Originally Posted by TheDoc

Wouldn't being able to raise venture capital prove that free sells?


If we had the traffic they had when they got 30m.. heck everyone would have people throwing money at them like they did. That's why they could raise it, people didn't invest in a broken machine.


Now they are spending that money and making money on stuff like a hosting company and host paid blogs, massive ones. You can buy more space and features for your free blog.

They own plugins for WP that cost monthly (biggest one too). Google adsense is auto on blogs if conditions are met. They upsell hosting and other products. They have a paid poll version. Premium Themes. Shared profits in widgets. Paid support services... and more.




It's a free product... they built up, floated about even for awhile, got some investments, grew the staff, and over the last year have really taken it to the next level.

Now sure about you, but I build my free websites/products, if I can monetize them, I invest more into them, grow them, add staff, and hope they take off. I have had investors before, I look at that as part of doing business.