2021 in review - I'm
[2022-01-06 01:59:59 PM] : 2021 in review - I'm going to try to cover both the good and the bad. (see thread)
1 Reply
[2022-01-06 02:00:46 PM] : I tried writing this out as a bullet list, and that just didn't feel like it gave the whole story, so I'm trying out a longer-form version.
On paper 2021 seems like a pretty good year. Revenue was at $226k, I raised $5k to donate to COVID relief in India and got it matched, I gained 8k mailing list subs, twitter following is nearly 7k, and my name recognition in the Go community is pretty good due to being on Go Time regularly and participating in some of their events at conferences like GopherCon.
In reality, 2021 was tough for me. I think I'm headed in the right direction now, but it took a while.
I started the year already burnt out. The pandemic was a factor here, but in reality I had been running on fumes for a while. My wife and I started fostering in 2018, which has been an incredibly rewarding experience. We adopted our amazing daughter, got to know some amazing kids, hopefully helped them out during a tough time, and we learned so much in the process. It was completely worth it, but it was also absolutely exhausting and at times brutal emotionally.
On a sidenote, if anyone is ever interested in fostering feel free to reach out. My wife and I wouldn't trade our experiences as foster parents for anything, and I am happy to help answer any questions I can.
Back to the burnout - for a number of reasons, we decided to stop fostering in 2020 with the intent to do it again in the future, but at that point I was basically just scraping by, and this had lead to me falling behind where I wanted to be. In retrospect, I didn't really have any deadlines to fall behind, but at the time I was convinced I needed to release this new course otherwise bad things would happen so I pushed myself through the end of 2020 and into 2021 despite running on fumes.
Long story short, 2021 wasn't that much nicer to me and eventually I just completely burned out. I have no clear recollection of when it happened, but at some point in 2021 I realized I
was just banging my head against a wall. I wasn't making progress and I needed to change things up. I took a break for a while and basically just did the things that weren't stressful or had to be done (eg support). A bit later I decided to work on updating an existing course. This was a much easier win for me since all the content was there, I just needed to update things and incorporate some notes I had on how to improve the course.
That is where I am now - working on finishing those updates and trying to let myself recover a bit. I got COVID shortly before Thanksgiving which didn't help. Black Friday is like ~30% of my income for the year, so I ended up working through COVID which isn't a great recovery strategy, but things are headed in the right direction now.
[2022-01-06 02:01:01 PM] : Some big takeaways from the last few years:
- If you take the time to stack the bricks, they don't deteriorate the minute life demands your attention elsewhere. The last year definitely felt like one of my least productive years, but I still did well with revenue, audience growth, etc.
- Audience building is just as important today as it was when I started. The way I do it has expanded to include a podcast, twitter, free courses, and youtube, but it all boils down to helping people.
- To date, I believe my free courses (Gophercises is one) have driven more growth than anything, so if I was starting all over again I'd probably focus on a free, medium sized product before doing anything paid. Would help me get familiar with the process of building a product while also serving as a super useful ebomb.
[2022-01-06 02:01:10 PM] : Moving forward my goals in 2022 include:
- Finishing my paid course updates
- Getting back to the new course with a clear head
- Trying to improve my YouTube presence with more video ebombs
- Updating/improving my free courses
- Figure out a good long term PPP solution
[2022-01-06 02:01:45 PM] : For anyone who just wants the numbers, here those are for 2021:
Money bits:
- $226k revenue; down from $257k in 2020, but COVID likely boosted that.
- In talks for a ~$50k deal to give an entire eng team access to my courses
- On track to hit $1m in total product sales this year.
Content:
- ~50% of the course overhaul is complete
- Twitter ebombs did pretty well this year.
- A few new ebombs via mailing list, blog, YouTube, etc
- Hosted the Go Time podcast fairly regularly (1-2x per mo)
Audience:
- Hit ~7k followers on Twitter.
- Go Time podcast is growing
- Mailing list gained ~8k new subs, but I purged ~14k inactives. ~42k subscribers total.
- Mailing list open rate is increasing since purge. At 30.25% now.
[2022-01-06 02:04:43 PM] : And to make sure this is clear - no need for a pity party here. I'm doing well. I just wanted to share both the good and bad, since it is easy to see revenue and assume it is all sunshine and rainbows.
[2022-01-06 04:00:40 PM] : Thank you for sharing Jon :hugging_face:. Glad to hear you're recovering and I hope you'll get back to 100% soon. Those are impressive numbers. Take the time to enjoy the fruits of your past labor.
[2022-01-07 02:16:53 PM] : Thanks for sharing jon. It was a great read especially because of the cloudy parts. So thanks for being so open. Did you purge your list to decrease costs for your email provider?
[2022-01-08 12:18:51 AM] : It wasn't about costs. It was just about improving open rates and click rates and removing people who according to tracking hasn't opened an email or click s link in 9+mo. When I did it I emailed people basically saying, '"it looks like you are an inactive subscriber. if you don't click this link in the next 10 days you will be unsubscribed"