#Spill over effec

[mimic-of-hysy]

I posted 18,873 times in 2022

That's 18,860 more posts than 2021!

998 posts created (5%)

17,875 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lyynpop

@virtue-and-beneviolence

@what-a-bastard

@akicore

@white-flower-blooming

I tagged 3,087 of my posts in 2022

#settie answers - 457 posts

#settie speaks - 422 posts

#settie's lovelys - 376 posts

#:pierre: - 110 posts

#virtue box - 82 posts

#:got this: - 75 posts

#settie vents - 72 posts

#settie macabre - 72 posts

#🏐haikyuu recs - 65 posts

#🏴tokyorev recs - 59 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi kashi k

I sent 1 gift in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Father Hanma

introducing my CorruptPriest!Hanma AU.

@virtue-and-beneviolence is like 80% of the reason this exists

this is a half HCs, half drabble abomination fueled by monster and my thing for authority figures. i needed to crank this out before i went to sleep so forgive inconsistencies or spelling errors. it's not meant to be good I just needed to get this out so i could sleep

word count: 510

contains: gn!reader, smut, dubcon if you squint really hard but more just abuse of power/status, corruption, does fucking in a church need a warning?

-the same man had been leading your congregation for as long as anyone could remember, so of course it was a shock when he announced his retirement. many people were upset over the idea of him leaving, but he insisted his replacement would leave the parishioners with nothing to want for

-rumours quickly began to spread of the new priest that was being appointed to your church. Some said he was young, no older than twenty. while others insisted he was a hardened criminal, turned man of the cloth. through it all you just smiled and shook your head. it was just the aimless chatter of excitement deprived housewives. right? oh how wrong you were

-ever punctual you arrived thirty minutes before service was to start, your intention to claim a seat close to the front. as you found, fate had other plans. upon opening the doors of the church you saw an unfamiliar man standing behind the pulpit. 

-”hey there” his voice echoing through the otherwise empty church. “I'm Father Hanma, Shuuji Hanma. I am going to your new priest”

-something here wasn't right. the wheels in your head were spinning, unable to find any reasonable answers to the questions flooding your mind. not the least of which was how? everything about this man, from the blond streak in his hair, to his captivating violet eyes, to long lean build screamed sin. even you could tell that

-”wel- welcome, Father Hanma” making your way through the pews, words began spilling from your lips. “if you ever need help organizing an event or anything, I know this place like the back of my hand. I've been helping out here since I was a little kid”

-his eyes flick over your body, intently watching as you find a suitable seat. ”I will keep that in mind.”

        ~~I'm too tired to write the relationship progression right now I'll do that next time I write this AU~~

-in the span of a couple months you go from the perfect little church going child of god who’s worst sin was forgetting to say grace once in a while, to the Father’s person fuck toy

-whenever you confess even the most minor of sins to him, he has you down on your knees with tears streaming down your face as he fucks that pretty little throat of yours. the penance for your sin, swallowing his cum

-it doesn’t take long for him to convince you that sex with him wouldn’t count in the eyes of god, as he is a man of god and not one of sin. so every time you have an impure thought or impulse you crawl to Father Hanma. Having him fuck you mercilessly anywhere in the church, pulling orgasm after orgasm out of you until he’s satisfied that your carnally sinful thoughts have been absolved

-he never wears a condom when he’s fucking you, claiming that if he cums deep inside you it will have a purifying effect. Who were you to argue the semantics of purity with a priest?

109 notes - Posted April 13, 2022

#4

Falling in love with any of the Port Mafia is a death sentence. This was something that everyone knew. Having the mafia know your name was dangerous, but having one of them deeply ingrained in your heart or you in theirs, can only end one way. Even the most idiotic of the Port Mafia were aware of this, evident by Higuchi’s blatant pining that never went any further. Chuuya knew this too of course, but that did not stop him from falling. The youngest Port Mafia executive in history, the reason Mori is the current boss, the single most valuable asset the mafia ever had, the traitor. If falling in love with someone from the Port Mafia is a death sentence, then being in love with a Port Mafia traitor is digging your own grave. Despite the anger and betrayal that came with his love, Chuuya dug his grave with a smile

