I went from $0 to $0 in about 3 months after launching Clubs HQ.
1
I had quite a few of those...
1
At least it didn't go into negatives ;-)
2
If we take into account the expenses for rent and food while developing the product full-time, I'm pretty sure the net is around the negatives...
2
So you only eat and live in a house when you're developing products? :P
2
or eat food that doesn't cost anything and live in a place that doesn't charge rent
14
We (EmailOctopus) were at £750 (55 customers) 6-months after launching paid plans. 6 months after launching the product, we didn't really have any revenue at all as we were only in 'Beta'.
Our revenue only really accelerated after we went full-time and began to treat it more as a business, rather than a side-project.
2
Thanks for sharing Thomas! Super useful
2
One of the biggest early mistakes, and I've seen others make too, is to not value your time (and therefore product) as much because you're being paid a salary by your full-time job. Anything your side-project makes is a bonus so you price it low.
As soon as we looked to increase ARPA and have a plan to acquire users, our growth rocketed.
Looking where you are numbers wise, you might not have that problem but always something to be wary of.
1
Is ARPA average revenue per account? I've never heard of that, but I'm guessing it's because customer lifetime value is a more useful stat. Is that correct in your opinion?
1
So LTV is made up of ARPA and churn rate. High ARPA and low churn-rate = high LTV. So I think to say either being more useful isn't correct, particularly as they are quite closely linked.
That said, LTV is very relevant when looking at acquisition costs and longer term, but to increase short-term cash flow ARPA (alongside acquisition) was a more important metric at the time.
1
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
13
Got Indie Hackers to about $4100 in revenue through a combination of selling ads and using affiliate links (mostly ads). Got Taskforce to about $2k in MRR. And of course $0 with many other products.
1
Awesome! thanks for sharing! Super helpful for us 🙌
8
We were at $3,494 with 97 customers 6 mo. after launching Tettra.
(it's now a three-quarter-of-a-million-dollars ARR biz)
1
And that was like 8 yrs ago right? (Been on your newsletter for years, huge fan of your writing style and content)
Any advice for long term consistency? Or keeping constant, daily progress going for that long?
1
Coming up on 10 years now! And I have lots of advice for consistency but haven't applied a lot of it to Freckle for some time ;) We're maintaining it, fixing bugs, etc., but not promoting it much these days in preference of focusing on other things. But I can say that when we DO market it consistently for weeks or months, it grows consistently. That's just a matter of inputs and outputs.
4
Mine was like:
January: 0
February: $32
March : around $400
April: around $1200
May: around $3k
June: around $4k
The next months growth decreased at about 5-10% per month. Still not sure why to this day.
3
Add your URL to this comment, you are missing on potential users here.
4
I was at $4,478 with quickmail.io and growing 4% per week
2
Big fan of yours Jeremy! I’ve been following you for years, crazy to come across you on indie hackers!
Actually it’s really not that crazy if I think about it.
I went through the Foundation about 6 months/a year after you, and I was a quickmail user for a while. Glad to see you guys doing so well.
You should do a podcast episode with @csallen , or at least a text interview!
2
Hey Joshua, thanks for the love! I've been recommended this place and I like the vibe so far :) Thanks fir the tip!
1
Awesome!
3
6 months after launching the beta: $0 as we don't charge yet.
Pricing kicks in next month so I'll be able to edit this comment later.
3
We (Mealime) were at ~$2,500 MRR after 6 months. It stayed that way for quite some time until we pivoted a few times and found our sweet spot.
3
After launching SIGMA, which isn't really a product but a service, it took me about 3 months to reach $833 / mo. After six months I was at $1500 /mo :)
2
It's hard for me to go back that far, actually — but in round numbers, we were at about $500 MMR six months after launching gimlet.us. Eight and a half years later, we're right around $10,000. It started out as a side gig (and my business partner and I both had kids in the intervening time) and it's steadily moving towards full-time work for both of us.
1
Nice consistency man!
Is it still a side project? Do you have any advice for keeping pace as long as you guys have?
