WPBeginner is one of the oldest and largest free WordPress resource site for beginners. A common question we often get asked is why do you offer everything for free? And it’s usually followed up with how do you make money?
So we’re creating this page to answer How is WPBeginner funded, and Why it matters to you!
Why is WPBeginner Free?
As a beginner or small business, you often don’t have a large budget to spend on tools and training. However, those two things are crucial for success.
We started WPBeginner in 2009 with a single goal: create WordPress tutorials that are easy to understand and most importantly are 100% free.
Unlike other copy-cat tutorial websites, our team is full of true WordPress practitioners. Our team includes a dedicated team of programmers, writers, video creators, and editors with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, web hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and online marketing.
For more details, check out WPBeginner Editorial Process.
Our goal is to help small businesses compete with the big guys.
Simply put, we created WPBeginner to offer users what we wish we had when we first started out.
How Is WPBeginner Funded?
We have always believed in being honest and transparent with our audience. In our opinion, that’s the only way to build a community.
Running a popular website like WPBeginner that helps millions of users every month requires significant investment. Both on the server infrastructure part as well as on the content creation part.
Our team creates and maintains thousands of free written WordPress tutorials and hundreds of free videos tutorials.
So yes, we have to make money otherwise we would have to shut the site down. Below are two primary sources that fund WPBeginner.
Our Products
Over the years, we have created several premium WordPress plugins to help you improve your website and grow your business.
When you purchase any of our premium WordPress plugins, it helps us fund WPBeginner.
We really appreciate everyone in the WPBeginner community who use and support our plugins. Thank you.
For more details on the plugin brands that we own or have invested in, please visit AwesomeMotive.com or see our premium WordPress plugins page here on WPBeginner.
Referral Fees
We earn referral fees when you buy services from companies that we recommend.
We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers. We thorougly test and use all products that we recommend. All opinions are our own, and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.
This monetization method is called affiliate marketing. The biggest brands on the internet offer affiliate programs such as Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. Many of your favorite sites use affiliate marketing to pay the bills.
The only difference is that not everyone tell their users how they make money.
Sometimes you will see banner ads like these:
Other times, you will see a special link unique to each website that track referrals such as:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/refer/hostgator/
http://www.csshero.org/?rid=5242
When you click on these link, you are tagged with a special cookie to track the referral. If you end up buying the product, then they pay us a referral fee.
The referral fees vary for each product. For a WordPress book that you may buy at Amazon, we might earn $1. For a premium WordPress theme, we might earn $10.
Question #1 – Will it Cost Me More Money?
No, absolutely not. In most cases, our deals will actually save you money.
Because WPBeginner is an authority website, a lot of vendors offer our readers exclusive discounts.
For example, if you were to purchase managed WordPress hosting from WPEngine, you would normally pay $29 per month. However if you purchase it by using our referral link, you will get 50% off for the first 3 months.
Please check out our Deals section to find more deals.
Question #2 – Do You See My Personal Details?
Nope. We don’t see any personal information i.e name, email, address, credit card, etc.
The only thing we see is that an anonymous user made a purchase on date/time and which product they bought.
How Can You Help Us?
Sites like WPBeginner takes a lot of investment to operate. Enough to buy a nice house in many parts of the USA.
We have a dedicated team of paid programmers, writers, and editors.
That’s why we need your help. Below are few ways you can help us:
- Purchase our premium WordPress plugins.
- If you’re thinking of buying a product, then please buy it using a WPBeginner referral link.
- If you’re using a product that we recommend, then please leave your review in the comments to help others.
- Spread the word by sharing WPBeginner tutorials with your friends and family on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Why Should You Help Us?
There are several so-called “experts” selling WordPress training for hundreds of dollars – all of which you can find for free here at WPBeginner.
There are also tons of bloggers that write fake positive reviews without ever testing the product / service only because they want to make a quick referral fee.
At WPBeginner, we are a People First company. We treat our team like family, and our readers best interest is our #1 priority.
All our WordPress tutorials are free because our goal at WPBeginner is to level the playing field for small businesses, so they can grow and compete with the big guys.
If you’ve found WPBeginner to be helpful, then we hope that you will help support us, so we can continue working towards our mission.
Thank you for support.
Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner