If you're looking to read our articles, or check out our regular subscription, this page is not for you.
You can view the content here: https://www.sknexus.org/archive and our regular plan is 5 bucks a month (as cheap as it gets on Substack).
This page is probably for you, if I personally sent you the link, or you were referred by someone to procure my services:
Ok too many memes. Can’t help. Here’s the deal.
We recently went paid on our Substack due to many reasons, one being AI scraping and the other being how Substack works as a platform. It worked out great for us, and we generally saw an overall improvement in our publication’s performance. You can learn more here.
That got me thinking, there is an option to set up something called a ‘Founding Plan’, usually a super duper premium plan for your biggest supporters.
Many have them, and a lot of them offer the same kind of stuff. Access to a dump of resources, some ‘special’ access to a community, discount codes for dozens of tools you won’t actually (or IMO shouldn’t) randomly subscribe to, so on and so forth.
So I was like, how can I, the guy who generally likes overworking himself to a fault, offer something nice with a bowtie on it.
And Nexus Direct, yes this page, is the result of that thought process.
Thing is, I DON’T want something scalable for the masses, I want something where I actually spend my time doing things I care about, creating results, working with people who are serious about building their niche, offering ‘real’ value rather than one amortized by made up yearly SaaS pricing tool numbers.
In short
What most founding plans on Substack include, next to what Nexus Direct includes.
There’s an essay by Paul Graham I keep coming back to whenever I think of such stuff.
His line is that your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made, and you get there by doing the unscalable thing on purpose.
That’s Nexus Direct basically.
If I’m selling my time, I’m going to do it properly, which means a small number of people I actually stay in touch with over the long haul.
And when you look at it from that perspective, this is CHEAP.
Trust me, I do this for a living. I can guarantee you that no one out there is offering something like this, with the same level of experience, and commitment, for the price broken down monthly. (I wish there was a way to give a trial or monthly pricing, but founding plans are yearly only).
So for now it’s $999 a year, which comes down to about $83 a month.
The perks you get are these.
More will be added, these will be optimized, as folks get through the door.
But what you see here is ‘everything you need’ to get serious about your content game, written content to be specific.
A monthly call, strategy direction, a direct line, and my pedigree of 10+ years in product and business behind all of it.
The people who know what this kind of work costs will know it’s nothing to pay for it, which is exactly why it isn’t sustainable.
Now this is a bet after all.
I currently run a whole business, and SK NEXUS ‘so far’ has been my passion project.
But as the name suggests, some day, in the long run, this is what I want to keep doing long after I give up on my consulting career (it burns you out like nothing else out there).
On top of that, content (written and digital) is something I already offer in my mainline services as part of being a Product consultant.
So why not pitch it here as well. At a lower price, to folks who really need this help, and to support other folks with their passion and platforms.
Now at this point, I would ask you to just DM me and talk 1 to 1, coz a standardized landing page won’t convince you any further.
But to satisfy the social proof lords and ‘why the heck’ should I care about you folks, I will share some data driven fancy charts and my backstory to make you believe in me.
First, a Bit About Me
I have had a very long ‘wannabe career’ in a sense. I began fixing computers at the little age of 9, and ever since have been basically doing everything under the sun as long as the label of ‘tech’ was slapped on it. By education, if it matters, I am a mechanical engineer, and by trade I picked the ripe industry of software and products because that was rather lucrative where I am based, Pakistan, hi there.
Then I began my ‘official career’. First in tech support to get my foot into a Product company, from there onwards to knowledge base management, content writer, PM for a marketing department, and then finally into the world of Product Management.
The reason for laying this out there is that most of my career has been ‘customer facing’. The one thing that builds an understanding of people more than anything.
Key word, Empathy.
And that skill comes in handy when your passion is to write about tech, or any area to be honest. Over my career as an employee, freelancer, contractor, and now consultant I have served over 50 businesses of all nature.
And I have empowered marketing in some shape, way, or form.
On top of that, I manage this very publication you are reading the page on, run my own Career and Builder Coaching community, and launched my consulting business officially about 2 years ago.
I basically run a flywheel now, this publication helps me stay up to date with the world, the community helps me learn, practice and execute on different ideas, and then the business is where I sell what I perfected.
But these worlds need to collide someday, and that begins here.
I’d rather do one thing really well than maintain 3 things, and to all of my clients I say this, ‘do as I say, not as I do’.
So How Do I Do Content?
A lot of my client work ends up being content, because content is how a product gets found.
Newsletters, SEO, blog programs, positioning, the occasional brand strategy. Over the years I’ve specced hundreds of articles across dozens of content strategies, and they all follow one method.
