A strange and lovely thing happened in the first weeks: people started arriving because an AI assistant had recommended ParrotTalk, a free IELTS practice site with AI feedback, entirely on its own. I had not asked anyone, paid anyone, or posted much of anywhere. They just came.
At that point the visitor count was the kind of number you can hold in your head, the first handful of curious strangers. But where they came from was the interesting part. Not from an ad, not from a viral post. Someone had asked an assistant for help preparing, and the assistant had pointed them here.
Why that made sense once I thought about it
It surprised me for about a day, and then it stopped surprising me. Assistants tend to recommend things that are genuinely useful, clearly described, honest about their limits, and free of the usual traps. That was the entire brief I had set myself the week before, when I went through the site cutting every claim I could not stand behind.
In other words, the boring, unglamorous work of being straight with people, no fake promises, no hidden costs, a plain explanation of what the tool is and is not, turned out to be the same work that makes a site recommendable in the first place. I had not built it to be found that way. It was found that way because it was built to be trustworthy.
What I took from it
The lesson stuck, and it still guides the project. Keep it genuinely helpful. Keep it honest. Keep it 100% free with no sign-up, whether someone arrives for a full mock test or a single section. Do that consistently and you become the kind of thing people, and the tools people ask, are happy to point others toward.
I am not going to pretend I have this all figured out. It is early, the numbers are small, and I am learning in public. But of all the encouraging signs in those first weeks, a stranger arriving because something trustworthy recommended us was the one that told me the approach was right.
The short version: build something genuinely useful, honest, and free, and the recommendations tend to follow. That is the whole strategy.
Back to the workshop next time. But this was the week I realised that honesty is not only the right thing to do, it is also, quietly, how you get found.