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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

How can there be NO money in 2 million users?

I would be more interested in active users. I have had personal projects with 100s of registered users yet I was the only one who actually used it. So 2M users might translate to somewhere between 1000 and 10000 unique users per month. Considering the niche; many of them young people with very little discretionary spending money.

We have about 70,000 MAU.

People tend to spend an intense few weeks learning a language, then disappear for a year. Then come back and learn another language. A large part of the 2M is still "alive" (I don't know exactly what number that would be, but I'd think around 600k) but Exercism isn't the sort of product you use day-in-day-out.

At 1.500 signups per day (45K a month) 70,000 MAU are horrible retention. Usually you need about 10 times MAU to signups. Unless you can make that happen you have nothing that people actually use and not just try out.

It takes people about a month to work through a language track, learn the language, and get on with their life. So I wouldn't expect to have more than 45k MAU. 70k MAU is because people LIKE the site and come back to learn another language.

We're not trying to be some business that sucks people into using our site every day and monetise them. We're aiming to teach people effectively and efficiently and then get them moving on with their lives.

We could make the site less efficient, or change it's purpose, but that's not the mission of the organisation.

If there is nobody using your service for more than half a month (at that point they would mostly already be counted for 2 months) almost nobody will ever pay. What is your day 7, day 30 and/or day90 retention?

If is low all you can do is lower costs, which should also be straightforward.

They have 800 monthly donors totalling $7,500 per month. That is some long tail but I doubt the 2 million are active users.

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