Tag: Research

2023â€™s Creator Economy Statistics That Will Blow You Away
Want to explore the recent trends and statistics in the creator economy?

The industry is home to content creators worldwide and grows a lot every year. From full-time content creators to hobbyists, the creator economy is made up of different creator profiles with different skills.

The creator economy also favors brands around the globe. It offers collaboration opportunities and helps businesses use different platforms to engage with their target audiences.

In this article, we have gathered a ton of creator economy statistics that will help you know the industry inside out.

List of Creator Economy Statistics

To help you explore all the different insights in our research post, we have divided the creator economy statistics into different categories.

By clicking the links below, you can jump to the section that you are most interested in and view the different statistics:
General Creator Economy Statistics
- The estimated worth of the creator economy is $104.2 billion.
- The creator economy is expected to double in size by 2027.
- The creator economy has 207 million content creators worldwide.
- The industry has 200 million active content creators.
- The creator economy has over 2 million expert content creators.
- Shopify is a leading company supporting the creator economy, with an annual revenue of $5200 million.
The creator economy is growing at a really fast pace. It is expected to double in the next few years as the industry welcomes new content creators every day.

Leading companies contribute to the creator economyâ€™s growth by either providing services to content creators or working with them to promote different solutions.

This makes it possible for both brands and content creators to benefit from partnerships.

If you are a content creator, then you can join affiliate programs within your niche and make money writing about and promoting these products. Alternatively, you can work directly with brands and get sponsorships.

Apart from social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it’s a good idea to create a WordPress website. This will give you full control over your content. Plus, having a website makes it easier for brands to find you and reach out to you for partnerships.

As a business, you can enter the creator economy by sponsoring influencers or starting your own affiliate marketing program with a plugin like AffiliateWP. That way, you can quickly get more referrals to your products and services.

Creator Profile Statistics
- There are more than 45 million professional content creators in the creator economy.
- 51.9% of content creators in the industry are women, with men making up 48.1%.
- The creator economy has more than 162 million amateur content creators.
- 46.7% of people identify as full-time content creators, followed by 42.7% as part-timers.
- 10.6% of people consider content creation a hobby.
- Only 0.96% of content creators have more than 1 million followers.
The gender gap in the creator economy is not that high. However, the industry has more female content creators than men.

The majority of people in the industry work as full-time content creators. However, there are some who work 9â€“5 and create content to make a decent amount of money.

Influencer Statistics
- The current estimated value of the influencer industry is $17.4 billion, which is expected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2025.
- The expected growth rate of the influencer industry is 14.47%.
- 78% of influencers earn around $23,500 per year.
- The average influencer income is $76 per hour.
- 83% of people believe influencer marketing is an effective marketing tactic.
- 63% of brands use artificial intelligence (AI) for their influencer marketing campaigns.
- Brands spend $6 billion on influencer collaborations.
- 82% of the total influencer marketing budget is spent on influencer collaborations in the United States.
- On average, lifestyle influencers pitch $994 for a collaboration, followed by fashion influencers at $912.
- On average, brands spend $257 per collaboration with an influencer.
- The average time influencers take to respond to collaboration requests is 14 hours.
- Influencers usually take 16 days to wrap up a collaboration.
- 42% of influencers prefer to be paid for a collaboration.
- 26% of influencers produce user-generated content like reviews, unboxings, testimonials, etc.
- 50% of people prefer purchasing products from their favorite influencers.
- Influencers are active on at least 2 social media platforms.
Professional content creators have a lot of influence in their niches. This makes them ideal candidates for brand collaborations.

For this reason, around 68% of companies prefer working with influencers. The creator economy acts as a bridge. It allows brands to onboard influential content creators and helps independent creators make a living from collaborations.

Influencers generally have a huge follower base. So, they can help your business increase its brand awareness and connect with online communities.

This partnership can help you attract more traffic to your website and capture high-quality leads.

Work Preference Statistics
- 85% of full-time content creators enjoy what they do.
- 1/3 of content creators prefer creating a single type of content.
- 58% of content creators generally produce 2â€“4 types of content.
- 94.5% of content creators use AI tools.
- For more than 25% of full-time content creators, follower growth is a preferred metric to measure their success.
- 37% of full-time content creators prefer working solo.
- 45% of part-time content creators prefer hiring staff.
- More than 35% of full-time content creators prefer creating content around entrepreneurship.
- More than 20% of hobbyists prefer creating content around personal development.
- Only 5% of content creators spend more than 40 hours each week creating content.
A majority of full-time content creators and hobbyists prefer to work alone. However, most of the part-time content creators do not mind hiring help.

Creators usually experiment with different types of content until they find what works for them. However, full-timers generally prefer creating content that talks about new business ideas.

Full-time content creators measure success by the rate at which their followers grow. Plus, they do not shy away from using AI tools to be more efficient at work.

For example, with AI-powered tools like All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily optimize your written content for search engines.

AIOSEO comes with a powerful AI title and description generator that can help you write better headings and meta descriptions for your written content. This can help you improve your rankings in Google and get a bigger audience for your content.

