Hi yall,
I feel like its been a long time I made time to write something in this journal. That's because, as I may have mentioned, I favored building over communicating in April. I saw a strong need to do so and now that I've been able to speed up the page, I'm enjoying the fruits of my work.
However, there's a certain thing that's been on my mind a lot recently. As you may have seen from the front page, OceanDAO's Round 5 is in progress. And with that, there's another opportunity for rug pull index to receive income so that I can pay rent.
In the beginning, I shrugged of the vote easily as the project was young and since I wasn't convinced in its importance. In the recent weeks, I've realized that it, too, became an important part of my online expression and a regular part of my life. I love doing things my way. I feel empowered. Working for RPI feels great.
But with that additionally gained freedom, as usually in life, there also comes a fear of losing it. I learned that when applying for OceanDAO R5 the last week. Simply put, I've been surprised to see that through its competitive nature, most proposals have risen in quality. The fund raising, too, has become more complex and time-consuming. There's now more capital voting than before.
And while I have no doubt that this capital can also work in RPI's favor, it makes me anxious to see that its existence is directly coupled to vote's outcome. That makes me anxious as, if I ran out of money, justification for spending time here would become difficult as I'd earn more from serving freelance clients.
This leads me to the point of this article, which is monetization. Or shall I say diversification and the spreading of risks? In Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" there's a section where he goes on to say that building a business is mainly about surviving throught progress and time. Along with that he states that PayPal has made more money in its recent last year than all other years of its existence combined. For him, it's all about continuity. I feel the same about starting a project.
Service and its quality is 99% about showing up and about consistency. Its about continuing to build trust. I know this as I've been part of BigchainDB GmbH and ascribe in their first years. I've witnessed the doubts from potential customers first hand. Sure, we faced problems building the product. But convincing customers to commit to our product was more than just writing code. It was about the team's quality, committment and the perceived chance of the company's survival. A customer trusting in us was a customer buying from us.
I've made that experience in 2015 - 2017. I realize it now and I want to act on it by making time and external progress the friends of rug pull index. It shall have limited downside and unlimited upside. Practically speaking, I can execute on that by removing weak parts and by improving the good parts. A weak part I've discovered is its dependence income through the OceanDAO.
Hence, for the future, I want to commit myself not only towards building and communicating but also towards to the goal of increasing and diversifying the project's income and funding.
A preliminary idea: Sell ads. Because why not? Building the ad spots took me 5 minutes. I've added outbound click tracking too and the results are starting to come in. Last week, there was a 32% chance that a user clicked a link on rugpullindex.com. At least for last week, it confirms that this newly created estate holds value. I'm open to discuss rates. Contact me.
Additionally, it means opening my wallet else where. It's not by accident that I've recently toyed around with web components and packaging web3 into a minimal JavaScript bundle. A web3-based signature feature is coming. Conviction voting sounds appealing. And with that, a new opportunity for revenue opens for me too.
Es bleibt also spannend!
To conclude: yes, you've heard it right I need the cash (to) flow! I need it now. If you have ideas too, please get in touch!
Best, Tim