What we learned running the numbers.
Hooks That Work: Change Plus Hope
A hook stops the scroll by showing something has changed and pointing somewhere better.
How Meta's Algorithm Actually Finds Your Buyers
You do not pick who sees your Meta ad.
How Do You Know Your AI Agent Is Actually Good? Evals for Operators
How to evaluate AI agents in production: golden sets, sampled review, tripwires, and the 8-Minute Check: eight hours of agent work reviewed in eight minutes.
Hub-and-Spoke SEO for Service Businesses: Why Your Blog Does Not Rank
Most service-business blogs are a pile of orphaned posts.
Price by Income Share: The 1% Monthly, 10% Annual Rule
Buyers do not judge a price in dollars.
Write the Landing Page Before the Ad
Researchers at Xerox found that people follow information the way animals follow a scent, and leave the moment the trail goes cold.
Launching Ads for a New Offer: Treat Ad Sets as Budgets, Not Audiences
When you launch ads for a new offer, the first question is not which audience or which ad.
Lead-First Nurture: Follow-Up That Gives Before It Asks
Most follow-up is a string of asks: checking in, circling back, still interested? A lead-first sequence gives something in every message and asks once.
Local Lead Gen: Zip-Code Targeting and Messenger-First Ads
A local business has one advantage a national brand cannot buy: it knows exactly where its customers live.
The Long Ad: Why 800-Word Facebook Ads Still Convert
An 800-word Facebook ad sounds like a mistake.
Conversation, Not Call: Lowering the Energy Cost of Booking
Amazon patented buying with one click in 1999, and the patent ran until 2017.
Argue Against the Story Your Market Believes
For decades, doctors explained stomach ulcers with one story: stress, spicy food, and acid.
Market Maturity: Where Beats When Beats What Beats How
In 1995 a Gartner analyst drew a curve of how new technology gets hyped, crashes, and recovers.
Max Allowable CPA: The One Number That Decides Your Ad Budget
Before you ask what a lead costs, work out the most you can afford to pay for a customer.
Read 'Results', Not 'Leads': The Meta Reporting Mistake That Hides Winners
A university looked biased against women in its overall admissions figures and was not, department by department.
Model-Agnostic by Design: Big AI Bets Without Vendor Lock-In
How to make serious AI commitments while staying portable across model vendors: the swap test, what to standardize, multi-model routing and vendor posture.
Ads for Buyers Who Already Know: Name It, Fix It, Hand It Over
Some buyers already know they have a problem.
The Hook Is Change: Why News Is the Oldest Content Engine
Rome posted daily public notices from 59 BC, and people gathered to read them.
The Next Problem: How Every Solution Sets Up the Upsell
A French philosopher was given a fine new dressing gown and ended up replacing his desk, his chair, and his pictures.
The Lead-First Email Sequence: Eight Emails, Written Out
A shaving cream became a national brand by putting six small signs in a row along the highway, one line each.
Offer Economics Before Launch: Velocity Cap and Allowable Cost
A cinema subscription at 9.
The Patterns Behind the Offers That Sell
In the worst month of the 2008 recession, a carmaker told buyers they could return the car if they lost their job.
Offers Start With Principles, Not Products
Most offers are built backward: pick a format, write the ad, then decide what is inside.
One Article, Twenty Pieces
Dickens sold one novel in nineteen parts before it was ever a book.