213 notes - Posted January 17, 2022

#3

The soulmate AU where you never see the colour of your soulmates eyes until you meet them(so like youd never see blue, green, brown, etc) but it is a little known fact that for it to work you have to look them in both their eyes(assuming they have 2 eyes) Dazai always has the one eye covered with bandages from when him and Chuuya meet, until he leaves the Port Mafia. Picture this, Chuuya falling in love with Dazai, and being fucking terrified because he’s so hopelessly in love with him but he didnt get a colour when they met. And the whole time Dazai knows that Chuuya is his soulmate because he saw blue for the first time in Suribachi city, and he never says anything the whole time its destroying Chuuya. In this Dazai never says goodbye to Chuuya. So months later, when Chuuya ends up seeing Dazai again he looks him in both of his eyes, and Chuuya sees brown. A colour he had never seen before, a beautiful dark brown that matches Dazai’s hair. Chuuya got a new favourite colour that day. Though he never said a word to Dazai, because he knew that Dazai knew, and figured that if Dazai didnt want him then he didn't need Dazai

326 notes - Posted January 17, 2022

#2

best friend!bakugou who rushed over to your apartment when you called crying that your boyfriend had broken up with you. not even knocking, instead using the key you had given him when you first moved in. finding you sobbing on the couch, not even seeming to notice his presence until he had wrapped you in his arms

best friend!bakugou who makes a point to get you out of your house, taking you to all your favourite places. even the stores he swore he'd never set foot in, anything to see you smile again

best friend!bakugou who cant stand seeing your eyes so dull. he wants nothing more than to find that bastard that broke your heart and beat him to a bloody pulp

best friend!bakugou who knows you well enough to see your smile doesnt reach your eyes when telling friends that yorue over it

best friend!bakugou who shows up unanounced on your door step, holding a bottle of red and a pint of cookie dough ice cream

best friend!bakugou who hears your first genuine laugh in months over some dumb joke he made about whatever show you had put on. he feels his his heart jump at the sound, but swallows down the feelings that try to come with it

best friend!bakugou who's been in love with you for years, but has accepted his place as the person who picks you up and puts you back together after you've had your heart broken. because you'd never given him a second glance. he's always been there, your rock, the person you could always turn to no matter what. and thats all he'd ever be

361 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

hanma would never never bend down when you're trying to kiss him. this 6'4 beanpole of a man will just stand there smirking down at you as you struggle

584 notes - Posted January 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[twilightfansofcolor]

CH. 1

Mid January, 2005

You made your way to the lunch line to get your food, and you heard the whispers as you walked by, all eyes on you. “I thought she was supposed to be at some boarding school in France.” “I didn’t even know they were in Forks. The news said they were in Canada.” “How have they gone this long without being spotted?” It was all variations of the same thing you’ve heard throughout the day, but you shook it off. 

You pretended not to hear them as you paid for your lunch, but finding a place to sit would be difficult, you didn’t know anyone apart from a junior named Bella who you met in the office this morning. You wanted to sit with her as she was also a new student, but it looked like she found a group of friends already; would she even want to hang around a freshman? The only spot was a table near a trash can that had crisps crumbs and spilled juice. Not an ideal place, but you were out of options. Just as you were about to sit down, someone called your name.

“Hey, Y/N! Come sit with us!” The person who called you over was a girl named Melina. You have three classes with her: Art, Algebra, and World History. Next to her were a girl named Chandler, also in your art class, and another girl, Alexa who was in your English class. You were grateful not having to sit by yourself on your first day of school, and the girls seemed nice. 

“So, the royals are in Forks now, huh?” asked Chandler. You took a bite of your turkey sandwich as you tried to come up with an answer; you weren’t sure how much you were supposed to say. After all, you hardly know these girls, what if they went to the nearest tabloid? “I guess you can say that.” It turns out that Chandler’s mom Cora ran the diner you and your mother had lunch at yesterday, and that they went to school together. Best friends, your mum had said.

You liked these girls; you liked a lot of the same movies, books, and tv shows. They didn’t seem to care about royal gossip or what really led you to Forks. Melina, Chandler, and Alexa were different from the girls at your private school in London; those girls were the daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of prime ministers, diplomats, media moguls and billionaires. The right kind of friends a young princess should have. These girls would give your great-grandmother and your grandfather a heart attack.

They gave you a run down of the school, the best teachers and the ones to avoid; the best water fountains and the best restrooms. “The water fountain in the art block next to the band room. I personally think it comes from God's faucet. But that’s just me,” Alexa said with a shrug of her shoulders and taking a few sips from her bottle of apple juice. All too soon, the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. “Hey Y/N, what’s your next class?” asked Chandler.

You shuffled through your papers, trying to find the schedule. “Uhh… PE. With Coach Clapp. And then French.” “Oh! I have PE too! We can walk together!” You and Chandler parted ways with the other two girls. “Are you liking America so far?” 

