This Happened in 2023 | The Monthly Log #10
This year I’m writing my first Year In Review. I’ve read many of these in the past but I never thought I had enough to say to write one for myself. But this year is different.
2023 has been a bit of a funky year for me - one of the most difficult on a personal level and the best on a business level. But since we’re here to talk about business then let’s focus on what made this year amazing.
I did this tweet yesterday and I thought I’d develop it in this monthly log instead of going through everything I’ve done month by month.
At the start of 2023 I set one main goal for the whole year: Create > Consume
As a result, I went from binge watching YouTube and stalking people building things and celebrating their successes on Twitter to creating my own content, launching my own projects and documenting the whole thing on Twitter (still not ready to call it X).
This monthly log was also a way to keep myself accountable and I’m super proud to have published 10 out 12 issues this year. Sometimes life gets in the way and it’s fine to skip one.
What happened this year?
Framer. I wrote about my Framer journey in more detail in my last monthly log but learning how to use Framer last Christmas is by far one of the best decisions I have made in my life.
This year I published a total of 8 templates. Altogether, these templates have been bought/ordered by over 4,000 customers. This number still blows my mind 🤯
When I launched my store on Lemon Squeezy back in March I never ever thought that so many people would be keen to get one of my digital products (paid or free).
It also opened a lot of new opportunities for next year and created an additional source of income for me too.
Business. I’ve done freelance work ever since I can remember. Even though I’ve been in full time employment since leaving Uni, I always found the need to do some freelance on the side and set up small businesses - mainly to keep things interesting.
This year things have taken a turn though. I launched both Frameplate and 88 Pixels.
Frameplate is a website directory which curates Framer templates created by members of the community, as well as resources for Framer users like this little tool for Framer partners. In the space of 9 months, the site has had over 10K visitors and 20K page views, and I’ve got plans to expand it next year with more content.
88 Pixels is the design/dev studio I’ve always wanted to have. For now it is the home of all my Framer templates and pretty much everything I create around Framer. I’ve got big plans to develop this further next year and I’ll document the whole process on Twitter if you want to follow the journey.
Earnings. This year I finally reached the $10K milestones for earnings made from my side hustles 🍾 So I thought I’d make one of these little graphs with my different sources of income for this year. This is great to evaluate what projects I should stop working on and the ones where I should put more effort in.
Tiny apps. I love to bring my designs to life with code so this year I launched a couple of tiny apps. These are usually apps that fill a personal need and help me to keep improving my coding skills by learning new stuff like APIs, React, Tailwind, etc..
- Staredown - An online game to test your colour vision.
- hndrd - An app to get into the habit of writing more.
- OneDo - wait. This one hasn’t actually launched yet so I’ll come back to it early next year 😅
What’s the plan for next year?
This is all well and good, but where do I go from there? How do I make next year even better than this year?
I think there are 5 main areas I’m going to focus on next year.
Design/Framer. This has been the highlight of this year, in terms of income but also in terms of discovering how much I like designing websites/apps and bringing them to life. Next year I’m planning to put much more effort into this (already got 6 new templates lined up 😁) to see where it takes me.
Coding. I can’t remember a year where I did not build anything using code over the past decade. And I’ve come to this point in my career where I need to level up my skills to be able to build bigger projects. The plan is to build one tiny app per quarter and a couple of weekend projects (if I can fit them in). I might even turn one of these into a Saas - who knows..
Business. As it stands the plan is to turn 88 Pixels into an actual agency and create more Framer templates as well as to start doing more client work again. On that note, if you’re reading this and need help with your website, get in touch.
Side Projects. Like many other makers, the list of ideas and projects I want to build is as long as my arm. There some ideas around affiliate marketing, newsletter, courses, website directories that I really want to explore so I’ll need to find time for these. Keep your eyes peeled.
Hobbies. I want to spend more time doing things that I enjoy and that are not linked to a financial goal - like travelling, reading, writing and doing more physical activities. I’ve also recently started sketching again and this is something I really want to do more of next year.
Thanks for reading this log - you can find all the previous ones here if you fancy checking them out. And if you liked this post please consider sharing it :)
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Until the next one 🫡