October wrap-up | Jason's monthly newsletter
October wrap-up
Looking back at my intentions for October:
Practising gratitude by doing well for my consulting gig
Aligning to my values and own authentic self
Doing some groundwork for building in Nov/Dec
I think I managed to practice all three. The gig is completing, and I expect to wind down for the year by mid Nov. Yet because I’ve stopped building for two months, I’m eager to jump back to coding my products then. Hope to have some active rest, and just work at my own place then.
Alignment continues to feel good. Every time I make a tiny tweak to my profile on Twitter, Makerlog or some other social platform, I feel better about it. I’m incrementally piecing the puzzle that’s my authentic online self.
My early thoughts for the building phase to come: It’ll be about doing my own thing, following my own instincts. And dropping a lot more of the current indie hacker practices I’m doing but no longer interests or serve me. Considering dropping revenue progress charts and updates, for example. It’s already shifting that way since this month.
Overall, October felt like the start of a 180º shift in my indie solopreneur approach… in time for the new year to come.
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Twitter stats - Oct vs Sep
– Tweets: 957 vs 929
– Tweet impressions: 232k vs 240k
– Likes: 2.6k vs 2.1k
– Engagement rate: 3.9% vs 3.9%
– Profile visits: 32.7k vs 36.6k
– Mentions: 1088 vs 996
– New followers: 280 vs 211
– Link clicks: 78 vs 143
– Retweets: 167 vs 188
– Replies: 913 vs 899
– Followers: 4739
– Emails: 40 (↑4) subscribers
What’s interesting:
No major changes to my Twitter approach this month, and no major stat differences either.
As always, the best performing tweets are in formats of questions and sh*tposts haha. Why do I even bother… 😆
I’m enjoying the one (scheduled) tweet a day approach. Been doing this since mid Sept and it does feel like a good rhythm for me. My profile feed looks less frenzied. Occasionally I adhoc RT something to make the extra tweet vary the timeline a bit.
Updated Twitter banner and profile to further align to authentic self, and to market my plugins.
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 Sept metrics
– Revenue:
Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (→$0)
One-off revenue: $261 (↓$90)
Total revenue: $380 (↓$90)
Total profit: $323.6 (↓$106.40) (excl. salary and consulting costs)
– Costs:
Heroku: $9/m + $14/m = $23/m
Table2site: $8/m
IFTTT: $1.99/m
Carrd: $7.40/m ($89/y)
Domains: $16/m ($200/y)
(Renewed domain for jasonleow.com (US$11.84) and jasonleow.sg (S$51.36))
Consultancy costs: $50 (Fiverr illustrator)
– Lifelog
No new features nor fixes. But looking forward to building in Nov/Dec!
Paid for 2 Heroku Hobby Dynos - damage = US$7 × 2 = +US$14/month costs
Feeling super anxious about updating the heroku-18 stack, so posted a question to Strapi forum to at least get this major pain started
1 new subscriber activated… thanks viaolaussen!
1 current subscriber’s payment had been failing multiple times, so I’m assuming he’s cancelling. So that evens out the MRR growth.
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 $0.03 payout on Medium
Hit evil 666 streak!
Lifelog chat group steady state at 27 members.
– Plugins For Carrd
Sold 12 plugins at $250 (↑$50) revenue. Sold 3 mobile navbars, 4 mega navbar, 3 testimonial sliders, 2 listings with filters & search plugins.
Made 3 new plugins! All from helping others with their Carrd problems:
Updated my Twitter and Telegram profile name - added the Carrd plugins URL to my profile name to restart marketing it
Got invited and accepted to be a moderator on the Carrd Facebook group!
Telegram Carrd group at 40 (↑2) members.
Spending noticeably more time helping people on Reddit and Facebook. It’s fun and enjoyable to help others. But also hope that translates to more conversions!
– Sheet2Bio
Received purchase enquiry for premium package. Emailed customer but no reply. Starting to think they don’t get my Gmail replies…
Next step is best to create a onboarding form where they can pay immediately and then get updated over email later.
– Cohort-based writing course for introverts
Decided for this to be a top of funnel product for Lifelog. Could be an automated email drip campaign/course, or a Gumroad standalone product.
Unsure if this should be free or nominal fee or paid yet.
– 5am creators
179 (↓2) total members now
Happy 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 121 (↑2) members.
This site needs a refresh. Time to also break away from table2site.
– Outsprint consultancy
LinkedIn metrics: 957 (↑31) followers, 12.6k (↓47.7%) impressions + 202 (↓40.4%) engagements (based on past 28 days), 410 (↓68) profile views (based on past 90 days)
Finished writing report for the S$30k consulting project with non-profit client.
Commissioned a Fiverr illustrator to sketch 9 frames of the storyboard (US$50 in 5 days) for the report.
Produced 2 videos for final presentation.
Sent invoice of $30015 to client!
Signed and sent letter of engagement to be on a panel of consultant experts (in public engagement) with another government Ministry.
Got 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.
Chatting with better.sg folks to explore opportunities for nocode masterclass
– Sweet Jam Sites
Decided to stop all work for it. Was fun leveraging JAMstack/Stackbit but lost the sparkle since.
Considering replacing this productized service in my portfolio with a Carrd equivalent.
– Tech for good
2 monthly coffees ($5.45 each) = $10.90 - considering offering option to followers tp cancel their subscription since I’m not doing much social impact projects now.
– Sleep goals
Continuing with 8h sleep as much as I can during weekdays
Researching more about stress and sleep as it’s necessary now.
Starting closing blinds to limit even more stray light at night
– Health
Health and sense of wellbeing continues to be incrementally better since the bout of minor chronic ailments in July.
Restarting my morning walks and workout routines.
Started a new goal for health - biohacking stress. Learning and writing about it.
– Money
Nothing happening on my Mind My Millions Telegram chat group
Onwards to November!
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This post was first published on Lifelog - where I write daily plus all my monthly wrap-ups: