Poker Copilot: The (Half-)Year in Review

It’s January 1st. I’m recovering from New Year’s celebrations. A new Ice Age hit Germany recently, keeping me indoors. So it’s a good time to look back on Poker Copilot in 2008.

Summary: Things went very well.

I launched Poker Copilot on July 1st. The first release was somewhat light on features.But it was enough for people to find it, try it out, and tell me what missing features were most important.

Traffic to the Poker Copilot website rose consistently:

Downloads also kept rising:

But most importantly for long-term viability for this project, sales kept rising:

The curious are looking at this unlabelled chart and wondering: how much does Poker Copilot earn? Let me keep some secrets! Monthly revenue is 4 digits, healthy, but not enough to justify giving up my day job – yet.

With feedback and support from many Mac-owning poker players, I’ve kept adding most requested features, worked hard on keeping the user interface simple, and tried to make Poker Copilot something unique in the world of poker tracking software.

Plans for 2009:

Personal directions:
When my current consulting gig ends in March, I’m taking six months off, and dragging my German girlfriend down under to Australia. There I’ll work exclusively on Poker Copilot and one or two other side projects. It will be the big test as to whether I can increase sales enough to give up the consulting work altogether. For many years it has been my dream to earn my living by creating and selling software products. That dream now feels like it could soon become reality.

Software directions:
I’ll keep doing things as I have been: adding most-requested features and releasing updates often.

Marketing directions:
The current approach has worked well so I’ll continue: openly and frequently blog, participate in forums, try to offer outstanding customer support. I’ll improve my marketing and sales efforts gradually, slowly, and continually.