Newsletter Letter from an Office Outlaw: December 21, 2025

[Zwielicht]

I bet all of you were surprised to see this!​

Yeah, I know it's been a while. I can't write these every month, but I wanted to write one toward the end the year as we've had so many great discussions here over the last few months.

For those of you who don't know this, whilst Office Outlaw was started in 2024, this is our first real year together as outlaws since we only properly opened it to registrations in March of this year.

Without further ado, here are the top 25 most wanted threads for the end of '25!

A special thank you to @Impulse for helping me write this!

Most Wanted Threads of 2025

Thanks to the active members of Office Outlaw, we had so many unique threads to choose from! The 25 threads below consist mainly of helpful original guides and important news announcements regarding changes in the industry.
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1. 2025: What Worked, What Didn’t​ Author: @Champagne Section: The Saloon This thread started by one of our administrators is a great way to take some time to go over what went well in 2025 and what went wrong. Whether it's something related to business or something in your personal life, reflecting back on these events can help better prepare you for the year ahead.	2. GUIDE - Competing With Resellers On Etsy​ Author: @Spicy Nug Section: General Marketing To my surprise, we ended up getting a couple of Etsy guides here on OO this year. What I feel makes this particular Etsy guide a good one is that it focuses on dealing with a real issue on Etsy. I may not have ever sold on Etsy, but I have used it many times since 2017, and finding genuine handmade goods and ignoring resellers can become tedious. It's even more annoying when you find something you like, only to see the exact same images offered by another seller; who is the real one or are both of them fake?
3. Core update [Mega Thread]​ Author: @t2van Section: SEO Discussions There was a Google core update back in July. Whilst there wasn't as much as engagement in this thread, some users did share their experiences with the Google core update's effects on their sites.	4. A curated list of free tools (plus some with generous free trials) to help you kickstart your affiliate marketing journey​ Author: @LuxRiches Section: Online Income Back when I did affiliate marketing in 2013, free tools did help me stand out more easily from the competition. It's thanks to threads like these that I found on several other forums at the time that I was able to find these kinds of free tools.
5. I Stopped Going The Extra Mile For Clients. Here's Why...​ Author: @Zwielicht Section: Business I don't know what to say other than that I always feel like such a prick adding my own threads in the newsletter.	6. Is there any real reason to choose wix?​ Author: @29dogs Section: Website Building This was a question asked by a member of OO. You often see ads for Wix and similar site building platforms, so it's only natural to wonder if there's any real benefit to using them over WordPress or even building your own site from scratch.
7. Amazon replaced nearly half of its DevOps workers with AI​ Author: @ZeroCool Section: Artificial Intelligence Something we've seen a lot of this year is jobs getting replaced with AI, and of course Amazon is one of the companies leading this charge.	8. 960 Free Credits – Create Video SORA 2 & Veo 3.1 Without Watermark​ Author: @MisterF Section: Artificial Intelligence Kudos to @MisterF for sharing so many of these promo codes! He shared even more later on in the thread, so there are 1860 free credits total. One user did mention on October 20th that some of the codes no longer worked, but it's always worth checking anyway.
9. Soon you`ll get horny in ChatGPT - No need for looking at your horny boss anymore​ Author: @Dopious Section: Artificial Intelligence This was certainly a peculiar update, but given all of the people apparently hooking up with their AI dream partner, is it really a surprise? But what really doesn't help the situation is that Elon made Grok look like Misa Amane from Death Note.	10. The whole fuckn internet went dark. AGAIN!​ Author: @roydan Section: General Marketing How could anyone have missed all the Cloudflare outages this year, am I right?
11. AI to now manage Rs 6,000 crore fund, all analysts fired. Is the future of high-skilled human jobs at risk?​ Author: @TheVigilante Section: Work Life 2025 was a difficult year for many in terms of employment. With many believing AI to be a bubble, it's hard not to think this when so many have been replaced by AI in the workplace as it is.	12. Jealous employee threatening to tell the CEO about my relationship with my manager​ Author: @FrankImawn Section: Work Life I don't know how anyone could've missed this, but there's been an ongoing love story between a man and his boss on OO. It actually starts with this thread here, but there's even more than these two last I checked. ​
13. [Quick Guide] How To Advertize Your OnlyFans Account​ Author: @BlueSteel Section: General Marketing I have to say, I wasn't expecting to see a guide for advertising an OnlyFans account on OO, but this is definitely a unique guide.	14. Google knows I am building backlinks​ Author: @notNewB Section: SEO Discussions I remember throughout the years, I saw other search engine optimisers who were concerned that Google would penalise sites involved with link building in Google Docs. Back when I used to develop and run the marketplace for a different forum, I used to even reject link building services that used Google Docs to deliver reports due to the concerns of the community members. Well, it looks like those fears weren't totally unfounded.
15. 15 Common SEO Questions Answered Directly and Fluff-Free (2025 Edition)​ Author: @t0mmy Section: SEO Discussions We've got a killer guide here that goes over some frequently asked questions I've seen other sites about how SEO works in 2025. Given how much machine learning programs, colloquially called "AI", have shaken up nearly every industry; it's always refreshing to see content that addresses this topic directly.	16. Nice looking website, love it.​ Author: @Dopious Section: Website Building Despite how much easier it is to make a nice website these days, it feels like it's rare to come across a truly nice website. In this thread, many of our members shared some websites they felt looked very nice.
17. Careful Soldiers, This Is How Anyone Can Get You Banned on Reddit​ Author: @Skipper Section: Social Media If you have a Reddit account that you care about, then this is one you'll definitely want to read.	18. Australian Social Media Ban​ Author: @Preying Mantis Section: Social Media This was an interesting development this year. Australia ended up banning social media for anyone who isn't an adult. From what I've read online over the last few months, there are other countries that may follow suit soon enough.
19. How to sell more on Etsy - A quick guide to improving sales on Etsy​ Author: @roydan Section: E-Commerce This is another Etsy guide that was written with the idea of helping those who make handmade goods improve their sales rather than dropshippers. In this guide, there are 12 handy tips you may not have been aware of going over just how to do this.	20. Only a few days left to opt out of Linkedin's AI data collection operations​ Author: @ggmopa Section: Social Media Here's one you likely missed! Given what @notNewB shared in his thread that's been featured in the newsletter, it's best to opt out of these AI data collection operations.

