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MRR update: $22/month from Chrome extensions

MRR update: $22/month from Chrome extensions.

Not where I want to be, but the machine is starting to work.

What changed this week:

  • ZenRead v1.2.0 shipped — the #1 issue was silent trial expiration. Zero notifications = zero upgrades. Fixed with chrome.alarms (4 reminders) + post-trial popup.
  • CookieJar hitting 2.1% free→paid conversion on paywall (96 shown → 2 paid)
  • ReadMark at 5.3% (38 shown → 2 paid)

What's broken:

  • Revenue pipeline stopped syncing April 14 — flying blind on actual May transactions
  • ZenRead got 200 installs in 4 days, GA4 shows -57% WAU. Ghost installs from CWS algo.

30-day target: $40. Need 1-2 more paying users. 12-month target: $670/month (34x current). Ambitious but I have 17 extensions and finally understand the conversion math.

Building solo, no co-founder. Happy to compare notes with anyone in similar territory.

posted to Icon for group Building in Public
Building in Public
on May 19, 2026
  1. 1

    How do you analyze your report?

    1. 1

      Honest answer: my stack is half-built right now.

      What works:

      • GA4 for installs, MAU, popup events. Each of my 35 extensions fires the
        same 3-event schema (paywall_shown / upgrade_clicked / dismissed) so I
        can compare conversion across the portfolio.
      • ExtensionPay → Stripe for actual MRR.
      • Supabase + a tiny Vercel dashboard that pulls GA4 + Stripe nightly into one table I can SQL-query (cohorts, weekly diffs, anomaly flags).

      What's broken:

      • Stripe → Supabase sync died April 14 (hence the "flying blind on May tx"
        line). Still debugging the webhook handler.
      • GA4 geo is 100% "(not set)" for all 35 extensions — known CSP / referrer
        issue with Chrome extensions, planning to fix late May.

      The non-obvious win has been the unified 3-event schema across the
      portfolio
      . Once you have that consistent, you can spot stuff like
      "ReadMark converts at 3.3% but XDetox at 0.2% — what's different about the
      trigger moment?" Without it you're just looking at noise per-product.

      Curious what you're using? Especially the "noticing what changed
      week-over-week" part — that's where most dashboards I've tried (Mixpanel,
      PostHog default views) seem to fall short.

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