What I write about
The crops I know how to grow, one row at a time.
An illustration of a farm field under soft falling rain, with rows of young green crops stretching to the horizon under a gray sky.
Why rainfed
About 80 percent of the world's cropland is rainfed. It relies on rainfall alone: no pumps, no canals, no water bill. It grows more than 60 percent of the world's cereal grain, according to the FAO. Rainfed farming is the default, the normal way most food is grown.
Advertising is irrigation. You pay to pipe attention in, and the moment you turn off the pump, the field dries up. Rain is the demand already falling for free: people searching, people talking, people recommending. You cannot control the rain.
What you can control is the soil. For a business, the soil is what you build and own: pages that rank, a list, a reputation, things worth passing along. That is the whole skill. My notes are about building soil that holds the rain.
Irrigated
- You pay to pipe attention in
- The field dries up when the pump stops
- The water bill only goes up
The dry season
Rainfed is slower at the start, and there is a dry season, a stretch when the search traffic is thin and nobody seems to be talking. The upside is worth saying plainly: no water bill, and the farm is still alive when the pump breaks.
Search
Pages that earn their place in the results and keep it.
Content
Writing people actually find, read and pass along.
Word of mouth
Being worth talking about, and making it easy to be talked about.
Referrals
Turning happy customers into your best sales channel.
Community and partnerships
Showing up in rooms where your people already gather.
Free tools
Small useful things that earn attention by being genuinely helpful.
About Steve
I am Steve Rajeckas. I have spent my career growing things without ads. It is how most food is grown, and it is how most of my work has grown too.
If you are a founder, a small business owner or a marketer who is tired of rising ad costs, or never had an ad budget at all, these notes are for you. Organic growth is slower at the start. It is also a farm you actually own.
- Built and ran a seven-figure SEO content agency with about 250 contractors at its peak.
- Was content lead at Authority Hacker.
- Built and sold a website for six figures.
- Runs content marketing at a large logistics company.
Leave your email and wait for the rain
I will send you my notes on organic growth, whenever there is something worth sending.