Dan

I studied the top-performing tweets from creators with 50k to 1M+ followers. 4 patterns kept showing up across all of them. Here's what actually drives reach on X:

everyone's sharing their AI tool stack. the tools aren't the advantage. access to AI is the same for everyone now. the advantage is knowing what to build, who to build it for, and how to get it in front of them. AI is the accelerator. taste is the moat.

i used to pride myself on coding ability 8+ years in AI, trained for programming olympiads, the whole thing now? in 90%+ of cases, you don't need to code to build a business the real assets aren't technical: • attention • brand • relationships these are the non-replaceables in a post-AI world

My method for improving fast on X: 1. Find 10 creators in your niche doing 50k+ 2. Pull their top 20 posts by engagement 3. Write down why each one worked 4. Notice the patterns 5. Apply to your own ideas This isn't copying. It's studying the game before you play it.

How much does your business depend on you being present? What's the risk?

@natiakourdadze Congratulations on this!

Got 2 new customers for GetViralSEO .com in the past 24 hours! 🥳 That’s +$96 in MRR.

i've bought the courses. joined the communities. done the challenges. the thing nobody tells you: the strategy is only 20% of the work. the other 80% is reps. showing up when the numbers say you should quit.

The barriers to starting a business have never been lower. Zero capital, zero team, just you and the internet.

Just signed up for the waitlist for @stanleyforx. An AI tool that replaces a $5,000/month Twitter ghostwriter. If you want to grow on X too, sign up below: vitaliidodonov.com/waitlist-p

Day 61 - Building an Automated Content Engine in Public Previously I’ve written about automating my content pipeline—reducing content generation & scheduling to <11 min per week This way I get a post out each day, even on days where I’m extremely busy The next step was to look at analytics. I’ve asked Claude Code to build a dashboard for my content, and it did a decent job Now I can focus again on reviewing & improving my content further How about you, how do you go about creating and improving your content? Would love to trade notes

@Iamkingsleyf @levelsio @brian_lovin cost optimization, makes sense

@danlockin @levelsio @brian_lovin Yet to switch, but I am hoping to save a few dollars

I get 4,150,000,000 (4 billion) requests and 300,000,000 (300 million) visitors per year That'd cost me $338,913 if I wasn't on a VPS like @brian_lovin below Instead I pay $2,932/year or 115x less because I host my sites on my own VPS My VPS servers are way too big and usually only use 10% of their resources so I could even go with $300/year probably if I optimized more (but I don't care) Especially with AI these days it's easier than ever to host your sites yourself, and way cheaper! 100-1000x cheaper!

@natiakourdadze noting this

@danlockin They offer 100K free credits

@Iamkingsleyf @levelsio @brian_lovin what made you switch?

@danlockin @levelsio @brian_lovin Currently on railway, planning on moving to coolify.

@GasperCrepinsek for sure it's the differentiator too, your story is uniquely yours and the POV

@danlockin feel like personal stories are gonna get more and more important as content gets AI-fied, haha

I studied the top-performing tweets from creators with 50k to 1M+ followers. 4 patterns kept showing up across all of them. Here's what actually drives reach on X:

@GasperCrepinsek email lists still at the top of what people should be growing

@danlockin I mostly sell via emails these days

I've made $111k across 40+ digital products. But NOTHING moved until I stopped “planning”... And started selling. Awkward? Yes. Uncomfortable? Double yes. The ONLY thing that moves the needle? Triple YES. Nobody built a successful business from their comfort zone.

@kapnap_n @levelsio @brian_lovin ah yes, I've seen supabase been used commonly too that makes sense

@danlockin @levelsio @brian_lovin Various.. got sucked into supabase when I started coding professionally - so a lot of them rn. Have built APIs hosted on VMs queried from Vercel but kinda annoying. Likely going to migrate to a Digital Ocean VM with Postgres someday.

so much gold being dropped about distribution lately if you're just launching your product remember: just obsess over distribution!! worry about features and retention way later like i'm talking maybe months later once you have 300+ downloads/day

@maubaron that's smart, focusing on the peak need (which is when they decided to install it as you've spotted) am taking notes

im confident we have on of the highest review rates in the world for our android app this absolutely crazy but not accidental we design our whole onboarding around optimizing our review success cause we know how important they are if you want the same results study our app: - ask for a review during the onboarding - don't ask too early or too late - ask for it after an aha moment

@ErnestoSOFTWARE @prayerlock was thinking that iOS users had more inclination to buy for your case, is it uniformly spread in terms of conversions?

I’ve been gatekeeping this app scaling method 😭 So we run a lot of ads for @prayerlock And sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s working organically So we built the Android version And since we are only running ads to Apple All the downloads spikes in Android gives us a clear picture on how our organic is performing

@DavidPreti Do you use Claude Code with Qwen?

Migrated 6 agent crons from Claude to Qwen 3.6 Plus last night. Quotas were dead. Again. Memory reindex, analytics, weekly reports — all running fine at 5x less per token. Not every job needs the flagship model. Most need cheap + reliable.

@DavidPreti being able to show your weakness is actually a strength and is uniquely you

@danlockin My go to one !