Don’t feel like writing too much this month, but here’s my update for the results of the month of July 2019.

In this post, I’m mostly talking about Starter Story updates. I’m also working on Pigeon and learning a lot about how to build an app. Currently have 12 paying users on that one. More on that soon.

TLDR 

July is another record month, the biggest in terms of traffic and email subscribers.

I've been working a lot on building process around the business and now onboarding some help to the team. This is allowing me to scale both content and features, which I'm really excited about. This is all sort of new for me, but I feel inspired to grow the business and make it bigger than just me.

Although most traffic comes from Google, I did see a big uptick in direct traffic this month and I think we are starting to feel some effects of word of mouth. I've started communicating more with users (by using Klaviyo) and they tell me often that they share the site with all their friends, which I love to hear.

High-level goals going forward is to keep increasing content output and variety, and keep moving the site to a more UGC model of AMAs, forum, Q&As, etc.

Numbers:

1. Visitors: 78K (14.2% MoM Growth)

2. Email List: (+1.1K subs) Total 7.7K

3. Content: +34 Interviews

4. Revenue: $4.1K (Klaviyo + Membership + Affiliate revenue)

July wins:

• I've fully onboarded two freelancers to the team. One helping with all things email, publishing, etc. And the other helping outreach to more businesses for interviews. The goal is to release 60 interviews in the month of August and it will only be possible with their help, and with the help of my new side project Pigeon.
• Launched new Starter Story "Start" page.
• Launched new Starter Feature profile series - a new way for businesses to share their story without having to share their monthly revenue.
• Implemented a new 5 email flow with Klaviyo (see screenshot) after signup. This has been awesome - especially the email where I ask them what they are working on - have made some great connections.
• 100% automated Reddit posts
• We cracked <100K Alexa ranking. Although it doesn't mean much, it does give our site more "clout" for pitching businesses and improves our name/authority in the space.
• Started new Pinterest campaign to drive more traffic to the site. Working on a 100% automated solution using asset generation tool Placid and the Pinterest API. It's pretty cool, you can see it already in action here.

Plans for next month:

• Publish 60 new interviews (in the month of August). This will be a record high and the new norm going forward if things keep going the way they are - also, sometime next month we will likely hit 500 interviews since inception!!
• Ability to favorite stories and save them for later
• Ability to follow users
• Start new "story follow up" content offering - Reach out to old stories and have them provide and update on their business
• Improve signup flow (get more data on user's businesses and incentize them to fill out their profiles)
• Incentivize more engagement on the site such as commenting and posting
• Add site-wide search to the homepage -> search "candle business"
• Add tags to stories -> "bootstrapped", "side hustle", "instagram"
• Finish out Pinterest automation
• Release Kindle book of 100 Best Stories

Pat