. They don't want that to be public. It would have to be a mostly 1 sided marketplace, where consulting firms make profiles, and prospective clients can easily sort through them to find a firm that makes sense for their specific project.

Fortunately, Owner permissions on Search console are not that risky. All you can really do is request a site be re-crawled, or request that Google validate some crawl issue that you fixed.

No way around it unfortunately. It isn't unlike RankMath, which does the exact same thing (plug and play for the indexing API), but is built specifically for WordPress.

If you use Google Analytics, you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't prompt the user with the cookie policy pop up. GDPR is a MF. I feel like it's bad UX to have that pop up, and I don't want to get in trouble, so I opt to use more bare-bones analytics and do a lot of custom logging myself.

The tool I use specifically is https://pirsch.io/, which is very privacy friendly and doesn't have any of the stalky type stuff that Google Analytics has as default. Using this, you don't need to have the GDPR compliance pop-up.