WordPress.com Forums » Tag: VC - Recent Posts http://en.forums.wordpress.com/tags/vc WordPress.com Forums » Tag: VC - Recent Posts en Thu, 23 May 2013 18:39:01 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.1-alpha-2539 timethief on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-8812 Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:44:44 +0000 timethief 8812@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Listening to you lot is absolutely hilarious. Thanks so much for the good time coming on the heels of a particularly yucky day. I'm off to bed with a smile on my face because visions of Matt's naked body rolling in piles of $1000 bills will be the main feature in my dreams tonight ... good night sweet princes.

]]> rogerblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-8808 Sun, 23 Apr 2006 04:56:15 +0000 rogerblogger 8808@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Co-founder Tony Schneider was interviewed by Business 2.0 about where WordPress is going :

So what is the business model?

"We're looking at a number of things. WordPress as a blogging platform is already open-source. If you want to run your own blogging service and host other people's blogs, great. Take it. We want lots and lots of people to become serious bloggers. Then we can offer add-on services to those people.

If a blog starts to have so much traffic that you start making some money, once you get to that point, you're ready to spend meaningful money. For people who just casually blog, it should be free.

We're starting to license add-on services like Akismet, which blocks Web spam, to other people who are running corporate blogs, for example. If you're, say, an About.com, and your business is on blogs, you can't have spam on there."

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/18/magazines/business2/startuptype/index.htm

]]> drmike on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7743 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 18:14:03 +0000 drmike 7743@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ So does that mean you know Chaney? ;)

]]> matt on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7737 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:55:13 +0000 matt 7737@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Haha, don't overrate that. It just means my discretionary income went to the business while we were getting things started. It's not much, but every little bit helps. And a very small sacrifice for what has turned out to be an incredibly fun venture.

]]> cornell on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7731 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:24:35 +0000 cornell 7731@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Hey Matt - I think that's probably the longest post you've ever made in the forum! ;)

Personal money eh? niiiiiiiiiiiice!

]]> matt on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7728 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:21:06 +0000 matt 7728@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Hey guys. :)

To address the original question, we plan to offer paid add-ons, but we're not going to charge for anything you get for free now. We've been testing out some things like domain parking and custom themes, and as our billing system gets ironed out we'll start to make more of these upgrades available.

We have taken a small amount of investment, as I blogged about here, but we haven't really dipped into it here yet. Everything WP.com currently runs on has been bootstrapped by personal money, Akismet licensing, and (as drmike pointed out) hosting partnerships. We're planning an expansion to make things faster and more reliable, that's what we'll be using the investment for.

I can confirm that we're not a CIA front, at least as far as I know. What's a little spooky though is my father did work at Brown & Root (which merged with Kellogg, which became part of Halliburton) for 25+ years, but I believe he consults for Chevron now. (There's not a whole lot in Houston besides oil and medical!)

]]> drmike on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7648 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:24:14 +0000 drmike 7648@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You can actually do a lot with $15-20k US a month in income.

]]> rogerblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7639 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:51:20 +0000 rogerblogger 7639@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ From the Messiah himself :

"The growth of WordPress.com and Akismet has outpaced anyone’s expectations. Recently, I made the decision to sell a minority stake in the company to a few select partners who I think are going to bring a lot of value to the business far beyond mere dollars." - photomatt

http://photomatt.net/2006/04/12/a-little-funding/

]]> radiofat on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7613 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 20:07:57 +0000 radiofat 7613@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ I heard Matt was plush with Halliburton oil money from Texas. Donncha is part of the IRA. WordPress.com is just a front to funnel CIA money to third-world countries, all under the guise of pot-smoking free-love open source folks. How else do you think they give so much s*** away?

But secretly I'm just perturbed they are making money while keeping things very cool around here. When I was in the first boom we would have had punch the monkey popunder on this b**** after the first month. Maybe I'm just still bitter from the months I wasted waiting for Blogger and Typepad to rebuild. Anyway...

]]> drmike on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7593 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:59:05 +0000 drmike 7593@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ You folks don't think they get a cutback for those sites over here when they make a sale? :)

]]> vitya on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7592 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:53:27 +0000 vitya 7592@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Or maybe this is a division of homeland security?

]]> wank on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7589 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:32:41 +0000 wank 7589@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Not really baffling, no, since as I've pointed out before there's a fair degree of hostility in the open source community towards the idea of anyone making money out of wordpress.

(Of course, this is counterbalanced by the fanboys who believe Matt can do no wrong and would love to see him make a million. And the vast majority who really couldn't care less.)

Even if that weren't a factor, communication and full disclosure have always been an issue for these guys. Maybe if they start turning a profit they'll be able to hire someone to handle their PR ;)

]]> nycblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7581 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 16:59:32 +0000 nycblogger 7581@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Roger, they also took funding last year (1). So that probably helps. Why they don't tell us, their community about that is baffling.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/oq7w3

]]> rogerblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7572 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:16:48 +0000 rogerblogger 7572@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Found the answer:

Right now everything on WordPress.com is free, and things that are currently free will remain free in the future, but we do plan to offer paid a la carte upgrades for things like extra storage and domains. How do we pay for everything? WordPress.com is run by Automattic which currently makes money from blog services, Akismet anti-spam technology, and hosting partnerships.

]]> cornell on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7548 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:55:37 +0000 cornell 7548@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ I believe that there will still be a free service with extra goodies for those paying a subscription.

Me? I'll still support because I enjoy helping.

:)

]]> rogerblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7546 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:30:17 +0000 rogerblogger 7546@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ It troubles me that they would think of charging soonish. Not because it's not a wonderful service, or because Blogger is free, but because WordPress is the result of hundreds of open-source volunteers who had no incentive or reward. How will they be rewarded? If WordPress is going to start charging, shouldn't they be upfront with the people donating their time?

]]> wank on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7515 Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:48:00 +0000 wank 7515@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ They're going to start charging soonish, yeah. In the meantime, they have a nice friendly guy who used to work for Yahoo! funding them, so don't worry about them going bust just yet.

]]> drmike on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7506 Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:53:21 +0000 drmike 7506@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Dude, please stop spamming the forums. Seriously.

]]> drmike on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7501 Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:46:44 +0000 drmike 7501@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Not sure why you had to post this twice. :) (edit - 4 times now)

Do remember that they do other things in the background. You might want to take a look at their website to see what else they do. I know the author of PHPNuke does his program full time but he takes donations, charges for the latest version downloaded and whatnot.

Who knows. Maybe Matt is really Bill Gates in disguise and this is how he supports Open Source software.

OK, you can stop laughing now. :)

]]> rogerblogger on "Profit" http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/profit#post-7495 Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:17:24 +0000 rogerblogger 7495@http://en.forums.wordpress.com/ Very Random Question - but how do you guys make money? How do you manage to stay afloat hosting 100,000 blogs with no advertising? Are you guys planning to compete head to head with Blogger and Xanga? Are you planning to pull a typepad on us, and start charging down the road?

It matters because as the people behind wordpress put in enormous amounts of time, we bloggers also put our time and we would like to know that years from now wordpress will still be here.

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