About Life Pro Tips

1. Who started Life Pro Tips?

Life Pro Tips was created by Parker Ruhstaller, in 2010.

2. Why was Life Pro Tips created?

Having collected numerous tips applicable to various aspects of everyday life, I registered the domain and began sending them out in an email list to friends and family.
lifeprotips.com circa 2012
lifeprotips.com circa 2012

3. What is a Life Pro Tip?

A Life Pro Tip or "LPT" is a tip that improves your life in a meaningful way.
Some Life Pro Tip examples:
  • Hang your photos on the wall in the perfect spot by using paper templates.
  • Use rubber dish gloves to wipe off pet hair from furniture.
  • Hang your photos on the wall in the perfect spot by using paper templates.

4. Is there a relation to /r/lifeprotips?

Shortly after lifeprotips.com was registered, I made the subreddit, /r/lifeprotips, as a cache to store the tips until the website launched.
From there, I submitted an ad to the self-serve system as reddit was offering it gratis at the time to moderators. I thought, why not -- so I made a crappy little advert and submitted it. From there, people started submitting their own tips amongst the initial seed list and it organically blossomed.
A few years later, the subreddit reached default status -- meaning all newly registered reddit users would be subscribed to Life Pro Tips by default.
Eventually, I was invited to the reddit offices to meet with some staff who were exploring the idea of creating short form video content from a select few subreddits including /r/todayilearned and /r/explainlikeimfive.
Around 2014, is when I launched the website. I set up a bot within the subreddit, to remove any non lifeprotips.com link-based submissions. This served two purposes:
  1. Spread awareness of the newly launched website to the community.
  2. Act as a filter for the majority of spam-ridden link submissions that were previously a point of contention on /r/lifeprotips and the reason why it was text-only.
lifeprotips.com circa 2014
lifeprotips.com circa 2014
Within a few hours, someone reported me to a trigger-happy reddit admin, who hastily removed me as a moderator from my subreddit and shadbowbanned my account.
The subreddit degraded into subjective "tips" and other worthless submissions without me at the helm.
In 2022, I rebuilt this website with a renewed focus in continuing my legacy of bringing useful tips to the masses.