Call for AI Builders: Let’s Get More Eyes on Your Work
I’m expanding build to launch Friday stories to platforms that drive meaningful discovery
I still can’t quite believe the Build to Launch Friday series is nine stories in, with more incredible builders lined up. I’ve met people I never expected: the driven, the creative, the relentless. Every conversation has been a surprise and a privilege.
Watching this community grow has been equally unreal. We’ve featured builders from film, design, developer tools, portfolio platforms, each bringing deep domain expertise and turning it into real products.
And it’s made me think: what if these stories could reach even further?
I’ve been wrestling with content distribution. It’s brutally hard. I’ve done all the “right” things: SEO, authentic connections, hours poured into thoughtful content, but discovery is still slow. Google’s algorithm still rules almost everything. Traditional SEO? You’re lucky to see results in months, let alone weeks.
So I’ve been asking myself:
If I’m putting this much into spotlighting builders through Build to Launch, shouldn’t I be doing more to get their stories seen?
I’d analyzed my Substack niche months ago and knew growth takes time, but these builders deserve more than waiting months for traditional SEO to kick in.
These builders are pouring their domain expertise into real products. They’re sharing honest, sometimes painful accounts of what it takes to ship. They deserve more than being buried in a single platform’s algorithm.
Where else could their stories live? I kept coming back to two platforms:
I’ve been familiar with Medium before Substack, earned my first $1000 online there, noticed its AI discoverability as I worked more with AI tools. Reddit’s been where I find stories that inspire me to build. My gut kept pushing: why not use these platforms?
But gut feeling isn’t strategy. I needed to know if this made sense.
So I Asked the Community
I posted a note asking where people share their work beyond Substack. What’s working? What’s driving traffic to their projects?
The responses showed me how different everyone’s strategies are:
almost downgraded her Medium subscription until she Googled herself: “I saw all of my Medium activity in the rankings. Needless to say, I did not downgrade.” That discovery factor is real. has a decent Medium audience and her LinkedIn recently got mind-blowing 72 comments on one single post. She’s leaning back into both platforms plus YouTube. and were active on LinkedIn, but with terrible results and single-digit reactions. earned just enough engagement with years of trying tips and tricks. wants to try Reddit but warned: “The ban hammer is never far away on that platform.” uses Facebook communities he’s built over time, pushing Substack content there. He’s also experimented with Medium and Patreon. Different platforms, different audiences, different approaches.In the Build to Launch community chat:
has an amazing audience on Threads and sells digital products directly there. has been on LinkedIn for over a year and sees huge potential, especially for B2B audiences. had the opposite experience about Reddit saying it “has been 🔥 for us.” His content hit top ten on r/claudeai, r/AWS, and r/n8n this week. found LinkedIn terrible, his diverse network confused the algorithm. But Hacker News brings visitors and is simple to use.AND OF COURSE, the highest vote is sticking with Substack!!!
The pattern was clear: everyone’s figuring this out differently. No universal answer. Lots of trial and error.
The Hard Questions About Content Re-distribution
left a comment that stuck with me:“Would you be suggesting to always share articles one publishes on Substack also on all these other platforms? Have you researched what could be possible downsides of doing this? Would you say there is an absolute definitive advantage in adopting this strategy, or would you suggest it only for certain type of authors and topics?”
I gave him a quick answer about how I’m only doing this for Build to Launch Friday stories, not everything I write. But his questions kept nagging at me.
I needed data, not gut feeling.
I’ve been thinking about Medium and Reddit specifically because I’ve seen them work in different ways. Medium for long-term SEO. Reddit for rapid visibility and AI training data. I’d previously researched how to make content discoverable by AI, but was I right about these platforms? What do the numbers say?
So I dug in.
What Medium Numbers Show
Medium’s domain authority is 97. Substack’s is 78. Personal blogs average 20-40.
That gap matters. Medium gets 52.3 million monthly organic visits. Substack gets 6 million. The median Medium article pulls 500-10,000 views if the topic resonates. Substack articles average 100-750 unless they go viral through the app.
Google indexes Medium articles within hours. Personal blogs? Days to weeks.
When I looked at my own Medium articles, this tracked. My HuggingFace guide still brings in readers months after publishing. My Cursor 2.0 review keeps showing up in search results. That’s Medium’s SEO working.
The catch? AI Overviews. Google’s AI summaries now appear on 13% of searches and cut click-through rates roughly in half (from 15% to 8%). But high-authority sites like Medium still get cited in those overviews more than small blogs do.
One more thing: canonical links. You can tell Medium your original article lives elsewhere, and Google will give SEO credit to your site while Medium amplifies discovery. Best of both worlds if you set it up right.
While I’ve not tested the canonical links myself, I’m glad to hear that worked for
.What Reddit Numbers Show
Reddit’s domain authority is 99. The highest possible.
Reddit threads show up in Google’s “Discussions and forums” module. AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini pull from Reddit for training data. That means content on Reddit becomes discoverable not by humans searching, but by AI systems learning what works.
But Reddit traffic spikes fast and fades faster. Unless your thread becomes an evergreen reference, it disappears after the initial burst. Links are “nofollow,” so they don’t pass SEO juice directly, but they drive referral traffic and brand mentions.
