What I'll Be Tracking
The metrics I'll share transparently
Building in public means sharing the numbers.
Even when they're small. Especially when they're small.
Here's what I'll be tracking and sharing openly as Brainz Lab grows.
The metrics that matter
Website:
- Unique visitors
- Page views
- Time on site
- Bounce rate
GitHub:
- Stars across repos
- Forks
- Contributors
- Issues and PRs
Newsletter:
- Subscribers
- Open rates
Revenue:
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
- Customer count
- Churn rate
No vanity metrics. No "engagement" numbers that mean nothing. Just the real stuff.
Why these metrics?
Time on site tells me if the content resonates. High time = people are actually reading, not just bouncing.
Open rates tell me if subscribers actually care. Easy to collect emails. Hard to keep attention.
Forks and contributors tell me if the code is useful. Stars are nice. People running the code is better.
Revenue is the ultimate metric. Everything else is a proxy.
What I won't track
Social media followers. Vanity metric. Someone can follow and never engage.
"Impressions." Meaningless. A million impressions and zero clicks is worthless.
Anything I can't act on. If a metric doesn't change my behavior, why track it?
The traffic sources I'll watch
- Twitter/X - Where developers hang out
- Hacker News - Technical credibility
- Direct traffic - Brand awareness
- Organic search - Long-term SEO plays
- LinkedIn - Professional network
No paid acquisition planned. Just organic growth through content and product quality.
The uncomfortable truth about transparency
Sharing numbers will be uncomfortable.
The temptation is to wait until they're impressive. "I'll share metrics when I have 10,000 users." That way I can look successful.
But that defeats the entire point of building in public.
The journey is the content. Week 1 with tiny numbers is part of the story. Maybe the most important part—because this is where everyone starts.
A year from now, I'll either look back at early numbers and laugh ("remember when 23 stars felt like a lot?") or Brainz Lab will have failed and these posts will be all that's left.
Either way, it'll be real. And real matters more than looking good.
— Andres