Earnings Statistics
- More than 45% of content creators use revenue as a metric to measure their success.
- 52% of content creators are monetized (make money from their content).
- 78% of monetized content creators are women.
- 59% of beginner content creators are still waiting for monetization.
- Monetized content creators generally earn $51 per hour on average.
- 32% of content creators own businesses related to creative work.
- The average income of content creators who run a business is $75 per hour.
- 67% of content creators sell products or merchandise to get more revenue.
- 28% of content creators make income through partnerships and promotions.
- 29% of content creators generate revenue through affiliate links.
- 35% of content creators make a living through ad revenue.
- 25% of content creators earn $50â€“100K a year.
- Only 2% of content creators make more than $1 million a year.
- To make more than $1 million a year, content creators need more than 5 million followers.
- 26% of content creators make the most money from TikTok and YouTube, respectively.
- 48% of people do not mind paying a subscription fee to access exclusive content.
- 29% of people want to support their favorite content creators because they inspire them.
- 35.3% of people give tips to their favorite content creators to support them.
- 50% of people have tipped their favorite content creators at least once.
- More than 40% of people tip $5 to $10 on average to their favorite content creators.
Most content creators let their earnings define their success. So, they often choose to own a business even if they are already monetized on social platforms.

Monetized content creators make the most money from TikTok and YouTube. Female content creators have the advantage here.

Apart from business income and ad revenue, content creators also earn through affiliate links and paid promotions.

Furthermore, the majority of people are willing to pay a premium fee to get exclusive content from their favorite content creators. This means you can easily make more money by making restricted content.

You could make a membership website. That way, users will need to pay to get past your paywall and get access to your content.

For example, 40 Aprons is a health and wellness blog that uses MemberPress to offer its visitors access to premium content like diet plans and secret recipes.

Alternatively, if you have something to teach your followers, then Thrive Apprentice is a great option. It allows you to make and sell online courses to your audience.

Engagement Statistics
- 29.3% of content creators publish content frequently on social media to engage their audiences.
- 5.6% of content creators host meetups to increase engagement.
- 62% of content creators say that focusing on a particular niche helps them get more engagement and reach.
- More than 25% of content creators say that Instagram is the top channel for generating engagement.
Engagement is one of the main metrics that content creators use to measure their performance.

To meet engagement goals, content creators often focus on a specific niche and create content around relevant topics.

Publishing content on a regular basis is the key here. However, some content creators go the extra mile and host virtual events or in-person meetups to engage with their audiences.

Running competitions and giveaways on your website is also an excellent way to boost engagement.

With RafflePress, you can easily run giveaways on your WordPress website without having to hire a developer. This can help you get more followers and shares on social media, as well as subscribers to your email list.

Challenges Statistics
- 14.6% of content creators say their greatest challenge is finding brand deals.
- 63% of full-time content creators have experienced burnout at least once in the last 12 months.
- 13% of full-time content creators consistently have extreme levels of stress, followed by part-timers at 9%.
- More than 45% of full-time content creators say the pressure to post everywhere causes burnout, followed by content fatigue at around 44%.
It may seem like content creators are living the dream. However, they can have challenges from time to time.

Always meeting audience expectations can be overwhelming. It can severely affect the health and well-being of some content creators.

Whether they are full-time content creators or part-timers, creators often report extreme levels of stress trying to meet the demand for new content.

When you create content day in and day out, you may eventually run out of content ideas.

The WPBeginner Blog Post Idea Generator can come in handy here. The tool instantly generates 100s of content ideas to help you find new topics and inspiration.

YouTube Statistics
- With 2.2 billion monthly active users, YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms.
- YouTube channels grow by 36% per year.
- 69% of influencers on YouTube are women, followed by men at 31%.
- YouTube supports multiple languages, covering 95% of internet users.
- 197 million YouTube users are from the United States.
- 29% of children in the United States want to be YouTubers or vloggers one day.
- Only 3% of YouTubers make 90% of the money generated through the platform.
- An average content creator on YouTube has a 1/57 chance of crossing the 10,000 subscribers milestone.
- 10% of the content published by popular YouTube channels gets 79% of the total views.
- 70% of YouTubers prefer creating long-form content.
- On average, brands spend $418 to collaborate with YouTubers.
- 25% of people prefer to watch live streams on YouTube.
- 25.9% of people prefer YouTube for tipping or subscribing to their favorite content creators.
YouTube is one of the leading social media platforms. Creators use the platform to engage their audiences with long-form content and make a living from ad revenue.

However, this is not the only way content creators earn money through YouTube. People also prefer the platform for live streams, where they support their favorite creators through tips.

So, if you are a content creator, live streaming on YouTube is a good option for you to grow your income.

You can also embed your live stream on your WordPress website. This is one of the most effective ways to attract more viewers and grow your audience.

Plus, you donâ€™t need to hire a coding expert for this. You can simply use Smash Balloon YouTube Feed to embed your YouTube streams on your website.

