WordPress News

Who is buying commercial WordPress themes?

Brian Krogsgard

June 18, 2014

To say the theme marketplace is undergoing a transition is probably an understatement. We've seen many shops sell or change focus over the past year. A few have maintained their place in the market or even grown some, but it's not easy…

PressNomics 3, the economics of WordPress conference, is January 22nd – January 24th

Brian Krogsgard

June 18, 2014

BusinessWordPress News

Dates have just been announced for the next PressNomics. PressNomics' third edition will be held in Tempe, Arizona, January 22nd through January 24th. The first two iterations of this conference, which is essentially the official unofficial WordPress business conference, were…

Crowd Favorite to acquire Forty, a UX and design agency

Brian Krogsgard

June 14, 2014

BusinessDesign

Forty is a design and UX agency based in Arizona. James Archer, Forty’s CEO, is a founding member of the Gangplank incubator in Chandler, AZ. Forty is a team of six that have focused on design and UX for the past…

WP eCommerce: What’s old is new again.

Brian Krogsgard

June 10, 2014

BusinessDraft

WP eCommerce is one of the oldest WordPress plugins you'll find. That it's an eCommerce plugin -- built on WordPress, well before such a thing seemed sensible -- is even more of a testament to just how impressive this plugin…

UpThemes adds Lucid theme collection to their reportoire

Brian Krogsgard

June 5, 2014

BusinessDesign

The Lucid Theme shop was run by Jon Bellah until today. He still maintains the Lucid brand, but he's sold his themes to UpThemes. When I inquired with Chris Wallace, founder of UpThemes, about why they made the acquisition, he said,…

VIP accounts for nearly 17% of WordPress.com’s “network” pageviews

Brian Krogsgard

June 3, 2014

Business

WordPress.com VIP has a fancy new stats page. Of course I immediately wanted to know how it stacks up to WordPress.com stats as a whole. Here's the math: WordPress.com VIP: 2,441,299,137 pageviews in the last 30 days All WordPress.com: 14,512,740,573*…

Press75 has been sold to Westwerk, the company behind WerkPress

Brian Krogsgard

June 3, 2014

BusinessDesign

In mid-April I wrote that Press75 was for sale on Flippa. That auction ended without a sale, with bids for up to $45,000. Today, the Minneapolis based Westwerk is announcing that they have bought Press75 from Jason Schuller. It's my…

Easy Digital Downloads is approaching $500,000 in annual revenue

Brian Krogsgard

May 29, 2014

BusinessWordPress News

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…

IgnitionDeck has acquired the Fundify Crowdfunding WordPress plugin and theme

Brian Krogsgard

May 28, 2014

BusinessWordPress News

Fundify is a crowdfunding theme and plugin combination, that operates on top of Easy Digital Downloads. Created by Astoundify, the Fundify plugin is a free download on WordPress.org, and they monetized the product through a complimentary WordPress theme, sold on…

Pagely has new plans, a new dashboard, and a new Amazon Web Services infrastructure

Brian Krogsgard

May 27, 2014

BusinessHosting

Pagely has made some drastic changes to their hosting platform over the last few months. They've moved from Firehost to being fully powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), led by their new CTO, Joshua Eichorn. Measuring tiers of hosting by…

The state of the WordPress theme industry

David Perel

May 27, 2014

BusinessDesign

Editor's Note: This story is republished from Medium, with author David Perel's permission. David has a unique take on the industry and has some very poignant thoughts that I wanted to share with this audience. The times, they are changing.…

Pantheon has raised $21.5 million in Series B financing

Brian Krogsgard

May 15, 2014

BusinessHosting

Pantheon CEO Zach Rosen announced this morning that they've raised $21.5 million in financing.I covered Pantheon, including an interview, just recently when they launched their WordPress product. As I said then, Pantheon is a very compelling product.Seeing this raise another…

Tips on providing efficient product support

Brian Krogsgard

May 12, 2014

Business

Steven Gliebe did a considerable amount of research when he realized he may be ready to hire support help for his theme shop, Church Themes. So, he asked others in the industry for advice. One of his primary takeaways was…

WooThemes is investigating alleged website vulnerabilities

Brian Krogsgard

May 9, 2014

BusinessHosting

Some WooThemes customers are alleging that their credit cards suffered from fraudulent charges after purchasing items from WooThemes’ website. The point of vulnerability is unknown at this time. The number of affected customers is unknown. The following is what we know:…

Why unlimited or lifetime product plans are sometimes good

Brian Krogsgard

May 6, 2014

Business

Syed Balkhi talks about product life cycles, churn, and marketing in his post about the psychology of unlimited or lifetime product pricing. At one point or another, you’ve probably wondered should I implement unlimited in my business? Is unlimited really…

The dangers of pricing in WordPress business models

Brian Krogsgard

April 30, 2014

Business

Tom McFarlin warns against the unsustainable practice of WordPress theme and plugin providers selling lifetime support. But although the amount of money that the business is making increases over a short time, there’s not a solid amount of cash flow.…