One of my favorite things about Pippin Williamson is that he is an open book. He’s always sharing what he’s learning, what he’s working on, and even how much money his products are making.
In an excellent guest post he wrote for ManageWP (for which I’ll hold a grudge for at least the rest of the day), he shared a number of things he’s learned trying to monetize Easy Digital Downloads, his popular eCommerce product.
Among what he shared, he stated that they are approaching $500,000 per year in revenue. It’s not his first time to showcase such a level of transparency; he did previously in his 2013 year in review. Do keep in mind though that revenues are not profits, so a good bit of that money goes to payouts, contractors, and other fees (I’d guess close to 50%).
It appears his business is doubling revenues from last year, and I’m very happy for him. Pippin is one of the most influential and important members of the WordPress community in my opinion, and his success is well deserved.
I don’t want to overshadow the rest of his post about what he’s learned running EDD by the income, so be sure to read the whole thing. But I did want to highlight that there are people in small teams really doing well with products, and if you’re looking to get into the market, be sure you’re paying attention to Pippin and his team.
Thanks Brian!
Just to share an additional piece of data related to your comment about 50% of revenue going into expenses. You’re absolutely right, more than 50% goes to contractors, sales commissions, development, costs, hosting, and other expenses. The largest chunk by far is sales commissions for extension and theme developers. So far this year, more than $81k has been paid out (or is waiting to be paid out) to extension and theme developers. This number does not include any costs associated with contracted extension development, which we sometimes do in order to accelerate extension development time.
Even at 50% goes to expenses…still a damn good payout. Congrats to Pippin. As I mentioned on Twitter, guess who’s buying the beers! 🙂
Profits aside, I’m so glad that people like Pippin are part of this community. He’s helped countless others to learn WordPress and become better developers. The fact that he’s found a way to support himself and his family while doing so is just icing on the cake.
Seeing Pippin his business evolve has been very inspirational for me.. Not because of the impressive numbers but the way he interacts with his customers and the WordPress community. It’s awesome to see how he has grown his business by prioritising on the right things (building customer relationships through excellent products and support) and simply spending a LOT of *bleeping* time & effort into everything he does.
Hats off to you Pippin 🙂