The other day via twitter I had asked folks if they were interested in some behind the scenes stats about my Practicing Ruby newsletter, and the response was generally positive. I plan to follow up with some more detailed discussion later, but for now, here are some raw numbers for those curious. Feel free to ask whatever questions you'd like in the comments section below or hit me up on twitter @seacreature.
All statistics labeled 'current' are based on the time of writing (2011/01/26)
First Purchase Date: 2010/11/06
First Issue Published: 2010/11/09
Number of Subscribers after 3 days: 70
Number of Subscribers after 7 days: 191
Number of Subscribers after 14 days: 238
Number of Subscribers after 30 days: 275
Number of Current Subscribers: 378
Cancellations: Less than 40 (estimated)
Total Number of Issues Written: 21.5
Total Lines written at 72 chars per line: 7705
Average Lines Per Issue (including whitespace): 358
Average Time Invested Per Issue: 3.5 hours (estimated)
Total Revenue To Date: $4600 (estimated)
Initial Price: $5.00/mo
Current Price: $8.00/mo (as of 01/18/2011, for new subscribers)
Average Revenue Per Article: $204 (about 40% of what my articles for OnLAMP paid back in the day, but insanely better than my book)
Average Revenue Per Hour: $58 (about 40% of my average consulting rate)
Obligatory Graph of Subscriber Count:
Up and to the right, yay!
Hello, my name is Gregory Brown. I am the founder of Mendicant University, a free online school for software developers.
I am passionate about community service, education, and the free software movement. If you're interested in getting to know me a bit better, feel free to send me an email: gregory.t.brown@gmail.com