“A lot better than England. Everyone here is more…relaxed. Not as uptight.” As part of the Royal Family, and living in England in general, there was always a list of rules and expectations to follow. What to wear, how to act, who to be friends with. Your school had a strict uniform dresscode. You’d go to school to follow one set of rules and then go home to follow another set of rules when all you’d want to do is let loose. 

“You make it look so easy. All the pictures of you I see are of you looking calm and collected.” Even though you’re sixth in line to the throne, your popularity is on par with your cousins, maybe even a little more. With you being the first biracial member of the family, and your parents’ the first interracial marriage in royal history, the British media had set your family with the task of modernizing the royal family; any item of clothing you wore sold out immediately, and they called it The Y/N Effect. To you, it felt like too much pressure.

You were quiet for a minute and Chandler picked up on that. “Was it hard then?” Her voice was soft, gentle, and just from that, your throat felt tight, tears were stinging the back of your eyes; you nodded. God, you just wanted to pour your heart out to this girl who you’ve only known for less than an hour. You wanted to spill the real reason why you and your parents were the subject of the most vicious headlines circulating the internet, but you couldn’t. 

At least, not yet. When you got to PE, Coach Clapp gave you a uniform, signed your slip of paper and told you to change with the rest of the girls. When you walked in the girls’ locker room, all the talking and giggling stopped, and it made you a little uncomfortable to change in front of them (not that you were self conscious about your body but because of how quiet they were), so you picked a small stall and changed quickly, meeting Chandler by the bleachers. Class today wasn’t too difficult; after a few minutes of warm-ups involving stretches, jumping jacks, he just told the class to do twenty laps around the gym for the mile. Walk, run, it didn’t matter as long as it was a mile.

You and Chandler walked and finished your conversation from the walk from lunch. “The only way I can describe it is… being one of the only black people in a small town.” Chandler raised her eyebrows, understanding the comparison. “Got it. You know, my mom said she always had a funny feeling about that aunt and uncle of yours.” Your dad’s brother, your uncle Oliver and his wife Sophia, and her mom was right, not that you were gonna tell her that.

When class ended and you changed back into clothes for your last class of the day, Chandler caught up with you as you walked to the main building. “Y/N! Wait up!” You slowed down a little as the other girl ran to catch up with you. “Oh, do you have French too?” “Nah, I have History next in another building, but I wanted to let you know something.” She looked around at the students walking to their last classes, some staring at you and whispering to their friends; Chandler put an arm around you and pulled you close. “When I asked you if it was hard, I could tell you were holding back, but I promise. With us, you have nothing to worry about. We got your back, okay?”

With one last smile, Chandler turned around, heading in the direction of her next class. You longed to have friends, friends who actually liked you because of your personality and not because of your status. Friends who weren’t part of the aristocracy you were born into. It looked like you might finally be getting your wish.

[comfortscripts]

Hi <3

Could you do how each Marauder would kiss you for the first time? Like the confidence levels for each would be soooo different I think and just the way they'd go about it, idk but yeah

First Kiss ¬ Marauders

Of course! Honestly, I have so many thoughts but....

Also for this, I just did James, Sirius and Remus but I am willing to do other Marauder era characters (including girls) in the future.

James Potter

"Honestly James, it's embarrassing at this point. Just admit I'm the better keeper"

This had been going on for years. Both of you claiming to be the best keeper in Hogwarts, neither willing to submit. Some say it's rivalry, some say it's unresolved sexual tension but whatever it was, you and James loved it.

"Let's make this interesting, shall we?" The Gryffindor retorted with a smirk. "Whoever saves more goals during practice wins and that's the end of it."

"Okay, deal Potter but if I win, you have to stand up in the Great Hall and announce that I'm the best. Got it?"

You see the flash of fear run across his face before he responds with his same cocky smile, "And when I win, I want a kiss."

Before you could make some form of objection through your flushed cheeks, James was already in the air and prepping for the friendly competition.

You were both on fire. The pitch replicated a professional practice rather than a school-sports one but for every one he saved, you saved two. Whilst you did sometimes long to feel the Gryffindor's lips against your own, the idea of him praising you so publicly was too good to give up. And it seemed like the push worked, you won.

Landing back on solid ground, the two sweaty keepers reunited. James' couldn't even be upset at his loss when he saw your face. Pride beaming through your smile as your flushed cheeks framed it and your skin glistened. You were magnificent.

