May wrap-up

jasonleow  •  31 May 2023   •    
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I’ve been in a slump for the past 2 months, and only just discovered a few days ago what’s likely to be causing it. It’s probably a magnesium deficiency. Like what?! I know right. On this last day of May, I’m writing like that slump never happened. It’s a weird feeling, to realise that in the end there’s probably nothing broken about me or my mind, but just a chemical imbalance.

Which is perfect timing because things are starting to get real busy. My consulting projects are full-on now, and I’m working on 2 concurrently! Schedule’s packed for the entire June, so no vacation even for the school holidays.

I started the month of may with the broad intention to follow my energy, to trust it. Looks like I couldn’t be more wrong about the cause and solution. Now that I feel ‘normal’ again, and my energy and motivation levels slowly picking back up, I can

Onwards!
 


May metrics

Revenue:

  • Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (↑$10)
  • One-off revenue: $974 (↑$67)
  • Total revenue: $1083 (↑$77) 🎉🎉🎉
  • Total costs = $190
  • Total profit: $893 (↑$52) (excl. consulting revenue)
  • Profit margin: 82%

Costs:

  • Domains (25): $40/m
  • Heroku: $7/m + $16/m = $23/m
  • Carrd: $13/m ($159/y)
  • Blogstatic: $1.60/m ($19/y)
  • Twitter Blue: $8/m
  • Sidebird: $7/m (US$84/y)
  • Telegram: $4/m ($50/y)
  • IFTTT: $2/m
  • Table2site: $8/m
  • Chatfuel: $15/m
  • Reinvestments: $68 (ad sponsorships)
     

Plugins For Carrd

  • Sold 15 (↓2) plugins at $410.85 (↓$9.15) revenue. Sold 6 mobile navbars, 6 mega navbars, 2 listings with filters & search plugin, 1 startup bundle.
  • $563.70 (↑$76.50) in affiliate income from Carrd in May. Affiliate income = Referral and Seller program. Slow and steady growth.
  • Updated plugins and website to show which plugins can work on Pro Standard so that it doesn’t unintentionally turn people away from downloading it.
  • Officially launched background image sections plugin.
  • Made 3 new plugins:
    • Made a free marquee plugin using CSS animation effects – marquee.carrd.co.
    • Made a free plugin to set up different fullscreen background images for different Sections – backgroundimagesections.carrd.co
    • Made a separate free version of the gradient text plugin that’s compatible with a lower price plan Pro Standard (instead of Pro Plus).
  • Continued experiments in reinvesting revenue back into product:
    • Continued with $19/m sponsorship ad on @markbowley’s deckof.carrd.co site (400+ visits/mth, top Reddit post in r/Carrd subreddit group).
    • Subscribed to new sponsored ad US$19/m on @markbowley’s Starrt.co.
    • Continued with $10/m sponsored ad spot in Zite Design’s popular Carrd course page on Gumroad. So far this is giving the most hits. Nothing like qualified warm leads from a relevant site.
    • Continued with the $20 sponsorship ad in Jannis’ Tools For Creators website (toolsforcreators.co), since 17 Jan. Jannis said he will continue working on it.
    • The last of the 4 ads (US$204) was published on Katt’s No Node Exits newsletter shown once every 4 wks over 4 months (Feb - May). Only a few page views.
    • Added all my Carrd plugins to Gumroad Discover at 50% commission (+20% more of the minimum 30%). Treating it as paying for ads on Gumroad.
  • The $150 sponsorship slot in @MeetKevon’s Public Lab newsletter on 11 May was my single biggest sponsorship for a single article yet, but it performed poorly. No takers for the discount even though it was 50% off any plugin. I think after sponsoring many maker newsletters, the conclusion is they don’t bring much traffic, and even less conversion. Will stick to sponsoring other Carrd makers moving forward.
  • Updates and bug fixes:
    • Updated copyrightyear and sheet2table plugins because using {{ }} syntax will conflict with Carrd’s own variables engine.
    • Added tutorial to template of password-protected section plugin. Enhanced the plugin to be able to to password-protect more than 1 Section and ability to include iframes in the Section, using simpler code! (No external scripts required now) - all thanks to user who gave feedback!
    • Wrote tutorial for embedding 2 or more text popups for textpopup.carrd.co plugin.
  • Finally found a use for my $19/y blogstatic.io subscription – realised it can work with a meta refresh of the blogpost URL with a query string, e.g. plugins.carrd.co/?post=my-blog-post.
  • Started something to get Carrd makers joining each other’s affiliate programs (mine) - we can all help amplify and multiply each other’s templates.
  • Telegram Carrd group at 79 (↑6) members in May.
  • Got promoted to “Helpful contributor” on r/Carrd, and got the “Top contributor” badge for the Carrd Facebook group.
  • Culled my follows:followers ratio on @pluginsforcarrd Twitter account to a ratio of less than 0.6, to not hamstring the accounts algo-wise.
  • Substack subscribers at 56 (↑6). Published another Substack newsletter, to release the free background image sections plugin – open rate was 67% (previous newsletters were 59% and 51%)!
     

