In September I had a 25% growth in users, and nearly doubled income to $391.21. While all the apps appear to be doing well in general, Time Until saw a 108% increase in users, which is fueling the overall growth. I’m really surprised by that apps growth, as there’s a lot of competition for countdown timers. I plan to do some investigating to see why my countdown timer may be outperforming others. Perhaps it’s just a collateral benefit of Datayze doing well in general?

Now that I’m growing substantially again, I think I’m going to adopt a more mature-company stance on updates in the fourth quarter. The October-December time frame is my most profitable, thanks, of course, to the shopping season. Last year, nearly half my income came from those three months online. That makes changes during this time risky from a financial stand point. Although rare, even minor changes can sometimes have unintended consequences. Now is not a good time to risk a stupid bug that breaks my website for even a fraction of my user base.

From now until the new year I plan to keep my website fixed. If something critical comes up, I will of course address it. This doesn’t mean I won’t be working on datayze. I have two apps in progress right now (the same too I’ve been working on for a while). My plan is to push their proposed launch date back until January at the earliest.

One critical issue I need to address in the next few days: I’ve running into the limits of my shared hosting. During high activity peaks my hosting company will sometimes run our of resources, and kill some of my processes. From a user standpoint it’s an occasional 503 error. That’s clearly not ideal so I’ll be moving from a shared host to a dedicated server. I’ve been assured by the hosting company that this will be a seamless transitions, but I’m going to do it as quickly as reasonably possible so the change is in place before the holiday season really kicks off.

The good news is the past couple of months of growth have improved my projections somewhat. I’m now projecting to reach $1000/month in early 2018. Possibly February, but more likely March. Here’s hoping.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft