Letter From An Office Outlaw
May 4, 2025
"May the fourth be with you."
Hurr hurr, tired joke.
It was another fun week with all of you. Many of us are invested as a community in this project, so I wanted to take the time to talk about where we're at so far.
We crossed over having 200 members on Office Outlaw this week, which is certainly pretty good for a forum that was only accepting registrations a little over one month ago. As you can guess, site traffic, daily posts, and daily threads, reactions, etc has continued to increase. But what I think is most important is that the quality of our interactions here is truly superb. I think we can all agree that it's going in a very good direction so far and there's only more to come later on.
It was actually a little hard to write the newsletter here because there was so much to choose from this week! Because of this, I actually don't think it's fair to say that the threads featured here are the "top 10" or the replies are the "top 5". Therefore, I took the time to rename the newsletter section descriptions to state that these are simply top of what we noticed. Also, because we had so many good threads, this will be the first newsletter where I didn't have to feature one of my own threads (great, because that made me look self-aggrandising).
We still don't have very many subscribers to our e-mail newsletter, so we won't be sending this one out via e-mail. Once we get more subscribers, I can start doing that, it just takes more time to do. Speaking of which, if you haven't signed up for it and prefer the newsletter to be e-mailed to you, then you can do
here.
Most Wanted Threads
These are the top 10 highlights of Office Outlaw that we noticed this week.
1. BASIC ON PAGE SEO - AND CHECKLIST - TO BEGIN
Author: @Mr.Brilliant
Section: SEO Discussions
Whenever I do on-page SEO, I often create a checklist of items to get to. You know, because when it comes to doing this stuff across multiple websites, you often end up looking over the same items and it becomes routine.
This is why this SEO checklist from
@Mr.Brilliant is great to have on the forum. For those of you who avoid black hat SEO tactics for clients or even just generally, this checklist seems to be based around Google's guidelines and it has the White Hat SEO prefix.
For those of you who do black hat SEO, it's sometimes good to get a refresher on how to do things the standard way to better understand the system and develop workarounds.
2. Top 5 Best Video Editing Software for 2025
Author: @Champagne
Section: Tools At The Forge
Video editing is something I used to do up until around 2019 when I stopped. Many of you don't know this about me, but I once even had a film in the local film festival. Because of my experience with this, I know how important it is to have the right video editing software.
Back when I first started, I used Windows Movie Maker and then Adobe Premiere Pro. These were great tools for the time, but Windows Movie Maker is no longer available and my copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 is more than a little dated. I'm sure I'm not the only one using dated software, either.
But the software @chamapgne listed the pros and cons of in this thread are not only more modern, but some of them are even free. If you're like me and you're using dated software for video editing, then perhaps it's time to check out what 2025 has to offer.
3. Top 100 Blog Commenting Sites List
Author: @back2form
Section: SEO Discussions
Blog commenting can still be a good strategy both to have a chance to leave insightful comments on popular blogs and for SEO purposes. Some specifically look for do-follow blog commenting sites for the link equity these will provide, but even the no-follow blog comments can help in terms of diversifying your link profile.
This list that
@back2form shared goes over the links and the current DA rating of the domain. It's a nice, simple list that's separated by niche, meaning you can quickly find the site that best suits your needs.
4. Creating Personas & Profiles for E-commerce with no budget
Author: @t2van
Section: E-Commerce
This was a very interesting thread from
@t2van, one of our Founding Members. You see, in business, some create what's called a customer persona to better understand that target consumer in the sense of how to acquire them and how to keep their existing customers happy.
This is a very useful thing to do to communicate with others on your team about how to understand the company's customer. After all, not everyone working in the company is going to instinctively know who the customer is.
5. [Pinterest Journey] Goal 10 Million Monthly Views
Author: @zakhej
Section: Journeys
If you weren't aware of this, we have a journeys section, which is a place where members share their upcoming or in-progress journeys in business and projects with the community.
@zakhej started a journey thread this week in order to grow his Pinterest account. He states that he did a Pinterest journey before in 2018-2020, but that it was much easier back then.
However, in 2025, he's got a plan and a goal in mind for this next journey. If you're interested staying updated with his progress, you can click the "Watch" button in the thread.
6. Gemini Advanced is free for college students through finals 2026
Author: @MisterF
Section: AI Solutions
Get this: Gemini Advanced is offering a promo where they give it away for free to college students.
I checked this out as far as we could, and all you apparently need is an EDU e-mail to get it for free.
For those of us in this industry, we know that translates to "you just need an EDU e-mail", so even if you have an old one from your college days or, for whatever reason, you have access to an EDU e-mail; then you can claim this offer.
7. 3 x Sapphire Memberships Giveaway!
Author: @Vix
Section: Giveaways & Discounts
@Vix, one of our Founding Members, is doing an awesome giveaway where he'll pay for Sapphire membership for up to 3 members who meet the requirements of the giveaway.
A member will be selected once every 20 days, so if you'd like to participate in this giveaway, all you need to do is post it in and make sure you meet the requirements in time.
8. Windows 11 update does rounds again - Backup your data
Author: @INCC
Section: The Saloon
Windows is... being Windows again. This time, they have yet another issue where there's a bug that sends you an update notification, the update fails, and then your entire drive gets encrypted by Bitlocker?
What's wild is that it's already happened to a lot of people, including the thread starter
@INCC.
9. Adrenaline or Chill? Reveal Your Last 2 Adventures!
Author: @LuxRiches
Section: The Saloon
This is a really cool thread that one of our Founding Members,
@LuxRiches, posted in The Saloon.
He wants to know what the last two adventures you went on. It can be hiking, trekking, spelunking, or whatever you consider as an adventure.
10. How to get cheap and constant shoutouts from big influencers
Author: @roydan
Section: General Money Making
This is an updated version of a guide that
@roydan, one of our Founding Members, wrote a long time ago.
Despite having shared this a long time ago, he states that it's really simple and he's a little surprised that more people aren't doing it. Afte all, getting cheap and constant shoutout from influencers has quite a lot of potential when it comes to increasing sales and exposure.
Sharpest Shots of the Week
Replies need some love too, which is why we feature the top 5 replies that caught our eye this week.
1. @SilverClouds posted a very funny response about the Windows bug.
2. @Rem posted their idea of an adventure.
3. @t2van shared more information on customer personas.
4. @zakhej shared an update to his Pinterest journey.
5. @INCC posted a solution to preventing the Windows bug. Definitely read this if you use Windows.
Trick Shots From Office Outlaw
These tips are to help you become a better Office Outlaw.
I've had a few, but not many people ask me where the off-topic section is. I think some keep expecting it to be called "The Lounge" for some reason. Hmm...
Anyway, the off-topic section is called
The Saloon.
Office Outlaw Updates
We're always updating the site! This is what we've done this week.
We strive to deliver improvements to the site as often as we can, but we have been able to do it every day consistently.
Summarised, the updates surrounded our forum's functionality (like the new push notifications), consistency, quality of life changes, and updates that benefit our members here.
Final Words
I accidentally left out the outro section of this newsletter the last couple of times. It's back in now, as you can see!
The wide variety of engaging threads and discussions we have here makes me feel like Office Outlaw has a very bright future. We're all building this together, because without our members, this would just be an empty forum. I can't even say it would be a functional forum without our members as it's thanks to our Founding Members who came on board early on and identified bugs and inconsistencies across the board.
I'm looking forward to seeing how our forum progresses next week, because we seem to be growing quite quickly each week!