"Good game, I guess you really are the best" Offering his hand out for good sportsmanship hand shake.

Grabbing his hand and closing the space between you, now chest to chest. "I think you deserve a consolation prize for your efforts today, Potter."

The collision of your lips against his was more thrilling than any quidditch match. Pent up tension releasing in waves as you feel the bespectacled boy get over his initial shock and lean into the kiss. Lips melding and moving together, all whilst allowing your hands to grip his broad shoulders. Pulling away to regain your breath, you look up at the flustered boy as he too, steadied his breathing.

"Well, I think in some ways we both won" Joked the red and gold keeper. Causing you to giggle at his cheesy flirts.

"I guess so but you still have to do the announcement. Maybe you should wear my house colours for effec-" Before you could complete your sentence, his lips were back on yours. Not that you minded.

Sirius Black

Hogwarts was a soothing place in general but nothing could beat the astronomy tower. The atmosphere, the fresh crisp air and the silence meant that it was almost the perfect way to escape. And tonight, that's what two young Gryffindors needed.

Leaning against the brick tower, you let out a sigh of relief. Worries and fears washing from your bones as the stars shimmered in the sky and your best friend blew a puff of smoke.

"You what's crazy, the stars have seen everything. Love, happiness, life but also pain, suffering and death. Yet they still shine so brightly, it's inspiring."

Sirius was never a stranger to profound thoughts, especially on these late night excursions but this shook you. Pushing off the cold wall, you shuffle towards the dark-haired boy before sitting shoulder to shoulder and admiring the stars alongside him.

"You're right. I guess that's why you are named after a star."

You knew how much pain the boy had bundled up within himself but still, he could outshine any star in the galaxy. He had endured more pain than he could ever deserve but still managed to light up people's lives and make people feel more love than most.

Sirius swore his heart stopped at your words. His brain was telling him that it was obviously you hearing him wrong or a joke, he managed to choke out a small "What do you mean?"

Turning to look at the oblivious boy, you could almost chuckle at his adorable furrowed eyebrows and quirked smile but instead, you offered the truth.

"Sirius, you are a star. You have been through so much that I couldn't even begin to imagine but every day, you get up and make the most of life. Bringing smiles to peoples' faces, making all of us laugh with your pranks, loving your friends and protecting us no matter what. You are the impressive one and honestly, those stars pale in comparison to you."

Gazing into his eyes, you saw emotions swirling through his stormy orbs. Processing your words and conjuring up a reaction but nothing seemed right. How could he respond to you? His love for you already threated to spill out every time your eyes met but now, he worried that opening his mouth would release his confession.

As yours eyes stayed locked onto one another, neither of you noticed your bodies unknowingly leaning towards each other. Sirius notices your eyes flicker down to his lips, this was all the confirmation he needed before leaning in and meeting your supple lips.

The love that radiated off the two of you was more powerful than any spell you had learnt. Feeling the warmth spread through your being as Sirius deepened the kiss, trying to get closer. His arms wrapped around your waist as he drank in your sweet lips. You felt all the hidden emotions, all the pain and sadness of the night drift away into the distant sky.

All that mattered was you had Sirius and he had you.

Pulling away only to find yourselves lovingly embracing the other, protecting your bubble of happiness just a while longer. Sirius always knew that you made him shine brighter but now, he felt that he could outshine the stars.

Remus Lupin

Rainy evenings were always your favourite. But tonight was perfect.

James, Sirius and Peter were off pulling a prank on some unsuspecting 2nd year Ravenclaws, whilst you and your long-term crush were huddled up in the common room with two muggle books and two steaming cups of hot chocolate. You had no idea how the lanky wizard looked so comfortable on the sofa but you weren't complaining as you felt your knee bump his every once and awhile, sparks erupting at the physical contact.

Diving into the pages of the latest muggle book Lily gifted you, becoming so lost within the words that you didn't notice the chocolate moustache you had left after your previous gulp. The rich chocolate liquid which formed a frame over your plump lips caught the attention of Remus, who had be sneaking longing glances at you all night.

Your book induced trance was broken by Remus' hearty chuckle, a sound that you could listen to on repeat. Breaking away from the words, you looked up to find the werewolf already looking at you with an amused look painting his handsome face.

Immediately becoming conscious of the fact that the amusing thing was you, you released a small whine, "Remusss, why are you laughing at me".

"You have a bit of, well. You have a hot chocolate moustache"

Eyes widening in embarrassment, you quickly attempt to wipe away any chocolatey remnants with your sleeve before presenting your face back to the taller boy and asking, "all gone?"

