A common question I get at the office when WordPress is at the forefront of discussion is, “if WordPress gives away it’s software for free then how do they make money?” Recently at the Economist Innovation Conference in Berkeley, California, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg answered this question in front of a few hundred people in the audience. The answer he gave was simple. Back-up services, Hosting, Anti-Spam, and a few other paid upgrades for it’s WordPress.com user base.
Back-up Services + Hosting + AntiSpam + Upgrades = WordPress Revenue $
Really? Yes Really! Even though there is not a large percentage of WordPress users who opt-in to these paid services, the total number overall makes WordPress as a company profitable. And more importantly profitable enough to keep the development of the WordPress project moving forward.
How much does WordPress actually make? Not really sure. But for Automatic (the company behind WordPress) to get a cool $30 Million in Funding last year, they must be earning enough to make that possible. Let alone the huge earning potential that they do have.
The point is this. You can create a true Open Source Project and still make profits. Your software just has to be good enough. Make your software amazing, open sourced, and easy to use and it will spread like wildfire. The profits will naturally come there after.
What open source project are you going to create?
Michel Leconte
August 26, 2010
Hi Chase,
we created http://www.seotoaster.com , the most advanced ecommerce SEO CMS out of the box under GLPv3. Please check it out if you have a few minutes, there’s also a demo online. You’re invited to our free and online Thursday’s training sessions of course.
Our business model is an upgrade to our Internet marketing platform http://www.seosamba.com which gives users the ability to manage seotoaster powered website, regardless of their hosting situation, from a central location. It also disseminates press releases automatically, interfaces with Google Webmasters, Analytics, and Optimizer and enhance your managed websites with a Yahoo/Google news compliant section along with RSS feeds.