Instagram Statistics
- 25% of people say that Instagram has the potential to generate the highest return on investment (ROI).
- 29% of brands plan to invest the most in Instagram because of the platformâ€™s potential to help them grow their audiences.
- Instagram is one of the most popular platforms, with 2 billion monthly active users.
- 79% of influencers on Instagram are women, followed by men at 21%.
- 9 out of 10 Instagram users consume video content on a weekly basis.
- 89% of Instagram users live outside the United States.
- 11% of Instagram users in the United States use the platform as their go-to news source.
Instagram is also an ideal place for content creators to score brand deals and sponsorships.

Instagram users are also generally very active. So, engaging them may be easier compared to other platforms.

Additionally, by embedding your Instagram feed on your website, you can show user-generated content to build trust and grow your brandâ€™s reach.

Smash Balloon Instagram Feed can help you with that. Using this plugin, you can easily add customizable social media feeds to your website and show your content to more people.

TikTok Statistics
- 26% of content creators say that their preferred social media platform is TikTok.
- TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users.
- 53% of TikTok users are women, followed by men at 46%.
- 76% of influencers on TikTok are women, followed by men at 24%.
- 80 million monthly active users on TikTok are from the United States alone.
- 37.3 million active users on TikTok represent Gen Z.
- TikTok users are active for around 95 minutes on a daily basis.
- 56% of brands prefer TikTok to collaborate with influencers.
- The highest-earning content creator on TikTok is Charli Dâ€™Amelio.
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Over 1 billion people use the app to get their daily dose of content, especially people from Generation Z.

This is why most content creators prefer TikTok to showcase their creativity to their fans. TikTok is also preferred by many brands for partnerships.

Facebook Statistics
- With 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms.
- 26.4% of people who use Facebook are millennials.
- Facebook is the source of news and updates for 43% of adults in the United States.
TikTok may be the preferred platform to engage Generation Z. But Facebook is the go-to place for content creators who want to connect with millennials.

Businesses often use Facebook to create an online community. It helps them humanize their brand and engage with their audience.

We even do the same at WPBeginner. We created our own Facebook group called WPBeginner Engage to help WordPress users improve their websites and connect with 95k+ like-minded people.

List of Sources

WPBeginner, MemberPress, RafflePress, Smash Balloon, Statista, Adobe, Forbes, HubSpot, Exploding Topics, Linktree, The Influencer Marketing Factory, Influencer Marketing Hub, ConvertKit, Collabstr, Zippia, Goldman Sachs, Demand Sage

We hope this list of creator economy statistics, trends, and facts will help you make a marketing strategy that works best for your business. You may also want to see our guide on how to start a successful YouTube channel for your business and our expert picks for the best marketing automation tools for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post 2023â€™s Creator Economy Statistics That Will Blow You Away first appeared on WPBeginner.
01.09.2023
Research: The Truth Behind Make Money Online Videos on YouTube and TikTok (We Analyzed 344 Videos)
Have you ever wondered whether those YouTube and TikTok influencers teaching how to make money online are telling the truth?

We analyzed 354 videos from YouTube and TikTok to see whether the business model or earning potential they share is realistic for an average person.

Here’s what we found out.

While a lot of these make money online influencer videos paint a rosier picture than the truth of online entrepreneurship, there are still a lot of options to earn consistent income through the internet.

Below are our findings on online business statistics along with the original research data that we collected from YouTube and TikTok.

The Trend of Online Work: An Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic showed millions of people that they could work from anywhere and at any time. As offices closed and all but the most essential services shut down, many jobs moved onto the internet.

This trend towards flexibility has persisted: even as most of the world has returned to normal, people still like working remotely. In fact, 45% of employees said they were likely to look for a new job if their employer required them to report to work in person.

Online work can also open up new opportunities for people who lost their jobs during the financial crises spurred on by the pandemic, said Haiyi Zhu, a professor at Carnegie Mellon Universityâ€™s Human-Computer Interaction Institute who studies gig work. These workers might â€œturn to online, virtual work as either a transitional job or to find additional income sourcesâ€ as they look for new full-time employment, she explained.

At the same time, social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok have made it easier than ever for people to learn about online work opportunities. Searches for online gig work or investment opportunities can lead a user to hours upon hours of content, explaining potential business ideas and suggesting how much an aspiring worker could earn.

At WPBeginner, we’ve summarized the money-making advice from hundreds of top videos, exploring the trends in business options and earning potential.

Of course, some videos might paint a rosier picture than the truth of online entrepreneurship. But, there are still a lot of options for earning consistent income through the internet.

For this report, our team used 177 videos from YouTube and 177 videos from TikTok, available in this repository.

On YouTube, we selected videos that came up at the top of a search for â€œhow to make money online.â€ While on TikTok, we used hashtags like #makemoneyonline and #entrepreneurship to select videos with this theme. We analyzed the videos based on the business options, potential earnings, and required skillsets they advertised.

The potential earnings we discuss in this article were taken directly from the YouTube and TikTok creators whose videos we analyzed.

These numbers do not necessarily reflect accurate trends. Rather, we are presenting them as a reflection of how online creators advertise work opportunities.

Wide Range of Earning Potential

After analyzing all of the videos from YouTube and TikTok, we found that the median pay these influencers advertised was about $50 per hour.

