Just one data point: when I recently launched a site selling custom physical products, in the first day I got 2 orders but like 10 emails from people wanting me to join various growth hacking/starup communities or list my product on their product listing sites (presumably paying to get featured). Super scuzzy.

I suspect the answer is a bit of 1 and a bit of 2. I mean, if you've got a product or service aimed at webmaster/developer type users, you've got a bunch of places your audience is likely going to be reading already, like Product Hunt and Hacker News. Your users are also likely less conservative about trying out new products or services than ones in a different market might be as well, which helps a lot.

So in these cases, it makes sense these stories work out the way they do.

On the other hand, if your product is say... basket weaving equipment or gardening tools, then I suspect the people on Product Hunt and Hacker News might be a lot less interested in it, the people on social media might be a lot less interested in it and your potential users might be less willing to take a punt on an unproven business.

And obviously yes, the people who like growth hacking and SEO and online marketing in general are more likely to create products or services that reflect that.

I've seen this as well. Every growth hack article is to promote a growth-hack company. It's never been simply the means to an end for a regular company - it always ends up being part of their offering.

the way i think about this is mcdonald's employees getting their oil changes from jiffy lube across the street and the jiffy lube employees eating lunch at the mcdonald's - there's no external investment in the local economy (yes this basically a microcosm for all economics).

That can't be true when so many of these small businesses have such massive margins. They're not spending the earnings on other small online businesses.

these people don't pay themselves as FTE so of course their margins are good.

That's irrelevant to above point. That they could pay themselves a salary out of earnings means there is more money going in that just what is cycling around between these sites.

no you're missing my point: they don't pay themselves at all so their margins are inflated.

Fair point, you see many of these SAAS and growth hacking companies using each other's products.

I don't think SiteGuru falls in that bucket though. It's useful for a much wider audience than just growth hackers and SAAS cowboys. Anyone with a website will find some issues and improve their site.

Many of the current users are small local businesses. The lessons in the article may not be relevant for them, the tool itself is.

You're right, it all feels samey, in an uneasy way. Maybe the "How I..." ecosystem is mostly self-referential.

Maybe its more that the OSI model is a reflection of a natural, observable law regarding abstraction layers, and the more energy is applied to this law, the more the strata become tangible. Or .. not .. thus requiring attention to strengthen certain realms of the model.

Sorry I'm sending you this here, I actually found this post of yours here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877297

I'd be thankful if you could elaborate on the process. Apparently, there's still not enough progress made in importing IPFS to iOS.