WPMarmite’s 2022 Year in review

So here we are in 2023! Like last year, I want to take the time to share with you how the last 12 months of WPMarmite have gone.

Whatever project you’re working on, I invite you to do the same. It will help you better understand your past successes and failures. Moreover, you will be able to reflect on your goals for the future.

So if you haven’t done it yet, put everything on pause and go into analysis and planning mode.

But before that, read this article to get inspired and learn about the evolution of your favorite blog. 😊

The 2022 year for WPMarmite

To analyze what 2022 was like for WPMarmite, I will proceed point by point, as I did last year.

I like this format because it allows me to consider the different facets of our project (indeed, today WPMarmite is much more than a simple blog).

Free content

A large part of WPMarmite’s content is free. This includes blog posts, newsletters, videos on our YouTube channel (in French), and our social media posts.

In terms of posts, we published or updated 69 articles in French (just like last year!) out of a total of 334, and 58 in English, out of a total of 173.

The total number of articles should be put into perspective because we plan to clean up our old publications (about 50 articles are scheduled to be redirected or updated).

As for the structure of the blog, we have:

• Revised the home page, to better highlight our content and optimize our internal linking
• Transformed 2 category pages (themes and plugins), to avoid having pages that simply list uncategorized articles
• Updated the WordPress training page, to showcase all our training courses (offered in French)
• Launched our WordPress silo, to cover our favorite CMS from all angles
• Published new WordPress guides to help beginners get started (especially in SEO)

On the video side, I’ve been more reserved this year. 21 videos (in French) were uploaded to our YouTube channel, including eight episodes of our SEO mini-course.

I would have liked to offer you more videos but my focus was elsewhere. We’ll talk about that in the following sections. ⬇️

Despite that, I am still proud of:

• A video made with WPChef to give you all the information you need to choose a WordPress training
• A video on how to create your first WordPress site, which exceeded 100k views in 2022

Let’s move on to our newsletters (the best way to stay in touch with WPMarmite). As we said last year:

If you’re a subscriber, you know we’re going out of our way to try to entertain you while teaching you serious stuff, even in emails promoting our training courses.

In terms of numbers, we’ve reached about a 35% open rate for our newsletters.

Finally, we have chosen to streamline our investment in social networks.

Indeed, after having worked with a community manager to offer you original publications on our accounts, we automated the majority of our publications because it was no longer financially feasible.

We will certainly come back to this but it’s not on the agenda right now.

International development

It’s been 3 years since WPMarmite started speaking English to integrate with the global WordPress ecosystem.

As mentioned above, the number of articles available in English has increased from 115 to 173, or 58 new publications.

Last year, I was quite disappointed with the results obtained despite all our efforts… However, the tide has started to turn since the last quarter of 2022.

In the last 4 months, we have surpassed the 10,000 unique English-speaking visitors per month mark. We even reached a record ratio of 16.8% non-French speaking visitors in December.

We also continue to:

• Bring value to the community, notably thanks to our Advent calendar, which was highlighted by Smashing Magazine and other newsletters
• Make connections with WP people (blog and newsletter editors, plugin and theme founders, and various other influencers)

It’s a monster job. A seed has been planted and like in my early days in 2011, giving up is not an option.

This can only lead to opportunities in the future, that’s for sure!

Premium content

The big project of 2022 was the release of our SEO training (only offered in French).

After a failure in 2021, the redesign of this program was a must.

Let me tell you a secret:

Creating an online training course (a quality course, I mean) is a colossal job.

However, we did it. The program has 143 videos on how to rank a WordPress site on Google. The videos from the first module are freely available on YouTube.

In parallel, we launched a new workshop (also in French) dedicated to the creation of restaurant websites (with a ready-to-use website template) and relaunched our freelance training three times during the year.

To conclude on the premium aspect of WPMarmite, we again offered a subscription option (to access all our trainings). However, this second experiment will be the last one.

Offering an option like this blurs things too much. Either you have to sell by the unit or switch everything to a subscription, but not both at the same time.

I’m still glad I was able to test this model, but it’s not the one that fits WPMarmite.

The WPMarmite network

After the launch of BeautifulPress in 2021, the WPMarmite family welcomed a new member in 2022.

This is WPTurbo, a site designed to save time for WordPress developers.

You can find more than 40 WordPress code generators that are totally free. Other tools will follow in the coming months, always to improve the productivity of developers.

Unlike BeautifulPress, WPTurbo will offer a Pro version. This will allow us to monetize the project so it can continue to evolve (and better serve its audience).

