E574: The five silent killers of startups that founders never admit. This is an expansion of the viral short video I previously made on this. When startups die, it’s not with a bang but with a whimper. These are the five most common reasons why startups fail. 1․ The Expert's Curse ◦ Being an industry expert becomes the biggest liability. ◦ You solve yesterday's problems. ◦ You know too much to see new patterns. 2․ The 90-Day Death Clock ◦ Days 1-30, vision leads. ◦ Days 31-60, you need validatio...
Jan 29, 2025•9 min•Season 1Ep. 574
E573: Joshua Ryan Schaver (@bagelfinagles on Instagram) shares how he’s made $600,000+ so far from Instagram and TikTok with an in-depth breakdown of his funnel. He’s using primarily social video and tripwire offers to scale his urban farming-based business. He shares the copy he uses, the hooks, his content strategy, his call-to-actions, his tripwire PDFs, what he gives for free and what he charges for, how his funnel evolved over the past 3 years, how much each of his revenue streams gives him...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 573
E572: This is how the popular newsletter platform, Substack, started, got its first customers and its first investor, and grew. We cover its go-to-market, marketing strategy, intense attention to customer relationships and trust, product strengths, and product weaknesses. We look at what made it successful, both in terms of how it acquired users and customers, and also in terms of what the product actually does. A lot to learn here, you’re going to love it. Source: https://read.first1000.co/p/-s...
Jan 27, 2025•21 min•Season 1Ep. 572
E571: A concise list of the things most people still get wrong about SEO in 2025. We look at things like intent, topical authority, vanity metrics, monthly search volume, AI SEO, amount of content, content quality, testing, and more intent. This is the high-level overview of how to do SEO in 2025. From Charles Floates’ post: https://x.com/Charles_SEO/status/1883379300793283011 Get tons of qualified traffic with my SEO Program, Compact Keywords: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Credit 00:22 SEO...
Jan 26, 2025•6 min•Season 1Ep. 571
E570: HubSpot is losing 80% of its SEO blog traffic, since March 2024. And this is part of a bigger decline started in February 2023. HubSpot is falling prey to AI chatbots (ChatGPT released December 2022) taking its traffic and to UGC ranking for its keywords. HubSpot has been going after top-of-funnel content. Now it has been decimated. This is why HubSpot’s SEO has been obliterated and what you can do to avoid this. Discussed on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1i8jev6/hubspot_is...
Jan 25, 2025•11 min•Season 1Ep. 570
E569: How to increase sales and revenue and everything good by selling the benefits and not the features. You’re naturally in the weeds with whatever you’re doing. You know your niche inside and out. You think your differentiating factors are the coolest things ever. But the truth is your prospects only care about the benefits your features bring. These are many examples of improving copywriting by emphasizing the benefits first, then the features. This will increase your revenue by improving yo...
Jan 24, 2025•15 min•Season 1Ep. 569
E568: This is the secret to growth on Instagram. 1. Post manually through the Instagram mobile app. Don’t use automation tools or views will be suppressed. Instagram doesn’t like shared IP addresses. 2. High-frequency posting. Post a lot. The brand in this posts 100 times PER DAY to Instagram. They get 9.2 billion impressions per month. And people are trying to emulate them. Insanity. Sources 👇 1 Day 100 Posts CHALLENGE: https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1i6t1xw/1_day_100_pos...
Jan 23, 2025•9 min•Season 1Ep. 568
E567: Clickthrough rate (CTR) manipulation with parasite search engine optimization. Manipulating clicks within Google Search to get your posts on other high-authority websites and platforms to rank fast and well. This is how it’s done, if it works, and whether or not you should try it. This is some of the darkest black hat SEO there is. If you’re curious about high-impact forbidden SEO tactics, this one’s for you. Mentioned in the podcast: Compact Keywords - have buyers find your brand when the...
Jan 22, 2025•16 min•Season 1Ep. 567
E566: Mike and Kass Lazerow are serial entrepreneurs and investors best known as the cofounders of Golf.com and Buddy Media, the leading social media marketing platform that sold to Salesforce for $745 million. With a lifetime of stories from decades of building, Mike and Kass have supported close to 100 early-stage startup founders. They served as angel investors and advisors to Scopely, which sold to Savvy Games for $5 billion in 2022, and Liquid Death, the canned water company whose “evil mis...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 566
E565: Negative SEO - using spammy SEO practices to harm your competitors’ rankings - is real. I’ve seen it even recently. This is a story about a well-known experiment in SEO that proved negative SEO is real and showed how it’s done. Source: https://seosherpa.com/seo-experiments/ 00:00 Introduction to Negative SEO 00:35 Disclaimer and Caution 01:06 The Experiment Setup 03:35 Results and Analysis 05:13 Conclusion and Final Thoughts The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: h...
