My First Month as a Digital Nomad (Dec 2018 Update)
This blog post is an archive of this series of tweets that I wrote, so I apologize for spelling errors and strange formatting :)
My #openstartup and life update...
December 2018:
- 💵 Revenue: $3,595
- 📈 Uniques: 34,537
- ✉️ Mailing List: 3,488
Lots of fun stuff happened this month.
This month started out in Thailand!
I flew out to Bangkok and traveled with my mom and sister for two weeks.
Although I enjoyed traveling, it is hard to not work for that long... towards the end I started getting antsy - squeezing in a few hours of work every couple days…
I got to Chiang Mai mid month (where I am now) and still struggled a bit to adjust. Wasn't sure what to expect... What's the life of a digital nomad like?
Turns out they just work a lot 😂
Was also lucky to find a few @wip'ers in CM - so that's been nice to have some friends.
But it also feels like another world for me.
It's weird. My routine is all over the place. I've lost track of the day of the week. Sometimes I work until 2AM and doesn't feel like I'm doing something wrong...
But the freedom is also reallyyyy nice.
Ok back to the business stuff -- traffic was down this month.
Was getting a bit worried but I think it's attributed to it just being the holidays. I think maybe people are less interested in starting a business at this time. In the new year I'm seeing it spike really nice.
And google traffic is continuing to spike! In the past few days, I've been seeing 700+ uniques/day from google search - that's an all time high!
Since "business" was a bit dead this month, I spent a ton of time on features and clean up - which has been really nice.
First feature: Starter Story Books!
I also made a crucial design change to stories pages!
In 2019 I want to become a much better and faster designer. The book @refactoringui really inspired me!
I also shipped an Explore page - which is basically a filterable interface that creates SEO friendly links.
Another big feature....
I quietly shipped a Starter Story Premium Membership!
This will be my first attempt at true MRR, and it is very much a work in progress - I'm excited to add more features over 2019 and really understand how to create an MRR business.
And this month was big for backend stuff.
As I'm scaling up everything - I need to be utilizing all of the code I can to grow the website while staying a 1 man team. Some stuff I'm working on…
Most notably, I'm working on a "true" CRM.
I want to eventually be able to manage hundreds of in-progress interviews and content - and not do it through email.
What I'm building will save me 10 hrs/week + I think it could productized for other multi author blogs!
Another big thing - my end of the year blog post!
I almost didn't write it... got nervous it would come off too corny.
Very glad I did tho - had so many ppl msg saying it inspired them / it was a nice to give people (not on Twitter) an update!
I also got back into running and I signed up for a half marathon in Bali.
Feels really nice to get back into it and it's helping me focus and I'm feeling a bit healthier.
Lastly, I spent a lot of December thinking about my goals for 2019 - I don't think I ever spent that much time on goals before - constantly revising them and thinking about them often.
Here they are...
I'm so amped up for 2019, and over the past couple weeks I've been feeling really focused and happy.
As always, thanks for reading!!!
🖤