September looked like it was going to be another explosive month. One week in and revenue was up high enough to put my business on track for the $2,000 per month milestone I was aiming for. But just as suddenly (and unexpectedly) as the increased revenue came, it vanished. Despite users being up 4% for the month, revenue dropped to only $1,128.36. Publisher coverage was down 20%, and adclicks were down nearly in half.

Despite spending most of the month trying to root out the cause of the revenue drop, I couldn’t identify the source. The drop occurred around the time I pushed an update, but it really doesn’t make sense for that particular change to effect revenue. It didn’t change either page content or user interface in a meaningful way – just replaced one text link with a button. If anything, users appeared more engaged afterwards. Time on site was up 19%, and the bounce rate down 63%. As far as I could tell, everything should be good on my end.

That’s not to say Datayze was error free in September. There was a nasty time zone bug effecting my time management apps for some users. I was finally able to identify the root cause after some user feedback. It appears the bug was introduce at the end of August. Since the bug was effecting my most popular apps I had some hope that it might have been effecting revenue in some round about way, but revenue remained largely unchanged after the fix.

Aside from interface improvements and bug fixes, I also launched a new app, Days Until/Since. Days Until gives you a total count, as well as the number of each type of weekday. It also precomputes the date of many popular holidays a user might not know of off the top of their head, like Thanksgiving.

While it’s hard not to be disappointed in the revenue drop, I’m trying to remain focused on the positive: $1,128 is still twice the revenue from June and May. Users are up, and we are heading into the most lucrative part of the year.

Posted in Work Life | Tags: Sarahsoft