It starts with a brief. What the business actually sells, who reads, and what the reader should do next. Then pillars, the 4 to 6 topics you want to own, each with a job in the funnel.
Then the library. Every article specced before it’s written, with its title, keyphrase, slug, meta description and headings, so the person writing it never faces a blank page. Then the linking, hub and spoke, because the multiplier is the links between them.
AI is here now, and new tools keep coming and going. But FUNDAMENTALS DON’T MOVE.
That’s the thing you need to start as a baby bird about to fly soon. Consistency and quality beat any ‘hack’ out there. Being part of Nexus Direct ensures that I hold you accountable.
Do it long enough, you start seeing numbers, and do it longer, you start seeing results.
Results Like These
What you see is effort across multiple industries and the impressions you get in return. And funny thing is, in an AEO run world, impressions are back in business, you want AI buttering your platform, don’t you?
I have helped ventures across marketplaces, product companies, services, nonprofits and media. And after staring at that much data, you kinda start seeing the same 3 problems everywhere.
1 - you start getting traffic, but there is no flow to where it goes. The pages you want to rank just collect dust.
2 - nobody goes back. Old posts sit untouched for years, titles never get tested, formats never change, and the clicks slowly dry up.
3 - the fix is boring, so nobody does it. Retitle the page to what people actually type. Link the lonely posts back to the main one. Move the report out of the file and onto a page.
Boring stuff works. Trust me.
And I do be eating my own cooking.
The very publication you’re reading this on.
Search clicks tripled between February and August.
Small team, side project.
It’s not a big site (I’ll say it before you do). But it’s punching above its weight.
The archive compounds. The whole point of showing up every week.
And most of what we write is evergreen, so this will go for a long time.
What sets us apart is the fact that unlike your typical tech journalism, where you are constantly chasing the next trend and news highlight, we kinda just chill out, you know? We are probably the last to cover something new, but often definitely the first to give you a fresh perspective on it.
And on top of that, one thing you should know. Substack grows through Notes and recommendations.
Way more than through Google. You only learn that by running one and staring at the numbers every month. So take the numbers with a grain of salt.
But stuff outside of Substack? This is what that looks like:
A site with next to no search presence in April.
6 months later -> nearly 8x the impressions and 2.5x the clicks of the 6 months before. It even started showing up inside Google’s AI answers.
We wrote 20 blogs, optimized their existing stuff, removed links that didn’t serve any purpose, and planned the next 6 months.
That’s exactly what I would help you execute for yourself.
So What Does a Month Look Like?
Ideally, you’d start by booking your first Checkup with me from the perks page, or just send a hi over the direct line.
We have a chat, talk about what’s on your mind, and get your thoughts on paper. Think of it like a basic version of content discovery.
Then I come back to you with actionable steps that I will share with you and hold you accountable for as we go, every month.
Under Nexus Direct, I want to have my full skillset up for grabs. For now, you can expect me to do content strategy for you, help you build your own personalized playbook to promote and distribute stuff across your social.
Have a website? I’ll throw in an audit for that one as well. Need help with process? Running a team? Don’t know how to serve your proof? Everything is up for discussion and delivery.
And if something seems like a reach, I will be upfront with you and quote that separately. Coz I’m not a charity (or I am trying my best to not be one anymore hah!), and neither are you.
The Direct Line has one rule. Quick questions only.
If the quick question turns out to be not so quick, it rolls into your next Checkup.
Lastly, as someone who runs a community and has done this work for a decade, effectively for free, I do want to help and promote valuable ideas out there. If I believe in what you are doing, and you show me your effort, I will try my best to promote you and help you with your long haul. You will personally get a shoutout on some of our ongoing publication work with fair disclaimers. This isn’t a sponsorship play, more a ‘hey check this cool thing I worked on and helped out with’ play.
Who This Is NOT For
If you want someone to write your posts for you, or run your LinkedIn with your login, I don’t do that. And frankly speaking, you shouldn’t outsource that either if you want content to be YOUR MAIN GAME.
At scale, some things are fine to outsource, hire teams for, and do all that.
But if you are someone reading this page till here, you need to run this by yourself to get deep and dirty into it.
Nexus Direct is for people who want to do the work themselves, with me pointing at the right thing.
The Fine Print
5 founding seats at $999. After the 5th, the price doubles.
And it never goes past 20 people. Full stop.
The whole thing runs on my time, and I’d rather give 20 people real attention than give 200 people a Slack channel.
Also, once you redeem a perk, Substack won’t refund the subscription. Substack’s rule. A fair one though.
After you join, you get a welcome email from me, and your perks page unlocks with the booking link and my WhatsApp.
Book the first Checkup whenever. Most people use it in the first week, on the thing they were going to ask me anyway.
With or without my help - I wish you the best.
