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This week in WordPress
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Gross (revenue) transparency
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"My annual year-in-review post is live!" tweets Pippin Williamson who, for the eighth year in a row, has published his annual 2019 Year in Review. In the 6,000+ word post, he delivers yet another very detailed and transparent overview of Sandhills Developments' core products and a breakdown of revenue.
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On the software side of things (Sandhills also operates a brewery), the company raked in $3,454,759.93 in revenue, which includes takings for AffiliateWP, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro. Twenty-four people now work on the digital side of the business, with 14 in the brewery.
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Pippin also lists some ambitious—yet no doubt achievable—goals for 2020, including surpassing $4 million in gross revenue and maintaining a 20% profit margin. "Really proud of what @SandhillsDev and @rcpwp accomplished in 2019," tweets Restrict Content Pro lead developer Ashley Gibson.
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And another one… two…
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There’s transparency and then there’s transparency. Inspired by Pippin’s annual year-end posts, WP Fusion’s Jack Arturo has laid his business bare, revenue, customer numbers, stats and all, in 2019 In Review. The post takes transparency to a whole ‘nother level, with Black Friday revenue, traffic stats, refunds processed, average customer lifetime, and commissions paid to affiliates, just to name some of what he shares.
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It’s an insightful, behind-the-curtains look at how Jack has grown his business over the past five years. He grossed $160,780 in 2018 and achieved a stellar 89% increase in 2019, taking in a $303,242.
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Lazy loading coming to core
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"By lazy-loading images with the native web API, we as the WordPress project have an amazing opportunity to drastically improve performance and UX on the web. Please review this proposal and test the feature plugin to help make it happen!" tweets Felix Arntz, WordPress core committer and developer programs engineer at Google. He links to Lazy-Loading Images in WordPress Core, his plan for pushing a lazy loading feature to WordPress core.
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"If testing goes well, this feature could land in WordPress 5.4 in March," adds Justin Tadlock from WP Tavern in Native Lazy Loading Support Coming to WordPress. "Google Dev (& @yoast alum) @felixarntz making web performance improvements at a WordPress scale," tweets Joost de Valk from Yoast.
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Congratulations Andrea Middleton!
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"Congratulations to @andmiddleton on being the winner of the Executive Leader of the Year of a Community Team category in the #CommunityIndustryAwards!" tweets CMX. Andrea Middleton was recently nominated for the inaugural awards for her long-time work as a WordPress community organiser. CMX is one of the world’s largest professional organizations dedicated to community builders. The awards celebrate the achievements of the best in the online community industry.
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In other news...
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- - 10up’s Director of Audience and Revenue, Mike Bal, has shared some initial results from the Google News Initiative Revenue Accelerator Program. During the first eight weeks, the Long Beach Post set new records for top-performing posts by organic traffic and revenue, and the extra revenue generated in the first three months was enough to hire a full-time staff writer. 10up has partnered with Google and LION Publishers for the program, which is working to establish a foundational blueprint for local publishers to comprehensively optimize their web-based revenue.
- - Shortcodes are, as the name suggests, short pieces of code that perform some sort of function. WooCommerce shortcodes, for example, let you add neat WooCommerce-related functions to WordPress pages, posts, sidebars, and widgetized areas on your website. On the Barn2 blog, Maria Ansari explains in Complete Guide to WooCommerce Shortcodes what WooCommerce shortcodes are and how you can use them to deliver better user experiences and grow your bottom line. It also explains when (and why) you should use each shortcode. Sponsored.
- - "In this guide we’ll show you how to get an agency started and, later, how to scale it for greater success and sustainability," tweets Kinsta, linking to writer Suzanne Scacca’s wonderfully written and informative piece A Guide to Starting and Running a Successful WordPress Agency.
- - Passionate about helping people get involved in contributing to WordPress? Consider taking a shift at the Get Involved table at WordCamp Asia 2020. The event will be held from 21-23 February in Bangkok, Thailand. Sam Suresh from the WordPress Global Community Team shares how you can help in Get Involved Table at WordCamp Asia 2020.
- - The organizing team for WordCamp Europe's Contributor Day in June this year wants to increase the value that new attendees get from Contributor Day and increase the long term benefit to the WordPress project from onboarding new contributors. Think you can help? Leave a comment on SiteGround WordPress Community Manager Francesca Marano’s post WCEU 2020 – Leave no Contributor Behind.
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