Happy Links

March 12, 2007 in Happy Links

SXSW Edition - 2 juicy panels:

• Web App Autopsy covered four existing web apps (RegOnline, FeedBurner, Wufoo, and Blinksale) and touched on:
  
  • build time (Blinksale 3 months, Regonline 3 years)
  • lines of code (Wufoo 43K, Regonline 549K -  more than twice feedburner's 212K!)
  • number of support requests (Blinksale 8/day, Feedbuner 45/day, Regonline 234/day)
    
  • conversion rates (all about 1% for paid services)
  • monthly income per user (Wufoo $13.03/mo, Blinksale $12.25/mo, Regonline $131/mo(!!))
    

Get the slides.

• The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps provided oodles of juicy and valuable financial information behind 5 successful web apps: DropSend, Freshbooks, Maya's Mom, Mobissimo and Wesebe.
  Some juicy snippets:
• DropSend: To build $48,012 / To maintain $3,625/mo
• Freshbooks To build $20,000 / To maintain $46,000/mo
• Maya's Mom: To build $70,000 / To maintain $30,000/mo
• Mobissimo: To build $60,000 / To maintain $150,000/mo
• Wesabe: To build $200,000 / To maintain $3,000/mo

Great benchmarking information for web app folks. Get the slides.

Can't wait for the podcasts of these panels.

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I have serious doubts as to how trustworthy those numbers are. I'd like to see the books. I could see if you were to build these things contracted out at $100/hour or more but I doubt that's really the case. Also my experience is that people tend to include a lot of costs like failed prototypes, marketing, learning, office, etc, I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it but I don't think you should take how much you wish you'd made as how much it actually cost.