Stats for My Projects This Month
- 5,947 unique visitors (+63% from last month)
- $81.13 revenue from ads and affiliates
- $526 revenue
- $509.17 MRR (+30% from last month)
- 22 active subscribers
Fantasy Congress (maintenance only):
- $812 revenue
- $787.71 MRR
August was the first full month of operating my new SaaS, PageFactory. The excitement of launching has worn off and the reality of growing a small SaaS product has set in. I also finally got ads on my programmatic site and I'm very happy with the results so far.
Full Recap
Looking for Qualified Leads
PageFactory (my programmatic SEO tool and latest venture) battled a lot of churn this month. I actually ended up getting quite a few new trials and 10 new subscribers, but net growth was minimal because I had almost an equal amount of churn.
Many of the users who churn appear to be unqualified leads. I've had a lot of people tell me they'll "come back" to PageFactory when they figure out how to target their niche with programmatic content.
Luckily, I already had something in the works I think should help with this.
Since last spring, I've been considering creating a course. I thought a course on programmatic SEO would make a good lead magnet, but the timing never felt right. At the same time, I've seen countless people ask for a course on this subject. And even though one or two exist, they're not very popular.
So I put out some feelers, created a landing page with an email opt in form, and announced my free programmatic SEO course on twitter.
Alright, I'm launching a course on programmatic SEO.
— Allison Seboldt (@allison_seboldt) August 18, 2022
And it'll be completely FREE.
I'm putting it ALL out there: everything I've learned from personal experience and working with clients.
Check it out ☺️https://t.co/7FUxPlorsU pic.twitter.com/bSadE2e3MN
My tweet really took off. In two days, I had over 500 opt-ins for the course. By the end of August, I had over 700.
Hopefully this will bring people into the top of my funnel (like a good lead magnet should), and also answer their questions and objections so they move farther down the funnel as well.
My Experiment is Making Some Real Money
My programmatic site finally got approved for Adsense in the beginning of August. No one talks very highly of Adsense, so I had very low expectations about what I might make from it. Nonetheless, I was pleased with the results.
The site made $76.07 from its first month with Adsense. At this point, I feel like it's time to stop calling this an experiment and treat it as a serious revenue stream.
And this is just the beginning. There's still so much I can do to increase traffic and improve the site's metrics. I can't believe it was that easy to make ~$75 from programmatic SEO. I'm stoked to see how much I could make if I took it more seriously.
September Plans
A big thing I continued to struggle with in August was balancing my time between marketing and development. I only shipped one feature for PageFactory in all of August (custom post types for Wordpress templates). I also started on a Webflow integration, but wasn't making great progress on it.
The last week of August I experimented with a new schedule: development work in the morning (my most focused time of day) and early afternoon, then a couple hours of marketing in the evening after dinner.
So far, this feels good. Normally when I try to do marketing tasks along side development I feel like a mess. But this schedule feels very natural. I do the hardest work in the morning when I have the most energy and focus. Then in the evening, I curl up in bed or on the couch with my laptop and do more creative, reflective work.
For September, I'm going to continue dedicating my days to shipping regardless of my marketing goals. The application needs more features, and improved features, in order to reduce churn. But hopefully a couple hours of marketing in the evening will be enough to keep moving forward on that front as well.