GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

Sorry for ghosting y’all last couple months. Was lost in the Dungeon for a bit.

In this letter:

• 1 tactic to build.

• 1 quote to inspire.

• 1 meme to make you think

Tactic: How To Build Your Own AI SEO Writer Like Jasper, Cuppa, (Whatever) - Ditching SaaS & Building Your Own

You know what really sucks? Paying for 100 SaaS subscriptions, forgetting about them, and then getting hit with all those annual bills again.

Most tools out there are simply user-experiences built on top of basic automations and APIs.

Tools like HYPEFURY come to mind. You’re literally paying for a UX built on top of the Twitter API. Even though objectively I know that tool is probably worth it, if I can figure out rebuilding that, you bet your ass I’m going to do it and share it with this newsletter, YouTube, and the whole f’n world.

The ROBIN HOOD of SAAS 🤣

We’re entering an era where a significant number of SaaS tools you are using can be rebuilt with AI plus low-code or no-code options, saving you a ton of moolah.

Tools like Make.com, Airtable, Replit, easy API connection tools, etc.

Plus it’s fun and way easier to customize.

I love tools like Cuppa, but hate paying for them, and if you want, you can rebuild them easily with two free tools and 2 extremely cheap APIs.

I’ll show you how to do it in the video below, and as a call-to-action, if you have ANY questions on the tech, want my prompts used, or want the Make automation itself… just jump in our Discord and ask away.

Here’s the video - kiss your CuppaJasperKoala subscription goodbye:

Quote To Change Your Perspective

Or pesky SaaS subscriptions?

The best way to get started automating things is not to try and automate it all away - you will get lost in the sauce and achieve nothing - instead: Find ONE specific problem in your business to automate. Built it, automate it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll start finding more things to automate, and more, and more. Eventually the robots will be working over time for you.

Really Makes Ya Think

damn.

Make sure you’re automating the right things.

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

Welcome to Torch Wednesdays:

• 1 quote, story, or idea to inspire, and how to apply it

• 1 philosophy, mental model, side quest, or tactic to try

• 1 meme to make you think

Announcement: The Dungeon Discord Archmage channels will be going paid soon. If you have the Archmage role already, you’re good to go. If you’ve been curious about joining the community, but haven’t taken the plunge yet, now’s the time to join for free access to our premium content - join here.

How To Build & Host Unlimited Static Sites For FREE Using Cloudflare Pages Built With WordPress

Want to build and deploy 100s, 1000s, or even berjillions of sites but hosting f—cking sucks and you’re a cheap-ass so you’re stuck with your garbage free shared $2.99/mo hosting plan?

Enter Cloudflare Pages + Simply Static + LocalWP (WordPress) + ZipWP… and the infinite site hosting scheme that costs you $0.00.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to get a 50+ page site live on the web in a couple hours flat, with no hosting costs, no software costs, using AI, a few free tools, and Cloudflare.

Very Important Caveat: these are static sites live on the web, there’s no live WordPress admin dashboard or CMS. We will be building in WP (locally and with AI), exporting the static files, and using Cloudflare to deploy the static files. Please understand what that means before trying this. Once the site is live, you cannot work on it like a normal WP build: you must rebuild it locally, and redeploy it (it’s easy!).

What this tutorial is not:

• SEO, article writing, AI-writing tutorial (nope)

• How to use WordPress tutorial (no)

• Affiliate or MMO tutorial (sorry)

• Installing GSC, GA4, branding, conversions, or anything like that (def not!)

• etc.

This is just a tutorial for getting these sites up: you’ll need to figure out your content and everything else on your own, but if you need help with that, our community is perfect.

What can be built with this and who should be using it?

• Unlimited live static sites or any static sites built using good ol’ familiar WordPress (doesn’t have to be WP, but we will focus on WP in this tutorial.)

• Unlimited staging/concept sites to show clients (perfect for agencies doing multiple staging build outs or using pre-built sites to lure clients).

• Affiliates doing quick site build outs, AI-niche sites, landing pages, etc.

Brief overview and tools we are using:

• Cloudflare allows anyone to create unlimited free static sites, called Pages, and yes, you can DNS it to your own domain.

• Simply Static let’s anyone create a static HTML version of their WP site for free.

• LocalWP let’s you build a WP site locally on your machine, so during the build out phase, no need for hosting.

• Zip WP is optional in this process, but will help speed up development. Zip WP let’s you use AI to quickly build out a WP site. I’d say it gets you about 80% there, with the theme, copy, pages, etc. all built in a few clicks with AI.

• ChatGPT (or whatever flavor of bullshit artist you choose) for free content generation. You can be much more efficient with this part using something like Cuppa as it connects to WP, but there are costs to using tools like that, and I’m trying to keep this t00t free, damnit.

Sidenote: If you need training on using Cuppa for programmatic content, jump in our Discord and navigate to the #-Archmage channel. You can create 100s of articles quickly with Cuppa, and auto-publish them to WP during the ZipWP portion of this training.

Getting started:

Create a free Cloudflare account, install LocalWP on your machine, and sign up for ZipWP. For SimplyStatic there is a free WP plugin you will install once WP is running on LocalWP, so no need for an account, but they do have a premium option as well which comes in handy if you want extra features.

FYI - in this tutorial, I’m not going to explain how to use every single tool. Figure that out on your own. I’m going to show you my process to launch these sites. Each of these tools has plenty of educational content, youtube tutorials, etc. I will link the Doc’s below.

Step By Step

Important: Want to use AI with ZipWP to spin up your sites and skip building the WP build manually? Start here, or move to the next section if you want to create WP sites manually:

ZipWP AI-Sites Instructions (Help Docs)

1. (Optional) - Use ZipWp.com and simply walk through all of their prompts to build out a starter version of your site using AI. This will save a ton of time and takes ~2 minutes to get the initial site done. ZipWP will install a theme like Astra, write the placeholder copy on each page, create the branding etc. all based on a few prompts. The bummer here is you only get 2 AI sites on their free plan.

2. Get the site as close to production ready as possible. Meaning: create all your posts, pages, finalize branding, etc. that wasn’t done in the spin-up. Use something like ChatGPT to create all your copy, posts, and pages. You want it to be pretty much finished to your standards. Note: in the free plan, AI-sites are only live for 24 HOURS. So if you’re not done, it’s OK! Just move on to step 3 below, because you can finish your site in LocalWP.

3. In ZipWP plugins area, install the WPvivid (free) plugin to create a backup of your site. Just search “WPvivid” in the WP plugins. Activate it. Here’s Wpvivid docs if you need them.

4. Create a full backup of your site, choose “WordPress Files + database”, that will backup the ENTIRE site, HTML, images, WP, etc.

5. Now download the zip file somewhere safe.

If you’re skipping ZipWP, and building manually from scratch, start below.

LocalWP Instructions (Help Docs)

Here is a really good YouTube demonstration on setting up LocalWP via Mac/PC/Linux by Ferdy (You only need up to about the 6:20 mark)

LocalWP gives you a local environment to work on your sites. This is important if you ever want to update or change the sites. Once it’s live in CF, you can’t simply login and update the live site because there is no back-end - only front-end (static) files.

I found LocalWP honestly to be the most technical part of this, but once you learn how to use it, it’s an incredibly powerful tool.

