16 months' data from the Useful Authors' OOC

May 6, 2022 · ooc-hey

Here’s the data from my first 16 months’ of paid membership ($19/m) in the authors’ community:

On the one hand, it’s a slow road to $2k MRR. (More on that in a moment.)

On the other hand:

• It feels very stable (e.g., I took 2-3 months’ break at one point, and you probably can’t tell exactly where)
• Growth is almost entirely autopilot (partly as a tagalong to the book’s organic growth, partly from member recommendations)
• All non-automated weekly operations (including events, newsletter, etc.) can be delegated at a cost of around half of current revenue, allowing for vacations, time off, etc. (And even when I’m “fully” active, the required weekly workload is <4 hours.)
• Now that the foundations are solid, I can invest my surplus time on improving operations, marketing, automations, and other nice-to-haves boosts to retention and growth
• Plus, even ignoring the revenue, it has created a bunch of positive externalities: 
  • For our products, the community has been a custdev superpower and acts as an eager group of early adopters
  • For me personally, it has offered tons of skill development and learning
  • For the business in general, it has networked us to excellent people (both guest speakers, members, supporters, and more) and allowed for interesting new opportunities (joint ventures, cross promotions, collaborations, etc.)

So: great benefits, good asset that can continue to grow, but generally slow.

However, it’s worth noting that in retrospect, I believe that we could have gotten to this point a lot faster.

Starting out, I had no idea what I was doing, which led me to be extremely conservative on all fronts: slow to make changes, timid setting the price and promoting it, and more.

Plus, undoing the “slack mistake” (by switching to a different platform) cost at least 3 months of my entire focus.

By making fewer blunders in those areas (and having a design roadmap, as we hopefully now do), I think we could have grown at least twice as quickly, even by doing something as simple as charging $29-39/m instead of $19. (We’ll soon be raising prices for new members, which should help amend that mistake.)

Overall, I feel very good about the time invested. While the direct revenue is still low, it feels like a major enabler/multiplier to our adjacent products as business activities, and I think there’s a lot of room for future growth as I continue to improve the underlying system.

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