Year in Review 2015

What did I make in 2015?

One thing I keep learning about myself: when I make stuff, I'm happy. When I don't make stuff, I'm not as happy.

I get energy from creating something and putting it out into the world. Having people people connect with something you've made is a great reward.

Here are some things I shipped in 2015:

A lot of those things seemed small when I was making them (for example, making a single podcast episode), but over the year those little things added up.

What were my biggest hits of 2015?

My friend Hiten Shah says: "Before you make plans, take a look at what's already working." Looking at what worked for you in 2015 is a great way to think about what you should do in the next 12 months.

Top blog posts

My blog was viewed about 130,000 times in 2015 (that's down from 300,000 in 2014). My top posts of the year were:

  1. Don't follow your heroes (January 2015) - 5,870 views
  2. Keep making things (June 2015) - 4,028 views
  3. You need help (March 2015) -3,418 views

Why was there a reduction in traffic? I can think of a number of reasons: I was focused on writing my book, I was writing a lot for consulting clients, and I wasn't as focused on promoting my work on sites like Hacker News.

Here's my posting patterns in 2015 vs 2014:

posting-patterns-2015.png

My top traffic came from these countries:

USA - 52,189 Canada - 13,813 UK - 9,386 Germany - 4,850 Australia - 3,329

Top products & Revenue

Here are my top products, ordered by revenue:

  1. Marketing for Developers
  2. Product People Club
  3. Product Hunt Handbook

My goal for 2015 was to make $80k in product revenue. In total, I made around $66k (last year I made $40k). That's a 65% increase, but it's not quite where I wanted to be.

A few notes:

  • Marketing for Developers (my book & course series) accounted for about 55% of my product revenue.
  • My consulting revenue (not listed here) was way up in 2015. The focus on consulting definitely took me away from products. I finished my big contract in November and I've already been able to commit more time to product work.
  • I was really hoping that Marty and I would be able to get Network Effects properly launched. We're close, and we're hoping to see some SaaS revenue in 2016.

Here's my revenue breakdown by country:

  • USA - 39% (the majority coming from California)
  • Canada - 8%
  • UK - 9%
  • Germany - 3%
  • Australia - 3%

Newsletter list

The number of people subscribed to my email list grew 79% this year (from 5076 to 9085).

A lot of that growth came from the Tiny Marketing Wins email course. It was featured on Product Hunt, and ended up with over 2,000 subscribers in 48 hours. I've been procrastinating on doing an email course for years; I'm glad I finally did it.

The rest of the growth came from blog posts, my podcast, and people signing up to receive sample chapters from my books.

Other significant events

Consulting

I mentioned this above, but I had a profitable year of doing consulting for startups (focused on marketing and product).

This November I made a big decision. I decided to not take any new clients for January and February of 2016. The idea? To focus exclusively on building my own stuff. This is the first time I've been able to do this since my wife and I had kids. It's very exciting (but also scary).

Travel

Wowser. For a guy that doesn't like to travel, I travelled quite a bit this year.

  • March: beauty snowboarding trip to Banff, Alberta, and a trip to Edmonton, Alberta for my friend Daryl's wedding.
  • April: went to my first MicroConf in Las Vegas. My wife got to come on this trip, which was really fun. I also gave a short attendee talk (my first talk in a long time).
  • May: a consulting trip to Portland. Got to hang out with some great PDX friends while I was in town.
  • June: family camping trip to Haynes Point.
  • July: another big family trip! We had an awesome road trip to the BC coast.
  • August: holy dinah. I was invited to speak at MicroConf Europe. My wife decided to surprise me, and booked 12 full days for me in Barcelona. An amazing trip. Got to meet many internet friends in-person for the first time, and had a blast exploring the city (a few of my favorite photos).
  • September: straight from Barcelona to Portland for XOXO Conference. Too many great people and experiences to count.

Planning for the new year

Themes

I have a few themes I'm going to focus on this year:

  1. Increase product revenue: I'd like to rely less on consulting, and more on products. To do that, I'm going to need to increase product revenue by 82%.
  2. Make 100 things: for fun, I've created a 2016 Maker Challenge. The objective is to create little projects I can ship quickly. You can join here.
  3. Family flexibility: since I've quit consulting I have more opportunities to do stuff with my family. I've volunteered a handful of times at my kids' school, and this is the first time I've ever been home the entire Christmas break. I'd like to keep doing this.

What I'd like to launch

Here are the projects I'd like to launch:

  1. A new podcast: in January or February, I'll be launching the first season of my new podcast, MegaMaker. This is where I'll be chronicling my story (of making 100 things) and stories from community members who join the challenge.
  2. Network Effects: as mentioned above, Marty and I are aiming to get at least 10-20 paying customers in 2016.
  3. Live workshop: I'd like to hold a product marketing workshop on-site somewhere. Currently considering Edmonton and Portland.