21. Advice: Do Not Confuse Copywriting With Content Writing​ Author: @Man Section: Content Writing & Copywriting This is a short and simple thread providing advice on knowing the difference between content writing and copywriting.	22. Employee who received 300 times his salary by mistake wins legal right to keep money​ Author: @TheVigilante Section: Work Life ...A member shared a news article from India about an employee who... look, you can read the title. Some members found the ruling by the legal system to be controversial. What do you think?
23. Adobe acquires SEMRush for almost $2B​ Author: @Skyrocket Section: Business It looks like SEMRush is about to get a lot more expensive...	25. I find ecommerce hard to start. Does anyone else feel this way?​ Author: @The New Guy Section: E-Commerce One of our members was wondering how they could get past the hump with doing e-commerce and many of our members responded with their own advice.

24. [QUICK GUIDE] Tips For Knowing Which Site Sold Your Data​ Author: @Mufasa Section: Privacy & Security This is another unique guide on the forum that goes over a few tactics you can use to determine which sites are selling your data.

Sharpest Shots of the Year
It's always a little difficult to find the top posts of the year, but we selected some of our favourite ones from members we thought were helpful or just funny.​

1. What Worked In 2025 This post was created by @t2van and goes over in great detail what worked for him this year and what did, along with his personal and business plans for 2026.	2. DownDetector Was Down I wasn't aware of this until I came across this post by @ggmopa, but apparently when Cloudflare went down, so did the DownDetector.
4. Experiences On NOT Going The Extra Mile This is a post by @SilverClouds in a thread I started, but many other members also responded with their own experiences with doing too much for clients.	4. Power Automate on Microsoft Teams An outlaw started a thread asking how he could automate talking to annoying co-workers on Teams. This is a known problem in corporate workplaces and we can definitely related to this issue. Thankfully, @ExecutePHP, who recently became our latest Sapphire member, provided a simple solution to the issue.

Trick Shots From Office Outlaw​

Throughout 2025, many of you have asked me how you can help Office Outlaw continue growing.

The best thing you can do for Office Outlaw is to just simply continue participating in the community as much as you want.

Having active, happy members is far better than having members who feel like they have to post for the sake of it and get burnt out as a result.

Office Outlaw Updates​

We've updated the forum quite a lot since the last newsletter on June 22nd.

All of these updates were possible thanks to those of you who purchased membership or donated to the site directly. As we show everyone on the donations page, we log each donation and mention how we use the funds to improve the website.

Additionally, this is also the first newsletter where we're trying out creating them as standalone threads that you can engage with! I'm also trying out a new formatting for these as the old formatting was one I created for a different newsletter when I was uninspired and limited in what I could adjust. If you or like or dislike this new formatting, let me know by commenting in the thread.

Final Words​

I originally wanted to make these newsletters a more regular thing, and in fact I would still like that. I will confess that there were many events from this year that were just exhausting to deal with and I'm quite fatigued with anything that feels like work at the moment.

Despite any difficulties, we're still getting new members regularly and we always have people online here. In fact, we finally managed to get our 500th member before the end of the year, which we're all pretty pleased about.

 

[payal23j]

@Dopious @Zwielicht steal the show, not fair
Truly amazing announcement