1. Log in to LocalWP and check out the help docs above to spin up a new local WordPress site (single site, NOT multi site), log in to the site panel, and:

   1. If you’re building WP from scratch, build out your site and get it 100% done - just like any WP build, using LocalWP let’s you choose theme, create content, etc.

   2. If you started with ZipWP above, log in to your WP sites admin panel, download the WPvivid plugin, and restore your backup that you created in step 3 above. Your site will now be a clone of your ZipWP build, and you can continue where you left off.

      • At this stage, finalize your site so it’s 100% done. Sometimes stuff can get funky when using a backup to rebuild a site, so you’re going to want to go back thru the site really quick and make sure everything looks good.

2. In your WP admin area, navigate to Plugins, search Plugins for SimplyStatic, Download the SimplyStatic Plugin and activate it.

SimplyStatic Instructions (Help Docs)

SimplyStatic is an amazing plugin that let’s you build static sites fast. REMEMBER: these are static HTML sites, not dynamic sites. SimplyStatic will basically compile a full static version of your site. Every page, post, etc. Read their FAQs here if you’re not clear on what all that means.

Continuing from above:

1. Make sure there no errors showing in the SimplyStatic settings (common if for example you do not have SSL set up in LocalWP).

2. Click the “generate static files” button, then when it’s done, click the “click here to download” link as shown here:

SimplyStatic WP Plugin Dash

CloudFlare Instructions (Docs Here)

Don’t ask me to explain why CloudFlare let’s you host as many free static sites as you want, but they do - these are called “Pages” in CF.

1. Create a new “Website” in Cloudflare, and configure DNS so CF is the DNS provider.

   • Click “+ Add site”.

   • Add your domain in the next page.

   • Choose “Free” on the next page when they try and sell you a subscription.

   • Click “Continue”.

   • Complete the steps to setup DNS - CF will scan for DNS records, you’ll need to go back into your domain registrar and DNS it over to CF.

2. Next, the actual SimplyStatic site files. This is where “Pages” comes in. These are not the same as “Websites” in CF. Confusing, I know.

   1. Click on “Workers & Pages” on the left nav.

   2. Click the “Create” button on this page.

   3. Click on the “Pages” tab.

   4. Click “Upload Assets”.

   5. Give it a project name (the site name probably).

   6. Upload your SimplyStatic export here.

   7. Click Deploy Site. This will automatically put your site on a free subdomain on CF.

   8. By now, your DNS should be working with your custom domain.

   9. Go back into “Workers & Pages”

   10. Click on the Page you created.

   11. Click on “Custom Domains,” then “Set up a custom domain.”

   12. Add the domain you DNS’d over earlier, click continue.

   13. Click “Activate Domain” and wait for DNS to finish setting up.

   14. You should be all done at this stage, and CF will have pushed your static site to your live domain, and a staging site.

   15. IF IT’S NOT LIVE ON PRODUCTION - Troubleshoot: go back into Pages, Choose your Site, check in “Custom domains” and make sure it’s Active, Click on “Deployments”, Click “Create new deployment”, Reupload your SimplyStatic files, click on “Save and Deploy”

What’s Next? Updating Your Site & Advanced Version Using GitHub.

Ok, at this stage you might be wondering - great, wtf do I do now? How do I update the site? Good question: since these are static files, you can do two things:

1) Free Way: Rebuild in LocalWP and redeploy: 

Simple: go back into your LocalWP, work on the site in any way you want, add new posts, pages, whatever. Do the SimplyStatic steps again and download a new SS file. Then repeat Step 15 above, redeploy. Boom you’re done.

2) Advanced Version: Using GitHub and the PRO SimplyStatic option 👾 

Ok - here’s the crazy thing.

You can actually push all the files to GitHub and Deploy them to CF via a Git repo and the pro version of Simply Static. The advantage to doing it this way is you don’t have to log back into CloudFlare to redeploy. You can just use Simply Static to push your files to Git-Hub and automatically update your CloudFlare front end.

[Not affiliate links] Here’s exactly how, and here’s a video tutorial.

Really Makes Ya Think

Favorite tweet of all time.

I chose this because of how damn long that tutorial was. My bad for that. But here’s the weird thing: I know that most people will not follow through with long tutorials. Sad. Makes ya think, too. If you’re stuck, feel free to jump in our Discord and ask for help! That’s a high leverage skill, ya know.

Quote To Change Your Perspective

Apply it:

• Focus only on what you can control.

• Do not linger on the past, live in the moment, dwell on the future.

• Ask yourself; on death's door, what did I live for, and did I build that free static site Sam showed me?

If you didn’t build those free static sites on CloudFlare, that’s OK. According to Seneca, f-ck it. Who cares. Not me.

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

What’s new? I’m going to try a bite-sized Wednesday edition of the Dungeon, calling it “The Torch”.

• 1 quote, story, or idea to inspire, and how to apply it

• 1 philosophy, mental model, or tactic to try

• 1 meme to make you think

Tactic: How To Build An Automated Idea Machine

A flow of endless ideas to power your content creation is hard.

One day your ideas flow like wine, the next you’re staring at a blank screen and every idea sounds cliche and dumb. Feelsbadman.

That’s where using AI and automation tools to build a never ending “infinite idea machine” comes in real handy.

If you’re already in our Discord, the video training is live in the #-Archmage channel.

If not, here’s the break down on how to get started:

Twitter tweet

Quote To Change Your Perspective

Apply it:

• Realize that your perspectives are limited, flawed (human)

• Seek out new perspectives (people) and contexts (waters)

• Growth happens at the intersection of new ideas and action

Expanding your network and being open to new ideas, contexts, flavors expands your opportunity zone.

Really Makes Ya Think

Time in the Markets Beats Timing The Markets…. but why not both?

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

In this edition:

• Óðr

• Dungeon News

• Profit Centers

• Sidequests

• Respice Finem

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

Óðr - In Norse mythology, Óðr is a figure associated with the goddess Freyja. The Old Norse word Óðr means "divine madness, frantic, furious, vehement, eager"

The Seeker is a section for beginners, new journeys, and transitions from old to new.

I recently tweeted a poll asking Twitter what they believe the number one most important business skill was in one word. Many said things like “sales”, or “communication”, and I don’t think those are wrong, per se. However, one response stood out to me. 

“Delusion.” 

You have to be fucking crazy to wake up every day and build a business or walk away from a steady paycheck. To be an entrepreneur. To believe in yourself so intently that you bend the arc of the universe to align with your purpose, your calling, and your direction.

If that’s you, pat yourself on the back, you mad lad.

Few can do it, and most will simply lie down for someone else’s calling for them, never pursuing their own. If you passively allow the world to pull you along, then you are building someone else’s dream, not your own. 

You don’t have to be that delusional, by the way, only delusional enough to believe in your vision in your small corner of the world or the internet to the exclusion of all the naysayers, to ignore the voice in your head that is telling you you will fail, to ignore all your limiting beliefs, your history, your friends and parents telling you you can’t do it, or it’s a stupid idea, that you should just get a job. Etc Etc.

Remember that With outsized risks, comes outsized rewards. 

The Dungeon News

• Dungeon+Forte SEO Friday call went off without a hitch this time, we covered:

  • Topical authority / EEAT (and why it’s probably bullsh*t)

  • Local SEO strategies and chatbot funnels

  • SaaS SEO strategies

  • ToFU/BoFU strategies

  • Press release SEO strategies with Randy the News Guy'

And a ton more!

