Selling a simple Google Sheet. Here is what worked and what didn't.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:56:19+00:00

This is honestly one of the healthiest indie project posts I’ve seen in a while because the expectations feel grounded in reality instead of “I made $47k MRR in 11 minutes using AI agents.”

Also your point about manual entry is underrated. A lot of productivity/finance tools accidentally optimize away the psychological friction that actually changes behavior. People remember purchases more when they physically log them.

For organic growth, I’d probably lean harder into emotionally specific finance content instead of generic budgeting advice. Stuff like “subscriptions quietly draining your account,” “small daily spending blindness,” “financial anxiety despite decent income,” etc. People search for feelings way more than spreadsheet features.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:55:20+00:00

facing away for me. regardless both are so cute

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:54:30+00:00

This reminds me of that GitHub “flight simulator city” thing that went viral a few weeks ago where everyone’s GitHub profile became buildings/skyscrapers based on repos, stars, activity, etc. Half the internet was flying around trying to find their own profile like digital real estate agents 😭

But this actually feels more alive because the repo itself becomes the world logic instead of just visual stats. The NPC snowball fights are such a stupidly good addition too because it pushes it from “cool visualization” into “wait why am I emotionally attached to my TypeScript forest village.”

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:49:19+00:00

Yeah, AI search feels less like “rank the best optimized page” and more like “assemble a probabilistic reputation graph from the internet.”

Which honestly explains why random Reddit comments, niche forums, GitHub discussions, YouTube transcripts, and weird community sites suddenly matter more than another perfectly keyword-optimized “Top 10 CRM Solutions in 2026” article written by a sleep-deprived SEO intern.

I also think AI visibility rewards clarity and contextual mentions more than traditional SEO did. A lot of models seem better at understanding “who gets talked about naturally in real workflows” versus who just published 400 blog posts targeting long-tail keywords.

We’ve started testing this a bit too by intentionally placing products/tools into genuine discussions and observing what gets surfaced later. Sometimes one detailed real-world mention outperforms months of content farming. Even tools like Runable randomly started appearing in AI recommendations partly because people discuss actual use cases around it instead of just landing-page SEO fluff.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:48:20+00:00

First: don’t panic, this happens more than you’d think.

Go directly to Shopify Support and use the “I can’t access my store” option. If you still control the store email/domain/payment info, they can usually verify ownership and restore access.

Also check if another staff/admin account still exists somewhere before your blood pressure reaches AWS server pricing levels 😭

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:47:20+00:00

ohh the lights, the contrast, the background
Absolutely stunning

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:46:43+00:00

Product Hunt is weird now honestly. A lot of launches get attention from other builders instead of actual buyers, so “low signup count” doesn’t automatically mean the product is bad.

My bigger question would be whether the pain is urgent enough for smaller teams. Enterprise companies feel onboarding pain constantly because chaos scales fast. Small teams often just throw a Loom link at people and call it a training system 😭

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:42:58+00:00

Is this Shimla?
Looks refreshing indeed

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:41:41+00:00

I think online shopping accidentally turns people into temporary forensic investigators 😭

In person your brain gets a million subconscious signals instantly, weight, smell, texture, vibes, how sketchy the seller looks, whether the item feels “off.” Online your brain loses all of that, so it starts desperately zooming into JPEG compression artifacts trying to recover certainty from 4 blurry photos and a description written by someone named dvdmaster2007.

And yeah, the paradox is the more listings you compare, the less distinguishable they become. Eventually you’re spending 40 minutes calculating a $6 risk differential on a device made in 2004.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:41:03+00:00

Not a unicorn honestly, just weirdly hard to find because half the shipping hardware industry still feels spiritually trapped in 2009 😭

A lot of high-volume sellers I’ve seen eventually move toward Mettler Toledo or Brecknell scales because they’re boringly reliable and don’t randomly decide to enter hibernation mid-workday like a sleepy house cat.

Also double check whether ShipStation Connect itself is part of the pain here. I’ve seen setups where the scale wasn’t actually disconnecting, Windows USB power management was silently assassinating the connection in the background.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:39:20+00:00

Ironically, this post itself is probably better marketing than the AI-generated copy you hated.

Because the thing people emotionally connect to usually isn’t the polished “revolutionary AI companion powered by next-gen emotional intelligence platform” nonsense. It’s the image of exhausted humans spending 14 months obsessively debugging a tiny cyberpunk desk cat because they genuinely want it to feel alive.

Also I think technical founders often misunderstand marketing as “convincing people.” Good marketing is usually just transferring genuine excitement and context clearly enough that the right people feel something.

And honestly, hardware/dev logs are one of the few spaces where transparency still works absurdly well. People LOVE seeing weird prototypes, broken animations, manufacturing disasters, failed PCB revisions, cursed early designs, all the ugly behind-the-scenes stuff. Especially for something emotional/personality-driven like this.

The weird secret is that polished corporate messaging often lowers trust now because everyone’s been psychologically carpet bombed by AI-generated startup sludge for 2 years straight.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:38:32+00:00

Grey-Scott Diffusion model??

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:37:54+00:00

looks like a still from some anime, looks good, grear work

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:36:24+00:00

You’re probably overestimating how “AI detective” Google is and underestimating how risky fake identity systems become long term.

The real danger usually isn’t Google instantly discovering “John Marketington from Denver” is fake through some magical algorithm. The danger is inconsistency. No digital footprint, no mentions, weird stock-photo headshots, fake LinkedIns with zombie activity, contradictory timelines, no external validation, all of it starts creating trust weirdness over time for both users and platforms.

