Fat Stacks ®️ @FatStacksBlog

Had my first Uber ride in an EV pickup truck today. I have a gas-guzzling Tundra. I joked to the driver that I’d lose money as an Uber driver in the Tundra. His response surprised me. What followed was a fascinating discussion about Uber economics. He said if you’re strategic as an Uber driver, I could earn $500 for every $100 spent on gas. That blew my mind. He backed it up by saying he only recently got an EV; before that he drove a gas-powered 4Runner and did just fine. “What’s the strategy?” I asked. He launched into a rapid-fire verbal listicle setting out exactly how to max out profits driving Uber. 1. Drive the higher paying times of the day. 2. Be patient. Only pick up rides nearby and that are heading somewhere a return rider is likely. 3. If have a gas-guzzler, choose riders that require using highway routes as much as possible. 4. When have no rider, cruise around or park in high-traffic areas to increase chances for a rider that meets 1 to 3 above. I’m sure he has a few more tricks up his sleeve. I have no plans to drive Uber, but as a gig-economy participant, I found the discussion fascinating. If ever I drive Uber, I’ll remember this conversion and would study Uber economics more deeply. I gave him a good tip. Maybe that’s his real secret… share Uber secrets for bigger tips. Once again, I’m reminded just how helpful other people can be if you simply ask.

A reader sent me a long email yesterday explaining how offensive one of my articles was. Not because of what I wrote. Because of what I didn't write. At first, I was mildly irked. Then I reread it three times. I came around to see her point. Most of us have read something and thought, "But what about this?" or "You left out that important detail." And yes, there are omissions that can be universally offensive. This was not one of them. It’s true the reader wasn't entirely wrong. Something was missing. The thing is, something is always missing. Every article, every book, every speech, every conversation is as much an omission as inclusion. Writers start with a universe of possibilities and choose a few. Everything else gets left out. That's not a flaw. That's writing in a nutshell. If writers are responsible not only for what they say, but also for every perspective they don't mention, every exception they don't include, and every possibility they don't cover, the standard becomes unattainable. The article becomes longer. Then longer still. Then longer again. Eventually it stops being an article and becomes an endless series of qualifications designed to prevent someone, somewhere, from feeling overlooked. Writing requires choices. Choices create omissions. Omissions can create disagreement. That's not a flaw. It's the price saying anything at all.

There's a gas station near my house I go to all the time. Gas. Drinks. Slushies with my sons. Different times of day. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with the kids. Half the time I'm wearing shorts and a bike helmet. The people who work there are kind. The place is well run, which is a key reason why I keep going back other than proximity. Yesterday one of the cashiers broke the usual “cash, debit or credit” script. He asked what I do. First cashier in the 11 years I’ve been going there to do that. We got chatting. Turns out he's a 26-year-old computer science grad building some pretty wild things with Claude Code. Open source projects. I asked why he'd give away his work if his goal was to make money. He said he's playing the long game. Building a portfolio. Building a reputation. Creating opportunities that might not exist yet. He knows the hiring market is non-existent right now and is doing something about it. Smart. What struck me wasn't just what he was building. It was that he'd noticed me. The odd hours. The bike helmet. The flexibility. The fact I was sometimes there with my kids and sometimes not. The conversation impressed me enough that we exchanged contact information. I'm genuinely interested to see what he ends up building over the next few years. And you never know. Our paths may cross again beyond the gas station. The lesson isn't to network. The lesson is to be receptive. Talk to people. Ask questions. Answer them when they're asked of you. Opportunities and connections stem from ordinary conversations with ordinary people on ordinary days.

@Casto As far as I can tell, the change is effectively going to be that blog.google/products-and-p…

I've not been in the SEO game since 2023 but I'm still wondering how Google's announcement "no more blue links in search" is gonna change the Web (apparently they'll still be there but not by default which is as good as not there). Content sites: Already hammered so only few remaining pubs will take a hit. Ecommerce: Google will show products but still send people to the sites to buy. Could be good for ecomm folks if they end up getting their products shown. Might be hard to beat out Amazon and other big players in product carousels. Ecomm with brand searches will clean up. Local biz: Not much change since Google Maps and map packs have dominated for years. SaaS: Google will act as a filter so the fewer searchers who end up on SaaS sites more likely to buy???? Not sure. Conversion rates may radically change. SaaS must invest in getting mentioned. Huge opp for agencies. Joe-Blow and Jane Doe searchers: Most prefer AI generated results hence Google is doubling down on it. Heck, I never go to websites myself unless buying something or via social media. ULTIMATE WINNER: Google of course. Users will spend more time on Google forcing ecomm, local and SaaS to spend more on Google ads. Runner-Up Winner: Social media. With far fewer websites due to lack of traffic and lack of easy access via Google, more people will spend more time on social media (already happening for years).

@aburgaburg Yeah, I did. It’s a great engagement feature.