Here’s the recording «

The Sovereign

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

Neo’s job was to escape the matrix. Yours is to become the CENTER of your personal matrix.

Your job is to identify the profit centers, remove them, and become the profit center in your own life. 

Control is conferred, in a profit-driven system like capitalism, well-being, happiness, and even biological imperatives, are all dependent upon access. Access to capital, access to privilege, etc. Who is controlling your access, and how do you escape?

 "If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” - Tony Gaskins

This quote gives me anxiety. Yet, it is so real, and so true. A cliche as well, and something I’m sure you’ve seen making the rounds in the solopreneur, entrepreneur, hustle-culture algorithm feeds. 

An employee is a profit channel, a business owner is a profit center. Entrepreneurs build profit (revenue) channels. They do that by hiring, automating, delegating, innovating - and yes, firing.

Start planning your escape, and to be realistic about your timeline. It might take you years, or even decades. But you need to start now. For young people, it can take less time, as they may be less encumbered with debts and family obligations, which is why if you’re young, and reading this now, the best time to start is yesterday.

Sidequests

How-to guides, blueprints, ideas I'm trying now, stuff that's working.

• How to build an automated “Idea Factory” with AI, Airtable, and Make so you never run out of content ideas: (video guide) and (Step By Step)

• Old affiliate site smashed by HCU or an update? Why let an old money-printer die - here’s how to revive an old site with GSC+Google Ads.

• How to growth hack your solopreneur career like a VC-funded startup (link).

• How to create a review funnel and 10X reviews of your business (link).

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• Good writing is ideas with wings - if you get it right, you can live rent free in the minds of millions, get paid for it, and they’ll share (market) your words for you - possibly for thousands of years.

• Most lose sight of fundamentals. They want to take big swings, but want to ignore practicing swinging the bat. You may hit a homerun in this analogy once, but you won’t be a hall of famer if you don’t practice your swing over and over again.

• 90% of success is simply not giving in to your worst impulses. Doing the boring thing over and over, and not chasing shiny objects.

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business. Sorry it took so long to get this one out.

In this edition:

• Alumni Networks FTW

• Dungeon News

• Qui Quearit Limina

• Law of Diminishing Returns

• Sidequests

Tiny thought: Seek thresholds, be comfortable on the edge.

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.” - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Master

Where and whom you work with, may be more important than what you choose to work on.

From the PayPal mafia, to the AI mafia - is optimizing for alumni networks the key to future opportunity exposure?

“If there’s someone greater out there to work with, go work with them. When people ask for advice about choosing the right startup to join, I say, “Pick the one that’s going to have the best alumni network for you in the future.” Look at the PayPal mafia—they worked with a bunch of geniuses, so they all got rich. Pick the people with the highest intelligence, energy and integrity that you can find.” - Naval Ravikant (source).

Many of the so-called PayPal mafia are now members of the so-called AI-mafia; from building billion dollar commerce platforms, to riding the network wave and striking it rich in the AI boom, it looks like Naval got it right.

If you’re young, and starting out: Where you choose to work, and who you choose to work with is infinitely more valuable than your morning routine, gym routine, hustle mindset, etc.

More reading: “The AI-mafia is forming”

Dungeon News

• Dungeon+Forte SEO Friday Space: Listen to the recording of our space from Friday, July 19th, on “Local SEO Strategies, Rank and Rents, etc.”. (NOTE: due to the crowd strike disaster yesterday, there were a number of technical issues with the space, but I’m told the recording is still Worth listening to.

• Damien is progress rapidly on his SEO tools project, theSEOlabs. Find it in the #Follow-Alongs section of the Discord.

theseolabs.com

The Sovereign - Qui Quaerit Limina, “Who Seeks The Threshold”.

"A liminal deity is a god or goddess in mythology who presides over thresholds, gates, or doorways; "a crosser of boundaries" - Wikipedia

Maybe you are at a crossroads, maybe you are unsure of your direction. Maybe you are looking backwards, when you should be looking forwards, or vice versa. The past carries stories, and the future is for making them.

If that’s you, standing at a crossroads, the most important step is the first step. That’s the most important thing to do, and the hardest thing to do. 

The second most important thing to do is to keep moving your feet forward. A journey begins with a single step, but you won’t reach your destination unless you keep going. 

The third most import thing to do - the thing that most people fail to mention or consider, is to enjoy every single step, to suffuse it with meaning, to treat it with reverence, really to celebrate the entire journey. 

You won’t reach the destination if you don’t love the journey, you’ll get easily sidetracked and the promised riches of side quests will distract you endlessly.

Be comfortable way out on the edge, with your foot poised on the threshold, like Janus, become a god of doorways. Open and close them fast.

Janus - God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, and endings.

Sidequests

Links, thoughts, news, random, ideas. Sidequests.

• The 7 highest ROI activities I’ve pursued in business.

• 6 Ways I scaled a B2B SaaS from $100 MRR to $100K+MRR in 12 Months (as a team of 3 with a small budget).

• How to build mental toughness as an entrepreneur (I insult your modern privilege to give you some perspective)

• Avoiding burnout as a solopreneur by seeking your permissionless edge.

Respice Finem - Look To The End

The attention economy is brutal. Honestly, exhausting. You have two choices:

• Play the game

• Make your own game

The Law of Diminishing Returns: An economic principle stating that as investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, cannot continue to increase if other variables remain at a constant. As investment continues past that point, the rate of return begins to decrease.

For creators, marketers, and hustlers: As everyone churns out similar content (ads, SEO, SMM), standing out becomes increasingly difficult, leading to diminishing results.

Solution?

• Play your own games

• Create your own walled gardens

• Forge your own blue oceans

• Operate on the extreme bleeding edge

• LEVERAGE.

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business. Apologies for the delay on this issue.

In this edition:

• The most powerful people on Earth

• Dungeon News

• The Dead Internet

• Sovereign Moats

• Year 20NOW

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

“Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.” —Jean de La Bruyère - and, “Children are not things to be molded but are people to be unfolded.” —Jess Lair

IMO - The most powerful people living today are children. Their power is untapped, un-manifested, and as yet un-realized, however, and sadly, they are also the most vulnerable in society.

Yet, you cannot argue that one day they will hold the reigns, and we will be at their mercy.

They also have access to specific skill sets and powers that most adults do not; I am speaking about “play”, “imagination”, “fluidity of thinking”, etc. They are simply less rigid in their thinking, and better adapted for exploration and big, wide, imaginative ideas.

There’s a lesson in there for everyone starting out (Seekers): remember when you were child, how nothing seemed like work, and everything was fun and new and something to explore?

This is a powerful mode of thinking if you’re just now beginning your journey. Make it fun, make it an adventure, think big and wide, avoid sunk costs, adapt fast, and learn to play.

The Dungeon News

It’s been ~6 weeks since I sent some news out, so a lot has happened:

• On Friday, Yukinari and I hosted a X Space. Tons of value dropped, especially on local SEO tactics, boosting conversions on your offers, and more. The recording is available inside the Dungeon Discord below.

• Dungeon Member Damien released his free keyword tool and accompanying Follow Along (in beta currently) with millions of keywords in the database. There will be a free and paid tier eventually, but for now, it’s free to play around with. I’ve found it to be pretty awesome tbh - you can find it in the #Follow-Alongs channel.

