Are you referring to business income/revenue or personal income from those businesses?
Of the 4 businesses I've founded or co-founded (BIG Folio, APF, NextProof, and 2 Tablespoons), the first two generate approximately half of their revenue from recurring fees (we also have setup fees). That adds up to high 5-figures per month for each (more in a good month). Of course, they both have the highest overhead in terms of labor and servers. For me personally, the recurring revenue results in a monthly draw/dividend that is now higher than my (good) salary. I spend most of my time (40 hours between the 2) on these two.
NextProof is a purely recurring/transactional revenue business. It currently makes in the low 5-figure range per month on subscription fees + about the same in transaction fees. User base is growing at about 3% per month. Overhead is fairly low (mainly hosting at EngineYard) and I work about 5-10 hours/week on it. I take a quarterly draw/dividen on this (not too big). As someone else said, if I really worked on some SEO and properly ran some campaigns/tests, it could probably grow at 10% or more.
2 Tablespoons is my newest venture and, so far, generates about $30 a month from one iPhone app (epic, I know). Launching a restaurant website service this month. Hoping to take everything I've learned from these other businesses–and from HN–and generate some solid recurring revenue without too much overhead. Haven't thought about goals, but getting to $2k/month by the end of the year sounds reasonable.
How do you acquire NextProof users? 5-10 hours a week is great for a website that generates 5 figures a month. I would love to hear more about this - do you blog?
We cross-sell NextProof to people when they sign-up for a BIG Folio site. We also rank well for some search terms that wedding photographers use. We run ad campaigns on occasion–AdWords and industry forums work well, FB ads don't.
I blog infrequently but mostly about Rails or iOS stuff. I don't blog much about startups/business. Only a few people do it well IMO and I'd rather spend my free time with my family–not blogging.
If so, Cilantro sounds interesting. One of the things I keep reading is that the restaurant industry is super resistant to change and adopting new technology. Or it seems that way.
How are you going about circumventing that issue? Or minimizing it, at least?
Yes, it is. Cilantro was originally going to be a "DIY Groupon" that you can embed into your own site and Facebook page and take payment via PayPal. But, after doing some research, I've come to the conclusion that white-label daily deal stuff is the wrong way to go.
So, I've decided to go after the website market and solve the Flash/PDF menu/no mobile/crappy website problem. Plus, I've succeeded in the niche website space already.
The cool thing is, I can still add coupons and daily deals into the website system–and with less friction.
To answer your question, I'm circumventing resistance to change by wrapping it into something every restaurant has to have (a website) and removing as much friction as possible (mainly time by making it so easy to create/update).
I'm somewhat skeptical of the idea that restaurant owners think that the website should not have flash/pdf menus/no mobile etc, why? Well, look at all the crappy websites that exist out there, right?
However, I completely support your endeavour because I hate all those restaurants.
Could I get your email? I'd love to discuss this further and see if my product can help out.
My thinking is that (a) there is a lot of restaurant turnover anyway, so new restaurants need sites and (b) every smartphone and Flash-free tablet sold increases people's awareness of their sucky site just a bit.
Of the 4 businesses I've founded or co-founded (BIG Folio, APF, NextProof, and 2 Tablespoons), the first two generate approximately half of their revenue from recurring fees (we also have setup fees). That adds up to high 5-figures per month for each (more in a good month). Of course, they both have the highest overhead in terms of labor and servers. For me personally, the recurring revenue results in a monthly draw/dividend that is now higher than my (good) salary. I spend most of my time (40 hours between the 2) on these two.
NextProof is a purely recurring/transactional revenue business. It currently makes in the low 5-figure range per month on subscription fees + about the same in transaction fees. User base is growing at about 3% per month. Overhead is fairly low (mainly hosting at EngineYard) and I work about 5-10 hours/week on it. I take a quarterly draw/dividen on this (not too big). As someone else said, if I really worked on some SEO and properly ran some campaigns/tests, it could probably grow at 10% or more.
2 Tablespoons is my newest venture and, so far, generates about $30 a month from one iPhone app (epic, I know). Launching a restaurant website service this month. Hoping to take everything I've learned from these other businesses–and from HN–and generate some solid recurring revenue without too much overhead. Haven't thought about goals, but getting to $2k/month by the end of the year sounds reasonable.