Hey Club!

This week an indie-hacker's side-project called: Outbid, made $177,420 in just 3 days!

Not even its creator expected such success.. So how did it do what it did?

If we boil it down to one word it would be: Distribution

The site has welcomed 1,2 Million visitors in ~3 days.

Meaning that spending upwards of $15K would put your company, in the eye sight of potentially up to a million people.

But wait, isn’t there another way to do this, absolutely for free in fact.

Yes, yes there is and it is called a Lead Magnet post.

Back in 2025, few posts of mine had crossed 2K comments on LinkedIn.

One was about AI + Voice, and the other was about AI + Product management.

When my AI Voice post gathered HALF A MILLION impressions, it felt like I broke the barrier of sound!

And of course, I was not the only one who did this. There are people on my platform who broke 1M impressions on a single post!

But LinkedIn is Broken Now (?)

I hear this quite a lot nowadays: "the algo has changed" what used to work simply doesn’t anymore.

Could it really be?!

Of course I had to analyze this, and below is my theory:

LinkedIn (like all other social media platforms), mainly runs on Ads.

So it needs to get people scrolling, and active to see (and engage with) those ads.

But what if, people were not scrolling anymore, like they used to.

LinkedIn could have easily taken this as: "AI generated content must be the cause of this".

Without any real basis (or understanding of their actual user base!).

The people who scroll all day on LinkedIn (like I was) all-day long, 24/7.

They do so not because they like wasting their precious time.

Or for escapism, there are much better platforms out there for this..

They do so because they’re actually there to promote their own businesses!

And they need to learn what works, and what is going stupid viral in their niche right now.

They are your avid posters, and engagers.

They actually engage with others. Meaning they comment, and they like other people's posts.

They join conversations, in public circles and in DMs.

I know this behavior, because I have analyzed it for 2+ years.

The people who post lead magnets also comment on all others. They like supporting others.

So what happens when you take away their own engagement from them?

They stop posting.

They pursue different distribution channels. They diversify.

In return, they will also stop looking at others for inspiration, and they stop engaging!

This (I believe) is the root cause of their downward spiral.

Not AI Slop. But the button that lets you mark your competitors as AI Slop.

Left unchanged, I believe that this change will be the downfall of LinkedIn.

As a social media platform that we actually loved / liked / were actually addicted to.

Because it kills the one thing that any good social media platform aspires to be:

A community.

So what can we do? I hear you asking. Where does our new distribution lie?

Is it posting on X (follow me btw!) or Reddit? Or email?

Well, I may be a little too optimistic. But I think we can still save LinkedIn.

Not by getting pitted against each other. But by working together.

By sharing what works with each other, and looking out for one another.

So in true spirit of the lead magnet club, I’m sharing 3 new lead magnet ideas I've seen in the past few weeks:
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1. CTA in the Image Lead Magnets

Not sure who came up with this, but it could be traced back to Gojiberry. (I couldn't find their post on X, may be deleted)

Who noted: "adding the CTA in the image instead of the post helps increase the reach of the post".

While I have not ran the full analysis myself, this seems like something you can A/B test pretty easily:
Putting the comment CTA in the post, and also in the image. To see the impact on reach for both.

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2. Company-page Lead Magnets

Several LeadShark users have been practically begging us to add this, company page comment-reply automation. So we did! You can now schedule posts to your company pages directly (pro+) and also you can automate the engagement on these posts (apex).

I was quite adamant at first (for no reason). And I kept saying to people, that company pages do not go viral on LinkedIn the way personal pages do (which led us to ignore this for way too long!).

But the results show otherwise.. AI for X type of company / community pages have gathered more than 2K+ post comments!

AI & Strategy (above) regularly get 100-200 comments on their posts (and they use LeadShark to reply to these comments on full-auto).

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3. Boosted (Paid) Lead Magnets

Back to the core business model of LinkedIn: you can of course run paid ads, in the form of Though Leader Posts, to pay to boost your reach and your distribution on the platform.

The growth-hack part? You can automate the engagement on your boosted posts!

Meaning, you can automatically respond to every single commenter, and keep these leads warm and engaged. And you can provide value upfront, and fast! (before your sales team actually engages them).
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So why share all this (honestly)?

Well, I realize by sharing the above growth-hacks, I am implicitly admitting one thing:

That lead magnets don't work as well as they used to.

At least not exactly the way they did back in 2025 (some new folks still go uber-viral check them out here: leadmagnet.top for free, or you can search them by niche now in the Discover Feed if you're on LeadShark!).

But I also think it is too soon to declare them clinically dead.

Because the core idea of lead magnets predates LinkedIn as a platform:

To provide more value than you receive, to wear your heart out on your sleeve.

And share something that is so real (genuine + valuable), that you cannot help but actually respond to it!

This is the spirit of the Lead Magnet Club, not competition.

But success through collaboration. Collaboration, between like-minded people who want the same thing...

So, if you are still reading this, I only want one thing from you.
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To share your ideas with me!

If you reply to this newsletter (or email me at ruzgar@leadshark.io) with:

1. Who you are (website or social link).
2. What you do (and who do you do it for).
3. One unique distribution idea / growth hack you want to share.

+ optional: What is a question you want to ask me / everyone?

I will feature you, and your ideas next Sunday, in the Club! 🍊 (no money needed / no upsell / no sponsorships)

You will get free distribution in front of 1K+ growth marketers, and B2B marketing experts amongst us
(and our own LeadShark users too, to whom I owe a great deal! they are awesome*).

*back when I got 1-2K comments, on LinkedIn, it wasn’t because I was in a pod / used some weird growth hack. It was because the LeadShark users (who I always commented on, and supported), instantly came to my support and commented on all my posts (some who had 10-20x larger audiences than I did). so I truly believe we can create a similar thing here!

As always, stay authentic + be you.

(if you're still reading this, it might be because this email contains absolutely zero AI! just something to think about...)

And automate everything but 🧡!

Cheers, Ruz 🏴‍☠️

Ruzgar Zere​
Founder, LeadShark + Lead Magnet Club