A look back at WPMarmite in 2023

Happy New Year! 2024 — just like that, we’re approaching the first quarter of the 21st century. And like last year, I’d like to share with you how the last 12 months have gone for WPMarmite.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I encourage you to adopt this approach. It will enable you to analyze your growth more effectively. More importantly, it will help you define and plan your future goals.

So, if you haven’t already done so, take a moment to pause everything and switch to evaluation and planning mode.

OK, back to WPMarmite and its annual review.

Note: To get the full picture, you can also read WPMarmite’s year in review for 2022 and 2021.

WPMarmite’s year in review: 2023

To return to 2023, as usual we’re going to look at each aspect of the project one by one.

This will give you a better grasp of WPMarmite as a whole.

Free content

Most WPMarmite content is free. Blog posts, newsletters, YouTube videos (in French) and our social network posts.

In terms of blog posts: we published and updated 63 articles (in line with our annual average) for a running total of 379.

Although the blog’s structure has evolved less than the previous year, we have nonetheless:

• Revised our strategic pages to optimize our internal linking
• Continued to develop our WordPress silo, with the addition on our French site of a page dedicated to WordPress agencies (which quickly ranked #1 on Google ✌️)
• Added a WordPress blocks tag to bring together articles related to blocks, Gutenberg, and FSE (Full Site Editing).

Aurore, our content manager, managed the editorial planning with a master’s hand, collaborating with Thibaut, our senior writer. Well done to them both, and thanks for their dedication!

On the video front, we uploaded 29 videos to our YouTube channel (French only), including 7 episodes of the new Pressta podcast (dedicated to WordPress providers).

At the end of the year, we began redesigning the channel’s thumbnails to offer more impactful visuals. I was finally able to delegate this task, which I wasn’t the best at.

In 2023, we said goodbye to Tom, our video editor for years. 😢 We’re now working with Oléane, who has taken the opportunity to refresh and add various elements such as the animation in the intro.

Getting back to the podcast, launching it was very close to my heart. Each episode is an opportunity to talk about a journey, a vision of WordPress, and to share best practices to inspire and empower listeners.

To date, it has had almost 7,500 listens, mostly from YouTube, followed by Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

We’re clearly a niche podcast, so we’re not expecting huge numbers. Even so, the feedback is super positive when I talk to service providers. 🙂

Moving on to newsletters (the best way to stay in touch with WPMarmite). As we’ve been saying for years:

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

As far as numbers are concerned, we held steady at around 30% open rate, then reached 40% after “cleaning up” our main list at the end of the year.

As for WPMarmite News, our second WordPress watch newsletter, we’re still at around 45% open rate.

On social networks, we’ve come out of the hibernation we entered in 2022, and gotten back to publishing original publications since November/December 2023.

The aim is to educate, inform, and entertain you directly from the platforms. Getting you to come to the blog isn’t an ideal strategy.

We need to adapt to current usage and ensure that the WPMarmite brand is seen as more than just a blog.

To this end, since late November we’ve been working with Julia, a talented service provider who produces superb visuals and publications.

We had a hard time finding someone with solid graphic skills, a talent for copywriting (even with the help of AI), and a technical grounding.

In the end I was giving up, but… we met Julia! 🎉

Expect to see more WPMarmite on social networks in 2024! ✌️

International development

It’s been 4 years now since WPMarmite started speaking English to integrate the global WordPress ecosystem.

The number of articles available in English has risen to 239, with 59 new publications and updates in 2023.

Traffic fluctuates between 17 and 22k English-speaking monthly visitors. This represents 20% of our total traffic.

As we’ve got the process dialed in, we’re able to get the English version of our FR articles out within a week of publication. By the way, thanks to Katie for proofreading and optimizing the translations. 🙏

WPMarmite continues its conquest of Google’s English-language search results pages. Reader feedback is very encouraging for the future!

Premium content (in French)

The highlight of 2023 was the transformation of Le Chaudron (our training courses, only available in French) into WPMarmite Pro.

I’ve talked about this already on the blog, but the idea was to refocus our activities under the WPMarmite brand (as we also did with the switch from Le Ptit Bouillon to WPMarmite News).

We took advantage of this event to open up to partner trainers.

After all, the WordPress ecosystem is vast, and we don’t know everything about it. From now on, other trainers can partner with WPMarmite Pro to co-create training courses or distribute existing premium content.