Scooting over so he was looming over your figure, hand resting on your knee to steady himself. Remus reached up to gently wipe away the remaining flecks of chocolate that settle in the corners of your lip, allowing his thumb to caress the outline of your bottom lip.

The moment seemed to last forever, with the both of your eyes locking together as the young Gryffindor cautiously traced the outline of your jaw before entangling his hand within your hair, bringing your lips together.

The overwhelming sense of emotion accompanied by the rich lingering taste of chocolate engulfed the both of you as you leant into the kiss, resting hands on his shoulders. Remus raised his hand to grasp your hip and slowly move you closer toward his embrace.

You always thought that your first kiss with the werewolf would be more passionate and spark filled but no, this felt like home. This felt like you had fallen into his arms and discovered you belonged.

Breaking away, you stared into his amber orbs. Looking for any sign of regret or fear but you found that his eyes were filled with adoration and love, matching the very same look you held for him.

Giggling as the now giddy Gryffindor pressed a flurry of light kisses on your plumped lips, you knew that this would beat any love-story in any muggle book because this, this was perfection.

[topicprinter]

Hey everyone,Over 6 months ago I posted here with growing 57 trends that you could capitalize on for business opportunities, along with a plug for the app I’d created that found them.Your feedback was awesome and motivated me to keep running with it and growing it. And thanks to that, I managed to sell the site to Brian Dean of Backlinko recently. So I thought I’d share the story here.I have to admit though, I hadn’t monetized yet and I was incredibly lucky with how things worked out. So I’m not recommending this as a reproducible guide for anyone but hopefully you still enjoy the read.How It StartedI began work on Trennd.co back in April while living in Japan, and back then it was originally called TrendList.io.imageI’d started to realize that it’s 100X easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride a big market trend. Jump on the opportunity before the competition gets too fierce.A great example of this is Jon and Justin at Transistor.fm, who spotted a growing B2B market for podcast hosting and bootstrapped a SaaS for it.Another classic example — Pieter Levels tapped into the digital nomad and remote work trend while scratching his own itch with Nomad List and Remote OK.Both market awareness and market timing were critical for these guys. On top of execution skill of course.But also, businesses take years of sales, marketing and general hard work even after you’ve launched. I’d like to know that life force is going into a growing opportunity, not a shrinking one.I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.I needed a shiny new app or tool to play with. 😛But I couldn’t find anything, so I started to build it for myself.The first version was literally just a CLI tool that output trend graphs to the console.I thought I might as well package it as a B2C SaaS product. But woaaaah no, not another sales grind. Especially B2C.Let’s just put it up for free and see if I can even build an audience (basically email list) around it first.As I proclaimed on the about page, “Revenue is obviously at zero right now. It will likely stay there for a while. Probably forever.”Not wanting to miss the opportunity to try a fancy new web stack, I wrapped the tool up into a NextJS web app. This choice was primarily to capitalize on the out-of-box server-side rendering it offers. That way, I could actually get this project to rank properly on Google for all the various trends.I listed Trennd in early May (way before it was finished) on Product Hunt’s Ship service. Admittedly though, I probably should’ve done much more than this and actually talked to potential users/customers before writing any code.But I was very bullish on the concept since I was building Trennd to solve my own problem. 👹imageBut with a total of 153 subscribers from PH Ship 2 months later, it definitely felt like there might be more cost-effective ways to acquire initial users than the $80/month there. But the brand exposure and potential support from those guys on launch is still valuable.By May 20th I felt I had something that I could finally start to show people.But around the same time, I also realized that Trend List was the brand name of Trendlist.org. This is a contemporary graphic design site with Domain Authority of 38 and a huge presence on Google SERPs. I really didn’t want to compete from day 1 just to show up on Google when people search the brand name.imageAnyway, I found 3 other names that I’d be more than happy with: Trendful, Trennd and Trend Geek. I threw Nice Trend Bro into the running at the encouragement of my wife.Then I realized this rebrand could be a fantastic marketing opportunity in itself. So I decided to run a public vote on the new name via twitter poll as a fun and novel way other people could get involved. Plus this way I’d ensure it’s a solid name that works for everyone.With the Twitter poll underway for a week, I wanted to capitalize on this 7-day window and get as many votes as possible.Reddit Pre-launchI quickly got it up on Reddit as an initial “pre-launch”. I’d mainly wanted to get some initial users to help iron out any wrinkles and bugs, and to point out any big holes in terms of functionality.And