Mint: Year Two in Review
Two years ago this past Labor Day I launched Mint. No, not that “inspired” third-party finance aggregator the VCs are going gaga over. The original Mint, the only (to my knowledge) self-hosted, real-time, extensible web stats app. So what’s happened since the first yearly review (for posterity and those who are just now joining us)?
Rerelease
At the end of January of this year, I released the first major upgrade to Mint. The launch was crazy. Mint 2 sold twice as well as the original Mint during its first month—despite PayPal server notification issues (which resulted in me manually processing hundreds of licenses) and the vocal minority of upgrade-cost bellyachers (which I was completely oblivious to because of the PayPal issues). The new version brought full support for IE, tons of interface refinements and new ways to filter and view your data and is now in use by nearly 8,000 individuals and companies alike.
Since the major upgrade there have been 12 free updates for licensed users—not including updates to the Default Pepper which added still more useful ways of viewing your default data. There have been 7 new official Pepper released for Mint 2:
- Bird Feeder (track your feeds)
- Doorbell (listen to your traffic)
- iPhone (Mint, tailored to fit in your pocket)
- Outbound (where are your visitors going?)
- Real Estate (resolution is meaningless these days, what size window is your site being viewed in?)
- Refresh (automatically refreshes all panes at set intervals)
- Secret Crush (keep tabs on what cookied commenters find most interesting—now includes the ability to search by name or ip)
There’s 18 third-party Pepper listed in the new Peppermill, a central repository for all downloads Mint. Including widgets for the:
Along with plugins and scripts to simplify integrating Mint with popular blogging platforms and CMS.
.Community
The community of developers continues to grow. Without them Mint would only be as good as the official Pepper. In no particular order (other than alphabetically) I want to thank these guys for doing what they do (shoot me an email if you think you should be on this list):
- Jared Bangs
- John Barker
- Chris Boulton
- Sam Brown
- Andrew Clemente
- Alan Edwardes
- Yaakov Ellis
- Marc A. Garrett
- Rob Goodlatte
- Tony Gumbel
- Tyler Hall
- Ronald Heft
- Hans van Kilsdonk
- Till Kruess
- Christoph Lupprich
- Jeff Miller
- Rusty Mitchell
- Craig Mod
- Ernie Oporto
- Scailay
- Steve Smith
- Benjamin Stein
- Tony Trupp
- Ben Vallack
Last month Sam Brown’s Peppermint Tea saw a redesign and remains a great resource for in-development Pepper and plugins and scripts that don’t find their way onto the Peppermill for one reason or another.
Talk like a Pirate Days
Piracy remains a problem but the long-time-coming, integrated Mint Forum insulates my time from pirates seeking support by clearly indicating who is licensed and who is still Mint-less—right next to their posts.
Events Apart
I enjoyed another year of speaking and events as a result of Mint’s popularity. Sometimes I get a little overwhelmed thinking about the number of people using Mint on a daily basis. While the preparation always seems to take longer than it should, these events are a great way to put everything into perspective and name-to-face a handful of those users. Highlights from this past year include:
- an hour with Bill Gates on the Microsoft campus
- another panel at SXSW hosted by Michael Lopp with John Gruber and Nick Bradbury
- An Event Apart Seattle
- and most recently Think Tank Nashville
The Longer Lasting Mint
This past July, the Mint and Shaun Inman Design & Development, Inc. offices moved from Baltimore to Chattanooga. I am still a single-person business—not for a lack of offers to grow or sell though. I really enjoy the illusion of being my own boss. Mint still generates a solid income for a two person household and is selling strong into its third year.
Like I said last year, there have been ups and downs and there will always be alternatives and detractors but it still looks like Mint (web stats, remember?) isn’t going anywhere.
027 Comments
Thanks for the update! Nice to see how far you’ve come since the little ol’ Mint 1.0.
Sue those SOBs for using MINT!
Thanks for the update! And thank you for attending ThinkTank Nashville… It was great to have you there!
Haha! That’s awesome!
