What's New: Bluesky might be your next website traffic goldmine

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• Bluesky is driving more traffic than X and Threads for some publishers.
• ChatGPT Search gives incorrect answers for news sources nearly half the time.
• $500K MRR with a Ruby job processor. Mike Perham launched his MVP as a free, open source library, while he built out the paid version.

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Bluesky might be your next website traffic goldmine 💻

A few days ago, Bluesky reached 23M users.

Dave Earley from Guardian Australia said that their posts on Bluesky brought more traffic to theguardian.com in its first week than any week on X this year. He also mentioned that Bluesky got them at least twice as many visits as Meta's Threads.

On the same day, Matt Karolian from The Boston Globe revealed that they're seeing 3x more traffic from Bluesky than Threads, and 4.5x more conversions to paying digital subscribers.

So, what's Bluesky's deal?

Read the full article →

ChatGPT Search misattributes news sources nearly half the time 🤖

ChatGPT Search often provides false information about news articles. Researchers from Columbia University found that OpenAI's chatbot often responds with incorrect titles, outlets, publication dates, and URLs when asked to find specific news articles.

Instead of declining to answer, or admitting it was uncertain as to the source of a quote, the chatbot often plugged gaps with inaccurate (but plausible) information.

Furthermore, enabling OpenAI's web crawlers didn't always lead to accurate attribution.

Read the full article →

Landing Page Hot Tips 🔥

Strengthen your landing page with Rob Hope's design, development, and conversion tips!

Keep the tone of your copywriting positive.

Position your offering as a confident solution, not as a snarky competitor.

A background job processor for Ruby apps 📝

Mike Perham had a successful 15 year career as a software engineer, but it ultimately left him unfulfilled. He got tired of being paid to solve other people’s problems, and wanted to build something that he cared about personally.

While consulting for a startup in San Francisco, Mike realized that they had about a dozen machines running to process all the background jobs. This was costing them tons of money, and they were already using the best practices for Ruby at the time.

Mike knew he could build something that could handle all the background jobs with just one machine, and that's how Sidekiq was born.

Read the full article →

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Michal Kankowski, Katie Hignett, and Rob Hope for contributing posts. —Channing