Today I share...

1. Year-end update! 🥳

2. The 2023 roadmap

3. The 2023 goals

4. "Click to meet" isn't working for authors. Why?

5. Traffic for December

6. Ben's life updates and reading list

Year-end update! 🥳

How many people visited Shepherd in 2022?

• 1.8 million readers

• 7x increase in website traffic

• 14x increase in search engine traffic

In December 2021, we averaged 1,571 visitors a day. For December 2022, it was 12,025 (7.7x increase). I am very proud of this! There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind those numbers. 

Ben will now take a moment to celebrate...

How did income & costs go?

• 8x increase in income

• Income covered 50% of our costs in December

I am funding Shepherd from my savings. I have enough saved to fund it through the end of 2023. Thus, breaking even on costs is a huge priority for 2023. The good news is that we are on track to achieve this!

Just a tiny reminder, this is all expensive to build. So if you want to support our mission, please join us as a Founding Member (special perks for authors).

How did costs break down in 2022?

• 13% - Servers, software, and book metadata licensing costs.

• 40% - The fantastic team that runs the day-to-day (I work for free).

• 47% - The cost of our fantastic part-time developer and designer.

The Founding Member program is a huge help!

Thank you to everyone who has joined the Founding Member program. Your financial support is a huge help! I have some special perks coming this year as part of the genre and age-group page rollout (coming in March). 

If you are interested in learning more...

I've got more info on the business model here (or hit reply).

The 2023 roadmap

January, February, and March

100% of our focus over these months will be on integrating book genre and age data into the website. This is a massive project!  

April & May

We will add the concept of a book series to our backend. Then we can create pages to help readers view the books in a series.

I am incredibly excited about the ability to notify readers when a new book in a series comes out. This is something I desperately want as a reader! 

Here is a very early mockup of what we are playing with. 

The 2023 goals for Shepherd

Reach financial sustainability

By the end of the year, Shepherd needs to have enough income to cover our monthly costs. I only have enough savings to fund it through the end of the year. We are on track to achieve this, and the founding member's program has been an immense help toward this goal.  

This is the most important goal for the year. 

Increase traffic by 3x to one million visitors a month

The bulk of Shepherd's income is from advertising, so if we can triple our traffic, we also triple our income. So this is a vital part of achieving financial sustainability.

Exit beta & "official" launch

I call the site a "beta" because it lacks some base functions that readers expect. The last ones we need are the genre and age pages. Those will be ready in March, and I want to do an "official" launch after that (probably in April). 

Hire a full-time developer

This is a stretch goal, but I would love to hire a full-time developer (in addition to our awesome part-time developer). Everything you see was created with a part-time developer; imagine what we could do with an additional developer working full-time. 

"Click to meet" isn't working for authors. Why?

Earlier this year, we launched this feature on bookshelves. 

The idea was that readers who liked the recommendation could click the "Click to meet Beth..." and meet the author who made the recommendation (and their book).

It currently looks like this... 

When they click on the "Click to meet x" line, it would open an area with their bio and book. 

Unfortunately, this isn't working.

The number of users clicking it is incredibly low. 

Why isn't it working?

I've done a series of video tests with users and found that they don't realize that that click-to-meet line is for the person making the recommendation for that book. And they are slow to realize to make the connection that the person recommending the book is an author who also created a list.

Basically, the way we show this data is confusing. 

What are we going to do?

I want to reframe how this data is displayed. Then I will test it on real users.

I want to ensure that:

1. Users know the person making the recommendation is an author.

2. Users clearly see that the author personally recommends this book. 

3. Users clearly see that the author also made a book recommendation list. 

And, since the book recommendation pages convert really well for the author's book, we want to send more traffic there. 

Here is an updated format I am playing with... 

Shepherd traffic updates

For December, we had 372,000+ visitors and 484,000+ pageviews. That is 21% higher than last month and a new all-time traffic record. That is up 667% over the previous year.

Traffic from Google was up 27% month over month, which is fantastic! That will accelerate as we get more pages and features shipped. It usually takes ~3 years to rank for competitive Google searches (we are 20 months old).

My goal for 2023 is to reach one million monthly visitors. 

What else is going on?

What am I reading?

• I finished The Prisoner of Paradise by Rob Samborn; if you like The Da Vinci Code, you will like this book! 

• I am reading Horus Rising by Dan Abnett. It is set in the Warhammer 40k universe, and I enjoyed a similar series he wrote about genetically altered wolf-human space marines (that one felt like a Viking saga). 

• I just started reading How To Be A Buddhist Millionaire by Matt Jardine. I had a blast talking to Matt for an upcoming show on his podcast, and I wanted to do a deeper dive. 

Christmas was fantastic! My mom and stepdad met us in Valencia, Spain, and we had so much fun. The last time I saw them in person was in 2023! 

Unfortunately, I slid into December at the tail end of a massive burnout cycle, which was frustrating as I would have liked to have had more energy for my family. I have vowed to do better next year. I am starting to feel better, and I have a lot of rest planned for the next two weeks. 

I wish everyone a fantastic 2023 that is full of good health!

- Ben Fox

Want to join our membership program?

The membership program launched in late September, and we've had 190+ readers and authors sign up.

That is amazing and makes me so happy. 

This helps us financially, and I have many more perks for authors and readers. I will share more details in the coming months.

100% of your membership goes toward new features.

My goal is to hire a full-time developer in 2023. Currently, we work with a fantastic part-time developer named Marton. My goal is to hire a full-time developer in addition to Marton. This would allow us to speed up the development of new features.

Imagine what we can do with 1.5 developers, given what we have accomplished with 0.5 :).