Field notes & essays.
Working notes, lessons, and the occasional opinion — from building websites, software, and AI systems for real businesses.
The full archive.
Every post, in chronological order.
Link Building for Local Service Businesses That Actually Works
Honest link building for local service businesses. Local PR, sponsorships, HARO, partnerships, niche directories, and guest posts done the right way.
Measuring Website ROI: The Metrics That Matter (and the Ones That Distract)
How to measure real website ROI: pipeline-attributed revenue, qualified leads, CAC, and the GA4 plus CRM stitch. Plus the vanity metrics worth ignoring.
The Business Case for Monitoring: Uptime, Errors, and Real User Performance
Why small businesses need website monitoring — uptime, errors, and real user performance — and how to set it up without paying for an enterprise stack.
How to Handle Recurring Payments and Subscriptions on Your Website
Stripe Billing vs Chargebee vs custom, dunning logic, proration, churn handling, and tax automation — what actually matters when you charge customers monthly.
Landing Page vs Homepage: When to Use Each (and Why It Matters)
When to send paid traffic to a landing page vs a homepage: message match, single CTA, audience temperature, and the conversion cost of getting it wrong.
Content Strategy for Small Businesses Without a Marketing Team
A realistic content strategy for small businesses with no marketing team. Pillar pages, topic clusters, publishing cadence, repurposing, and when to outsource.
When to Rebuild vs Redesign vs Leave It Alone
A practical framework for deciding when to rebuild a website from scratch, when to redesign on the existing platform, and when doing nothing is the right call.
Why Your Website Is Slow (and the Real Cost of Doing Nothing)
Why most small business websites are slow — render-blocking resources, third-party tags, hydration, server response — and what slowness actually costs in conversions.
Website Integrations That Actually Save Time: Zapier, Make, and When to Go Custom
The real limits of no-code automation, when API integration costs less long-term, and ROI examples from service businesses doing both well.