I am planning on launching a network of sites & considering doing the same for all my projects, starting from day 1. Are there any downsides doing this though? To be more specific, I want to share amount of visitors, page views, hours spent on projects, expenses and revenue.
Who here shares their revenue etc. & what are your experiences/advice?
I run a software consulting & development agency. I shared about our revenues & goals in public. I got reprimanded by my co-founder, mentor & few other folks in my industry. For agencies - sharing their revenue, profits or metrics are not advisable.
Buffer were the original ones to expose their metrics I think
Downside is that sharing revenue can attract patent trolls and it invites copy cats to clone your product.
I've also seen Jon Yongfook remark that public revenue can become misleading for readers once you have employees or cost-of-goods. You have to really spell out the profit/loss details (like Michael Lynch does), but people will still be tempted to do an apples-to-oranges comparison of your top-line revenue vs other public founders.
I have a different question for you, which is: what are the upsides? If you're doing because you think it's fun to share interesting stuff say that, but let's be clear about it.
In general I don't want people to know how much I make, because it comes with assumptions and expectations I don't want to deal with. My income is and should stay a small part of my identity.