I build things online. Some of them work.
A decade of building, most of it the expensive way.
Websites, apps, plugins, communities, crypto projects and AI tools. Some of it paid off. Plenty of it taught me something instead.
I have built websites, apps, plugins, communities, crypto projects and AI tools. I have run a business that did over $200,000 in sales. I have also spent money on things nobody wanted, shipped products that went nowhere, and had an app sit in a review queue for weeks over a login screen while I refreshed a dashboard wondering whether it had even been submitted.
The successful projects did not stop me making expensive decisions afterwards. Failing repeatedly and paying attention is genuinely how I learned most of what I know.
Marketur is the useful residue of all of it.
How to Fail: I Got Really Fucking Good at It
The title is not self-deprecation for its own sake. It is a decade and more of building online businesses, with the mistakes left in and the cost attached.
Building something online, getting people to it, keeping it working.
Deciding what to build
Free tools like the Reality Check, and write-ups on validating an idea before it costs you a domain, a build and an ad budget.
Building it
WordPress, plugins, AI-connected site management, apps and the platform decisions that determine what it costs you to leave later.
Growing it
Marketing, search, email and the channels I have actually tested, including the ones that produced impressive numbers and no customers.
From something I did, with the cost attached.
There is a lot of advice online written by people who have never shipped the thing they are advising on. I am not interested in adding to it. If I have not tried something, I will say so rather than pretend.
That also means the content is not neutral. I came back to WordPress after spending real money on AI builders, so I have opinions about ownership and platform risk that a comparison article written for traffic would not have. You should weigh it accordingly.
If an article says a thing was a mistake, it was my mistake.
The one rule for everything published here
Articles are useful. Tools are more useful.
The Reality Check researches a business idea, names the competitors with sources, works out who controls the distribution and gives you the cheapest test that could kill the idea, free and without an account. More small tools like it are coming, alongside the WordPress plugins already in the toolkit.
Marketur is run by me, Rob, under Qubi Labs LLC. It is a small operation rather than a company with a content team, which is the reason it can be honest about what did not work.
If you want the work done rather than the instructions, I sell fixed-scope services. If you would rather do it yourself, most of what is here is free. Both are fine. The best way to follow along is the blog, or an account if you want the community and the tools.