May was another record breaking month for me. I earned $40.52, and that’s with a travel holiday weekend in there, pulling down my numbers. I’m finally starting to see the growth I was hoping for last year. Better late than never, right?

May was the month of maintenance. In business there’s a motto that it’s ten harder to acquire customers than to keep customers. If I want to keep my customers (users), I want to make sure their experience using my apps is as easy and straight forward to use as possible. I had amassed a 35 item list of minor (to the user, not necessarily in implementation) tweaks that could make my apps more user friendly. My javascript skills have improved quite a bit over the past couple months, and some of those early apps looked like they were written by the javascript newbie I once was. It was time to update them. The list is now down to a paltry 17. My goal is to get the tweak list down to under ten items and keep it that way.

I finally got around to writing my privacy policy, and have been trying to come up with a new business identity.

I was so busy with my task list that as of yesterday morning I hadn’t published a single app in May. Yesterday I released three, including two I started just yesterday.

The new apps include:

Word Blender. The word blender uses the same underlying support code, but the heuristics and language model are tweaked for generic English words, and not specific to names. I had mostly finished this app a few weeks ago, and have been using it to explore new domain name possibilities.

Labor Probability Chart. After the initial interest in the Miscarriage Probability Chart, I thought I’d create a similar graph for the Labor Probability Calculator. Although the Labor Probability Chart and the Labor Probability Calculator have similar names, they’re actually modeling different things. I worry that this might be a little confusing for causal visitors. I could better than I English. If I ever get big enough to consider hiring employees a technical writer will be high on my list.

Alternate Spelling Finder. This app has dual purposes. I’ve been considering this app for a little while as a means to give visitors a chance to create unique baby names with a little more control than the name generator affords them. I could also see it being a good tool for fiction writers writing about alternate earths or post apocalyptic words where language has evolved a bit differently. Lately I’ve also been tinkering with the idea of an alternate, cutesy spelling business name.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft