Path to Design Updates: Jan

A slow start to the year.

Since it has been a while since I've written here, I thought it would be a good idea for my first post of the year to be an update on how Path to Design is progressing.

Balancing a full-time job, life, and multiple projects on the side is not for the faint of heart. However, it has always been a goal of mine to be able to generate revenue (and hopefully profit) from a series of projects that I've built all by myself.

This means that I have to take care of all aspects. The idea, the implementation, marketing, sales and everything inbetween. Although it sounds like a lot, I have enjoyed the process and have learned an incredible amount along the way. I would not have been exposed to half the things if I had just stuck with my day job.

A slow start

The festive period was just a few weeks ago and it slowed everything down. On top of that, back in October, we found mold under our floorboards and was forced to move out and renovate the house.

Fast forward to the present day and we're still not back at the house. I don't want to get into it as I don't want my blood pressure to skyrocket!

I mention all of this because it has affected the amount of time I have been able to put into Path to Design. Being a one-man-band has it's advantages, but if I don't have time to work on it, it won't progress.

With that being said, I feel that I'm slowly starting back up and ready to get back into the grind.

Although, I just want to move back into my house again!

Traffic spike

It wasn't all that bad. In the month of October, Path to Design was featured across multiple well-known Instagram and newsletter outlets. Even newletters that I'm subscribed too! UX Weekly, TLDR, and Toools.design just to name a few. This created a chain reaction that generated high volumes of traffic to the site. Traffic that I had never experienced before.

Stumbling upon my own project being featured in newsletters that I follow was a welcomed surprise.

I managed to 10x the amount of traffic to the site in October. However, as you can see in the image above, the traffic didn't last that long. It quickly dropped just as fast as it spiked up.

This drop in traffic didn't deter me. In fact, it helped me validate that I have something and all I need to do is continue working on it to.

Moving forward

I plan to get back into the swing of things and continue chipping away with Path to Design. The focus is on generating organic growth and hopefully attaining the amount of traffic that I experienced back in October, but on a monthly basis.

I plan to write a series of blogs with targeted keywords to help with SEO. Then start exploring different social media outlets to further spread the word.

Currently, Path to Design is free. There's no product, premium content or any way to generate revenue. I plan to explore this further, but for now I want to continue generating traffic to the site.

Building in public

To hold myself accountable, I plan to share my progress here on the blog. Whether it's a small win or a big loss, I want to document the journey of building Path to Design as well as all my other projects that I plan on building.

I hope to keep this up!