What Grace's Up To: Issue #12
Black Friday Review. New Articles. New App. The Year 2023 In Review
Hi, this is Grace. Each month, I talk about what I've tried and stumbled upon as a creator. I share exciting findings and honest learning along the way.
This will be the last issue of 2023. So I will take this moment to review my year 2023.
Black Friday Review
The most exciting time of the year for every creator is November. Why? because Black Friday is when people all have a plan to spend money on discounted products. I bought an air fryer and several other things. 😅
I like what Daniel Vassallo said, “I'm always surprised how human behavior changes when we all collectively have our wallets open at the same time.”
Here is how it went with my products in November 2023:
You can see that the largest contributor is from Gumroad. However, Gumroad, in general, does not generate much traffic; you have to do a lot of marketing yourself. Similar to last year, getting my products on Tony Dinh’s GitHub page made a huge difference. Thank you, Tony, for doing this again!
Considering this, one idea is to focus on creating high-quality products throughout the year without stressing over the earnings. Instead, concentrate on doubling down on marketing your products in November when everyone is inclined to spend.
New Articles
In November and December, I wrote a few articles mainly focusing on learning.
Outperform Under Pressure: I learned the importance of mentality in any activity through my daughter’s competitive gymnastics journey.
Books I Read In 2023: my yearly tradition of writing down what I’ve learned from the books I read this year.
Money Wisdom: A list of things I always go back to when making money decisions.
ReadingClock: App to Track Reading Time
Reading is a big thing in my family. When my son was in 1st grade, his reading was so bad. So bad. How bad? When we taught him to read a short sentence, he would often forget it immediately, even for the word “the”. 😭
Since then, we've made it a daily practice for our kids to read for 20 minutes. By the time he reached 3rd grade, he managed to complete 7 books from the Harry Potter series during one summer break! We witnessed the power of persistence in reading through my son.
Now the school requires them to read for 20 minutes per day, but in our family, we encourage 45 minutes. (Now my son is my go-to expert if I want to know more about any species of snakes. 🤣)
This inspired me to create ReadingClock, a simple timer designed for reading sessions. It allows them to track their reading time, while we, as parents, use it to monitor their progress. I intentionally made the UI very simple, without much to set up to onboard.
You can download it here. 🙂 If you like it, I would appreciate it a lot if you could rate and review it.
The Year 2023 In Review
Here are some stats of this year:
# of Medium articles written in 2023: 22
# of books I read in 2023: 15
# of macOS/iOS apps created in 2023: 2
# of niche websites created in 2023: 2
# of books published in 2023: 2
# of income streams through products in 2023: 8
What Do I Think about My Year 2023?
Unlike many other creators, my primary focus is raising my children and being happy every day.
Earning is a form of validation to say that, I can bring some value to others, but it is not my primary goal anymore. If there is anything I gained from the whole year of experience, realizing this and having my whole heart and soul turning around is a great success for me.
In 2023, I spent a lot of time thinking rather than doing. I began to question many things that I blindly believed when I was too busy working and had no brain bandwidth to validate, and now I’m reevaluating many of these beliefs.
In 2023, we spent a lot of time traveling around the world. This helps me reset many of my worldviews as well.
That’s all! Thanks for reading. I hope it is helpful!
Questions? Just reply to this newsletter. 🙂
God willing, talk to you next time in 2024. ✌️