3 months, 1,264 commits, 0 inbound links: The startup lesson I ignored

On 6 May, the author began building a trading terminal alone, committing the first code to version control. Three months later, they reviewed the numbers: 1,264 commits, over 600 indexable pages published, but zero inbound links from other websites. The author had been telling themselves they were practicing content marketing, publishing 37 articles in June and 13 in July.

However, they failed to check if anyone had linked to their site, and when they finally did, there were no human-generated inbound links. The assumption was that rankings would follow due to the amount of content published, but the author realized that authority comes from links made by people, not time. The author did not notice the lack of progress because building is easy and feels like progress, while reaching out to people is slow and personal.

After deciding to "focus on distribution," the author made 122 commits in 13 days, but only 15 touched distribution, and published no new articles. The author realized they were avoiding contact with strangers and not executing their strategy. They also tried reaching an audience through an algorithm, but the videos performed poorly due to language and regional targeting issues.

The author would advise themselves at month one to pick one number that can only move if a stranger chooses to do something, and check it in week one.