Making a profit!
by Allison SeboldtSince I launched Fantasy Congress in February, revenue has hovered around ~$300 MRR. Which is nice, but barely covers the site's expenses. I've spent this summer working on a new offering that I hoped would bump that number up a notch: annual subscriptions for educators. This offering launched in July and already I've seen a 127% increase in revenue!
July Highlights
- $760 total revenue
- 6 new free trials
- 4 educator sign ups
- Estimated profit: ~$460
As the fall semester approaches, I'm hoping revenue from educators will continue to increase. You can read more details on my plan for this in my July retrospective. But for now, I'm celebrating this small but meaningful win!
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This is so cool! Congrats on the progress.
Well-written, retrospective on the blog, btw.
Sounds like it's implied that the site's costs are about $300/mo? I'm curious, if you're open to sharing, what the breakdown of those expenses is?
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Thank you! Costs are around $250/mo I believe. Though it's been awhile since I went through and counted everything up. It's mostly small stuff that ads up like AWS, Heroku, Sendgrid, gsuite. And then there are some yearly things like the corporate annual report ($325) and my accountant who does my taxes. I factor the yearly stuff into the monthly costs.
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Ah, that make sense. I haven't read all your blog posts, so I don't know all the context and was wondering if the AWS free tier might help reduce costs. Seems like the assortment of services needed kind of makes where things stand pretty close to the minimal cost. Small stuff definitely adds up!
On the upside, I'm also imagining the costs won't increase much for a while, so hopefully your August goals go well and you see some more profit! 🤞
I'm looking forward to following your journey! Creative and impressive work thus far!
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Congratulations, this is a huge achievement!
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Aw thank you 😊
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This is awesome
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Congrats! As the spouse of a teacher, I feel like it's gotta be hard targeting teachers since they have so little discretionary income. How are you overcoming that problem? Or am I wrong on that assumption?
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You know, through this experience I've learned that there actually is quite a lot of money in education, but it is not evenly distributed. Of course I'm specifically talking about the US, where schools are funded by property taxes. The balance I've tried to strike is offering some piece of the product for free (I have instructions on the website on how to play for free using data I make publicly available). So if someone lands on the site and belongs to the 80-90% of schools that don't have a budget for this, they can still get something out of it and don't get their hopes up for nothing. So far it's working and in general people are understanding.
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Ah, super interesting. Makes so much sense as soon as you say it.
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Very neat idea to tailor to educators! I would hope that that users could be counted on for new feature ideas and for sales ideas (e.g. how to help educators sell this product 'up' to principals/administrators).
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Oh yes, the teachers are really great about giving feedback. They're a pretty supportive audience.
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This is an awesome idea! The educator angle is great and I bet is going to be a big source of revenue for you. You also have a cool roadmap if you started knocking off fantasy sports features (like daily fantasy betting -- granted betting takes this in an entirely different direction)
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Yeah there's so many ideas I have for where I could take it. But so little time!
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Congrats! This is excited.
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Congratulations!!
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Thanks 😊
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congratulations.
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Ty :)
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So glad to hear this, great work!
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Thanks!
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well done, good job.
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Thank you!
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congrats! The game looks very topical! kind of like hidden agenda x hollywood stock exchange... ? so educators are using it to educate students about government?
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
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Looking to maintain it for now. Trying to reach ramen profitability before I think any farther into the future.
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