Time flies and we’re again just starting a new year. As always, it is time to review everything that has happened in the year we left behind. We already did it in 2015, 2016, and 2017, so we couldn’t miss it in 2018.
Here you have the summary with all the highlights that happened in 2018 in Nelio Software.
Our Web in Numbers
In 2018 we have published 104 new posts on Nelio Software’s blog, the same as we did in 2017. That’s two new posts every week! We continue using Nelio Content for managing the editorial calendar, which has allowed us to keep up the pace of publication with little effort. If you can’t write consistently in your website, I absolutely recommend the use of an editorial calendar. It’s something that is working very well for us, as you can see from the numbers.
On the other hand, Nelio’s website has received 577 comments throughout the year, slightly less than in 2017. This is due to the fact that we have closed the comment section in some posts where we only received support requests. As always, we recommend you post your questions to the WordPress support forum, as more people will be able to address them and more people will benefit from the answers. But we’re extremely happy to keep receiving your feedback!
In terms of popularity, the articles we published in 2018 that you most enjoyed are the following:
- 7+ Useful Plugins to Manage Your WordPress Media Library
- How to Create Your First Block For Gutenberg
- WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla! Which One is The Best in 2018?
- The Problems of Using Nested Loops in WordPress
- 8 Examples of Successful Personal Branding
- 7 Main Differences Between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing
- The Dangers of Installing Multiple SEO Plugins in Your WordPress
- 15 Personal Web Designs in WordPress for Inspiration
- The Limits of the Support You Provide for Your WordPress Plugins
- The Perfect Yoast SEO Setup For Your WordPress (I)
In addition to this, this year we finally had enough time to integrate all the content of Nelio A/B Testing directly into the website of Nelio Software. So, now we can say that all our premium plugins are on the same site, under the same umbrella. Another goal accomplished!
Events in Which We Have Participated
This year we have been participating inside and outside the WordPress community in several areas . Let’s look at this in a little more detail…
David participated as a speaker at WordCamp Madrid. He talked about the blog as the central point of your marketing strategy to achieve success in your project. And he was delighted with the organization of the event. You can remember his summary of the WordCamp Madrid here.
We were also involved in the organization of WordCamp Barcelona 2018, which took place a few months ago. Ruth, David, and I were members of the organizing team of the event, and we spent almost a year working on it to contribute to its success .
If you have not participated in the organization of an event of the size of a WordCamp, I recommend that you do it, as you’ll always learn something new. It has been very useful for us to see from the inside how these events are organized and how they work internally. We had already helped in previous editions, but this time we were able to participate in the whole process of the creation of the WordCamp. One more experience in our pocket.
In addition to these major events, Ruth made a presentation on content hacking in the meetup of Entrepreneurs, Freelancers and Marketers of Barcelona. And I explained how we at Nelio manage the entire editorial process of generating and promoting WordPress content both in the meetup of WordPress Santa Coloma de Gramenet and in the meetup of NetSquared Barcelona.
In addition to all this, David and I applied to be members of the organization of the next WordCamp Europe 2019 that will take place in Berlin. And since September we are working on it, David in the Content team and me in the Attendee Services team. A very interesting experience that we’ll share someday during the year in more depth.
Nelio A/B Testing
Native Tests for WordPress
Use your WordPress page editor to create variants and run powerful tests with just a few clicks. No coding skills required.
State of The Business
2018 has been a year of changes and of adapting to them. The first of them was the arrival of the GDPR, the data protection law that forces to make certain modifications in the web so that everything is clearer for the visitor. We spent a few months working with this in order to comply with the law and make everything as correct as possible.
Another change, this time internally, was David’s stay in the United States for 3 months. This meant that we all adapted to work remotely in order to continue with the same dynamics that we had already established. In the end it was not so difficult… Apparently, though, David missed us a lot and came back before the end of the year. You can read his experience in this post.
Another activity we got involved in was teaching courses at CIFO l’Hospitalet. We taught an introductory course on WordPress and another on content marketing. This was a great experience too: we had a good time and we were able to let people know more about Nelio from a completely new perspective.
As for our plugins, we have continued to evolve them by adding more features. We have even been working on things that you don’t see, like a much better backend for Nelio A/B Testing that hasn’t seen the light yet but that we hope to release in a few months.
As a curiosity, we were awarded the Fiberemprenedor Mention, which is given every year to a company formed by former students of the School of Informatics of Barcelona. It is always an honor that former faculty members remember us. Thank you!
Going back to the changes, the one everybody was expecting was the release of WordPress 5.0 with Gutenberg, the new block editor, which happened just a few weeks ago. Beyond the controversy about it and the dramas that were seen in social media, we were able to launch adaptations of our plugins in record time to avoid problems.
This was a big challenge, but we lived up to it. In addition, we’ve spent the last few weeks learning deeply all the technologies behind Gutenberg, so we hope to release novelties soon. Stay tuned!
And, of course, I could not finish this section without talking about the results obtained. In 2018, compared to the previous year, we have managed to increase revenues from Nelio A/B Testing by more than 5% and from Nelio Content by 38%. Overall, we have had more than 2,500 units sold in more than 60 different countries:
As you can see, in the case of Nelio A/B Testing, our main market is in the United States, which together with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada represent more than 75% of our sales.
With Nelio Content, the United States has grown by almost 30%, representing 50% of the total. And along with considerable sales growth in Spain (57%), Germany (98%), and France (220%), they represent almost 75% of our revenues.
What We Expect From 2019
In the new year that just starts we want to keep growing and our plugins to continue to please those who use them. In addition, we hope to be able to release new features more frequently and take advantage of all the new things that arrived to WordPress recently.
New challenges are approaching and we will do everything we can to be ready. Many thanks to all of you who have been following us over the past year. We will continue with you one year more.
Featured image by Andrew Neel on Unsplash.
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