• There are a lot of updates across the board in other Follow Alongs, especially from RUSH, who has been diligently moving forward and updating the community. GG bro.

The Sovereign

“It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once." - Kate Morton

The Internet as we know it will die. I didn’t say “go away,” I said it will die. Reborn, or replaced, with something mostly unrecognizable, that is the nature of things. Dinosaurs get wiped out by asteroids, and the Web 2.0 will get replaced by something completely new - a 99.9% AI-generated, VR/AR-hellhole - and, yes, we are to blame. Read the Dead Internet Theory here.

My prediction? (Mostly useless as are all others, but here it is anyways):

Twitter tweet

Some ideas for Sovereign Moats:

• Build your own walled gardens - membership areas, forums, newsletters, gated content, SaaS, etc. Stuff accessible behind locked checkout forms. All public content on the web (for now) will get harder and harder to monetize.

• Use public facing content to drive conversions into your walled gardens - think like the marketer here, not the “Blogger” or “Niche Site Owner”, using your content as top-of-funnel driver into your buyer funnel.

• Adapt or die: things will move faster and faster. As AI chips get exponentially more powerful, and compute gets stronger, these disruptive systems will disrupt faster and faster. Therefore, adapt or die.

• Justin Welsh did $1.6M on his latest launch. Lordy.

Future Tripping

The future appears to be NOW, this is the year 20NOW. I renamed this section from The Year 2050, to Future Tripping. Who cares.

• Perplexity AI trojan-horsed Google SERPs - a taste of their own medicine, or the greatest growth hack ever seen? Either way, fuck this shit, however, if you’re doing SEO, I’m sure you’ll find some ways to abuse this. GG.

• I’m still buying Robotics ETFs, robotics companies, etc. AI is NOW, robotics is tomorrow. The 10 year upside on robots is fucking nuts. Get in early suckas.

Respice Finem - Look To The End

Who is surrounding you on your death bed? What emotions are on their faces? How are they looking at you? Are they silently waiting for you to expire, or wishing for one more moment with you? Are they thinking about what’s in your will, or what’s in your heart? Are you alone or surrounded by loved ones? Contemplate it. I mean really think about it. Do this simple exercise and many truths will be revealed to you.

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die" — Claude Campbell

GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

In this edition:

• The Protean

• The Archmage

• Puer Aeternus

• C.R.E.A.M 🤡

• Respice Finem

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

Because Proteus could assume whatever shape he pleased, he came to be regarded by some as a symbol of the original matter from which the world was created. The word protean, one meaning of which is “changeable in shape or form,” is derived from Proteus.

Transformation. Metamorphosis. Proteus. Shiva. Build, Destroy, Change, Build Again.

Many of us arrived where we are now because the last life we built burned down in flames. Or went out with a whimper, or no whimper at all, just a wet fart. POOF. Job gone, wife gone, career not valuable anymore, or something worse: boredom, or apathy, sapped our will to live and we wake up one day invisible to the world.

Suddenly the abyss opens up before you and everything you worked for is evaporating, energy dispersing elsewhere in the universe - maybe in the form of money, labor, or something else. Regardless, it’s gone, and time to move on. Yes, it happened to me.

It is right at the apex (or nadir) of shit going absolutely sideways that we learn who we really are. If you cling to sinking ships, you go down with them.

There is really only one solution: transformation - becoming something else, trying something new. Transformation is fundamental to every law of nature (hence gods like Shiva, Proteus), but not every individual embodies this or can harness it’s power. Many people only manage it once in a lifetime, or not at all.

Therefore: Embrace the Protean, be Shiva. embrace fast, transformations as often as possible. I’m not just talking about re-inventing your career: tactics, strategies, traffic channels, offers, businesses, mental states, ideas. Never give in to sunk cost fallacies.

The Dungeon News

• A wild Archmage appears! Until now, roles have been fairly meaningless. But now they begin to reveal themselves. The Archmage role grants you access to premium content in the #Archmage channel, with assets already being added, and more to come. At some point, this role will stop being granted automatically. Get in now suckas.

  • Spreadsheet: 40K USA Cities W/Data for Local Sites

  • Training: Programmatic SEO + 500 pSEO ideas

  • Amazing sharing and growth happening across the Dungeon in the last week:

  • Strategy: Indexing links with Google Sheets (Damien + Malphas, and more)

  • Tiered building strategy (InPursuitOfProfits)

  • Updated code for running GPT in G Sheets (IDID)

  New Follow Alongs:

  • Member RUSH has a new FA as well, after shutting down his first one: “Local Massacre” - the name says It all, I believe? He is progressing fast - and we granted him the Paladin Role.

  • Member Damien has started a new FA: “Local Spam to find easy R&R opportunities” - combine this strategy w/the new spreadsheet dropped in #Archmage: 🖨. He’s already ranking in some territories.

The Sovereign

"When you're alone, you're free to try things you may feel uncomfortable doing for the first time in front of others."

• The story of Jesse Livermore, a scrappy kid-turned millionaire trader by ignoring the status quo - high risk, high reward, big fall. Lesson in here.

• Puer Aeternus - The Eternal Child. The child doesn’t worry about how others see him or her, they simply play the game. They want the reward, don’t want to do the work. Dualities are funny things.

Not much to share in this section today.

The Year 2050

This section explores any and all thoughts I have about the future.

• SERP / Algo prediction: Indexing and Ranking algo’s will become AI-agents, much smarter. Site builders are all asleep at the wheel for SEO I believe.

• The Devin video was faked - C.R.E.A.M. Thanks, Ralf.

• “The good effects come first, the bad effects come later.” GM:

Twitter tweet

Crazy how hard this hits, and the wisdom of this is relevant to so many things we work on:

True with entrepreneurship, marketing, and more.

Respice Finem - Look To The End

"The greatest challenges humans face in their lives are two: 1) the challenge of where to start, 2) the challenge of when to stop." -Sameh Elsayed

• Test fast, test often, collect test data, let the winners run, and let the losers go. Sunk cost fallacy is deadly and should be the antithesis of the autist-capitalist, marketer, and chad Dungeon dweller. Marketing, like investing, requires a strong thesis, and ruthlessness: if your thesis is right, you lean into it. If it’s wrong, you cut your losses immediately and move on.  

• Ability to organize, parse information is possibly one of the highest-leveraged skills, and one of the hardest things to maintain, let alone improve. As systems get ever more complex, entropy starts to creep in. Therefore, as you grow and obtain more knowledge, continually simplify your processes.

• I saw a tweet recently, can’t remember from who, and it stuck with me. The gist: do you want to be spamming the internet in 20 years from now? Do you want to be a nIcHe SiTe OpERaTor when you’re an old gray? No. These are revenue streams, use and abuse ‘em. Then use the earnings to do something meaningful for yourself.

Remember to look to the end, because the end is looking at you.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

First, apologies for the delay in getting this edition out. They say time and tides wait for no man, in this case, the tides were dragging me out to sea for a bit.

In this edition:

• The Dark Forest

• Dungeon news

• The Answer Engine

• Wild Beast, or a God?

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

"The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost" ― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

The quote above is a perfect analogy for building internet businesses on the fringe. I’m not talking about VC-backed, SaaS, software startups, etc. I’m talking about the kind the rest of us build, out here in the cold beyond the walls of The Citadel.

