Happy Spooky Season, folks! 🎃 it’s the third Wednesday of the month, which means it’s time for a new dispatch from Dropped Bits.

More On Cheqin

The temperatures have started to plummet here in Montreal, Canada, and with that I’ve been doing a lot of planning work for next year, mostly related to Cheqin, the new app I mentioned last month.

There’s a lot more than just writing code that goes into launching something like this. I’m working on setting up a support forum as well as a product marketing website; I’m thinking a lot about the general business model, too. That include pricing, which is especially tricky for a personal finance app since your customer might have more sensitivity to what an app costs. I want to deliver as much value as possible, but I also want to be sure I can deliver that value sustainably — unlike some other apps that keep raising their subscription prices.

Goodness gracious me, it's been a while. I last sent out an update in February, and then dropped into silence. Clearly, I am very good at EnGaGeMeNt mArKeTiNg.

A couple of things have happened since the last update.

A New App

I've been wanting to build a new app for a while now. Trouble is, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to build. My background is in accounting and engineering, so the natural fit was something to do with finance, and I started thinking about building something for entrepreneurs… before realizing that my real passion is to build something for everyone.

Okay, so — first things first: Two Common Cents Club will not continue in its current form past the end of 2024. In fact, I’m probably going to shut this down and refund subscribers (thanks for your support!) earlier than that.

And you know what? I’m not even mad/sad. In fact, I’m excited.

How We Got Here

Eight months in, uptake on this blog/newsletter has been a flat line. I’m not doing much promotion here outside of sharing the link when a new article comes out, so that’s not especially surprising. But I also don’t get very much engagement here, either. I get replies and comments on my personal newsletter, The Angelo Report, and that’s motivating.

Okay, if you’re an indie developer or a creator and that’s your side business —I know, super specific, but that’s who I’m writing for— how much time do you spend making vs talking about what you’re making?

Don’t tell me, just write down a split on a piece of paper or something. 50-50? 80-20? 35-65?

Now think about the last product, service, or feature that you launched. How did that go?

For me, talking about what I’m making has had two interesting effects.

Note: I somehow missed publishing this on the 15th of July. I think that only underscores the problem.

I took two weeks off at my day job recently. I was excited to have all this free time on my hands — I’d get some projects done around the house, I’d get to work on Cheqin, and I’d get to take a little overnight trip with my wife.

We took our overnight trip. It was great; we went out to a little ski-resort village, did some kayaking and walking around, had some good food and got a nice break from the day-to-day routine.

Last time, I wrote about the options you have in deploying your "leftovers" — the cash remaining in your business after you pay your bills. I also mentioned that I'm working on something to help with this.

Building The Thing

Since then, I’ve started further fleshing out the ideas for Cheqin, my “financial toolkit” app for indie devs and creators. One of the biggest roadblocks I’ve had up to this point was figuring out just how I want to build this thing: a web app, or a Mac app?

Web apps are universal, in that they (mostly) just need a browser to work. The downside is that customer data must by definition be available on the internet, which means a large threat surface that I need to cover, and I don’t feel confident enough in my knowledge of this stuff to build a web-based product.

If you’re running a business of any size, you’ve got three piles of money to think about:

1. How much is coming in;
2. How much going out; and
3. What's to be done with the leftovers.

The goals for the first two piles are pretty straightforward: maximize (1) and minimize (2). These can’t grow to infinity or shrink to zero, respectively, of course, but that’s a topic for another day.

That third pile, though, is where things get interesting. That third pile, the leftovers, is about opportunity.

In the last issue, I said that I’m feeling a lack of progress. Distractions tend to replace deep work with busywork, and I promised I’d spend this time trying to determine two things for my side business:

1. Finding my niche; and
2. Finding my tribe.

Here’s how that went.

The Niche

We’re in the fifth month of this website’s existence, which makes this the tenth issue. I started this in January with a grand ambition —building a successful microbusiness— so I thought I’d share how that’s going.

I’ve made the site’s analytics public, so you can see exactly what I see about visits. Since the beginning of the year, there have been about 300 unique visitors, mostly coming directly to the site. About a third of those visitors come from the United States, with Canada taking second place.

The most popular issue on the site, by far, has been about focusing on customers before you have any which, perhaps ironically, I published on April Fool’s Day.

I generally haven’t been doing much sharing of these issues on social. I share across social networks on the day of publishing, and that’s about it. Engagement generally isn’t very high. I have thoughts on this.

