March 2020: Covid Crunch, Launching HDR
by Karl HughesIt's a really bad time to be in any business that deals with in-person events.
CFP Land has been hit pretty hard by Caronavirus. A couple people canceled their paid accounts to save money, and new signups have basically dropped off a cliff. My KPIs:
- 3643 Twitter Followers 🐦
- 1987 Free Email Subscribers 💌
- $336 in Pro Subscriber Revenue 💳
- $0 in other revenue 💵
My Focus in March
Caronavirus isn't going away anytime soon, and while it shuts down the events industry as we know it, it opens up a huge opportunity for job boards. Unemployment is skyrocketing, and the Developer Relations industry is likely to be especially hard-hit since much of what they do is speak at conferences.
So, I launched Hire DevRels! 🎉
I've had this idea in my backlog for almost a year now. I'm starting to think of CFP Land (and now Hire DevRels) as my "top of funnel". Both these tools will be free, but allow me to collect leads for a higher-priced SaaS app built for these audiences (more on that coming next month).
The nice thing about Hire DevRels is that like CFP Land it can be almost entirely automated. It takes me about 15 minutes per week to keep it running, so it's very do-able (and eventually outsourceable). In its first two weeks, I got over 100 subscribers.
As long as Hire DevRels doesn't become a distraction and it grows organically without too much input from me, I think it's a worthwhile lead magnet.
