Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may receive compensation when you click on links to products in this post. For an explanation of my Advertising Policy, visit this page. Thanks for reading!
Here are the ways how WordPress makes its money.
WordPress.com is owned by the company called Automattic. Automattic, which is the only company allowed to use the trademark name “WordPress”, makes money on WordPress.com by:
- Selling advertising on blogs and sites using its “Free Blog” plan.
- WordPress.com hosting plans including the selling of additional disk space, commercial themes, etc.
- Domain registrations.
- WordAds.
- JetPack, WooCommerce and other subsidiaries Automattic owns (See below).
WordPress.com should not be confused with WordPress.org.
WordPress.org, which owns the WordPress trademark and is part of the non-profit WordPress Foundation, makes money mostly through donations and referrals to Self Hosting Web Providers.
Here’s a link where you can find out more information about Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com.
WordPress.com is just one of the companies that Automattic owns. Automattic also owns and makes money through these other products and services:
As you can see WordPress and Automattic are hardly charitable organizations. In fact, it is estimated that Automattic, the company that owns WordPress has a market cap of about 3 billion dollars.
WordPress.org on the other hand is a non-profit organization. WordPress was created by the founders of WordPress.com as well as Automattic to offer WordPress, the CMS platform, to the world in the form of open source software.
On WordPress.org you can find free versions of basically everything WordPress that you need to create a WordPress website except maybe hosting. You can find the following on WordPress.org:
- Themes
- Plugins
- Support
- Forums
- Basically all things WordPress even hosting. But the hosting companies that you find have basically paid to advertise on WordPress.org and their plans are not free.
How do free WordPress blogs make money for WordPress?
Automattic and WordPress.com make money from their free WordPress blogs hosted on WordPress.com by putting advertising on these blogs.
Please note, that the blog owner or blogger themselves does not make any of the money that WordPress.com receives in ad revenue from their content or their blog.
This is how WordPress.com is able to offer free WordPress blogs hosted on their servers.
Here’s how you can make money on how WordPress makes money.
Obviously unless you have a few hundred million lying around, duplicating WordPress’s business plan and how they make their money is out of most people’s reach.
However, that should not stop you from emulating and offering the same services that WordPress.com offers or stop you from profiting from companies that do.
This is the key. You can either become an affiliate for some of WordPress.com’s services.
You can become an affiliate for some of Automattic’s other WordPress products and services and/or become an affiliate for companies that offer similar products and services that are WordPress related.
You can even do a combination of all of them.
But that’s not all. If you look at WordPress.org, at first glance you might think that it’s simply a charitable organization that offers free open source themes and plugins to the world, which they do
However, if you look just a little deeper beneath the surface, you’ll find that WordPress.org is also a money-making platform for those who participate in it.
You see, on WordPress.org, whether you’re offering a theme, a plugin or any other type of service, you must have a free version to offer in order to be listed on their platform.
If your plugin is a strictly paid plugin or your theme is a strictly paid theme, then you are not allowed to list it on WordPress.org.
Therefore, if you look a little carefully at the themes and plugins that are available on WordPress.org, you will also notice that the majority of them offer pro, premium and paid versions of their products.
In addition, many of them offer affiliate programs as well. These affiliate programs will pay you a commission for every sale or subscription that they get.
The commissions of course vary as well as the terms. So you can literally offer plugins as well as themes without having to write a single line of code yourself.
However, if you know how to write code there’s nothing stopping you from developing your own WordPress theme or plugin.
You can then sell it out to the wider world. Although you would need to know how to code in PHP as well as be familiar with JavaScript and of course HTML and CSS.
Here’s a list of WordPress related products that Automattic offers, which are under their “Affiliate Program”.
Automattic will pay you a Marketing Fee of 20%, unless agreed otherwise, of all amounts actually received by Automattic from new users that click on your Link and purchase Automattic Services within 30 days of clicking on your Link.
Other ways you can make money with WordPress.
Oh but wait! I’m not done. There are even more ways you can make money with WordPress.
You can become a hosting provider yourself, just like WordPress.com.
Many, if not most hosting providers have what’s called a “Reseller Program”. This is where you buy or at least pay a monthly subscription for space on their servers.
You can then offer this server space in the form of hosting to your WordPress clients. Of course, you can mark it up and put in your profit margin etc.
Again, you don’t need to know how to code to do this either. However, you should be very familiar with how hosting works as well as how servers, Hosting companies, Dashboards etc. work.
That’s not all. You can even sell WordPress themes! Here’s a link to a post on “How you can make money selling WordPress themes.” for more information.
How WordPress makes money and how you can too, summary.
Now you know how WordPress makes money.
Whether that is WordPress.com through their parent company Automattic or even WordPress.org, which is an open source platform where you can find most things WordPress for free.
There are still plenty of ways to monetize WordPress.
I’ve also gone through many ways in on how you too, can make money from WordPress as well.
So what are you waiting for? With WordPress all you need is a little drive and imagination in order to make money from WordPress.
You don’t even need to know how to code.
