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$40k ARR: Optimizations as a company of one

Sharing another financial milestone with Lunch Money paired with a blog post! This time I've written about my optimizations as a company of one which makes juggling engineering, product, marketing and customer support bearable and sustainable.

Check it out here ▶️ https://lunchbag.ca/company-of-one/

Thank you to the Indie Hackers community for your continued support!

  1. 2

    I love it so much! Thank you for sharing and will definitely get lunch money a try! Love budgeting but all the tools we're not exactly well suited love it

    1. 1

      Awesome, thanks! Let me know if you have any Qs or feedback!

  2. 1

    Love seeing the support-driven approach to implementing some features in app to save yourself some future support workload.

    1. 1

      Thanks! I'm just glad that it's been working!

  3. 1

    Great post, and I agree that the design is on point.

    1. 1

      Thank you for the kind words :)

  4. 1

    Love your posts! Keep pushing it!

    1. 1

      Thanks! I will :D

  5. 1

    Jen, realized you embody the dream I am working towards. Thank you for the breakdown, makes my life easier to understand how I can organize myself for Alpha Health.

    1. 1

      Hey, thanks! That's really nice to hear. Best of luck with Alpha Health and remember to enjoy the journey :)

  6. 1

    That's a great article. Thanks for sharing.

    I'm impressed by your ability to juggle so many things!

    1. 1

      Thanks Merott! :D

  7. 1

    Great job - love the post!

    1. 1

      Thanks for reading!

  8. 1

    This is inspiring! Kudos to you! :)

  9. 1

    Hey @jen, like the content. Like the design of the post, especially the hyperlinks.

    1. How is your blog setup? wordpress, ghost, other?
    2. How is it designed? Custom, themes, other?
    1. 2

      Thanks!
      My blog is custom designed by myself and it's made with Hugo.

  10. 1

    Loved reading about your processes! Congrats Jen 🎉

  11. 1

    Wow. 40k ARR for a one person show is amazing. Congratulations and best wishes. And that too in a space which has some heavy weights like Mint etc!

    1. 1

      Thank you for the kind words!

  12. 1

    Totally borrowing the low-hanging fruit tag. Thank you for sharing, and congrats on your nice ARR!

    1. 1

      Awesome! Thank you!

  13. 1

    Great article! Give motivation for all solo-entrepreneur

    1. 1

      Thank you :) Glad to hear!

  14. 1

    This is a wonderful post. Specific. Concise. And good marketing, because I am considering using budget software. :)

    1. 1

      Haha! Thank you! :)

  15. 1

    Awesome job and congratulations, Jen! Thanks for sharing your blog post — love hearing about your processes (especially loved the bits about “Merging marketing and engineering for a combo win”, the email filters, and context switching) and love your can-do attitude 😀 Keep it up!

    1. 1

      Thank you for reading and for your support, Amy!

  16. 1

    Wonderful article. Bookmarked your blog! Keep writing... And congrats for the milestone.

  17. 1

    Great job! I stil get your retargeting ads sometimes 😂

  18. 1

    Hi Jen, love the branding and the tone of voice in the blog content! Heads up that LunchMoney will be featured on Perdiem (http://perdiem.site) in the coming weeks!

  19. 1

    Congrats Jen! That's a great achievement :)

    1. 1

      Hey, thanks! :)

  20. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks! I actually don't get very much traffic to my blog, only when I post and it hits front page on Hacker News or something.

  21. 5

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 1

      Hi Alex, did you like the design of my blog/app so much that you decided to copy it for your own gain?

      I was more than happy to share and answer your questions (still am) but I don't appreciate that you would steal my design and subsequently lie to me about it. I would really appreciate if you changed your logo. Thanks :)

    2. 1

      Yes, please share your marketing funnel. Very interested in learning that

      1. 2

        At this point, traffic comes mostly from my blog posts and word-of-mouth. Mentions from people on Twitter, influencers on podcasts, posts on Indie Hackers and in general people sharing my story to their friends drives a lot of traffic. I stopped doing paid ads on Google once I got top position for my desired key words and I run minimal retargeting ads on Facebook. Hope that helps, let me know if you have any specific Qs I can answer!

        1. 1

          That's a great answer.
          Thanks

          in general people sharing my story

          How can one do that? Assuming one doesn't have a story to share.

          I stopped doing paid ads on Google once I got a top position for my desired keywords

          is that natural? As in, if I run ads for a page with longtail keywords, will the page start ranking higher on that page?

          Thanks again Jen

          1. 2

            How can one do that? Assuming one doesn't have a story to share.

            It might be hard to have people share your story if you aren't openly sharing it! I blog pretty transparently over at lunchbag.ca and I send every new Lunch Money user a welcome email introducing myself with a link to the origin story of the product on my blog.

            is that natural? As in, if I run ads for a page with longtail keywords, will the page start ranking higher on that page?

            I don't think I got the top position because of my ads, rather the ads were a placeholder until I got the top position by other means– mostly being mentioned on high ranking domains and improving my own landing page. I'm no expert here, so I'm not sure how robust this strategy is for longtail keywords.

  22. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Glad to hear! Thank you!

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