as a professional “wantrepreneur”, I’m often lurking here on r/entrepreneur and I thought you guys might find Trennd useful.But I came in with my guard up. I knew full well you would chew me up and spit me out in an instant if you sensed I was here solely to promote.So I found 57 of the most interesting trends I had at the time and used them as a shield going into the post. I made sure to provide value first and ask for feedback second. I stuck around the comments section all day replying to everyone who took the time to comment.imageThe response to this Reddit post was huge! It received over 500 upvotes across 3 subreddits. One kind stranger even gave me Reddit Gold.In terms of number, Reddit brought:80 email subscribers50 user signups1k trafficNot a bad start.I also got a huge amount of awesome feedback on how I can improve the app and make it more valuable. Like requests for:Better data granularity for shorter time frames.Enabling Keyword trends too, not just Google Topics.Plus dozens of smaller things (like moving the trend close button to the top right so it’s easier to click on mobile).After this Reddit success, the twitter poll had over 100 votes for the new name. It was a close run between Trendful and Trennd.And, somehow, Pieter Levels came across Trend List, loved the concept and voted for the name Trennd!imageI’m a huge fan of Pieter’s and Nomad List. I was watching his Bali video about his maker journey literally days before starting Trend List! So for him to vote and like the idea was both uncanny and amazing.And in the end, the name Trennd won by a small margin.Following all this initial traction, Trennd was featured on Harry Dry’s killer Marketing Examples blog.imageI made the front page of Indie Hackers too with the top milestone too. Love the IH community so this was a big deal to me!imageAfter the first 5 weeks I was absolutely chuffed with the results. (That’s British slang for very pleased!)I hadn’t set any goals, but 353 email subscribers was way beyond anything I expected.And I was even more pumped that the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly positive.I’ve made some other small products, but they were like trying to get a massive boulder uphill. Every time you stopped pushing for new customers, it would roll back down on you. Old customers would churn and you hadn’t replaced them.But this one felt obviously different. It was the first thing I’d made that people just shared automatically and it kind of took flight by itself.And with an email list in the hundreds, I started a weekly email newsletter called Trennds For The Weekend**.** My primary goal there was to make no-fluff, straight to the point emails, with a carefully curated list of the most interesting and fresh trends each week.imageThe newsletter was the one thing that I made sure happened every week. It was great motivation to get things done to have something to talk to the readers. Plus it was an invaluable way to keep in touch with Trennd’s growing audience and have an open channel for feedback. If I started to go in a wonky direction re: trend quality, web design, email format, bugs, or anything really, somebody would usually let me know via email reply and help to straighten the ship’s course.Next up was a Show Hacker News launch, which I expected to be a giant flop as most things usually drown in the noise.Show HN LaunchSo Friday at 10pm and I’m sat at my desk in Japan ready to post to Hacker News. My wife’s already gone to bed, but I figured this was the best time to post such that people were awake in both US + Europe. Plus I could reply to any comments and keep check on things through to Saturday morning JST if I had to.So I drafted my opening thread comment and hit submit.“Sorry, your account is too new to submit this site.”Oh man. I’d been thinking about this submission all day. And I couldn’t even post. 🤦🏼‍♂️Anyway, I emailed the mods at Hacker News to explain and they very quickly and kindly marked it ready to go through. My account was made in 2017, but turns out “too new” can also mean not having participated much in the community.Flash forward to the following Friday and this time it went through.We’d made sure to phrase the title to resonate with the audience. On Hacker News (and in most places I suppose) simple, clear and humble works best. this is where fellow indie maker Vincent was awesome — he helped me to get this title spot on, along with a bunch of other great advice that made a huge difference.The post immediately moved onto the best of Show HN page, and then quickly onto the main page.imageTraffic increased to 400 concurrent users on Trennd and we briefly peaked at #1.imageIt was at this point that Trennd got the infamous “Hacker News hug” and the site died. The free MongoDB Atlas database plan did not appreciate this flood of connections. So I had a frantic 15min where the website was down while I upgraded to the paid tier.It’s a shame that I lost this quarter-hour of Hacker News prime time. And I’ve since implemented some server-side caching that prevents the database from getting hammered.But since I recovered quickly, we remained near the top of the front page for 12 more hours, which is good enough for me. Let’s not be greedy. 