Jan 20, 2025•6 min•Season 1Ep. 565
E564: Huge docket today. A Gary Vaynerchuk story related to the very special billionaire coming on the show this week. The Trump Meme Coin that literally just launched. The TikTok ban, and what to do now. And Yandex Video for Parasite SEO. Crazy episode. 00:00 Gary Vaynerchuk 00:36 Upcoming Podcast Guest: Mike Lazerow 01:07 Gary Vaynerchuk's Influence and Lessons 04:25 Seven Power Lessons 09:15 Donald Trump Meme Coin and Personal Brands 10:25 TikTok Shutdown and Social Media Strategy 12:28 SEO N...
Jan 19, 2025•14 min•Season 1Ep. 564
E563: Tripwire funnels - what they are, four examples, how you can use them in your marketing and sales to generate more revenue, and how you can do this fast. Tripwire funnels are small purchases that help break initial resistance to purchasing. Once the purchase is made, it becomes easier to upsell the main product. The four examples are inspiring and educational. For example, repurposing work you already did into a tripwire funnel that generates over $12,500. Or an ascending price mechanism t...
Jan 18, 2025•16 min•Season 1Ep. 563
E562: This teaches how to get on Google Images with images of your choosing - Google Images SEO. It could be images of you, your face, your brand, your product, or whatever you want. It’s a strategy that allowed me to take up 20% of Google Images, not even including the images outside of my control. I share image file names, alt text, captions, internal linking strategies, page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, H2s, and more. Everything you need to do to effectively get your images onto Google Ima...
Jan 17, 2025•10 min•Season 1Ep. 562
E561: I’m able to consistently go viral with hyper-top-of-funnel content. Validated subject matter. But how will I use this hyper-top-of-funnel content? Growing my followers is not enough. I want to drive top-of-mind awareness to Compact Keywords. Easy way to do this? Clothing. So I tried having a shirt made with Fiverr. Listen to hear my results and what I’m doing now. Compact Keywords: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Introduction and Recap of Previous Episode 00:28 Viral Video Success Story...
Jan 16, 2025•10 min•Season 1Ep. 561
E560: Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin) is a prolific marketer, builder, and writer. Previously he was Head of Growth at Product Hunt. He shares insane tactics. He shares: - His LinkedIn marketing automations and LinkedIn growth strategies. - How he grew his newsletter. - How him and some of the biggest companies are using meme marketing to make millions and billions of dollars. - Specific tools and strategies with those tools. - Exact copy he is using for unique call to actions. - His 𝕏 strategies ...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 560
E559: Go to market stories from 37 billion+ dollar companies. This episode will answer two questions: 1. How do people hear about your product? 2. Why do they buy it? This is what’s known as a GTM Motion, or Go-To-Market Motion. I share flowcharts for both high-intent customers and low-intent customers. I give examples of every possible scenario (as demonstrated by the 37 unicorns) in each flowchart. If you need a how-to guide for marketing and sales, this one is for you. Super actionable, direc...
Jan 14, 2025•20 min•Season 1Ep. 559
E558: Canva is going after bottom-of-funnel keywords. High user-intent keywords like, “make wedding invitation.” They’re using templates and a very cool conversion flow. And their numbers are crazy. - 700M+ total monthly visits. - 25% from organic search. - 2x Adobe's total monthly traffic. - Zero reliance on paid advertising. The critique is they’re only able to do this given their brand presence. Not true. Searchers will jump through hoops to get what they want, especially with bottom-of-funne...
Jan 13, 2025•11 min•Season 1Ep. 558
E557: Medium.com used to be huge for Parasite SEO (using the strong web presence of another platform to rank on Google). Then it died. It died hard. But now it is back! It is back with a vengeance. But there are new rules. A new playbook. This is what’s going on and how SEOs are gaming Google with Medium.com. (The Edward Show does not condone or recommend any of these tactics, they are evil, pure evil, black hat SEO is evil and Edward Sturm does not recommend it.) Sponsored by Compact Keywords: ...
Jan 12, 2025•12 min•Season 1Ep. 557
E556: Kanye West put up a viral Instagram post expressing his disbelief and dissatisfaction over Adidas ranking above his website, Yeezy.com, for the search term, “Yeezy.” When you look at his SEO, it’s very clear why this is happening. Very clear. Here’s what’s going on. Sponsored by Compact Keywords, my full SEO Program, showing how to audit, enhance, and do aggressive, offensive SEO across a variety of platforms - get it at https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Kanye West's Instagram Controversy...
Jan 11, 2025•11 min•Season 1Ep. 556
E555: Methods and stories of businesses getting valuable, authoritative backlinks in crazy and creative ways. Getting backlinks from .gov and .edu sites. Getting backlinks from major publications and journalists, getting backlinks from small blogs, and even getting backlinks in extremely black hat ways. Some are white hat. Some are grey. Some are impossible shades of black. All are creative and entertaining. If you’re doing SEO or link building, this is going to inspire you. From: https://www.re...