At the lowest end of the range, creators advertised microwork tasks, or series of small tasks (such as answering survey questions) that can be completed asynchronously over the internet. Microwork can lead to earnings as low as $1 per hour, according to the videos.

At the highest end of the range, video creators suggested that entrepreneurs can earn over $1,000 per hour for more skilled work like running a popular blog. In our expert opinion, this number is exaggerated and very rarely do individual bloggers get to such income level.

Overall, though, the earning potential mentioned in the videos skewed lower: 90% of the videos on both platforms advertised that workers would get under $300 per hour.

This statistic again should be taken with a grain of salt because it doesn’t factor in true-working hours because it’s unlikely to have a 40 hour work-week at that hourly rate.

Income instability is one of the most common challenges that online gig workers face, Zhu said. Her team has a paper currently undergoing peer review that names key issues across online gig workers and those that use online platforms to coordinate physical work, like driving for Uber or DoorDash. Other major challenges include a lack of employment benefits, health and safety (both physical and online), and a lack of power in the workplace, she said.

Some YouTube and TikTok creators advertise more lucrative career paths by talking about their own experiences getting rich, though their videos may be misleading.

For example, Adam Enfroy, a popular creator on both platforms, claims to make $300,000 a month through blogs and affiliate marketing, but this income is unrealistic for new marketers just starting out. According to statistics, the average earnings for professional, freelance marketers is $50 per hour or $100,000 per year only if you’re absolutely at the top of your game.

Making Money with Online Publishing

Online publishing Statistics, according to YouTube

Online publishing was the most popular type of online business advertised on YouTube, clocking in at 45% of the videos we analyzed.

This is a broad category of online work which might include setting up a blog that earns revenue through affiliate links, writing a newsletter, making videos on YouTube, or creating content as an influencer.

YouTube creators pushing online publishing advertised that workers could earn a median of:
- $925 per hour writing a blog
- $312 per hour writing a newsletter or similar periodic articles
- $230 per hour for YouTube sponsorships
- $106 per hour with affiliate marketing
Note: these rates shared in videos may not reflect actual earnings.

Affiliate marketing is one of the simpler options for a new writer with less experience. In this model, companies pay you to send customers to their products. Google a simple question like â€œbest laptop for college,â€ and youâ€™ll find hundreds of lists on sites ranging from independent blogs to the New York Times, taking advantage of the search engine to drive affiliate revenue.

Online publishing Statistics, according to TikTok

Creators on TikTok similarly advertised blogs and marketing as a high-earning strategy. The videos we analyzed claimed that writing a blog could net a median of $1,500 per year. Digging into this further, we analyzed the skills that TikTok creators claimed would be most lucrative for different online businesses.

According to the TikTok creators, marketing could lead to the highest (advertised) earnings at a median of $62.50 per hour, followed by investing at $56 per hour and video editing at $50 per hour.

As on YouTube, TikTok creators tend to provide fairly limited evidence for their earning estimates. Video creators also tend to advertise business ideas that are easier to sell to a broad audience as “easy money-making strategies”. In reality, getting extremely rich off of a blog is harder than video creators make it sound.

Instead, experts suggested that selling writing or another type of service as a freelancer might be more successful for online workers with prior talents under their belts.

Making Money with a Service Business

Service businesses can include a range of skillsets.

On TikTok, we found that services businesses were the most popular type of online work advertised by creators.

These businesses include a range of skills and activities such as: starting your own agency to provide a service like tech support to other companies, selling goods through an online store, making content for clients on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, and performing microwork tasks like filling out surveys or tagging content.

Microwork can be particularly appealing for people who are not currently employed full-time and looking to make extra cash, said Melissa Keith, a psychology professor at Bowling Green State University whose research focuses on the platform Mechanical Turk. Mechanical Turk, run by Amazon, allows remote workers to make money by doing small tasks that canâ€™t be completed by computers.

Microwork rates are low, but improving.

â€œItâ€™s pretty unrealistic to think youâ€™re going to make a full-time salary on most of these platforms,â€ Keith said. But the all-remote, fully flexible nature of the platform allows workers to earn money on their own terms â€” potentially even while working at another job. While TikTok videos advertise that workers might be able to earn over $50 per hour while on platforms like Mechanical Turk, Keith found this number is unrealistic compared to her research. â€œA good rate is closer to $10 an hour,â€ she said.

In recent years, workers on microwork platforms have pushed the companies posting jobs to improve their hourly rates, Keith noted. Tasks that might once have paid under $1 an hour will now earn a worker the U.S. minimum wage, if not more. These rates can be particularly attractive to workers in other countries where the cost of living is lower.

Related: 11 Best WordPress Developer Jobs Sites (+ Example Job Templates)

Balancing Expectations and Reality

Online videos paint a rosy picture of entrepreneurship opportunities. This is especially true for financial and investment advice, as creators advertise buying into cryptocurrency and other risky assets. As CNET contributor Ana Staples points out, anyone can claim to be an expert on TikTok. Short, punchy videos can make getting rich online look much easier than it really is.

Itâ€™s also important to consider the gap between who makes videos about earning money online and who actually comprises the online gig workforce.

