It’s been roughly a month since we launched the idea for Fiber Club so I wanted to share what we’ve been up to since then.
- Started thinking about the design of Fiber Club and have been researching accessibility and overall good design practices.
- Took down the surveys. Thank you to everyone who filled it out! When we have more specific questions we will reach out at that time.
- Patreon is approved and working!
- Reached out to a handful of designers to get their feedback regarding the designer process flow so we know which features to focus on.
- Sorting through various email issues. It seems yahoo, aol, hotmail and some personal domains are auto-rejecting so I authenticated the domain and warmed up the IP. Hopefully those steps will help with this next round of emails.
- Teri is working on a few logo design ideas and should have an update soon!
- Rommel set up the fiber.club domain, project plans, code repositories, documentation and testing infrastructure. He also set up the email collection landing page on fiber.club and AWS setup for Elastic Beanstalk, Route53, Certificate Manager and RDS. He is working on a mobile app repository and creating reusable components to use throughout the app (buttons, cards, drawers, headers, icons, etc.) as well as other features.
Finances:
I would like to be open and honest about the finances of Fiber Club as I think it’s important to know where your money is going. All of the fundraising that has been done is earmarked for business expenses towards Fiber Club. So far we have spent about $1,500 (USD) on things like software, templates, domain, PO Box, email marketing, etc.
Of the money we’ve raised, we have about $1,500 left. We will be receiving our first Patreon payout in the next few days so we expect it will be closer to $2,200 after those funds are transferred. We had a backlog of funds with Patreon because we were waiting to be approved so now that is cleared, we should be receiving around $500-$600 per month starting in September if things don’t change.
Overall, Rommel and I are trying to be as frugal with the money raised as possible. Especially as the project ramps up, we foresee a lot of expenses that will add up very quickly. Next year we will need funds to set up Fiber Club as a business, pay for hosting content and handling traffic, and other expenses.
I would like Fiber Club to be financially healthy so that it becomes a sustainable business for Rommel and I to continue to work on. We are in it for the long haul and we don’t expect we will be paying ourselves anytime soon. Once we are able to afford paying our own salaries from the profits of Fiber Club, I will disclose that information as well.
My hope is that one day we will not only be able to work on Fiber Club full time, but that we will also be able to financially support others in the industry as well. Ideally that includes a small staff of people and also things like grants for people to start their own small business in the fiber world. That dream is still a long ways away but maybe one day I can look back on this blog post and be proud that it’s come true.
As always, I want to thank you again for your continued patience and generosity. We have big plans for Fiber Club and we are eternally grateful for your support. 🙂
Originally posted on August 2, 2020