Last years version of this post was the most read post on this site for 2009.  It got 6500 views on Jan 7th, when it was featured on Hacker News and 11k views for the year.  Let's see if we can make magic again!

Gone Fishing

All the sites listed as "The Losers" last year are gone.  I put them in a boat with Al Neri, sent them fishing on the lake and they never came back.  No one noticed or cared.  I probably would have just let them be, but I switched hosting from DreamHost to SliceHost and couldn't even be bothered to move them.

Hanging Around

music.rsstalker.com

music.rsstalker.com is a site that generates a custom RSS feed for new album releases.  Yes, I know iTunes probably already does this, but some of us don't use iTunes.  Oh and it doesn't work at the moment (I'll explain below, but the short explanation: I suck and I'm lazy).  I had hoped this site would make a little bit of money - the links in the feeds are affiliate links to Amazon.  Since $33 qualifies as "a little" I guess you could say I reached my goal.  Also I spent no time marketing or promoting it, so it's not like people will magically start knowing about it (although that would be awesome).

later.rsstalker.com

later.rsstalker.com is a bookmarklet that adds the page you're currently viewing to a RSS feed so that you can remember to go back later.  Frankly this is the awesomest thing I've ever done.  And it's retardedly simply to boot.  I use it multiple times per day, which alone makes it a winner.  Although now I realize that the "Recently Saved" section could be renamed "Recently Saved by Matt", since I'm the only one that uses it.  That could get embarrassing if I start saving links to porn or Java sites.

The Winners - Still Mostly Winning

rsstalker.com

rsstalker.com generates a custom RSS feed to track price changes on Amazon.  I make money when people click the links and buy shit from Amazon. 

Here's the story of why this site was broken for a month and music.rsstalker.com is still broken.  On August 15th Amazon flipped a switch that made all requests to their Product Advertising API require authentication.   They announced the change on May 8th, giving sites that depend on the API (like mine) plenty of time to adjust.  That is if they saw the announcement.  I lived in blissful ignorance of the change until Sept 12th, when I came to realization: "Hey, why the fuck haven't I gotten any price change notifications for the Amazon wishlist that I'm tracking through that awesome site rsstalker.com?"

I fixed it that day (SVN log message: "FU Amazon"), but the damage had been done.  Or had it?  Oddly, one of the reasons I didn't notice anything was wrong was because it was still getting orders.  Check this out: Aug 15th to Sept 12, 2009: 30 items, $1031 Amazon revenue, $58 referral fees.  Now check out the same time period for 2008: 32 items, $1178 Amazon revenue, $76 referral fees.  Not all that different.

What about the rest of the year?  Uh, not that great.  Here's a table of the last three years:

The two things that jump out are the nice boost in number of items sold (+264) and the drop in how much they sold for.  In 2008 the average item was $71 giving me a referral fee of $3.34.  In 2009 that dropped to $40 for a referral fee of $2.91.  You can see this reflected in the type of items ordered.  We used to get a lot of HDTV and digital camera sales, but hardly had any over the last few months of last year.  Maybe it's a reflection of the economy or maybe it's just that everyone already has 17 HDTVs.  

Either way, I'm enthused by the growth in items ordered after being stagnant from 2007 to 2008.  I don't promote this site much and the maintenance is minimal (when Amazon isn't fucking with their API), so it's pretty much all gravy.  Gravy that I use to fill my bath tub and swim around in like Scrooge McDuck.  But then I have to shower immediately after, because it isn't socially acceptable to walk around smelling like gravy.

planbookedu.com

Now for the ruler of my tiny web kingdom.  PlanbookEdu.com is a web based lesson planner.  There is a free version which has basic functionality and a premium version for $20/year.  In 2008 I completely re-built the site, which was a large effort leaving me little time to do much in terms of marketing or sales.  Last year I was able to add features, and still have time to take a shot at building the user base.  Here's a table of numbers since 2006:

A couple things I'm proud of in that chart.  Obviously, the huge jump in orders from 2008 to 2009.  But, also the renewal rate.  From 2007 to 2008: 49 of 87 (56%) of people renewed.  From 2008 to 2009: 88 of 137 (64%) people renewed.  If 60% renew next year I'm looking at around 224 orders as a base.