Our analysis found that the creators of YouTube and TikTok videos skew towards men in their 20s; the user bases of platforms like Mechanical Turk tend to be pretty evenly split on gender, Keith said.

Younger men might be â€œmore willing to share their success stories,â€ said Zhu, the Carnegie Mellon researcher. Meanwhile, low-income immigrants who are doing more low-paid gig work might â€œnot necessarily want to brag about their work, and also donâ€™t have the time to create videos,â€ she added.

As online work remains popular in the wake of the pandemic, Zhu and Keith both anticipate that workers will continue to push for higher wages, flexibility on the job, and benefits that better align with those of typical full-time employment. â€œIf people move towards these more flexible work arrangements, weâ€™re going to have to have systems in place to protect workers,â€ Keith said.

List of Sources

Federal Reserve Board, Haiyi Zhu, Upwork, CNET, Melissa Keith, YouTube and TikTok

That’s a wrap! We hope this original research gave you an idea of what to expect if you’re looking to start an online business or become a freelancer.

If you’re looking to start earning online, you may found the following resources helpful:
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post Research: The Truth Behind Make Money Online Videos on YouTube and TikTok (We Analyzed 344 Videos) first appeared on WPBeginner.
21.02.2023
A History of Blogging (1993 â€“ Present Day Timeline)

Do you want to know about the history of blogging?

If you are thinking aboutÂ starting a WordPress blogÂ today, then you might like to know that there are 1.9 billion websites in the world, and the blogging industry makes up one-third of it. But it didnâ€™t start out that way.

In this article, weâ€™ll share the small beginnings of blogging, the powerful blogging platforms that evolved, and how WordPress came to power over 43% of all websites.

1993-1994: The First Blogs Were Published

Blogging was born sometime around 1993 or 1994. No one was expecting the impact it would have on the world, and the word ‘blog’ didn’t even exist. As a result, there were no historians watching out for it, and no one kept careful records.

We know that Rob Palmer started a plain text journal online in late 1993. In an article on how he became the first blogger, Rob explains how costly it was to run a website in those days. The domain name cost him $100, and basic hosting cost over $100 a month (for comparison, it costs $2.69 per month now).

However, itâ€™s more widely recognized that the first blog was created by 19-year-old student Justin Hall. His home page contained hyperlinks to interesting content he found online, and articles he wrote himself. The content included basic HTML text formatting and small images.

Ten years later, the New York Times Magazine named him the â€œfounding father of personal bloggersâ€. You can still find an early version of Justinâ€™s page preserved on links.net.

Three or four years later, the tech blog SlashDot was launched in September 1997.

December 1997: The Term â€˜Weblogâ€™ Was Coined

Originally, blogs didnâ€™t have a name. They were thought of as online journals or diaries, or personal home pages.

In December 1997, Jorn Barger came up with the term â€˜weblogâ€™. He maintained an internet culture website called Robot Wisdom, and the term reflected his process of â€˜logging the webâ€™ as he browsed.

August 1998 was the first time a traditional news site tried blogging. Journalist Jonathan Duke â€˜bloggedâ€™ about Hurricane Bonnie for the Charlotte Observer, but didn’t use the term itself.

October 1998: The Open Diary Platform Was Launched

Creating websites was technical, so eventually blogging platforms were created that made it easy for users to record their thoughts and experiences online.

One of the earlier ones was The Open Diary, which developed an online community by allowing users to comment on one anotherâ€™s posts.

Hereâ€™s an early screenshot preserved on the Internet Archive. Notice that blogs were designed for much lower-resolution screens back then.

March 1999: RSS Made Blog Subscription a Reality

RSS is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It was initially released in March 1999 and is a format used for delivering frequently changing web content from websites and other online publishers.

It allows users to keep track of updates to their favorite websites without having to visit each site individually. They are able to read the latest content in an RSS feed reader or their email.

You can use RSS to grow your blog by following our guide on how to use RSS in WordPress.

In April 1999, developer Peter Merholz added some humor to his website, Peterme.com. He broke up the word â€˜weblogâ€™, into two words, â€˜we blogâ€™. This caught on, and the term â€˜blogâ€™ was born.

April 1999: LiveJournal, an Early Blogging Platform, Was Launched

In April 1999, programmer Brad Fitzpatrick launched the LiveJournal platform as a way to keep in touch with his high school friends. It quickly grew into a community of people recording their thoughts online.

LiveJournal was easy to use because it provided a single open text area. Its competitors at the time offered form-based text fields.

In January 1995, the blogging company Six Apart purchased the company that operated LiveJournal, and the platform is still operating today. Although a lot of LiveJournal users have switched to WordPress by following our guide on how to move from LiveJournal to WordPress because WordPress is more powerful and easier to use.

In July 1999, another blogging platform called Metafilter was launched. It was known as MeFi, and its members could post entries to be published on the main website.

August 1999: Blogger Was Launched by Para Labs

Blogger is another early blogging platform, first launched in August 1999 by Pyra Labs. It offered a quick and easy way to create a blog for non-tech-savvy users.

Every entry on Blogger was given a permanent and shareable URL or permalink. This made it easy for users to access the content they were searching for and made Blogger the platform of choice for a lot of writers.

