Traffic
Since July 29th, the date I turned my attention to the 30zzz blog and promoting the site "a bit more", 30 sleeps has had over 30,000 unique visitors from more than 135 countries, the vast majority of the interest spent on my writing, though the registered user count is also increasing steadily. I've already set a new traffic record today, and there's still a few hours left till tomorrow. I've been linked to by sites in languages I don't immediately recognize. My Inbox has seen a fair amount of reader feedback, including an email from a popular life hacking blogger expressing interest in an article exchange. The responses-unanimously positive-are, in many ways, the ultimate salary.
I'm currently generating about a quarter of my revenue from Amazon affiliate links, the rest from AdSense. While I've earned barely more than a nice dinner so far, I've easily surpassed my initial expectations. From the start, I considered the blog and the web app to be parallel business interests, so I'm perfectly happy with readers of the blog ignoring the web app, and vice versa.
But the most interesting observation here, for me, is how much working for someone else will hold you back. I'm referring not just to the time, income, and mobility you lose by being someone else's knowledge butler, but to the accountability structure.
What I love most about the 30zzz project is that my userbase holds the vote over whether what I'm doing is valuable to them. Every aspect of 30 sleeps-concept, design, scope, objectives, even the current trade-offs I'm making on certain things so I can focus on creating quality, original content and spreading the word-is a decision entirely of my own making.
It is a privilege to be accountable directly to the people to whom I want to provide value. For anyone who cares deeply about helping people kick ass, anything else is not only frustrating, but insane.
I'm currently generating about a quarter of my revenue from Amazon affiliate links, the rest from AdSense. While I've earned barely more than a nice dinner so far, I've easily surpassed my initial expectations. From the start, I considered the blog and the web app to be parallel business interests, so I'm perfectly happy with readers of the blog ignoring the web app, and vice versa.
But the most interesting observation here, for me, is how much working for someone else will hold you back. I'm referring not just to the time, income, and mobility you lose by being someone else's knowledge butler, but to the accountability structure.
What I love most about the 30zzz project is that my userbase holds the vote over whether what I'm doing is valuable to them. Every aspect of 30 sleeps-concept, design, scope, objectives, even the current trade-offs I'm making on certain things so I can focus on creating quality, original content and spreading the word-is a decision entirely of my own making.
It is a privilege to be accountable directly to the people to whom I want to provide value. For anyone who cares deeply about helping people kick ass, anything else is not only frustrating, but insane.