_{Day 104/100}

Hey—It's Tim.

Today was a hard one to write.
Not because it’s super serious or anything. But because I thought I had it written it last night. I’ve just done a 7 hour drive. And my draft didn’t save. So yeah.

Here goes nothing. Round 2. It went something like this.

I opened X (still refuse to call it “𝕏”) and watched marketers sprint after the weekend’s new shiny:
“AI-generated Drake cover songs rank in Google now!”
“Threads hashtags boost reach by 7%!”
“Carousel posts are back, baby!”

Coffee hit. I closed the tab.
Because twelve years in, here’s the only growth hack that never devalues:

That’s the story.
Everything below is just proof.

Slow is smooth, smooth is ranked

• Wait But Why publishes two monster essays a year. Tim Urban still clears a million readers per post and sells Broadway-sized theater shows off the back of them.
  

• Stratechery: Ben Thompson’s four-days-a-week cadence hasn’t changed since 2013. No viral hooks, just compound analysis → compound revenue ($10M+ ARR last public estimate).
  

• Ahrefs Blog pushed ~8 deep tutorials a month for nine straight years. Each article refreshed, never retired. They rank for 7.3 M keywords and spend $0 on ads.
  

• NerdWallet wrote the “How to cancel a flight” guide once in 2015, updated it quarterly, and now banks an estimated 250 K monthly visits - all without chasing “What’s hot on TikTok?”
  

Notice the pattern:
Consistency ≠ daily, hourly, or algorithm-spiking.
Consistency = a pace you can sustain for five years without hating yourself.

“SEO” actually stands for Slow Evergreen Output

I read a line the other day that smacked:

So before you hit publish, gut-check:

If you hit two check-marks, schedule the post. If three, write it today.
Then go outside.

How to start your own compound library

1. Pick a Wednesday. Any Wednesday. That’s your publish day.
   

2. Choose a hill to die on. One topic. No side quests until twenty posts in.
   

3. Add a “Last updated” date at the top. Future-you will thank past-you.
   

4. Bank ideas offline. Trend storms won’t drown you if your calendar is already queued.
   

5. Iterate in public. Every refresh is an excuse to reshare - and Google eats recency crumbs.
   

Small steps, repeated loudly, > heroic sprints, forgotten quickly.

TL;DR

• Trends spike, fade, and get screenshotted for cringe threads.

• Evergreen assets snowball; they’re interest-bearing articles.

• Pick a cadence you can respect on your worst week.

• Update, don’t reinvent.

✌️ Tim "Evergreen or EverMeme?" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Send me the evergreen content you’re most proud of making. I’ll get you a link in my new series on the Penfriend blog.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.