Budget Meal Planner

I've been battling this decision for almost two months now, and I as I try to pursue where my passion truly lies (TERRA), I know BMP needs to end its' chapter in my book.

I've discussed more about this decision in my thread of tweets here: https://twitter.com/diannamallen/status/1235995834287902722

And I want to express all my gratitude for the support I've received on IndieHackers throughout this projects journey. Without this community, it would not have grown to what it is today.

I would hate to see the project die completely, as it holds a lot of sentimental value to me... so, I am considering selling it to anyone who feels they can continue its mission.

It has a community of thousands surrounding it between its email list, Reddit, and Instagram. Let me know.

It's been a little bit since I've had any news to share with BMP. Partially because I haven't given it as much attention as I used to.

However, I'm happy to report that the subreddit community around it is growing, I've surpassed 2k subscribers there, and the newsletter itself has 21 premium subscribers.

I'm honestly at a loss of how I can go about converting/funneling more people into the premium tier... I have a list of 3.5k free subscribers, that's constantly growing little by little every day, and it's a shame to see almost no conversion.

However, I don't want to dwell on that and I am beyond happy that this newsletter still shows its potential day by day.

This project was born out of boredom back in April, and the fact it's survived, grown, and is consistently being acknowledged to this day is a mystery to me!

Hell, it was even nominated for a Golden Kitty for Product Hunt's 2019 awards in the side project category... that's incredible.

Always excited to see where the future takes it.

I sent out a copy of a few archived meal plans for BMP today, and I've hit #17 on the home page of Substack!

Check it out here: https://substack.com (would also appreciate any 'likes' -- the heart -- on the post as that's what helps to keep its position)

I just switched over to Substack on Thursday, and I'm convinced this is the best move I could have possibly made for BMP.

My subscriber count is still low, but I'm at 4% of my goal to 150!

Which results in $36 MRR at the moment ($432 ARR) -- pretty cool!

Hey IH! It's been a long while since I've chatted about BMP.

To be honest, I took a little break from it as I worked out some life situations. Things just happen and that's okay! Anyways, I've hit the ground running again and last night I made the switch to using Substack.

I started BMP with Mailchimp (do not recommend), then switched to MailerLite (do recommend), and have decided to take it one step further and move my subscriber list AGAIN.

Why?

Well, Substack offers the insane ease of setting up a freemium business model.

I've been toying with the idea of creating a premium tier for BMP and I decided to just jump right into it.

So, to give some background:

BMP originally was designed to send out weekly meal plans (full 7-day plans for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks). What made this appealing to people was not only that the desired goal of it is to save money, but also because each week was themed. Therefore, the meal plans were always exciting.

As I jumped back into BMP the past few weeks, I surveyed my subscribers in hopes of analyzing exactly what they want.

I've found most are okay with receiving new recipes ideas and others are seeking the meal plans.

With that awareness, I immediately knew how to separate a free tier from a paid tier.

Now:

• BMP sends out a weekly free newsletter that includes 3 recipes.
• BMP also sends out a weekly paid-subscription newsletter that includes a 5-day meal plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complete with a grocery list for ease of shopping.

Why did I drop 2 days from the initial meal plan idea? Because it's unrealistic to not have a cheat day or an overall 'fun' day where you just don't worry about what you're eating.

Why did I drop 'snacks' from the meal plans? Because I wanted to :p

Feels great to back and I'm excited to see how Substack works out! I've already converted 1 subscriber to the paid tier, so that's just fucking awesome.

Version 2 is just fancy for a redesign. But, behind the scenes it's a lot more.

I switched from Wix to Wordpress. I had great things to say about Wix in the beginning -- then quickly realized how much I needed to get away.

Very happy with the new design, lots more opportunities to grow the website using Wordpress. Just the new navigation hierarchy has me in love with the potential.

Also made a huge mistake in changing the website without alerting my audience. I became too eager to put the website live, that I hadn't finish migrating all the content. Silly me forgot people actually follow my meal plans and I woke up to emails asking where the recipes went... oops. Good thing I have everything saved!

One of my goals for July was to gain a sponsor for the weekly newsletter. That didn't happen.

But now, 1 week into August, I managed to check that off the list! Another first for me and I'm so excited to get some brand-relationships going for BMP. Ideally, I wanted someone long-term (3 month commitment) to establish a relationship between not only us, but them with my audience.

I guess that will still take some time to find that one, but I've got almost the whole month of September booked with a sponsor for my newsletter.

Budget Meal Planner is officially a TEAM effort! I'm not alone!

This is so wild to me because I never thought that I'd be able to expand, or even need an extra hand with it all.

I took some time yesterday to sit down and reflect on what all needs attention, and the blog has been ignored for a while. I shared a tweet yesterday on why the blog is an important factor for me: https://twitter.com/diannamallen/status/1156260170609152000

Thankfully, I have the best friends ever. Ally is a content writer and she jumped at the opportunity when I told her I was thinking about offering up the position.

Now, I've made a team page for BMP and it feels so damn good to delegate tasks. Oh, and I'm a control FREAK, so this is a massive step for me to take and the fact it feels good, just proves that I'm doing the right thing.

