I've always had a philosophy to try a bunch of different things. The thought being that a) they will all add up to something great or b) one will take off.  In the 2008 and 2009 version of this post you can see all the different things I've tried.  This year I'm only going to be talking about one project. Just go ahead and assume that all the others were either killed off or on life support. 

The Site

Since one of my projects took off I focused completely on that this year.  I'm not going to mention it directly, because I don't want this post showing up in Google, but it's the education related sited listed first in the "My Sites" section of the sidebar.

In short it's an online lesson planner targeted at K-12 teachers.  There is a free version and premium version, which is $20/year.

Fun With Numbers

Here's the same revenue table as last year updated with 2010's numbers.

Signups are people who signed up for the free version, but never upgraded after their premium trial expired.

Revenue Per User

If you look back at all the previous years you'll see that $20 * (renewals + new orders) = revenue. Which makes sense since the premium service is $20/year. In 2010: revenue / (renewals + new orders) ≈ $19 per user.  This is because I was able to sell about a dozen group orders which were discounted. These went to schools or entire districts, both public and private.

Renewal Rate

I really have no idea what a "good" renewal rate is, but I think I'm doing pretty well.  From '08 to '09 it was 64%.  From '09 to '10 it was 74%. 

Extrapolate!

One of my favorite words, both in meaning and just how cool of a word it is: extrapolate. 

<tangent>My friends and I have a running joke when we're watching sports or playing video games. If our team takes an early lead someone will yell "extrapolate" meaning let's just end the game now and generate the final numbers based on what's been played so far.  Usually it means a final score of something like 1730 to 0.</tangent>

Let's take the growth from '08 through '10 and use that to predict '11.  This probably doesn't have any actual relevance, but it'll be fun.  We already figured out the renewal rates, so let's split the difference and call it 69%. 

New users increased 3.25x in '09 and 5.5x in '10.  Averaging again, we'll call it 4.4x.

Taking the 1873 total orders from 2010 and assuming 69% renew that means a base of 1292 orders for 2011.  If user growth were to jump 4.4x that would mean 7009 new (paying) accounts.  Some quick math (1292 + 7009) * $18 = $149k.  WOW!

I used $18 here since I'm hoping there will be more group accounts which will lower the overall revenue per user.

Needless to say I'd be ecstatic to reach that number. It's probably at the upper range, but it's good to set goals high. 

So Far in 2011

Since this post is about a month late we already have January 2011 in the books. 

Total orders for January '10: 42

Total orders for January '11: 163

That's a 3.8x jump.  Just 8138 order to go!

Seasons

I should mention that since this site is tied to education the orders are very seasonal.  In 2010 60% of all orders came in the three month period from August to October, which is the "Back to School" period for most of the U.S.

Needless to say I'm mildly nervous to see what's going to happen then.

Coming Up

Revenue is great, but if it took me $100k in AdWords spending to get there then these numbers don't look so good. I'll break down some of my costs in a post later in the week.  Make sure to sign up for my feed or follow me on twitter.