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Weekly backlog 03.

25 November 2019

Short summary:

  • free version of Gift Hunt is live
  • landing page changes
  • Google Ads for Discount Hunt
  • virtual meeting with a fellow maker

2019.11.18. Monday

After the WordPress course, I didn't have the energy to publish last week's backlog so I started the day with that.

As I already got a response from the plugin review team about what changes should I made in the free version of Gift Hunt, today I'll work on that. I want to finish the necessary changes at least by the end of the day. I also want to start to work on the landing page updates, so I can just publish it when the free version of the plugin goes live.

For the rest of the week, I'll try to get some traction for Discount Hunt. I'll set up a Google Ads campaign for it and I think I'll give another try to Facebook ads as well. The target group is a bit different and I hope the results will be better.

I just checked the results of the campaign I set up on Facebook for Gift Hunt. The important numbers:

  • reach: 2619
  • impressions: 3144
  • clicks: 18
  • cost per click: $1.65

I think I wrote about it in a previous daily backlog that I stopped the campaign before I spent all the money I previously intended to.

I'm sure the collected data wasn't enough to make a deliberate decision, but I felt that I haven't tried all the possible "free" solutions yet.

2019.11.19. Tuesday

I got another response from the plugin review team, there were a few additional changes I had to make in the free version of Gift Hunt and I spent the first half of the day with that.

As these changes are mainly security enhancements I also implemented them to the Pro version of the plugin. So I already know why it wasn't the best decision to create two standalone versions of the plugin. Now I have to maintain two codebases. And while I can just copy and paste most of the changes from the free version to the pro, still, every time I change something in the source code it is also possible that something will go wrong. So I have to find a better way to maintain the two versions of the plugin.

I also started to work on a project for the agency I previously worked for. For the upcoming weeks, it'll take about half of my time so I have to be as organized as possible to be able to work on all of my projects and also ship new things.

2019.11.20. Wednesday

While is was sleeping, the free version of Gift Hunt got the approval \o/

So I started the day by getting familiar with SVN to launch my plugin into the wild. Luckily, the review team provided a short tutorial on how to do that, so about 30 minutes after I started the process, my plugin was live: https://wordpress.org/plugins/gift-hunt/

I made a few adjustments on the landing page, the free version is available from there as well. I also added a pricing section to it where I was trying to highlight the benefits of the pro version but this is just a temporary solution, I'll add more details about these features a bit later.

I've been using my phone in grayscale for a while now and I just find out that some of the key elements are not working well during these conditions on my landing pages. For example, the main CTA on the Gift Hunt landing page was almost "invisible" in grayscale, so I made some color changes to avoid this issue. I'm not sure how many of my visitors use their device like this (in grayscale) but I hope this will also help in situations where the lighting conditions are not good enough.

2019.11.21. Thursday

Today, my internet connection grow a personality and I have to tell it, it wasn't really kind. Downloading files with 10kb / sec is not funny at all. It was around 3 PM when it started to work properly, until then, I felt like it was 1998.

With that slow connection, I was still able to set up a Google Ad campaign for Discount Hunt (the Shopify version of Gift Hunt) but it took at least 3 times longer than with a normal connection.

A few weeks ago I added myself to the list of Virtual Meetings with Indie Hackers and today I had a great conversation with a fellow maker. I think I'd have to do that more often. As I'm not using English quite often (at least I'm not talking in English quite often) I feel the rust on that part of my brain.

2019.11.22. Friday

Today I spent only a few hours working on my products, the rest of the day was about the freelance project I started to work on.

I started to write a guest post about Gift Hunt which (hopefully) will be published on a WordPress/eCommerce related magazine so it can help to reach potential customers.

At the end of the day, I paused the Google Ad I created for Discount Hunt because Google says that Ad relevance, Landing page experience, and Expected CTR are all below average and this makes the CPC really high (avg. $6.97). I have to create a new landing page specifically for these ads to get better results. This is something I have to do as soon as possible. I’ll probably start next week working on this.

Todo for next week:

  • add more details about pro features of Gift Hunt to the landing page
  • create a separate landing page for Discount Hunt to optimize Google Ads
  • finish the guest post about Gift Hunt
  • create a different mutation of the Gift Hunt article for Discount Hunt and use it in Facebook ads