VibeQuiz

This week has been quieter for VibeQuiz, both in traffic and mental energy. I’ve been adding features/building less and thinking about distribution more.

Start of the week, I ran a small experiment with Reddit ads to see if I could nudge some quiz-takers in. It didn’t really move the needle. The targeting was narrow enough, click throughs were ok, but the traffic all bounced and spent 0s on the page. Something was wrong here.

The Reddit For Business team actually reached out to me about optimising my campaign. I agreed to set up the call, only to find they were expecting me to have a budget of $1000 a month for ad spend to work with me. Not quite!

It was a reminder that paid traffic can’t replace organic momentum or genuine curiosity. Especially for a quirky indie tool like VibeQuiz, the magic comes from people sharing it because it feels human. That's what we're aiming for after all.

Now the focus is firmly back on distribution over development. Writing, talking to my phone for social media, sharing, and experimenting with partnerships.

Hopefully this will return to driving traffic, instead of my endlessly coding new features when the core of the site already works.

Anyone visiting can now see real traffic data: how many people are taking the quiz, which indie shop spotlights are getting clicks, and where the traffic comes from.

At first, this felt risky. There will be weeks when traffic dips or days when it flatlines completely. Making that visible means showing the slow patches, not just the wins.

But that’s exactly the point.

Why I Did It

Accountability: It keeps me honest. Numbers are grounding. They remind me what’s actually happening, not what I hope is happening.

Transparency: I want indie partners (small UK retailers featured in the quiz) to see the attention their products get, without waiting for a monthly report.

Building in public: VibeQuiz is an experiment in community-based discovery. It is part quiz, part indie spotlight, part gift marketplace. The ethos is open and collaborative, so it felt right that the data should reflect that too.

The Pros

• It builds trust. Potential partners can instantly see real engagement.

• It helps newcomers understand the traction and seriousness behind the project.

• It encourages me to keep improving the quiz, since every dip is visible.

The Cons

• It exposes quiet weeks. Transparency isn’t always flattering.

• Partner businesses might misread the numbers, assuming a low day equals low value.

• There’s no hiding place. Everything’s out there, including my mistakes.

Still, I’d rather build something real in the open than pretend there’s constant momentum.

If you’re a small indie founder, I recommend trying it. Its an experiment for sure, but that's what this is all about. My bet is transparency will turn the data into dialogue, and lead to more collaboration.

The Leave a Little Love page on VibeQuiz is supposed to be a one-liner, anonymous note people can send in after supporting an independent shop.

It’s a tiny UX moment designed to give indie retailers a morale boost and collect a few warm-fuzzy lines about the gifts people loved. I thought it would take an hour. It took a full day.

The Bug That Only Existed in Production...

Locally everything worked perfectly: the popup appeared, the form submitted, and my test data hit the Google Sheet exactly where it should.

Then I deployed.

On the live site the button showed at page load (not after clicks), and the form stopped writing altogether. No errors. No console logs. Just… nothing.

Turns out Google Apps Script and the browser treat CORS and no-cors JSON requests very differently in production. What worked silently on my server was being dropped completely once hosted over HTTPS.

The Fix

• Switched from application/json to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

• Removed mode: 'no-cors' so I could see real responses

• Locked the Sheet by ID instead of relying on getActiveSpreadsheet()

Once those pieces lined up, the first feedback arrived in the spreadsheet. A tiny success that felt way bigger than the code behind it.

Small moments (like a one-line thank-you form) can take longer than entire features... but they’re worth it.

When I first started building VibeQuiz (a personality-driven gift finder for UK indie shops) I made the same mistake as everyone else: I kept asking 'what should I post?' instead of 'who actually needs this, and where are they when they’re looking for it?'

Here’s the mindset shift that’s been helping me (and might help other small indie or product builders too):

1. Start with the problem, not the platform

Every channel looks tempting when you’re guessing. But real traction started when I asked:

Who has the exact pain I solve?
Where are they mentally and digitally when they feel it?
What are they already Googling, complaining about, or trying to fix?

That told me where to show up, not just post on Instagram, but hang out where people panic-buy gifts the night before a birthday.

2. Prioritize discovery over broadcasting

Good marketing isn’t a case of shouting louder. It’s listening better. Now I spend more time in communities (like r/BuyUK, and other subreddits) than I do scheduling posts. People literally tell you their pain points if you spend enough time there.

3. Engineer visibility around the moment of need

Conversions happen when someone’s in the problem. That’s why I’m experimenting with getting VibeQuiz seen on 'help me find a gift' searches and in newsletters that appear right before gifting season, not just relying on brand awareness.

4. Treat channels like experiments, not habits

Every platform’s an experiment now: one hypothesis, one mini-campaign, one clear result. Kill what doesn’t work fast, double down where people actually respond.

5. Make distribution part of the product

The big goal: make VibeQuiz market itself.

I’m working on shareable vibe results, better indie shop spotlights, and referral loops so users naturally spread the word while they find gifts.

tl;dr

Stop trying to be a content brand. Be the signal that shows up when the right person has the right pain.

Today feels like a big little win.

VibeQuiz has officially passed 100 unique gifts, sourced from 28 independent UK-based shops.

Every product on the platform is a real thing made (or curated) by a small business. Ranging from gothic journals to botanical prints to chilli sauce boxes.

What started as a scrappy idea (“What if gift guides were based on vibes, not demographics?”) is slowly turning into a tiny ecosystem that supports the British high street from the online world.

Next step: scaling traffic while keeping that handmade, human feel intact.

If you want to see what 100 indie gifts look like through a personality quiz → vibequiz.co.uk