You can meet Ally here: https://www.budgetmealplanner.com/team

Numbers are always fun to start with -
🍎 Page Views: 195,331 (+1288%)
🍑 Unique Visitors: 34,821 (+955%)
🍊 Email Subscribers: 3532 (+450%)
🍋 Avg. Open Rate: 52% (-5%)
💰 Total Revenue: $235.62 (+219%)

(Before going further, I want to apologize for the unorganized structure of this post, I'm just going to speak about whatever comes to mind.)

I didn't write an IH post for June's updates but you can view the tweet for comparison here: https://twitter.com/diannamallen/status/1144660700142407682 Note that this was the first month my website had been live.

It's obvious that this month has been full of explosive growth. But it didn't come out of no where, even though it felt like it. Each little thing I did was quickly creating a snowball effect.

First it started with launching on Product Hunt, which then lead to an article feature on LifeHacker and multiple other viral/trendy websites.

To take advantage of the traffic, I implemented opt-in forms on nearly every page of BMP. I did not want to risk missing out on growing my email list. At one point, some of my opt-in forms weren't working properly, so I did miss out on a few opportunities of email collection - but I can't be too greedy. I still grew by 450% this month.

In order to entice people to give me their emails, aside from joining the weekly newsletter, I removed grocery lists from the public meal plans. Instead, I created printable grocery lists, complete with all ingredients needed for the week + a little notes section. So, those interested in trying a meal plan would have a handy list they can print and bring to the store.

Now that my email list was growing steadily, I looked into ways I can begin monetizing. You're probably wondering how I made revenue if I'm not monetizing, well, I have Patreon and an ebook available. But, that is not my ideal monetization strategy - so I don't really say the website is monetized. At least not to my standard! :)

Anyways, I decided to begin offering memberships. Starting with Keto meal plans. You can learn about what all that includes here: https://www.budgetmealplanner.com/keto-meal-plans

It's not available yet, but I've set up an email capture (of course) and a coming soon. The main selling point, I think, will be the app. And thank god for no-code technology because I don't know how to make an app. I'll be using Glide to achieve this easily. All I have to do is create a Google Sheet!

I had two goals for this month, which I discuss briefly here: https://twitter.com/diannamallen/status/1156187004369063936

My next goals for August will still include gaining a newsletter sponsor. Hopefully a long-term one, rather than just a one-off opportunity.

But my biggest goal will be to fully launch the Keto membership! I think I can do it :) This is actually what pushed my focus away from the sponsor goal the past few weeks. I'm okay with not achieving goals if it means that I was working on something better and more logical for the time-being.

I'm not even going to pretend that I'll be able to out-do this month's growth analytics. It's just not possible. So, I know next month's stats won't appear as impressive - but I'll be comparing them to June. That month was normal and non-explosive.

One of my favorite things that has happened this month was being a guest on the IH Podcast with Courtland! That was amazing and I'm so grateful for that opportunity. If you haven't listened, please, please do so here: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/104-quick-chat-with-dianna-allen

It was also my first ever podcast ever, so to be on IH was mind-blowing. I was internally screaming out of the excitement the entire time.

That's something I want to touch base on, too: positioning myself to be available to each and every collaboration. I literally tweeted that I'm here for whatever you're working on, as long as BMP can get a little feature from it also. Here's that tweet: https://twitter.com/diannamallen/status/1145999043027488768

I'm a huge believer of speaking things into existence and making things happen yourself, and I think that tweet is the best example of how to GET SHIT DONE!

Is it cringe? Kind of.
Is it a vulnerable risk? 100%.
Do I regret it? Absolutely not.

I really don't know what else to say, a lot of has just happened this month. Most of which, I've documented here on IH.

I'm just trying to take slow and calculated steps towards each goal, but not too slow, I'm sitting on a list of over 3,500 emails :p

In June, BMP generated $100. This month was $230. I'm really aiming for a $500 month by the end of this year. I just have to keep this momentum and I will.

To end this update, I want to thank you all who are reading and interested in watching BMP grow. I am extremely grateful for all the support, the kind words, the acknowledgements. Seriously, every piece of encouragement goes a long way with me and it really keeps pushing me forward and excited on how I can improve BMP.

In a few days, it will be 3 weeks after BMP launched on Product Hunt. I've been waiting for the traffic to bottom out, noticing less and less each day since the launch and article feature on LifeHacker and MentalFloss.

For about a week after Product Hunt, my daily visitors were ~2,000 per day. The following week, 800-1,000. This week, it's officially reached what I think is the lowest it will ever be going forward.

I'm at roughly 500 visitors per day and the reason I think it will always stay around this number is because each day this week it's been up and down in the 500 zone.

Weeks before this, each day consisted of less and less users, but that's not the pattern now. Some days are higher, some days are lower, but it's not always lower and lower.

These are just my thoughts. And I'm really happy with where BMP is right now.

I'm currently preparing a membership plan to launch within the next month, so everything is lining up very well until then! I'm excited to bring in monetization to an already established audience.