Jan 10, 2025•11 min•Season 1Ep. 555
E554: Postmates was acquired for $2.65 BILLION in 2020. This is the legendary story of how they got their first customers. The first part of the episode is me reading how they did. The second part is a concise summary of the tactics they used and how they learned and validated what people actually wanted. The third part is how you can do this with SEO. How Postmates got their first 1,000 orders: https://read.first1000.co/p/postmates Compact Keywords: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Introducti...
Jan 09, 2025•12 min•Season 1Ep. 554
E553: Google is caught. Another statement that flies in the face of past statements. Core Web Vitals do not impact SEO rankings. Nope. Sorry, they don’t. Countless dollars, time, and effort spent trying to optimize for Core Web Vitals when the real SEOs know it doesn’t make a difference. This is what Google has said and what the SEO community has to say. Stories, anecdotes, and data shared. Read it for yourself - tons of evidence: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1hvb2jy/googles_team_let_sl...
Jan 08, 2025•12 min•Season 1Ep. 553
E552: A Google Maps engineer saw my viral video about a Local SEO exploit in Google Maps. It’s a pretty crazy exploit, if true. And the Google Maps engineer addressed it directly. I checked LinkedIn to make sure the guy really works at Google Maps. He does, and was at Microsoft before. This is what the black hat exploit is (warning: it’s explicit) and the Google Maps engineer’s response. Watch the Viral Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEX60-nifgC/ 00:00 A Wild Social Media Story 00:19 Disco...
Jan 07, 2025•13 min•Season 1Ep. 552
E551: Just as the title describes, this person got 20,000 users in 3 months for his startup with only $50 and shares how he did it. Very actionable and repeatable strategies in this one. If you want to get users and qualified traffic for your company, these methods will be great. Sources: How I got 20,000 users in three months with $50: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-got-20-000-users-in-three-months-with-50-5d1f91a4ba Relaunch like a pro: 100+ places to launch, relaunch, and list your p...
Jan 06, 2025•10 min•Season 1Ep. 551
E550: This guy nuked his company by getting greedy with AI generated pages after first seeing success. This is a story mirrored by many reckless SEOs and webmasters. I even share a story of a startup I’ve been monitoring for over a year now. They used tens of thousands of AI generated pages to rank for 213,000 keywords in just a few months. Now… they only rank for 1 keyword in the top positions of Google. Absolutely decimated. But it turns out it is possible to recover from having your site pena...
Jan 05, 2025•14 min•Season 1Ep. 550
E549: The rules of building a personal brand have changed. 2025 is going to be great for them, but not if you waste your time with one cardinal sin. This is what that sin is - how to avoid it - and the four pillars that will make you an authority in your niche. How to build a personal brand in 2025… explained in under 6 minutes! My Exact Social Media Posting Strategy: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/social-media-posting-strategy/ Content Inc. Second Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Content-Inc-S...
Jan 04, 2025•6 min•Season 1Ep. 549
E548: More and more creators are coming onto the scene every day. People using their face and faceless AI. So how do you stand out? This is one basic thing to focus on and then two things people don’t realize. Two hacks for creating above-average mobile video - TikToks and Instagram Reels. This is what I have personally learned from making literally 3,000-4,000 videos since starting on November 1, 2022. And this advice will get you views and sales. 00:00 Introduction: Three Epiphanies 00:26 Crit...
Jan 03, 2025•15 min•Season 1Ep. 548
E547: Impactful, unexpected, ROI-driving, and some unusual ways to boost local SEO with Google Business Profile and more. This is not your standard “add high-quality photos” advice. This is the exact content to make, the language to use, and even a crazy black hat technique that you’ve probably never heard of. This advice is focused on making the phone ring, not just on getting better rankings. This stuff will bring you real qualified traffic with local SEO. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/...
Jan 02, 2025•10 min•Season 1Ep. 547
E546: This guy hacked growth on Reddit to build his software as a service (SaaS) company to over a million dollars. The strategy is straightforward, repeatable, and works for any niche and any brand. This is a good one. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1hqdd65/how_i_hacked_growth_on_reddit_to_build_a_1m_saas/ 00:00 Introduction: The Reddit Growth Hack 00:41 Why Reddit is a Goldmine for Growth 02:10 Five Straightforward Strategies 05:07 Viral Post Formula on Reddit 07:00 Final Tips ...
Jan 01, 2025•9 min•Season 1Ep. 546
E545: Positive Friction in apps is one of the strangest retention tricks ever. Get people to expend more effort and it makes them stick with an app more! Very similar to the Ben Franklin Effect. Get somebody to do something for you and they like you more! As marketers, we look for every edge we can get, not just in awareness, but in getting people to stick with our brands. These tricks are very cool and very worth knowing. 🧪 Positive Friction: https://read.first1000.co/p/positive-friction The B...
Dec 31, 2024•10 min•Season 1Ep. 545
