Remote Matcher Journal #6

This is something new I’m trying: a journal recapping the work I’m doing on Remote Matcher which is my current side project. My goal with this is to do some public accountability so I’ll > keep moving forward on this project.

(Real talk: I’m passionate about the idea behind the project, but I seem to have some kind of mental block about getting work done on it. These blog posts are meant to apply pressure to me to report my progress publicly and move the project forward)

BLUF

(Bottom Line Up Front)
Steady progress this week, things are looking good!

Last week(s) in review

Let’s look at the goals from last week and score them

1. Sponsored post work – Done, but more still to do.
2. Measuring engagement for all of this work – Thought about it, but no solid
3. 20 new tweets and start some content posts. – Thought about it, but nothing written down.

Score: 1.5/3 = 50%

Thanks to MakerLog I can see what I worked day-by-day. (If you want, check out my progress on MakerLog!) I’m also somewhat tracking this in the 12 week year spreadsheet I’m using to manage the project overall. This is an interesting approach, I’m keeping an eye on the tactical, and another eye on the strategic at the same time.

Technical issues

This week was all about stemming and bi-gram testing. Lots of deploys, waiting overnight, then checking the results in the morning.

Then thinking about what I saw, making some tweak, and repeating.

This process will continue for a little while, I’m not sure what the best mix of things to do are. The tests were in shambles for a few deploys, but things are starting to converge and look somewhat sane. I think in the next week I will merge the current changes and deploy them to prod.

Testing this week also revealed a bunch of show-stopper bugs around the job posting logic. That clearly needs to be fixed to achieve my goal for this 12wk year.

Growing the business

Most of my work this past week has been thinking about copy writing for the site: How do I position this service to both users and recruiters?

I feel strongly that there’s a way to get these two groups to talk to each other. I really need to get some words on paper so I can workshop the ideas a little bit.

More users

Churn is expected in this app, and this week I lost 2 users. 1 filled out the exit survey, and the reason was “too many emails”. Not the result I was aiming for, but interesting none the less.

More money

There’s a survey out this week that I’m interesting in filling out, but they say its for SaaS businesses that have at least $1 per month in revenue. It makes me sad that I’m not at that point yet.

Next steps

1. Bug fixes for the job posting
2. Research engagement measurement
3. Testing and tweaking of the bi-gram and stemming work.

Questions? Comments? Email me and ask away!