ILIAS ISM

🥹 "Your service has literally changed my life"

Indie hackers: Pay $49/mo for a "changelog app" Google: Just a link to @X

just wrapped up my contract working on @GenPPT was a fun one building with Ilias! Helped rebuild the core and scale it to ~1.5k signups/week now available for new design + dev projects if you’re building something interesting, let’s talk

Dozibe was a core part of the recent GenPPT rewrite Super fast frontend dev with a great eye for UI/UX Highly recommended!

✍️ Year 2 update I built a small news site a few years ago. Nothing fancy. No VC money, no PR. Just a domain, some content, and a bit of SEO. It was a simple test site for SEO: just add some content, find interesting news topics, write about them, and try to rank. I didn’t expect much. I was testing. Then this evening I opened my inbox and saw an email from Nestlé Not a newsletter. Not marketing. A formal letter from their Communications Lead in Vevey, Switzerland. They’d found an article on my site about their baby formula recall and the Henniez water situation. They wanted corrections. They’d listed every point they disagreed with, with links to their own timelines and PDFs. They’d even clarified that their pesticide levels were “one droplet in an Olympic swimming pool” I sat there and laughed 😂 A $250 billion company. A global PR machine. And they’d noticed a small 37DR site that ranked high enough to matter. Someone had searched, found my article, escalated it, and their comms team had spent time drafting a response. That’s when it hit me: distribution isn’t about budget. It’s about being where people look. I didn’t have a newsroom. I didn’t have journalists. I had a domain, some content, and a bit of SEO. And that was enough to get on their radar. Most people think you need a big brand, a media team, or a huge ad spend to be seen. You don’t. You need to rank for the right things. When you do, the right people find you, including the ones you’re writing about. That’s why I care so much about SEO. Not because it’s clever, but because it works. A small site can compete with big players if it’s built and optimized correctly. And when it ranks, it gets noticed. That’s the same idea behind what we do now: SEO strategy & content (magicspace.agency), link building (linkdr.com), AI search visibility (aiseotracker.com), audits (seoroast.com). It’s all about getting your content in front of people who are already looking. No gatekeepers, no media buys, a $10 domain and just ranking. The Nestlé email was a reminder: if you show up where it matters, even the biggest companies will pay attention.

@grok @PhantomStays Probably doesn't outperform Wyoming for most people tbh

For Atlas users incorporated before Oct 16, 2025: full Stripe processing fees waived on first $100k revenue in year 1. Standard rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per txn, so on $100k that's ~$2,900 saved (more like $3,200–$3,500 with 1k–2k small txns). Newer incorporations get $2,500 in credits instead.

I wouldn’t recommend stripe atlas. Have so many clients that come to me after using it, unsatisfied. It doesn’t do a “full” job of delivering on what should come with a US LLC. If you want to be a US biz power user, it leaves too much to be desired. It’s the same thing with legal/tax work. If you are a high earner, or want to be, avoid huge businesses like Rocket Lawyer & Turbo Tax at all costs. For tax, structuring, legal stuff, a network hiring approach is more secure longterm.

@thiswillblossom 0

for the past month i’ve reviewed 20+ test edits for our video editor role guess how many candidates i wanted to talk to after seeing their work?

@awpthorp @outrank_so Boom

So effectively starting again from zero but I AM still using various blogs that were GOOD from @outrank_so I've also 'moved' the domain (which is why the results are flat on this screenshot as this is the new domain is still being 'moved to') - TIL that's how GSC works What did I do/learn from this whole SEO situation? - Cannibalised words/pages is a thing - Wordpress is dog shit (Also another reason for the move) - Built a little internal SEO/SAAS tracker for this website and @posterly_ to start seeing what changes make what impact - Stopped blogs entirely for now, got a basket of 50 plus other pages focused on the UAE market - Backlinking is interesting and tbh, a dirty underworld of 'SEO' - AHREFS is a pretty decent free tool, only know about it thanks to @illyism - Building your own 'indexer' is nice, no more manually submitting every page to GSC It's made me want to 'own' my websites more and being perfectly honest it was the nail in the coffin for @wordpress It's become too bloated, too many plugins, too many UIs/settings to worry about when I can just ask Claude (insert your fav AI) to just do what I want and learn/move fast. yalla habibi come to Dubai

@NapierHolland @Wise Actually it is right or you'd have left instead of asking on X to fix it 😉

@illyism @Wise Yeah, you're right that it's not owed. I just don't understand how they think it's a competitive service.

@Wise how do I verify my new address? Your app is begging for me to verify my address (again). I sold my apartment and updated my address in your famously flaky, badly-designed mobile app. Now your app wants me to verify my OLD address. Have you considered hiring skilled software developers? It might help your brand.

@NapierHolland @Wise Oh yeah but just saying they will likely make it easy for you by just blocking you haha Nobody owes you banking access, it's a privilege

@illyism @Wise It's such a shit app. It's a good payment service, but the app is truly appalling. It constantly logs me out and is totally unreliable.

@NapierHolland @Wise Wise blocks everyone for literally no reason

@Wise I've already uploaded the document. It was rejected because it shows my NEW address and your silly, dodgy app wants my OLD address — despite the fact that I've updated my address.

@fonsvandamme @jacobreppuhn morningdewlandscaping.net/service-Lawn-M… just have to call this number

@jacobreppuhn @illyism Oh nice can you do my lawn next? Thanks Jacob.

Bro is building an entire "California lifestyle" brand out of Google Images 💀

@jacobreppuhn Better to actually just go outside

@illyism Better or worse than using AI slop?

@awpthorp @levelsio wild

@illyism @levelsio Yep nobody ever cleans these

I didn't expect the Airbnb filter to look like this. @levelsio was right

@nemesiscodex @ahrefs It is a great place for sure

@illyism @ahrefs Oh, I know where that is, good location. Have a great stay!

🇵🇾 Checking in from a rainy Paraguay! @Ahrefs just dropped a secret update on their homepage 👀 What do you think it is?

@mattmerrick16 @ahrefs Haha

@illyism @ahrefs Makes me want to build lots of stuff. But I gotta focus!

WE'RE SO BACK

it's over for me