You could say that 2024 was an eventful year.

I left Malt, which I co-founded in 2012.

I open-sourced Bloggrify, the engine I use for my own blog.

I slowly started a new business and cut my teeth on a new SAAS, RssFeedPulse.

I went to live temporarily in Japan and enrolled in a language school.

I launched two Youtube channels.

So yes, it's been a busy year.

Now, at the beginning of 2025, it's time to look back.

What worked, what didn't?

What does the future hold for my blogs and Youtube channels?

What is the outcome of the products launched? Did I make any money?

How is Japan going?

Japan

We arrived in August, the worst time of year to come here. Japan in August means over 80% humidity and scorching temperatures.

But are things going well?

Yes.

Will I make my life there?

No.

I miss French food.

I miss the space and the quiet.

Tokyo is an urban area with over 35 million inhabitants.

Of the 10 largest railway stations in the world, 5 are in Tokyo, including the top 3. Talking to people is difficult. English level is not great.

Nevertheless, for someone like me who has been immersed in Japanese culture since childhood, Japan delivers on its promises.

It's a constant explosion of color, noise and cultural references.

Restaurants are everywhere, on every floor. Tokyo is as much a horizontal city as a vertical one.

It's how we represented the 21ᵉ century when I lived in the 80s.

If you take note, this sentence is double-edged and I'll be sure to talk about it again soon.

Summarizing Japan in a few lines is obviously a nightmare. But I don't want to bore you with this subject, which perhaps, only fascinates me :)

I may, however, touch on some very specific points, such as life as a digital nomad in Japan and a few interviews I've done there.

And if you have any questions about visas, budgets etc... Feel free to use the comments section.

Japanese courses

Oh yes, have I become bilingual?

Far from it.

Japan is a horribly difficult language. For a long time, I was lulled by preconceived ideas that Japanese would be easy because there are no declensions in gender or number or because the number of tenses is limited.

Get this idea out of your head. Japanese is awfully hard.

Speaking English in 3 months for a French person in total immersion is feasible. Poor English, but enough to make yourself understood.

Speaking Japanese in 3 months is an illusion.

As for going back to school with students, the youngest of whom are 18 years old, it's a real slap in the face :)

fun fact, if you look hard enough, you'll find me on this little video

Unfortunately, the energy required to do 5 to 6 hours of Japanese a day clearly prevented me from doing almost everything else for a whole term.

And so it was with regret that I decided not to continue with the courses and to concentrate on my other activities from January onwards.

The blog

Speaking of other activities.

The blog, the one you're reading this on, has been one of my side projects for almost 20 years now.

There are actually 2 blogs, one in French: eventuallycoding.com and one in English: eventuallymaking.io.

In 2024 I published 29 articles, on subjects as varied as scale in startups, open source, Nuxt, stripe, coolify and freelancing.

That's 3,500 visits a month.

But did the blog go out of fashion in 2024?

Isn't it time to turn the page and make only Youtube videos?

That's debatable.

The energy required for a video is far greater than for an article, so for a side project, it's unreasonable.

But above all, text, the written word, remains the dominant medium for technical content, in-depth articles, professional content and SEO.

I'm not at all convinced that the Blog is dead.

Yes, video has taken another place, and can mix technical content with entertainment. It's fun to do.

But it's something else.

So, what's next for my blog? Well, it will continue.
And all the SAAS-type projects I've released and will be releasing in 2025 will undoubtedly be linked to the blog world.

On the other hand, I'm not setting any goals for the blog. It's a side project.

Youtube channels

I've just mentioned Youtube, so let's get to the point.

I started with a first channel called EventuallyCoding.

Surprisingly enough, the channel did well at first. I quickly reached 3k subscribers, much to my surprise. By the way, the channel is monetizable.

Then, in August, I made a decision that may have been a mistake. I wanted to split the channel in two:

• on the one hand, videos for the general public, more geared towards vulgarization and tech history
• on the other, niche videos, in the tech ecosystem, based on what I've done in the past (freelancing, startups, etc.).

And I made the mistake of putting the mainstream videos after the niche videos, on the eventuallycoding channel. Basically, I tried to keep the existing audience on the first channel for the mainstream videos.

Yes, it was stupid. It lost people. Sorry about that.

Separating the audiences isn't necessarily a bad idea, but maybe it was too early, and more importantly, it needed to be done differently.

