Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Nearly 80 percent of WordPress users are making revenue (survey)

By | December 21, 2011, 11:17am PST

Summary: A new survey analyzes how WordPress is being used and what these users want to see more of from the open source platform.

Most WordPress users see the service as more than just a blogging platform but rather as a full-fledged content management system, according to a new survey.

Thus, these users want WordPress to act and deliver tools that live up to this expectation.

The survey was conducted by WooThemes, a theme and platform provider for professional WordPress sites, helping businesses with customizable features and performance.

The overall purpose of the poll was to get a better understanding of the primary skills and uses of the open source blogging platform, to see if/how users are monetizing WordPress, and what these users think are missing from the service.

Here are some of the highlights from the survey as WordPress stands now in the minds of these respondents after its latest upgrade:

  • Experience: Approximately 90 percent of WordPress users have more than a year of WP experience; almost half have over three years. Nearly all of these users call themselves “developers” or “designers.”
  • Purpose: WordPress has an almost equal mix of users designing sites for personal and business purposes. (60 percent use WordPress for client services.)
  • Monetization: Almost most 80 percent across the board are making revenue from their sites.

Some of the aspects of WordPress that delights its users include that it is a scalable platform as well as its “Tumblr-like” simplicity mixed with the complexity of web app frameworks.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. Here’s some of the improvements that some users would like to see:

  • Less plug-ins
  • More do-it-yourself functionality
  • Responsive web design (more focus on the user interface and experience)
  • More fully integrated features with better reliability and refined functionality

For reference, the survey results are based upon more than 2,000 responses from polling over 100,000 WooThemes clients on WordPress.

[Graphic via WooThemes]

Related:

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

Talkback Most Recent of 5 Talkback(s)

  • RE: Nearly 80 percent of WordPress users are making revenue (survey)
    Lots of scams on wordpress and blogspot too.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    bobiroc
    21st Dec
  • RE: Nearly 80 percent of WordPress users are making revenue (survey)
    Guess I'm missing out. I get nothing, monetarily, for my WordPress blog.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    TreeTrunkRick
    21st Dec
  • RE: Nearly 80 percent of WordPress users are making revenue (survey)
    @TreeTrunkRick

    I think the article is referring to the Wordpress CMS
    ZDNet Gravatar
    JoseTorr
    21st Dec
  • RE: Nearly 80 percent of WordPress users are making revenue (survey)
    Meh, "making revenue" is not the same as "making a living." Only 30% said they were earning a living from it.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CobraA1
    22nd Dec
  • http://www.waxfilter.com
    Install the filters for air compressors have certain necessity. The compressed air is often as a kind of energy and power to use. This is because the compressed air is safety and circulation flexible. It also can obtain simple. But, in order to reduce the operating cost to improve work efficiency, it is necessary to purify the compressed air. By remoing compressed air, water vapor, garbage, oil mist, waste gas such harmful substances, it can enhance the energy utilization. The so-called harmful material is refers to the use of oil and sheet metal, carbon, teflon piece, piping of rust, etc. Compressed air with these material can cause paralysis system, thus affecting the normal production process.
    In this , the problem of compressing water in air is especially prominent. When the air temperature 11 ?? C per rise, the ability of water vapor in the air to keep doubling, the air in the compression process reduced volume, and significantly increased temperature. The compressed air temperature changes a lot in the course of transmission and the compressed air water problem is outstanding, so the ability to get off water is a standard to measure the water separator's performance. I give you an advice to click in this china water separator factory now. http://www.waxfilter.com/
    ZDNet Gravatar
    filters
    23rd Dec

Talkback - Tell Us What You Think

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources