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This is our monthly report where we share our business insights as part of our transparency policy.
Updates
During the past two months, we have shipped 6 new minor updates for version 2.6. We fixed a large number of bugs and incompatibility problems with other plugins. For further details, you can have a look at our changelog : https://wp-rocket.me/changelog/
Problem with the Updates Detection
We encountered some difficulties with WordPress plugin updates detection in version 2.6.5 .
We modified our code in order to reach 100% compatibility with WordPress management tools like MainWP and ManageWP. Unfortunately, we didn’t take into account that this code improvement would have deteriorated the WordPress updates detection.
We completely fixed this detection problem in version 2.6.8. From this version on, the update is available within 12 hours, like every free plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory.
If you’re still using version 2.6.5, 2.6.6 or 2.6.7, we strongly recommend you to force the update detection following this simple method. Simply add this string at the end of the URL of your plugins page : ?rocket_force_update=1
For example : example.com/wp-admin/plugins.php?rocket_force_update=1
If you’re using version 2.6.5, you should also install this mini-plugin:
Do not hesitate to open a support ticket if you have any kind of problem in updating the plugin to its latest version, we’ll be happy to help!
Revenue
August
- $62 366 in revenue (-30.9%)
- 1 041 orders (-21.7%)
- 115 renewals (-76.2%)
- 835 new customers (-1.8%)
- 4 067 websites added (+6.7%)
September
- $71 250 in revenue (+14.2%)
- 1 123 orders (+7.9%)
- 301 renewals (+161.7%)
- 824 new customers (-1.3%)
- 4 677 websites added (+15%)
August was not a bad month, quite the opposite. The apparent drop in revenue is biased by the fact that in July we launched two successful promotional campaigns, so the revenue for that month was unusually high. Just as a reminder, we had $53 000 in revenue in June. In addition, the number of new customers is almost the same for each of August and September. We should also say that our customer acquisition has increased even without a promotional campaign.
The September results are excellent, indeed. During this last month, we focused more on licence renewals. This strategy has reaped rewards, since we had a significant increase in renewals with a direct impact on revenue.
A More Aggressive Renewals Strategy
Starting from July, we began to test multiple strategies aimed at increasing our renewals rate. In August we noticed that the number of renewals was lower than in June (190). For this reason, we decided to be more aggressive in our renewal strategy. We now have 2 new renewal offers that we consistently communicate through different e-mail campaigns:
- 2 years + 6 free months
- 4 years + 12 free months
We don’t think that lifetime licences are a good idea for the business model. These are licences that offer an unlimited number of websites, updates and support. Some marketers will tell you that these offers allow you to improve your renewal rate thanks to a unique offer, which is the ideal solution for those customers with a tendency to forget to renew.
Our opinion is that lifetime licences do not have an audience. Customers will renew every year if they love your product. It’s up to you to not let them forget to renew their licence each year.
Your team’s work has a unique value. The development of new updates and your support team, represent a cost that you cannot offer for free. A quality product cannot be offered for an unlimited lifespan.
In Baremetrics you can find an excellent article about this subject : Why an “Unlimited” Plan is Toxic for Your SaaS.
The experience of Tweetbot 4 is also worth reading: What’s worse than paid app updates?
Moreover, the average fee for this kind of unlimited offer is $499. You can be sure that a customer with a single licence would never be the target for these offers. They can be geared toward agencies, developers, people who manage a significant number of websites.
Not offering lifetime licences is a risky choice, we are aware of that. But on the other hand, the financial impact is much more important if you can keep your customers renewing their licences. With our new offers, we are trying to propose an alternative to lifetime licences with much more important economic benefits.
Let’s look at a concrete example comparing the offers proposed by AffiliateWP and WP Rocket. AffiliateWP offers an all inclusive license for $449. This means that, for this price, your customer could use your plugin on an unlimited number of websites and with lifelong access to updates and customer support.
A WP Rocket customer who purchases a pro licence + a 4 years renewal offer + 12 free months, will have to pay $199 + $398, which is $597. The economic impact of this offer is much more appealing. All the more so, the customer could renew the licence again in 6 years.
Do not give up on the temptation of offering an all-inclusive package.
To provide a quality product, it needs to have a price!
In our next report, we will present in detail which tests and actions we’ve been carrying out during these last months to reach our latest result.
A new objective for WP Rocket
For the last 4 months, we’ve been beating our monthly revenue objective for WP Rocket.
Just as a reminder, our startup established a bonus system for our public salaries. With the income of each of our products, we can have an additional % on our monthly salaries.
This is an essential point for WP Media‘s philosophy. A project can evolve and beat its objective thanks to the work of the whole team. That’s why we think it’s logical that every teammate participating in the evolution of a project, must be rewarded.
For WP Rocket, the objective was $50 000 per month. For every additional $10 000 we were making above $50 000, we added a 4% bonus to base salary to each teammate working on the project.
For example, in August our global revenue has been +$60 000 and the salary bonus 8%.
If a project beats its objective for 4 consecutive months, we decide to re-evaluate that objective. This is a way to amp up the team and encourage them to reach new goals for the project.
The monthly goal for WP Rocket has now been raised to $120 000 per month.
Regarding the bonus, it will be an additional 3,5% for every $15 000 above $120 000.
Since our revenues are more significant now, a new objective must be established. We also decided to add a fixed bonus to the whole team. Every Rocketeer will have an 8% bonus automatically applied to his/her base salary. And every other teammate who is not directly working on the project will receive a 1% bonus.
Support/Happiness Report
The number of tickets didn’t increase much:
- August : 496 (-3.3%)
- September : 530 (7.50%)
During these last two months, our response time increased. This is not surprising, since Jean-Baptiste and Jonathan are less available for WP Rocket support. They’re working on a new project : Imagify.
To improve our response time and the quality of our support, we welcomed two new astronauts : Alice & Rémy. Alice speaks 4 languages and lives in Barcelona, Spain. Thanks to her, we can now ensure support in Italian and Spanish. She works with Marko in the European time zone.
Rémy is an expert WordPress developer. His expertise with WordPress will bring you precise answers to all your technical questions. Starting from October, he will be living in Montreal and, along with Lucy, he will take care of the North American time zone.
For this period, our satisfaction score is 87, which represents a 0,4% increase according to the previous two months.
Lucy (again!) wins our customer satisfaction competition. We are going to offer her a $50 Amazon gift card.
And what about you? Which is your point of view regarding lifetime licences? For or against?
