
Evernote makes $800,000 per Month - kingsidharth
http://mashable.com/2010/12/09/evernote-by-the-numbers-stats/
======
Multiplayer
Evernote is a genius utility that was not completely obvious to me until a few
months ago. Here's my take:

You can store anything in it, and does text recognition on photos for later
searching. My scanner is hooked up to it - I scan everything and dump it in
there. Receipts, statements, bills, correspondence, contracts, whatever.

You can dump any document into it, tag it, put in a notebook, whatever.

It works across my complete tech stack: Iphone, Ipad, MacBook, Imac and web
when needed.

Switching to a new computer/device is completely painless. Install the app,
login, your environment is duplicated from the cloud. Perfect every time.

I have tried every task and todo system under the sun, as well as note takers,
folder sync systems, etc. Instead of worrying about where all the files are,
whether they are syncing or backed up, blah blah blah, whether they can
connect to another pc to get the sync, etc.

This is a really strong blend of all of the above. You can implement a GTD
system if you wish, etc. etc. etc.

All my "stuff" is with me wherever I go now.

I also use omnifocus for project stuff, fwiw. Works across my entire tech
stack and syncs really well too.

~~~
trotsky
you don't worry about having such a large cache of personal information in
such a weakly protected storage location? Would you even be able to detect any
ongoing intrusion?

~~~
jemfinch
I doubt his home computers are any less weakly protected than Evernote's
servers.

~~~
trotsky
You think his computers accept logins from anyone on the internet that types
in his url, with a password that can be reset using his email and/or a
security question?

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theBobMcCormick
This part jumped out at me:

"The longer you stay, the more likely you are to become a premium user. While
less than 1% of active users sign up for premium content in the first month,
approximately 20% of active users (7.5% of total users) are paying users by
month 29"

There's a lot of discussion on HN about whether "Freemium" is good or bad, for
Evernote at least it sounds like it's a win if their best route to getting
paying customers is to entice you to use the product for an extended period of
time.

~~~
gleb
This kind of survivor bias will be true for mostly any subscription business.
Users that weren't getting much value from your business will drop off. Given
a reasonable segmentation of free and paid users that will mean a larger
percentage of _active_ users will be paid.

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wccrawford
Little bit of a terminology issue there.

They bring in $800k gross. No clue what their net (aka profit) is.

~~~
dhyasama
Also of note, Evernote has a $45/year option in addition to the $5/month
option. That is a 25% discount so the number must be less than $800k.

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maxklein
When I see news like this, all I think is that a proportion of Evernotes users
must be quite dissatisfied with their services and would switch if there were
a better alternative. Then I think - perhaps I should make a better
alternative.

I store some of my stuff in Evernote, but it's not convenient for writing.
It's too cluttered and distracting for that. I'd like to make something with
the storage facilities of evernote, but a much less distracting writing
interface.

~~~
mattculbreth
I've actually had a note (in Evernote) for a while now to "find replacement
for Evernote or write my own."

Every time they release a new version I see item after item that's of no
interest to me. I really just want a simple place to store to-do lists, notes,
etc. and have it available on every machine and phone I use.

They do a lot more than that now, but yet you still can't edit a to-do list
with checkboxes on the iPhone!

~~~
alecthomas
Check out SimpleNote.

~~~
zzzmarcus
Especially with Notational Velocity which is a joy to use and OSS.

<http://notational.net/>

------
kondro
I guess something is working out for them. But for that $800k/month they have
to support 5 million users.

I wonder how profitable that actually is for them?

~~~
richardw
That calc is just from paying users. It has ads bottom-left as well so it's
likely they get extra ad income in proportion to the number of non-paying
users.

~~~
tnorthcutt
Not to mention "a series of confidential, revenue-generating partnerships."

~~~
sedachv
Anyone have any clue what those might be? Bundling agreements with PC
manufacturers?

------
sadiq
Crunchbase seems to think they've raised $45.5m so far which strikes me as an
awful lot.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/evernote>

I wonder what their growth is like.

~~~
duck
Growth in term of users?

[http://blog.evernote.com/2010/11/10/5-million-evernote-
users...](http://blog.evernote.com/2010/11/10/5-million-evernote-users/)

------
petercooper
They'd be making a bit more if they didn't spontaneously downgrade my account
when it expired without encouraging me to upgrade. I got an email saying it
had expired, been downgraded, and please could I could renew? I noticed,
though, my account continued to work great on the free level and I wasn't
using the quota at all, so I never renewed.

If, though, they'd e-mailed a week or two before expiry, I'd have just blindly
renewed for fear of the downgrade.

The business lesson here: give people an opportunity to avoid perceived pain
in advance, in case it turns out that the pain, when inflicted, isn't a pain
at all ;-)

------
arturadib
A corollary from these stats is that their active user base is about 1/3 of
the total.

That's pretty darn impressive, if it's accurate.

~~~
JacobAldridge
I don't come out with the same numbers. Seems to me:

Just over 3% of total are paying (160,000 / 5,000,000) 7.5% of total users are
active users (that's in the article)

Still, they've built a $10,000,000 business (in regards to turnover, not
profit or valuation of course) and that's darn impressive as well.

~~~
arturadib
Ha, I guess one of us misinterpreted the statement:

"approximately 20% of active users (7.5% of total users) are paying users by
month 29"

Is it "20% of active = 7.5% of total", or is it "active = 7.5% of total" ?

It seems a little ambiguous. But to be honest, I think a more reasonable
number is 7.5% indeed!!

------
joebananas
OTOH, $800K/month gross is probably less than what your grocery store does.

~~~
ahi
Walmart Stores U.S. averages $5.7m/month gross per store. Years ago I worked
at a tiny CVS that routinely hit 50k in a week.

~~~
wallflower
Revenue figure comparisons are not meaningful if the gross margins are not
similar.

For most grocery stores, the profit margin is around 2-3%. In other words, if
someone steals a pack of cigarettes they have to sell $200 of groceries to
make up the loss.

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mkramlich
I'm always amazed when something that feels like a solution to a non-problem
is earning big bucks. I mean, note-taking, really?! That's had a wealth of
overlapping solutions, both free, cheap and otherwise, going back ... well,
thousands of years at least.

But props to the folks behind it for getting $800k/mo revenue out of it. Wow.

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jan_c
for all the noise that evernote makes about its numbers, 800k sounds a bit
paltry... sure, most startups don't even come close to a 10m run rate, but I'd
expect better given how proudly and frequently they boast their stats
publicly.

evernote is as old as groupon and doing <1/100th the revenue - overhyped much?

~~~
bobf
Groupon is far and away the exception, not the standard to measure against.

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jwcacces
My problem with Evernote is that it came as shovel-ware on a new netbook I
bought. Don't know much else about it, but that part defiantly turned me off.

~~~
LiveTheDream
Evernote is one of the first apps I install when upgrading to a new system or
reinstalling the OS, so I would actually be pleasantly surprised to find it on
a new netbook.

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plnewman
There are indeed a ton of Evernote books in Japan.

