Tweetminer opens up all their stats (income, server, users)(tweetminer.net)
tweetminer.net
Tweetminer opens up all their stats (income, server, users)
http://tweetminer.net/stats
39 comments
What motivates one to expose all their internal business data? Call me an old fart, but I just don't get it... can someone please explain?
Your mileage may very well vary, but I also release most of my business statistics and have for years, so I think I can supply a bit of motivation here.
1) It provides an automatic hook to make people pay attention to you. This is the Purple Cow factor -- its so different than what people expect that it is remarkable in and of itself. I am convinced that a lot of the reason people read my blog in the early days, prior to me having any reputation for saying worthwhile things or writing in an engaging manner, was that "real public sales numbers" were as rare as hen's teeth in the industry.
The kind of people paying attention to your are typically folks in your industry, who are very connected, have blogs and Twitter accounts, link to things they find interesting, do I have to paint you a picture?
2) It costs you nothing. What is the worst that can happen, somebody tries to Xerox your business and outcompete you by being you-er than you are?
3) You know how pg advises people to have a co-founder so they won't feel all alone in the world in the long, long slog that is running a business? Many of us cofounderless wretches have an intense urge coming from the monkey portion of our brains to show off what we've been doing (and I don't mean that in the pejorative sense). What is the point of spending 12 hours over a hot interpreter to solve a one-line bug if you can't lament about it to your buddies? Similarly, when you get the sense of elation at e.g. having two whole customers in one day, you want to share that with somebody, too. Preferably, somebody who understands -- and nobody understands these things better than your peers. (Friends, family, priests, and romantic interests are wonderful things to have in your life, but there is a distinct limit to their tolerance for "Guess what? Guess what? I got X uniques today due to my ongoing SEO efforts!")
1) It provides an automatic hook to make people pay attention to you. This is the Purple Cow factor -- its so different than what people expect that it is remarkable in and of itself. I am convinced that a lot of the reason people read my blog in the early days, prior to me having any reputation for saying worthwhile things or writing in an engaging manner, was that "real public sales numbers" were as rare as hen's teeth in the industry.
The kind of people paying attention to your are typically folks in your industry, who are very connected, have blogs and Twitter accounts, link to things they find interesting, do I have to paint you a picture?
2) It costs you nothing. What is the worst that can happen, somebody tries to Xerox your business and outcompete you by being you-er than you are?
3) You know how pg advises people to have a co-founder so they won't feel all alone in the world in the long, long slog that is running a business? Many of us cofounderless wretches have an intense urge coming from the monkey portion of our brains to show off what we've been doing (and I don't mean that in the pejorative sense). What is the point of spending 12 hours over a hot interpreter to solve a one-line bug if you can't lament about it to your buddies? Similarly, when you get the sense of elation at e.g. having two whole customers in one day, you want to share that with somebody, too. Preferably, somebody who understands -- and nobody understands these things better than your peers. (Friends, family, priests, and romantic interests are wonderful things to have in your life, but there is a distinct limit to their tolerance for "Guess what? Guess what? I got X uniques today due to my ongoing SEO efforts!")
Thanks for the insights. Much appreciated.
I doubt it's deliberate. Someone probably just wasn't too creative with the URL and didn't bother to put in any kind of authentication.
I don't see this stats page mentioned on their front page nor their blog's first page.
I don't see this stats page mentioned on their front page nor their blog's first page.
Nope, it is deliberate. The developer announced on the Business of Software forums that he was sharing it. Some of us around those parts do -- it answers what is far and away the most common question from newbies, provides for some external motivation, and satisfies a little bit of the human urge to know you're not totally alone in the endeavor.
He also talked about it here as well http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971498
they probably saw how well that worked for Balsamiq, and think it'll work for them too.
I don't think it'll work as well, since they have a different business model.
I don't think it'll work as well, since they have a different business model.
bokep
Yes, I've been very motivated by balsamiq - but another big reason is because we talk about it weekly on our tech podcast http://techzinglive.com - the main reason is because this is exactly the kind of data I wish I had been able to see when starting my earlier one man businesses
Thanks, it is a gold mine. Interesting to see huge variation in October and November revenues.
FYI - First sale was on Oct 17th which probably accounts for the variance :)
Hi jv2222, two questions if you don't mind me asking
a) Did you start selling paid accounts from day 1. Or was there a paid beta period? How many of your paid beta users converted?
b) For payments I see you use PayPal. Can you point to some resources to get the subscription based system with PayPal up and running?
a) Did you start selling paid accounts from day 1. Or was there a paid beta period? How many of your paid beta users converted?
b) For payments I see you use PayPal. Can you point to some resources to get the subscription based system with PayPal up and running?
