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independence7 unconnected · 3 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 12 claims against 2

applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

14 claims · 13 articles · 4 receipts

window

2011-08-09 → 2025-07-16

7 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Publish the revenue, including the months it falls

Openness about a decline is what makes the good months believable, so put the whole line out, name a partial result as a success in advance, and let the running account of the climb become the reason people follow a small company. It works hardest while you are small and unproven, when an audience will cheer, send ideas and promote for you, and it makes any later cold outreach land warm.

Where this splits

Publishing the numbers is credited with the audience, the ideas and the promotion that carried these products, and separately abandoned on the grounds that transparency now mostly recruits competitors and that what read as an underdog story at a hundred dollars a month reads as boasting at ten thousand.

  1. side 01 · 12 claims

    Publish the numbers openly, including the bad months

    Corey Haines · Cory Zue · Deacon · Florin Pop · Jordi Giménez · Justin Jackson · Nathan Barry · Peter Steinberger · Ron Stefanski

    1. 1Publish your own revenue numbers including the quarters where they fall, because openness about a decline is what makes the good numbers believable.
    2. 2Publish your revenue numbers openly. It costs nothing and it gives people a reason to follow a small company.
    3. 3Publish a monthly income report from the beginning. It gives the audience a reason to keep returning and gives you the record of your own progress.
    4. 4Building in public pays off most while you are small and unproven, when an audience will cheer, send ideas, promote and occasionally buy.
    5. 5Define partial success in advance: reaching a fraction of the revenue goal in public is still a result worth having.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    Keep revenue private, disclosure now mostly recruits competitors

    Cory Zue · Rand Fishkin

    1. 1Do not publish your numbers, because the transparency that once differentiated you now mostly recruits competitors.
    2. 2Retire public revenue milestones once the numbers get large, because what read as an underdog story at $100 a month reads as boasting at $10,000.

What it returned

  • $100,000

    Deacon has been sharing WellKeptWallet's financials for years, including revenue dropping from over $100,000 a month in 2020 to $50,000 a month in 2021. Most of the site's traffic comes from Google, with Ahrefs estimating around 280,000 monthly visitors, and affiliate commissions are the biggest revenue line ahead of advertising.

  • Bugfender's figures are available in real time on a public page.

  • The founder has published one every month since starting and points to the six month run of reports as evidence of the trajectory.

  • Zue credits six years of open dashboards and monthly retrospectives with support, ideas, promotion and friendships, and doubts he would have done as well privately.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in build in public

all build in public plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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