DeveloPassion's Newsletter - Issue #101 - Looking back at 2022
Edition 101 of my newsletter, discussing Knowledge Management, Knowledge Work, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and more!
Hello everyone! I'm Sébastien Dubois, your host. You're receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion's Newsletter. Thank you for being here with me ✨
Welcome to the 101st edition
Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩
This is the very last edition of 2022. I've been extremely consistent since I've published 64 editions of this newsletter this year. I've really enjoyed sharing my journey and discoveries with you all. And while it's the end of 2022, it's just the beginning of a much longer journey.
As you know, I enjoy Periodic Reviews, and it's time for me to look back at the whirlwind that 2022 has been! Alright, let's gooooo 🚀
Taking a look back at 2022
There's so much to say that I really don't know where to start. But since many of you are curious about my progress as an Indie Hacker, I'll start with the numbers game.
Firstly, I wrote a lot this year. I took notes almost every single day, captured the essence of what I read, learned, discovered, felt grateful for, my challenges, my creations, my ideas, etc.:
These notes helped me prepare and publish 30+ articles and 60+ newsletters. This helped me reach ~130K visits and about 200K page views this year:
As my blog and newsletter are at the top of my sales funnel, this is pretty cool, and I'm proud that so many people find something interesting/useful around here. A few of my articles also made it to the front page of Hacker News, which has been really cool!
I've also seen awesome growth on Google search:
At the beginning of 2022, I continued working on my Dev Concepts series, and made good progress on volume 3 (Architecture), but had to put the project on hold.
Revenue wise, I've established a new record at $1,6K in a month, combining my revenue on Medium, Gumroad, affiliate marketing (Amazon) and ads (Ethical Ads). The steadiest revenue source has been Medium (~$100 per month), and Gumroad. This is far from enough for me to sustain my lifestyle, but it's way more than zero, so I'm both proud and grateful. So, at this point I still heavily rely on my day job (half-time) and my freelance work (~1 day per week) to pay rent.
Most of my Indie Hacking revenue has come from my efforts around Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). I wanted to have a positive impact on the PKM community, and I think that this was a success. I've created the PKM journal, the PKM community, the PKM sub-reddit, published a number of articles about the topic, and two products: the Obsidian Starter Kit and the Personal Knowledge Management Library. I had two goals in mind: establish myself as a trustworthy member of the community, and helping more people get started with personal knowledge management. And I'm convinced that I've succeeded in both 🎉
The communities that I've created have grown a lot, and I'm super happy to meet so many new friends each week, on Reddit, Slack and Twitter.
My most successful product so far is the Obsidian Starter Kit. I sold 375 copies so far, leading to $6,7K of revenue.
I want to continue focusing on PKM in 2023, and I have a ton of ideas.
The other main thing I put energy into was this newsletter. It's been really fun to take time each and every week to share some news, some ideas, and insights about my journey as an Indie Hacker and author. I will continue writing a new edition each week, and I hope that you'll keep coming back for more. I also want to monetize this newsletter, and find enough supporters to help me keep going.
One of the regrets I have this year is that I did not manage to publish more videos on YouTube. I was enthusiastic about my channel, but life is life and I had to spare my energy for other challenges. That being said, I did make progress as I got all the hardware I need, I designed my audio processing pipeline, and learned a ton about audio recording, video recording/editing, etc
Content creation is very demanding, and it's hard to dedicate enough time to it when most of my time needs to be spent on a day job to pay rent. I'm not complaining because I love what I do, but it's just the reality of it. I know that I could do so much more if I could spend more time on it. But for now, I still need my day job and freelancing work to be sustainable. I'm patient though 😂
All in all, I'm truly grateful for what I've been able to achieve in 2022, knowing how much of a storm I've been through. I went through a separation, and it has been really stressful, exhausting. It took most of my energy, caused tons of anxiety and stress. I had to rest, needed to breathe and to reconstruct myself. 2022 was one of the toughest years of my life, but also one of the most surprising. The beginning was really tough, but the end is truly marvelous. Life is full of surprises, to say the least! That's why I'm so enthusiastic about the future. I can't wait to discover what 2023 has in store for all of us.
Next week, I will focus on defining what success would mean for me in 2023, picking priorities and setting ambitious goals. But no matter what I decide to do, I'll make sure to let you all know! Thank you so much for being here, for being so supportive and for motivating me to continue! ❤️
If you enjoy this newsletter and get value from it, please consider becoming a supporter. You'll be able to join our community and meet like-minded people while enabling me to keep creating content. If you prefer, you can also buy one of my products on Gumroad or offer me a cup of coffee.
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Sebastien Dubois
