Apr 2023: I sold Black Magic
And other updates in April 2023
Hello again, everyone! It’s Tony 👋😄
Since the last newsletter issue, I’ve been caught up with so many things.
I feel like there is not a single good timeslot for sitting down and writing my monthly update.
But finally, 10 days late after the month starts, here I am, writing yet another issue for my monthly update 😄
Here is what happened since April 2023:
Black Magic is acquired!
Yep, you may have heard the news and dramas around the Twitter API pricing changes.
The minimum price is now $42,000 per month to use any meaningful API usage.
I mentioned in my previous email that Black Magic was at $14K MRR. That means I cannot afford the new pricing.
I was forced to shutdown or sell.
After considering many options and talking with many founders who have interest in acquiring/partnering with Black Magic, I have come to conclusion to sell Black Magic.
We are still processing the acquisition, it’s almost done now.
Here are the gists:
Black Magic will be merged with another bigger Twitter product (can you guess who? – comment below 😂)
I will continue to work on Black Magic!
That’s all I can share at the moment.
I feel lucky to have found a good buyer who is a very good fit with what Black Magic is doing and can keep serving Black Magic to its customers.
I’ll make an official announcement to all existing users and on Black Magic website soon ✌️
Dead focus on TypingMind
Over the last month, I spent all of my focus and energy to TypingMind.com.
I have delivered so many new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
I feel like I have done so much more in just a month than all the works I have done in the last 3 - 4 months!
It’s exactly the same feeling when I started building Xnapper last year too.
Now it’s a bit slowed down.
I’ve involved a freelancer to help me keep delivering features while I start to think more about the long term plan for the project.
When I first started TypingMind, I thought it will be making at most $5K and then dies out with the hype train.
Totally unexpected to keep seeing new customers coming in consistently.
This could be an entire business!
I recently offered Custom Deployment and ChatOrigin.com which brings recurring revenue too. I’m at $2.6K MRR at the moment.
With Black Magic sold, I no longer have any other recurring revenue streams. So I really hope TypingMind can be my next big hit.
Let’s see!
I hired my first full-time employee
It has finally come to that point where I need to hire.
I mentioned in my previous emails that I’m working with 2 freelancers: one developer and one with content marketing.
Over the past months, I asked if the content marketing freelancer would like to take up other tasks like customer supports, partnerships, etc.
She gladly agreed and helped me with so many other tasks around the business.
Finally, I feel that having her working full-time will help push things forward way faster than the old way when I was working alone.
So, I offered a 2x market rate salary to come work for me full-time.
It hasn’t been a week since she joined but I’ve already feel the different. Mostly the peace of mind to focus on other tasks that I want to work on.
I’ll share more on the progress soon!
Considering making this newsletter paid
Now that I no longer have a recurring revenue, I’m starting to think about ways to generate more.
One of the idea is to turn this newsletter into a paid newsletter.
If you have read this far, what do you think? (comment below)
That’s all for now!
Thanks for reading and and see you again soon! 😄
I see your need for recurring revenue. But this newsletter is not valuable enough in itself to ask for $$$. It's basically a (really pleasant) update on what you did the past month, which functions as a way to get people's attention towards what you built. Charging for it would probably end up costing you money, as fewer people will see your work.
If you want to charge, I'd recommend adding a subscriber-only section to each newsletter edition. Behind-the-scenes stuff from the business. In-depth look into the revenue, where the leads to your products come from (Twitter, product hunt, google), your in-depth strategy ideas for next steps in marketing and product dev, and also your in-depth, controversial perception on current trends (AI, Twitter, etc. etc.).
This added content could also be parallel to offering it as Tweets to your Twitter Paid Subs.
Something like this. What do you think?
Normally I would be congratulating you for getting Black Magic acquired, but not so sure from reading your post if I should.. how are you feeling about the sale Tony? Happy? Relieved? Neutral?