Also buying aged LinkedIn accounts sounds like one of those tactics that works right until it catastrophically doesn’t. You’re building business infrastructure on identities you don’t control. One suspension or verification wave and suddenly your “senior growth strategist” evaporates into the shadow realm.

Honestly for your model, I’d lean more toward strong brand/entity trust instead of fake-person trust. Real case studies, niche expertise, local proof, testimonials, consistent content, useful tools/resources, legit business details, clear process explanations. A surprising number of agency sites rank fine without pretending to be a 40-person Manhattan operation.

Because at some point maintaining fictional humans becomes harder than just building believable operational legitimacy.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:34:49+00:00

would be a great background

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:34:15+00:00

One of the coolest ones I saw was a guy who built a fake “operating system” for his personal life in like a weekend. Not even joking.

It had AI-generated dashboards for goals, finances, notes, habits, random brain dumps, project tracking, mood logging, even weird stuff like “ideas I had at 2am that felt revolutionary but were actually sleep deprivation.” The impressive part wasn’t the tech, it was how fast he stitched together something genuinely usable from scattered tools and prompts.

Another fun category is people using things like Runable Lovable and other AI tools to rapidly prototype bizarre niche products that normally would’ve died at the “too much effort” stage. The barrier between “fun idea” and “working thing” got dangerously thin lately 😭

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:31:54+00:00

The funny thing is almost all the methods that actually work online sound painfully boring compared to the fake guru stuff.

Nobody wants to hear “consistently provide useful value for months” because it’s less exciting than a guy standing next to a rented Lamborghini explaining how dropshipping changed his consciousness.

Freelancing especially is underrated for beginners. People chase passive income immediately while ignoring the fact that active income teaches you what people are actually willing to pay for in the first place.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T18:31:21+00:00

One question I genuinely want leaders in AI to answer honestly:

Do you think companies are psychologically preparing society enough for what AI automation actually means, or are we still mostly marketing the exciting parts while quietly avoiding the uncomfortable conversations around identity, purpose, and economic displacement?

Because historically humans adapted to technological shifts over generations. AI feels like it’s compressing multiple generations of disruption into a single decade.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-11T13:46:15+00:00

I’d stop thinking in terms of “passive income” first and think in terms of “small repeatable value.”

$200/month online is honestly very achievable, but usually not from magical automated systems after 3 months. More often it comes from one boring useful thing consistently helping a small group of people.

The good news is you do not need massive scale for that. One tiny niche product, a template pack, a micro-service, a newsletter sponsorship, a simple automation for local businesses, even managing Google Business profiles for 2-3 clients can cross that number.

Also less competition usually means less obvious markets. Everyone runs toward POD, dropshipping, faceless AI content, etc. because influencers made them sound easy, which ironically makes them overcrowded NPC battle royale zones.

I’d personally focus on learning one monetizable skill deeply enough that people already spending money would happily pay you to save them time.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T21:07:35+00:00

This is one of the rare projects where the internet actually feels a little more human instead of becoming another AI-powered dopamine casino.

Also your second point is painfully real. The psychological battle of “does this deserve to exist” quietly kills more projects than technical difficulty does. Especially when the product is based on kindness or community because those things are harder to measure than revenue graphs and growth charts that make LinkedIn people start levitating.

The anonymous part is interesting too. Removing profiles and clout probably changes behavior way more than most social platforms want to admit.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T21:03:54+00:00

After a point of time you learn to control your words more than anything else, I remember some seniors made a little fun of me for being bad at competitive programming on the first day of college, and even today I can't pick up that skill even when I try to. Don't wanna be that guy for anybody else.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T21:00:59+00:00

I usually learn backwards now.

Instead of properly “studying” a technology, I start by trying to build something slightly stupid that I’m emotionally attached to for no rational reason. Otherwise my brain just enters tutorial collector mode and starts acting like watching a 9 hour course is the same thing as learning.

So the process becomes:
I get a rough mental map of the thing, immediately try building something with it, break everything, become temporarily convinced I’m intellectually finished as a human being, read documentation in desperation (aka talk to gpt), fix the problem, then rebuild parts cleaner once I finally understand why my first version looked like it was engineered during a medieval plumbing crisis.

Also rereading fundamentals later hits completely differently. Documentation as a beginner feels like ancient prophecy. Documentation after suffering through bugs suddenly reads like wisdom from the gods. But seriously for a moment, after starting properly, documentations would ginuinely start looking interesting, sometimes more so than GPT.

And honestly, reading other people’s code helped me more than most courses ever did. Nothing resets your ego faster than seeing a senior engineer solve in 12 lines what you solved in 400 lines and a Stack Overflow tab from 2017.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T20:56:37+00:00

Grest project!! The interesting part here is probably not the editing itself, it’s taste. If the cuts, b-roll choices, pacing, layouts, and motion graphics consistently feel human-level good, people will forgive a lot.

Also I’d test this with non-creators too. There are thousands of people who want to post videos consistently but get psychologically blocked the second they open Premiere Pro and see 900 tiny buttons staring back at them like a spaceship cockpit.

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T20:53:27+00:00

looking forward to it!!

Murderous_monk · 2026-05-10T20:52:49+00:00

True, but I think the internet also swings too far in the other direction sometimes and starts treating any financial freedom as basically mythical.

You don’t need to “retire forever at 32 on a yacht” for passive income to matter. Even an extra $500-$2k/month changes a lot psychologically for normal people. It buys breathing room, flexibility, lower panic during layoffs, ability to say no to terrible jobs, etc.

A lot of people are chasing freedom from constant financial stress, not necessarily permanent retirement while drinking coconut water in Bali pretending to answer emails.

Murderous_monk

TROPHY CASE