I wanted to see if Nostr ads could help people find Seed Keys, my metal backups for recovery phrases. Maybe make a sale or two.
I did a Google search and found Zapadd in the search results. I visited the homepage, of course, and saw a typo in the <h1> that didn’t inspire confidence...
Also, buttons with broken emojis, like 🪿. Not a dealbreaker, but not a great first impression either. (You should fix that, team.)
So, I looked for more info on Nostr and Stacker News. There isn’t much out there. Almost nothing about how the ads actually work. No reviews, no feedback, no warnings.
But it seemed legit enough. So I was like: fuck it. We ball.
First, Nostr login worked fine enough, I used nos2x. Logging in also fixed the buttons with broken emojis, BTW.
But the rest? A few rough edges.
Note selection wasn’t easy.
The “Random” option is simple: you just pick how many notes you want to target. But why are these notes showing up? How do I know they’re actually relevant? There’s no way to check who’s behind them, how many followers they have, or if they even get seen. Feels like guessing.
Keyword search is hit or miss. Sometimes you get too many results, sometimes too few. And no real way to filter or sort. So you end up picking names you don’t know, hoping someone sees it.
One of my own notes showed up on the list, so I tested it on myself. At least I know the flow works.
The message limit is 49 characters, a bit tighter than a usual Google Ads headline. But just enough to explain what Seed Keys is. Emojis go through, which is fine. But links don’t work (at least not in my Minibits wallet), so don’t count on driving traffic that way.
Creating zap requests took about 20 minutes. I gave permissions upfront, otherwise, I’d have to confirm every single zap. Didn’t want that.
Then a notification popped up: “Due to Primal Wallet rate limiting, your zaps may take a few hours to be sent.” But it took only about 45 minutes to send all 1,000 zaps. Maybe a bit longer to confirm the failed zaps (I didn’t stick to my screen to check that).
Still, it’s not something you fire and forget. It felt like a slow drip.
And I wasn’t sure if I could leave the tab open, or close my browser. So, I left everything open, left it running. Just in case.
I really enjoyed seeing the live zaps come in on Nostr Zap. There’s something oddly satisfying about it.
Zapadd’s dashboard was a bit slower to refresh. But still, nice to see real activity happening.
In the end, 51 zaps failed. There’s a “Request refund” button you can click, to get the sats back. I did. It worked fine, got them to my Nostr Lightning address.
I didn't break Top 10 Zappers on Nostr Zap. A bit disappointing 😅
While I hate spam, this feels different. Zaps are more acceptable. People get free sats. And there’s a little dopamine hit when your note lights up. So maybe it’s worth it, even if it’s just noise.
So I ran the Zapadd campaign to get Seed Keys seen.
Account is brand new. No history. No network.
Here’s what happened:
- 948 zaps
- 29 follows
- 3 likes
- 4 replies
- 1 repost
- 5 mentions
- 1 DM
And yeah, no sales yet.
The campaign cost me 10,400 sats: 8,000 for zaps, 2,400 in fees. I received 408 sats back from failed zaps, 8 sats each.
If you’re thinking about trying it, this is what it was like. Slow. Clunky. But real.
seedkeys.xyz — in case you want to see what I was trying to promote.