8,000 licenses * $30 - paypal fees = holy shit! Congrats!
And I’m just gonna guess that you’ve made much more profit than those other Mint guys.
You deserve the success since it is obvious that Mint has been served with love and professional skills. I really like it and like it to contribute a small share in order to integrate Mint with third party CMSs like WordPress. Go ahead.
Congrats Shaun, from everyone at EllisLab!
It’s great to hear that all of your heard work and effort continues to pay off three years down the road.
Completely off topic, but I’ve always wondered about the reason behind the background of this comment form. There are chunks missing out of the bottom left and upper right corners?
Inmanooga!
yes my company uses Mint and yes it’s a nice product. But a little balance here. Most of the updates you released that were ‘free’ were actually bug fixes.
Mintastic
Congrats, Shaun!
Thanks everyone.
Alex, I’m just not a fan of perfectly square boxes hence the chips.
Emma, the reason I call out the number of updates Mint has received is to illustrate that Mint is still being actively developed and supported. You’re not paying $30 for some text and image files and then being abandoned. It’s no secret (it’s the point really) that Mint derives the vast majority of its features from Pepper. That’s how it was designed.
Regardless, there were a number of important features (for both end-users and Pepper developers) included among those twelve releases. To say nothing of the number of features introduced or improved via official Pepper—which were all free as well—over the past year.
I’ve been a customer and fan of Mint from day one and couldn’t be more pleased with the application and the support it receives from both you and the community. I would pay 100 bucks a license — It’s that good.
It’s one thing to have a lot of customers, but it’s an amazing accomplishment to have so many customers who are rabid fans of the product — like everyone I know who uses Mint.
Congrats on two years.
Congratulations Shaun! It’s been fun developing for your product and of course using it. Here’s to another great year of Mint.
Congrats Shaun — can’t wait to see what else is coming in the future.
Cool. I love my Mint, and i had no idea it made you enough money to live. That makes me glad.
Very happy to see all of your hard work has paid off after your second year. Look forward to the next one and where Mint may go from here!
Congrats. Thanks for a great product. You are well worth your success. So what about your future plans for mint. v3.0 around the corner? Throw us a bone or two =o)
I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to introduce clients and co-workers to Mint. Checking stats becomes pure pleasure and often borders on the obsessive. That is no small accomplishment.
congratz sean. one of the things that I have enjoyed most about your software was the decisions that you made along the way regarding whats most important.
your work definitely exemplifies “getting real” and as a result I’ve remained a die hard user.
I love mint and at the same time reminisce about my long ago shortstat installations.
2 great real apps.
Jonas, Mint has always been about addressing a small set of well-defined needs. In its current incarnation Mint addresses those needs admirably. Mint 3 isn’t even on the drawing board yet.
Congrats Shaun. I knew Mint was successful when over half the room at your SXSW session last year raised their hand after being asked if they used it, but I’m especially glad to hear it’s doing as well as you say.
Here’s to another 2 more years, and hopefully more (non-Mint) apps from you as well. :-)
Nice work! Always nice to hear a well deserved success story.
Any plans for offering an affiliate program for Mint? I’m sure you could see 8K turn into 80K very quickly. Just a thought.
No plans for an affiliate program. For something as inexpensive as Mint is it just doesn’t make sense.
I also think affiliate programs call into question the bias and credibility of both the affiliates and the quality of the actual product. “Oh, they have to pay others to tell me how good this is? No thanks, I’ll pass.”
It doesn’t matter if the affiliates’ opinions are honest and that the quality of the product is great, that there is a monetary incentive for sharing that opinion calls the whole thing into question.
I’d rather sell Mint on its strengths. I want to you to sell Mint to your clients because you love Mint and think it fits your client’s needs—not because you get a $5 kickback for every green pill you push.
i think you should set up a pepper that logs all of the mint site ripoffs that you find over the years.
i check your site every week or so and i always miss the ripoffs! they are always redesigned before i get to see them, and ripoff spotting is one of my favorite things, ever!