Geeky Medics

Thanks Zack! Yeah, consistency and remaining motivated enough not to quit (which I was close to doing a few times).

Hey @MattEhr thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it! Yeah, I'm a big fan of pixel art, so that's always been part of the design. When I started out, I created a pixel art version of each major organ (i.e. heart, liver etc) and combined them to create diagrams and blog post cover art. A few years ago, I replaced most of my pixel art with nicer versions created by freelancers, which is what you see today.

It never really felt like I was having to "stick with it", it was just something fun I enjoyed working on in the evenings whilst I was a student and later a doctor. It grew slowly via organic search traffic and word of mouth between medical students. The only marketing effort was to post in a few medical student forums at the time about the site. I probably had a few 100 views in the first year and then maybe a few thousand in year two, things started to pick up more pace after that.

Nope, I didn't code the website from scratch, I set up a self-hosted Wordpress blog and then found a premium theme I liked for like $30. I then tried to customise/hack the theme to fit my requirements and ended up regularly visiting the Wordpress forums to ask for help from actual developers when I got stuck. I had no budget for development at that point, so it wasn't really an option. I'm still using Wordpress today, with a premium theme that I've paid a freelance developer to modify, so I owe a lot to Wordpress!

For the first few years, I wrote all of the posts. Whenever I felt like I finally understood a medical topic, I'd write a summary article, which was useful for consolidating my own learning and also good content for the site. I also filmed and edited all of our videos (and still do). After a few years, medical students started to email, offering to write an article for the site and things grew from there. These days there's always a large backlog of content submissions, so my job is mainly reviewing submissions, assessing quality, finding editors and publishing other's contributions. I still film and edit all of our video content however and do all the other stuff that comes with running a small business.

Hopefully, those extra details are helpful. Good luck with your own community-centric product!

Thanks Josh!

Thanks! Yeah, I've thought about other advertising networks and even tried a few. The adverts they were showing were not the kinds of things I wanted our brand to be associated with though (super scammy stuff largely).

Hey @Nakkeeran, it's awesome you've previously come across Geeky Medics! So we generate revenue in two ways, the first is via advertising on our written content and Youtube videos (Adsense) and the second is via in-app subscriptions. The geekymedics.com website is completely free, whereas the app requires a yearly subscription fee of £8.99 to access all of the content. I release our latest videos to the app first and then later to geekymedics.com (I'm trying to find a balance between providing lots of free high-quality content whilst being able to generate enough revenue to continue improving the business). Now that I'm full time on the business, revenue has become much more important (i.e. if there's not enough, I can't pay rent). As a result, I've been working on something for the last 18 months that will provide us with a brand new revenue stream once launched. I can't give all of the details right now, but it relates to geekyquiz.com and I'm hoping it will be live in the next 6 weeks (I'll be back to announce it!).

Nice. This is what these communities are all about.

Hey! I’d love to meet up, just drop me an email at lewis@geekymedics.com and we can arrange something. Yeah I didn’t expect to see any other medics on IH either!

Thanks so much Val! I’m really enjoying following along with your journey!

Thanks Rosie!

That’s great Eric. The crypto crossword stuff looks excellent (although I do suck at crosswords personally). Definitely give me a shout in the future if you have any questions. 🙂

Thanks so much, I really appreciate that!

Thanks!

😂😂😂

Ah, thanks for spotting this issues, I’ve added them to the todo list! I really appreciate the kind words, I’m a huge fan of pixel art :)

Cheers Harry! Looks like you’re doing some awesome work, keep it up 🙂

Thanks Shamima 🙂 I’m currently packing my case and it’s suddenly feeling VERY REAL!

Thanks Anthony!🙂

Thanks! That’s some really useful feedback. I’ll work on the CTA once I arrive in Australia. Any increase in conversion would be great as the majority of the revenue is generated from the iOS and Android app.

Thanks Merott 🙂. Yeah, I can't wait, it feels really surreal!

Thanks! It’d be great to be added to the Startup Victoria Slack channel! My email is lewis@geekymedics.com

Thanks! No that’s not something I’m planning on as I already feel stretched quite thin and I think others are covering that area well already. Trying to be mindful when picking my battles.

I’ll definitely be posting updates 🙂 Half way there now (Dubai). 13 hours to go! Step 1 is going to be finding somewhere to work from.

My partner got offered a job out in Melbourne, so it felt like a good time to commit to the business (as the revenue was finally at a point it could support me). I’ve been part time for 2 years, so it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I might go back to part-time doctors training in a year, it just depends how things go. I’m interested to see if I miss the clinical role.

Thanks so much, that means a lot!

Thanks! Just boarding the plane 🙂

Thanks! Yeah, I’ve been wanting to do this for years, so it feel great to finally give it a go!

It’s taken almost 9 years to take the leap, so don’t give me too much credit!

Hey @joshdance. I started the channel alongside a Wordpress blog 8.5 years ago whilst I was a medical student. I was trying to learn the various techniques of examining patients and performing procedures (for med school exams) however there was very little content online (other than some low-quality video behind a paywall). I was interested in video production myself, so I saved up for a DSLR/microphone then convinced two friends to act as the patient and doctor for the first video. We didn't get immediate traction, but I was enjoying putting content out, so I kept going despite the lack of others interest. Then after a year or so we started to grow, in part through word of mouth and also because the content started to rank better. I would say that if I hadn't enjoyed the process of filming, editing and releasing the content, I'd have given up before the end of year one, because we had very few views in those early days.

Our primary audience is medical students and other healthcare professionals. They watch the videos when practicing the relevant skill they need to demonstrate for an upcoming assessment.

Thanks Justin!

Thanks. The UI definitely could do with some improvements, but I feel like UI is always a work in progress!

That’s awesome! Thanks for the sub :)

Thanks guys. Yes sorry, I decided to finally set up my product page and add some significant milestones that we have achieved over the last 8 years. I didn’t expect this to be posted in the activity feed as I added the date of the milestone as January 2017!

When I first launched the iOS app, I was hoping it’d provide an immediate significant revenue stream, which didn’t materialise (the company was making around £200-£400 a month from Youtube and Adsense ads). At launch I chose a one-off purchase price of £1.99 (meaning about £1.40 after Apple took their cut). We made around £1000 in the first month and then dropped to an average of around £200 a month after that. I then started to increase the one-off price and then after about 12 months, I switched to an annual subscription (for new users). Since switching to a subscription and increasing the price (now £8.99/year) the revenue has become much more significant and I’m able to fund all of the companies new initiatives with this revenue, which is great! I should have probably started with a higher price, but the app did kind of suck at first, so maybe people wouldn’t have paid for it. The main lesson I’ve learned is that the single most powerful thing you can do to increase revenue is to increase pricing, which sounds obvious, but it certainly wasn’t to me!