If you’re just starting out, or building your lonely, anon, micro, or highly-leveraged business out here on the fringe with you… the Dark Forest is a concept worth exploring and incorporating into your mindset.

It may sound dystopian, it may sound grim, it may sound lonely, but there is power in truth and in owning the reality: if you are building a solo-internet business, you are the armed hunter, the prey, the civilization, all wrapped in one, stalking the Dark Forest.

There is only one goal in this zero-sum forest, kill or be killed. Unique advantages in Intel (alpha), knowledge, skillets, and financing (leverage) are the best weapons you have.

Seek leverage.

The Dungeon News

• Yuki and I had our second space, the topic was “Black hat strategies working now,” and it was an eye-opener. We discussed local Rank & Rent, parasite SEO, doorways, and more. I especially enjoyed the alpha dropped by the homie Sonny in the last 5 minutes or so… Here’s the recording.

• Speaking of Black Hats 🎩, check out this Black Hat here, only for the bitter and jaded SEOs tired of sucking it up to the Citadel.

• Member e-SEO built a CTR bot and needs people to test it out, give him a shout in the Discord. Link.

• #Follow-Along News: IDID started a new Follow Along: Semantics Tomfoolersy - Local SEO

Alpha occurring now in the Dungeon (like RIGHT now, if you’re reading this, head over to the Discord and jump in - remember that Alfa is fleeting, sometimes comes and goes in seconds - jump in now.)

The Sovereign

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. - Aristotle

You can growth-hack your solo business the same as a startup. True story, I once Growth hacked a real estate startup to $100K/mo from zero cold emailing scraped lists, running automated webinars, and straight up selling over the ol’ phone. You can do the same with any business.

Some light reading:

• Scaling TikTok channels with VAs. (Thread).

• SEO turbo autist X post on dom vectoring. (Over my head)

• Building niche job board sites instead of just niche sites. (Link)

• A solopreneur doing $291K/mo selling his programming courses. (Link)

The Year 2050

This section explores where it's all going.

• Your own AI-CTO is on the way, and it’s coming sooner than you think.

• An AI that tests 100s of variations of your prompts to arrive at the best one? Yes, prompt engineering agents are here.

• Search is dead, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Google doesn’t want to be your search engine anymore, they want to be the Answer Engine, the middle-man to the entire Internet - long live search:

Twitter tweet

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• Slow down, to speed up. I realized recently that I’m only productive for so many hours in a week, therefore, I now take Mondays off completely and cram it all in Thurs-Fri. Because fuck Mondays. Give it a try.

• If you’re hitting a wall and it’s impossible to get into any kind of flow state, something somewhere is trying to tell you something. Call it the universe, God, or your own subconscious. Go outside and get lost and find a new path.

• The best business advice I received lately was to plan your business activities around things you love to do in your life, not the other way around. 

• “Perfection” is an anthropocentric concept that doesn't exist anywhere in nature and only exists in the minds of men, women, and unfortunately - and especially - children. Nothing else in nature worries about achieving a state that is antithetical to creation. 

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business. You have to move through darkness, to emerge into the light.

First - sorry I am a week late with this edition.

In this edition:

• The Great Clappening

• Black Hat Opsec

• $BOME

• The Big Lie

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

"Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of the truth." - Einstein (Supposedly)

Maybe you’ve been living under a rock? If so, Google dropped a core update last week, and Twitter went insane. Tales of entire GSC accounts getting de-indexed, influenzas getting targeted, build-in-public SEOs getting spanked-in-public, sites gone, moneys gone, manual actions, spam penalties. If you’re not new around here, you’ll know this is really nothing new.

The lesson? Be incredibly paranoid and protective of your income streams. Do not embarrass the Citadel, do not give them any breadcrumbs to follow (whether you are white hat or black), do not reveal any domains, DO keep all your sites silo’d away from each other in separate GSCs, GAs, hosting, etc.

And above all: learn to view the Powers That Be for what they really are; massive power structures beholden only to their shareholders. They do not care about your content site, or your business.

To simplify further and perhaps more usefully: Search is just a traffic source. Use it, they will use you.

Start here for some Opsec black hat paranoia - H/T @tehseowner:

Twitter tweet

The Dungeon News

• Yukinari and I had our first space, discussing the March Updates, and more. We had a great group of speakers, including Zeshan (got a Manual Action account-wide, sorry bro), Connor Showler, Safak, ScaleWithBrown, and more. Here’s the recording.

• RUSH is CRUSHing it with his Niche Index follow along. “Site 1 (programmatic) jumped from 700 to 12k indexed pages.” - meanwhile, inside the same FA, @IDID is crushing local Pay Per Call offers.

• We hit 600 members this week in the Dungeon, with vibrant conversations happening in a wide range of topics: SEO, local R&R, crypto & DeFi, and a lot more.

The Sovereign - Solana Degen’s Running The Numbers

Getting involved in crypto this cycle is 100X easier than the last bull run.

This week, we witnessed millionaires being minted on Solana from investments in the $100s - yes, a few hundred dollars aped into the right meme coins on Solana could have netted you millions. Of course, this is mostly 100% pure luck, being in the right place at the right time, or knowing the right people and being in the right alpha groups. In other words, it’s pure gambling.

$BOME - Book of Meme - ran to a 1.26 billion dollar market cap in less than 48 hours. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is cooked btw, not investment advice.

We haven’t seen a feeding frenzy like this since 2021, and now, with all the action on Solana, it’s easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before.

Sending a DEX transaction on ETH during the last bullrun could cost you upwards of $500 per swap at the peak, now, on Solana, swaps can cost you .0003 per swap, and the ecosystem around it has grown exponentially and made it 100X easier to get involved.

I’m using BONKbot on Telegram (ref link) right now to easily manage trades, find emerging tokens and pools to trade, manage MEV risk, and a lot more.

The Year 2050

This section explores any and all thoughts I have about the future.

• Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI, exposed the big lie - your content is not owned by you. When mega-corp’s like Google and OpenAI use your content to train their systems, it’s “the open Internet”, when you do it to build your tiny business, you’re a spammer. For more proof, witness the SERPs: when Google published mass AI content (SGE), it’s progress, if you do it, your sites are rekt.

FFS - stop pretending these companies are benevolent overseers shepherding us into some golden future - Going forward, treat these companies as they treat you: use ‘em, lose ‘em, and move on, as they will do the same to you.

Twitter tweet

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• There are watchers everywhere, remember that, unless you own the traffic source, your traffic isn’t safe. If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s to not reveal your sites, offers, or campaigns - snitches are everywhere, stay safe.

• Content is NOT king, traffic is king - content is the Jester - he wants to keep you engaged, looking the other way, while the court schemes behind your back. Point is, worry less about creating helpful content, that was always a Psyop - worry instead about traffic.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business. You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, delve the depths, and know darkness to know light.

In this letter:

• Who to compete with

• Dungeon news

• Alex Becker

• Raktabīja

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

"It's only you vs you in this grand game called life."-Yukinari

Twitter tweet

This is some of the best advice you will ever get starting out on your journey; be inspired by others, but only compete with yourself. Are you 1% better at this shit then you were yesterday? That is the way. This also happens to be some of the hardest advice to follow, as it takes an enormous amount of self awareness, but once you find that center, amazing things happen.

You will be constantly inundated with influenzas income shots, brag posts, lambos, and more. See past it. Either: A) They put in mountains of work to get there, or B) it’s not what it appears to be.