To tell you the truth, this project excites me a lot because I want to do something besides trainings (designing the SEO training has exhausted me).

Connecting with users, promoting the project, and improving the site is exciting.

So far, 200 people have trusted us by creating a free account. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be in one year!

Evolution of the team

In 2022, we stopped looking for new people to add to our team. Instead, we reorganized internally to better distribute tasks (and remove some).

We were able to meet in Paris in March for our “2022 Marmite Summit” (our annual seminar). It was really a pleasure to see everyone again (and meet in person) after the pandemic.

As I’ve already mentioned above, we decided to stop working with our community manager for budgetary reasons. Even though it’s not ideal, we preferred to automate it for now.

We also slowed down several of our collaborations to focus on the marketing aspect of WPMarmite.

These choices have allowed us to collaborate with:

• A marketing specialist related to online training
• An SEO consultant to review WPMarmite’s strategy
• An HR consultant to optimize our internal organization
• An outreach specialist to obtain backlinks for our international SEO
• A product analyst to better understand and optimize conversions

I have also set up a new routine with Claire, my assistant, to better organize my weeks. We will also bring in a new editorial assistant in 2023 to help us with more basic (but essential) tasks such as research and transcription.

The goal is to have me focus on the tasks that bring the most value to our various projects.

To conclude this section: we had to turn a page in the history of WPMarmite. By mutual agreement, Cynthia and I decided to go our separate ways.

Cynthia was the first employee of WPMarmite. She joined us in July 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

You can’t see it from the outside, but WPMarmite has really become professionalized thanks to her!

Without her, the English version of the blog wouldn’t be where it is. She translated huge amounts of content, optimized their SEO, connected with other actors in the ecosystem… and so on.

I learned a lot during her two and a half years with us. Our collaboration had to stop here due to different visions, but I wish her the best for the future.

Thanks again and all the best for the future, Cynthia! 👋

WPMarmite’s goals for 2023

Now that you know more about our 2022 year, let me tell you about what we will be working on the next 12 months.

• Maintain our WordPress trainings (in French) to keep them up to date and promote them regularly
• Work on our marketing by optimizing our conversions (email and e-commerce);
• Launch two new products (small trainings or workshops)
• To reach 100k unique monthly visitors (including 25k English-speaking visitors), we will:
  • Increase our publication rate and update our content
  • Improve internal linkage
  • Optimize strategic pages
  • Continue link outreach
  • Prioritize the production of EN content with the most potential
  • Develop WPMarmite’s reputation within the global WordPress ecosystem
  • Pursue content translation (from French to English)
• Experiment with new formats like Twitch and TikTok to strengthen our ties with and grow the French-speaking WordPress community
• Launch the Pro version of WPTurbo to develop a new revenue stream
• Organize the 2023 Marmite Summit (our internal seminar)

The list is not exhaustive but there will be plenty to keep us busy, that’s certain!

Conclusion

In 2022, WPMarmite managed to release another big training course to help its readers work on their website’s SEO.

It was a monster job and it personally wore me out. That said, we’re still not going to give up designing training courses. We’ll just work differently (which we have already tested at the end of the year) to optimize my time.

In parallel, we are working to better understand our visitors, subscribers, and students in order to support them more effectively with our content and programs.

The launch of WPTurbo (the project targeting WordPress developers, freelancers and agencies) excites me like never before!

In terms of revenue, we were less successful than expected in the 2021/2022 fiscal year (€220k instead of the expected €300k). For the fiscal year 2022/2023, which will end on March 31, we should be back to around 280/300k €.

By the way, I would like to thank all the people who use our training courses, because it is thanks to them that WPMarmite is viable.

Further, WPMarmite is in a good season as of the end of 2022. We may not be making millions, but that’s not our most important goal. If you’re an entrepreneur, remember that not every startup company achieves the success of Facebook or Apple. Set your own goals based on your priorities rather than trying to compete with someone else’s achievements.

Like every year, 2022 was also a year of learning. The many lessons we learned will be useful for the future!

And as I said in my review of last year:

Ultimately, the most important thing is to be able to work on exciting projects every day in a good mood with my great team!

That’s it, we’ve reached the end of this 2022 review. Thank you for reading it in its entirety. Once again, thank you for following and trusting WPMarmite for all these years. 🙏

See you next year for the next review! Tell me what you thought in the comments. 😉

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About the author

WPMarmite Team

WPMarmite helps beginners get the best out of WordPress with in-depth tutorials and honest reviews. Meet the founder, Alex, and his team right here.