2022 year end review – reflecting on a challenging year, lessons learned and hopes for the future

Another year has come and gone, and it’s time for a review of all that CodeRevolution accomplished in 2022. On a global scale, it was certainly a year like no other, with the ongoing Ukrainian war and the global impact of Covid-19, everyone was impacted in a way or another.

Also, on a personal note, in December of 2022, I experienced the devastating loss of my father, as he died from a pulmonary disease. Losing a loved one is always a difficult and emotionally taxing experience, and my grief and sadness during this time were overwhelming. It was difficult to find the motivation and focus to continue with my daily tasks and responsibilities, and my productivity inevitably suffered as a result. Also, in the same period, me and my family also contracted COVID-19 (for the first time for us).

The physical and mental toll of the virus was significant, especially as it was combined with the loss of my father. I was really struggling to maintain my energy and focus as I recovered from the illness. These events have had a profound impact on my personal and professional life, and it has been a challenging year to say the least. I have had to temporarily adjust my business goals and priorities as I navigate my grief and recovery.

It has been a difficult year, but I am grateful for the support of my loved ones and the understanding of my clients and customers. I am taking things one day at a time and trying to find ways to adapt and move forward. I want to encourage anyone who may be going through a similar experience to remember to be kind to yourself and give yourself grace. It is okay to take a step back and adjust your goals and priorities as needed. It is important to take care of yourself and allow yourself time to heal and process your emotions. Seek support from loved ones, a therapist, or a support group if needed.

As we move into the new year, I am hopeful for a brighter future and the opportunity to move forward with renewed energy and focus. Even with these unfortunate events, lets continue with a new edition of the “Year End Review” post, in an optimistic way.

I am glad that I have the ability to write this post, to contemplate the rights and wrongs of the last year and to fix the wrongs and to improve the rights. You can check also previous “Year in Review” posts I wrote: 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021.

First and foremost, I am happy to say that I released several new plugins that have been well received by CodeRevolution’s users. The best example of this is the Aiomatic plugin, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 models to generate unique blog posts, and has proven to be a hit with busy bloggers looking to save time on content creation.

The Ultimate News Aggregator, Bestbuyomatic and Ultimate Anime Scraper have also been popular additions to my plugin lineup, providing users with a convenient way to access and display relevant news, BestBuy products and anime content on their sites.

In addition to releasing new plugins, I also made significant updates to my existing products, improving their functionality and user experience. I am always striving to provide my customers with the best possible tools and am constantly working to improve and optimize my plugins. Long time customer satisfaction is essential in my business view.

Of course, the events of 2022 had a significant impact on the WordPress economy as a whole. The Ukrainian war and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have brought about unprecedented challenges and changes for businesses around the world. However, I can say that I have been fortunate to have a strong and supportive community of users who have stuck with me through these tough times, and in this review post I want to thank you all for this!

I am grateful for the support of my blog readers, YouTube subscribers and customers and am excited to see what the future holds. I have big plans for 2023 and can’t wait to share them with you. So, a big Thank You for being a part of the CodeRevolution family!

Now let’s check on the 2022 year’s numbers and stats

• • I managed to release 4 new WordPress plugins: (Aiomatic, Ultimate News Aggregator, Bestbuyomatic and Ultimate Anime Scraper)

• • Grew my YouTube channel, passed the 5600 subscriber mark and continued to publish videos

• • Maintain traffic to this site, adding more articles to the blog section. Also, I added more content to the member only section of this site

• • Created my third and forth APIs, one for scraping anime data with full episodes from around the web and the other for AI content creation and editing (currently text and images)

• • Trimmed my niche sites and kept only the most profitable ones

• • Updated my existing plugins, adding new functionality to them, making them work together like never before and also, updated all the plugins which needed maintenance, so they are kept fully functional

• • As usual, I continued to provide support for all my plugin customers! This is top priority for me.

So let’s see a detailed overview of what happened in 2022:

1. CodeRevolution on CodeCanyon

In 2022, my WordPress plugin portfolio grew to 120 plugins (+4 in 2022, vs +3 from 2021).

In the past years, I was used to releasing tens of plugins in a single year, however, for 2 consecutive years now, I managed to release only 3-4 new plugins each year. The main reason behind this is the high number of support requests and customer questions, which are top priority for me, at a daily matter. As a business, CodeRevolution’s top priority is always the satisfaction of my customers. I believe that happy customers are the true foundation of a successful company, and I always strive to provide the best possible support and customer service to each and every one of my customers. But what does it mean to prioritize customer support? And why is it so important? First and foremost, providing excellent customer support means being there for each customers when they need me. Whether it’s answering questions, troubleshooting issues, or simply lending a listening ear, I am always committed to being responsive and helpful whenever my customers need assistance. Additionally, putting customer satisfaction first means going above and beyond to ensure that my customers are happy with their experience. This can involve offering additional resources and support, providing personalized recommendations, or simply taking the time to understand and address their individual needs. In today’s competitive market, excellent customer service can be a key differentiator for a business. Customers are more likely to return and recommend a company that they feel has provided them with great service, which in turn can lead to increased revenue and growth. This is why, I favor exceptional quality customer support over the development of new plugins and products, as in my current vision, great customer support is the base of a thriving company.

Regarding number of plugin sales from 2022, I saw a 10% increase in sales count, as I managed to make 2.2k sales in 2022 (versus 2k sales in 2021). For this, once again, I have to thank everybody who purchased any of my plugins or who follows me here on this blog or on YouTube.

A goal for 2023 is to create and publish new plugins (regardless of their number). I will try to focus my attention on AI and plugins related to AI, as I see a great growth and huge potential in this area. Also, I will continue to keep all my existing plugins up to date, functioning and maintained.

