The First Sight of Promising Revenue

Published: April 2nd, 2018

I'm not feeling too inspired to write a ton, but still want to provide my monthly update.

March 2018, by the numbers:

  • 39 total interviews
  • 41,937 pageviews (March)
  • 1,581 total mailing list subscribers
  • $181.26 revenue (March)

As far as new mailing list subscribers, this was a bad month 😞

I only added 285 new mailing list subscribers (netted with unsubscribes and bounces), compared to last month which I added almost 800.

I had a goal to hit 600 subscribers, but didn't even get close. Part of this was due to the fact that I had no big reddit posts until later in the month. r/entrepreneur wasn't digging my stories so much this month, which was a bit hard to swallow. It sucks to be so reliant on Reddit for traffic.

I feel like I hit the "trough of sorrow", which is refers to low traffic after a big "launch".

Overall, I felt pretty unmotivated this month. I found it hard to put serious time into the project, and found myself looking for new ideas (possibly starting another business).

But, towards the end of the month, I became more optimistic because I started to see some real revenue!

I picked up a mailing list sponsor ($40), and then a sponsor on the "Tools" page ($60). The Shopify affiliate program is proving to be a lucrative area for revenue as well, generating $60 (and more to come as time passes). Amazon affiliates also brought in about $25.

The month before, I earned about $60 in revenue, so this is a big jump, and actually I didn't put in a whole lot of work into the revenue part - I still haven't reached out at all to find advertisers.

After a bit of a lackluster March, I'm inspired to put a lot more work in this next month πŸ˜€ I'm starting to feel inspired again, and I'm very optimistic about the future of Starter Story.

I'm going to actively find new advertisers, and try to double down on new interviews.

I'm also ready to take the next big step with Starter Story...

I plan to start the beginnings of a Starter Story "community". Not sure how it will look yet, but I envision some sort of forum/discussion board. If you have any ideas or feedback, would love your input.

That's all I have for now. As far as goals for next month, I only have two:

  • 15 new interviews
  • Finalize a plan for the new community

Thanks for reading! See you next month 😁

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UPDATE! For those who are looking for my updated revenue reports since April, I've been posting them on Twitter! You can find them here.