Later in 2003, Google acquired Blogger and over time redesigned it into the product we know today. It is WordPressâ€™s largest competitor, and you can learn more in our comparison of WordPress vs Blogger (Pros and cons).

In January 2000, the first known vlog entry was created by Adam Kontras, and also the popular blog Boing Boing was born.

Early 2001: b2/cafelog, the Precursor of WordPress, Was Launched

In early 2001, the French programmer Michel Valdrighi launched a personal publishing system with a new design known as b2 or cafelog.

In contrast with most other blogging systems at the time, the software needed to be installed on the userâ€™s own web server, and it dynamically created pages from the contents of a MySQL database. WordPress users will find this familiar.

b2/cafelog became popular and was eventually installed on about 2,000 blogs. Unfortunately, the project was abandoned, paving the way for its source code to form the basis of WordPress in 2003.

October 2001: The Moveable Type Blogging Platform Was Released

The company Six Apart launched the Moveable Type blog publishing system in October 2001. Like b2, it needed to be installed on a web server. They introduced a trackback system in version 2.2 that has been adopted by other blogging platforms including WordPress.

In February 2002, Heather Armstrong lost her job for writing about her work colleagues on her personal blog, dooce.com. As a result, â€˜doocedâ€™ has become a term that means â€˜fired for blogging.â€™

April 2002: TheMommyBlog.com Was Founded

In April 2002, Melinda Roberts started TheMommyBlog.com, one of the first blogs focussing on parenting and family life. This would inspire more than 3.9 million other parenting blogs over the next ten years.

This highlights how successful some blogging niches can become. Learn how to select the right niche for your blog in our guide on the best blogging niches that will make money.

The popular Gizmodo blog was also launched in July 2002.

August 2002: Blogads Allowed Blogs to Be Easily Monetized

Blogads, the first broker of blog advertising, launched in August 2002. This allowed many bloggers to turn their hobby into their primary source of income.

You can learn to do the same in our guide on how to sell ads on your WordPress blog.

Less than a year later, Google launched AdSense, a competing platform.

November 2002: The Blog Search Engine Technorati Was Launched

Technorati provided a search engine for bloggers in November 2002, allowing blog readers to easily find useful content. In 2008, Technorati also launched an ad network.

Gawker, the first gossip blog, was launched in December 2002. It ceased operations in August 2016 after a legal battle and was later relaunched in July 2021.

February 2003: The Birth of Live Blogging

In February 2003, The Guardian made use of live blogging during the Prime Ministerâ€™s question time. They called this â€˜live textâ€™ and started to use it frequently for sporting events.

Today live blogging has taken many forms from self-hosted live blogs done on CNN and other blogs, to even real-time tweets which in essence are a form of live blog.

If youâ€™re looking to start live blogging on your own website, then see our step-by-step guide on how to do live blogging in WordPress.

February 2003: Blogger Was Acquired by Google

In February 2003, Google acquired Blogger, which was at that time the biggest and most successful blogging platform. It continued to grow in popularity until mid-2010.

However, since then WordPress steadily rose in popularity, and has been beating Blogger and dominating the trends since 2014.

Blogger remains the second most popular platform used by about 0.4% of blogs, while WordPress used is by an astonishing 97%.

In March 2003, an anonymous Iraqi blogger known as â€˜Salam Paxâ€™ blogged about the Iraq War to a worldwide audience.

May 2003: WordPress Was Released

In May 2003, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released the first version of WordPress. It was based on the code of an earlier blogging platform, b2/cafelog, that they were involved in. The new software retained the best parts of the older platform and added new features.

Like b2/cafelog, the software needed to be installed on a web hosting server, and dynamically created web pages from a MySQL database, just as the current version of WordPress does.

One goal of the platform was to be easy to set up. Hereâ€™s a preview of the WordPress 1.0 basic settings screen:

If youâ€™d like to see how WordPress came to power 43% of websites, then see our guide on the history of WordPress. You can also see how WordPress features have developed over the years in our guide on the evolution of the WordPress user interface.

June 2003: Google Adsense Was Launched

After purchasing Blogger, Google launched its online advertising platform Adsense in June 2003. Its unique feature was to match ads with blog content, and it made it easy for bloggers to start making money.

Google Adsense is still a leading ad platform for bloggers. You can learn how to use it in our guide on how to properly add Google AdSense to your WordPress site.

Jason Calacanis founded Weblogs, Inc. in September 2003. It eventually grew into a portfolio of 85 blogs. In 2005 he sold the company to AOL for $30 million.

TypePad, a commercial blogging platform based on Moveable Type, was released in October 2003 and hosted blogs for major multimedia companies such as the BBC.

February 2004: The Year of the Video Blog

In February 2004, videographer Steve Garfield started to upload one or two short videos each month to his personal blog. These often covered news events such as protests and rallies.

Other video bloggers started doing the same, and this became known as â€˜vlogging.â€™ Steve Garfield dubbed 2004 â€˜the year of the video blog.â€™

This led the way for YouTube to be launched the following year.

In May 2004, WordPress 1.2 was released, introducing a new plugin architecture.

In September 2004, Darren Rowse launched ProBlogger.net.

