December 2017 Income Report
Ooops, only a month late on this one. My apologies to everyone who asked where this post was, the truth is I’ve actually just been too busy with BugMuncher (for once).
Due to the wedding, honeymoon and dabbling in other little side-projects, I really don’t feel like I worked much on BugMuncher for the second half of 2017. I decided to rectify that this year, and I’ve been working really hard on BugMuncher this last month.
But more on that in the next income report, which I should be writing now. But as you know, I’m a month behind, so hopefully I’ll get January’s income report done in the next couple of days.
Normally at this point I’d give you a quick overview of what happened in the preceding month, and then move on to the actual figures, but I literally cannot remember what happened with BugMuncher in December. So I’m just gonna spend a few minutes going through the figures and emails to remind myself. Bear with me…
Ok, I’m back, and with a vague recollection of what happened in December: Mostly BugMuncher just maintained the status quo. December is always going to be on the quiet side, what with Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/[insert non-denominational winter holiday celebration here].
The Figures
| This Month (December 2017) | Last Month | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Recurring Revenue | $4,139 | $4,160 | |
| Income | £3,154.19 | £2,613.82 | |
| Expenses | £2,370.37 | £2,444.45 | |
| Paying customers | 66 | 65 | |
| - Personal Plan | 23 | 25 | |
| - Startup Plan | 35 | 31 | |
| - Corporate Plan | 8 | 9 | |
| Unique users on landing page | 1,305 | 1,781 | |
| New Free Trial sign ups | 21 | 35 | |
| Free Trial sign up rate | 1.6% | 2.0% | |
| New Paying customers | 6 | 6 | |
| Lost Paying Customers | 5 | 3 | |
| Free Trial to Paying conversion | 28.6% | 17.1% | |
| Profit |
So a very slight loss in revenue, mostly due to one of my top level $199/month subscriptions downgrading to the mid-level $59/month plan.
Other than that, it was a pretty decent month - 6 new subscribers and $325 of new recurring revenue. Predictably uniques on the home page was down, but free trial to paying was pretty damn strong.
Profit is up simply because I had a customer pay for 12 months of the middle Startup plan up front.
Expenses
| Supplier | Expense | Amount | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | £2,370.37 | ||
| Me | Salary | £2,142.93 | - |
| Me | Home office allowance | £57.07 | - |
| Linode | Hosting | £38.21 | $50 |
| Digital Ocean | Hosting | £11.46 | $15.00 |
| SauceLabs | Selenium Servers | £52.74 | $69.00 |
| Pingdom | Uptime monitoring | £9.95 | - |
| Plusnet | Internet | £12.01 | - |
| O2 | Mobile Phone | £13.00 | - |
| Xero | Accounting Software | £33.00 | - |
Expenses = normal. Running out of ways to say that. This will be the last month I detail expenses, as it rarely changes.
Revenue
Ah, the fabled “Upside down, and slightly lumpy, hockey stick growth”. Also known as Venture Capitalist Repellent. Although if I changed the name from BugMuncher something to do with BitCoin they’d be throwing money at me.
I feel I should probably reiterate that I haven’t changed, I still have no interest in VCs or funding, I just thought it was amusing that BugMuncher’s revenue growth is pretty much the opposite of what VCs normally look for.
But I can do better, I can reach $5k, I will reach $5k.
Plans for January
Let’s pretend January isn’t already finished as I write this:
I’m going to get back to work straight away after the new year, no taking time off for hangovers. The ultimate goal for the month is to finish that damn custom survey questions update and get it live.
Thanks for reading
- Matt