WordPress which is powering around 28% of the internet websites is basically an Open source. That is indeed the main reason behind its popularity and wide usage. The official website has world’s best WordPress themes, incredible plugins and excellent collection of premium themes. WordPress being an open source project gives an opportunity to the budding coders to see and improvise the platform code available. The number is evident in the form that thousands of developers across the world are continusoly working hard to make WordPress a better CMS. Automattic is the name of the company which owns Wordpress.com.

But you must be wondering, if WordPress is open source, then how does it make money? Here are the ways which help WordPress to make revenue.
1. Web Hosting
You may not be paying directly to WordPress, but it gets a substantial share for its services from your host-providers such as SiteGround, BlueHost etc.

2. Google Ad Sense
You may be aware, but the revenue is also shared by the WordPress. Free blogs which are hosted on this CMS which carry Google adsense ads offer some of the share to WordPress also. There are rumors that WordPress may start charging fees for running Google adsense in the free accounts also.

3. WordPress themes
WordPress has a wide range of premium themes which ranges between $50 to $100. These themes are developed by the third-party developers across the world and the themes are 100% GPL compatible. Automattic holds a commission based sale of these themes.

4. Premium Accounts
In order to get additional space for storing your multimedia files such as images, videos you have to pay a fixed amount of fees. Even if you want to have your own domain instead of a sub-domain wordpress.com, you have to pay the amount.

5. Web Host referrals
Wordpress.org recommends self-hosting of your blogs for a fixed fee charged by third-party web hosting companies. For all these links displayed on the website, WordPress earns a decent commission. In fact while searching for web host provider in Google, WordPress holds the top rank in the sponsored hits.

6. WordPress Support
It may happen the free WordPress forum may not be able to solve your issue. The best way out is to enroll in the Automattic’s subscribing list to Network Support. Here you get in touch directly with the developers and get your issue resolved. In fact the response time is extremely low for such as service. But the amount is hefty i.e. around $4000 annual.

7. Guided Transfers
When you want to transfer or move your website from wordpress.com to wordpress.org, you need to avail a service called guided transfers given by the Automattic. A onetime fee of $119 is charged from the user per website.

8. Backup packages
There is a backup service provided by Automattic known as VaultPress. Here a backup of your website is automatically taken to the cloud. They not only perform the backup services but also notify you regarding any potential issues. The package starts at $15 per month.

9. Video Press
This plugin enables your website to host videos and audio files. The videos can be hosted without any bandwidth issues and no restriction on duration of videos. You can also server HD playbacks for yoyur videos that too without ads. The package starts at $60 annual.

10. Automatic spam protection
WordPress offers free automatic spam filtering for the free and non-commercial blogs. But in case you run a network of blogs OR have a corporate blog, then you need to get an Akismet commercial license which starts at a monthly pack of $50.

Besides providing premium best WordPress themes, WordPress also earns revenue by the sale of premium plugins or the pro versions of the plugins. I hope this blog cleared all your doubts regarding revenue making of WordPress.