David SmithThis week's Under the Radar talks through my recent learnings about how subscription apps work in practice and how to best forecast your future income from them.
(also now include automated transcripts in the show notes)
Adam@_Davidsmith back on Twitter you mentioned that you rolled your own analytics and would love to hear if you explored any 3rd party solutions. Count.ly is one I’m looking into that can run self hosted so there’s no giving up users privacy.
@adamlevy I looked into that at some point, but for right now found that I wanted the control and ability to tailor it to exactly my needs.
@_Davidsmith good to know. At some point when I set it up I’ll let you know how it goes.
johnaugust@_Davidsmith This was so helpful! The (monthly sub starts)/churn formula accurately predicts our premium subscribers too.
@johnaugust Glad to hear it! I was surprised how simple the formula ended up being, which makes it much more straightforward to use in practice.
illustro@_Davidsmith great episode. I've been able to reproduce the calculations in google sheets (as I don't have access to a Mac) in case that is easier for others to use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cj7OYftB6J1Ethl4Thb3BfxUcht8Ocs_56L4p6GIwSw/edit?usp=sharing Columns F-N have been hidden but contain the duration calculation. I mentioned in another post that this is very close to the work actuaries do in life insurance for modelling populations (which is what I do)
TheChurnCalculation
Parameters Months to Project:,360,Month,Trials,Converted Trials,Duration 1 Entries,Duration 2 Subscribers,Duration 3 Subscribers,Duration 4 Subscribers,Duration 5 Subscribers,Duration 6 Subscribers,Duration Ult Subscribers,Start of Month Subscribers,Change,End of Month Subscribers,(Post-Share) ...
@illustro OOOO, very cool. Thanks so much for putting this together. That is super interesting to see how to build it in Excel. I tried and failed to do that myself.
@caseyliss either the app by @_Davidsmith or the equivalent google sheet above are something you should be using for the new app pricing.