And the community can be brutal. Self-promotion gets you shadow-banned or torn apart if you misread the room.
The Verdict
This isn’t a universal strategy. It works for specific situations.
Cross-posting makes sense if:
You’re building a product and need visibility (more eyes = more users)
Your content is evergreen and searchable (tutorials, frameworks, guides)
You’re growing authority, not monetizing exclusivity
You have bandwidth to adapt content for different platforms
Cross-posting doesn’t make sense if:
Your business model depends on Substack subscription exclusivity
Your content is time-sensitive commentary or weekly updates
You don’t have capacity to maintain multiple platforms
Your audience values the intimate, exclusive newsletter experience
Build to Launch Friday fits the first category. These are builder stories that serve as marketing for their products. Wider distribution helps them find users, collaborators, opportunities.
But I’m not cross-posting everything. My personal essays, weekly reflections, premium content, all stay exclusive here. You subscribed to this newsletter. That relationship matters.
So to answer Robin’s questions directly:
The downsides are real. It costs time to adapt content, potential SEO confusion if canonical links aren’t set, risk of audience seeing you everywhere and tuning out.
But for Build to Launch Friday specifically, the data shows it’s worth it. These builders need visibility more than I need content exclusivity. Wider distribution means more potential users, collaborators, opportunities.
Is it for everyone? No. But for builders with products to promote and evergreen content to share, the numbers support it.
Next: Building External Sources
Resolving Robin’s questions gave me confidence to move forward.
But I had concerns. Medium’s getting cautious about external links, and submitting to established publications means risking rejection. Reddit? Everyone I talked to warned it can be brutal. Self-promotion gets you torn apart.
Then I realized: I don’t need permission.
I can create my own Medium publication and my own subreddit. Maybe it starts with low traction. That’s fine. I’ll share builder stories there, adapted for each platform. If a community forms, amazing. If it’s mainly me amplifying work that matters, I’m still happy. Either way, the content gets indexed for traditional search and AI discovery.
What Are They
So I created two new spaces:
AI Builders publication on Medium: I’m publishing in-depth builder stories here with all the technical details and lessons from shipping with AI. The full interviews, nothing cut.
Vibe Coding Builders on Reddit (r/VibeCodingBuilders) - I’m sharing condensed case studies here with discussion prompts to spark conversations among builders.
My approach was straightforward: take the Build to Launch Friday interviews and adapt them for each platform. Medium gets the complete story. Reddit gets the key insights in a scannable format.
I spent time developing conversion formulas for both. Tested them with feedback from builders in the community. The response? They thought it worked.
First Test
was our very first Build to Launch Friday contributor. He’s been incredibly supportive throughout this entire journey. When I asked if I could redistribute his story across Medium and Reddit, he nodded dozens of times. Everything we captured in his article? I could share it anywhere. That openness is exactly the spirit I want to amplify.So I took his story and adapted it for both platforms:
On Medium: The full interview with all the depth intact
On Reddit: A condensed case study with key takeaways and discussion prompts
Check them out. See if this approach works for you.
This is just the beginning. If you’re building something and want more eyes on your work, this is how to get involved.
How to Join
I built this for builders who want visibility.
If you’ve been featured (or want to be featured) in Build to Launch Friday, your story now can go beyond this newsletter. I’m putting it on Medium for people searching product deep dives. I’m sharing it on Reddit for community discussions and AI training data.
What this means for you: You don’t need to do anything. No mandatory contributions, no strict rules, no bending your content to fit arbitrary criteria. These spaces exist as support when you want more distribution.
If you want to be featured in Build to Launch Friday: Leave a comment to this post and we’ll discuss in the DMs. Any public-facing app counts, no matter how small. Make sure you’re on vibecoding.builders so people can find your project.
If you want to leverage Medium’s SEO: Comment on the AI Builders’ “Write for us” article, and I’ll add you as a writer. Submit what you want, when you want. I’m not gatekeeping based on follower count, credentials, or clout, the only criteria is you’re building with AI and/or shipping real products.
If you want to share on Reddit: Join r/VibeCodingBuilders and post. No heavy moderation, no fear of removal.
Why this matters: I believe anyone serious about building deserves to be discovered. Not judged by mods, not criticized by anti-AI voices, not penalized by gatekeeping editors. That’s why I built vibecoding.builders and wanted a space where builders get featured for their work, not their follower count.
Distribution is hard. That’s why I’m finding ways to take the stories I feature and make sure they’re findable wherever people are searching, not locked to a single newsletter platform.
I’m treating this as an experiment. I don’t know exactly how it’ll evolve or what’ll happen when more builders join. What I do know is that keeping these stories in one place wasn’t serving the people who trusted me with their time and honest insights.
If you’re building and you want your work to get seen, reach out. That’s what I built this for.
— Jenny
Jenny at the top of the medium article include a link that says read for free on Substack and link to the Substack article. I am seeing traction from this on my stories.
This is Gold. I am glad you decided to create your own pub on medium. I was going to suggest it. You will be able to feature one story per week which will be perfect for this series.
Thanks for this wonderful analysis.