August 2024 wrap-up

I wanted August to be a normal month where I didn’t feel like I’m drowning.

I continued my daily commits on Lists Kit. I got back to shipping Carrd plugins. I undusted the Lifelog codebase and restarted 🍟 Side Project Weekend. I’m getting into my rhythm. I love living the same day over and over. Yet I still had fun, got back to Rails and learning new things, really enjoying it.

Everything went as planned. Life was routine and boring.

And it was gooood.

After being in financial anxiety and stressed over lack of work for months and years, I tell you, boring is a good thing.

Some doors closed, but new ones opened. I do feel like momentum is picking up again. Layering momentum on top of the boring routine has a nice feel to it.

Things seems to be shifting, getting slightly better by the day…

I couldn’t ask for more.

Grateful 🙏🙏

AUGUST 2024 METRICS

– Revenue:

• Current MRR: $107
• One-off revenue: $4936
• Total revenue: $5043
• Total costs = $255
• Total profit: $4788
• Profit margin: 95%
   

– Jason’s Plugins For Carrd

• Total revenue from Carrd: $3062.40
• Sold 13 plugins at $345 revenue. Sold 2 mobile navbars, 1 testimonial sliders, 4 mega navbars, 3 listing with filters, 3 dark mode.
• $1217.40 in affiliate income from Carrd. Affiliate income = Referral ($1179.60) and Seller ($37.80) program. WOW pretty substantial bump in referral fees this month. Usually it’s between $600-800… what happened??
• Made $1500 from work done for managing @Carrd X account.
• Launched another plugin for auto updating age.
• Created version 2 of Listings with Filters and Search Carrd plugin because customer needed to hold more data (aka code) and need to spread out over a few Embed elements.
• Felt like I picked up momentum for Carrd plugins again!
• Reinvested $97 revenue back into product in sponsorship ads.
• Telegram Carrd group at 158 members.
• Substack subscribers at 231.
   

– Outsprint design consultancy

• After failing “Outside Activity” background/reference checks, decided to permanently close that door for gov-related positions.
• But wondering if I should even consider trying PM positions at gov-linked private limited company OGP… 🤔
• Finally resolved Workday system issues between SP and NYP to get paid.
• Completed a 1-day online training workshop for SP, ~ S$1000.
• Completed a half-day training workshop for SoX DSG, ~S$840.
• Confirmed 3 programme opportunities with SoX DSG till Feb 2025.
• Thankful for the stable stream of gigs twice per month… really helped offset that financial anxiety.
   

– Lifelog

• MRR dropped –$20 to $107/month.
• 🥲 Got 2 cancellations from 2 long-time members… been fire having you @Twizzle and @Melanie!
• No new subscriptions.
• Some quality of life improvements shipped this month:
  • Fixed longtime bug where registration failed to capture timezone info.
  • Added current streak to Telegram notification in Daily Lifelogs group and success banner on publish on both /write and /compose page.
• Wondering if I should create a paid SaaS version of Writebook from Once.com - software to publish your own books on the web for in a simple, browsable online book format, no publisher required.
• Lifelog chat group at 27 members.
   

– Indie solopreneur build in public journey

• First freelancing gig ended as no further help was needed. Feature was deployed!
• Continued freelancing as frontend developer at 1 local startup. Made US$1874 this month.
• Learned more Ruby on Rails. Enjoying it. So refreshing after years wandering in chaotic JS land.
• Didn’t do much PHP, SQLite nor use my $5 VPS from Digital Ocean. But still determined. Next: PHP API authentication. Won’t give up yet on my dream tech stack.
• Twitter analytics:
  
   

– Lists Kit

• Zero new sales. Revenue = $0.
• Continued adding 1 new item a day and affiliate links for Directory Starters - now at 64 listings and a couple of affiliate links… I think it’s almost ready.
• Next steps: Conduct keyword research to know which long tail keywords to build SEO pages for - sign up to Ahrefs/SEMrush? Must follow the plan here.
• Informed by @poppacalypse that Payhip affiliate links only link to their product page, not to my website. Might have to switch to Lemon Squeezy, or Rewardful.
   

No updates this month for:
– Keto List Singapore
– Tech for good
– Sheet2Bio
– Sleep hackers club Telegram chat group
– Sleep biohacking
– Health
– KeyboardSG
– Career Conversation Cards
– Mind My Millions

Onwards!