The Inside Scoop: September / October/November Update

Hi Friends 😄

Quick Note: A new update is live with a lot of bug fixes, a new translation, and a Bible menu as well as much cheaper pricing. Please check it out, please subscribe, and please share it with your friends. We need all the support we can get.

It’s Spring/Summer in sunny South Africa! That means everything is green and temperatures are “just about right”.

Photo by Raphaël Biscaldi on Unsplash

Updates!

• I updated the website with an FAQ page to help with any questions our users might have. It’s basically made up of the questions I get repeatedly. Even a list of things we are working on. You can see it here: https://pencilbible.com/qa
• I also added more t-shirts/merch and even a phone case. The previous links expired — but are working now. More money = faster development (www.pencilbible.com).
• Something I’m super excited about is the Tiny Seed accelerator we just applied to. Basically, they get 10% equity for a $120k investment in PB and we get a year of mentorship (plus some much-needed funding). Please pray with me for this. I think it would be beneficial in the long run.
• Translations 💀 — ok so just another month in the coding world 😂 We budgeted $800 to add the passion translation (TPT). In the end, it will be around $6000, but we are getting a great discount. TPT has a ton of little nuances that other translations don’t have. Still, I’m excited about this one as this was my dream from 2019 when the idea was still incubating in my mind. It’s almost done. Just getting all the notes and chapter details sorted out. After TPT we will add the CSB and then continue work on touch vs pencil and drawing performance.
• When we do the TPT update there will also be a prettier Bible selection menu as well as new pricing (much cheaper for the subscriptions). Everything is still an experiment at this stage — I hope the new pricing and lifetime option will be a bit more fruitful. More money = faster development.
• We got our first server bill 💸 thanks to the 15000 downloads we had so far and an average of 800 active users monthly! The problem though is we don’t know why? The bill is for annotation downloads, but annotations are not supposed to download all the time. Matt added “logged events” in the code so we can track what is causing the download bug. I tried to upload the new version (with the logged events) to the Apple Store, but it was rejected because Apple wants us to add a “Delete Account” option to PB 😅. It’s not too much of an issue. I made a quick design and sent it to Matt for an hour's worth of coding. P.S. We found the bug and server costs are down to $100 a month now.
• + Incredibly in the USA, we are ranked number 2 under Bible search and 7th under the reference category!
• The New iPad Pro M2. Pencil Bible does not work on the new iPad. Or at least the Pencil is not working. Luckily most drawing apps are having issues.
• I created a Reddit subgroup for the Pencil Bible. Please post your notes, support & requests, or pictures of your cat if you want to 🐈‍⬛ https://www.reddit.com/r/pencilbible/

That’s it for now I think.

Thanks for the support.

Erin

P.S. I started writing this in September. It’s now October and it's a scolding hot 41 degrees celsius 🥵

P.S.S. Didn’t get accepted to Tiny Seed.

P.S.S.S. TPT is done.

P.S.S.S. It’s now November (yip 😑 — we had a ton of issues 👏🏻)