February 2020

March 2nd, 2020

this is an excerpt of a monthly email I send to stakeholders

Feb 2020, tldr:

Although traffic was down slightly, Feb was the highest all-time revenue for all projects. Most of Feb was spent shipping features and increasing content output. For March and the foreseeable future, we are focused on adding more value to Starter Story and monetization, including launching a community for Starter Story mid-March. We will also be moving towards freemium for Pigeon (target mid-April).

the good

- A breakout month for pigeon ($1k MRR!)

- Implemented big features to add value to starter story premium (better explore page, csv export, deals on tools)

- Announced starter story community launch date (will be FB group)

- All-time record for starter story interviews (87 shipped interviews!)

the bad

- Traffic down due to slower month & no longer sharing on Reddit or hacker news

- Not making fast enough progress on UGC content - only shipped 1/8 planned (example)

Numbers:

- Total Revenue: $8,898 (88% Starter Story / 12% Pigeon) (+$351)
- Starter Story Traffic: 80K uniques / 106K sessions / 143K pageviews (-20%)
- Interviews published: 87! (highest all time)
- Email List: 12,061 total subscribers (+643 net subscribers)
- Starter Story Premium MRR: $1.2K (highest all time)
- Pigeon MRR: $1.1K (highest all time)

What got done / what went well:

- Onboarding email drip for Starter Story Premium

- Added more filters for finding ideas

- Created a form where we ask people why they canceled

- CSV/Data export feature

- Added discounts on tools (incentive to sign up to premium)

- Announced the launch date for Facebook group community

- Published 87 interviews

- Built MVP of "Get Started" page <-- very early

- Published 1 new roundup post from UGC

- Published 3 more pigeon case studies

- Added more tags on Starter Story backend