Finally some NEWS... not. Just an update on all things "projects". The summer holidays has really thrown a wrench into the routine of writing and shipping. I am surprised I actually got anything done. Although it's clear to me that for now client work has to be top priority during this period.

Tinylytics

Ever since I started with Tinylytics I wanted to bring the ability to record unique hit data to everyone. There was an option that allowed you to turn this on if you were subscribed. What that did was pass back a random string of characters to the script, when it loaded, and store that in the browser temporary session storage. That worked great and I was happy with it! With that string I could track the same user (or random string) across multiple navigation visits to your site, if they kept the browser and your site open — once they closed it, the browser would then automatically delete that random string.

However, there was always that itch I wanted to scratch to make that better (because it was sometime unreliable) and also... well... remove an extra line or 3 from the script as it loaded — because why not? So I set about building a super simple way of making that happen without ever breaking privacy using the data I already had as the hit was recorded.

I already wrote about it on the Updates blog, so read it there for a longer winded explanation of what I did.

To sum it up real quick though, it'll use all the incoming data when it's recording the hit, create a special "hash" of multiple data points, and encrypt that (so you can't decrypt any of the data) using a special salt key. That salt key is automatically rotated every 12 hours and will be deleted after expiry.

It works pretty great and I'm super happy with the way it works.

That means every hit now automatically has this data available to use and if you're subscribed you can access the data. There is also a new graph that will show you the combined data. It's pretty nice.

The next thing was to explore exposing the usage data for your account. Tinylytics has a free tier, which I think is very generous and has enough features for most people. However, I never got around to actually showing this — so now you can see your usage data on your account page (or billing page).

Right now I don't really enforce the limits although have started contacting people that are way above the limit. In addition there will be a little button at the bottom of the page if you're at a limit of 98% that will ask you to upgrade.

Usage data is calculated on an average of your last 3 months — I think that's fair and also allows the occasional burst, which happens.

Right now I am unsure what the next step would be if a user doesn't want to upgrade. My plan for now is to just disable the admin interface and redirect to the billing page. Hits will continue to be recorded for some amount of time I guess. I'd like to make sure though that the hits data can always be downloaded no matter. Hmmm.

There were many little changes throughout the site and how data is loaded — especially improving responsiveness when you have a site with a lot of data. Again I am super happy with the way things are working.

I did give the homepage a little refresh too. I like it more now. More to do here, especially on wording.

Shoutouts

What is shoutouts? Yes, very good question. Not going to lie here... but it's been sitting there humming along just nicely and making not very much money at the same time. It's pretty niche as is and the reach is low and is very specific. I love it a lot because, whilst simple, it taught me a lot.

As always I have a long list of ideas that never get any attention because I am happy with the way it works... and then I just work on something else.

Recently I switched the old domain of .lol to shoutouts.page — it's automatically redirecting and everything should be working as it should. I much prefer the .page handle because it'll work better for what I have planned.

Other stuff

I'm reassessing a lot of things now and would love to provide free products as best as I can — however at the end of the day I still like to make a living from my little projects.

Tinylytics makes the most in terms of a more stable income, although things have been super slow and also had to deal with some errors by my payment provider that paid me double for each subscription that used PayPal (urghhh). There are usually 2 - 3 paid sign ups a week — now it's around 1 - 3 a month (and a few cancellations also — the natural order of things). Gonna blame the summer holiday for this. Hopefully I'll make a small dent here again!

Shoutouts income barely covers the server bill, which isn't that much at all. So it's basically running at net zero. So that's a positive I guess. If I can get 1 or 2 paid sign ups a month, then that would be a good target for the next year.

Scribbles saw a decline of 60% - 80% of active users, although it's been picking up again very slowly in terms of people blogging. A lot of folks like to experiment with different blogging platforms. To this day it was the best short term success of any of my projects. Great to see so much enthusiasm around blogging. I am happy I built something that I wanted, especially that I have a very unique use case for my updates blogs. Paid sign ups are far and few between. Scribbles has been the most expensive service to run, to date, too. Great eye opener.

Saying all that, I need to concentrate where I can make the biggest dent in terms of sustainable income and fun. So I'll focus on Tinylytics and Scribbles as priority.

I haven't had any regular payouts since May...

As always I do love working on many things at once and, now that the summer holidays are nearly over, I'm hoping to get back into a more stable routine again. Working for the web gives me a lot of joy and always love to share what I'm doing.

Thanks for reading.

— Vincent