This past month I struggled at building my company. Wearing all the hats brings with it a tremendous amount of context switching, but I'm learning to manage it better. Writing, website work, emailing customers, learning to market, and trying/failing to do actual product work feels like juggling too many things. Maybe I'm not prioritizing my time correctly, and am pushing the rock up the wrong hill? Time will tell, but I feel momentum building again.
After spending the first few weeks of the year without much inspiration or direction, I had some key insights that made the lull worth it. Overall, the past month ended up being instructive, and I hope to learn from it.
📱 Code
I had an "aha!" moment soon after writing this past December's update, which I discussed briefly in my previous post. TLDR, I took a step back to think hard about my current direction for SwiftStarterKits, and decided to pivot towards building a tool kit specific to launching subscription apps for Apple's App Store. This one line pitch allows for an immediate communication of the value this product is hoping to create, in addition to the audience it's for (Developers of Apple's platforms). I can still expand the product later, but immediately I'm focusing on building SwiftUI components that aid this new singular goal (building subscription products). Any programmatic tool or screen that accelerates this end goal is fair game.
Here's a peak at the new website, which was shipped right towards the end of January:
With this product re-alignment out of the way, I can iterate towards more attainable milestones. Updates will roll-out for a single package of tools, and the amount of value I can provide with my skillset can multiply alongside the size of the library I've built. At some point I'll increase pricing, once the suite has grown an order of magnitude. For now, just focus on value added.
January site metrics
SwiftStarterKits saw a dip in overall traffic compared to December. This is mainly due to my reduced tweet/toot cadence, fewer updates to share, and lack of product work while I pivoted the product.
I'm not fussed, February is already off to a great start, and I'm confident the recent product overhaul will aid in building momentum long-term.
January download metrics
SwiftStarterKits doubled lifetime product downloads! From 8 to 16 (+100%).
Next Steps
I'm going to spend this month cleaning up orphaned url's from the website overhaul, fixing page indexability, then carve out some serious time to expand the SwiftStarterKits library of components. Aiming for 1 big product update by the end of the month.
🎸 Music
I re-listened to several LCD Soundsystem albums this month, Sound of Silver is particularly popular in my recent repertoire of coding albums.
🎮 Games
I didn't play very much this January, however I did finish God of War Ragnarök, which was incredible. Also I started Pokémon Scarlet, which my little brother got for me over Christmas. Being the first Pokémon game played since maybe Silver in the late 90's, I'm excited. It's charming, silly, and lacking some polish. But overall is relaxing to play, and easy to drop in for shorter sessions. Once I get a bit further along, I'm interested to experiment with the multiplayer features alongside my brother.
📚 Books
Still reading through God Emperor of Dune in short bursts. Separately, I've read halfway through User Friendly which was recommended by my roommate (who is a professional illustrator and designer). It's a great escape from my engineering focused mindset, and puts some of the design choices I've been making on SwiftStarterKits under a new lense. So far, I recommend it.
That's all for now!
I'll report back next month with hopefully some big updates to SwiftStarterKits. Plus some newly discovered music, games and books!
