Transparency report #8 – Nov 2016

What. What is this? Another transparency report for November 2016 being written before the end of November? What… well the main reason for yet another early report is so I can clear my plate for the 1st December 2016 launch of the Epic Blogger Theme.

On the 1st November 2016 I wrote a post titled ‘Why I’m saying NO to Freelance‘ and the main reason is I want to focus on the 12 WordPress Themes in 12 Months challenge which I set myself at the start of November.

So, how did the financials go in November?

[UPDATE 1st FEB 2017: Due to the improvements in the Zero BS CRM Sales Dashboard transactions are now categorised. The totals exclude old ‘9-5’ consulting, but do include Freelance which has been a result of the online businesses]

Overall – Freelance, Plugin and Theme sales the November total was: $8,959..  wow.

Hmmm so I said I would be saying ‘No’ to that thing called Freelance? It turns out that I actually ended up doing a shed load of Freelance in November. This was mostly helping my old 9-5 for a bunch of deliverables which were due in November / early December as well as some regular freelance work and a cluster of smaller freelance jobs.

To keep things separate on the Freelance front any work that I do which isn’t development of products for sale via epic plugins or epic themes, I put through my web development agency.

At the moment this is just me. You can read How I Failed to HIRE here. In the future, depending on the volume of Freelance requests I may look to scale this Company but for now I’m focussing on building my own dream (and not just running a web development consultancy and building others dreams)…

How did the Freelance (that I’m saying no to) go in November? Total Freelance income was $7,300.

Onto the Theme and Plugin sales for November 2016 (with a few days still to run.. this is as writing at the 27th Nov )

Theme and Plugin Sales

As usual, I’m keeping track of all plugin and theme sales through the Zero BS CRM which we launched back in July. I’m back to including the usual screenshots this month.

So the trend is looking to end up like the below

• May 2016 – $3,645
• Jun 2016 – $3,644
• Jul 2016 – $3,430
• Aug 2016 – $2,286
• Sep 2016 – $2,692
• Oct 2016 – $2,936       ($2,289 PayPal, $647 Stripe)
• November – $1,998 ($1,700 PayPal, $228 Stripe)

A bit of a drop since October. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster – this is the chart which shows the ‘Gross Revenue’ into the CRM. For the past few months I’ve not been putting Freelance into the mix. Here’s the chart without the Freelance revenue in…

And here’s the chart INCLUDING the Freelance. I did this by adding transactions manually into the CRM – converting £ into $ using todays Google rate (the actual $ to £ has varied over the period).

Zero BS CRM has recently had a massive update which includes transaction tagging so I can now manually add in transactions and tag them as either plugin sales, or freelance work (and the Sales Dashboard will be updated to show these splits)

Subscriptions….

From the 28th of October I turned all of the plugin and theme sales into purchases that were billed annually. This move is to make it easier for you going forwards to keep getting support and keep getting the latest theme updates (jam packed with new features).

Looking at the Plugin Hunt Theme change-log (check it out here). This theme alone has had 27 new releases in 2016. Including two MAJOR new features updates. Putting this amount of development into a theme costs money and the annual renewal cost for continued updates and support goes directly into the product development.

The subscriptions doesn’t mean you have to keep paying to use the theme. If you cancel, the theme will continue to work as it did the day before you cancelled. Forever. Renewing your subscription simply means you’re continuing to support ongoing theme development.

It’s like when FIFA 17 comes out, FIFA 16 will still work for you but if you want all the new fancy stuff, you need to grab FIFA 17.. it’s the same with our Plugins and our Themes.

What’s happening with Epic Plugins and Epic Themes?

The 12 WordPress Themes in 12 Months project. That’s what’s happening. I started this as a way to really build out the WordPress Theme offering and build up the value of my Epic Themes domain. You may have noticed that I’ve now moved the themes to be sold via https://epicthemes.com and this is where any launches from the 12 WordPress Themes in 12 Months project will be sold.

It’s also the new home of the 3 Themes I already have. Plugin Hunt Theme, Epic Hackers Theme and WPeddit are now all sold via epicthemes.com

You may have even seen I wrote a blog post about How we decide what to price our WordPress Themes. You may be wondering why I haven’t run two WooCommerce stores in the past. The main reason was the reporting (these transparency reports are tough to write if sales are all over the place). The API systems I use as well meant it checked where the sale came from.

However I listened to a great podcast from Entrepreneur on Fire 🙂 which really brought home the message to take each business seriously including blogging and I also wanted to boost up epic themes in the SEPRS results 🙂

Make sure to subscribe to the Newsletter to keep up to date with news from Epic Plugins and going forwards also Epic Themes. I’ll be blogging here and also over on the Epic Themes Blog.

What’s going to be on the Epic Themes Blog?

I’ll be blogging through the full journey of getting a WordPress Theme Shop populated with Themes (via the 12-in-12 challenge). This will cover the ups and downs of growing a business through content marketing with the goal of getting the theme sales via Epic Themes up to $10k per month.

A lofty goal, certainly for me. I have faith.

But what about this blog?

The Epic Plugins blog will continue to blog about the overall Company successes and failures. The Company is still ‘Epic Plugins Limited’ but this will cover the plugins. I will cover the themes (and link to relevant articles over on the ‘sister’ blog) in transparency reports.

It’ll also be the place where I continue to write these monthly transparency reports and various WordPress related news 🙂

How do I keep up to date with both?

Simple. Sign up to the newsletter below. I’ll continue to send out the monthly roundups about new blog posts and I’ll also send out news of any new plugins or themes which are developed to the mailing list. If you’ve not signed up. Make sure you do.