December wrap-up
jasonleow • 31 Dec 2022 •
Setting intentions for December had always been easy. Every year, it’s always to rest and reflect.
But if you know anything about me, it’s that I always struggled with resting. So it’s no surprise that I would do a bad job at it in Dec. Ok, I did rest… just not as much as I would love to. In the past, I found it easier to break my habitual energies by transplanting myself to Bali. But no travel this year, so I definitely found it harder to truly rest and rejuvenate.
I did find time to reflect, thankfully. I reviewed my one word for 2022, mused and amused myself over my best and worst of the year, closed out my open questions for the year and didn’t forget my annual tradition of reviewing the year using 8 forms of capital.
Overall, a busier-than-usual December, but a fruitful one. Onwards to 2023!
Twitter stats - Dec vs Nov
– Tweets: 1135 vs 1102
– Tweet impressions: 347k vs 260k
– Likes: 3.0 k vs 3.1k
– Engagement rate: 3.2% vs 4.0%
– Profile visits: 48.3k vs 40.5k
– Mentions: 1780 vs 1517
– New followers: 340 vs 402
– Link clicks: 145 vs 218
– Retweets: 169 vs 187
– Replies: 1.1k vs 1.1k
– Followers: 5496
– Emails: 79 (↑28) subscribers
What’s interesting:
- Again, the better performing tweet formats are questions. A good question gets the best engagement.
- Sh*tposts had been consistent top-performers haha 😆 Being entertaining had always shown to have more viral potential. But does that convert to followers? Not sure. Convert to revenue? Doubt so!
- Newsletter increased by 28 subs! Maybe it’s due to switching to weekly newsletter.
- In 2023, will stop doing these monthly tracking and reviews for Twitter growth, as my focus is shifting from follower growth and building an audience, to growing more bets and building in public.
- Removed Revue newsletter module, experimented with Location Spotlight module hack, but got spooked by instability of changes on Twitter so removed the module and simply used my profile URL to show my Substack (instead of my Sheet2bio link).
- Concerned about platform risk on Twitter, so created some Plan Bs:
- Replicate Twitter account on Mastodon. Ghost town in there. It sucks.
- Auto-tweet to a mirror repurposed personal Telegram channel t.me/jason_leow.
- Auto-backup all incoming tweets and followers to Google Sheets via IFTTT.
Other Dec metrics
– Revenue:
- Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (•$0)
- One-off revenue: $744 (↓$174)
- Total revenue: $853 (↓$174)
- Total costs = $76
- Total profit: $777 (↓$188) (excl. salary)
- Profit margin: 91%
– Costs:
- Heroku: $9/m + $14/m = $23/m
- Table2site: $8/m
- IFTTT: $1.99/m
- Carrd: $13.25/m ($159/y)
- Domains (23): $30/m ($350/y)
– Lifelog
- 🔥 Hit 700 day streak on Lifelog!
- Markdown preview feature is 80% ready. Will launch in Jan 2023.
- Need more time to work on rich text-to-markdown text editor.
- Got lazy with selective posting of atomic essay screenshots. As predicted, impacted trial sign-ups.
- Got 2 new Lifelog trial sign-ups, 1 of whom cancelled same day later.
- New trial user’s subscription (US$10) kicked in this month… thanks Steven!
- Lifelog chat group at 26(↓1) members.
- Bought writingemoji.com and writinghandemoji.com as traffic generators for Lifelog. Wrote about why I’m domaining for organic search traffic.
- Decided not to use Heroku Eco plan for my frontend code of Lifelog as it doesn’t come with SSL cert management – don’t want to screw up anything domain/DNS-related
- Got my answer to my concerns updating the heroku-18 stack – no issues with Strapi backend.
- Switched from monthly to weekly schedule for my Substack newsletter documenting my indie solopreneur journey. Grew 28 new subs in Dec! Wrote about how I started a newsletter.
- Tried many fun ChatGPT experiments for writing, like asking it to convince me of writing daily in the voice of Donald Trump, and Shakespeare. Much possibilities for Lifelog.
- Did my first commit to Heroku after more than 1 year… damn that’s long! Just minor text updates to the writing prompts, to test if the pipeline still works! And to fix the announcement banner with new Google App Script link.
- Got featured in Indie Insiders newsletter!
- Got my FIRST pledge for paid subscription to my indie solopreneur newsletter! Wow too flattered, @Via_Benjamin! Not sure if I should though…being paid to write it feels categorically different.
- A slower sales month due to Christmas/New Year season.
- Experimented with festive marketing, through the snow confetti plugin and the auto-updating copyright year plugin.