1st Line of code August 10th
1st Signup September 13th (34 days to go beta)
1st Sale October 17th (68 days to first sale - 1 month beta)
1st $1000 November 17th (98 days to $1000)
About 500 beta testers signed up. Very few converted because I gave them all a free pass for one year.
Here's the paypal links I used to get things up and running...
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/ebook/subscriptions/html.html https://www.paypal.com/en_US/ebook/subscriptions/Appx-ipn_su... https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&c...
About 500 beta testers signed up. Very few converted because I gave them all a free pass for one year.
Here's the paypal links I used to get things up and running...
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/ebook/subscriptions/html.html https://www.paypal.com/en_US/ebook/subscriptions/Appx-ipn_su... https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&c...
Other curiosity: are you working on it full time or is it a side business?
Please feel free not to answer any of the questions if you think it is personal. I totally understand.
Please feel free not to answer any of the questions if you think it is personal. I totally understand.
Well, it's not selling crack cocaine, but hey, its more than Twitter.
I don't think it is more than twitter. Recently the Twitter COO indicated twitter made more than $4 million from the Google and Microsoft deals.
FWIW Even if true, I'd rather have a large number of consumers spending money, than 2 customers paying millions.
Getting from the first line of code to $1000 revenue is the hardest part of ANY business. Think about it. Google. Facebook. Twitter.
TweetMiner did that in 98 days. That's VERY rare for a web startup, especially for a part time project in a space that everyone says is not monetizeable.
Sometimes it's not about the amount of revenue - it's more about what the business proves. After that it's just a question of scaling and not f*ing up...
TweetMiner did that in 98 days. That's VERY rare for a web startup, especially for a part time project in a space that everyone says is not monetizeable.
Sometimes it's not about the amount of revenue - it's more about what the business proves. After that it's just a question of scaling and not f*ing up...
Another interesting stat: their conversion rate (paid/all users) is 3.38% (62/1830)
Oops! There's a slight bug in the customers by plan stats code. The real number of customers is 51 (2.8%) -- listed on the customers line -- (bug fixed now)
Thanks for this, always good to have real data!
These days the operative buzzwords are open and transparent. I don't advocate both of those concepts blindly but I do ask, what is the potential downside of offering this level of data to the public?
If you keep everything private then you have something to hide, better yet you have something to manipulate. Perhaps you want to go public or attract investors with your projections not your reality.
In appropriate cases this type of sharing can bring your users into your business in ways no other tactic can. Devout users want to see you succeed and this gives them that barometer.
All in all, I applaud them (assuming making it public was intentional.) Not only does it help me benchmark my business but it helps me connect with Tweetminer in a way I otherwise wouldn't.
If you keep everything private then you have something to hide, better yet you have something to manipulate. Perhaps you want to go public or attract investors with your projections not your reality.
In appropriate cases this type of sharing can bring your users into your business in ways no other tactic can. Devout users want to see you succeed and this gives them that barometer.
All in all, I applaud them (assuming making it public was intentional.) Not only does it help me benchmark my business but it helps me connect with Tweetminer in a way I otherwise wouldn't.
well looking at this data you can tell two things:
business is dying, less and less signups every day and their premium membership is next to zero
hardly numbers, you'd want to shout from the rooftop
business is dying, less and less signups every day and their premium membership is next to zero
hardly numbers, you'd want to shout from the rooftop
Are we looking at the same numbers? November was higher than October and December is higher per day so far than November.
Also 3% conversion rate is hardly a bad one and about 1% higher than most people could hope to expect.
Also 3% conversion rate is hardly a bad one and about 1% higher than most people could hope to expect.
I'm just looking at the numbers made available under this "full disclosure" thing, which basically just shows November signups, and if you just look at that you can def see the decline.
Thankgiving.
[deleted]
I want to add something to this discussion. Something I certainly did not expect would happen. Since I released the revenue figures publicly I have had three angels contact me saying "what are your plans, are you looking for any investment". Imagine that! Angels perusing me!!
As I say it wasn't intended - but it's a nice side note.
As I say it wasn't intended - but it's a nice side note.
Pursue, not peruse. Maybe they perused the statistics though :)
What does the affiliate bit mean? Affiliates generating income for tweetminer by selling it?
Or tweetminer acting as an affiliate showing people adverts and generating income?
Affiliates are generating revenue by helping promote tweetminer. The software used is http://www.idevdirect.com
Interesting. Thanks :)
Soo cool you made these stats public. It's not only that you can't loose anything by sharing this data, but you also inspire people by giving out data like this. Really really cool. One question... can you expand on how you marketed this website, sounds like you really did some marketing on this website, I already saw this affiliate program you're running, are their other ways you target your customers, like adwords? Organic traffic? And what's your ratio of development/marketing? Thanks very much for sharing.