A month ago, I wrote about a new app I’m thinking about building. I’m calling it Atelier, and it’s an iOS (and probably Mac) app for managing your Buttondown newsletters.

As I mentioned in that article, I started by sharing a survey to try and get some idea of how people would be interested in using the app (and, hopefully, pay for). And believe it or not, people actually shared their thoughts!

Now, it wasn’t a huge sample of users. But it signaled enough interest that I set up a website and a newsletter that you can sign up to if you want updates on how development is coming along.

Last week, I sent out the first issue to a handful of subscribers. I shared the survey results, talked a little bit about my expectations, and even got a reply where someone shared how they build their own weekly Buttondown newsletter.

I've been feeling a bit stuck lately. I have ideas for moving various projects forward, and I make a bit of progress on those ideas on mornings and weekends.

I make a little progress forward, then set things aside to focus on the day job, or personal stuff, or whatever. And when I come back to it, I need to get back up to speed on what I was doing, exactly. My notes haven't been great lately, so they're no help.

It's frustrating. And I know that's a common feeling for anyone trying to make a go of a side business (or even personal projects, which I think are wonderful).

I asked on social media and in various Slack groups what indie devs struggle most with when trying to make a go of a side business.

I’m working on building a new app for the first time in a couple of years, and this time I’m starting a little differently than I usually do: I’m starting with figuring out if I should even build it at all.

How It Started

In the past, the apps I built were largely made to scratch an itch (and learn something in the process). Per, my price-per-unit calculator app, is a good example of this: it was something my wife mentioned would be really helpful, and I was looking for an opportunity to learn a new programming language Apple had just released, called Swift.

My first app, HoneyJar, was similar: I wanted a way to calculate the future value (or opportunity cost) of recurring payments, and also to learn how to build and ship an iOS app.

Last time, I said:

Constraints mean starting with less money so you have to launch faster. I’ve earmarked a chunk of my business’ retained earnings to run Two Common Cents Club for a year, and not investing anything beyond that. If I can make it self-sustaining by then, it’s a success.

And I promised to share the tool I put together in today’s article.

But first, a story.

Last time, I shared a review on a book I was reading called Company of One, by Paul Jarvis.

In the book, Jarvis talks about how to build and run a company that provides enough — the idea that by pushing back against growing for growth’s sake, we can deliver excellent value entirely because serving our customers excellently doesn’t scale.

(Related: I firmly believe that chasing 30–40% year-over-year growth necessarily comes at a cost to your customers, your colleagues, and your community. If you want me to write more about this, let me know.)

Every book, article, and podcast on building a business that I’ve consumed recently involved some measure of doing something that 99% of people won’t do. Avoiding growth-for-the-sake-of-growth feels like one of those 1% things.

The Intro

Today, we’re looking at a book that feels like it was written just for what I’m trying to do with 2C³. Company of One by Paul Jarvis is a refreshing take on the concept of business growth and success. It challenges the traditional notion that bigger is always better, advocating instead for a philosophy of 'better before bigger'. It’s particularly relevant for solopreneurs and individuals running a side business, as it lays out a blueprint for building a sustainable business without succumbing to the pressures of relentless expansion.

I like to break book reviews like this down into four sections — a summary of key points discussed, any criticisms I might have about the book, any concepts I’m applying (or plan to apply), and a conclusion. Let’s get started!

The Download

Hey folks, it's been a while! Here's a small update for you.

First, Some Important Stuff

Historically, the analytics available from this newsletter's provider have been disabled. However, I'm seeing a lot of spammy new subscribers, so I've enabled these analytics. The privacy policy has been updated to reflect this.

I proudly use Buttondown as my newsletter provider of choice. They're a privacy-focused small business, just like Dropped Bits. For the sake of completeness, here's what's now tracked in Dispatches from Dropped Bits HQ, this company newsletter:

In my first article, I said (emphasis mine):

I’ll post here twice a month; on the first of the month, I’m going to share news and updates. On the fifteenth of the month, I’ll share more in the way of resources.

You might be looking at your calendar right now, confused. It's the third of February. Which is not the first of the month.

So in my third bit of writing, I've already broken a promise. You expected to be reading this two days ago, and I didn't deliver.

The Intro

We’re going to be digging into The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber, a renowned book in the entrepreneur space that delves into the myths surrounding starting and running a small business.

I like to break book reviews like this down into four sections — a summary of key points discussed, any criticisms I might have about the book, any concepts I’m applying (or plan to apply), and a conclusion. Let’s get started!

