Lupe Farkas

So, rebels…

Yesterday I didn’t post the experiment.

Why?

Because I was out in the world living.

I went to Bratislava, had a good meal with the family, tacos, because apparently it’s Mexican Week, and for dessert I had American pancakes.

And guess what?

They tasted amazing AND looked amazing.

So we’ve learned something else during this experiment. If I want to eat good-looking food, I must eat out.

I wanted to take a picture of the food for you guys, but since I’m still new to this whole life of showing and telling people what I’m doing, I forgot.

I remembered after I ate it all, though.

So technically I was thinking about you.

At the end.

Does that count?

Anywhooo…

You are not here to read about what I do and eat, right?

Or maybe you are?

Should I also start adding exhibits of life outside my desk? Let me know.

You’re the boss.

Day 4: I Scheduled Things and Then Disappeared

Before escaping into the real world on Friday, I did actually work.

Half of the day was spent writing content, working on reviews and scheduling posts.

And while I was out there eating tacos and forgetting my responsibilities as an internet person, the scheduled posts were quietly being published in the background.

Which felt VERY sophisticated.

Look at me.

An organised woman.

A professional.

A woman whose content continues to appear on the internet while she eats pancakes.

This lasted approximately one day.

Because then Saturday arrived.

Day 5: Oh.

Today I had the biggest and worst surprise of this experiment so far.

My views dropped.

Not disappeared.

Not apocalypse.

But dropped.

And the timing is rather interesting.

Friday was also the day I didn’t share as much manually on social media and didn’t work on the ecosystem as much as I had during the previous days.

Now, my social accounts are still babies.

Tiny babies.

Some of them probably don’t even know how to walk yet.

So apparently I can’t disappear for a day and expect the algorithms to stand outside screaming:

They coped remarkably well without me.

Rude.

But this gave me perhaps the clearest lesson of the experiment so far.

I need to cross-post.

And more importantly:

I need to automate it.

Because if this experiment eventually proves that I need to manually copy, paste, resize, rewrite and publish things on seven different platforms every single day until the end of time…

I’m quitting the experiment and opening a taco stand.

The whole point is to build an ecosystem.

One piece of content should be able to travel.

Website. Instagram. LinkedIn. Facebook. Pinterest. Podcast. And wherever else we decide to invade next.

I shouldn’t have to personally escort every post to its destination like it’s a five-year-old going to school.

So this weekend we’re going to work on that.

But first…

THE NUMBERSSSSSSSSSSS

Yes.

It’s time.

But before we begin, one important nerdy note about how I’m reporting these.

Google Gave Us an Award 😂

Okay.

“Award” may be slightly dramatic.

Google calls it a Search Impact milestone.

I call it:

Therefore it is an award.

I will not be taking questions at this time.

😂

On September 3, 2026, Google congratulated lupefarkas.com for reaching:

80 CLICKS

from Google Search during the previous 28 days.

Which is particularly funny considering that five days ago I was basically poking Google with a stick asking:

Apparently…

yes.

Yes, Google can see us.

And the Search Console numbers are moving too.

Now.

Let’s behave ourselves.

49 Google clicks does not mean I need security at book signings.

But that’s not why this interests me.

The website is small.

The experiment is five days old.

And Google Search is moving.

Can I prove that this experiment caused it?

No.

And that’s something I want to keep very clear throughout these posts.

We’re watching what happens.

We’re recording it.

We’re comparing it.

We’re looking for patterns.

We’re not going to see two numbers go up simultaneously and announce that I’ve cracked Google from my desk in Slovakia.

Although if that happens, obviously I’ll let you know.

If you missed the previous chaos, go back to Day 3 of The Indie Author Experiment: The Goodreads Gods .

And Then I Stopped Pushing

This is where Day 5 becomes particularly interesting.

Because after several days of constantly publishing and sharing…

I slowed down.

And traffic slowed down too.

The website recorded 48 views in the latest completed day.

And when I looked at where those visits came from, the picture became even more interesting.

There were a few other tiny sources too.

And this is probably the first time during the experiment where I’ve been able to actually see the difference between creating content and distributing content.

Writing something isn’t enough.

Publishing it isn’t enough.

People need a way to find it.

Which brings us directly back to:

Because I cannot spend six hours writing something and then another six hours standing on every digital street corner screaming:

I WROTE A THING!

There are books to read.

And apparently tacos to photograph.

Instagram Is Tiny. The Views Are Not.

This continues to make me laugh.

My Instagram account currently has:

142 FOLLOWERS.

That’s it.

142.

Remember when I said that apparently getting Instagram followers requires black magic and unfortunately we hadn’t learned it yet?

Well…

looks like I was right.

😂

Because the follower count is still tiny.

But somehow this tiny little account has generated:

On an account with…

142 followers.

😂😂😂

HELLO?

And here’s my favourite number:

So Instagram still refuses to teach me black magic, but apparently it is perfectly happy to show my posts to thousands of strangers.

Fine.

I’ll take it.

Because for this experiment, that’s actually more interesting.

The question right now isn’t:

How many followers can I collect?

It’s:

Can the content escape my existing audience?

And based on that number…

Yes.

It appears to be escaping.

Run, little posts. Run.

LinkedIn Has Also Started Doing Things

LinkedIn is particularly interesting because it was basically asleep.

Between 30 August and 5 September, it recorded:

But look at when those impressions happened.

