This is Episode 1 of my text series about building projects. The challenge: 200 paidpost users before 2027. Yesterday paidpost became a full marketplace, not just a price page for creators. It started with SEO: Claude showed me how to do it right, and the site went from 4 pages to 60. Lifehack: Google Keyword Planner, paste a competitor’s site, get the search terms around it. Google results in ~2 weeks. Today’s step: AI search. Follow along so you don’t miss it. Costs you nothing, makes my day.

Episode 2: I asked ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini where to sell sponsored posts on X. None of them mentioned paidpost. When I asked about paidpost directly, all three warned me about the same problem. The problem: brands and creators deal directly, and that’s where scammers live. Two takeaways: 1) AI needs to know paidpost exists 2) Deals need protection For #1, my bet is launch directories. Even free listings, even nofollow links. AI crawlers read those sites, and every mention adds weight. For #2, Safe Deals are already in progress. The code is the easy part. The law is not: if users top up a balance on your site, you’re holding client money, and in many countries that needs a license. So now I’m reading laws from different countries to pick the right flow. Progress: +5 users in one day. Proud of this one. Creators on paidpost crossed 1M combined followers. Google indexed 17 of 61 pages. Slow but steady. Follow along, it’s going to get interesting.

A creator with 750K followers just signed up for paidpost 💪
 I asked how he found us.
His answer: Grok recommended it. I never pitched Grok about paidpost. Still not sure how to feel about that 😁

paidpost is now a marketplace! It started as a link in your X bio with prices and free slots. But brands had to already know you. Now they find you in a public catalog of X creators across 26 niches. Free for both sides. 0% commission. Join free! paidpost.net/news/marketplac…

Friday was all work, the weekend was all family. Result: more unfollows than follows three days in a row. Honest question to builders here: if you go quiet for two weeks to ship, how much do you lose? Or is being on X just part of the job now?

Need followers? Do replies! My 7-day X growth challenge is done: 175,640 impressions (24× previous week) +171 new followers 668 replies sent 505 replies received, 27 posts The week before: +25 followers. This week: +171.

Monday mode: two Claude Code agents building new paidpost features in parallel. 425K and 416K tokens in under 5 minutes. My job now is mostly reviewing and saying “no, not like that” 😄

The best signal for a new product: strangers. paidpost has 25 creators after less than 4 weeks. The first ones were friends from X. The last 8 I’ve never talked to. So it’s 10pm and I’m getting a new feature ready for them.

Hetzner approved port 25 for my VPS. Self-hosted email for all my projects incoming. Question for @grok and anyone who’s done this: how do you keep a fresh IP off blacklists?

X growth challenge, day 5/7 9 unfollows is my new anti-record. A bit sad, I guess for some people the follow was an impulse buy. But no hard feelings, moving on!

You can see your nose right now. Your brain just hides it. Also, your jaw muscles are working right now so your mouth doesn't hang open. Congrats, your nose and jaw are now on manual mode. Have a nice day 😄

3 weeks ago I bought paidpost.net. Today: 22 creators in the catalog 199.9K combined audience 1 completed deal, $10 total Small numbers, but every one of them is real.

Plugged paidpost under a 143K account’s post. 5 minutes later, they signed up. Sometimes marketing is just showing up at the right moment with a joke and a link 😄 Welcome to paidpost, @PrettyBlogPink! paidpost.net/@PrettyBlogPink

Hey USA, go to sleep and give me back those AI servers! Good morning, friends, what are your plans? Mine for today: - keep planning a new project - keep marketing paidpost - another 3 tasks at my 5-9 job

X growth challenge, day 4/7 101,497 impressions, +21 new followers, 5 unfollows I promised 100 replies and only made 91. But one of them blew up, and the day went way past what I expected. Lesson: replies are a big part of growth on X.

I live in a convenient timezone: my day is over, and in the US it's just starting. I never understood people complaining that AI is slow or that servers are overloaded. Now I get it: I work with AI while 70% of its users are asleep! Good night, see you in 8 hours 😴

PHP2Shell: what happened to PHP, and should you panic? Explaining it in simple words. What happened
On October 21, PHP shipped emergency updates. Two critical holes were found (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619). They're in PHP itself, not in WordPress or Laravel. In theory, an attacker can send a specially crafted request to your server and run their own code on it. No login needed, and in some setups it happens before your site's code even starts. Why all the noise - the vulnerable code is over 10 years old; everything from PHP 5.4 to the latest releases is affected - PHP runs on millions of servers - details leaked before the patch was out, so the release was pushed a day early Why you shouldn't panic
In practice, this isn't "one request and the server is theirs." An attacker needs to know your exact PHP build and server config, hit the right process, and often find a separate hole in the app itself. According to researchers, the public exploits don't work against a standard install. Bots are already scanning the internet, so don't sit on it, but experts aren't expecting a Log4Shell-style mass wave. And most importantly: this is normal
Your project isn't just your code. It's the OS, the Linux kernel, OpenSSL, nginx, your framework, hundreds of composer and npm packages, your payment SDK, third-party APIs and integrations. Vulnerabilities get found in every one of those layers. Literally every week. Most of them just don't come with an all-caps subject line. Security isn't "I have no holes." It's "I patch fast when they're found." What to do today 1. php -v: check your version 2. Update to 8.5.12 / 8.4.27 / 8.3.36 / 8.2.35 (package manager or a fresh Docker image) 3. Restart php-fpm or Apache. Without a restart, old processes stay vulnerable 4. Can't update right now? Temporarily set session.upload_progress.enabled = 0 in php.ini. It's a partial fix, not a replacement for updating 5. Still on PHP 7.x or 8.1? There are no official updates for those, only distro backports. Great excuse to finally upgrade Updated? Breathe out. Just another Thursday in a developer's life.

Replies are the cheat code for small accounts. A one-line answer under a big post: 15K views.
My own posts: rarely past 100. The formula is simple: find a real question, answer it simply, make people smile.

$5 is the cheapest thing I can think of. And the most expensive. For one person, it’s a forgotten coffee. For a founder, it’s the first sale and the reason not to quit. For someone else, it’s dinner tonight. “it’s only $5”