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. We are not covering our costs yet, so my main goal right now is to get to the point where we are making enough to hire one full-time developer. I have to be very strategic about what we build and ensure it helps us achieve this goal at this early stage. 

If you want to help, please join our membership program for founding members. 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?

First, I need to create a user account system for authors to have a place they can log in so they can see these stats. We don't have a user system yet, as we saved a lot of money, skipping that complexity and impact to our server costs. Even with a user system in place, this is a massive amount of work to connect authors, their books, and their book lists together. 

Second, I need to find a tracking system that can pull that data via an API without big 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. 

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? 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.

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. And we need to have enough money to hire one full-time developer before we have the capacity to do this. 

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).

P.S. Would you like to help us build features like an author stats system faster?

I launched a membership program for founding members at the urging of authors and readers. 100% of the money goes toward developing new features and my goal of hiring a full-time developer (currently, we only have one part-time developer).