Dungeon News

• 👺 Scammers are starting to impersonate myself and the Mod’s in the Dungeon yet again (Crypto season). Be safe and remember that neither myself nor any Dungeon Mod’s will ever DM you first unless publicly discussed in the Discord.

• 🧙 There is a TON of progress in RUSH’s Niche Directory Follow Along (Join in here.)

• ➡ There is a lively discussion taking place this morning by member IDID - can you spin local pages and rank and bank? Your input request in the Dungeon.

The Sovereign

"Indeed, "brute force" solutions are often characteristic of advanced cultures, not primitive ones." - Henry Spencer

Love him or hate him, Alex Becker sold Hyros for $100MM - some interesting thoughts from him here on what it takes. Boil it down: TIME IN THE GAME.

You can growth hack your solo business the same as a startup. The trick is to stop overthinking tactics and strategies, and start executing ruthlessly.

I was CMO at a real estate startup in Seattle in 2015. I was the #3 hire, we had zero in revenues when they hired me. We reached $100K/mo within a few months.

How? Basically we just tried everything. We did everything. We sent millions of cold emails to RE agents around the country. Hacked the sh*t out of our funnels, webinars, upsells, downsells, sold over the phone, brute forced our way to profits. Prior to me being there, they scraped well known sites to build their own databases.

There was no finesse. Only brute forced marketing and sales. You can do the same with your blog, course, personal brand, whatever.

The Year 2050 - The AI Clones Are Here

In Hindu mythology, Raktabīja was an Asura (loosely translated as demon). Raktabīja had a boon that whenever a drop of his blood fell on the ground, a duplicate Raktabīja would be born at that spot.

• Influencers are being cloned and armies of their AI deepfakes are being used to peddle products, propaganda, and disinfo. (Watch Video).

• Alibaba trolls OpenAI by making the Sora woman sing. (Watch Video).

• Coinbase proves yet again why we can’t have nice things by wiping out $100 Billion in $BTC market value in with a glitchy user interface. (Read it.)

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• For the SEOs in the house: Google is a search engine, not a content engine. It doesn’t exist to grow your business. They’re playing you, you need to learn to play them. GG.

• If you’re not in control of your destiny, of your day, of the minutes and hours of your day, of the tasks you choose to work on, then someone else is. Identify who/what that is at all costs and start planning your escape.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business. You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, delve the depths, and know darkness to know light.

Inside:

• Funny Twitter SEO beef and consultants.

• Godfather offers.

• Dungeon news.

• Sovereign Individual <> Centralized Authorities

• The hidden god.

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

A master is a beginner, who kept beginning.

• “Just build a brand” and the fallacies and privileges of consultants, in-housers, and out-of-touch technocrats who think the internet is only for themselves and their ilk.

• Subtweeting this hilarious SEO beef. ‘Majin coming after Joe with such drivel. Why does this matter for beginners and seekers? At the outset of your journey, just do what works, sell, collect revenue streams. If you can build a “brand”, great, but most cannot - instead, focus on survival.

• 50K views on this post by my friend Chris Walker on Reddit outranking original source article - for the article. Why’s it matter? Remember that Google is a machine learning algorithm tied to an index. That’s it. Find the buttons and levers to push, and operate the machine, or it’s going to operate you. HCU and niche site devastation proves my point.

• Speaking of Reddit - big LOL - did The Citadel overplay it’s hand on their recently announced back-room handshake firehouse-of-reddit-data deal? Source: Glen Gabe via Grindstone.

The question you need to ask yourself, in this and all things, will you blindly follow the rules of The Citadel, or - knowing that they are a monolithic, centralized machine designed only to further centralize power, knowledge, and access to enrich anointed members - will you choose to follow your own rules?

The Dungeon

“People either build a castle or a dungeon. The former by their virtues, pull people into positive edifices with gainful impression. The later by their vices, push people into negative huts with painful oppression.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

• Godfather offers - what are they and why should you create one? A “Godfather offer” is an offer you can’t refuse. I dropped an example for cold email outreach inside the #agency-and-services channel. You can apply this principle to your affiliate campaigns, agency services, outreach, and ecom products - and a lot more.

• Dungeon Member RUSH has been dropping new updates for his Niche Directory follow along.

• Yukinari and I had our first Dungeon Xwitter Space - we discussed everything from SEO to Google rankings, to the hero’s journey arc from white hat to black hat SEO, to chaos theory physics nerd shit applied to the pace of AI technology. We’ll do more soon and updates will follow.

The Sovereign

"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule" - John Locke

The goal of any centralized authority is to hoard and gate-keep access to the levers of power; information, data, backroom handshakes. Corporations, polities, networks, knowledge banks - all operate on these same principles.

The goal of the sovereign individual is the same: to centralize authority unto themselves.

Bookmarks:

• Buying Reddit upvotes and accounts - via @pinch_of_black.

• Zero WP plugins alpha - via @Tehseowner and @elralfchristian

The Year 2050

This section explores where it's all going.

• Sora was released and the death rattle of a million startups was heard around the internet. Imagine being an animation studio right now? Adapt or die. Use it or lose it. Wen API access?

• Gemini is still complete shit, but the power is in the ecosystem. I can already see it coming together.

Respice Finem - Deus Otiosus

Deus Otiosus - the hidden god - a high god who has withdrawn from the immediate details of the governing of the world. The god has delegated all work on Earth to ancestors or nature spirits, who act as mediators between the god and humans. This concept occurs widely in Africa, Melanesia, and South America.

• Becoming the Hidden God: the more you delegate, automate, and outsource, the wider your field of influence, the higher your rate of execution. Soon, AI agents will act as our mediators online - they already are for me, working tirelessly 24 hours per day.

• I adhere to the concept that the Universe and everything in it is a black box, you can’t know what’s inside, and you can’t predict everything that comes out of it, all you can do is experiment, record outcomes, and try and iterate on them to get better outcomes.

• If time is an arrow, only the destination matters. If time is a frozen river, every action and every thought is frozen forever, a monument to your life for eternity.

• I used to think about money as a fickle, finite thing, it ebbed and flowed in my bank account, only representative of the labor I put in.

Remember to treasure your time, your children, family, and friends - you can’t take your niche site portfolio with you at the end.

This newsletter is about growth, in life and business. You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, delve the depths, and know darkness to know light.

What’s inside?

• Following charlatans vs Roman generals

• Dungeon weekly updates & news

• How to start a dropservicing agency fast (in 2 hours)

• Finding your leverage

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

And I learned in the deepening twilight
This glorious verity,
‘Tis the torch that the people follow,
Whoever the bearer may be. —Author unknown

From an interesting speech I found on the interwebs, this quote and idea can teach us a lot about setting the right path for ourselves, in life or in business.

You will encounter many pitfalls along the route of your journey, especially when starting out, but none so dangerous as following charismatic charlatans - false torchbearers that promise brightly lit futures, but offer only dead ends.

Continuing from that same page, this is a quote from Lucius Macedonicus, a Roman general:

Information is key and knowledge builds our reality - shapes our thinking and molds our actions - and the source of your information dictates your path. Make sure you are following the right torchbearers.

“Thoughts are things, you can create your own and place them in the world, or let others create theirs and place them in your mind.” - Me

The Dungeon

“The shadow is the greatest teacher for those who seek the light.” - Source, Trust Me.

