Full Transparency-RunPee app income and expenses

Note: Apple doesn’t pay consistently every month. There are some months that they don’t issue a payment, and other months that they make two payments. That’s why the income from Apple varies so widely.

Above is a chart going back to January 2023 of the RunPee income and expenses, broken down by Google, Apple, and direct donations via PayPal/Venmo.

The RunPee app is ad-free and completely free to use. It is supported by donations from our users. We currently have 932 subscribers. That number has decreased over time. Originally, the subscription gave users an ad-free experience, so there was more motivation to subscribe than pure generosity to help support RunPee. When we went to the donation model we had around 1,500 subscribers. We’ve lost around 580 subscribers since then. But, users also give one-time donations, so that balances out the loss a little.

Android Users

Over the past three months Android users account for 58% of movies viewed in the RunPee app vs 42% for iPhone users. However, over that same time period Apple users account for about 74% of RunPee income. If Android users would donate at the same clip as Apple users I’d be in great shape. So… Thank you iPhone users! 🙂

//echo ‘.o.o.o.o’;

Expenses

I spend around $100/month for hosting.

I see at least one movie each week, and sometimes two when the situation arrizes. There are no expenses there besides my time and the cost of an AMC A-List membership. My sister is my Primary Peep. I pay her, and all the other Peeps, $50/movie to send me the Peetimes and write a short movie review. This is my biggest expense by far and depending on the month can cost me somewhere between $200 on the low end and just shy of $600 on the high end.

A Week at RunPee

Obviously, I do a lot of work each week for RunPee. My work consists of watching movies and adding Peetimes, user support (I respond to every email.), writing movie reviews and other blog content, helping with the weekly newsletter and organizing who’s seeing what movies and when, plus adding those movies to the database. I don’t keep detailed numbers on the hours I work on RunPee, maybe I should do that for a month to really know, but my best estimate is about 20/hrs a week.

Oh, that doesn’t include the time I spend actually building and maintaining the RunPee app. In case you didn’t know, Vera (Wife) and I are both software developers. We rebuilt the RunPee app from scratch in 2020-21. That was thousands of hours of work. I worked about 30/hrs a week for a year to rebuild the app and all the backend and the RunPee admin app. Vera also worked a great deal on the app. She did all the work on the Peeple’s Poll and payment systems, plus most of the UI/design work. (That explains why the rebuilt app looks so much better than the old one.)

My goal is to update the RunPee app about 3-4 times a year. Each update will add a new feature, or at least enhance an existing feature, and contain bug fixes. Fortunately, there’s not much left to fix. I’m very proud that at present there are zero known bugs to fix. That isn’t to say there are no bugs; only zero known bugs.

Making ends meet

We are incredibly fortunate that we own our house and car outright. There’s no way we’d make it with a mortgage or car payment. The RunPee income is just about enough to pay for the essentials: food, electricity bill, and phone service. (It sure would be nice to have health insurance, but that’s an expense beyond our means right now.) The rest has to come from elsewhere. Right now we are both co-founders in a startup called Mapt.co: helping high school students navigate the college application process. Currently, the app doesn’t generate enough money to pay the three founders are the two part-time employees. We’re all working on the promise of future income and equity. Hopefully we’ll get a little investment funding soon to help make ends meet and grow our paid user base enough by the end of the year to pay ourselves. That’s the hope, but there’s a lot of work to do to get there. If you, or someone you know, is a high school student then please send them along to Mapt.co. (Not .com!)

Future

There’s nothing for you to worry about. We’ll continue to add Peetimes as much as we can. I’d love to increase the number of movies we offer, but right now it doesn’t make much financial sense. If RunPee brings in more income, or if the Mapt.co app works out and money isn’t so tight then I’ll pay the Peeps to add a few more limited-release movies.

I have two major features that I would like to include in the RunPee app by the end of the year. First, let users see a list of upcoming movies and vote if they are interested in seeing it. This would give me some indication which movies I should focus on for Peetimes. Sometimes we add movies that get only a few hundred views and sometimes we miss limited-release movies that could have gotten more.

The other feature is to use ChatGPT to translate the Peetimes into other languages. I’m not sure how well this will work out, but it won’t cost me anything but time, so I’ll give it a shot. It sure would be nice to spread to Spanish, French, German, Portugese, Hindi, and Chinese. (For starters.)

How to help support RunPee without subscribing

• Share a kind message about RunPee on your favorite social media platform(s).
• Tell your friends and family about RunPee.
• Maybe lean over and share the RunPee app with a stranger in the movie theater and make a new friend in the process. I mean, you’re watching the same movie together, you already have something in common. 🙂
• Write a kind review of the RunPee app at the App Store or Google Play Store.
• If you think of something we can do to make the app better for you then email me ([email protected]), leave a comment below, or you can chat with us on Discord.