Added to that, the move to Japan and the Japanese lessons took up a lot of my time, so I released a lot fewer videos.

But Youtube is sensitive to regularity when it comes to suggesting content, and so my ratings were lower in the second half of the year.

Nevertheless, let's come back to the positive. I really enjoyed the experience.

I'm not going to kill Youtube channels. The eventuallymaking channel will probably have a higher output frequency, with videos that are more lightly edited.

The eventuallycoding channel, on the other hand, I'm going to try to increase the quality, so it won't be a channel with a lot of videos a year, but I want to still be proud of it in several years' time.

In short, if we're talking about objectives, I'm going to try to reach 8,000 subscribers in total on both channels, and get back on track with a positive output dynamic.

A move to open source

Getting back to the blog, I've open sourced all the mechanics that will enable me to run it in February 2024. The project is called Bloggrify.

I left Wordpress a few years ago and given the controversies of 2024, I'm glad I did.

I was a bit reluctant to release Bloggrify at first because it's an overlay on Nuxt-content and you can legitimately wonder what I bring to the table.

But you have to understand that Nuxt-content is a fantastic tool that allows you to do much more than just blog.

And when you say "more", you also mean that there's a learning curve if you want to do "just" a blog.

You need to set up index page pagination, SEO (open graph, meta data etc...), redirections of old articles, integration with commenting tools, syntax highlighting, template systems, newsletters and so on.

And that's what Bloggrify is all about.

To date, Bloggrify is :

• 2,000 monthly visits
• 92 stars on Github (feel free to add your own to exceed 100 stars)
• referenced on jamstack.org and awesome-static-generators
• a fantastic playground for learning how to manage a community project

What are my goals for 2025?

I'm not a Front-end developer, and that's probably reflected a little in the code.

I'd love to convince regular contributors to join me.

I'd like the project to reach 200 Stars on Github and pass the 3,000 monthly visits mark.

Of course, it's still a side project, but a bit more ambitious.

Oh yes, fun fact, Bloggrify accounts for 50% of this year's revenues!
How is that possible for an open source project like that?
More on that later.

a SAAS: RssFeedPulse

Bloggrify allows me to make a good transition to RssFeedPulse because the projects are linked.

Bloggrify refers to a number of products that allow you to create a static blog and then add additional features such as analytics, comments or newsletters.

And RssFeedPulse is the default solution for newsletters.

While Bloggrify is open source, RssFeedPulse is a SAAS.

But does it work?

The answer is mixed.

After 7 months in business, I have a compound growth rate of 57% (CAGR). This reflects average month-on-month growth.

But we can see a slowdown towards the end of the year.

Retention is over 80%. This means that users tend to stay.

The conversion rate from traffic to account creation is 1%.

That's about average for a SAAS. Low average, but average nonetheless.

The problem is that, despite these figures, I still haven't reached the symbolic 100 euro mark in monthly recurring revenue.

And the source of all this is traffic.

Traffic is less than 500 visits per month, but mostly 150 unique visitors per month.

And that's just not enough to make a successful product.

If I don't do anything in terms of marketing, growth will inevitably decline.

But above all, I think this product alone is too limited.

There are possible evolutions of course, but it remains a "vitamin", a "nice to have".

And that's why RssFeedPulse will probably become part of a wider range of tools that will start coming out at the beginning of this year.

Stay tuned.

How are you doing financially?

Have my various projects allowed me to make a living?

Clearly, I can't count on that.

All things considered, I generated a total of 211 euros over the year.

Half came from the paid templates offered on Bloggrify, the rest from RssFeedPulse.

But I also had expenses (servers etc...) so the real income is much lower.

Even so, I don't lose money every month. Which is still a change from last year.

Of course, if you don't count the fact that I need to eat, find somewhere to stay etc... A detail...

I know this may be disappointing for some people who also want to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure. It's not an attractive example.

But I'd like to tell you that it's unfortunately the reality for many entrepreneurs.

Building a business takes time. Unless you're just freelancing, which is easier.

But building products takes time. Many successful entrepreneurs have taken years to make a living from it.

It's a reality I've accepted, and my goal is to do better every year, and I give myself time thanks to what I've earned before.

Of course, I can still be honest and say that I haven't been 100% into entrepreneurship, so the result is worth the investment.

Now for the final word, I'd just like to say one thing.

2024 has been a great year, personally, and I wish you all a happy 2025!

(yes, I'm going to avoid talking about the state of the world)