Another spectacular year is almost over, and I would like to take some time to reflect on it, look briefly into the future, and share some statistics about how my projects are doing.
OllieWP
Ollie Pro Launch
We finally launched Ollie Pro in June of this year. Our cloud-based pattern library features dozens of handcrafted and beautifully designed patterns, a modern yet core-oriented UI, and what we envision as the future of WordPress.
While it can be challenging to be an early mover in a space that still seeks majority adoption, we are betting that the block editor and full-site editing will significantly impact how people work and interact with WordPress.
First Month (Revenue)
We’ve also written a blog post about the first month of Ollie Pro financially: olliewp.com/our-first-10k-and-lessons-learned-in-our-first-month/
Simply Static
This year, I learned a lot about focus. In the past, I always worked on multiple products simultaneously, following Daniel Vasallo’s Small Bets approach.
However, if you are familiar with the idea, you will also notice an exception – you keep making small bets until you find your “main” thing, and I think Simply Static proved to be that this year.
So, I focused most of my attention on Simply Static this year, which included countless new features, improvements, and bug fixes. I also ensured our internal processes were as smooth as possible now.
AppSumo Select Deal
Yes, we’ve done it. We ran an AppSumo Select deal, a success in many ways.
I know many of you think it’s insane to offer an AppSumo deal for an established product and that lifetime deals are bad business, but they are not.
I don’t want to convince you, but let me get things straight:
- We made 25% of our average annual revenue in about two weeks
- We got a super-professional promo video + several YT videos from affiliates
- We have grown as a team due to high pressure (there were A LOT of questions)
- Lifetime doesn’t mean you can’t make your own rules
- We got so much helpful feedback (and we already incorporated 95% of it into the product)
The basic math behind it:
We’ve done something simple: We offered discounted lifetime licenses but limited support access for one year after purchase.
We also introduced an extended support plan, which people can use to continue getting help from us at a discounted price.
You won’t lose potential customers because 95% of AppSumo’s customers are platform advocates. They won’t buy from you directly; you either offer them a deal or don’t get them.
The additional cash flow helped grow the team and allowed us to pursue a more ambitious new project for Simply Static (more on that next year!)
Will we do it again? No. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and we plan to remove lifetime licenses entirely next year (while still grandfathering existing customers).
New Website & Video Course
We released an entirely redesigned new website this year.
We also reworked our documentation, and I created an entire video course for Simply Static to make it easier than ever before to learn about Static WordPress:
We’ve done a lot to make Simply Static the best product for Static WordPress and the most accessible introduction to the topic, which will remain our top priority next year.
Funny Acquisition E-Mail
We got a message from a guy who happened to be our customer, launched a “competitor”, and wanted to acquire Simply Static to push his (not even legally-compliant) alternative.
I found it interesting that a company so much smaller in revenue and without any technical team members offered to take over the development of a product that is 100% beyond its capabilities.
I don’t want to go into too many details, but they might be better off continuing to brew beer than lying to people about things they can’t deliver on.
Numbers
While I never share the exact numbers, I love updating you on the business’s growth.
Traffic
I’m happy that our SEO work paid off this year. Our traffic more than tripled compared to last year. (If you check my review from last year, you will notice I aimed to double the traffic.)
The only thing we messed up is the conversion tracking – we only tracked 163 event completions, which is less than 10% of the actual data because it somehow stopped working, and I did not notice it for months 😅
Here is the chart from last year for a quick comparison:
Net revenue
11.3% net revenue growth might not sound much, but that was expected as we:
A) Had an insane revenue growth of 45% last year
B) We experimented heavily with pricing (no lifetime, price deduction)
C) Some data is missing from this chart (as we had an AppSumo deal)
MRR
Slightly below the 103% from last year but still pretty impressive. We grew our MRR by 93.1% in 2024 – the second year in a row where we doubled it.
Churn
Churn was up by 8.4% compared to last year.
This is something we need to continue to work on, but it was also expected because of several reasons:
- we introduced three major updates with breaking changes
- we had 78.5% more people on yearly subscriptions this year as we, step by step, move away from the lifetime model
Support
Although we had only 25% more tickets overall, we almost doubled the number of new conversations (new customers).
While technical tickets are still our bottleneck (given the nature of the plugin and the lousy state of WordPress hosting companies), we are happy with the results.
Summary
Simply Static is in a pretty good state right now.
We are profitable, bootstrapped, and have a small but mighty team.
We still deliver outstanding support to all our customers and have not lost our identity.
While there are always things that could be improved, faster, and more optimized, I’m confident that if we stick with our work ethic, we will continue to win.
Other products
You might have noticed that I haven’t discussed my plugin shop, which was run on patrickposner.com last year.
That’s because I’m closing it down to narrow my focus to fewer projects more aligned with me and my state of business.
WooCommerce Extensions
I stopped selling my small WooCommerce extensions and canceled all existing subscriptions. Since I couldn’t find a reasonable buyer, I will slowly let them die.
Passster & Filr
My friend Cristian from WP Chill took over both plugins and will continue to grow, update, and support two of my oldest plugins.
I couldn’t find the time to maintain and push both of these products further, as 99% of my time now goes into Simply Static and Ollie.
I’m glad I found a good new owner, but I’m still sad to see them go.
Did you know that Passster was my first commercial WP plugin?
It’s what brought me to building and selling plugins for a living!
Qyrr
I will try to keep maintaining Qyrr for a while, but don’t expect any fancy new features.
It will move into maintenance mode with only basic support as we can no longer afford to split support between different products.
Domain Mapping System
I co-acquired Domain Mapping System together with my friend Maarten from Studio Wombat.
While it might seem counter-intuitive to buy a plugin while selling others, this one fits perfectly into the ecosystem of Simply Static, and both products share a very similar user base.
We will publish an official announcement post on the blog, showcasing our plans for the future and what you can expect from the change of ownership.
Goodbye!
I’m offline! Not really, but kinda.
My girlfriend and I will travel the world over the next 12 months while I try to live and work as a digital nomad.
While nothing will change for Ollie and Simply Static, this might explain why I had to drastically reduce my workload and step back from some of my endeavors.
Honestly, I’m feeling pretty burned out.
The constant juggle of work, day-to-day life, and all the preparations involved in making a 12-month full-time travel journey are immense.
I’m happy to take a break for a while, knowing I have an excellent team and partners to back me up, so if you are a customer reading this, rest assured, we’ve got you covered!
To all of you – Happy holidays, a wonderful Christmas, and a happy new year!
Cheers,
Patrick