During last week I dove deep into audio quality and Media Stream Recording API, there is some cool stuff happening in your browser surrounding this! We're able to get better than CD quality audio out of our browsers including that tiny one in your pocket. I was able to push these updates out and get more feedback from my users (weird I can say that!). The feedback has been good so far! (it's working, phew) 

I pushed to market quick once I had written the widget with StimulusJS and then rewrote it entirely with Svelte, without a lot of additional account-level features fully developed out. I'm about to push a simple notifications menu where users can finally clear their notification bell and get a real time notification if they're logged in. (Thanks to the noticed gem [I still read it as notic3d], Chris and team made this easy) I have some ideas for integrating this better to the inbox interface.

Tacked on my first international user, unfortunately, I don't have internationalization in mind, possibly a future feature. But, interesting to see the use-cases come in. I believe it was a user who is a "consultant" of sorts wanting to use in on their contact page.

Pressing on with trying to find the motivation to finish up the Ghost theme, named Caster, a separate paid product, to hopefully kick start the new year. It's about 80% complete. So, I sit here, procrastinating, writing an update into the 12in12 void.

I don't know how other indie-style single dev projects deal with a "hit" of product launch, my anxiety level would be through the roof. May be why I opted for a slow roll out, to fix any underlying bugs and to try to incorporate any feedback from initial paying users.

Over the past few days I've been able to tack on a couple paid accounts to the ol' indie developer success belt. They've helped identify a few new features that I feel would improve the value significantly for our niche.

This has led me down the rabbit hole of focusing on the understanding of digital audio, differences between browsers (ugh), transcoding and what really is available in the browser today with regards to the MediaRecorder API. I have a much greater understanding of the capabilities and may post some analysis in the dusty personal blog. 

I feel we're on the cusp of more configuration of browser audio across the variants of browsers. Fingers crossed Safari keeps moving the needle.

Some pipeline features coming to the widget will be:

Allow for HQ audio input (set frame rate, sample rate, bits per second)
Degrade to standard if not supported by browser
Notify user of potential for degraded audio when using a browser not supporting HQ audio (this can be enabled/disabled)

I do plan to finish first ancillary product by Dec 31 that showcases Soundbite to niche audience. It's a podcast theme for Ghost publishing platform.

I've been toiling over ways to build paths to showcasing Soundbite as well as selling an additional product. What I've been hacking on lately has been outside of Soundbite but will ultimately be a way to grow what I'll call on ramps to new users of Soundbite.

I'm building out a few themes for Ghost CMS that have a "question" submission component that will showcase Soundbite's capabilities of capturing those recordings to be used in their niche (podcasting, video show, training course, etc).

Small short update:

I disabled ads and am re-thinking how I want to package this overall solution. Ads seem to bring a non-engaged user. I attempted AdWords targeting users looking for "website voicemail" and "web audio recording." Also attempted to run a quick campaign to target the podcast niche on Reddit. (Going to research further into Twitter ads)

Got first account that added a site, since ads were not running, not sure how they found the site. I think since I'm offering a free tier I'll need to have a metric show when a user adds the widget to their site. 

Got listed on AlternativeTo and approved.

Tiny wins. 

Reddit podcasting communities, while early, seem more interested

Still < 10 accounts and none have gone through with the full setup process of adding the embed to their website as of yet.

I think I'm going to use 12in12 in conjunction with my #buildinpublic posts on Twitter.