The Download

Twelve years ago today, Dropped Bits, Inc. was incorporated. Domains were registered. Social accounts were created. Even business cards were printed.

And then… nothing much happened for a couple of years after that.

Eventually, some iPhone apps were launched to thunderous… silence.

Today, Per and Thought Detox have a few thousand installs, and the business is profitable, but it’s not exactly what I’d call successful. Marketing, product development, and growth of any kind has generally been an afterthought, and frankly, while I’m proud of the apps I’ve built, I have to admit: they’re utilities. They’re little apps I’ve built to scratch an itch, to learn something new, and to recoup my expenses. They are not —and this is key to understand— something that I can build a successful business around.

Hello, friends!

It's been a little while since the last newsletter. If you don't remember why you're receiving this, you probably signed up on the Dropped Bits website. In today's edition, I'll share some updates on my apps, and a special mention for World Mental Health Day.

Don't want to receive this newsletter anymore? Click here to unsubscribe. 🙂

Welcome back to another edition of Dispatches from Dropped Bits HQ! I hope your holidays were as good as they could be, given All This™.

This month, on top of a quick recap of 2021, I want to talk a bit about where I see Dropped Bits going in 2022. January marks the company's ten-year anniversary — something that kinda snuck up on me, if I'm honest. I'd imagined some kind of fanfare, along with a whole new webpage to mark the occasion, and that… didn't happen.

But nonetheless, here we are, a decade later, still publishing apps on the App Store. That's pretty cool. 🔟

December In Review

We’re nearly at the end of the year, and it’s certainly been an interesting one.

My goal for 2021 was to get Dropped Bits to break even, after losing money for years, and I’ve done that. I launched a new app, Thought Detox, for the first time in six years. While it hasn’t been a runaway success, it has brought in enough money to cover base expenses. I sunsetted my first app, HoneyJar. And now, I’m working on a redesign of Per.

Of course, we’re nowhere near the point where this business can support me. And that’s okay. I get to make stuff that I use and enjoy, I get to build it my own way, and I get to do it on my own schedule. And as of this year, I’m not pouring money into the business to keep it afloat.

Achievement unlocked. ✅

It's the 15th of November, and you know what that means — a monthly update on how things are going at Dropped Bits HQ!

October is always an interesting month, at least here in Montreal. The city feels like it's got one foot in summer, and the other in winter; there's a sort-of-refusal to accept that the heat and daylight we've been enjoying since late May is winding down, and at the same time some excitement kicking off preparation for the first snow and the holidays.

I like preparation work. I bought a new parka, so that I can continue my walks by the lake in the depths of winter. I ordered a planner for 2022, so that I can keep on top of things. And I dug a bit deeper into getting things ready for the launch of Per 2.0, too.

Writing the code is such a small part of launching an app. I have to rewrite the marketing page, and work on the App Store product page. I have to figure out what's going to be free in the app, and what will require an in-app purchase. I have to figure out what kind of analytics and crash reporting I want to integrate. I have press kits to assemble and tech journalists to email.

Hello, friends!

If you’ve been reading these regularly, you might have noticed that there was no first-Wednesday-of-the-month post last week, nor was there a mid-month update in September. There are two reasons for that.

First, there hasn’t been much to report. September was pretty quiet, aside from releasing a very early, mostly-incomplete version of Per‘s redesign to internal testers.

We're a few days into a "back-to-school" sale on Per (USD $0.99 instead of USD $2.99), with a new release that includes translation to French being around the corner.

Here's what the download numbers looked like for August:

• Per: 3 downloads (-57% ▽)
• Thought Detox: 5 downloads (+67% △)

Revenues and proceeds on June sales are estimates based on the information I get from Apple, in US Dollars.

> Indie Tools is a series that dives into the apps and services I use to run my bootstrapped indie-development business.

My first career was accounting and small-business consulting, which has been helpful in running my own business. I’m really comfortable with the idea of profit-and-loss reports, balance sheets, and cash flow, and so I haven’t had much of a need for accounting and bookkeeping services. That’s probably not true of everyone.

That said, it’s still something I need to keep on top of. The business is just barely breaking even, so knowing what’s coming in and what’s going out is really important.

When I first founded the business nine years ago, there wasn’t much to track beyond two or three expenses per year. It was easy enough to stay on top of things in an Excel spreadsheet and hand it over to an accountant at the end of the fiscal year.

