Code With Andrea
Flutter App Development Tutorials and Courses
After a few months in design and development, I finally launched my new site this week:
Along the way, I figured out it would be cool to create a Flutter web clone of the home page, and post a video+article with some performance benchmarks of my live site vs the Flutter clone:
https://codewithandrea.com/videos/flutter-web-html-css-js-performance-comparison/
As it turns out, this went quite viral on social media and even generated a big spike on Google Discover.
As a result, traffic to my site quadrupled during launch and doubled over a single week.
In turn, I got a bunch of new email signups. And since I'm doing Black Friday, I got a bump in sales too (though smaller than expected).
Overall, this has been an exciting week (I never had so much traffic on my site at once!). I'm very happy about how the new site has been received, and I'm curious to see what the new baseline will be once things settle down a bit.
Definitely some good material for my end-of-year retro!
My October revenue was over $6K. In addition to my usual sales, I got some extra revenue from affiliate sales, sponsorships, and a bit of consulting work I did for a friend's company.
But I spent $2,600 in outsourcing costs for my new website, meaning that my net profit went down.
Here's the breakdown:
SALES
Course Sales: $3,148
Affiliate Sales: $1,335
AdSense: $86
Sponsors: $480
Consulting/Training: $822
TOTAL REVENUE: $6,256 (+2%)
EXPENSES: $3,062 (+629%)
PROFIT: $3,193(+94%)
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,390 (0%)
Unique visitors: 41,100 (+0%)
Page views: 58,100 (-0%)
YouTube views: 30,100 (-10%)
YouTube watch time: 1,700h (-12%)
YouTube subs: 30,978(+460 = -20%)
New videos: 0
Twitter followers: 10,300 (+8%)
ANALYSIS
In October I did some interviews and hired a very good web developer to start work on Code with Andrea 2.0. I did a lot of integration work on the website myself, while he was working his magic with CSS.
I also continued working on the project for my new course and started posting some short video previews for people on my waitlist.
I moved my site to Vercel (from Netlify) which boosted speed quite a bit.
Content-wise, I published three new articles and repurposd some previous course content as a mini-course on Udemy, which earned a bit of extra sales.
Looking forward to launch my new site in November!
My September revenue was over $6K, with a nice bump due to affilate sales from the Ultimate Flutter Course by Robert Brunhage.
Here's the breakdown:
SALES
Course Sales: $3,721
Affiliate Sales: $2,184
AdSense: $93
Sponsors: $137
Consulting/Training: $0
TOTAL REVENUE: $6,136 (+21%)
EXPENSES: $420 (-80%)
PROFIT: $5,716 (+94%)
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,377 (-0%)
Unique visitors: 41,000 (+8%)
Page views: 58,300 (+10%)
YouTube views: 33,200 (-5%)
YouTube watch time: 1,900h (-10%)
YouTube subs: 30,503 (+550 = +0%)
New videos: 0
Twitter followers: 9534 (+9%)
ANALYSIS
In September I started working on a new big Flutter course. I ran some surveys and interviews with my students to validate interest and figure out what they'd like to learn. As this will be a project-based course, I started creating a demo app that I'll use for the course lessons.
I have also written some new articles and started posting more regularly on Twitter, resulting in 900 new followers in a single month (best to date).
I worked with my designer to iterate on the new designs for my site, and implemented some minor changes to the live site already.
Sales-wise, the biggest result was the launch of the Ultimate Flutter Course by Robert Brunhage, which I promoted as an affiliate and net me over $2K on launch week.
And I hit 40K unique visitors to my site for the first time, yay!
Onwards!
As of today, I have reached 80K in sales on Udemy.
This is no overnight success. I reached this from 3 courses over a period of 2.5 years.
In addition, I also reached 19K in earnings from Teachable, making the total just shy of 100K.
More to come!
-
2
Congratulations Andrea :))
-
2
That's awesome Andrea! I'm curious how the revenue grew over the years. I mean does the curve look exponential or was it rather linear over the years?
-
1
Congrats! What unexpected things have you learned so far? What was the hardest part? What was MOST useful? What advice would you give yourself if you were starting this journey over?
-
1
Well done :)
-
1
That's really awesome, I didn't know Udemy was that profitable! They have huge discounts all the time, so many courses cost 10-12 EUR, it would be tough for the creator to get meaningful revenue with these prices.
-
1
Congratulations Andrea 👏
My August revenue was just over $5K. This is very good for the summer months, though I'm outsourcing some design work and having high expenses for a few months.
Here's the breakdown:
SALES
Course Sales: $4,138
AdSense: $74
Sponsors: $840
Consulting/Training: $0
TOTAL REVENUE: $5,052 (+3%)
EXPENSES: $2,110 (+19%)
PROFIT: $2,943 (-6%)
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,431 (-0%)
Unique visitors: 37,900 (-5%)
Page views: 53,000 (+3%)
YouTube views: 34,800 (-17%)
YouTube watch time: 2,100h (-14%)
YouTube subs: 29,952 (+459 = -41%)
New videos: 0
Twitter followers: 8739 (+6%)
ANALYSIS
In August I focused mainly on my website. I kickstarted a new redesign and started iterating on concepts with my designer.
On the content side, I launched a new content mixtape so that my email subscribers can get weekly emails with Flutter tutorials on their inbox. So far the new format is working well and people really like the content.
I published 5 new articles and revamped some old ones, contributing to improved SEO and the highest website metrics so far (even if by little).
