September's Statistics
I liked September, September was a good month. Not only did it mark a year since I began this ludicrous quest to earn a living from my little side-project, it was also a great month for revenue growth, AND I got a lot of shit done!
As always, we begin with some numbery things, but first there’s been a couple of changes:
I’ve changed the actual USD revenue data to be before Fastspring’s fees are deducted, as it makes it easier to see the difference between MRR and actual revenue, and the fees are detailed in the next row.
I’ve also added figures relating to the new Freeloader plan.
The Figures
| This Month (September 2016) | Last Month | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Savings (end of month) | £7,047.44 | £7,292.46 | 3.4% |
| Monthly Recurring Revenue | $2,495 | $2,198 | 13.5% |
| Actual Revenue | $2,407 | $2,198 | 9.5% |
| Fastspring fees | $179.07 | $165.77 | 8.0% |
| Expenses | £1,959.92 | £1,748.36 | 12.1% |
| Income | £1,496.56 | £1,145.16 | 30.7% |
| Average Month on Month Growth | 11.3% | 11.12% | 1.6% |
| Paying customers | 41 | 38 | 7.9% |
| - Personal Plan | 21 | 20 | 5.0% |
| - Startup Plan | 13 | 12 | 8.3% |
| - Corporate Plan | 7 | 6 | 16.6% |
| Free plan subscribers | 10 | - | ∞% |
| Unique users on landing page | 2,481 | 3,052 | 18.7% |
| New Free Trial sign ups | 50 | 65 | 23.0% |
| Free Trial sign up rate | 2.0% | 2.1% | 4.8% |
| New Paying customers | 4 | 6 | 33.3% |
| Lost Paying Customers | 1 | 3 | 66.6% |
| Free Trial to Paying conversion | 8.0% | 9.2% | 13.0% |
| New Free plan customers | 10 | - | ∞% |
| Free Trial to Free plan conversion | 20.0% | - | ∞% |
| Monthly Burn Rate | £245.02 | £504.51 | 51.4% |
| Runway | 28.8 Months | 14.5 Months | 98.6% |
Even though there’s a quite a few rows in the red, I’m really happy with September’s Statistics - most of the red figures relate to having less traffic than last month, which is to be expected, as last month I had a popular blog post that brought in a lot of traffic. Well, a lot for me at least.
Last month I set my self the ‘lofty goal’ of reaching $2,500 MRR by the end of September. I didn’t really think I’d make, but I also didn’t think I’d get this close - just five dollars short! Of course most of that can be attributed to a new subscriber to the $199 / month corporate plan.
This month there was quite a discrepancy between MRR and actual revenue, this is because two subscriptions (one $29 and one $59) ended the month in an ‘overdue’ status, meaning Fastspring had tried to take payment, but for whatever reason it had been declined. Fastspring will make two more attempts to collect payment before cancelling the subscription, and both of these were on their first attempt when the month ended. Want to know if these subscriptions were eventually paid up or had to be cancelled? You’ll have to wait until next month’s post (it’s a cliff-hanger, dun dun duuuun!)
I’m really happy to see that my average revenue growth has increased for the first time in 5 months! Even if it was by just 1.6%, it’s a great relief to have reversed that trend.
Runway is the real story here though, with my burn rate slashed to just £245, I’ve currently got enough money left to last for nearly two and half years. I really do think I’ll be able to reach profitability by the end of 2016!
Expenses
| Supplier | Expense | Amount | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | £1,959.92 | ||
| Me | Salary | £1,345.29 | - |
| Me | Home office allowance | £54.71 | - |
| Digital Ocean | Hosting | £7.86 | $10.00 |
| Linode | Hosting | £8.48 | $10.80 |
| SauceLabs | Selenium Servers | £53.51 | $69.00 |
| Barnstaple Work Hubs | Co-working Space | £180.00 | - |
| Pingdom | Uptime monitoring | £9.95 | - |
| Tree Tops Chartered Accountants | Annual Return Submission | £60.00 | - |
| Federation of Small Businesses | Annual Membership Renewal | £130.00 | - |
| Talktalk | Internet | £35.20 | - |
| O2 | Mobile Phone | £22.84 | - |
| Gengo | Translations | £52.08 | $66.60 |
September was an unusually expensive month, even though I didn’t expense any sandwiches! But I’m not worried, as there was £242.08 in non-recurring payments: £190 were things I pay annually, and the £52.08 to Gengo was for having the new text in BugMuncher translated, as well as having two new translations done (Italian and Russian).
Revenue
Behold my fancy graphs!
It’s great to see I’ve put even more distance between me and my 10% growth target, I’m not even gonna do the whole ‘Starup Growth Calculator’ thing this month, as with over 2 years in runway, I really don’t think it’s necessary.
Freeloaders
One of my goals for September was to introduce a free plan, which I decided to call the Freeloader plan. I wrote a separate blog post about the plan and its implementation, so today I’m just going to talk about the results.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the free plan, or even if there was any demand for one. I only made the free plan live on the 18th September, so it’s probably a bit early to draw any meaningful conclusions, but here’s what happened:
| Before free plan 1st - 18th Sept | After free plann 19th - 30th Sept | |
| Unique users on landing page | 1,439 | 1,120 |
|---|---|---|
| New Free Trial sign ups | 19 | 31 |
| Free Trial sign up rate | 1.3% | 2.8% |
So based on this limited data, it seems I’m getting twice as many free trial signups now that I have a free plan. It’ll be interesting to see if that trend continues, and what long term effect (if any) this has on free trial to paying conversions.
So far, the free accounts haven’t required any technical support, nor have they put any strain on BugMuncher’s servers.
Plans for October
I’ve started working on BugMuncher’s next big update, and it’s a doozy. Recently a lot of potential customers have asked me if they can ask custom questions with BugMuncher. Currently the answer is no, but I’m now working on adding that functionality.
While I am making sure BugMuncher will still function in exactly the same way as it currently does for existing customers, adding custom questions will shift BugMuncher’s focus away from Website Feedback, and more into on-page surveys, so depending on how this update is received, it could become a bit of pivot.
The last time I pivoted BugMuncher was back in November last year, when I shifted focus away from bug reporting, and more towards general website feedback. At the time I wrote how the BugMuncher name didn’t fit so well with this new direction but decided the cons of changing the name outweighed the pros, and stuck with BugMuncher. If this new direction turns out to be a success I will be changing the name, as BugMuncher really doesn’t fit with surveys.
As always, exciting times ahead. Thanks for reading.
- Matt