30 August: basically nothing.

31 August: 2.

1 September: basically nothing.

And then:

2 September: 130.

3 September: 70.

4 September: 51.

That means 251 of the 258 impressions happened from 2 September onward.

That’s 97.3%.

Which happens to overlap with the period when I started properly feeding this experiment through the different platforms.

Again:

Correlation. Not causation.

Look at me being scientifically responsible.

I hate it.

But it’s interesting enough that we’re going to keep watching it.

And Apparently the Podcast Wants to Participate Too

This one surprised me.

Spotify’s latest Discovery data shows:

269 IMPRESSIONS.

Those produced:

26 plays.

That’s a 9.7% impression-to-play conversion rate.

And the average completion rate is:

53.3%.

But here’s the part I really care about.

Where are those impressions coming from?

Search is doing most of the work.

And Spotify Home is contributing too.

Which means discovery isn’t happening exclusively when I post a podcast link somewhere.

Spotify itself is showing the podcast to people.

Our latest 30-day overview also shows:

39 plays/downloads

from an audience of:

22 people.

Tiny?

Absolutely.

But remember what we’re doing here.

We’re not pretending I’ve conquered podcasting after five days.

We’re looking for movement.

And there’s another little number I love.

One of my episodes, I Wrote a Book. Somehow I Became…, has 19 plays and is currently performing:

+94.9% compared with comparable episode performance.

WHY?

I have no idea.

😂

But please continue.

Meanwhile, the new episode with Roie Oknin, Ramen, Existential Crises & 85 Minutes, is beginning to collect its own listeners too.

A Quick Weather Report From KDP

Ah yes.

The tiny detail we should probably discuss during an experiment about growing an indie author’s ecosystem.

Book sales.

Ready?

0.

ZERO.

😂

Google is clicking.

Instagram is showing my posts to thousands of people.

LinkedIn has awakened.

Spotify is sending people towards the podcast.

The website is getting visitors.

People are apparently reading reviews.

Everybody is doing SOMETHING.

Except buying my bloody book.

So, as of Day 5, the official commercial result of this experiment is:

Which raises another interesting question.

Apparently only ghosts are reading my book.

👻📚

Excellent.

We’ve successfully penetrated the paranormal reader market.

A demographic I had completely neglected in my original marketing strategy.

Maybe that’s where the Instagram black magic comes in.

😂

But genuinely, this is important data too.

We can make Google move.

We can increase website traffic.

We can reach non-followers.

We can get podcast discovery.

But none of that matters commercially if eventually we can’t move someone from:

“Oh, this Lupe woman again.”

to:

“Fine. I’ll read the bloody book.”

And five days in?

We haven’t.

Yet.

So I’m not hiding the zero.

The zero stays.

Actually, I think the zero might become one of the most interesting numbers in this whole experiment.

Because now we get to see what has to change before it becomes one.

Until then…

Thank you to my loyal supernatural readership.

Your support means the afterlife to me.

👻

Before October Ends

English edition

Explore the English Edition

Prima che Ottobre Finisca

Edizione italiana

Scopri l’Edizione Italiana

Antes que Outubro Termine

Português do Brasil

Conheça a Edição em Português

Each cover links to its own language edition page, where readers can find book details, formats and buying links.

And Now for Someone Who Is Actually Selling Books…

REBELS.

I have VERY VERY VERY VERY GOOD NEWS.

My favourite book, Ramen, Existential Crises by Roie Oknin, reached:

#5 IN JAPAN.

On Amazon Japan’s foreign-language new contemporary novels list.

NUMBER.

FIVE.

IN.

JAPAN.

🇯🇵🍜

And I am so bloody happy for him.

If you’ve been following me for more than five minutes, you already know how much I love this book.

So there is only one thing to say here:

Seriously.

Enjoy every bloody second of it.

And because I will use absolutely any excuse to talk about this book again, you can listen to our podcast interview.

We talked for exactly 85 minutes because noodles boil for 85 seconds, and apparently this is the level of professionalism you can expect around here.

And What About the Goodreads Drama?

Ah yes.

That.

It continued yesterday.

But I decided to ignore it.

And today?

Silence.

So maybe the Goodreads Gods have finally become bored with me.

Let’s see what happens over the next few days.

Send good vibrations.

😂

I’m not giving any more of this experiment’s oxygen to something I can’t control.

There are far more interesting things happening.

So What Now?

This weekend I’m going to plan the coming week properly.

I’m going to start posting older content on platforms where it hasn’t appeared yet.

I’m going to investigate how much of the cross-posting process I can automate.

I’m going to keep watching what happens when content travels, and what happens when I stop pushing it.

And…

I’m going to read.

Because I have MANY ARCs waiting for me.

Somewhere underneath Google Search Console, Instagram, LinkedIn, Spotify, WordPress, Goodreads, tacos and my increasingly questionable relationship with analytics…

I’m still supposed to be a book reviewer.

And an author.

I think.

Five days into this experiment, I still have absolutely no idea whether this is going to work.

But I know more than I did five days ago.

Publishing isn’t distribution.

Small audiences can generate surprisingly large reach.

Search matters.

Cross-platform visibility matters.

And perhaps most importantly:

So now we test whether we can build a system that keeps feeding it without requiring me to sacrifice my entire life to the Algorithm Gods.

Because I have books to read.

A book to write.

A podcast to make.

A family.

Five dogs.

And apparently…

tacos.