I’m changing the format a bit for this monthly report, to make it less time consuming on my part. I’m bundling April and May, as I haven’t had enough spare time to write one for last month.
For earlier issues, please see the overview.
From now on, I’ll focus on the revenue & costs of each business, but skip the parts of the personal business cost structure. You can still see my salary at the bottom.
Birds-eye view
Let’s start with the summary first and do a break-down further down this post. If all you care about is “how much money is Mattias making", you can probably stop looking after the first table.
My income comes from 4 3 main sources: DNS Spy, Oh Dear!, and cron.weekly advertising. I’m dropping consultancy from this list, as I don’t see any revenue from that anymore (nor do I actively seek it out).
| Month | Gross revenue | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| April 2020 | €4,926.00 | -13% |
| May 2020 | €5,432.00 | +10% |
These numbers don’t mean much in and of themselves, so let’s dive in.
Oh Dear
Oh Dear! is the monitoring SaaS that Freek & I are building. We employ a 30/35/35 rule for our revenue: 30% of our revenue gets re-invested in the company (advertising, art designs, external freelancers, …), 35% goes to Freek, 35% goes to me.
April 2020
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €5,804.00 | -21% |
| Costs | €750.00 | - |
| 35% to Freek/Me | €1,768.00 | -31% |
This drop in revenue was to be expected, as we had an exceptionally good month in March with several new yearly subscriptions. Our MRR is still growing, March was just a (fun) spike in revenue, which makes April look less good.
May 2020
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €6,244.00 | +7,5% |
| Costs | €750.00 | - |
| 35% to Freek/Me | €1,922.00 | +8.9% |
May continued the uptrend in MRR! 🥳
DNS Spy
DNS Spy is a much simpler product than Oh Dear. It has fewer features and only focusses on DNS, a much more narrow use case. As a result, its proceeds are also lower.
DNS Spy is owned and operated by me, so all profits flow to me directly.
April 2020
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €1,172.00 | +30% |
| Costs | €75.00 | - |
| Total profit | €1,097.00 | +47% |
May 2020
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €974.86 | -16% |
| Costs | €75.00 | - |
| Total profit | €899,86 | -17% |
The spiky nature of DNS Spy revenue comes from users mainly choosing yearly subscriptions, which makes the revenue harder to predict.
Consultancy
I didn’t take any consultancy assignments in April or May.
cron.weekly
Revenue from weekly newsletter comes from sponsored posts and advertisements.
The ad-slots were sold out for all previous weeks (and the next few ones as well).
April 2020
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €2200.00 | - |
| Newsletter costs | €139.00 | - |
| Total profit | €2,061.00 | - |
May 2020
Since May had 5 newsletter issues instead of 4, revenue is slightly higher.
| Type | Amount | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue (VAT excluded) | €2750.00 | +25% |
| Newsletter costs | €139.00 | - |
| Total profit | €2,611.00 | +26.6% |
Conclusion
I’m still grateful to have the revenue from cron.weekly, as Oh Dear and DNS Spy alone don’t pay the bills just yet. But combined, they provide a safe stream of income!
My salary hasn’t changed, I’m still paying myself a net salary of €1,825.00.
Extra note: because I now own a business, I get to (partially) pay things like my home office internet, electricity, heating, … with pre-tax revenue. This allows me to receive a lower-than-before salary while keeping the same standard of living.
Hours worked vs Money made
How much time did I spend working to get that revenue? In other words: what am I worth per working hour?
Corona has deeply impacted my available working time in both April and May. As our kids are home from school and my wife has a 9-to-5 job, I was limited to working the nightshift. This is also the reason the April issue of this report was missing and got combined into this one.
The working hours are estimates, as I don’t accurately track my time.
April 2020
- Hours worked per week: 8h (~32h in the month)
- Gross revenue: €4,926.00
- Hourly revenue: €153.93
May 2020
- Hours worked per week: 8h (~32h in the month)
- Gross revenue: €5,432.00
- Hourly revenue: €169.75
By working less hours, I’m actually pushing my hourly value up.