We launched BuiltByMe in the first week of January with one goal: a directory for people who actually build things. Nearly three months later, we have 321 products submitted and 279 makers in the community. The weekly competition is running, the community is growing, and we genuinely love what's happening here.

So naturally, it's time to talk about the part that isn't as fun.

Growth attracts the wrong crowd.

It's predictable, really. The moment a free submission flow gets any traction, a certain type of person shows up - not to contribute, but to take up space. As submissions grew, a pattern became hard to ignore: makers signing up with no bio, a blank avatar, no skills listed, and no real effort put into who they are or what they build. They treated "free submission" like a form to tick through as fast as possible, just another backlink drop.

Since March, we've deleted more than 50 submissions. Not suspended. Deleted.

We sent emails first: "Action Required: Update your maker profile for [Product Name]", giving 48 hours to bring it up to a basic standard. Real name. A genuine bio about who you are and what you build. A profile photo. Some sign that a real person is behind the submission. Some people updated within minutes. The rest got removed. We'll keep doing this.

Here's what most makers don't realise about their profile.

Every maker on BuiltByMe has a public page at builtbyme.io/maker/yourname that shows who you are, your bio, your skills, your tech stack, and the products you've shipped. We build and index those pages on Google. Your name, your story, your work - it's in search results right now.

A complete profile with a real photo, a genuine bio about yourself and what you build, your Twitter or GitHub handle, and your tech stack is the kind of page that can show up when someone Googles your name. It's free. It's yours. It takes 5 minutes to fill out properly.

And yet a surprising number of makers leave theirs entirely blank.

What this means going forward.

Quality standards are getting tighter, not looser. A real, complete maker profile isn't optional: it's the baseline for being part of this community. We're building BuiltByMe for people who take what they create seriously, and that starts with showing up properly.

If you submitted a product and received our email, update your profile. The community is better when everyone in it is genuine.

The BuiltByMe Blog

Your Maker Profile Is Indexed on Google. Please Act Like It.