2019 year review

Once again, here I go with a year review. Also you can see the 2018 year review

My 2019 Year Review ⚖️

At the beginning of the year I:

After some job interviews, I started to work on Mediasuite for Optiva Media

👎 This year I didn't post about the books I read like I did in 2018 for example. To be honest, I think I only read 1 book this year: 🇪🇸 El motor del éxito by Alex Marin (ForoCoches.com founder)

I started to listen to some podcasts, it's another way to learn just listening! Usually I do it when I drive to the office twice per week in order to avoid the feeling of wasting time on commuting & traffic jams 🤦‍♂️

Some of my favorites podcasts are:

  • Startup stories by Andrew Warner
  • 🇪🇸 K Fund PodKast (about startups)
  • 🇪🇸 Tu dinero nunca duerme (about economy)

In summer, we were at a free, outdoor live performance of Mago de Oz in my city 🤘


In the last quarter, at the office I took a couple of interesting courses about AWS and GTD 👨‍🏫 Also I gave a talk about Clean Code


🎱 Wait... what about sideprojects?

In the next months I plan to release a new version of ghost-purge-images CLI tool: changing callbacks to promises, add tests and use the new Ghost SDK ✨ No deadline but WIP

Ghostboard keeps growing organically 🌱

Past year it finished with 11 customers and a MRR of $60. Right now there are +45 active blogs, including active free trials and MRR recently reached +250 EUR

Ghostboard 2019 MRR

Like 5X but pretty far of break even. For example, the freelance fee in Spain is about 285 EUR per month 🔥 Remember I also have to pay servers, accountant, etc.

🎀 Some features added this year:

  • New reports: Authors, SEO, Tags & Links
  • <noscript> support
  • Search for posts
  • View detail for posts & referers

🌡 Some issues:

  • Severe performance issue on July when a big blog gave a try
  • On the last quarter, noticed a performance issue due database

I took steps to solve the problems as soon as possible but there is no excuse. One big task for next year is to upgrade the infraestructure design and improve scalability.

On the other hand, I'm thinking seriously about shutdown Glasslytics: I have not enought time to improve it and even maintain it. Also I should accept it is a zombie due no growth and just a couple of customers... 🧟‍♂️

It's quite difficult to balance a day job, a family, hobbies and sideprojects but trying to do my best 🤹‍♂️

Some plans for 2020 🎯

  • 🧠 Keep learning: read more books & take some courses specially about coding skills and English
  • Days off with my wife & kids 🏖
  • More exercise 💪

I would love to build a mobile game but this have to wait another year again 😅

Happy New Year 🙂
My best wishes, thanks for reading 🥂

David Burgos

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