I enjoy reflecting and writing these articles each year, and while I write them for myself, others have told me they enjoy reading them. If you missed previous years, you can find them here:
- 2014: What I learned about building an audience, selling products, and productized consulting
- 2013: What I learned from launching one failed and one successful product (and a bit about coauthoring a book and consulting)
- What did you ship in 2012?
- None for 2011, unfortunately…
- What did you ship in 2010?
Shipped in 2015
I didn’t list what I shipped in 2013 or 2014 and I wish I had, so I’m doing it this year. Here’s what I shipped in 2015:
- Parsing JSON in Swift, my new book
- APOD for Apple TV
- iOS Boot Camp: The Video
- Another round of the iOS Boot Camp
- Developing for iOS without falling into the Massive View Controller trap, a talk I delivered at Dev Workshop Conf
- Beginning Auto Layout in Interface Builder, an online workshop and user group talk
- Auto Layout in Interface Builder, a 4-part email course based on the workshop
- The 5-Part Guide to Getting Started with Swift, which has now been read by over 1000 people
- Swift and iOS training for a team of six web developers
- 3 pull requests to Swift Foundation
- An oil sample reporting app for a client
- The Diary for Apple Watch
- A workplace communication app for a client
- A few small features on My Index for iOS
- 38+ articles on this blog
Listing everything I shipped this year helps me to see what I accomplished, and it feels great. I’d encourage you to do the same.
Products
I shipped a few new products this year, though revenue was down from 2014 numbers. This is mainly due to the fact that iOS Boot Camp sales this year weren’t as good as last year, and I only held one of them this year, as opposed to two in 2014. I actually opened ticket sales multiple times for the Boot Camp in 2015, but failed to sell enough to hold the Boot Camp more than once.
Over the past few months, I’ve spent a ton of time writing, editing, and promoting Parsing JSON in Swift. I’m proud to say I’ve written a book now. Sales for the prerelease version were better than I expected, so I’m happy with where things are and expect sales to continue into 2016 as I release the first edition. I’m also looking forward to experimenting with a few different packaging approaches now that I have a book to sell.
I also built and released APOD for Apple TV this year, and though it was rejected at first, it eventually made it through App Review. I spent a small amount of time and effort on it and released it hoping that as one of the first apps on the Apple TV App Store, it would do well. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it did – at one point, it was ranked #82 in the Top Paid charts – though it didn’t actually bring in much revenue. I’m happy to say I have experience building an Apple TV app and that it hit the top charts.
Audience Building
My email list continued to grow this year. At the beginning of 2015, there were 346 subscribers – now, at the end of 2015, I have 1373! That’s almost 4x growth in the past year. I’m excited that so many people are reading my articles and liking them enough to subscribe for more.
Consulting
This year I spent considerably less time consulting to focus more on products in 2015. I was compensated accordingly – consulting revenue was down over last year, but still much more than enough. I had some down time in between projects this year – a first for me – and was able to spend more time with the family, too.
Looking Ahead to 2016
In 2016, I’m planning to finish and launch the first edition of Parsing JSON in Swift. I’m going to continue to focus on building products for iOS developers, and I hope to do another book or video course. I’d love to have a higher baseline revenue from product sales to smooth out to the somewhat irregular revenue from consulting, and I hope to get a higher percentage of revenue from products in 2016.