Discoverability vs. Monetisation

I don't speak much about WordPress on this blog, but it's a very important part of my life. I've been working in WordPress for nearly 20 years! I've contributed to core, run releases, spoken at WordCamps, built and sold businesses on WordPress.

I recently spoke about the WordPress Plugin repo at WordCamp Brisbane 2025. The session was recorded and is now available to watch on YouTube.

The WordPress ecosystem is very unique. In a world hyper-optimised to micro-transact, greedily extracting every last dollar, WordPress stands apart. It's version of an "app store", the plugin repo, is strictly open-source, and 100% free. You couldn't buy a plugin from WordPress.org if you tried.

That poses some interesting challenges for plugin authors who want to build a sustainable business. That's what my talk is about.