Product
29 posts on Product.
Often the marketing problem I was handed turned out to need a product instead. A client who asked for a website really needed a booking tool, an e-commerce client's biggest win was a welcome email that did not exist yet, and Ripost was founded as an internet platform rather than a news portal. Lately it is favURL, built in public with AI agents in the loop. Here are the articles about that side of the work, including the testing habit that survived four years of chasing every shiny new thing.
- Six Onboarding Tasks That Changed favURL June 15, 2026
Six simple onboarding tasks that teach the whole of favURL, improve every profile, and quietly rebuilt the dashboard around momentum.
- Know a Social Media Manager? June 4, 2026
The last post in the favURL series, and the one with an ask. The freemium features are free for real: no card, no timer.
- Real Pages. Real Businesses. June 3, 2026
People asked what a favURL page looks like, so I built a gallery at favurl.com/world: hundreds of real businesses, from real Google reviews.
- 200+ Reviews. One Idea. June 2, 2026
My friend Valter's restaurant had 200+ Google reviews doing all the marketing work, sitting unused. That became favURL, and he became an accidental co-founder.
- One Project a Month. Zero Shipped. June 1, 2026
Five months of building one project a month with AI in the loop. Everything shipped, everything quietly let go, and what 'fail fast' finally taught me.
- Hello Again, Now Building With AI Agents May 1, 2026
After years away from entrepreneurship, I'm back, using AI agents to develop ideas and turn them into working things, and documenting the journey here.
- What I Learned Building Qysh Me September 1, 2021
Lessons from launching an Albanian-language educational platform in 2011, before edtech was even a word people used in Kosovo.
- Pokémon Go and the Case for Location-Based Advertising July 25, 2016
Pokémon Go got millions of people to walk outside on command. That behavior-change engine points to where location-based advertising goes.
- Keeping a Growing WordPress Site Secure and Updated March 8, 2016
A popular WordPress site is a target. The unglamorous maintenance discipline that kept Qysh Me safe and online as its traffic and reputation grew.
- Four Years of Testing Everything: What Actually Stuck October 28, 2015
Years of testing every shiny new thing in digital marketing. What survived, and why the testing itself turned out to be the only thing that mattered.
- WordPress at Scale: Taxonomy, Categories, and Search October 14, 2015
As Qysh Me grew into hundreds of how-to articles, structure became the product. How we organized WordPress so readers could find things.
- When a Client Needed a Product, Not Just a Website August 11, 2015
An early project where the real fix was a small web product: an online booking tool for a salon drowning in phone calls.
- SEO for a Site That Wants to Be Copied July 7, 2015
Ripost invited people to copy everything we published. Notes on canonicals, speed and structure when duplication is the strategy, not the problem.
- Ripostime: The River That Replaced the Front Page May 26, 2015
Below the featured mosaic, Ripost ran an endless river of items labelled by format, not section. On designing a homepage for scrolling.
- The First A/B Test That Changed How I Think About Pages April 15, 2015
A service business whose landing page looked fine and converted poorly. One A/B test, a clear winner, and the habit of testing over guessing.
- PunPun: A Show Made for the Internet, Not for TV April 14, 2015
Producing PunPun at Ripost meant unlearning television. On short formats, cutting for the phone, and losing the broadcast slot.
- The User Journey Was a Hashtag March 10, 2015
Ripost replaced the category menu with a row of live hashtags across every page. What that changed about how people moved through the site.
- Designed to Be Reposted January 27, 2015
If your platform's name is a verb, the interface has to let people do it. UX notes from Ripost on building for sharing and screenshots.
- The Welcome Email a Client Was Not Sending January 27, 2015
An early e-commerce project where the biggest win was an email that did not exist yet, and what it taught me about owned audiences.
- Shipping Ripost in Beta and Leaving It There December 15, 2014
Ripost carried a BETA label next to the logo on purpose. Notes on running formats as experiments, and what the label bought us.
- Ripost Is Not a Portal November 18, 2014
We founded Ripost as an internet platform, not a news portal. What that distinction meant in practice for a newsroom of misfits.
- Taking Qysh Me Mobile: The First Albanian How-To App May 20, 2014
By 2014 most of our readers were on phones, so we built Qysh Me an app and billed it, half-jokingly, as the first Albanian how-to app.
- Designing Qysh Me for Phones First January 28, 2014
Long before mobile-first was standard, most of Qysh Me's readers were on phones. How the small screen made the whole product better.
- Building a Writer Community Around Qysh Me June 11, 2013
Qysh Me could not scale on two people alone. How we brought in contributors, kept quality high, and turned readers into writers.
- My New Mantra: Test, Test, and Test January 22, 2013
After two years of arguing about what works in marketing, I found the answer. Stop arguing. Test it. The idea that changed how I work.
- Qysh Me Gatu: When the Recipes Became Their Own Thing August 25, 2012
How Qysh Me's cooking section grew into a vertical with its own identity, its own audience, and the first ads we ever sold.
- 54 Hours to Elexoj: Winning the First Startup Weekend Prishtina April 23, 2012
We built an Albanian audiobook platform over a weekend and won. What actually decided it was not the product, it was the letters we got signed.
- Making WordPress Fast on Kosovo's Internet October 8, 2011
How we optimized Qysh Me's WordPress site for slow connections and cheap phones, and why performance doubled as an SEO strategy.
- Why We Built Qysh Me on WordPress April 12, 2011
Why a two-person team building Albania's first how-to portal chose WordPress over a custom build, and what that choice let us do.