Year in review

∕ Finance

Financially, this wasn't a great year. I would say it was a tragedy. Although I made more than one sales (17 to be exact) that didn't even cover my product-related expenses.

∕ Product stats

I could acquire a few users with all the products I launched and based on the stats from Google Analytics I reached a few thousand people. As I summarized the distribution channels it was clear that compared to product development I spent almost zero time getting my products in front of potential customers.

∕ Tech stack

Learning new things and refreshing my dev skills was one of my goals after I "returned to the keyboard", so I started the year by getting familiar with Netlify and Jekyll to set up my personal site.

After that, I completed the JavaScript 30 course which was on my list for a while and I used my newly acquired knowledge to build the HashtagCalendar.

For Quizy (which I haven't launched officially) I used Docker to set up my local dev environment and as the core feature of this product was to store the collected information in a Google spreadsheet, I got familiar with the Google Sheets API.

This was the first time I configured a VPS (on Linode) to host my application. Luckily, I had some dev ops experience previously, so at least I know what to search for. First, I created a simple LEMP environment, later I also had to set up Node for other projects.

Although I didn't officially launch Quizy, it became the first application where I had to implement some kind of payment gateway. For that, I used Braintree (and their Drop-in UI).

While building CreativeDevJobs I became familiar with the Google Jobs API and also used AMP for the first time.

For TWiS I had to recall my Facebook API knowledge, but this time I implemented some Instagram endpoints. A few things has changed since I last used their API, but most of it was the same.

Story View bacame my first WordPress plugin completely developed by me. Because it is a premium plugin, I also had to figure out how to handle the automatic upgrade process.

I probably learned the most while building Maker Goals Menubar. Almost all the things I used were new for me ( Electron, GraphQL, Apollo, React, Node.js, Express ). Luckily, I could use this knowledge later on to build my upcoming products.

And I also used Heroku the first time for one of my applications.

I knew that I only scratched the surface of these tools, so I completed a basic Node.js course to strengthen my knowledge. And I used it to build Re-Product for Fixathon.

Gift Hunt became the first WordPress plugin I submitted to the WordPress plugin directory, so I became familiar with most of their requirements while I was working on the plugin.

And Discount Hunt was the product where I used most of the things I learned while I was building Maker Goals Menubar. React, Node.js, GraphQL, MongoDB, and Koa.js were my tools to complete this app. Oh, and of course, I got familiar with the requirements to submit an app to the Shopify App Store.

To learn all these things I used free video tutorials, blog posts, and other free resources most of the time. Luckily, the quality of freely available content is really high and this was it was easy to acquire new knowledge.

I'm extremely thankful for Wes Bos and Brad Traversy for all the great things they create and share.

∕ Goals

I had only a few goals for this year. Sadly, I couldn't reach all of them.

∕ Fun stuff

At the end of May we took a trip to Italy, and visited Padua, Venice, Nesso, Como and Milan. Lake Como is one of the prettiest part of Italy, so it was a good choice.

∕ 2020

I haven't set my resolutions for 2020 yet, but that'll be something I'll do in the first days of next year.

I'll keep adding my goals to Product Hunt Makers (you can follow me here: @feriforgacs) and I'll also move my weekly backlogs to Indie Hackers (my IH username: feriforgacs) and I'll try to be more active on twitter as well (@feriforgacs).

∕ Summary

At the beginning of the year, my expectations were really high and I can't say I lowered them after I saw things are not going as well as I expected, so I'm not happy with my results. I'm not sad but disappointed because I think I saw what was and is the problem (lack of product "marketing") and I didn't really do much to solve it.

At the moment my problem is that I can't say that any of the products I created took off so I can't choose one to keep working on. I don't think that Story View has enough potential to become a much bigger product even though that was the most successful by the number of sales.

I think Gift Hunt and Discount Hunt have a much bigger customer base so I have to find better ways to reach them.

I'm happy I choose to go full time on my projects and I'm also satisfied that I learned and actually used a ton of new things.

I'm also happy that I had the opportunity to get in touch with other makers and felt a bit that I am also the part of this community.

Basically, this is what helped me keep going despite I didn't have much success with my products.

To win a golden kitty was something I absolutely didn't expect at the beginning of the year and although it is not going to help me pay the bills it was a huge "power-up".

I'm grateful to everybody who purchased one of my products or pushed the upvote button on Product Hunt. The cheers I got on PH makers are also really helpful when I'm running out of energy.

The small success with my products also helps me to feel more motivated than at the beginning of the year and running out of money is also motivating 😅 So the first few months of 2020 will be really busy and I can't wait to see how things will work out.

2020, show me what you got. 💪