July continued to be a quiet month for sales, so I’ve decided to think a little bit bigger with the business and have moved some contracting work in. There are a few advantages to doing this for my particular situation, but as far as my goal of making the business profitable this year, it feels like a bit of a cheat — the goal was to make the app business profitable, and so I’m going to continue to focus on that part here.

That said, having a little bit more money flowing into the business gives me a bit more breathing room month-to-month as far as what I think of as “long-game” expenses — things relating to the app business, but that won’t pay off until later. I’m trying to be careful about adding such expenses; it’s easy to find a justification for spending money, but every dollar that goes out is coming from a very limited supply of dollars coming in.

So with all that said, here’s what the download numbers looked like for July:

My Updates

I wanted to share a couple of updates on Thought Detox here.

First, a French translation of the app is now being beta tested. I've done the translation myself; my French isn't bad, thanks to immersion programs in high school. Still, it's far from perfect, so if you see something that's off, please let me know.

The French language often uses significantly more words than English to express the same thing, so sometimes that affects UI elements — for example, the "Release Another" button ends up being titled « Libérer une autre pensée » in French. This doesn't fit on one line with the current design of the app, so I'll have to make a change there:

Financially, June is always a down month for cash flow due to income taxes. More specifically, while there aren’t usually any taxes to pay (because the company has been operating at a loss for the last little while), the filing fees I pay to submit the tax returns has eaten up a major chunk of the cash inflows so far in 2021.

Anyways, here’s what the download numbers looked like for June:

• Per: 8 downloads (+60% △)
• Thought Detox: 4 downloads (-43% ▽)

Revenues and proceeds on June sales are estimates based on the information I get from Apple, in US Dollars.

We're nearly halfway through the year, and Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC, or "Dub Dub" for those in the know) has come and gone. It's a special time of year for iOS and Mac developers, where new features of the platform are announced, along with ways to build for them. There's always more there than I can consume during the week that the conference runs, but I'm slowly catching up, and I'm really excited to see what's coming to iOS 15 and macOS 12.

Often, these new features aren't available to older versions of iOS and macOS. It may not be a feature that is visible to people using the device, either, but rather a feature of the Swift programming language that makes our code more reliable or performant.

This year, I released Thought Detox, written in SwiftUI. For the way I think about apps, SwiftUI lets me build things faster, but as it's new, there were quite a few rough edges that needed special care. For iOS 15 and macOS 12, many new features are being added, and that will make building with SwiftUI even better—but much of that will be iOS 15 only.

I've also started working with a UX designer to (finally, for real) update Per. The current version hasn't been updated since iOS 9 was released nearly six years ago, so it's long overdue. Being able to focus the update only on iOS 15 and macOS 12 will make it much faster to build the update across iOS and the Mac.

Recap: May 2021

Looking purely at dollars, May appears to continue the downward trend of sales for Thought Detox. However, because the app was on sale all month, downloads are actually up. And, again, this is a very small number of downloads, so big percentage changes might still be in the margin of error for number of units.

Here’s what the download numbers looked like for April:

• Per: 5 downloads (-17% ▽)
• Thought Detox: 7 downloads (+40% △)

When I created the original Thought Detox web app, it was meant to be a digital version of a traditionally-analogue concept: take a thought that’s upsetting to you, write about it on a piece of paper, and then throw away that piece of paper. And there’s evidence that this works, too:

As it happens, writing down your negative thoughts on a piece of paper and then physically throwing this piece of paper in the trash lessens the salience of these thoughts. Our neural circuitry doesn’t always make a clear distinction between the mental and physical. Physically discarding negative thoughts turns the volume down on them mentally too.

I always thought about the app as a way explore your thoughts through writing. What’s interesting to me is other ways that folks are using the app!

While I tend to use the app during quiet hours at the end of the day, Tony writes about using Thought Detox a little bit more in the heat of the moment, to release negative thoughts about work as they come up.

Recap: April 2021

April appears to continue the downward trend of sales for Thought Detox, though frankly in this very small range of downloads, big percentage changes might still be in the margin of error for number of units.

Here's what the download numbers looked like for April:

• Per: 6 downloads (+100% △)
• Thought Detox: 5 downloads (-50% ▽)

I'm working towards the next major feature of Thought Detox: making it available on the iPad and the Mac.

Well, sort of. That's more of the end goal for the actual next feature that I'm working on: adding another way for you to track your time writing in the app.