I added 1,480 additional email subscribers simply by adding gamification features to my sites. Initially, I designed and deployed gamification to increase dwell time. I did not expect that with a single tweak it would be my second best lead source. What’s gamification? It’s anything that adds some sort of engagement features on websites. In my case I set up an incentive for visitors who engage in anyway twenty times during a visit they get one of my info-products for free (give their email). What’s an engagement? Any tap on an up or down vote, save an article (every visitor has their own library for saved content), emoji responses and of course signing up for the email newsletter. Why do this? It’s proven to be one of the best things I added because it adds a tremendous amount of time on site PLUS attracts email subs.

@darkzOGx @GoDaddy That's the point. There wasn't a billing failure. It was my choosing not to renew but by GD saying billing failure, it makes me think none of my other domains will renew on account of an actual billing failure. Huge difference.

What's up with @GoDaddy's alarmist email marketing? Their use of "Billing failure" as an email subject line is an over-the-top way of saying "did not renew domain." There's a HUGE difference between payment failed and chose not to renew. The first time I saw that, I dropped everything to ensure my payment methods were working. They are. Hence, my choosing to not renew a domain was NOT a "billing failure" but a choice to not renew. Domain registration is one of the most sensitive services in our World. Losing a domain could cost someone everything. IMO, GoDaddy needs to choose its words more carefully.

5 years ago I spent a month and hundreds of dollars trying to get faceted search working on one of my sites. The end result was garbage. Three months ago I asked Claude to code me faceted search for the same site. 30 minutes later I had faceted search to rival the most advanced ecommerce sites on the Web.

@realbrianmoran "They spend the majority of their time, effort, and energy coming up with really good hooks and angles" is the secret for any niche these days regardless how one monetizes. SEO killed good headlines for ten plus years. Now the headline is all we have.

@holmisthename I love this. It flips the script from "who's your ideal reader?" to "who's your ideal advertiser?" Not many people talk about that.

A newsletter client of mine makes $2M+/year with just 95K subscribers. Here's exactly how he does it: There's an old saying: "Riches are in the niches." In newsletters, this is huge. I've worked with clients who had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and still struggled to monetize. Not because their content was bad. Because their audience was too broad. No clear ICP. No premium advertisers. Just a big list going nowhere. My client took a different approach. Here's the 4-step strategy he used: 1 ) Reverse-engineer your ad dollars He looked at his existing advertisers and asked three questions: · Who pays on time? · Who has serious budgets? · Who's actually making money advertising with me? That told him exactly which advertisers were worth building for. 2 ) Define your golden audience Once he knew his best advertisers, he went deep on the ICP they were chasing. He's in the financial space. He could've picked "retail investors" and called it a day. He didn't. He niched down. Then niched down again. Kept going until he found a niche within a niche that his top advertisers couldn't easily reach anywhere else. 3 ) Go all in on that niche With a crystal-clear audience, everything clicked into place. Ad creative spoke a specific language. Targeting got sharper. And advertisers immediately got the value of his list without needing a sales pitch. 4 ) Charge a premium His advertisers were used to paying for massive lists where only a small slice matched their ICP. Now they had a 95K list that was almost entirely their ideal customer. They paid for that. Happily. He raised his rates. His cost per subscriber stayed the same. Same costs. Way higher ROAS. The result is $180K/month from a 95K list.

@crsbos Yeah, probably because I hadn't emailed very consistently for a long time. That said, open rates same as they were years ago so it might be one off. I think if you move the email to primary tab, it should be fine going forward.

9,435 email subscribers over the past 30 days reveals the following: Context: 1. Every subscriber signed up to a form that offers to email them the article they were on. 2. Every article was AI-assisted. 3. The two publications are in very different niches. Conclusion: AI-assisted content can be so good that 9,435 people over the past 30 days were willing to give me their email so that the article they read is emailed to them for future reference.

@crsbos Hey CRS, good question. I use it out-of-the-box so I hope it's ok but you bring up a good point. I'll have consider this. Thanks for bringing it up.

15+ years of publishing online and my to-do list almost never got finished before dinner. 2026 is the first year it's done by lunch. Most days. => I didn't hire a team. In fact, my team is smaller. => I didn't cut my output; I increased it substantially. => I didn't lower my standards. I’m producing better content than ever before. What I did was build AI systems that handles the labor-intensive work.

Delegate the trivial. Systematize the vital. Spend your time on the creative and strategic.

@MCovBrown 100%. Unless it's a hobby, there's no point in starting anything unless have an offer or one is in the works.

@AlinDragu Absolutely but it explains why people who don't love writing become a copywriter, which was your question.

Gotta respectfully disagree on this one when it comes to outdoor gear (ski jackets, parkas, ski pants etc.), suits, dress shirts and footwear generally. Obviously there's a point of diminishing returns but paying more for certain clothing and gear apparel is almost always worth it if you care about how it fits, looks and durability.