Matt Mullengweg (the founder of WordPress and Automattic) recently was able to answer some questions regarding the strength of WordPress at Le Web (one of the leading tech conference in Europe).
While some of the questions answered at Le Web were not surprising (i.e. his desire for Automattic to avoid being acquired), a few answers regarding revenues for WP.com were.
Are you making money?
We’re focused on growth right now, so we’ve invested a lot in infrastructure and so on. We haven’t been focused on revenues so far, but I can tell you we’re break-even.
How big is the company right now?
We’re about 74 people. In terms of revenues to sustain our growth, I’d say we make a little under $1 million a month from all our services combined.
(TechCrunch: that’s roughly $10 million a year, based on that statement and what we’ve heard from other sources.) (via TechCrunch)
Note: Questions in bold were asked by Alexia Tsotsis
Matt Mullenweg later went on to explain that most of Automattic’s revenues come from selling premium features and hosting services which are apparently generating a nice sum of cash for the company every month.
While it’s good to hear that WordPress has a solid business plan (something Tumblr has yet to discover), what was surprising to this author is the fact that WP.com has not yet become a very lucrative enterprise already, despite boasting superior features when compared against rivals.
Although it’s inevitable that Automattic will eventually become a thriving company (especially after convincing Microsoft to surrender its blog users to WP.com), hopefully freemium and premium services like Akismet and VaultPress, respectively, can help quickly push WP.com deep into the black.
