Shipped this week #1: rmelling.co.uk is live

The launch

rmelling.co.uk is live. You can now follow along with my journey in more detail, and even join my newsletter to see what I'm up to and what I've shipped. I'll share real stats and real insights, including my (ongoing) annoyance with Apple and the lack of iPhone Duo stock, which is holding back my ability to test apps for the Duo. Frustrating!

I've also launched the TestFlight for the WordPush Apple apps. You can check it out and join the TestFlight here. I'm giving everyone who gets access a 30-day free trial of WordPush, but spaces are limited.

And I started developing an iPhone Duo game inspired by my brother's idea. It's really cool and will launch as soon as I've tested it on a Duo (if you have one, hit me up!).

A few notes on the list above: the carousels and the voice engine aren't technically shipped yet, but they're in the beta, and they're the biggest leaps WordPush has made. The voice engine is a tricky thing to nail, it would seem. This sixth version is huge, and some special users are testing it right now. X posting has been coming for a while, so watch out for me posting on X more now that WordPush can handle it. And I'm going through the gruelling task of getting connectors set up for Claude and ChatGPT, so people can plug in to WordPush with their own AI. It's a custom connector for now, so I'm hoping being officially listed will help with discoverability.

What happened in marketing

This has been a bit slower. I posted on LinkedIn about this very list, but thought I'd go into more detail here, and I've had some other wins:

• Turnmail: GEO is making huge steps for this product. It's getting organic signups every day now, thanks to people using AI recommendations. A HUGE win.
• WordPush: I've decided to wind down cold email on this one. I tried using AI to write the emails, and it failed. I wrote the emails myself in a personal, tongue-in-cheek way, and they got low results. I don't think the infrastructure cost is worth it for such low discoverability, so I'm calling it on this one.
• Personal brand: I've reshaped my LinkedIn profile to be me-first instead of product-first. I think this works with the type of content I've been putting out. No one seems to be interested in the product, so I want to talk more about everything, including Initiate IT (my fractional IT and services business), as that's also taking off thanks to improved SEO/GEO.

Initiate IT

A few updates on the IT business:

• New leads are flying in!
• New content shipped to the site.
• Cancelled the Google Ads: low volume and rubbish leads!
• Email marketing is in the works.
• A client is looking at leased lines, which will need to be implemented.
• Lots of BAU support queries and strategy calls, as usual.

That rounds my week up well.