Tailscan updates - From $500 to $1500 MRR and riding the wave

This is the fourth article in a series of articles about building Tailscan in public. In this update on Tailscan I will talk about the rebranding and pricing changes, the massive growth wave of the last few months, some viral "incidents" and the upcoming Tailscan 2 release.

In the previous articles, I've written about the starting out and the early days of Tailscan, figuring out marketing and becoming an Open Startup (and why).Also, if you're wondering: "What is Tailscan?" click here to find out more.

Rebranding and price change

From the very start of Tailscan, I've been using the same landing page, color scheme and pricing.

And although I like purple gradients very much, I felt like some 🌶️ excitement was missing from the color scheme. Introducing

Maroon! Thank you for helping me choose, Twitter X!

Once I got the new color scheme figured out, I started redesigning the landing page.

The old landing page showed what Tailscan is and what it does. But it didn't explain any benefits. In other words, it didn't explain why you should use Tailscan. It only explained what it did. And one of the golden rules for writing a good landing page is first explaining why you need this product, not what this product does (write about that part further down the landing page).

I've also added social proof in the form of testimonials and better product demo videos. For those reading that allowed me to use their review or comment as testimonials: thank you!

And last but not least, the price for Tailscan has also changed. The initial price was set to $49/year. In the 10 months that followed, tons of work has gone into making Tailscan a much, much better product. To reflect that and what's about to come in the Tailscan 2 update, I've decided to change the prices.

It was also the perfect opportunity to introduce a monthly plan and perpetual license (one-time payment).

Growth from $580 to $1,600 MRR in 4 months

The moment I published the Tailscan Open Startup page, recurring revenue was at $580. That was the end of March 2023.

In the 4 months that followed, Tailscan has grown to $1,600 MRR. That's a 176% increase in 4 months 🤯! There are five main reasons for this growth.

First, SEO efforts seem to really take off! Every month, Tailscan is shown a quarter million times on Google, resulting in 3000 clicks. 27% of this is branded searches (like 'tailscan'). The rest is organic!

Second, sponsoring two Tailwind newsletters helped to get the word out to the Tailwind community. I've stopped sponsoring them as it was a bit too expensive to do continuously (~$250 a month). But I might sponsor some newsletters again in the future.

Third, building in public on Twitter and has really helped to get the word out. The open page in combination with blog articles like these make excellent tweets!

Fourth, Tailscan has been featured on social media a couple of times (like by @TomIsLoading on TikTok) and added to some resource libraries (like the one by Flowbite)


And (fifth), there were some viral "incidents" on Twitter 👀..

Viral "incidents" on Twitter

I didn't expect to ever write this but: someone copied my new landing page that I've worked so hard on. After tweeting about it (I admit, fueled by emotions), I found out that most of Twitter does not think there is anything wrong with that. Or that it's a "Noob mistake #1 when your site gets cloned" - @levelsio.

What followed that day was an overheated phone from notifications, 2.5 million (combined) impressions and 1000 new followers (if that's you: hey!), a crazy plot twist about who Brian really is and 13.000 new visitors to the Tailscan website.

My thought on the whole matter is mostly neutral. I got to say what I wanted to say, and got to learn other people's perspective on this.

What does Brian think? Will we ever see him again? Was this all a hoax? Those are all excellent questions 😉

Almost time for Tailscan 2

I'd like to take this opportunity to give an update about Tailscan 2: it's almost there! I'm in the stage of refining and refactoring right now. This is a release that I've been working on for a long time (some code was already written in January of this year!)

Very excited to tell you all about it in the next blog article. I expect Tailscan 2 to be out by the end of October or start of November.

And as always, if there is anything in particular you'd like to know, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or via email (erwin@tailscan.com).


Still curious about Tailscan? Why not try it out on this page! Just click the button in the section below.