2. Plugin Support

Because sales increased slightly in 2022, customer support load also increased (especially as I work alone on each and every aspect of my company at the moment, including customer support). However, I tried to reply and solve each and any issue which could have appeared for any customer while using my plugins. Despite the added workload, I made sure to prioritize customer support and tried my best to reply to and solve any issues that arose for my plugin’s users. I understand that when people are using my plugins, they are relying on them to work smoothly and efficiently, and any problems they encounter can be frustrating and time-consuming. That’s why I made it my mission to address any issues as quickly and effectively as possible, working diligently to resolve them to the best of my ability. While it can be challenging to juggle all the different aspects of running a business on my own, I am committed to putting my customers first and providing them with the support they need. I am grateful for their patience and understanding as I work to improve and expand my company, and I look forward to continuing to provide excellent customer support in the future and hope that my customers will continue to reward me with more 5 star reviews for my plugins.

3. Site Stats (coderevolution.ro)

In 2022, the traffic of this site underperformed the traffic of 2021, but at the end of the year, I saw some signs of recovery, which seem really promising.

At the time of writing of this post, 22,472 different people visited the site in 2022 (down from 38,421 in 2021 – I suspect that Google penalized my site for some weird reason, which I still try to figure out). There were 72,594 page views (down from 95,106 in 2021) and an average of 1.45 page views per visit (down from 1.88 in 2021).

For 2023, I will keep the goal which was set for the 2022 year (which was unfortunately not yet met): to pass 250,000 page views on this site in a single year.

4. Blog Posting Stats

In 2022, I published 6 new posts on my blog (down from 20 in 2021 – once again a big decrease, attributed to my main focus on customer support and plugin updates). Also, the member only section of my site grew with 14 articles (down from 16 from last year). I put more focus on the member only section of my site, to provide quality for the subscribers of the site, who continue to support my work and efforts. I will continue to do some premium research and publish more member only articles, to say thank you for all the wonderful people who subscribed to my membership site!

As a goal for 2023, I think it would be nice to double the number of posts published this year. To keep things realistic, so, my mail goal is 12 posts on my main blog and 28 posts on the member only part of the blog.

5. YouTube Channel Videos

In addition to prioritizing customer support, I also made an effort to grow and expand my presence on YouTube in 2022. The CodeRevolutionTV YouTube channel saw a steady increase in subscribers this year, with the current count standing at 5669 (up from 4318 in 2021). I published a total of 191 new videos this year, featuring updates on my plugins, new plugin releases, and helpful tutorials. While I didn’t quite reach my goal of 6,000 subscribers this year, I am pleased with the growth I’ve seen and I continue to be committed to creating valuable and informative content for my viewers. I believe that by providing my audience with useful resources and information, I can not only help them get the most out of my plugins and products, but also establish myself as a trusted and reliable source in the WordPress community.

Ad revenue on the other hand went down from last year. Now, I earn around 2250$ per year from my channel, down from 3100$ per year, from 2021.

For 2023, my goal is to reach 7000 subscribers. I hope I will manage to reach this goal, as it is slightly over the 1000 subscribers mark I think my channel can take without effort.

6. Niche Sites

In 2022 I did not create any new niche sites, I focused mainly on the existing ones (which remained from the VISA card accident from 2021 0 to learn more about this, I recommend you read also the 2021 year end review post). Based on this experience, I will continue to work mainly on WordPress plugins and customer support, I don’t plan to create more sites at the moment. I will continue to work on my passion, which is programming new WordPress plugins.

So, I don’t really have a goal for 2023 for niche sites, more than just maintain the ones I already have and to keep them functional.

7. Online Courses

In 2022, there were no new courses released, however, I had a goal set back from 2021, to create at least a new course. I failed to met this goal and all I can do now is to postpone this goal to 2023. Lets see if I will have the time and energy required to build an online course which will be useful for you guys, during 2023.

8. Other interesting stuff from 2022

Check some video highlights from 2022, which are notable and interesting:

• • I released my 1000th video on YouTube

• • Created AiomaticAPI, a new API for AI generated content creation

• • Took part in Envato’s 2022 “Cyber Sale Week”

9. Summing Up the Goals for 2023

To sum things up, here are my goals for 2023:

• Boost productivity and set realistic targets to achieve better results than in 2022.
• Create new WordPress plugins and maintain existing ones, with a focus on maintaining a 5-star support level.
• Maintain my niche sites, by also reviewing and optimizing them.
• Grow my YouTube channel and provide valuable content for my audience.
• Develop a new online course to share my knowledge and expertise with others.
• Prioritize delivering a positive experience for all past and future customers.

10. Thank you for reading the year end review for 2022!

As the year 2022 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the progress and accomplishments of the past 12 months. Overall, it has been a challenging year, but despite any setbacks or obstacles, I have managed to achieve a number of significant goals.

One of the main highlights of the year was the successful launch of Aiomatic – the new WordPress plugin for AI content creation, which has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from users. I also made significant strides in growing my YouTube channel and creating valuable content for my audience.

Although I faced many difficulties along the way, I remained committed to delivering a high level of customer service and support, and I believe this dedication has paid off in the form of satisfied customers and positive reviews.

Looking ahead to the coming year, I am really excited to continue building on these successes and setting new goals for myself. I am confident that with hard work and determination, I can make 2023 an even better year!

As a tradition, I finish up the post with the picture of my beloved daughter Maya, we were on a hike at the countryside, in our beautiful country, Romania.

As always, cheers to years past and those yet to come 🍻!