Outsprint design consultancy

  • LinkedIn metrics: 1831 (↑7, ↑2.1%) followers, 25444 (↓47.5%) impressions + 346 (↓46.3%) engagements (based on past 28 days), 1141 (↑28) profile views (based on past 90 days), 81 (↓17) search appearances.
  • Need a site refresh! Carrd + plugins? Or HTML website with Tailwind?
  • Received $950 for delivering 1 coaching session for non-profit.
  • Started on 2 coaching projects for non-profit client. Workshops ongoing all May and Jun.
  • Confirmed 2 opportunities to be design facilitator for Design Singapore Council’s School Of X programme with 1 government agency.
  • Considered an ITQ by a non-profit, but there were some red flags so didn’t bid for it.
  • Set up Zoho mail (freeplan) for receiving and sending email.
     

Lifelog

  • MRR up to $109/month (↑$10). Thanks @lukehollis!
  • Got 1+ new Lifelog trial sign-ups this month.
  • Received another $10 subscription payment after customer’s trial expired, but the customer never wrote a word on Lifelog, so won’t add +$10 MRR just yet…
  • Deployed many new features this month:
    • Created scheduled database backups on Snapshooter.
    • Updated Heroku stack – that was painful
    • Deployed typing sounds to improve productivity and writing experience on Lifelog. Next to consider future sound profiles like typewriter, cash register, and mechanical keyboards of click, clack and thock. Tried to optimize keydown to sound by testing speed of keydown vs textarea input - keydown is more consistent (0.3-0.4ms) and 0.1-0.2ms faster.
    • Based on customer feedback, added placeholder text shows goal reminders as writing prompts, to keep user’s goal top of mind when starting on a blank writing page.
    • Added new saving status UI feature.
    • Fixed bug where toolbar on /write page extended out of screen.
  • Culled my follows:followers ratio on @golifelog Twitter account to a ratio of less than 0.6, to not hamstring the accounts algo-wise.
  • Lifelog chat group at 26 (•0) members.
  • 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 on Convertkit, or a Gumroad standalone product. Subsuming this under Lifelog now.
     

Indie solopreneur build in public journey

  • Third month in a row where my revenue is above $1k (at $1061)! The thing about my revenue is… it’s mostly based on one-time payments. So I never know if the next month’s taking will be the same.
  • Twitter stats are unreliable this month as analytics seem to have stopped working since 14 May. It didn’t track tweets sent and new followers properly. Impressions seems to be still working though not 100% sure. So only these stats for May vs Apr:
    • Tweet impressions: 982k vs 833k
    • Followers: 7066 vs 6798 (↑268) 🎉 Passed 7k followers!
    • Emails: 216 (↑21) subscribers
  • Went viral with a long form tweet sharing my Twitter approach coming full circle. Real stories to keep things real!
  • Since subscribing to Twitter Blue on Apr 1st (getting verified till Apr 6th), tweet impressions seems to be up, though that didn’t translate to a similar increase in new followers (compared to last 2 months).
  • Switched Twitter scheduling tool from Zlappo to Sidebird (annual subscription US$84) for the auto-RTs and auto-unRTs, but re-considering now if I even need autoRTs.
  • Hit 1600 day streak on Makerlog! Insane journey.
  • Continued publishing weekly Substack newsletters on Saturday. Started a Substack profile page @jasonleow too.
  • Plotting how to earn an extra $1000 per month, using what I have.
     

Sheet2Bio

  • To be pivoted. To something else entirely (a chart2site to show revenue and charts?), perhaps for B2B, and create an onboarding flow where they can be like Carrd where user can set up a Sheet2Bio site immediately and play around with the Google Sheets. Payment can be prompted later.
     

5am creators club Telegram chat group

  • 139 (↓7) total members for May.
  • Low engagement continued. Just 2-3 of us posting our wake times. To get more people posting their wake times, considering a social challenge like 5for5 (5am for 5 weeks) or use ChatGPT to make a Telegram bot to track our sleep stats/streaks. Of course, there’s many sleep tracking apps already, but few are anchored to a community.
  • Planning to make a dedicated micro web app for sleep cycle calculator for myself and the community.
  • An info product for sleep could be another top-of-funnel resource for the community.
     

Keto List Singapore

  • Zero ad revenue (•$0) this month.
  • Received and replied to enquiry for an ad! Been a while!
  • Keto chat group at 122 (↑2) members.
  • This site needs a refresh. Time to also break away from table2site. Consider using Spreadsimple + Carrd for it?
     

Career Conversation Cards

  • Single item ecomm store upcoming.
  • Might use Payhip as payment processor for ecomm physical goods.
  • Marketing channels to be SEO/organic search, ads and word of mouth (locally amongst career coaches).
     

Tech for good

Sleep biohacking

Health

Money

Onwards!

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