One area I want to focus on this year is my startup. Despite a good start, my metrics have been down the past two months. Users are down 15.9%, and revenue is down to just 61 cents a day.

To help me stay focused I decided to create some targets to shoot for:

– A dollar a day ($365/year)
– A paycheck a month ($1200/year, ~$3.29/day)
– Covering the girls extracurriculars at school ($2600/year, ~$7.12/day)
– Enough to get the full DCAP benefit ($5000/year, ~$13.60/day)

I knew it would be slow going, but to be honest I had hoped to already be at the second tier by now. After ad placement change, I was hoping November and December (typically good months for me) would get me to the first tier at least. Even without the dip in users, I’d only be at 74 cents a day. It’s hard not to be discouraged.

Whenever I get discouraged, Domingo reminds me that it takes an average of two years before a new company becomes profitable. I remind him that tech companies are usually boom or bust. I’m hoping to go “boom” before the two year mark. I’d really like to be earning more than $5000 a year. At a minimum I’d like to replace my grad student stipend. It would be wonderful if my business could cover the childcare costs. Small steps at a time.

With that in mind, I’m working on a few new apps as well as some major improvements for existing apps.

I’ve had to hold off on one of the major improvements to my writing tools as one of the javascript libraries I’m using – d3 – is incompatible with IE 8. Some of my apps actually pre-date IE 8. The readability analyzer was practically written in the digital stone age. I suspect I’m one of the few apps in that domain that actually still works with IE 8, which could explain why such a large percentage of my traffic uses that browser. I’ve held to hold of off on launching some of those improvements until IE 8 is no longer supported (which will occur on the January 12th.)

My goal for 2016 is 100 new apps, roughly 2 a week, and to reach the $100/month mark. Hopefully with the new apps will come new eyeballs and with them new ad dollars.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft