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In my youth, there was a restaurant franchise that had a short message at the bottom of its street signs that would proudly state how many people had been served.

I can remember noticing that the number wasn’t the same all the time. The signs had to be updated all the time with larger numbers as more and more people ate at the restaurants. I remember watching as the numbers kept getting bigger all the time and wondering how they fit all those people into that tiny restaurant. As I got older, I wondered how the restaurant counted all those people. We’re talking way back into last century here, before we had computers in restaurants to do the counting for us.

If you’ve visited our community forums lately and have happened to scroll down near the bottom of the page, you might have noticed the Visitor Statistics section. Some time during the last few weeks, the Total Registered Members counter quietly crossed over the 50,000 mark.

Does this have any great meaning? For me it does.

Rather than open myself up for a debate about what this might mean from the view point of a statistician, an SEO expert, a marketing expert or venture capitalist (please let’s not go there), here’s what it says to me personally.

EllisLab is growing. New people are finding us on the web and using our products. People are actively leaning about our products and engaging our fabulous support staff through the community forums. More and more people are turning to EllisLab for software that provides them with a launching pad for their own success.

It also means that next time I’m pitching EE in a meeting and some guy (it’s always a guy that says this. . . why is that?) says in a condescending tone, “Well, if it’s so great, how come I’ve never heard of it?,” I can answer with, “The EE community has over 50,000 registered users from all over the world, so it isn’t exactly a well-kept secret. I’ve got time to give you a personal tour of EE on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week; which is better for you?”

Coooooool!
—————
Been so long since I registered, what’s required? Can anyone register?

Easy stuff:

Username (should be unique to you)
Password (you have to be able to key it in twice in exactly the same way)
Screen Name (optional)
Email Address (needs to be a working email account)
URL (optional)

Terms of Service (you have to agree to the terms of service)

Getting in is the easy part. .. Welcome to Hotel California!

Does it come with a kids meal and a toy?

#3 with OJ to go, please..😊

Hmmm,

I thought it was my fault as I always forget my names and passwords and so usually sign up around 100 times or so just so that I can get in!! 😊

Seriously though, I always take a quick look at the number and my position on the member list!! How vain am I?? 😊

Really good news though. ExpressionEngine is (next to my wife and cats and all other really important things in my life) the best thing I have ever come across.

I had noticed lately though that I somehow got logged out of the site, not too sure why though and when I came back to log in the username and password options at the top of the page had been replaced with a pop-up entrance block. This unfortunately doesn’t allow my browser to auto-fill the information. Don’t know if this was meant to happen or not though?

Again really good news about the 50,000. Let’s try and get it to 150,000 by the end of 2008 shall we?

Best wishes,

Mark

This post should take me onto the second page on the member list 😊

Is 50,000 all the registered members of the forum, including (free) ExpressionEngine Core users, or does it represent paid licenses for ExpressionEngine? If paid licenses, then you’ve really got something exciting to say in a meeting because it represents a real business. Undoubtedly there is a good one there, as EllisLab now has more than 10 on the payroll.

Is 50,000 all the registered members of the forum, including (free) ExpressionEngine Core users, or does it represent paid licenses for ExpressionEngine? If paid licenses, then you’ve really got something exciting to say in a meeting because it represents a real business. Undoubtedly there is a good one there, as EllisLab now has more than 10 on the payroll.

This is registered forum members.  This includes Core users and CodeIgniter users (some of them quite chatty as several of them are appearing on the front two pages of the member list.)

Of course those numbers also include a bunch of designers and developers who are cranking out a respectable number of ExpressionEngine sites.

It would be interesting to know how many commercial licenses have been issued so far (although I imagine this is quite confidential!)

I’m just a nosey bugger 😊

Of course those numbers also include a bunch of designers and developers who are cranking out a respectable number of ExpressionEngine sites.

That’s right—not all the people who hold licenses are members of the forum, and a lot of forum members have several licenses. I’ve got two EE licenses myself, and my firm is about to commission a firm website redesign that will take another commercial license for EE and a Multiple Site Manager expansion too. I’m just saying that if Kurt is having a corporate “pitch” meeting (for such a reasonably-priced product?) the number of paid licenses would be more salient to the decisionmakers than how many people use the software without paying.

Because one of the things companies are concerned about (I know this from pitching to our law-firm marketing committee) is “stability”. The software isn’t going to stop working if EllisLab closed up, but company weenies will choose as if it will.

As for me, I can speak to stability—as you can see, I’ve been a paid-up user for more than five years. But not so chatty—86 posts in five years isn’t going to put me up on the all-star leaderboard.

I’m just saying that if Kurt is having a corporate “pitch” meeting (for such a reasonably-priced product?) the number of paid licenses would be more salient to the decisionmakers than how many people use the software without paying.

People using EE for free are not necessarily even registered members of our site, as one does not have to be a member to download EE Core.  Our membership would be many times higher if that was required.

Well, Rick, you know I’m one who is an advocate of getting paid for your work—which I why I’ve paid early and enthusiastically for all EllisLab products. Frankly, I am hoping the release of EE 2.0 (when is that being released, anyway?) comes with a price increase for a “super” version, perhaps with telephone support, or the e-commerce module, or some combination.

Perversely, some buyers are attracted to the higher price as a signal of value. (These might be the ones Kurt is meeting with.) Telephone support for higher-price customers, or a telephone service contract, might be a selling point.

My guess on the number of paid licenses at $199? 15,000—which at $40 per year for update downloads is a nice recurring revenue stream too.

Frankly, I am hoping the release of EE 2.0 (when is that being released, anyway?) comes with a price increase for a “super” version, perhaps with telephone support, or the e-commerce module, or some combination.

I don’t think telephone support would be very helpful but something along the lines of shared screen support ala iChat or something might do the trick.

I’ve pitched and/or co-pitched EE to single person consulting firms, clear up to global companies with over 118,000 employees.

I get a lot of questions about everything from security, scalability, sustainability, design-ability and my all time favorite. “Can we have bouncy menus in our new site?”.

I’ve been yelled at, accused of lying, and had people walk out of a “pitch” in a temper tantrum. As long as I’m pitching EE though, I’ve always got the sale if I wanted it.

Price is always a question, which is always funny to me. They will pay me a couple thousand dollars to have me fly in for a day or two, then want to argue about the price of EE.

They ask “.. if its that good, then how come it doesn’t cost $10,000?”. I answer, “Because its that good, and when its that good, EllisLab sells a lot of licenses, and that keeps the price down”.

They ask “.. if its that secure, then how come more large companies aren’t using it?”. I answer, “Actually, a bunch of very large companies are using it, and large companies come with legal teams that like to have consultants under a non-disclosure agreement. EE is a very popular CMS for secure employee intranets, and public websites.”

I never know what folks will ask during the pitch. Some times I get off the phone a laugh out loud, other times I just want to go hide under a rock. I’ve been pitching ideas for a long time. In a past job I asked people to part with their money in exchange for for feeling good about themselves; I raised over 3.5 million a year for charity and most of the donors got nothing more exciting than a lapel pin to show for their money.

For most of the last 5 years now I’ve been pitching EllisLab products and building dreams for my clients with them. Its a lot of fun to have something tangible to show for my efforts at the end of the day.