December 2004: â€˜Blogâ€™ Was the Merriam-Webster Word for the Year

In 2004, the most looked-up word in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary was â€˜blogâ€™. It became their word for the year.

This shows how much blogging was impacting the mainstream world. In fact, 32 million Americans were reading blogs at the time according to one study.

In February 2005, WordPress 1.5 was released, introducing themes.

February 2005: YouTube Was Launched

With the growth of video blogging, YouTube was launched in February 2005. This made it much easy for users to upload video content to the internet.

It would be purchased by Google the following year.

Blogging continued to grow in credibility. In March 2005, Garrett Graff became the first blogger to be granted a press pass for the White House. The popular tech blog TechCrunch was launched in June 2005, and Mashable the following month.

August 2005: Automattic Was Founded

In August 2005, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg founded a new company, Automattic. The following year, it launched a new blog hosting service known as WordPress.com.

This allowed you to create a WordPress blog for free, but without the advanced features of self-hosted WordPress. You could purchase additional options like a custom domain name, additional storage, and other premium services.

Because of the similarity in names, beginners often start with WordPress.com thinking they are getting the powerful WordPress.org software.

After seeing the limitations, users often end up switching from WordPress.com to WordPress.org to have more features, ease of use, and control over their website.

In December 2005, it was estimated that $100 million worth of blog ads were sold that year. Also, WordPress 2.0 was launched, introducing the new admin dashboard.

November 2005: Google Analytics Was Launched

To create a successful blog, itâ€™s helpful to know how users interact with your website, including the blog posts they enjoy and those they donâ€™t. In November 2005, Google Analytics was launched to help website owners track user activity.

It was initially developed from other analytics software acquired by Google, including Urchin on Demand and Adaptive Path, and additional features were added in the following years.

You can learn how to track the activity of visitors to your own blog by following our guide on how to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics.

March 2006: Launch of Twitter, the Popular Microblogging Platform

In March 2006, Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter and sent out the first tweet. This new platform restricted posts to 140 characters or less, introducing the concept of microblogging.

You can use WordPress Twitter plugins to include your recent tweets on your website or encourage visitors to share your blog posts.

Automattic filed for trademark registration for the WordPress name and logo in March 2006. At the time there were 50 million blogs on the internet according to Technorati.

August 2006: The First WordCamp Was Held in San Fransisco

WordCamps are locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. The first WordCamp was organized in San Francisco by Matt Mullenweg in August 2006.

Since then local communities around the world have organized hundreds of others. If you would like to attend one, you may be interested in our infographic on what a WordCamp is and why you should attend.

October 2006: Wix Hosted Blogging Platform Was Launched

Wix was launched in October 2006. It is a popular hosted platform that offered a drag-and-dropÂ website builder, allowing small businesses to easily build a website without coding skills. However, themes were limited, and you had to pay for every third-party plugin.

Wix currently has over 110 million users across the globe. Learn how it compares with WordPress in our article on Wix vs WordPress.

Google acquired YouTube in October 2006.

February 2007: Tumblr Microblogging Platform Was Released

Tumblr was launched in February 2007. Itâ€™s a microblogging platform with social networking features including following other blogs, reblogging, built-in sharing tools, and more.

The platform was purchased by Yahoo in 2013, then acquired by Verizon in 2017. It is currently owned by Automattic.

If youâ€™re a Tumblr user looking to move to a new platform, you can see our guide on how to properly move your blog from Tumblr to WordPress.

Posterous, a similar microblogging platform, was launched in May 2008. On an unrelated note, the White House started its own blog in January 2009.

July 2009: WPBeginner Was Launched

In July 2009, the WPBeginner blog was launched by 18-year-old web developer Syed Balkhi. He decided that instead of maintaining his clients’ WordPress websites, he would teach them to do it themselves.

He scoured the web to find a resource that could help his clients and other new WordPress users, but most WordPress tutorials were written by developers for developers. So he created WPBeginner as a resource targeted toward WordPress beginners and DIY users.

Since then, WPBeginner has become the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry.

In June 2010, Automattic donated the â€˜WordPressâ€™ trademark to WordPress.org. By the end of the year, there were more than 152 million blogs across all platforms and 11% of bloggers were earning their primary income from blogging.

August 2012: Medium Was Launched

Evan Williams, a co-founder of Pyra Labs which created Blogger, launched a different type of blogging platform called Medium. It works like a social network where you can publish articles.

Medium has grown into a community of writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts. It is an easy-to-use blogging platform with limited social networking features.

However, while the platform looks attractive at first, the lack of monetization and control leads to most people switching from Medium to WordPress. To learn which platform matches your needs, see our guide on WordPress vs Medium â€“ which one is better?

April 2013: Ghost Minimal Blogging Platform Was Launched

Ghost is a minimalist blogging platform with features entirely focused on writing blog posts. It was launched in April 2013 and is available as a hosted platform, and also a version that you can host on your own server, though this is tricky.

Ghost now has over 3 million installs with an active monthly user base of over 10,000. You can learn how it compares with WordPress in our WordPress vs Ghost guide.

