Unlimited Free Forms Were the Whole Marketing Budget
Tally gives away what competitors meter, converts about 2% of users to paid, and passed $5M ARR bootstrapped. The math only works because free users do the distribution.
Topic
Business
Articles on operating a small company that survives: finding customers from public signals, pricing your product with confidence, defending against chargebacks, and the operating decisions that separate businesses from projects.
The 30-Hour Blog Post That Sells an API
ScrapingBee failed twice, then rode long technical tutorials to $1M ARR and an eight-figure sale to Oxylabs. Their content playbook, step by step, with the numbers.
A $4 Million Exit Where the Investors Agreed to Take Nothing
Josh Pigford published every term of his Baremetrics exit: three payments, no earnout, a guaranteed $3.7 million, and two seed investors who agreed to walk away with nothing.
Ten Customers at $29 a Month Before the Product Existed
Cold LinkedIn messages went nowhere, so Alex West sold the list before it existed: ten customers at $29 within two weeks of a Product Hunt launch. The whole arc, from $87 on day one to a $53,700 peak and back down.
56% Opens on 328 Cold Emails: The Cadence That Grew a Freelance Business 14x
Laura Lopuch sent 328 researched cold emails as a new freelancer with no network and grew her revenue 14x in about four months. The method is documented down to the day of the week.
Two Cleaning Companies, Opposite Playbooks: $19-an-Hour Employees or Contractors You Never Meet
Chris Mondragon runs Queen Bee Cleaning past $1.5M a year with employees and a $4,200 monthly ad budget. Chris Schwab ran Think Maids to $60K a month from another continent. Both published their numbers.
Guillaume Moubeche Kept $60,000 of a $160,000 Launch, and It Was the Right Trade
lemlist started in 2018 with $1,000 and reached a $150M valuation without outside funding. Four times its founder traded short-term money for distribution, and the AppSumo deal shows the exact price.
An Event Is a Variable Your Team Named. The FTC Just Called One Health Data
The FTC, Utah and California say Hims shared health information with Meta and Snap through customer lists and automatic website Events. Four surfaces leak a category, and you can inspect all four in half an hour.
The Cheaper Microsoft 365 Plan Sits Behind the Cancel Button. The CMA Opened a Case on 29 July
Classic plans keep the old feature set at the old price: 59.99 pounds a year against 84.99 for Personal. Microsoft does not document a route to them. What two regulators say happened, and the renewal audit to run.
1,741 Partners Behind One Click: We Counted the Vendor List Your Banner Draws From
noyb filed a complaint on 30 July over a consent banner covering 1,741 advertising partners. We downloaded the IAB framework vendor list the same day and counted it: 1,196 vendors, 428 of them relying on legitimate interest, and one declaring an 11.8 year retention period.
Seven Warning Letters in One Day: What It Takes to Substantiate a Made in USA Claim
The FTC wrote to seven companies on 6 July over Made in USA claims, three months after settlements of $625,000, $167,743 and $75,000. The standard is stricter than most sellers assume, and the fix is usually a rewrite, not a resourcing project.
An SMS Code Proves Somebody Rented a Number: What to Check at Signup Instead
Phone verification stopped being an identity signal once controlling numbers at volume became a monthly expense. A cost-asymmetry table for signup controls at their published prices, our arithmetic at 10,000 signups a month, and Radar rules that connect the signal to the moment money moves.
Your Payment Iframe Does Not Cover the Page Around It: The SAQ A Line to Read
PCI DSS v4.0.1 added an eligibility criterion to SAQ A about script-based attacks, and it targets merchants who embed a processor's payment form rather than redirect to it. FAQ 1588 gives two ways to confirm it, and the email that gets a usable answer from your processor.
The $2,200 Domain That Became an Onion Business Shipping 64,000 Pounds a Season
Peter Askew won VidaliaOnions.com at auction in 2014, then found a Georgia farm to fill the orders. He grows nothing, ships nothing, and answers the phone three hours a day in March.
Cursor Priced India at 649 Rupees: How to Choose and Defend a Second Country Price
World Bank purchasing power parity data gives you a defensible starting number for a regional price. Here it is for ten countries, next to what Cursor actually charged, plus the two mechanisms that ship a second price and the checkout dropdown that undoes one of them.
Google Ads Requires a Passkey From August 5. The Setup Takes Up to Nine Days
New OAuth refresh tokens for the Google Ads API need a passkey from 5 August, and a new passkey takes one to two days to pair plus a possible seven-day trust delay. The arithmetic says create it today.
Your AI Bill Does Not Name a Customer: Three Layers That Fix Attribution
Provider cost reports group by workspace, model and day, never by your customer. The three layers of instrumentation that produce a per-customer number, with the exact fields to send and a worked conversion from one usage row to dollars.
Fiverr Has 700,000 Fewer Buyers Than a Year Ago, and the Ones Left Spend 16% More
Fiverr's Q2 2026 release shows annual active buyers down 21.9% to 2.7 million while annual spend per buyer rose to $368. The mix shift inside those two numbers tells you what to sell next.
The UK Just Closed Consultation on Letting Apps Link Out for Payment. Build the Link Now
The CMA's steering consultations for Apple and Google closed on 28 July 2026, with a decision due later this year. Google has already repriced UK Play fees, and the external web link rate is published.
AI Shopping Agents Read Your Product Feed, Not Your Product Page
ChatGPT's merchant feed programme is limited to approved partners, but the work that qualifies you is the same feed hygiene Google Shopping has required all along. The fields to fix, in order.
Google Changed Its Review Rules on 24 July: Undisclosed Incentives Now Cost You the Stars
Incentivized reviews are not banned. Reviews given in exchange for money, discounts, vouchers or free products without a clear and prominent disclosure are, and the enforcement route removes your star ratings.
A Fake Copy of Your App Is on the Store: Use the Legal Form, Not the Report Button
Three users sued Apple on 27 July over a counterfeit Sparrow Wallet that took $1.8 million. For anyone with a named product, the useful question is which form actually removes a clone, and what it demands before you file.
Click to Cancel Died in 2025. Your Cancel Button Is Still Mandatory in California
The Eighth Circuit vacated the FTC's click-to-cancel rule on 8 July 2025. California's automatic renewal law is stricter on the one point founders care about, and it applies to any business with a California subscriber.
One in Four TikTok Ad Clicks Fails an Invalid-Traffic Test. Measure Yours Before Buying a Tool
Published per-platform invalid traffic rates run from 7.57% on Google to 24.20% on TikTok. A five-step routine using clicks versus sessions, Google's 500-address IP exclusion limit, the Click Quality Form, and the spend level where a paid tool starts to pay for itself.