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Comment by fudged71 | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious how much development, marketing, and maintenance is needed to maintain this level of revenue. How long can you coast? How long can you go without new features? I know that may not be the goal and there are other reasons to work on it, but hypothetically...

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It's a good question. My churn rate is still quite high at around 10%. So I definitely cannot coast, I have to actively market and make sure my growth is higher than my churn.

When I take my foot off the pedal and stop marketing, I feel it - I get less targeted signups and less conversions.

So this is a full time job right now, it's not a "set and forget" style business!

Do you use ImageMagick for image generation? (I've had issues with it and am always looking for a replacement, but it just does SO much...) Do you do it yourself or via third party? What does your stack look like? Ruby on Rails and...?

I just retweeted you btw. Very impressive, actually even a little intimidating. I don't know if you're looking to be bought, but if you haven't had offers already, I'm sure they're coming your way soon

Thanks. I suppose if you had minimal or negative churn you could take a break. Where do you feel the churn is coming from?

If you have a healthy churn rate (say 5% or less) and you're getting some residual number of signups every month through SEO or some other passive channel, then theoretically you could coast for a long time. The obvious downside being that your competitors may eat your lunch.

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