Midyear update for returning users

(trigger/content)Warnings: money, politics, strong personal opinion, longread, no nudity)

First of all, I feel very nice to know that I’m not just screaming into the void anymore and have more curious souls landing here daily to watch me.

Welcome.

However you got here.

Who is this post for?

If you are here to see how my project develops – this post is for you for sure. If you have your own project in development or only plan to start something, feel free to learn from my mistakes. You can send me a blank email to newsletter@sicut-dico.com to get updated without following me on social media.

But let’s get to the screenshots below. Here I try to show you a bit of the dynamics of returning and new users over the last year according to google analytics.

My plan is to update you on every 1000 unique users landing here until it gets either too fast or too boring. Now it’s getting more and more interesting every day, but it’s my perspective.

Let me first explain what it means – to get 1000 unique users on an independent website. But while I’m doing this I’m going to ask you to try to not think of these 1000 users from the perspective if it’s good or bad. It’s neither. It’s just a step. It’s just a number.

Half of this time or even more I had less than 30 users a month. In December 2022 I published twice more posts as during all the months before.

I launched the store in April 2023.

I have around 500 followers on Instagram, less than 300 on Mastodon, below 100 on Chaturbate and Fetlife, below 10 on Reddit.

I had less than 10 orders through the store. Most candles I sell before taking pictures of them.

So here I have to ask you and myself to stop evaluating and get back to observing. None of the things mentioned above are good or bad.

From the side of my expectations, the candle business is going faster than I expected and most of the time I like it, the development of the audience is rather slow though. I guess the perfectionist inside me expected this to happen faster. Like a lot faster.

Well. I’m very grateful to myself that I could actually take it so slow.

The spikes represent the moments when I’d posted more actively but in general, I consider my posting activity quite low at this whole time and inconsistent.

It’s good that it’s slow enough so it’s possible to actually see the magic later. Or the absence of it. Depends how you look, of course. Also, my posting consistency is getting better, obviously.

But what is the price of this all? I received a lot of feedback. Positive, negative, constructive, judgmental, mixed, carefully sorted. Silence and ignorance count as feedback too. I got plenty.

All those questions I received daily. The most invasive ones come usually as dm’s on Instagram. Some came from people who barely knew me, some from absolute strangers, funny enough even people whom I considered close to me tended to slide into my dm’s with one or two phrases generally telling me that I’m not fulfilling their expectations for some reason.

That’s one of the things why I don’t like mainstream social media for. Their whole concept is toxic. Especially Facebook products – they are designed to help the black-and-white style of thinking to thrive and consume our souls.

I’d like to keep mine away from that madness. As much as I can.

So here is the compromise. I keep running my accounts on the evil soil because I can connect there with other like-minded people. But don’t generate content that benefits the platform and I for sure do not give it my own money anymore.

If you are one of that returning users, you probably already got that. But I’m trying to make sure we are all on the same page.

What is going on here now?

This post is an explanation that will work only for people who are ready to understand. The speed of growth might change soon. So this post is also my intention to document the current statistics and comment on what I consider important to share right now.

When we were in Greece, I got my old Instagram account unblocked with 6000 users who knew me as a russian-speaking blogger. It returned to me after almost a year-long ban.

I didn’t advertise this website to them yet. I’m not sure they’ll all like what I have to say here, but I think some will understand.

Here’s the link btw – if you only know me from my English-speaking side, you may have to use the translation function. It’s also a private account, since I posted anti-Moscow ideas last year I suffered my first bot attack, I don’t need to see it again. I add new real users 2-3 times a week, feel free to knock on my old life door if you’re real.

Just keep in mind – the person who used to run that blog is dead. I’m not that person anymore. I might have inherited some of the values, perhaps some hobbies, but not all the stuff by far.

That’s exactly why I created this site. To grow my own bubble of people who appreciate the same things and care about feelings in the same way. But this time with no chance for any platform to take away my right to connect with those who chose to connect with the new version of me. And it’s happening.

Well. Like everything that happens to me, it’s a bit wild and full of complications, but it’s okay.

Store orders, bookings and emails

I’m still more or less a one-person operation. The people who help me are listed as co-creators but they all have their own projects, so I’m open to hiring more assistants for canbed.one purpose, my kinky projects and the general goal of the destruction of capitalism, but this will be unfolded in another post.

I’m at least a week behind on emails, I’ll catch up by the end of this week.

Shop orders are already underway, if you’ve ordered candles you’ll get updates by tomorrow evening

I’m fully booked for July and August. If you’re thinking of hiring me this year, please get in touch now.

What’s the plan further?

Have I ever said that I dream to fuck capitalism with its own relics?

It’s not just a pretentious phrase. My dreams have a high chance of becoming real if I focus on them. That’s exactly the part of the magic I’m trying to show you. Or the absence of it.

But it’s not an easy task either. I’m going to need your help.

I intend to keep going on the energy exchange where I give what I have to give, and those who have the intention to take the gifts can take them anytime they feel ready. The story will only get better with time.

Next station is: money making factory

Here we are getting to the part of the story that you can’t see at all unless I expose it

My financial results from this project. (You can see the euro symbol on the screenshots, but google analytics doesn’t represent reality) Also, I need a good accountant to give you better money stats, but let’s start with some numbers today.

In the first year, I got a bit more than 200 EUR from less than 15 people.

In the last two months, I got more than 2000 EUR (from how many people – impossible to say, that’s why I need an accountant).

But I think those who want to understand my point about sharing money dynamics got the point. Or hopefully a few points. I have no intention to write them down here, it’s too early. But I want to write a few more questions here.

1. Would it be possible for me to even go this way without having a financial backup pillow from my old life?
2. If I, a professional marketing specialist and business owner with 10+ years of experience, feel frustrated sometimes while promoting myself because it’s a completely different story, then how the hell are other artists without all this experience supposed to handle all this shit?
3. Can we change the situation by exchanging our experiences more openly, actively, and with a higher level of transparency?
4. How does talking about money often makes you feel?
5. Have you ever thought about how useful it is to preserve the current state of the financial system if everyone more or less avoids talking about money unless absolutely necessary or feels uncomfortable asking for payments?

Anyway. Call me crazy, but I want to live in a world where paying for something or being paid for something aren’t off-putting topics.

There’s no shame in exchanging resources or power consensually.

In this world, everything has a price. We pay with money, our time or our health, our kindness or our reputation, and some things cost some of us our lives. Nothing is free. We are the essential result of an exchange of energy, whether we like it or not. But the part where right now most of us are born already in debt does not have to stay.

I’m sorry if that’s complicated.

That’s why I’m here asking you to be patient and kind. I slowly understand myself and allow you to see the world as I see it. As I feel it. Not to make you feel the same. Not to evaluate things as right or wrong.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m only the impulse.

So the next step is the one where I help Gene with their financial strategy and focus on making communication about money more comfortable for us all.

If you like what I’m doing you can support my blog here. If you want to follow our discussion about money specifically – send us a blank email with the word “money” in the subject field to newsletter@sicut-dico.com.