October 2024 wrap-up

jasonleow • 31 Oct 2024 •
Tweet

Screenshot

Monthly goals

What I said at the start of this month:

In October, I want a boring month with big fun.

And I got it!

One random tool for making a LinkedIn banner badge, then one super viral tweet, then 1M impressions, then one new domain, then finally one new project in the portfolio.

It was waaay too much fun.

…the intention for October is to have no intention. And just ride the wave, go with the flow.

And I tried to ride the wave on that project, while keeping balanced on all my other work, freelance and indie. It was a tough wave to surf. This is a new niche, one I’m not familiar with. I did the best I could, but I think it’s fading off.

But it was fun anyhow.

I’ve always felt I didn’t have a good nose for opportunity. But this was a good run. It was good practice on that sixth sense.

Maybe this isn’t the rocket ship I was waiting for, but it sure hell gave me a test drive on the track!

MORE!

OCTOBER 2024 METRICS

– Revenue:

Current MRR: $107
One-off revenue: $5106
Consulting/Training: $1394
Total revenue: $6607
Total costs = $293
Total profit: $6314
Profit margin: 95%

– Jason’s Plugins For Carrd

Total revenue from Carrd: $3186
Sold 15 plugins at $360 revenue. Sold 3 mobile navbars, 2 testimonial sliders, 7 mega navbars, 2 listing with filters, 1 floating button welcome video.
$1326 in affiliate income from Carrd. Affiliate income = Referral ($1270) and Seller ($56) program. The substantial bump continues… as it did the past few months… why?
Made $1500 from work done for managing @Carrd X account.
Got asked to do technical support for Carrd! Offered 2h/day Mon-Fri, at $50/h. Comes up to around $2000-2200 per month income.
Launched another plugin for custom audio player.
Reinvested $107 revenue back into product in sponsorship ads.
Telegram Carrd group at 187 members.
Substack subscribers at 248.

– Outsprint design consultancy

Celebrated 10 years of being in business. Decided that conducting training is no longer for me, so will pivot to frontend dev, which is already like a job for me now. Will probably just leave the design industry by beginning 2025.
But there’s always a price… sent rough quote of S$180k to potential consulting client.
Completed a 1-day online training workshop for SP, ~ S$1000.
Completed a half-day face-to-face training workshop for DSG, ~S$840.
Got 3 new opportunities for remote work - 1 Carrd-related, 2 frontend dev related. Ask and you shall receive indeed!

– Lifelog

MRR stable at $107/month.
Got 1 new member! Thanks for joining us, @doubleA
New features shipped:
- Deployed the @mention dropdown popup on rich text editor
- Added a search page to search for past posts on Lifelog
- Added an animated green icon to signal new features on Lifelog
- Added loading indicator to all pages, and to notifications page too
- Added an inline search feature for the markdown editor, to make it easier to search for past posts on Lifelog while writing.
- Tried replacing Imgbb with Imagekit, but too complicated. Abandoned task.
Still thinking about a paid SaaS (inspired by Writebook from Once.com) where it helps aspiring book authors to stop procrastinating and publish their own books on the web for in a simple, browsable online book format, no publisher required.
Lifelog chat group at 28 members.

– Indie solopreneur build in public journey

Continued freelancing as frontend developer at 1 local startup. Made US$1840 this month.
Last month I decided to slowly look out for 1 more fractional web dev gig for Jan 2025 at least, to replace my income stream from design thinking. Then I got asked to work an extra half day for my existing gig, got offered a new gig tio build a side tool, and remote technical support work for Carrd! Manifestation, baby!
Remind myself about the spirit of indie hacking.
Passed 300 days of daily commits!
Didn’t do much PHP, SQLite nor use my $5 VPS from Digital Ocean. 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 100 listings! Finally!
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.
Considered making a Tailwind version, added a Google Form link in home page to test demand.
Approved 1 new affiliate signup on Payhip.
Set up Lemon Squeezy for affiliate program, and switched over from Payhip. Got first affiliate… thanks @poppacalypse!
Added selection criteria in the intake form and About section of the SaaS Starters directory, in order to keep to 100 top quality boilerplates.
Sadly, not able to unlock a repeatable, reliable distribution channel yet. The directories are useful but not repeatable.

– ProfilePicture.app

Got lots of feedback, revamp app to v2.0!
Did some keyword research - looks like “linkedin profile picture” might be best bet… “pfp” is great but too broad and gamer-related…
Bought ProfilePicture.app domain from Namecheap!
Managed to 301 redirect the subdirectory path /profilephotoeditor to profilepicture.app
Tried #MooDeng, #OpenToMRR, #IVoted badges but the world didn’t take.
Realised this is more of a meme generator, but it’s losing steam tbh…
Added a CTA link to test if the B2B white label, custom badge generator idea for teams/companies will work…

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