I built a Twitter bot that tweets out my revenue and now it's embarrassing
So partly inspired by Indie hackers, I connected my Stripe account to a Twitter bot, and each week after launch it automatically sends out my revenue.
Fast forward three weeks after launch, I have 500+ signups, but only two paid users. For a whopping $18 in monthly revenue.
Here's the scary thing: it really didn't hit me until I saw the bot's tweet. First, some embarrassment and paranoia - "what if my friends see it? they think I'm a successful entrepreneur, this is going to shatter that" followed by some good old-fashioned dread.
I've read so many posts about how building in public is super motivating and people love it, but this didn't feel good at all. And I'm now starting to regret the whole visibility thing.
I'm also starting to think that most of the successful folks we see being transparent with revenue and posting often only do it after they've hit a respectable number. That makes it easy to focus on a few success stories and gloss over the giant graveyard of business ideas. It discounts how hard building a business really is.
I don't want to discourage people from sharing early on, but at least I'm finding it's tough to bank on building in public to help motivate you when sometimes it can do the opposite.
But even though it's going to take a bit to recover motivation on this project, at least it's out there. I'm reminded of the Steven Pressfield quote - “It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.”
With that in mind, building in public is still probably worth it. Going this route has netted much more helpful feedback than I've received in the past, and if nothing else, it helps me feel like I'm not alone.
500 signups is awesome and you should be proud of that :) $18/mo is still $18/mo. It's nothing to be embarrassed about at all. 99% of people with side projects never even monetize.
Exactly! Everyone who would be tweeting out “$0 MRR” for months on end is seething with jealousy over your hard won $18 MRR 😂 In the same way that you’re staring at the $1k MRR dudes. And they too feel insecure next to the others, and so on. Rock on man 📈
Appreciate it! To the point about it all being relative, I probably feel insecure after reading the Baremetrics news this week 😂
This is awesome 👏 Transparency goes a long way. Just don’t make a HN posting bot 😉
Thanks! And good call, that would be terrifying
Yeah, Building in Public will only help if the community is motivating you to achieve more!
"I'm also starting to think that most of the successful folks we see being transparent with revenue and posting often only do it after they've hit a respectable number. "
Yup, that's it. And even then it's relative b/c what one person thinks is respectable another may think is rather low. Building in public doesn't mean you need to share revenue figures btw, it can just mean you share processes, tools, and strategies. Use percentages (% closing rate, etc.) and not specific customer numbers. Just an idea.
Really like that idea. I could even see IndieHackers changing their metrics to "+15% this month" vs defaulting to MRR to encourage relative success
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With a SaaS business - which is what I'd say most IHers are trying to build - it's very likely that your margins are extremely profitable. So MRR is pretty reflective of profit. At least, that's how I understand it.
keep going
This is awesome.
First of all, its really cool what you built. Second, 500 signups, three weeks in, and two paying customers is really good! You should be proud. Whatever we expect or picture never really turns out as quickly as we hoped. It's those that keep on hammering away that achieve their dreams.
Kudos to you and your humility!
If anything, this should direct you to more on how to increase conversions.
Recently, I noticed one of my apps has only 1 percent conversion (2 out of 200 plus users) rate and now all my focus is on improving it.
You want to be transparent but Not discourage others when they See Bad numbers? Man this is just Part of the Business Game! Especially new Starters Must learn this
Build in public founders often tweeted their numbers out early but nobody cared since they were so uneventful ;)
So true, people usually start to care about it only when the numbers are high enough (relative to what they make).
Why not tweet the signup count and not the MRR? It’s an awesome milestone what you got there 🥳
Keep doing it ! I understand what you feel, I was debating posting my progress with my product launch because I've only made 5 sales so far... but you know what, we all start at 0, and it's important for all of us to remember that even we only hear about the success stories, most people are like you and I, struggling to make their first $$$$ !
your landing page for notionmetrics is superb!
Hehe, bad bot! 😋
It's a cool idea for a bot!
thanks Pete!
I was working on a bot to do this as well! Mine is even worse, though. $0 revenue! 😭
I was in that same spot a few weeks ago! Small steps 😊
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I'm using Javascript. It's a Node.js function that gets called every 24 hours on Heroku - it looks at the launch date and if 7/14/21/30 days have passed, it sends out a tweet update via the twit library