This week in the Dungeon it’s been quiet, with only a few updates to share:

• There are 3 #follow-alongs happening now you learn from and follow along with - each with a few updates this week: Faceless YouTube Channels, Niche Site Directory, Rank and Rents.

• 580 users hit, with plenty of alpha going around in Crypto and Biz-opps

• Yukinari and I will begin to do spaces on X soon (Thoon), so watch out for those if you’re interested in joining in.

• If you missed the Quicky Training for pSEO and my 500 keyword ideas for programmatic content, you can grab it here.

How to start a drop servicing agency - fast

• Find an outstanding seller at a great price - they should really deliver a quality product and it should be SIMPLE - this is why I went with selling LINKS (it’s dead simple). You do not want a lot of back and forth as a middle man agency. Simple service > Quality product = Money.

• Find a source of buyers (FB group, Slack group, Discord, Twitter, SEO, whatever)

• Build some Stripe order forms or just take cash with PayPal

• Sell, Buy, Fulfill, Repeat

• From there, scale with contractors, build a funnel for it if you want or whatever.

Yes, it works.

The Sovereign

"To be called a sovereign nation, a nation has to be able to control its own borders. It is controlling your own destiny in a way, and we don't control our own borders" - Tom Tancredo

What really is all this nonsense about being a “Sovereign Individual”? It’s about creating freedom, simple as that.

IMO, the time of the individual is now, the time of the collective and the nation state is waning. Oh, for sure, control is still squarely centralized, but this may be the only time in history where anyone from anywhere can step outside of that system if so desired and actually thrive.

Small thoughts:

• The Sovereign makes his own way, seeks his or her own tribe, builds owned income streams, builds systems that free him or her from conventionally controlled systems like finance. 

• Seek always your own path, or forever walk someone else’s.

• Curiosity + Persistence + Time in The Game + Leverage = freedom. 

• The internal world is where you build your external empire.

Respice Finem

Consider leverage. Starting out, you need leverage, and at every stage of your growth you need more leverage.

What is it and how do you get it? In the simplest terms, leverage is force. Power to move the needle, hearts, and minds. Power over competitors, partners, the market. When you are starting out - unless you were born rich or lucky - you likely have zero leverage. Money, traffic, audience, specific/secret knowledge (information and data), skills - these are all forms of leverage.

You need leverage and the stones to use it ruthlessly.

Email list as one example: the ability to tap into a stream of buyers with a well written email and the click of a button. An asset that only you control. This is why you will see “build an email list!” recommended in every beginner marketers course or article. An email list is one of the easiest forms of leverage to build starting out. You own it, can move it, control it.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, and know darkness to know light.

Programmatic SEO Quicky Training + 500 Keyword Ideas

As promised, here’s the link to my quick training on how to build 1000s of pages on the fly using templates and keyword variations (AKA, programmatic SEO) - plus my Doc for 500 prog SEO keyword ideas to get your juices flowing! Once you’ve checked that out, make sure to jump in our community if you have questions.

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki (Few)

Apes together, strong - perhaps you’ve heard this? If you witnessed the Great Wall Street Bets war against hedge funds, you know what I’m talking about. 

For the Dungeon, it’s Fortiores Una - Stronger Together. Remember D&D and Dungeon Crawlers back in the day? Maybe you’re not Sam-level old... s’okay. Anyways, point is... you don’t make it out of the Dungeon alone. You need a sold crew of adventurers.

Networking, sharing, working together. This is the way. In our world, there is a strong tendency to want to fly 100% solo.. The Urge To Go It Alone. 

We’re Sovereign Individuals, right? Yes. But that doesn’t mean “alone”. 

As a solo-business, affiliate, whatever - your greatest asset is your knowledge, data. The wider your net for collecting data (network and processes) the wider your surface area for hitting winners.

The Dungeon - Fortiores Una

“The shadow is the greatest teacher for those who seek the light.” - Source, Trust Me.

• New #follow-alongs live: 

  • Rush is building a NICHE DIRECTORY site, a programmatic content directory - think [product] vs [product]. 

  • Noah is building 10 Local Rank & Rent sites and partnered with a very high-ticket service for revenue. If you’ve wanted to start some local R&R sites, this is a great one to check out.

• We cracked 550 users this week and the community is picking up. We’ve got SEOs, agency builders, niche site operators, hard core affiliates, local SEO and Rank and Rent operators, Spamooors slamming Reddit, parasites, and more... 

• Plans for the near future: Yukinari and I are planning on having live calls with thought leaders in various spaces: the format is a LIVE shit talking session in a Dungeon channel, Q&A, everyone jump in and have some, roast, etc. IF you have ideas for ppl we should reach out to, reply back and let me know - I’ll do my best to bring them into the community. Can be crypto, degen, MMO, etc.

The Sovereign

Like any technology company, information and data is the Sovereign's edge. Seek more, hunt more. Your value to the herd will increase exponentially.

1. How to make 1k rank and rent assets in a day 🤪, by @Spamdexing

2. Here’s some alpha for you on Parasite SEO, most are doing this completely wrong IMO (no one liked this post lol, keep doing Outlook, NGMI)

3. The easiest way to start your first AgEnCy, is to resell someone else’s high-quality service. Dropservicing basically. Layer on some profit, and boom, new “agency”. Yes, it’s just arbitrage, but IMO the easiest way to start. I started reselling link providers, had my first customer, and paid via PayPal all within an hour. My profit on this hustle is 50%. Fast, easy.

4. Via @APX_loot, here’s a good mental model to run through if you’re considering building a solo biz.

5. Being a 2nd-tier only affiliate - sounds like the good life tbh.

6. Hang on, are you building a solopreneur business, or just another job?

The Year 2050

Invest where the world is going in 10-20 years, not tomorrow.

• Google announces Gemini Pro available everywhere and image generation available in Bard - at this point, do we give a f—k about Bard or Gemini? I’m at the “show me the money” stage of no f—ks given with Goog and A.I.

• OpenAI feels it needs to tell us that “GPT-4 won’t create bio weapons”, sure bud (just SERP weapson, amirite? Kek).

• Speaking of OpenAI, they announced a 50% price decrease using GPT 3.-5 API - wow lol - I am now spending approximately $0.01 per programmatic SEO article using Cuppa. Details at the top of this letter.

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• List or Community? Build both. The problem with email lists is it’s a one-way communication channel. List + Community/Audience beats just a list every time. 

• A watched pot never boils, same for these affiliate campaigns. Stop obsessing over them and learn to launch fast, and often. Launch 100, you will find one massive winner with asymmetric ROI. Facts.

• You don’t need perfect landers, perfect copy, or the best looking page. 9 times out of 10 an ugly lander will do the trick. Just launch. Same goes for SEO, YouTube, etc. - just starting beats perfection every time.

• Layer value into everything you do for your personal brand. MOAR value. A business is much more than targeting keywords in SERPs, you need to get people in your gravity well so they keep coming back. This doesn’t apply to your spam campaigns.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, delve the depths, and know darkness to know light.

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day"

If you’re looking for new directions to expand into right now, here’s what I’ve been reading.

• Written in 2007 by Eli (@bluehatseo on X), this gem of a read by an SEO legend still has so much to offer: SEO Empire Part 1

• From the MMO archives, anyone else ever think about the time Shawn Hogan got caught up with the FBI for making $28mm cookie stuffing as an eBay affiliate? I’m sure there’s more to this story.