The jump in earnings didn't come free.  I spent some cash this year doing promotion.  Note: when I say "signup" I'm talking about the free version, "order" I mean the paid version. 

Here's what I tried:

StumbleUpon

I paid $50 for 1000 stumbles ($.05 each).  According Google Analytics the actual result was 887 visits (I'll assume the others had JavaScript off or GA blocked).  This resulted in 5 signups - a .56% rate.  The site average is 9.24%.  At the time I wasn't tracking the original referrer of people who went on to pay for the premium version (a user gets 30 days free to start), so I don't know if I made my money back, but it's doubtful.  Even though StumbleUpon has categories to target (I went with "Education"), the traffic wasn't very good.  

Google Ads

Note: As I write this post it's the first time I'm really looking at these numbers.  I'm super nervous.

I started a campaign on August 19th and ran it off and on for the rest of the year.  In total I spent $762 for 2,696 clicks.  That works out to $0.28 per click.  Of the 2,696 clicks 409 signed up according to AdWords conversion tracking. My numbers have it at 390.  I didn't start the conversion tracking right away on AdWords or in my system, so that probably explains the number differences.  I'll use the 390 here, but the actual count is likely higher (425-450 range).  Of the 390 that signed up 86 (again this number is likely higher since I wasn't tracking originally) eventually upgraded to paid accounts.  That's $1720 in earnings on $762 of ads for a difference of +$958.  Win!

Contests

I ran a cheesy Twitter contest to build followers for the @planbookedu Twitter account.  Prizes totaled $150.  We ended up with a little over 400 followers (probably mostly spam).  The contest also resulted in 3 signups, but no orders.  Considering I'm not really utilizing the twitter account, this was probably a waste.

Blog

I started a PlanbookEdu Blog, with all the content bought through elance.com.  In total I bought 10 posts for $180.  I think the quality of the posts is solid and I still have a few left to publish.  Actual traffic has been minimal - the 10 Twitter Tips for Teachers post received the most views (320).  I don't have any stats for signups/orders referred from the blog, but I suspect it's low to none.  I look at this as a longer term play, helping to build search traffic.

New Feature - Sharing

Again, I don't have hard numbers on this one, but in my heart I know this is one of the top reasons for the past year's growth.  I added the ability for teachers to share parts or all of their planbooks with anyone or everyone.  This has led to two behaviors: 1) Teachers sending links to their plans to other teachers, who are introduced to PlanbookEdu for the first time.  It's a little viraly when you think about it.  2) Teachers posting links to their plans on their websites.  The intent is for parents to be able to see what's going on in the classroom, but the win for me is another inbound link, usually from a .edu or .k12.us domain (which I believe are weighted stronger by Google). 

New Homepage

As part of 2008's rebuild I didn't spend much time optimizing the homepage.  As a result it looked like this:

Not great.  I spent some time reworking it to make it more conversion friendly.  You can visit the live site to see it in action, but I'll warn you: you probably won't be able to resist signing up. 

I know what you're thinking, "Hey, I've seen that design before".  I won't argue.  It's heavily influenced from some well known web apps.  Design isn't my strong suit. 

What's Next?

I have a kinda secret project I've been working on that I have no idea what to do with.  I'll definitely continue plugging away with PlanbookEdu.  I started sending automated emails a week after a person signs up asking for feedback and have gotten some great responses that pointed out weaknesses that need to be fixed. 

In terms of advertising AdWords did the best for me.  I've scaled the campaign way back at the moment, because even though school is in session, teacher's aren't really looking to change their habits mid-year.  I'll turn it back on in full force next August to October. 

In some ways it sucks having a seasonal app that's quiet 10 months of the year, but at the same time I hardly get any support requests those months and barely have to pay attention to it.  Although it does use Amazon's S3 service, so I can't let it auto-pilot too much or next thing I'll know they'll switch up the API and nothing will work :)