In April 2013, LinkedIn acquired the Pulse blogging platform, which was rolled out to all users over the next couple of years.

September 2013: OptinMonster Was Launched

In September 2013, Syed Balkhi and Thomas Griffin co-founded OptinMonster, the most powerful conversion optimization software. It was designed to help bloggers grow their email lists in WordPress and convert website visitors into subscribers.

Over the years, Syed had tried numerous techniques to get more email subscribers. He was able to get 70â€“80 new subscribers each day by adding a sidebar form, contact form, and other landing pages to his site.

When he started using OptinMonster, he started getting 600% more email subscribers even though his blog was getting the same amount of traffic as before.

OptinMonster is now used on over 1.2 million websites. You can learn how to use it by following our guide on how to build your email list in WordPress with OptinMonster.

In April 2015, there were more than 227 million blogs worldwide.

March 2016: WPForms Was Launched

The following year, Syed Balkhi co-founded another product, this time with Jared Atchison. WPForms is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy for bloggers to create forms using templates and drag and drop.

You can easily create a contact form, online survey form, email subscription form, donation form, billing order form, or any other type of form with just a few clicks without hiring a developer or learning how to code.

You can learn how to get started with WPForms on your own blog by following our step-by-step guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

April 2016: MonsterInsights Was Launched

In April 2016, Syed Balkhi acquired Yoast Analytics, the most popular Google Analytics integration in the world, and rebranded it as MonsterInsights. The plugin allows you to easily install Google analytics in WordPress and shows you helpful reports in your dashboard.

Google Analytics shows you how your audience interacts with your website, which is crucial for a successful blog. The best part about using MonsterInsights is that you can add the Google Analytics tracking code without editing code or hiring a developer.

You can learn how to install Google Analytics on your blog using MonsterInsights in our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

In May 2016, WordPress introduced the .blog domain extension as an alternative to .com, .net and .org. By February 2017, there were more than 300 million blogs online.

November 2017: Substack Was Founded

Substack, an online newsletter publishing platform, was founded in November 2017. It allows you to easily send newsletter emails to your subscribers.

You can have both paid and free subscriptions, and Substack gets a share of all your paid subscription fees. Apart from newsletters, you also get a basic website and podcast hosting.

However, Substack doesnâ€™t have all the functionality of a typical blogging platform or a content management system. You can learn how it compares with WordPress in our guide on Substack vs WordPress: which one is better?

WordPress 5.0 was released in December 2018 and introduced the block editor, codenamed Gutenberg.

October 2018: SeedProd Joined Awesome Motive

In October 2018, SeedProd, the popular coming soon and maintenance mode plugin for WordPress joined Awesome Motive through a merger, along with the pluginâ€™s founder, John Turner. At the time it was used by 800,000 WordPress sites.

The plugin was launched in 2011 and allows bloggers to easily create custom landing pages and layouts using a drag-and-drop builder interface. You can see how it works by following our guide on how to create beautiful coming-soon pages in WordPress using SeedProd.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the WPBeginner blog, the WPBeginner Engage Facebook Group was launched in April 2019. It currently has over 89,000 members and is the largest WordPress group on Facebook.

February 2020: All in One SEO Acquired by Awesome Motive

In January, Awesome Motive acquired All in One SEO (AIOSEO), the original WordPress SEO plugin that was being used by over 2 million websites at the time.

The plugin was released in 2007 by Michael Torbert and allows you to easily optimize your WordPress blog for search engines and social media platforms.

To learn how to make the most of the plugin, see our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Awesome Motive acquired Smash Balloon in June 2020. This popular plugin makes it easy to add your social media feeds to WordPress.

Later that year, PushEngage a leading web push notification software was acquired by Awesome Motive to help more bloggers use push notification to notify their users about new blog posts.

Web push notifications have become one of the most effective way to notify blog subscribers about new content, and it’s used by large news sites and publishers.

July 2021: SearchWP Acquired by Awesome Motive

Awesome Motive made another acquisition in July 2021: SearchWP, the leading search engine plugin for WordPress. It was originally developed in 2013 by Jon Christopher.

Effective site search is important to bloggers. It allows their users to find what theyâ€™re looking for, resulting in more sales and page views.

To learn how to use the plugin on your website, see our guide on how to improve WordPress search with SearchWP.

By 2022, 43% of the web was built on WordPress. There were 572 million blogs globally, and over 31 million bloggers in the US alone. For more statistics like this, see our list of blogging statistics, trends, and data.

July 2023: End of Life for Google Analytics UA

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Googleâ€™s analytics platform. It has many changes, like a new reporting system and metrics. The way GA4 collects and processes data is also different from the previous version known as Universal Analytics (UA).

Google will sunset the old Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. Itâ€™s important to switch your blog over to the new version before then.

You can learn everything you need in our ultimate guide to GA4 in WordPress for beginners.

We hope this article helped you learn about the history of blogging. If you have additional blogging history facts, please let us know by leaving a comment below.

You may also want to learn how to choose the best blogging platform, or check out our list of ways to make money online blogging with WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post A History of Blogging (1993 â€“ Present Day Timeline) first appeared on WPBeginner.

14.12.2022