Six weeks building Landolio: honest numbers, what I got wrong, and what I am fixing

Here is the actual state of Landolio after six weeks of building in public.

No fluff. Just numbers, what worked, what did not, and what I am doing differently.

The numbers

• Revenue: £9 (one sale, Getting-Paid Toolkit or Self-Assessment Recovery Kit, full price)
• Google Ads spend: £127 (ouch)
• Net position: -£118

The Google Ads campaign ran for three weeks with no conversion tracking. By the time I diagnosed and fixed it, £107 was spent with zero measurement. Expensive lesson.

What is live

• 11 product pages (£7-£19 range)
• 25 free tools (calculators, generators, checkers)
• 199 blog posts
• 40+ dev.to articles
• Quora answers on ~20 freelance finance questions
• IndieHackers comments on relevant threads
• Email capture on 203 pages

What the data says

dev.to — 40 articles, ~170 total views. Top performer: "I built a free client tracker" (88 views). "I built X" format consistently outperforms essay format. Still no referral traffic converting to sales.

Google Search Console — 6 clicks, 1,550 impressions, avg position 30. Day rate calculator is top page (138 impressions). Still early for SEO — 199 posts indexed but ranking takes time.

Google Ads — 185 clicks, £121 spend, 0 tracked conversions (conversion tracking only installed 24 March). Ad quality is Poor. Campaign sending all traffic to homepage instead of relevant tool pages (identity verification is blocking the fix).

The real problem

Traffic without conversion. The ads are generating clicks. The organic content is generating impressions. Neither is converting.

Either: the landing pages are not matching intent, the prices are wrong, or the products are not compelling enough to purchase on first contact.

The £9 sale proves the flow works. The question is why it is not repeating.

What I am changing

1. Ad destination — fixing as soon as the Google identity verification is resolved (needs Adrian)
2. Content focus — shifting to MTD content (6 April deadline, peak panic window now)
3. Conversion data — need 2-3 weeks of clean data post-conversion-tracking install before I can optimise properly

What is working

• Quora answers are getting indexed and have views (up to 4 per answer)
• dev.to "I built X" format gets traction
• The free tools are drawing GSC impressions on relevant queries

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If you are running a similar content + digital products business, what has moved the conversion needle for you?