• I’ve been learning a shit ton from Jacky Chou’s YouTube lately, I am impressed at the velocity and range of experimental content. Dude’s an experimentoor beast. Everything from black hat hacks, to local SEO. Choose your flavor.

• I’m leaning more heavily into (gasp) programmatic SEO (no, it’s not a dirty word or black hat - don’t listen to the weirdo purists spouting their Citadel Approved Content Propaganda), it’s worked well for me in the past, and new tools out there make it WAY easier with presets for programmatic - check a few ideas below if that’s something you’re interested in:

Twitter tweet

Speaking of programmatic if you want to really learn more - bow down to the programmatic overlord of SEO, Ian Nuttall who has…. some sites with BILLIONS OF PAGES? Yes, “levels to this game”, and he’s certainly reached god-tier level.

Take a fuckin’ bow!

Twitter tweet

The Dungeon

“The shadow is the greatest teacher for those who seek the light.” - Source, Trust Me.

In Dungeon-related news, we’ve powered through our Faceless YouTube Channel follow along.

Hiring, testing contractors, uploading your first video, etc. - all available in the #follow-alongs channel in the Dungeon Discord.

We are currently in the growth stage on my channel, my contractor is rocking along and pumping out about 1x video per day and right now our biggest limitations are our limits inside inVideo, and getting a good thumbnail design template.

We’ll do many more such follow alongs (hopefully) in the future, leaving a directory of case-study guides for anyone to find and use.

More Dungeon news:

• Yukinari and I plan on doing weekly spaces soon on the ol’ bird app (topics for sovereign individuals and Dungeon crawlers: finance, investing, MMO, etc.)

• Inside the Dungeon, we are going to start strong-arming knowledgeable and visible (influenzas) to join us on shit talking strategy sessions LIVE in the shadowy halls of the Dungeon (hopefully bi-monthly). We’ll do it when there’s a sufficient amount of butts in seats to make it worthwhile to our guests. SOON (as they say)

The Sovereign

Legacy financial and cultural systems are mental gravity wells holding you down to Terra firma.

The Automata are coming, as you’ll see in the next section.

The Sovereign knows this, he/she understands that society and tech are moving fast. You don’t complain, you don’t worry - you know that as with every other technological revolution, more opportunities will be created.

For every job lost, 10 will take it’s place.

Is that good or bad? No, there is no moral compass to growth.

Will some be hurt? Yes, but those that catch the wave will be just fine.

The robots are already here - you just need to open your mind to the possibilities.

A Sovereign Individual seeks freedom from legacy systems (employment, financial systems, cultural expectations, etc.) in order to become financially and mentally free - no overlords, only personal sovereignty. Automation is yet another tool in your toolbox to get you closer to that goal.

The Year 2050

This section explores any and all thoughts I have about the future.

The very soon (way before 2025, like next year or two years out) future of business is autonomous teams of agents doing 90% of the work for you…

…and here’s a great video showing you that it’s actually happening right now.

You can already build teams of AI’s to do a ton of heavy lifting for you: SMM agents, content agents, etc. - all running autonomously and working together. This is GPT next level shit. I’m not saying it’s prime time yet, or ready to be unleashed, more infant-level at the moment, but…

Soon. Few. Etc.

Respice Finem

Bite sized thoughts on building a business you care about, that lasts the test of time.

• Work with A-players only, partner with A-players only. Everyone else will hold you down. Be extremely generous with them, inverse law.

• Hire fast, fire fast. Test often, move quickly. You can’t afford tire-kickers.

• Seek your personal edge, and swim in Blue Ocean waters. Avoid overly competitive waters, unless your “edge” is better than everyone else’s. What do I mean by an Edge? Data, knowledge, something no one else has and no else can compete on.

• A niche site isn’t a business, it’s advertising inventory for someone else’s business. Go deeper, create your own products, build community, etc.

• Time in The Game, like Time in The Markets beats every other edge.

• Business, like LIFE, is not about decreasing your failure rate, it’s about exponentially increasing your failure rate. IYKYK.

This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

You have to seek in order to find, scrape the bottom, delve the depths, and know darkness to know light.

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

The way is revealed for those who seek.

Time in the Game is the best way to beat the odds - if you’re new to this game (or any game - don’t care if it’s WiFi money, health, fitness, etc.), the absolute best way to guarantee your success is Time in The Game.

Bet on this over anything else: if you weren’t born rich or a lucky SOB, you need TiTG - 10,000 kicks like Bruce Lee, you’re GMI, Hoss.

But, that’s only the first “X factor” IMO to guarantee your success.

Here’s all 4:

Twitter tweet

The Dungeon

“The shadow is the greatest teacher for those who seek the light.” - Source, Trust Me.

This week in the Dungeon, we’re kicking off a #follow-alongs channel - what is it?

Free alpha for Discord members.

A Follow Along is old school build-in-public style content… they are common on affiliate marketing and MMO forums like BHW, affiliatefix etc.

Basically, someone has an idea for a campaign/side hustle to start, and documents every step of the journey - making it easy for someone else to follow along. Everything they did to get it live, fails, successes, everything.

Anyone can post one: these are awesome for keeping yourself accountable, and getting feedback and input on your strategy, copy, landing pages, ads, whatever.

I’ve got Day 1 of my first follow along for you all:

I’m automating a fully AI/outsourced and faceless YouTube channel. Will I succeed or fail? IDK, but I’m showing everything I’m doing, from who I hire to the Job Description I used, to software and tools… and even revealing the channel URL.

Along with the videos in the Discord channel, you can access the day-to-day step by step guide on Trello (Free), and you can click “follow” on the follow along of your choice to get notified of new activity.

Day 2 of this series is already live and includes: hiring process, video prompts, and more.

In Day 3, coming next week, we’ll tackle some of the hard stuff: monetization, affiliate programs, testing contractors, etc.

Want to build a 100% automated faceless YouTube channel with us?

The Sovereign

The Sovereign makes his or her own way, avoids legacy system traps, and looks for ways to operate outside of the system. 

New year, new outsourcing/automation goals.

I’m trying to pretty much outsource or automate everything this year - I know, it’s a fools game, and the more you automate… well, it’s a quality race to the bottom.

You run the risk of your content getting stale, your game gets stale… whole thing starts to scrape the bottom, but still:

There is soo much in my business that is suffering because I am simple in the way, the bottleneck.

Get rid of all that: automate, outsource it, Sam Altman GPT that shit, whatever it takes.

Sovereign Individuals need to work towards being the profit center, not being the work center.

Are you really “sovereign” if you’ve just built a job for yourself? I think about that often, the goal was to escape employers.

The Year 2050

This section explores any and all thoughts I have about the future.

Are you watching these spaces for opportunities? I am.

• Robotics/AI (see my last post on this)

• Anti-aging tech

• Batteries

• Quantum Computing

• Nuclear Fusion

• Near earth resource extraction

Each of these industries is going through break neck speed innovations, yet are still a long way off from mainstream/in every home etc. - therefore, these are sectors to be looking into if you have an investing horizon of 10-20 years.

NFA/DYOR.

Respice Finem

Looking towards the end, how can we build better businesses that are more risk-off?

Today I’m reading this awesome article by Gregory Welch. Here’s a quote: