I would love to build a dashboard for authors.

I do not know when we can afford to build this feature. 

Everything you see was built with one part-time developer, and we are covering about 70% of our costs (I am currently working full-time for free). So, my main goal right now is to break even on costs. After that, I want to hire a full-time developer in addition to our part-time developer so we can keep creating the best indie book platform for readers and authors. I have to be very strategic about what we build and ensure it helps us achieve this goal at this early stage. 

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100% of the money from this program goes toward developing new features and my goal of hiring a full-time developer.

Why is this feature a technical challenge and so expensive to build?

We just added a user account system in October 2024; it is a big leap for us, as it gives us a place to build this feature. But we still need to build all of that into this system, and I am not sure when that will make sense for us to do versus other features. 

We also need to find a tracking system that can pull that data via an API without high costs. If I can't find one that works, I will have to build something custom. I am hoping Plausible can do this cheaply, but I am not sure yet. We are currently testing Plausible in this capacity through our Book Boost ad program, which Founding Members receive as a perk for supporting us. 

Both of these paths are incredibly expensive and time-consuming. 

What stats would I like to show authors in a future dashboard?

• How many readers viewed their book list(s)?
• How that ranks among lists so they get a comparison versus the top 50% of lists, etc.
• How many readers clicked their book on a bookstore link? And maybe the explore link as well. I think this is the most valuable stat to see how many possible sales you are generating and if your book is resonating with readers or not. 

When can you build this? 

I don't know. I think we can look at building it once we have 1,500 to 1,800 paying members.  

With our very limited financial and development resources, my main focus right now is to build features that grow traffic and have the biggest impact on getting Shepherd to financial sustainability. 

What stats do you have?

On my side, I have aggregate stats for all pages and page types. I have stats on each page and how many people click links to bookstores (but not on individual books). I am currently using Plausible.io to do this (I used Google Analytics in the past, but Google switched to GA4, which is terrible). 

Here is the overall traffic and clicks stats to the author's books (updated monthly).