2012 has been a great year for me. I expanded my plugin development business, I started a large community-driven plugin project, I contributed to WordPress core and plugins that were not mine, and my wife and I started a family by bringing our first baby girl into the world.
Site Stats (Pippin's Plugins.com)
This site has seen very steady growth since it's launch a little over a year ago (October, 2011) and I'm quite happy with the numbers.
207,841 different people visited the site in 2012, with 307,889 visits total. There were 630,599 page views and an average of just over 2 page views per visit.
Nearly 33% of the site visitors were returning visitors (I think that's good).
The most visited posts / pages on the site were nearly all detail pages for some of my more popular plugins (no surprise there), with Easy Content Types being the most popular, and Restrict Content Pro taking second place.
My primary goal for 2013 will be to pass 1 million page views on the site in a single year (2012 had about 640,000).
Posting Stats
In 2012, I published 169 new posts, which is 69 more than I published in 2011.
- 92 were tutorials
- 32 were tutorials / plugins for paid members only
- 12 were reviews of plugins by other developers
- 12 were thoughts on and around plugins
- 9 were published as parts to my Plugin Thoughts podcast
- 30 were published as news items
- 5 guest posts were published
Membership Stats
Exactly one year ago, I launched my membership section to this site. Paid members gain access to restricted tutorials and also free downloads of several plugins offered exclusively through the site.
- Currently active and paid subscribers: 176
- Expired subscribers: 272
- Free members: 4953
- Active members by subscription level:
- - Hobby Coder: 39
- - Coder by Night: 41
- - Code Monkey: 87
- Earnings from paid memberships (Jan 1, 2012 - Dec 31st, 2012): $8770.10
Easy Digital Downloads
Last April I launched a large plugin project called Easy Digital Downloads, which is an e-commerce plugin specifically for selling digital products. The plugin has really taken off and has seen a large amount of growth over the last nine months and I'm exceptionally pleased with where the plugin is today.
EDD has been downloaded 41,888 times from the WordPress.org repository.
The plugin has 5 official contributors: mordauk (me), sksmatt, sunnyratilal, SpencerFinnell, Chriscct7.
40 developers have contributed patches to the EDD.
Easy Digital Downloads has received 62 5-star ratings and 17 reviews (all 5-star).
There are currently 63 published extensions for EDD, with many more in the development / planning stages.
EDD earnings stats from extension sales:
- 891 extension purchases have been made
- $24,624.20 has been made in extension sales since April, 2012.
- $4,469.65 has been paid out in extension sale commissions for other developers
- $1,234.20 is waiting to be paid out to other developers for extension sales
- $1425 has been paid to developers for contracted extensions
Easy Digital Downloads has been adopted as the sales platform of choice by some very popular WordPress theme / plugin shops:
Easy Digital Downloads has also succeeded in hiring three paid support staff to help with the ever-growing support ticket numbers.
Our funny blue monster got made into a plushy:
I really couldn't be happier with how well Easy Digital Downloads has been doing.
Commercial Plugin Sales
My commercial plugins include all of those sold through Code Canyon.net, Mojo Code, and this site.
Commercial plugin sales account for a very significant part of my annual income (it's more than enough to support my family) and today has been a good year.
My most valuable plugin is Easy Content Types, with the runner up being Restrict Content Pro.
Total plugin sales: 6239
Total earnings in plugin sales in 2012: $68496.16
My Daughter
http://instagram.com/p/TZxD_JycmE/
Eliza Joy Williamson was born May 10, 2012.
Pippin, thanks for sharing your success in such an informative way and for all your contributions to the WordPress community—I value my premium membership and really appreciate the thoughtfulness and depth of your tutorials and posts. Congratulations on your 2012 success, your beautiful daughter and best wishes for a wonderful 2013!
Well done Pippin! Great numbers indeed 🙂 Thanks for sharing, as always.
All the best for this new year
My god! Congratulations Pippin and thanks for everything. You are an awesome dude!
Amazing stats and congratulations for your achievements in 2012. I wish you all the best for the year ahead. Can’t thank you enough for your contributions to the WP community. You are awesome! 🙂
Many more awesomeness in the year 2013. All the best Pippins!
Just wanted to say your post is very inspiring – it really shows what can be achieved in one year and makes me rethink about my life as well and what I’d like to achieve in 2013. I always wonder how you find the time and energy to write such thought provoking and informative posts whilst juggling everything – perhaps you could give us tips one day 🙂
Happy New Year for 2013!
You know you’ve hit the big time when you make your first plushy.
Keep up the great work Pippin!
congrats man! what a great year!
Thanks for your great works and ideas.
Pippin, I love the openness and the earnings reports. It’s awesome to see how diversified your business is becoming, and how well you are doing for yourself. Nice work, and keep it up! You make great products, and I can’t wait to see your business grow more in 2013.
Pippin,
Congrats on a successful year in 2012. I myself started full time freelancing / startup my own consulting company, and have had similar successes. I’m getting into plugin development in the coming year and will be frequenting your site. Great job on a year well done, and a daughter.
Zach
congrats man, keep up the good work!
Underneath this jealous sky you deserve nothing but even greater year 2013!
Congratulations to you and your wife on your beautiful baby girl as well as the success of your coding work. Sincerely, Stuart Sequeira
Hi from a fellow CodeCanyon developer.
Amazing stats you have shared here.
Good luck to you coming 2013.
Congrats man! One day, I may make the jump into full time as well. Ha!
congrats and thanks for being a valuable member of the WordPress community
Congrats on the new-born and the amazing year. You’ve done an wonderful job and EDD is a fantastic plugin – it’s great to see quite a few designers & developers get on-board and I’m looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer.
Here’s to the new year and I’ll be watching for the follow up post at the end of the year showing what’s happened, what’s changed, and that you’ve doubled your income :-).
Pippin, just discovered you today. What a great year! From the looks of what I have seen – you deserve it. Very professional, impressive, and all this from a truly nice guy.
Great numbers Pippin, you deserve all this, keep up the impressive work and thanks for being so open! This will surely serve as inspiration to many others.
Great to see the success of your business. Your plugins are top notch. So happy to see a true entrepreneur like yourself making an honest living from WordPress development! And thanks for being so transparent with your numbers, it’s quite motivating and inspiring to read.
Congrats about your daughter! Sorry I am late, didn’t know this. They are awesome. My daughter just turned 3. It is a wonderful experience.