- Sold 25 (↓9) plugins at $407.30 (↓$200.60) revenue. Sold 7 mobile navbars, 4 mega navbars, 10 testimonial sliders, 3 listings with filters & search plugins, 1 startup bundle.
- $320.70 (↑$21) in affiliate income from Carrd in Dec. Affiliate income = Referral and Seller program. This is becoming pretty significant! Adding this to the total revenue numbers.
- Made 7 new plugins!
- image gallery hover buttons plugin
- snow confetti plugin
- carousel slider plugin
- full page carousel slider plugin
- auto-updating copyright year plugin
- potential plugin for Lemon Squeezy integration? I helped someone with his Lemon Squeezy integration to Carrd. Could be a free plugin that’s helpful for others using LS.
- potential plugin for audio waveform embed plugin. Helped someone with their audio waveform embed for Carrd, using wavesurfer.js.
- Earned $108 donation (included this as part of affiliate income) from creating an audio waveform plugin for a customer… thanks Nathan!
- Bought plugemoji.com as traffic generator. Wrote about why I’m domaining for organic search traffic.
- Telegram Carrd group at 48 (↑7) members in Dec.
- Moved newsletter from Revue to Substack – pluginsforcarrd.substack.com
- Google keyword alerts showing some new Reddit (r/commisionart, r/hireanartist, r/HungryArtists) and DeviantArt communities to check out.
- No sales/enquiries in Dec.
- Next step: Create an onboarding flow where they can
pay immediately and then get updated over email laterset up a Sheet2Bio site immediately and play around with the Google Sheets. Payment can be prompted later. - Stopped sharing my sheet2bio link on Twitter.
- Thinking of pivoting Sheet2Bio in 2023…
– Cohort-based writing course for introverts
- Planned for 2023 as a top of funnel, lead generating FREE product for Lifelog. Could be an automated email drip campaign/course, or a Gumroad standalone product.
– 5am creators club Telegram chat group
- 167 (↓3) total members for Dec.
- Continuing to let people self-select themselves out of the chat group, as I don’t need a huge chat group. I prefer an engaged group interested in posting their wake times and learning about sleep biohacking.
- Considering making a dedicated micro web app for sleep cycle calculator for myself and the community.
- Zero ad revenue (•$0) this month.
- Keto chat group at 122 (•0) members.
- This site needs a refresh. Time to also break away from table2site.
– Outsprint design consultancy
- 🔥 Crossed 1000 followers on LinkedIn just before Christmas! Best Christmas gift ever!
- LinkedIn metrics: 1012 (↑34) followers, 20471 (↓5%) impressions + 397 (↑5.6%) engagements (based on past 28 days), 313 (↓14) profile views (based on past 90 days), 73 (↑28) search appearances.
- Continued to post a few replies everyday on other LinkedIn accounts.
- Cleaned up my feed for more focus on design. Unfollowed (but stayed “connected”) all indie hackers and creators except those who create for LinkedIn, and added more designers.
- Continued with smallish gov gig - $15200 for 9 days worth of facilitation, ideation and prototyping work for service design for local public service centres.
- Decided against adjunct lecturing opportunity with Singapore Institute of Technology as the curriculum is standardised.
- Exploring work in design for inclusion/accessibility, and in IoT/smart building space.
- Submitted proposals worth a total of $136k so far for 2023! Awaiting for tender results. 🤞
- Submitted a $64k tender bid for a potential project with a government Ministry.
- Sent a proposal for coaching work valued at $72k to potential non-profit client!
- A small bet that didn’t work out. Lost the JAMstack sparkle. All work stopped.
- Wondering if I should just close it down.
- 2 monthly coffees and 1 one-off coffee ($5.45 each) = $16.35
- Going to offer the option to followers to cancel their subscription since I’m not doing much social impact projects now. 🤔
- Received $750 in total worth of Uncle Ringo carnival credits for my tech for good work! Had fun!
– Sleep goals
- Started shifting my wake time to fit 5 sleep cycles (7.5h sleep), which works great especially when bedtime is late. Been doing that and it works for better sleep scores.
- Considering making a dedicated micro web app for sleep cycle calculator for myself and the community.
- Leela sleep card seems to be working well. My sleep seems deeper than usual. Or it might be due to eating 2-3x lesser at dinner.
– Health
- Health and sense of wellbeing continues to be incrementally better.
- Restarted and enjoying my morning walks and workout routines before the household wakes up.
- Fasting in the morning, and eating 2-3x lesser at dinner helped a lot of sleep and health.
- Felt like I should have rested more in December.
– Money
- Nothing happening on my Mind My Millions Telegram chat group
Onwards!