How to Make a Living, Giving It Away for Free
A WordCamp Detroit 2011 talk arguing that bloggers, designers, and developers can build a working career around supporting open-source WordPress development. This is the earliest publicly archived version of a thesis the speaker has now revisited four times across twelve years — see the related talks below for the through-line.
Where and when
- Event: WordCamp Detroit 2011
- Date: Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 10:30am
- City: Detroit, Michigan, USA
Watch the talk
One archived viewer comment on the original WordPress.tv page: “This was so inspiring. Shared on twitter and facebook.”
The premise
From the published WordCamp Detroit 2011 schedule:
“A look at how to make a living working with a free product like WordPress. The presentation looks at how bloggers, designers and developers can build authority, revenue and opportunities by supporting open source development.”
What the slides covered
The slide deck for this talk is published on SpeakerDeck under the title “How to Make Money with WordPress” — 40 slides, posted October 1, 2011 (one month before the talk). The deck organizes the argument around five primary income strategies available to WordPress professionals:
- Full-time employment as a WordPress developer
- Consulting work — both project-based and maintenance-based
- Publishing expertise through tutorials and content
- Selling solutions (themes and plugins)
- Content monetization — including site advertising and working directly for Automattic
Two anchor lines from the deck are worth quoting verbatim:
“Free is not a business model.”
And, citing Matt Mullenweg as a then-current data point:
“20,000 people make a living from WordPress.”
Matt Mullenweg, cited in the deck
The deck also flagged the contemporary scale of the platform — that “approximately 19% of Alexa’s top 100,000 sites are on WordPress” — as the size-of-market case for the thesis. (Alexa is gone; the underlying point about WordPress market share has only grown since.)
Related talks in this through-line
- WordCamp Toronto 2011 — same year, same thesis, different angle (the “free charity plugin” framing)
- WordCamp Ottawa 2013 — re-delivered with the same abstract two years later
- WordCamp Buffalo 2023 — twelve-year revisit
Related work
- Open-source plugins by the speaker: wpShadow · External Link Control · WebP Support
- Working with the speaker: WordPress services · Get in touch
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Pricing (CAD) Per Student
| Team Size | Price / Student |
|---|---|
| 1-3 attendees | $249 |
| 4-5 attendees | $229 |
| 6+ attendees | $209 |
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