This blog post is an archive of this series of tweets that I wrote, so I apologize for spelling errors and strange formatting :)

I can't really believe it - it feels sorta surreal. I remember getting excited about $3 in Amazon affiliate revenue just a few months ago.

I was barely making any money and I was bored.

I even started working on another project.

You just have to keep putting a little bit of work in each day, and you hit these small milestones that keep you going - like an email from a fan or a HN post going viral.

Been waking up early over the past few months, but over time I was getting up later and later.

Before I knew it, I was snoozing for like an hour and half.

So in the beginning of the month, I made it a point to wake up every day at 530AM, no excuses. I kept my phone across the room so I couldn't snooze it.

I even started running right in the morning as well.

Never have I been a morning person before…

I finally executed on this after meeting up with @FelixThea, the host of The Shopify Masters podcast.

He told me you have to hire someone, and to stop thinking you are the only one that can do certain tasks.

So I went on Upwork - terrible experience.

So, I just asked for help - I posted on Twitter and in my email newsletter that I was looking for help.

Such a good decision.

I got dozens of responses from fans and followers - people that really want to be a part of this!

I ended up hiring @WalterDom_ and he's been working with me for the past few weeks.

He's based out of Mexico City and has been helping me with email and publishing articles.

It's so nice having someone else helping out - thank you Walter.

When I run, I think about stuff, esp @starter_story - it motivates me.

I've also seen @CaseyNeistat 3 times now - yes Casey that was me who awkwardly waved at you this morning.

https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/1024005784693288960

I also took a ton of time off this month. I traveled through Massachusetts on a road trip with my dad, and just had a long weekend with friends in Austin.

This was prob the first time I've taken time off for @starter_story, it was really hard to not look at email

Traffic for Starter Story was low this month - this is because we didn't have any huge stories on Hacker News or reddit.

It sucks not to get that adrenaline boost, but it will happen eventually :)

One cool thing is organic search traffic is starting to pick up!

This next month, I will be building the @starter_story community.

I'm super excited, but also nervous.

It's going to be a big challenge.

https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/1034051367818674176

Lastly, I want to thank my sponsors for helping my get to the $1k mark!

@klaviyo @BitBond @GetOkendo thank you for your support!

Thanks for reading and excited for the next month.

This blog post is an archive of this series of tweets that I wrote, so I apologize for spelling errors and strange formatting :)

June 2018 Open Report for @starter_story

💵 $553.51 Revenue (June)

👨‍💻 71 Interviews (+12 in June)

✉️ 2,210 Email Subscribers (+372 in June)

💻 263,581 Pageviews (+60,878 in June)

👋 30,955 Uniques (June)

Read more 👇

This month was filled with a lot of shipping and lot of luck.

As far shipping, I've never been more productive in my life 👇

- Automated social media images & posts with @buffer 

- Moved entire website off @Netlify/@reactjs and onto @rails 

- Began strategy of posting in FB groups

- Improved backend tools ➡️ Less manual work

- Moved tools form to rails app and created individual tools pages

- Created twitter tools posts ➡️

- Added social media follower counts & alexa ranking to article pages

- Automated "Published" email

- Google Docs integration ➡️ Auto publish stories from google docs

1. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173463…

2. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174245…

We've only done this two other times, but it provides an incredible amount of traffic.

The site also didn't go down!

👏 I had 4-5 people reach out to inquire about advertising 👏

Before, I was doing cold outreach for this, and it's so nice to get emails like this.

Advice: Put a call to action on your "About" page, people will email you!

1. Front page

2. Newsletter

3. Article/story page

4. Tools page

I had to open up the article/story page spot just to accomadate all of these sponsors.

Most of the revenue will be deferred to next month, so I hope for an even better July

☀️ I now work in the mornings.

I wake up every day around 6AM, go to a coffee shop, and work for about 2-3 hours before my full time job starts.

I've never been a morning person, but this is really working for me.

No excuses, I do it every morning and it becomes routine, whereas before I would skip some nights (like Fridays).

I am so much more focused in the mornings.

And it's so much nicer to get off work and be "done" for the day, instead of racking my brain from the hours of 7 to 10pm.

Now I just go to bed 2-3 hours earlier than before.

But, as far as the last month, my "shipping ability" increased by literally 3x. Not exaggerating.

I have been thinking a lot about how Starter Story can become a "hub" for entrepreneurs in the e-commerce and consumer product space.

I plan to soon expand the website.

There is a serious lack of quality content in this space. There is a lot written about indie hacker type stuff, but I think there is a massive opportunity in the space of "non-coder" entrepreneurs out there.

Think about how many friends you have that can't code but are passionate about entrepreneurship.

Where do they get great content that's actually written by founders?

This is way more big picture stuff, but it's really been in the back of my mind the past month.

I plan to start publishing "non-interview" content and exposing a "real blog" on the home page.

More on that in the next few months.

This past month I spent a ton of time of automation and backend stuff, which has been really fun (for me), and I also think it's something really lacking in the "blogging" industry. Maybe there is some product opportunities here.

And lastly, I've shipped so much more this month from the help I've gotten from @alex_grossmann.

He's published a ton of interviews and has helped me with a ton of shit behind the scenes.

It's also been nice to have someone to show all of my boring automation stuff :)

This blog post is an archive of this series of tweets that I wrote, so I apologize for spelling errors and strange formatting :)

May 2018 Income Report for @starter_story

Stats:

This is the biggest month so far, and I doubled last month's ~$200.

This is thanks to locking down a front page sponsor (@MastermindJam) and a newsletter sponsor.

The @Shopify affiliate program is also proving to be a nice source of income.

We published 13 new stories this month, a monthly record. 📈

Earlier in the month, I committed to publishing 3 stories a week (Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday)

Turns out spreading them out was a good idea, in terms of exposure and it felt like "less work"

Email subscriber growth is still slow. My subscribe rate is about 1.8% on average. Any ideas on how to make that better?

Shoutout to @alex_grossmann, who reached out on Twitter. He's helped me:

- Get more leads

- Implemented CRM inside Gmail (@streak)

- Editing and posting interviews

- Helping me work on more automation.

It's also nice to bounce ideas off each other.

I'm starting to work on some cool projects, such as:

- Moving to 'real' database and to Rails.

- Automate social media.

- Automate reddit, HN, Facebook group posts.

- Community

- Verification (preventing false revenue claims)

It's pretty exciting to think about the potential of @starter_story when a lot of the manual stuff is taken out of the way.

I think it can become a well-oiled machine! The tough part, though... revenue. That continues to be a very manual process.

Hey! 

If you’ve found yourself at the end of this blog (or beginning of my journey), but looking for older posts, I have some more stuff here, dating back to the first days of Starter Story:

https://www.starterstory.com/stories/starter-story-story