Hello dear reader 👋
As I'm finally recovering from all the New Years’ partying, I thought this was an excellent moment to reflect on the past year and look ahead at what 2023 has to bring.
Last year stood in the theme of consuming less, producing more. While I had hoped to have more output than I did. I didn’t sit still. What follows is a quick recap of 2022. And some goal-setting for 2023.
RobinDeNeef.com
At the beginning of the year, I launched a new design for my personal website. The previous site was built with the purpose of finding a job. This one is aiming more at providing content. I added a Makerlog section. I published a total of 12 maker logs. A bit far off from my once-a-week goal 😅. Nonetheless, the site grew from 86 unique visitors in 2021 to 199 unique visitors and 1,282 total pageviews.
One interesting observation is that even though all the new content published this year were maker logs, the blog post from last year was still the most visited. Probably because this one is shown on the landing page. I'll probably merge the blog and maker logs so that they are all shown on the landing page for more exposure.
This year I also started this newsletter. I published only 3 letters last year so I am holding myself to the no-spam promise 🙃. And I've grown the newsletter to 5 subscribers! 🎉
Thanks for following along!
🎯 Goals for 2023
Publish at least 12 pieces of content
Have 1,000 unique visitors
Have 50 newsletter subscribers.
GCP Secured & Fullstack Almanack
In my last newsletter, I mentioned I wanted to take GCP Secured to 20 articles by the end of the year and see if I could turn it into a niche site. I increased the total article on the site to 4 🤭. I didn't really find the time and energy to write the articles, they seem to take so long to research and write out. But still, it's a goal I'm taking with me in 2023.
One interesting observation, and the reason why I included FullstackAlmanac in the title, is that even though I haven't published a single article there since 2020, the site outperforms my other sites in unique visitors. It seems that 2 of the three articles are bringing in quite some traffic through Yandex as I have quite some traffic from Russian-speaking countries on the site. I wonder if it's a good idea to publish a couple of articles on it and see if they get picked up as well.
Looking Ahead 🔮
I can already tell that 2023 will become an interesting year, to say the least. That is because I have given my notice and work and will be full-time independent by February.
The first question you get asked is what will you do afterwards, do you have other work lined up? Do you have another income to fall back to? And if I have to answer that question honestly I don’t really have anything lined up yet to provide me with a decent income. I have some smaller Freelance projects lined up that will earn me a bit of money here and there but they won’t be enough for a full-time income.
Why did I do it then? Well, I wanted to take a small bet on myself. My goal this year is to build a portfolio of small bets. I’m going to try a few things like building a few SaaS applications and trying to market them. Currently, I’m working on CloudPurse.io, a tool to keep your cloud infrastructure bills in check. The MVP is as good as finished so it’s time to start marketing it. Marketing isn’t my strong suit so this will be a skill I will be focusing on this year.
To keep my head afloat I’m picking up some freelancing on the side. So if you or anybody you know need a website or webshop, or if you want to build cool (web) apps. I’m the developer you need 😉. Feel free to contact me at robin@sobrinostudios.com.
That’s it for this newsletter. I hope you have some exciting goals for the new year as well. My mailbox is also open for any replies so feel free to write something back! See you next month!