Elixir Radar transparency report — end of August 2020
What is this about
Hi, my name is Hugo, I’m the person behind Elixir Radar!
One of my values is transparency. This report is a way to practice that value.
What Elixir Radar is about
Elixir Radar was born in 2015 as a content curation newsletter for Elixir developers. It’s still that, but a little bit more.
Elixir Radar is currently about helping the Elixir ecosystem by generating value to different agents of the ecosystem, in a sustainable way.
By generating value, I'll explain what I mean in the next section.
By different agents, I mean:
- Elixir developers
- Elixir content creators
- Elixir companies
By a sustainable way, I mean:
To have the means to keep doing that work. That means making money to sustain the costs and the work behind Elixir Radar for now and for the future.
My inspiration for my thoughts around financial sustainability comes mainly from two books.
The first one is "The Infinite Game" by Simon Sinek. Here's an excerpt from the book that inspired me how I think about money:
Money is the fuel to advance a Cause, it is not a Cause itself. The reason to grow is so that we have more fuel to advance the Cause. Just as we don’t buy a car simply so we can buy more gas, so too must companies offer more value than their ability to make money. A company, like a car, is more valuable to all constituents when it takes us somewhere to which we would otherwise be unable to go. That place we envision going to is the Just Cause.
The second one is "Reinventing Organizations", by Frederic Laloux. Here’s an excerpt from the book that inspired me how I think about money:
Profit is like the air we breathe. We need air to live, but we don’t live to breathe.
How Elixir Radar generated value in August/2020
I believe that value is more about the perception of the consumer than the belief of the producer. So, I can’t say exactly what is the value we generated, but I can at least say how we intended to generate value.
Here's how we intended to generate value for Elixir developers, Elixir content creators, and Elixir companies.
How we generated value to Elixir developers
We use mainly our email newsletter and jour web job board to generate value to Elixir developers.
Through the newsletter
In August/2020, Elixir Radar had an average of 9,731 subscribers. We sent four issues of our newsletter to our subscribers. Our open rate is around 50%.
So, I believe we generated value to at least 4,865 Elixir developers. What kind of value?
I believe that the main value we generated was helping those 4,865 Elixir developers with their professional development, by connecting them with quality technical content from Elixir content creators.
I also believe that we helped those that were looking for a new Elixir job, through the 7 Elixir job listings we promoted in the newsletter in August/2020.
Through the job board
In August/2020, our job board had 725 unique visitors that together generated 2,825 pageviews.
I believe we helped those 725 Elixir developers to find a new Elixir job.
How we generated value to Elixir content creators
In August/2020, we curated and promoted 28 pieces of content in our newsletter
Those 28 pieces of content were produced by 27 Elixir content creators.
We sent a sum of 7,951 unique visits to the content produced by them.
I believe the way we generate value to content creators is by helping them to reach a broader audience.
How we generated value to Elixir companies
By Elixir companies I mean companies that are using Elixir to develop software.
In August/2020, 10 Elixir companies submitted 11 job listings to our job board.
We showed those job listings to 727 Elixir developers through our job board and to ~4,865 Elixir developers through our newsletter.
I believe we generate value for Elixir companies by helping them to attract and employ Elixir developers.
How Elixir Radar made money in August/2020
Elixir Radar made US$ 1,461 in revenue in August/2020.
As I mentioned, I see that money as the fuel to sustain and grow and the value we generate for Elixir developers, Elixir content creators, and Elixir companies.
Here's a little bit about the journey to make Elixir Radar financially sustainable so far.
On July/2020, I started to experiment with ways to make money with Elixir Radar. The first initiative was what I called "Elixir Radar Individual Sponsorship".
By the end of August/2020, we had 39 Elixir Radar Individual Sponsors, which together give Elixir Radar US$ 221 in monthly recurring revenue.
In August we started to have an additional line of revenue: Company Sponsorships. In August/2020, we made US$ 1,240 with that.
You may notice that we made more money with Company Sponsorships compared to Individual Sponsorships. That said, one is recurrent and the other is not.
Elixir Radar Individual Sponsorships is what gives me the sense of safety that we'll have at least enough revenue to pay for the infrastructure and tooling costs every month because it's recurrent revenue. In a nutshell, that I won't lose money in a given month.
Elixir Radar Company Sponsorships allowed me to start to believe that Elixir Radar could even pay for my work as an individual, not only for the infrastructure and tooling costs. Also, it allowed me to invest in Elixir Radar, by buying a license of Tailwind UI to use in the future rewrite of elixir-radar.com! 🎉
That's all for today.
If you're already an Elixir Radar subscriber, thanks for your support. If you're not, you may like it.
If you're an Elixir content creator, hope I can bring you a bigger audience.
If you're part of an Elixir company, hope I can help to connect your company with potential new hires.
If you appreciate our job and would like to support us financially, you can become an individual sponsor. Or, your company can buy a primary company sponsorship and in return, I'll promote a sponsored link of yours to our audience.
See ya! 👋
