And so, the month of July came to an end a few days ago, and it's time for the monthly review.

As I initiated in a previous post, I'm going to try to report regularly (*) on the progress of all the projects I've launched recently.

(* It's not impossible that I'll switch to a quarterly rhythm depending on current events).

If you're interested in seeing/reading the trials and tribulations of a solopreneur, understanding what worked and what didn't, well, this is the place to do it.

For the moment, we're in phase 1, the not-so-sexy part of the story where the main character makes less than €100 in MRR (recurring revenue).

But that's reality too...
And I know this phase could last 1 or 2 years, even though I'd do anything to speed things up.

TLDR; July

Anyway, back to business, here are the key points of the month:

On the positive side :

• RssFeedPulse still has 0% churn, people who have subscribed to the service are sticking around
• The Youtube channel is now monetizable
• I've passed the €33 MRR mark, that's x11 compared with the previous month

On the negative side:

• traffic down on all projects
• an even sharper drop in traffic on Youtube, with 2 videos less successful

July in detail

I wrote the following in the previous review:

July and August are going to be more difficult, they're two months that are a little less active in general, and for my part I have to prepare for the trip to Japan, so I won't necessarily have time to tackle everything at once.

Well, that was the case. July's figures are at half-mast, but that's partly a question of seasonality, so it was to be expected.

On the other hand, as expected too, working on too many projects at once is starting to take its toll. I've been concentrating on video production to the detriment of Bloggrify or RssFeedPulse, which is reflected in the lack of traffic growth.

It's hard to accept that I'm less efficient on a particular project, so I have to make choices.

My current choice is to bet on the Youtube channel which has seen the strongest growth since the beginning of the year. I've got two videos in the pipeline, but I have to admit that releasing something in the middle of August seems questionable. I'm still hesitating regarding the results of the two previous ones in July.

As a consequence of this choice, I've also decided to halt the development of one of the future SAAS I was planning to release. I'll talk more about this soon, as it's a bit more complex than that.

In short, it's been a mixed month. But it was also the month when I was preparing to leave for Japan, and I know that you have to accept the difficult moments, it's part of the game.

Especially as I doubt August will be any better. I'm counting on September instead.

Now to the details.

Youtube

July saw 3.6k views, it's 77% less than in June.

2 videos were released. They had 900 and 1300 views, the lowest scores of the last 10 videos (10 times less than the best video).

And yet, I like them :)

(I'm just showing you the figures, it doesn't mean I'm basing all my reasoning on them, I know how to take a step back)

The channel generated 9 euros in revenue. I don't even know how I'm going to get the money, to be honest, but given the amount I'm not going to look for it right now ^^.

I'm aiming more and more for mainstream content and there's a good chance I'll create a second channel to talk only about the CTO, solopreneur etc. experience...

To be continued...

Bloggrify

Bloggrify had 2131 page views, -25% compared to June.

There were no significant new features, but some important fixes.

One person took out a paid template (20 euros).

Traffic, on the other hand, is now fairly balanced, not coming exclusively from France as it did at the start.

Rssfeedpulse

RssFeedPulse is 500 visits compared with 793 in July, i.e. -37%.

That's 1 new customer and 0 departures. MRR is 4€.

It's pretty frustrating at the moment, because I'm not investing much in marketing, but conversion versus traffic and churn are good. I'll have to come up with some cheap tricks.

I'll tell you in a future post what I've already put in place for SEO.

Eventuallycoding and Eventuallymaking

Blogs held up better than the rest, with only -9.5% of visits (3095 visits vs 3422).

4 articles were written, 72 people subscribed to the newsletter.

On the other hand, I'd like to come back to the book Impactful software Engineering which is still being written, there are several chapters I'd like to finish.

To be continued as well.