Another year passed by, and we’re close to getting into 2023. It’s been a year with a single Swift 5.7 release, Xcode 14, new SwiftLee products, and many articles. I always enjoy looking back on the year and realizing what I’ve achieved, hopefully inspiring others for the year to come.
More than ever, I’ve been focused on growing existing products. I’ve released Stock Analyzer, improved RocketSim, upgraded SwiftLee Jobs, published 51 SwiftLee Weekly issues, and continued to write a new article every week. It has also been great to get back to in-person conferences sharing my experience live on stage. Let’s look back and review!
SwiftLee
My blog grew again and reached over 3 million page views in 2022. While I have yet to optimize or change the layout of my blog this year, I did write a new article every week, resulting in a consistent return of visitors. A big thanks go out to all the sponsors I’ve had this year, and I’m happy to share Q1 and Q2 of 2023 are almost sold out already. In other words: expect many more articles to be published next year!
Most popular articles
While I published many articles, there can be only a few most popular ones.
1. Async await in Swift explained with code examples
Many of you started adopting async/await, looking for resources to help on this journey. The concurrency category is full of articles that I wrote related to async/await, for which this article has been the most popular.
2. JSON Parsing in Swift explained with code examples
One thing almost all apps have to do is JSON parsing. If there’s one article I often get feedback for, it’s going to be this one since it turns out to be a to-the-point explanation of handling JSON in Swift.
3. Getting started with the Combine framework in Swift
Combine is still alive! You can tell from this top 3, but I can also tell you there’s a world for both async/await and Combine to live together. SwiftUI depends greatly on Combine, so it’s not going anywhere soon. Could you ensure to get started with this in-depth article on the Combine framework?
SwiftLee Weekly
This year’s first issue, issue number 96, went out to 7964 subscribers. This week’s issue will be sent to 12.909 subscribers! That’s a growth of almost 5000 subscribers, for which I’m incredibly grateful. It means many of you that subscribed continued to read my weekly issue.
I’ve done several giveaways throughout the year, including giving away The App Icon Book and several conference tickets. If by now you still need to subscribe, I encourage you to do that now.
SwiftLee Jobs
After the first release of SwiftLee Jobs it turned out that it was hard for me to make it really valuable. Finding companies to post new jobs was hard, making it an invaluable place to visit frequently for those looking for a job.
This year, I announced The SwiftLee Talent Collective as a replacement, which was an incredibly successful step forward. In just two months, 115+ candidates joined the collective and applied to over 340 jobs. It didn’t take long before I got the first iOS developer telling me he found a job through my collective, which was a great feeling of honor and pride!
RocketSim
May this year, I launched RocketSim 8.0, introducing grids and rulers. Updates followed, reaching version 8.7.0 not long ago. Meanwhile, I’m working hard towards the next major version 9.0.0, which will introduce so-called Quick Actions for Push Notifications and deeplinks.
I introduced Team Licenses which allowed larger teams to use RocketSim as well. Altogether, I’ve grown my Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) from $81 to $1054. Subscriptions allow me to create a sustainable income to continue development. The best thing of all: there’s so much more to come!
Stock Analyzer
I released Stock Analyzer early this year, much sooner than I thought. Releasing an app is motivational and has led to two more significant releases. Today’s version contains so much more than I hoped to be able to build in a year, including widgets and ETF support. MRR is currently at $69, but I’m seeing steady organic growth with much more potential.
Looki
Looki must be the most surprising for many of you of all the projects mentioned in this article. It’s a CoreML game that lets you capture emojis in the real world. You can see a demonstration video here.
I built this app with Jordi Bruin, and we released it two weeks ago. We’re aiming to add more functionality next year and have yet to start reaching out to the press for a big push on marketing. Exciting times coming up!
What’s next?
While looking back, I’m also super excited for the coming year. Goals help me to stay accountable and create focus, aiming to stretch for the next significant steps. While I’ll be defining my plans in more detail in January, here’s a rough outline of my goals:
- Continue RocketSim development and grow MRR to $3000
- Release Stock Analyzer on Apple Watch, iPad & Mac, growing MRR to $500
- Explore the possibility of writing a book “How to become a successful engineer”
- Consider creating a “Nailing that job interview.” PDF guide
- Visit WWDC
- Increase the number of SwiftLee Weekly subscribers to 20.000
- Grow my Twitter following from 36.661 to 50.000
Big goals, but I fully believe in achieving them all. No promises, but everything starts with an idea!
Conclusion
2022 has been a great year! While I’ve only mentioned goals related to SwiftLee and my apps, I didn’t even mention I married last Saturday and became a dad in March to our beautiful son named Sep. My goal of this article has been to inspire you all, but also to keep myself accountable for reaching new goals in 2023.
Stay tuned!