From idea to $$ in 2 days

(I should really keep this for my students only, but I’m in a giving mood today.)

Last Friday night, yeah, we danced on tabletops, and we took too many shots I went to Philz Coffee (best coffee in California, don’t @ me) to write a blog post.

I arrived at 6 pm. They closed at 8 pm.

On the drive there, I had a plan. I was going to write a blog post with the goal of ranking it as quickly as possible. I knew that in order to do this, I needed to:

• Find a keyword based on a topic I already had authority in.

• Make sure that keyword had “zero volume” (more on that in a sec).

• Write in 100% my own style without any help from LLMs.

I first started by looking at which pages on my site 1) ranked really well and 2) had a lot of natural backlinks. I found a blog post I wrote a while back about AI in marketing. It had over 250K reads and a ton of backlinks.

So, I expanded on the topic of AI in marketing. And I knew AI agents were a big thing right now.

I opened up Ahrefs and started looking at keywords related to AI agents. I was looking for something Ahrefs said had little to no volume.

I found:

• AI agent platforms

• AI agent builders

Which keyword do you think I picked? Well, actually, I wasn’t sure. The one with more search volume seemed like the obvious choice.

But that’s exactly why I hesitated.

What intrigued me was that “AI agent platforms” had little to no search volume, with no data populated about it.

Ideally, you want to find keywords that show little to no search volume — sometimes even “N/A” in Ahrefs (or other keyword research tools).

But obviously, you want people to actually be searching it.

So, I did an extra step I rarely see anyone talk about. I went to Google Keyword Planner (a free tool inside Google Ads) and entered both keywords:

The best “zero volume” keywords — the hidden gems — will show “N/A” or fewer than 10 monthly searches in third-party keyword research tools (like Ahrefs or Semrush), but when you input them in Keyword Planner, they will show at least 100 avg. monthly searches.

In this case, “AI agent platforms” seemed like the better option. It was also more expensive to bid on, so I knew it was more valuable.

Now I had 1 hour and 47 minutes left to write.

I did my standard content outline process using Frase. Then, started writing like a madman.

If you had asked me to write a 3,500-word blog post three years ago, it would have taken me 5–7 hours.

I finished this one at 7:58 pm, and was the last person inside Philz Coffee.

I ran home, did some final edits, and published the article just after midnight (now Saturday).

Then I went back and interlinked it with my other article on AI marketing (huge step). Then, I waited.

Monday morning, barely two days after publishing, the first conversion came through:

$74. Not bad at all. Definitely paid for my decaf Americano and slice of banana bread.

And through this experience, I learned a few things:

• Constraints are everything. Over the past three years of being self-employed, I’ve realized how lazy I am. Give me a task, and I will take as much time as I’m allowed to. Pomodoro timers and all those productivity hacks never worked for me. What unlocks ultimate productivity for me is having time constraints enforced by others. This could be anything from client deadlines to a Philz employee kicking me out.

• Great SEOs online writers know how to find hidden gem keywords no one is thinking about, and they know how to match the intent of the search. LLMs can’t help you find those ideas and the keyword research tools all your peers are using won’t either. You need original ideas and the knowledge on how to validate those ideas.

• Write what you know and forget LLMs. If you’re a writer or SEO person, every time you’re about to publish something, ask yourself, “Would I be proud if the CEO of my company read this?” If the answer is no, the article probably sucks. What I’m seeing right now is Google rewarding original thought and insights. If you write about what you know from genuine experience, you will beat the big brands churning out AI-generated content. Remember, Google needs to ideas to feed the AI beast.

• Stay in your lane. Build on what you know and what works. This experiment would not have gone well if I hadn’t already built topical authority in the AI space. That took over two years to develop. If you’re constantly bouncing around from topic to topic or idea to idea, you delay the process of developing your zone of genius.

Okay, that’s that. I go over more stuff like this in my content marketing course if you’re interested (it’s for more intermediate-to-advanced marketers).

Hope you learned something, and please don’t share this with a lot of people. I’m trusting you.

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• How Tally bootstrapped to 500K users

• Getting your first 1,000 newsletter subscribers

• A study on 4,523 comparison keywords

• The one-page brand strategy roadmap

• Ad in the wild

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• The ads that won over creatives at Super Bowl LIX

• Snap posts strong numbers in Q4, but questions remain about growth

• These are the investors funding Musk’s $97 billion OpenAI takeover attempt

• Google confirms review count issue - working on fix

• The AI Sputnik moment: A new era begins

• Threads drives 73.6% more engagement than X

🚀 All things growth & product

How Tally bootstrapped to 500K users, the product market fit collapse, and using customer empathy as a product marketing edge.

💌 Email marketing & copywriting

10 welcome emails that build long-term trust, how to get your first 1,000 newsletter subscribers, and 7 practical ways to write copy that converts.

✍️ SEO & content marketing

A use-case-led SEO strategy for organic growth, a study on 4,523 comparison keywords, and a content marketing salary report for 2025.

🤳 Paid ads, social media, & branding

A guide to Smart Bidding in Google Ads, a founder-led LinkedIn growth guide, a book summary of How Brands Grow, and a one-page brand strategy roadmap.

❤️ For the heart

📣 Ad in the wild

Spotted an ad in the wild that caught your eye? Reply to this email with the ad and your @ for credit to get it featured!

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Growth Marketing Associate @ AllTrails

• Marketing Growth Generalist @ Agora

• Product Marketing Manager @ Rocket Money

• Head of Growth (USA) @ Programa

• Head of Marketing @ Blueberry

Okay, that's it for now 🧡. See you next Tuesday!

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” — Agnes De Mille

Riddle answer: An impasta!