In 2018, WordPress hit 32% market share. By 2019, WordPress powered 43% of the web, according to Kinsta, so somewhere in that year, WordPress zoomed past one-third of the web on its way to nearly half of all the CMS-based websites in the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among key competitors in this space, Joomla was at 3.1% in 2018 and 2.9% in 2019. Drupal went from 2.2% to 1.9%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wix and Squarespace both grew their market share in those years, but by 2019 they hit just 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WordPress had clearly become the most popular website platform, and its market share has only grown since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of Economics, what does this popularity mean? As WordPress sought to democratize publishing, making it easier than ever before to build highly functional websites, it opened doors to the online economy for millions of people. Barriers to entry fell for e-commerce, monetized blogging, lead generation, brand awareness websites, and many more creative opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018 and 2019, traditional hand-coded websites were still in the majority, but by 2021 WordPress surpassed them. In 2018-2019, as is still true now, the use of WordPress dwarfed the use of all other content management systems combined. According to WPEngine\u2019s Study of the WordPress Economy, the WordPress-enabled economy reached $596.7 billion early in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf WordPress were a country,\u201d the WPEngine report<\/a> claims, \u201cits economy would rank 39th in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a podcast, Josepha listed five groups of people in the WordPress ecosystem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agencies, web hosts (which Matt identifies as the group that benefits the most financially from WordPress), and infrastructure suppliers, are also included in the WordPress economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each member of these groups plays an essential role in the ecosystem as well as the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Topher DeRosia<\/a> of HeroPress<\/a> curates stories about people who have entered the WordPress economy and improved their lives. Sometimes they have made the world a better place as well. These WordPress heroes are part of the people economy of WordPress \u2013 the human beings who use WordPress for their livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From all over the world, people have shared their inspiring stories. Nigel Rodgers<\/a> of Zimbabwe tells how WordPress community involvement made him a global citizen. Devin Maeztri<\/a> of Indonesia tells how she found a place in the community without being a developer. Marieke van de Rakt<\/a> of the Netherlands wrote about finding her place in a welcoming community. Gobinda Tarafdar<\/a> from Bangladesh enlarged her life experience by making friends worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of the essays center on a sentiment similar to this line from\u00a0Michelle Schulp<\/a>\u00a0of Minnesota: \u201cWordPress has changed my career. It has helped me achieve financial and personal independence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Josepha Haden Chomphosy gave a lecture on the WordPress<\/a> economy in an economics class at Hendrix College. She mentioned the size of the WordPress economy in dollars, but she also took a different approach. As an open source Project with many volunteer contributors, WordPress is unlike other big tech projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But WordPress asks for a 5% give-back contribution in the Five for the Future<\/a> (5ftF) project. That contribution might be in the form of time, money, or a combination of the two. It might be a matter of volunteering to work on the software, donating a team member’s time to work on core, organizing WordCamps or Meetup events, or engaging with the community in marketing, translation, or any number of other activities voluntarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Josepha brought up the concept of \u201cfree riders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s an economic theory about those who don\u2019t contribute but reap the rewards. It\u2019s called the\u00a0\u201cfree rider\u201d problem<\/a>. The metaphor comes from people riding a bus without buying a ticket. As long as plenty of people buy tickets, a few can ride for free without any consequences: the supply of seats is adequate and their choice to pay or not to pay has no effect on the bus schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the conundrum with free riders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The free rider metaphor works for resources that don\u2019t get used up, as Josepha pointed out in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cNo matter how many new sites are launched using WordPress, the core software does not become any worse for wear, and there is no end to the available \u2018seats.\u2019 Access to and use of the software is wholly unconstrained and any advancement to the software benefits everyone equally regardless of the size of their company or contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WordPress established the Five for the Future project in 2014. In 2018, Andrea Middleton wrote a proposal for a Five for the Future acknowledgment page. The idea was to acknowledge companies that supported the effort and to motivate more companies to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contributions have more than quadrupled in that time. WordPress.org has a Pledges page that shows numerous organizations that have pledged, from a handful of organizations pledging one hour each week to Automattic\u2019s 4,069 hours a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This section of the website also points out the benefits of contributing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been some controversy around the program, including questions about whether core contributions and ecosystem contributions are equally important, whether it\u2019s right to acknowledge companies or if it amounts to \u201ctoxic score-keeping,\u201d and whether activities like building WordPress websites count as 5ftF contributions (officially, no).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contributors can add their contributions to their profiles, and a special web page for the project was added in 2019. In 2022, Josepha spoke of \u201ca culture of generosity\u201d and proposed a set of questions to guide future acknowledgment of contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program continues to evolve and develop, and the contributions of volunteers continue to be central to the WordPress economy. The most recent contributor days brought skyrocketing numbers: 800 in Porto for WordCamp Europe 2022 and more than 630 in Bangkok for WordCamp Asia 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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