New to the monthly recap? This is a monthly business-in-review post that'll cover the following:

• Health of the business

• Course updates

• Bug fixes + features

• Monthly Goals

🗓 August 2021 In Review

My August goals were a little disorganized and scatter-brained. I didn't have anything very specific in mind to finish, but I made sure to knock out some videos required to call some of my courses "complete."

Specifically, I knocked out seven video lessons across the Intermediate Three.js and CSS courses, while adding three separate code challenges to the CSS course as well.

This last week (September 13 - 20th), I completed the Intermediate Three.js course, adding a few new website features along the way, most notably: GitHub Source Code access and video related code snippets.

I've had a few people request the exact code used in the video they're watching, so I finally decided to get a bit strict with my video production process, stringently tracking all of the code changes between each video, then storing them in a Git repo accessible for all Chris Courses premium users. To access these Git repo links, all you have to do is visit a video, click on the purple "Video Source Code" button in the Premium Features section, and you'll immediately be greeted with all of the code changes made for that particular video you're watching.

Right now, I only have this feature active for the Beginner and Intermediate Three.js courses, but plan on adding it to the remaining courses throughout the week (HTML, CSS, JavaScript games).

In addition to GitHub source code, I've also added a code snippets section to each video where you can grab small snippets of code relative to each video. Figured it would be a nice and easy way to get a piece of the code from the video really quickly—no jumping between tabs or links required.

Like the source code, this feature is currently only available on the Three.js courses, but I also plan on adding more snippets to the same courses mentioned earlier.

I finally feel like I know the direction this business is heading in, and what is required to make people happy and feel as if their subscription / purchase is worth it (well produced videos, source code for each video, well-written descriptions, quizzes, and code-challenges). Each course I fully complete, the closer I get to being able to solely focus on a new course, and only that course. I feel this is going to be the new process for releasing videos in the future—jumping between too many courses at once is bound to lead to slower releases since it takes time to come back to a particular topic I may have gotten a little rusty on.

Anyways, for those of you who've stuck with me through my random thoughts, thanks for reading, more regarding business and bug fixes below :)

💰 Business Review

• $761 total revenue (+51.2%)

• $400 MRR (+12%)

• 19 new customers (+72.2%)

• 12 churns (+20.9%)

August saw an increase in pretty much every statistic, including churns (yay!!!) Jokes aside, what a great month August has been, $761 is near the most I've ever made from Chris Courses in total, and added onto my YouTube revenue, the total comes close to $1,000. It's still hard to believe that I've made it this far, and I definitely deal with a bit of imposter syndrome: "Is this all really worth it? Do people really think my courses are beneficial?" are some questions I've commonly asked myself. But in the end, I'm glad to see the numbers staying afloat, and even increasing.

I would say my biggest fear is just losing everyone within one month, but not sure if that fear is really valid since any reduction like that has yet to manifest since starting this business a year ago. All I can really do is continue to produce high quality content, fill out the rest of the courses page, then let the site ride and see where it goes once I hit 15 completed courses with 100+ hours of content.

It's a big time investment with the main risk circling around the question of: Is this where I should be dedicating the majority of my time? I personally think so based off the improvements I've been seeing everywhere. Although I've never had explosive growth ever in my content creation career (45k YouTube subscribers happened gradually over three years), I have faith, not for explosive growth, but for steady improvement backed up by good content.

So my business goal for September is really to create more content, then let the subscriptions and purchases follow. If there's one new thing I'd like to try, it's a successful email marketing campaign. I tried one a while back for the game course, but my deadlines were a bit off, and I only converted 2/300 recipients. Now that I've fully completed the Three.js courses, maybe there's some potential to try a new campaign just to see how things go (I've also added a checkmark on sign up to indicate whether a user wants course update emails).

Anyways, I'll post the results of that campaign here as they happen, wish me luck 🍀

🐛  Bug Fixes + Features

GitHub Source Code

Best feature I think I've ever added. Found myself more than a few times needing to reference code from certain videos, yet always had trouble accessing it since I was never tracking anything with Git. Now you can see the exact changes made to the code for whatever video you're on, or just grab the completed project for your own needs. Makes me very happy thinking about how useful this can be for everyone.

Enhanced Course Previews

Added a new hover box that previews out the course you're about to get into on the courses page. Shows the lesson count, total play time, a description, and some courses include a video preview with a demo link. Very happy with how this turned out—awesome way to get people excited about what they build for each course.

FireFox Course Tracking Bug

Fixed a small bug where each planet's course progress bar was full, even if you hadn't completed the course. Weird FireFox bug that requires a px value added into the SVG equation for this to work.

Forum Styling Bug

Fixed a bug causing some code to not wrap correctly when inserted onto the forum. Small and easy fix with the word-break CSS property.

🏆 September Monthly Goals

My goal for September was to finish off a couple of courses, specifically the CSS and Intermediate Three.js course. One down, one to go (CSS). From there, I'd like to update each course with the GitHub source code feature, then move onto Advanced Three.js and or the Sidescroller course.

Checklist for the month is below:

Intermediate Three.js

• Click and drag lesson @Sep 11, 2021

• Mobile Three.js development @Sep 17, 2021

• Course Complete

CSS

• Features Section #1 (Desktop) @Sep 8, 2021

• Features Section #1 (Mobile) @Sep 20, 2021

• Features Section #2 (Desktop) @Sep 20, 2021

• Features Section #2 (Mobile) @Sep 21, 2021

• Testimonial Section @Sep 21, 2021

• Pricing Section @Sep 22, 2021

• FAQ Section @Sep 23, 2021

• Footer @Sep 24, 2021

• Complete

Email Campaign

• Determine individual Three.js course prices @Sep 20, 2021

• See if Stripe checkout can handle purchase system @Sep 20, 2021

• Develop course landing page @Sep 20, 2021

• Create sales email @Sep 21, 2021

• Import users into flodesk @Sep 21, 2021

• Design email @Sep 21, 2021

• Send @Sep 21, 2021