Heya friend!

Carl here. You signed up to receive updates about Ymir, the WordPress serverless DevOps platform that I’m building.

INTRO

So I'm still not feeling 100%. Actually struggled to remember what I did during this cycle. 😅

I’m definitely worried about a burn out. I’m trying to take it easy. During this cycle, I worked on things that I felt motivated to work on as well as consulting work. (Also helps it's Thanksgiving in the USA so everything has been slower! 🦃)

Besides that, business is going well. I might actually hit 1k MRR this month. (For realsies!) So that'll be a good milestone even if it might go back under next month.

For now, let's hope I hit it! 🤞

PRODUCT

You can always view the history of Ymir's product development at https://ymirapp.com/changelog.

Carl, what did you work on product wise this cycle?

A list box. Yes, a list box. I spent an entire week working on it if you can believe it! I documented my journey on Twitter lol

Carl Alexander @twigpress Next time, you're thinking, "Carl is so smart. He wouldn't spend hours on something." I'm still working on this list box after 20h 🤣 #frontendnoob share.cleanshot.com/Dg3tto CleanShot 2022-10-20 at 07.20.41 Video uploaded to CleanShot Cloud share.cleanshot.com November 23rd 2022 0 Retweets 5 Likes

I really wanted to copy the list box from the Vercel project creation page that shows all the accounts that have the Vercel app installed. Well, that was harder that I imagined it would be as someone who doesn't do frontend work that often.

That said, I felt a lot better when I got an Alpine UI components update from Caleb (creator of Alpine.js) saying how much he struggled to build his list box component. (I didn't feel as dumb. 🤣) It also sped up my work because I could look at his code. So I wrapped it up finally!

As a side note, I really missed just being able to do nothing but code and work on a problem for a few days. Even if it was just a list box. I just haven't had a lot of opportunity to do it recently while I'm juggling consulting, Ymir support and working on that LonghornPHP talk. 🥲

MARKETING

Still not doing a great job doing marketing. I know I need to do better, but, with thanksgiving and how I've been feeling, I've tried to cut myself a bit of slack about it. I did publish the article I'd worked on for LonghornPHP.

​Getting started with serverless PHP >>​

I also finally updated the object cache guide in the documentation. I think there are probably more improvements I can make to the documentation. It's a low hanging fruit that I should fall back to when I'm not sure what to work on.

But outside of those two things, I did nothing else.

I've been thinking a lot about Twitter. I've used Twitter a lot as a marketing channel. But we're almost a month with Elon Musk at the helm. The vibe is pretty different now. People are leaving or just going on it less. Even I'm going on it less.

Twitter was never a great marketing channel for Ymir. I just enjoyed making threads and talking with other developers on it. There isn't really another good place where developers hang out either.

So maybe this whole situation will force me to take a serious look at where I decide to spend my marketing energy. Or maybe I'll just keep posting on Twitter 😅

BUSINESS

You can always view Ymir's up-to-date business metrics at ymirapp.com/open. They're updated every 10 minutes.

November is looking like it'll be one of my best month since I started charging for Ymir. Shows you how much of a roller coaster this is. Last month was probably my worst month since I started! 😅

If I don't jinx it by mentioning it now, I should have my first real 1k MRR month. So that'll be a cool milestone if it happens! (Be on the lookout for the next report title! 🤣)

As I said last update, I got my first Carl-as-a-Service customer as well. I'm also seeing a few other people doing it, which makes me super happy! 😆

Carl Alexander @twigpress If every open source person ends up using "<name>-as-a-Service" to help with their sustainability effort, I'll be happy with my contribution to the universe 🤣 pic.twitter.com/BLCqdu3vhR November 21st 2022 0 Retweets 6 Likes

Carl