2
Kind of? My business partner and I are both part-time at our "day jobs" so we have genuine work-week time set aside to run the business. Our day job / Gimlet job balance has shifted as our MRR has grown.
Advice-wise: there's a bunch of stuff we've done to make the business easy to have (we've tried very hard to keep ops simple, even if that means dev is slower — this way we don't need to spend much time at all keeping the app running) but some of it makes our lives harder (even our small clients can mail us checks) and that's fine. Aside from a few weeks before launch, we've always operated under a "no crunch" policy. We haven't taken any outside investment, so there's no board breathing down our necks to get hockey stick growth going or do something shitty with our data. If the day-to-day of running the business was stressful, we would probably have stopped by now.
But really... a lot of what has let us grow this way is privilege. Our day jobs (University jobs, both of us) have let us do our dev work without IP complications, have been flexible with hours, and provide (formerly excellent, still pretty good) health insurance. They pay enough that we can live without needing to chase the biggest paycheck we can find. We've never gone all "leap and the net will appear," we're more like "let's climb the mountain, making sure our ropes and anchors are in good condition" and we're very lucky to have been able to reasonably make choices that lets us do that.
This is the first post I read on IH and it brought me so much relief. My SaaS is at $2,500 after 6 months, and it constantly feels like such a failure. For the first 4 months we were under $350, it was painful. Seeing your numbers helps me understand we're on the right track. Maybe.
1
It’s definitely all relative. I just started my beta a month ago but I’d be ecstatic to have your numbers in six months.
2
We're at 3 months and $1100 mrr with Mandy.ai. Have a few more in the pipeline that should close soon hopefully :)
2
Most (past projects) were exactly zero.
And just a few (current ones) between $500 - $3000 after 6 months.
2
We at standuply.com reached $6k MRR in 4 months after we started charging our users.
I went from $0 to $0 in about 3 months after launching Clubs HQ.
I had quite a few of those...
At least it didn't go into negatives ;-)
If we take into account the expenses for rent and food while developing the product full-time, I'm pretty sure the net is around the negatives...
So you only eat and live in a house when you're developing products? :P
or eat food that doesn't cost anything and live in a place that doesn't charge rent
We (EmailOctopus) were at £750 (55 customers) 6-months after launching paid plans. 6 months after launching the product, we didn't really have any revenue at all as we were only in 'Beta'.
Our revenue only really accelerated after we went full-time and began to treat it more as a business, rather than a side-project.
Thanks for sharing Thomas! Super useful
One of the biggest early mistakes, and I've seen others make too, is to not value your time (and therefore product) as much because you're being paid a salary by your full-time job. Anything your side-project makes is a bonus so you price it low.
As soon as we looked to increase ARPA and have a plan to acquire users, our growth rocketed.
Looking where you are numbers wise, you might not have that problem but always something to be wary of.
Is ARPA average revenue per account? I've never heard of that, but I'm guessing it's because customer lifetime value is a more useful stat. Is that correct in your opinion?
So LTV is made up of ARPA and churn rate. High ARPA and low churn-rate = high LTV. So I think to say either being more useful isn't correct, particularly as they are quite closely linked.
That said, LTV is very relevant when looking at acquisition costs and longer term, but to increase short-term cash flow ARPA (alongside acquisition) was a more important metric at the time.
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
Got Indie Hackers to about $4100 in revenue through a combination of selling ads and using affiliate links (mostly ads). Got Taskforce to about $2k in MRR. And of course $0 with many other products.
Awesome! thanks for sharing! Super helpful for us 🙌
We were at $3,494 with 97 customers 6 mo. after launching Tettra.
Nice ARPU 💪
Thanks! We've more than doubled it since then. :)
Would love to learn more about that?
First off, we knew based on this framework that we wanted to be a t $1k annual ARPU (aka rabbit hunting): http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html
From there, we raised our prices and talked to customers at a $1k ARPU and asked them how we could make the product better. Rinse and repeat. :)
More detail here in the "What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?" section: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/tettra-f7e811e0c2
Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing 💪
$1768
(it's now a three-quarter-of-a-million-dollars ARR biz)
And that was like 8 yrs ago right? (Been on your newsletter for years, huge fan of your writing style and content)
Any advice for long term consistency? Or keeping constant, daily progress going for that long?