A first workshop designed with a partner trainer will arrive in January, and others are in the pipeline. 😉

In terms of products offered by WPMarmite, we have launched:

• The WordPress Site Redesign workshop, which presents the detailed process for redesigning a site according to best practices, without worrying about forgetting anything.
• The WPMarmite Pro community, which brings together WordPress providers who want to break out of their solitude and help each other in a supportive group.

These products are currently only available in French.

The WPMarmite network

For several years now, we’ve been working to create a network of sites around WPMarmite. I call this the WPMarmite family!

At the end of 2022, we launched WPTurbo, a site designed to save time for WordPress developers and tinkerers.

In addition to totally free code generators, we created AI-based tools for generating custom code, as well as WordPress tips.

A Pro package has been launched and now boasts almost 500 customers. As for the site, it has almost 2,100 total users (free and paying).

We were lucky enough to be featured by a very popular WordPress YouTube channel, which gave us a lot of exposure!

We’re currently adding “integrations,” i.e. AI optimizations for popular themes and plugins.

The aim is to improve the level of responses generated for these products to further help our users.

To date, WPTurbo is integrated with Elementor and Divi.

As for BeautifulPress, the project is on hold for the time being, as we don’t have enough resources to continue feeding it regularly.

It’s unfortunate, but the project isn’t profitable enough. We’ll see when we can revive it.

Team evolution

As I’ve already mentioned in this article, the WPMarmite team evolved quite a bit in 2023.

We said goodbye to Tom and welcomed Oléane and Julia. Other service providers, such as Edwige, also help us more or less regularly with specific tasks.

On the administrative side, we’re still working with Claire, my assistant, but we’re going to change our accountant (again). I hope I’ve found the right one!

We also had to have our first audit of our employer/employee social security contributions (called the URSSAF audit in France). In the end, it was a good thing, as we got about €300 back!

In September, the core team met up in Paris for our traditional “Marmite Summit.”

We were able to discuss the many different sides of WPMarmite (those listed in this article, in fact!).

However, a number of the plans made at the time will have to be altered in 2024…

WPMarmite’s goals for 2024

Now that 2023 is clearer for you, let’s move on to our plans for the next 12 months.

Simply put, we’re going to cut back! We’ve realized we’ve spread ourselves too thin.

Worse still, the commercial side of the project has never really developed. And that’s hurting us today. We’ve got to do something about it!

To tell you the truth, I’ve been making the wrong decisions for years.

1. We were focusing on the wrong indicators (more traffic doesn’t mean more revenue for our business).
2. International development with no monetization planned from the outset.
3. Lack of attention to social networks to reach new people.
4. Continuation of our the model that’s been successful so far (selling our training courses via launches and promos).
5. Reduced focus on affiliation.
6. Training design exhaustion.
7. We’re not invested enough in our students’ success.

As is often the case, we wait until we’re up against the wall before reacting. I think I’ve learned my lesson.

To get to the next level, we need to adapt and change our approach. This includes:

• A change of indicators (revenue instead of traffic)
• Updating our offerings (with a focus on our SEO training)
• A greater focus on student success
• The development of our sales department
• The launch of new offerings for the general public (such as WordPress audits)
• Reduced blog publishing intensity in favor of social networks
• Reduced focus on ancillary projects

There’s no shortage of project ideas, but we’re not in a position to launch them properly.

With more income, we’ll be able to expand the team to go further. For now, we need to refocus on the essentials.

Conclusion

In 2023, it’s fair to say that WPMarmite stagnated. Our revenues fluctuated between €16 and €37k per month, with an average of €22k (we averaged €23k last year).

If we keep up this momentum, WPMarmite’s financial year should see sales of €250/260k.

This may seem significant and even impressive for a blog, but WPMarmite isn’t just a blog!

As you’ve seen throughout this article, there’s a team at the core and a number of different projects revolving around it. And that’s not for free (fortunately!).

I’m aware that I’ve made some bad decisions, but I’m determined to raise the bar to help WPMarmite reach 50 and then €100k in monthly sales. 💪

With figures like these, we’ll be able to expand the team to execute our long-term vision of offering a whole ecosystem of WordPress content, products, and services.

All will be announced in due course, but one thing’s for sure: I’ve rediscovered the drive of my early days! (when I was trying to get the blog off the ground).

By the way, I’d like to thank all the people who have put their trust in us to help them get up to speed with WordPress, as well as our partners, like WPChef and o2switch, to name but a few.

And as I said in last year’s review:

That’s it, you’ve reached the end of this 2023 review. Thank you for reading it all! Once again, thank you for following and trusting WPMarmite for all these years. 🙏

I look forward to sharing more updates with you on our projects.

See you next year for the next review! Let me know 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.