In this post
  1. The scoreboard
  2. The zeros, one by one
  3. The most expensive mistake: 47 videos live with the wrong text
  4. What returned the most per hour
  5. What we would do differently
  6. A note on measurement

This is the last part of the series. The previous three covered specific failures — the title that became a filename, clicking by coordinate and the post that did not exist.

This part is the scoreboard. No makeup, and with the right denominator — each channel's real queue, not "looks done".

The scoreboard

ChannelDone%
YouTube Shorts38/38100
Discordown server100
Store developer pagefull profile100
Threadsbio, link and posts100
Site and blog2/2100
Store listing copy6/786
Software directory5/683
Product Hunt7/978
X27/3871
App Store editorialprepared50
TikTok16/3842
Facebook13/3834
Instagram10/3826
Reddit0/80
Long-form YouTube00
Developer communities00
Kwai0/380

Five channels at zero. The reasons are worth separating, because they look nothing alike.

The zeros, one by one

Reddit — reputation gate. Covered in full in part 3. New account, zero karma, own domain in the first post. The unlock is time, not effort.

Kwai — no web interface. The account exists and is configured. But Kwai exposes neither profile editing nor publishing on the web — no settings route exists on the site. Only the mobile app. For a desktop operation that is not difficulty; it is the absence of a door.

Developer communities — never attempted. Zero by decision, not by block. Flutter, Firebase and indie dev forums are exactly where this series would find its audience. It is the biggest gap in the plan and the cheapest to close.

Long-form YouTube — the asset does not exist. No horizontal video was ever produced. An honest zero.

Store promotional content — the feature does not exist. It was in the plan by assumption. The account simply does not have it.

Three of the five zeros are not poor execution. They are planning on unchecked assumptions — a channel with no web interface, a format that was never produced, a feature the account does not offer. Checking the door first would have saved the entire queue.

The most expensive mistake: 47 videos live with the wrong text

Our typing automation was assumed to be unable to send accented characters. Because of that, every caption was generated without accents — which works, and looks visibly amateurish in Portuguese.

On 4 August we discovered the assumption was false: accents go through fine. The copy generator was fixed the same day.

And then came the second mistake, which cost more than the first: nobody went back to the channels already published.

Copy fixed in the generator100%
Already-live videos fixed0%

Result: 38 Shorts and 9 TikToks published or scheduled with the wrong text — plus a misspelled hashtag surviving in two derived files that were never regenerated.

When an assumption falls, the work does not end at fixing the cause. Sweep every artefact derived from it. Fixing the factory and leaving the defective batch on the shelf is half a fix.

What returned the most per hour

Type of workEffortDurability
Profile pageshourspermanent
Store listing copyhourspermanent
Own site and blogdayspermanent, under your control
Short video across six platformsweeksephemeral, algorithm-dependent
Reputation communitiesweeks of presencepermanent but slow

The first three rows return the most per hour — and they are the least glamorous. A well-written store listing works every day, forever, depending on nothing. A short video works for 48 hours.

That is not an argument against video. It is an argument against starting with video.

What we would do differently

  1. 1. Check the door before building the queue. Three channels entered the plan

without anyone verifying that publishing on the web was possible.

  1. 2. Read the house rules before writing the copy. Five communities were chosen

by topic and none allowed self-promotion. The text was written before the rule was read.

  1. 3. Enter reputation channels months before launch. Reddit and X are presence

channels, not launch channels.

  1. 4. Treat assumptions like code. When one falls, sweep the derivatives.
  2. 5. Start with what is permanent. Store listing, profile pages, own site.

Ephemeral content afterwards.

A note on measurement

The most honest item in this scoreboard is the one that is missing: we have no conversion numbers. The URLs went out without campaign parameters, so we cannot say which channel produced installs. We know what was published. We do not know what worked.

That is the next fix, and it comes before any optimisation — because optimising without measuring is just switching guesses.

Frequently asked questions

How many channels can you realistically run in parallel?

Fewer than it looks. Of the nineteen we opened, four finished at 100% and five stayed at zero — and those five did not fail from lack of effort but from structural blocks: account reputation, no web interface, or a feature the account simply does not have. Map the door before you build the queue.

What returned the most per hour invested?

Profile pages. Developer page on the store, a listing on a software directory, a launch profile: hours of work, permanent, and independent of any algorithm. Video content produces more raw reach and costs twenty times the time.

Is it worth posting the same video on six platforms?

Yes, with one big caveat: the copy has to be adapted per platform. X deprioritises posts with site links in some contexts, TikTok does not allow clickable links below a thousand followers, and Reddit treats repeated text across communities as spam. The video travels; the caption does not.