😛I manned the comments section into the early hours of the morning, got some great discussion and a tremendous amount of positivity from the crowd.Twitter BonanzaJust as I started to think everything was all over and we were back to normality. The buzz started to spill over and have a huge domino effect onto Twitter.Dozens and dozens of people tweeted about Trennd.Thankfully I’d updated the twitter preview image beforehand (thank you Michael!). So there was a pretty placeholder image and sweet description when dozens of people shared and tweeted about Trennd.And then, the cherry on top of it all was that Rand Fishkin of Moz tweeted about it! Unbelievable! This made my month. 🍒imageThe number of likes and retweets on the back of this was insane too. I’m a twitter newbie, so to get this kind of exposure blew my mind! 🤯It also led to us getting picked up by the hackernewsletter and kottke.org which drove some good traffic our way too.imageAll of this combined to rocket us above 2000 email subscribers:Subscribers: 2,163 🎉Visitors: 28,353 🕵️‍♀️Pageviews: 124,026 👀It was really cool how ready people were to contribute and add trends of their own too. It confirmed my hypothesis that we could crowdsource the surfacing of new trends to some extent. In a similar way that Product Hunters crowdsource new products.But with this came the issue of quality control. One visitor, for example, added “Donkey Porn” as a new trend, and it may well be trending, but I had to moderate it away. 🤫At this stage, I felt I’d truly validated interest in the project with over 2000 subscribers, marketing to get another X hundred subscribers wasn’t going to change anything.I needed to make the platform more powerful. So I held off a Product Hunt launch thinking I’d keep that powder dry.Monetization (Or Lack Thereof)I also started to think long and hard about how to monetize the site at this time. I needed it to at least pay some of its own bills and maybe even some of mine!In the medium to long term, I knew a premium version of Trennd was the way to go.But I couldn’t figure out what this should look like and wanted to do it right.There’s no point damaging hard-earned goodwill by pushing out a rushed premium product too soon or something that’s the wrong fit.Somebody did ask for a “private Trennd dashboard” where they could favorite trends and even get personal alerts. They even said they’d pay $100-$200 per month for it. Turns out, they found Trennd immensely valuable to discover new programming languages sooner so that they could make Udemy courses around them. (If they were the first to get a course out and get good reviews, it’s like a winner take all market and can be very profitable.)But, to me, all the value seems to be in the trends themselves and spotting hotter trends sooner. Not the ability to put certain ones in a personal dashboard. They’d just use the free version! Plus how many tech course creators are there out there? For better or worse (I think better!), I dismissed it as a dead-end.Instead, I began to look for a community or affiliate sponsor and started to have pricing conversations with people. Even though I was still small fry in terms of traffic and a few thousand email subscribers.I managed to set up a nice sponsorship ‘swap’ with Unreadit (which is awesome, check it out!) and that was a good fit and worked out well for both of us.It drove a bit of traffic, some new subscribers and gave me some stats about how well Trennd sponsorship slots converted for future potential sponsors. But it didn’t bring in any cash money since it was just a swap.imageHaving that deal in place did give me an excuse to scuttle back into my code cave though. 🦀Code CaveThis was with the view to making Trennd more robust and sustainable for the long term.The #1 challenge was, and still is, the noise to signal ratio. Nobody wants to click through page after page trends to find the ones relevant to them. They need to be able to slice and dice the trends in more ways/dimensions that are relevant to them.So I hunkered down in my little white room in our Japanese “mansion” (which in Japan basically means an apartment).imageI added things like absolute search volume data and the ability to sort on it. More consistent categorization standards and automatic classification of trends too.With the data granularity, you can see the 3-month chart data was weekly at first. So pretty crummy with only 12 data points.imageBut then below that with daily data points instead you can really see the difference.imageAnyway, I’ll stop boring you with the various small additions and improvements I made over this time. Back to the story. 😛Traction Despite InactionI’d done zero marketing for over a month. 🤦‍♂️The hype last month around the Hacker News launch and Twittersphere had naturally died down, along with the web traffic.It’s way too easy to put marketing on the back burner and keep building in general. That’s where I’m personally most comfortable.Yet, I know too well marketing should be an ongoing crusade, alongside product improvement.The most successful indie hackers I see around — they have systemized routines that enable them to continually output valuable content.But to my surprise, the mailing list count was still ticking up every day despite all this, and the site had seemed to reach a healthy equilibrium of 100–300 daily visitors.imageThese were both big green flags to me. (I’m not sure if green flags are actually a real thing. Emojipedia doesn’t think so… 🚩)Pieter Levels tweeted about us again out of the blue too! This was several months after the first time and drove several thousands of visitors to the site. imageAcquisitionAll kinds of people had been putting themselves forward asking to get involved. And this was happening on a semi-regular basis!The problem is, co-founders bring a huge amount of risk with them. Differences in vision, work ethic, and so many other things.They’re big unknowns, so I’d decided to stick by myself and the devil I know.That is until I received the following email from:imageI thought I recognized that name. Googling Brian Dean… Oh snap!Yep, it’s Brian Dean of Backlinko.com 😮imageMore googling… Interesting, he’s acquired things before. I don’t think he’s joking around.imageI’d just had my wedding 2 days before and we were off to Okinawa for 4 days, so my call with Brian had to wait. Best to play hard to get anyway. 