November wrap-up
First time hitting $1k total for all my indie products!
My intentions for November were simple:
Finish well for my consulting gigs.
Start from zero for my products, without any preconceived or blindly inherited notions of right or wrong, should or must.
I definitely finished well for the consulting gigs. Client feedback were mostly good, though I expected better Net Promoter Scores. Overall, finishing without major mishaps. And I got paid! Phew that was a close shave… my savings were running out.
Alignment to that sense of being able to do it my own way, without any borrowed narratives felt good. I under no illusion that I’m completely free from external influence, of course. It takes time to be an independent thinking, self-assured (or shameless) creator. But the initial steps this month felt optimistically promising.
Going all in on hyper-commercialism and marketing overdrive for Black Friday was fun this month. And for the first time, my total revenue from my indie products (excl. consulting) hit the $1k milestone! That counts for something! 🤑
Overall, November felt like I’m taking my first steps of a different, more self-assured approach in my indie solopreneur journey. Definitely bodes well for the new year to come!
Twitter stats - Nov vs Oct
– Tweets: 1102 vs 957
– Tweet impressions: 260k vs 232k
– Likes: 3.1k vs 2.6k
– Engagement rate: 4.0% vs 3.9%
– Profile visits: 40.5k vs 32.7k
– Mentions: 1517 vs 1088
– New followers: 402 vs 280
– Link clicks: 218 vs 78
– Retweets: 187 vs 167
– Replies: 1.1k vs 913
– Followers: 5140
– Emails: 51 (↑11) subscribers
What’s interesting:
Passed 5k in followers on Twitter!
Did a crazy Twitter stunt where I blanked out everything in my profile in black, no bio, no URL. Result: People got confused. New followers dropped. Just looks cool and fun for a while, until it isn’t. My advice: Do not try it.
Again, the best performing tweets are questions and sh*tposts haha 😆 Being entertaining has more viral potential.
Beginning to think that maybe I don’t need to do these monthly tracking and reviews for Twitter growth anymore, as my focus is shifting from follower growth and building an audience, to growing more bets and building in public.
Other Nov metrics
– Revenue:
Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (↓$10)
One-off revenue: $938.30 (↑$677.30)
Total revenue: $1047.30 (↑$677.30) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Total profit: $985.06 (↑$661.46) (excl. salary and consulting costs)
– Costs:
Heroku: $9/m + $14/m = $23/m
Table2site: $8/m
IFTTT: $1.99/m
Carrd: $13.25/m ($159/y)
Domains: $16/m ($200/y)
– Lifelog
Working on a markdown preview feature, and a rich text-to-markdown text editor. Finally building again!
1 recent new subscriber cancelled after 2 months payment.
Restarted posting of atomic essay screenshots as that has an impact on trial sign-ups. But will only post selectively while sticking to 1 tweet per day approach.
Received $0 payout on Medium.
Lifelog chat group at 26(↓1) members.
Considering Heroku Eco plan for my frontend code of Lifelog. $5/m instead of $7/m, for 1000 compute hours a month. I only need a max of 744 compute hours for 31 days, and the rest can be used for my free dynos, e.g. my staging frontend site to test frontend code before launching.
Feeling super anxious about updating the heroku-18 stack, so posted a question to Strapi Discord forum to at least get this major pain started.
Started a Substack newsletter to document my indie solopreneur journey. Will switch from monthly newsletter to weekly, using indie hacking writings from Lifelog.
– Plugins For Carrd
Realised plugins overtook Lifelog and other products in revenue at the start of the month! This was before the Black Friday sale.
Lots of marketing for Black Friday 34% sale! Posted deal on BF directory sites.
SpammedSent out messages on email list, newsletter, chat groups, Carrd communities. Best BF hack ever - offering 50% off for a retweet.Created my very first Carrd plugins bundle for launch on Black Friday - the Startup bundle ($65, BF price $39). Added a previously unreleased, responsive background image plugin into the bundle to make it more rare.
Sold 35 (↑23) plugins at $627.70 (↑$377.70) revenue. Sold 9 mobile navbars, 8 mega navbars, 8 testimonial sliders, 6 listings with filters & search plugins, 1 floating button welcome video plugin, 3 startup bundles.
$299.70 in affiliate income from Carrd in Nov. 😱 Affiliate income is becoming pretty significant! Adding this to the total revenue numbers.
Revenue from Black Friday campaign alone: sold 21 plugins, $372.70 revenue
Made 1 new plugin – the Lottie animation plugin
Added 2 extra new features (show videos from Facebook, Vimeo) to the video button plugin based on a customer enquiry.
Minor non-breaking code changes for the listings with filters & search Carrd plugin
Telegram Carrd group at 41 (↑1) members.
Spending more time helping people on Reddit and Facebook, and looking for new channels to engage in – Slack, Discord, Youtube, Tiktok, Pinterest. Also want to find more micro-communities in Reddit, Twitter. While it’s fun helping others, I got to also track how that translates to more customers and revenue!
Decided to be more clued in on the Carrd scene. Created “carrd plugins” keyword alert notifications on Twitter, using IFTTT and Telegram - time to monitor and engage. Also created keyword alert notifications on Google Alerts.
A trip down memory lane on how I came to be making plugins for Carrd: A back story - https://golifelog.com/posts/how-i-came-to-be-making-plugins-for-carrd-a-back-story-1669676890490
– Sheet2Bio
Received yet another radio silence after replying to a purchase enquiry. They are definitely not getting my Gmail replies!
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.
– Cohort-based writing course for introverts
Decided for this to be 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
170 (↓9) total members now
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.
– Keto List Singapore
Zero ad revenue (→$0) this month.
Keto chat group at 122 (↑1) members.
This site needs a refresh. Time to also break away from table2site.
– Outsprint consultancy
LinkedIn metrics: 979 (↑22) followers, 21.796 (↑57.6%) impressions + 384 (↑63.5%) engagements (based on past 28 days), 327 (↓83) profile views (based on past 90 days), 45 search appearances. Looking forward to hitting 1000 followers milestone!
Made it a point to post a few replies everyday on other LinkedIn accounts. True enough, impression, engagement numbers went up. It’s social media after all.
Finished consulting project with non-profit client. Client feedback were mostly good, though I expected better Net Promoter Scores (of ≥8). Received $30015 from client - PHEW.
Started on a new smallish gig - $7600 to conduct 4 days worth of ideation workshops with a government organisation to do service design for local public service centres.
Bid for a service journey mapping/design thinking project on GeBiz
Considering adjunct lecturing opportunity with Singapore Institute of Technology.
Attended my first in-person conference in years! Govtech’s STACK 2020 developer conference. Made it a point to network, and it worked! Booked 1 meeting out of the conference - not much but hey it’s a start!
– Sweet Jam Sites
A small bet that didn’t work out. Lost the JAMstack/Stackbit sparkle. Stopped all work.
– Tech for good
2 monthly coffees ($5.45 each) = $10.90 - considering offering option to followers to cancel their subscription since I’m not doing much social impact projects now. 🤔
– Sleep goals
Stopped using Mute anti-snoring device as it seems to make me wake up due to it feeling uncomfortable.
Working on stress biohacking is working way more for my sleep than I expected.
– Health
Health and sense of wellbeing continues to be incrementally better.
Restarting my morning walks and workout routines.
Realised biohacking stress is crucial new health goal.
I need a good break in December!
– Money
Nothing happening on my Mind My Millions Telegram chat group
Onwards to December!