judges, today I have prepared for you a financial update. despite its minimalist presentation, I think you’ll find it filling.
was that intro good? not really. is the financial report introduction one of the few places I can make jokes in corporate communications? yes. I will take any opportunity I can get. you’re going to read these anyway.
keeping it brief this month; we talked about funding and The Future in the mini-update last week. if you haven’t read it yet, go do so now. I’ll wait.
welcome back. here’s numbers:
| Category | As of May 5 | As of April 7 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active subscribers | 3,327 | 3,402 | -2.2% |
| Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) | $21,315 | $21,982 | -3% |
| Subscriber churn rate | 3% | 2% | +50% |
| Revenue per subscriber | $6.41 | $6.46 | -0.8% |
| MAU | 18,973 | 21,269 | -10.7% |
| MAU → subscriber conversion rate | 17.5% | 15.9% | +10% |
| Artist Alley listing-weeks sold | 416 | n/a | n/a |
a couple notes:
- we don’t see the subscriber count drop-off as concerning; it falls within our existing churn numbers, and we don’t expect cohost plus growth when we’re not actively promoting it
- we’re seeing the last bits of MAU attrition from the wave of new users from tumblr.
- the general rule of thumb for an online community is that 1% of your users will be active. currently, about 9% of our total users are active. 20% of users that joined during the tumblr wave are also still active. we are above average in expected MAU metrics.
- other rules of thumb include: 20% of users will produce 80% of the posts (for us it’s 22% of users)
- by most metrics, we are a fairly conventional social media platform. the main exception is subscriber conversion rate, which is over double industry standard. the reasonable conclusion is that we have built a conventional social media platform, except in the way that 17.5% of our users like it enough to pay for it.
- artist alley listing sales went live on april 12. next month will prove more interesting for comparison there.
that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say here. part of getting these out consistently is keeping them brief. sometimes there just isn’t that much to say that hasn’t already been said.
enjoy your week, and thanks as always for using cohost 
~jae