I didn't publish any new videos, and my YouTube channel has recorded the lowest views and watch time for this year. I'll get back to that sometime but for now I have higher priorities.
Overall I'm very happy that revenue has averaged $5,000 over the summer months (which is normally a slow time for sales).
Also got my biggest sponsor purchase for $840 worth of ads on my site, with more enquiries on the way.
All in all, looking good!
Every year I share a full retrospective and income report about my content creation business.
Most recently, I completed the launch of my Flutter Animations course, and I had so much to share that I decide to write its own retro.
Here's an article with all the details:
https://codewithandrea.com/meta/flutter-animations-course-retro/
My July revenue was nearly $5K but profit dropped due to some large expenses. Here are all the numbers:
SALES
Course Sales: $4,807
AdSense: $80
Sponsors: $0*
Consulting/Training: $0
ZTM revenue: $67
TOTAL REVENUE: $4,909 (-3%)
EXPENSES: $1,779 (+249%)
PROFIT: $3,130 (-31%)
*I had pre-booked sponsors from last month but didn't sign up new ones this month.
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,521 (+1%)
Unique visitors: 36,100 (-2%)
Page views: 51,200 (+0%)
YouTube views: 40,800 (+5%)
YouTube watch time: 2,400h (+4%)
YouTube subs: 29,359 (+776 = +17%)
New videos: 1
Twitter followers: 8,261 (+7%)
ANALYSIS
In July I completed my Flutter Animations course (finally!) and did a launch sale that brought in an extra $1K.
I shared new articles and tutorials on my website and also started preparing a ConvertKit sequence based on my best articles, so that I can keep my subscribers "warm" with weekly emails.
I also prepared a full redesign spec for my website and hired a designer to carry out the work. Paid $1,000 in advance for this, and this explains the much higher expenses this month.
But overall the revenue was still close to $5K, which I consider a good outcome for the summer months.
After the launch of my latest course in May, June was back to normal. Here are all the numbers:
SALES
Course Sales: $4,762
AdSense: $95
Sponsors: $0*
Consulting/Training: $0
ZTM revenue: $196
TOTAL REVENUE: $5,054 (-64%)
EXPENSES: $512 (-13%)
PROFIT: $4,541 (-67%)
*I had pre-booked sponsors from last month but didn't sign up new ones this month.
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,340 (+0%)
Unique visitors: 36,700 (+3%)
Page views: 51,000 (-4%)
YouTube views: 38,600 (-24%)
YouTube watch time: 2,300h (-17%)
YouTube subs: 28,572 (+642 = -33%)
New videos: 1
Twitter followers: 7,706 (+5%)
ANALYSIS
June was quite a slow month. I was on holidays for a week (good chance to relax, reflect, and plan the next steps), and then focused primarily on completing the planned content for my latest course.
Aside from that, I only posted one new video+article for the entire month, haven't been very active on Twitter, and did very little promotion.
Based on this, $4,500 profit may be my new baseline. This is encouraging because it means that on more active months things can only be better.
What's also interesting is that my Teachable revenue ($2,181) got closer to my Udemy revenue ($2,581) on a "regular" month. I expect my Teachable earnings to overtake Udemy as I create new landing pages for my courses and send all my traffic to Teachable over the next month.
May was a very big month for me as I launched my new Flutter animations course, and this boosted my profits by 250% 🤯
Here are my sales numbers and analysis for May:
SALES
Course Sales: $13,641
AdSense: $105
Sponsors: $300
Consulting/Training: $0
TOTAL REVENUE: $14,046 (+231%)
EXPENSES: $589 (+20%)
PROFIT: $13,457 (+259%)
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,282 (-0%)
Unique visitors: 35,600 (+12%)
Page views: 53,100 (+13%)
YouTube views: 48,100 (+8%)
YouTube watch time: 2,700h (+7%)
YouTube subs: 27,893 (+853 = -3.40%)
New videos: 3
Twitter followers: 7,313 (+1%)
ANALYSIS
May was BY FAR my most successful month to date. I opened my Flutter Animations course to all my email subscribers, and later on made it publicly available for Early Access.
I designed and very clear plan well before launch and spent a ton of time on marketing on multiple channels. This has paid off big time and I will share a full retrospective later on.
After the launch, I also went on holidays for a week and this was a great chance to recharge my batteries and make a solid plan for how I'll be growing my business over then next year.
My plan for June is to complete all the course content, continue with marketing efforts, and revamp my newsletter.
Here are my sales numbers and analysis for April:
SALES
Course Sales: $4,238
AdSense: $98
Sponsors: $540
Consulting/Training: $0
TOTAL REVENUE: $4,238 (-11%)
EXPENSES: $489 (-47%)
PROFIT: $3,748 (-5%)
OTHER METRICS
Email subscribers: 20,296 (+1%)
Unique visitors: 31,800 (-13%)
Page views: 46,900 (-19%)
YouTube views: 44,200 (-22%)
YouTube watch time: 2,500h (-33%)
YouTube subs: 27,040 (+882 = -53%)
New videos: 0
Twitter followers: 6,593 (+8%)
ANALYSIS
In April I spent most of my time creating my new Flutter Animations course, and haven't released any new free content as a result (other than on Twitter which is the only channel that has been growing).
On a positive note, two new sponsors have reached out and booked my site for 3 entire months. This is great as onboarding new sponsors is nearly zero effort for me.
In May I'll launch my new course for early access and I'm also planning some new free content. So all metrics should start going up again.
Comment