Persistence

Right now, if you choose to track your writing time, the app does so by storing it as Mindful Minutes in the Health app on your iPhone. That's a great solution, but it's only available on iPhone — so I'm working on a second option for tracking this data.

Recap: March 2021

Compared to February, with the new app launch, March has been much slower. While that’s pretty much what I expected, I didn’t think it’d be this much slower. That’s okay! It gives me a baseline to compare against as I try things.

Here’s what the download numbers looked like for February:

• Per: 3 downloads (-63% ▽)
• Thought Detox: 10 downloads (-92% ▽)

Growing up watching my parents run a small family business made some lasting impressions on me.

First and foremost: the importance of taking care of your customers. They didn't charge a whole lot for their services, but bent over backwards to serve their customers, often working weekends, and rarely taking a vacation. While I don't think that's especially healthy, that focus on customer service stuck with me, and evolved into a strong user advocacy in any products I'm involved with.

Reinforcing this is the difference that size makes. There are excellent, caring people in every business, but I can't agree more with this post that as a company grows, the less likely their customers feel looked after. "Don't scale past the number of users that you can excellently serve," Sam writes, and that has become a mantra for me. I don't want a million customers — while that would probably mean a life-changing amount of money, I couldn't excellently serve them all.

It's also important to realize that your business is a member of a community — many communities, really. Beyond the community of customers I serve, there's the community of other developers whose advice and whose products make it possible for me to build my own business. There's the community of people in Montreal that, often behind the scenes, help keep me going.

Thought Detox v2021.02 Released

Happy Wednesday, friends! A small update has been released and includes the following changes:

• The Settings button is now hidden during the release animation, to match the Release button.

Recap: February 2021

Just like last month, most of my time was spent working on launching Thought Detox on the App Store. This had a lot more to do with all of the other moving parts, besides the app: the landing page, the marketing copy, the press emails, and the Product Hunt announcement.

Here’s what the download numbers looked like for February:

• HoneyJar: 9 downloads (-55% ▽)
• Per: 8 downloads (+14% △)
• Thought Detox: 127 downloads

Thought Detox has now been available for sale on the App Store since February 15th, with pre-orders opening one week before that. I'm going to focus the discussion on the following timeframes:

• 8-14 February (pre-order week)
• 15-21 February (launch week)

Prior to that, I was sharing some of my work on the app via my personal Twitter account, and set up a beta-testing program via AppAirport. I didn't get a whole lot of feedback from public beta testing, but it was useful to check that the app wasn't crashing anywhere.

(I'll write more about my beta-testing approach another day, and what I've learned from this launch.)

It's official! Thought Detox is available for sale on the App Store, and to celebrate, I'm extending the sale price.

The official website also went live Sunday night. Many thanks to Christina Szilbereisz for her work on the design — I'm really thrilled with how it turned out!

I haven't seen a tonne of downloads yet, but nonetheless, Thought Detox has done way better on launch than other apps I've released, which I'm really thrilled about. As of this morning, it's 14th on Product Hunt with 150 upvotes, is in the top 100 Health & Fitness apps, and got its first five-star rating on the App Store. Thank you all for your support!

Thought Detox is Available For Pre-Order

Thought Detox is now available for pre-order!

In the interest of transparency, I’ve decided that the first update of every month should include a recap of how things went the month before. Let me know if you find this useful!

Recap: January 2021

Most of my time was spent working on the Thought Detox launch (more on this below). I’ve been telling myself that “release is imminent” for a couple of months now, but there’s always something more to do! The app is nearly complete, so I’m turning my focus now to building the landing page.

You may have seen this tweet yesterday.

I've been teasing the work I've been doing on the first new Dropped Bits app since… wow, 2015? Has it been that long since I launched Per?

Thought Detox for iPhone

It's coming, and it's based on this Glitch app that I built in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I'm excited to tell you all more about it soon, but for now if you're interested in testing the public beta, it's available on Airport (here's a direct link).

In 2019's site update, analytics were ripped out while I looked for a more privacy-focused option. I'm happy to announce that the site now uses privacy-respecting Plausible Analytics, and I've updated the privacy policy to reflect this.

Plausible Analytics is an open-source project dedicated to making web analytics more privacy-friendly. Our mission is to reduce corporate surveillance by providing an alternative web analytics tool which doesn’t come from the AdTech world. (Source)

In the name of transparency, I'm going a step further: site analytics are now publicly available. Go here to see exactly what data is collected on droppedbits.com.

The change to Dropped Bits' privacy policy is available in its entirety here.