Hi all, I'm happy to publish another retro/recap of my software entrepreneurship adventures after a "brief" hiatus. To be clear, I didn't stop trying to make money online, I just stopped writing about it. But after reading Michael's recent retro , it gave me a yearning to start writing and sharing again. Thanks Michael!

What's the point of this?

The goal of these retro writing pieces is to help me think and articulate my thoughts on wtf just happen the previous month and hopefully give me some ideas on what to focus on next.

The bonus goal of me writing my thoughts onto the internet is to attract interesting strangers (also) doing cool shit.

The anti-goal is to spend an ungodly amount of time (say 8+ hours) writing these stories. After all, no one is buying my retros. Unless... 🤔😆.

Current status

I'm still trying to make fricken money on the fricken internet from the software I write!

I'm currently living off the 50% of my time I spend working as a freelance software developer. However, I really want to live off the other 50% of my time I spend working on my software projects.

I'm really proud of the mental progress I've made dealing with not having a regular job, living with the uncertainty of life, and making decisions for myself.

I'm still 100% committed to this path, but it's certainly not easy.

Recent events

• One of my (free) projects went viral (in South Africa).
• I've moved house.
• I'm planning to get married soon.

CarPriceValue

After my car reached end-of-life, I experienced some pain trying to replace it with a reasonably priced used car. As it turns out, a "reasonably priced used car" is a myth. I settled on a new car because used cars just didn't seem that much cheaper.

This lead me down the endless rabbit hole of automotive pricing. An industry that seems to be a self-referential loop of car dealerships selling cars based on prices fed to them by automotive data providers that base their prices on what the car dealerships are selling cars for.

Who am I to judge? So I made a website ( carpricevalue.co.za ) that shows consumers a car's recommended retail price (as fed to the car dealerships) compared to a car listing's asking price.

When the website first launched, no one really cared. By chance, a follower of a followee, who happens to be a car guy (and has >20k followers of his own), posted about the website. Then traffic really picked up.

This all started the Friday, and by the Monday the website was shutdown by the automotive data provider I was using, for excessive API requests. Later, I found out that they accidentally gave me access to a product that is only meant for car dealerships and that the product I should be using is 10x more expensive.

After chatting to a few very helpful people in the industry, I managed to get access to an alternative data source at a reasonable cost. So the website lives on and people continue to use it everyday!

Don't move!

My fiancé and I decided that it's time to trade-in our 1-bedroom apartment for a 1-bedroom + 2-office (i.e., 3-bedroom) apartment. However, we forgot about how terrible it is to move.

This time, I thought, I wouldn't lift a finger. Professional movers would come in and gracefully transport my life to it's new location, with minimal disruption.

That did not happen. I lifted more fingers than ever before.

Besides packing and unpacking, moving heavy things and delicate things is difficult. That's why I hired movers to do that part for me.

Watching them move the items I care for was kind of like watching a new user navigate your product's carefully designed user-interface. They managed to break, scratch, or bend things in the most creative ways. I had to look away, it was hard to watch.

My only retribution was a fair review.

Marriage planning admin

As our special day draws near, I find myself losing more and more of my time, that I would normally spend on my software projects, to urgent marriage planning admin (i.e., emailing suppliers, answering questionnaires, helping guests with travel visa requirements, etc.).

At first I was bitter about this, but as with most things once I started leaning into it, it became slightly easier to manage.

I'm hoping for a smooth transition into married life, over the next few months 😅.

This month's focus

1. Capture some value.

   I've been spinning my wheels on what's next for CarPriceValue. The website isn't perfect and the car valuations I display are quite nuanced because it depends are so many different aspects of a car (i.e., make, model, condition, add-ons, etc.). I kept thinking that the website isn't valuable yet because of all these caveats. However, the website is consistently generating traffic everyday. Why would people visit a website if it adds no value?

   So, if there is some value there, I want to capture it, in the form of charging users.

What happens next?

If you're interested in what happens next, I'll email it to you next month.