[psycr]

This comment is strange to me, I did not have the same impression whatsoever. The numbers here, and overall picture, match all of his previous annual summary posts. It's been fairly clear in those summaries that his attention has shifted to other projects/consulting opportunities etc, and that BCC was declining in profitability.

[dennisgorelik]

The facts are the same, the impression is different.

The change in impression did not happen overnight though. Earlier posts were much more optimistic, with slow decline of optimism over the years.

The thing is, even the same earlier years of BCC growth do not look as rosy anymore as they were at the time of that growth.

[graeme]

>The thing is, even the same earlier years of BCC growth do not look as rosy anymore as they were at the time of that growth.

Why? He stopped actively focussing on the business years ago. Of course it's going to decline. Few recurring revenues businesses, if any, are truly "build it once, sell it forever". They need upkeep and growth plans.

Patrick's growth efforts went elsewhere.

[dennisgorelik]

My point here is not about declining 2013-2016 years of BCC business.

My point is about growth in ~2008-2012.

Back then in Patrick's stories that growth looked impressive. The same ~2008-2012 years of BCC business do not look as impressive anymore.

Now we can see how BCC was time-consuming business with profits that are not really exciting for software developer.

That said, the learning aspects of BCC for all of us still look great: baseline for our businesses, realistic expectations, and relevant know-how.

[graeme]

The rate of growth was quite high though. If Patrick had continued working on BCC exclusively, I imagine it would be a much bigger business now.

But he had other, better opportunities.

If you thought if looked more impressive then, maybe you hadn't actually looked at the numbers, or were confusing his consulting revenues for BCC numbers? The numbers were never that high. But the point was that they let him leave his work at a Japanese company, and develop expertise he could use to consult for others. And he could have kept going at BCC and grown that instead, of course.

https://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month

[imron]

> Now we can see how BCC was time-consuming business with profits that are not really exciting for software developer

In 2014, it was bringing in $4,000 an hour [0]. Sure, that hourly rate doesn't scale, but it was only 4-5 hours work for the entire year.

It's not surprising that sales weren't anywhere near the level they were when more time was invested in sales and marketing.

To me, it seems not so much that BCC was time consuming, it was that everything else consumed Patrick's time and there wasn't time for BCC except the bare minimum required to keep it up and running.

[0] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...