3 builders who never spoke to each other

Publish the work behind the result

Assertions about quality are cheap and buyers discount them, but visible labour is hard to fake and does the convincing on its own. Show the pipeline, the diagrams, the people who built it and the finished jobs, including how you reasoned your way through a problem that resembles theirs. Handing over the method does not stop anyone paying you to run it.

The method

1. 01

   Rather than asserting that your product is good, publish the behind-the-scenes labour that produces the output, because visible effort is what convinces buyers the result can be trusted.

2. 02

   Differentiate from label-only competitors by being transparent about how the thing works and was built: precise language, system diagrams, naming the engineers behind it, being a public case study for the tools you use, and describing your process.

3. 03

   Publish the whole method, step by step, because telling people exactly how to do it does not stop them hiring you to do it.

4. 04

   Write up finished projects as case studies so a prospect can see how you think through a problem like theirs before they ever talk to you.

5. 05

   Make those anchor posts a set mix: case studies that show the work, breakdowns of how you approach a problem, what you believe about the business, what went wrong and what you learned, and pieces praising peers and clients.

What it returned

• 2010

  Ahrefs keeps a data page in its top navigation explaining how the product works, and its pricing page states the web has been crawled around the clock since 2010 with petabytes indexed. Its crawler handles 8 billion pages a day.

• Wolfpack Digital publishes the apps it has shipped and Cuttlesoft publishes web and mobile case studies.

Sources

• Ahrefs - Why We Buy 🧠Katelyn Bourgoin · customercamp.co · How Ahrefs Uses Buyer Psychology · undated
• The Ultimate Guide to Building Client Relationships - Double Your FreelancingAustin Church · doubleyourfreelancing.com · Give away your secrets. · 2016-09-12
• Software Development Services: Attracting New Clients, AI Apps, No-Code Tools - Trends.vcDru Riley · trends.vc · 🌱 How to grow Software Development Services · 2023-09-27
• AI is All Natural: What to Do About Ambiguous LabelsGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2019-04-26