😜Then 1 call, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 31 seconds later — we had a deal.And we literally shook hands over Skype video! 🤝As for the acquisition number… that’s why you’ve read this far, right?!It’s really difficult to put a price on something that’s not making any money yet. Well, actually it’s not. Most people would just say $0. And traffic was growing but spikey and low in an absolute sense.But at the same time, we were both massively excited by the potential and the concept is partially validated and de-risked given the initial traction obtained.We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.So I can’t retire yet, but it’s a HUGE win!The main thing is - now I don’t have to worry quite so much about paying rent every month and I can start to think more big picture in general.And perhaps even more importantly, it provides validation to myself (and my wife!) so that I can keep working on these “projects” of mine and not get a “real job” just yet.To be honest, I didn’t know if I was just crazy and wasting my time for 6 months.To my Japanese in-laws, I was the slightly strange, unemployed “freeter” at home on my computer all day.imageI have to say, writing during the process made a huge difference. It keeps you sane as a solo-founder and allows you to track your own progress at a high level.Also, being as open as possible and sharing metrics such as subscriber growth, traffic and revenue helped to attract support and keep me accountable when it was only me working on it.And overall, all of this helped to create a story around the product, without which people don’t have reason to care.What’s NextIt’s awesome to have Brian behind the project now. This is fantastic news for Exploding Topics. He’s a massive name in the SEO industry of course, but also a super-smart guy who really knows his stuff and enables us to take the project to the next level!He has a great instinct for direction, based on years of experience and success online. This includes his “head-ache detector” as he calls it, which can foresee potential problems way further in advance than I can.And we’ve also fast-forwarded to having Brian’s huge audience to put new features in front of and see what they think.I no longer need to slowly grow Trennd’s audience via a trend community/discussion platform over months and years, while also trying to wrestle with product-market fit.Instead, we can focus on building a better product. This means the core value of trend discovery and getting people hotter trends faster**.**To this end, we’ve been able to refocus on the backend. Now we monitor way more places on the internet as sources for interesting new topics and keywords across health, business, marketing, fashion and more.We’ve also decided to niche down. This is a vital step and something I’d been sweating and delaying for several months. But with Brian’s help, this is something we’ve been able to move forward on.The problem is there are so many different potential customers: indie makers like me looking for their next project idea, investors looking for a company stock pick, affiliates seeking the next hot product or people just seeking to feed their curiosity.But we’ve settled on professional bloggers**.**These guys are our new focus as they constantly need fresh content ideas across a range of categories to write about. And if they’re one of the first to write about an exploding topic then this makes a huge difference to their results.They also potentially make for good customers. (Even though we don’t have our premium version yet!) It’s still good to choose a nice market where people immediately ‘get’ the product and are willing to pay for it if it provides value.This market has proven itself before too, as Nathan Barry of ConvertKit said about going from $1k — $10k MRR:Niche down as small as possible. Going from a generic email marketing company to “email marketing for professional bloggers” was critical. (source)We’ve renamed it too. I know, I know… I’ve already rebranded from Trend List to Trennd, and now we’re doing it again? But hear me out.This product spreads by word of mouth very well.But try telling your friend to “check out trend, but with two n’s. Oh and it’s .co not .com”. Not good. 😅So we’ve gone with ExplodingTopics.comLovely. Easy to remember and easy to spell. Has a balanced look to it on paper too, but maybe that’s just me.And the word “topics” aligns better with our new target audience.Plus we now have a sweet new design. I feel it’s much more intuitive and way sexier in general. 🤩imageBefore it looked like a project, now it looks like a product.And here's the plug, the inevitable plug:And we’re finally launching on Product Hunt today. Both Brian and I will be active in the discussion all of today (3rd December 2019):That’s it! Glad you made it to the end, hope you enjoyed the story and thanks again to you guys at r/EntrepreneurUntil next time,😘Josh