Coming up on 10 years now! And I have lots of advice for consistency but haven't applied a lot of it to Freckle for some time ;) We're maintaining it, fixing bugs, etc., but not promoting it much these days in preference of focusing on other things. But I can say that when we DO market it consistently for weeks or months, it grows consistently. That's just a matter of inputs and outputs.
Mine was like:
January: 0
February: $32
March : around $400
April: around $1200
May: around $3k
June: around $4k
The next months growth decreased at about 5-10% per month. Still not sure why to this day.
Add your URL to this comment, you are missing on potential users here.
I was at $4,478 with quickmail.io and growing 4% per week
Big fan of yours Jeremy! I’ve been following you for years, crazy to come across you on indie hackers!
Actually it’s really not that crazy if I think about it.
I went through the Foundation about 6 months/a year after you, and I was a quickmail user for a while. Glad to see you guys doing so well.
You should do a podcast episode with @csallen , or at least a text interview!
Hey Joshua, thanks for the love! I've been recommended this place and I like the vibe so far :) Thanks fir the tip!
Awesome!
6 months after launching the beta: $0 as we don't charge yet.
Pricing kicks in next month so I'll be able to edit this comment later.
We (Mealime) were at ~$2,500 MRR after 6 months. It stayed that way for quite some time until we pivoted a few times and found our sweet spot.
After launching SIGMA, which isn't really a product but a service, it took me about 3 months to reach $833 / mo. After six months I was at $1500 /mo :)
It's hard for me to go back that far, actually — but in round numbers, we were at about $500 MMR six months after launching gimlet.us. Eight and a half years later, we're right around $10,000. It started out as a side gig (and my business partner and I both had kids in the intervening time) and it's steadily moving towards full-time work for both of us.
Nice consistency man!
Is it still a side project? Do you have any advice for keeping pace as long as you guys have?
Kind of? My business partner and I are both part-time at our "day jobs" so we have genuine work-week time set aside to run the business. Our day job / Gimlet job balance has shifted as our MRR has grown.
Advice-wise: there's a bunch of stuff we've done to make the business easy to have (we've tried very hard to keep ops simple, even if that means dev is slower — this way we don't need to spend much time at all keeping the app running) but some of it makes our lives harder (even our small clients can mail us checks) and that's fine. Aside from a few weeks before launch, we've always operated under a "no crunch" policy. We haven't taken any outside investment, so there's no board breathing down our necks to get hockey stick growth going or do something shitty with our data. If the day-to-day of running the business was stressful, we would probably have stopped by now.
But really... a lot of what has let us grow this way is privilege. Our day jobs (University jobs, both of us) have let us do our dev work without IP complications, have been flexible with hours, and provide (formerly excellent, still pretty good) health insurance. They pay enough that we can live without needing to chase the biggest paycheck we can find. We've never gone all "leap and the net will appear," we're more like "let's climb the mountain, making sure our ropes and anchors are in good condition" and we're very lucky to have been able to reasonably make choices that lets us do that.
I wrote a blog post on this a few years ago (I even have a graph of our ARR there), I still feel like it's pretty true: http://www.ridesidecar.com/2015/02/09/running-a-startup-myths-and-realities/
This is the first post I read on IH and it brought me so much relief. My SaaS is at $2,500 after 6 months, and it constantly feels like such a failure. For the first 4 months we were under $350, it was painful. Seeing your numbers helps me understand we're on the right track. Maybe.
It’s definitely all relative. I just started my beta a month ago but I’d be ecstatic to have your numbers in six months.
We're at 3 months and $1100 mrr with Mandy.ai. Have a few more in the pipeline that should close soon hopefully :)
Most (past projects) were exactly zero.
And just a few (current ones) between $500 - $3000 after 6 months.
We at standuply.com reached $6k MRR in 4 months after we started charging our users.