2024 year in review & transparency report

Barn2's 2024 saw a new plugin, my first ever WordCamp talk, awards, team changes, plus plenty of WordPress drama. Discover the full story in this Year in Review and transparency report from Barn2's Founder and CEO, Katie.

Welcome to my 6th Year in Review! You can check out my previous ones for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

This year I spoke at my first WordCamp and in an online conference, was proud to see Barn2 win more awards, and navigated Barn2 through a turbulent time in WordPress. After a strong start to the year, our growth also slowed for the first time ever, which led to some new challenges and a change of direction.

This is the story of 2024 at Barn2 - the highs and the lows.

2024 in numbers

• Plugin sales:
  • $1,699,326 total revenue from plugins (18,410 sales) - compared to $1,517,006 in 2023, a 12% increase 📈
  • $860,232 of the above came from new sales and the rest was renewals. (New sales revenue was $860,345 in 2023, a decrease of 0.01% 📉😕)
  • $96.53 average order value
  • 1,838 refunds – refund rate 11% (down from 13% in 2023)
• Additional income streams:
  • $11,932 commission received from other WordPress products that we are an affiliate for, compared to $15,279 in 2023
  • $36,385 from hosting and support for historical clients whose websites we built before we switched to selling plugins, compared to $30,245 in 2023 (I have no idea why this increased because we're gradually closing this part of the business 🤷🏻‍♀️)
  • $3,799 from YouTube ads
• Other stats:
  • 1 new plugin, 129 plugin updates, and 5 plugins sold 👩‍💻
  • 90 knowledge base articles, 88 blog posts/tutorials, 50 YouTube videos, and 13 live Q&A's 🔥
  • 24,652 support tickets - an increase of 12% (22,195 in 2023)
  • $19,841.42 paid to our 885 affiliates (sign up here!) 📣
  • I worked for 1,399 hours (see full breakdown) and attended 3 WordCamps
  • And I was on 35 podcast episodes and interviews 🎙️

Big milestones

We also reached some incredible milestones. Our total lifetime plugin sales passed 7 million dollars. There are now over 90,000 people using our plugins!

I'm eternally grateful to everyone in the Barn2 team for making all of this happen, and the rest of the WordPress community which gives me so much love and support.

Hang on, why did new sales decrease?

Yeah, that is a problem 😞. It's fantastic that total plugin revenue increased by 12%, but this number hides the fact that new sales decreased by 0.01%.

After a strong start to the year, our new sales declined in June as a result of Google algorithm changes. To tackle this, we made various changes such as improving the trust factors on our website (a big priority for Google these days) and revitalizing old blog posts. In late August, Google reversed some of its previous algorithm changes and we saw some recovery. However, the rest of the year remained fairly stagnant for new sales.

The drop would have been worse if we hadn't released so many new plugins in the past couple of years, as the growing sales of our new plugins made up for a bigger drop in some of the older ones. This made me grateful that we're a multi-plugin company, as this stops us being too dependent on any one plugin.

However, it was scary to see new sales declining for the first time ever. In 2024, a lot of external factors (not just Google) have threatened the business in a way that I haven't experienced before. I'll discuss this in more detail below, including what I plan to do about it.

Barn2's plugins

New plugin - WooCommerce Discount Manager

As I mentioned in my 2023 Year in Review, our priority in 2024 was to focus on growing our most successful plugins instead of releasing new ones. However, we already had one big project in progress, which was launched in February.

Our new WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin is a one-stop-shop for creating any type of discount or deal in WooCommerce. Its sales are growing nicely and it's now our 6th most popular plugin (out of 19).

5 of our plugins were acquired

We started the year with 23 premium plugins, which soon increased to 24. That's a LOT for a small company!

After doing an 80/20 rule analysis of various parts of the business in late 2023, I knew that most of our revenue came from a small proportion of plugins. Specifically, 9 plugins (39% of the 23) made up 80% of our revenue from new sales. This showed that we could grow the business more effectively by putting more resources into our top selling plugins.

Andy and I identified 5 plugins which were (a) generating the least revenue and (b) less connected to our other plugins. We decided that the best option for everyone would be to find a new home for these plugins, plus 2 of our free ones.

I had never sold any of our products before, so wasn't sure of the best approach. To get started, I tweeted to ask the community for advice. I wasn't actually advertising the plugins at that stage, and yet the tweet generated tons of interest 😲. This was unexpected - I hadn't even created a formal document with all the numbers yet!

One of the responses was from Max Rice, who I knew by reputation as the founder of Sky Verge. I had also had some dealings with his wife Beka and knew they were big players in the WooCommerce community. They were starting a new venture called Kestrel and were interested in acquiring our plugins.

I spent a couple of weeks advertising the plugins on FlipWP and Acquire.com and received some other offers, but none that I was as comfortable with as Max's. We then did a deal and the process went incredibly smoothly. I made sure that our agreement included supporting our existing customers, including those with lifetime licenses.

The tweet that led to the acquisition:

I'm interested, just sent a DM on post status slack 😄

— Max Rice (@maxrice) January 10, 2024

Now we "only" have 19 plugins, it feels more manageable. Each of our remaining plugins consistently makes over $1,400 per month, which means we can afford to maintain them all.

Improving our existing plugins

With our plugin catalog reduced, we could turn our attention inwards and add hotly-requested features to our most popular plugins. Some of the biggest new features added this year include:

• Document Library Pro - Document expiry feature, automatic featured images, filters for the grid layout, and more file types for the document preview.
• WooCommerce Bulk Variations - Sticky header and integration with blocks + other plugins.
• WooCommerce Fast Cart - Shortcode to display the cart anywhere.
• WooCommerce Product Options - New live preview add-on to display instant image previews of customized products, the ability to display variations as options, huge advances to the price formula option type, more flexible image options, import and export tool, improvements to conditional logic, and more.
• WooCommerce Product Table - New table builder to create tables more easily, pre-designed table templates, total and subtotal display, author column, sticky header, and "Select all" option.
• WooCommerce Quantity Manager - Role-based category quantity rules, and integration with blocks.
• WooCommerce Wholesale Pro - Product visibility options, various usability improvements and added flexibility.

Support tickets grew by 12%

We handled 24,652 support tickets in 2024 - 12% more than last year. Revenue also grew by 12%, so that makes sense.

Our support team of grew from 7 to 8 people - a capacity increase of 14%. However, the average first response time was 6 hours and 44 minutes, 21% longer than last year. This isn't good enough and we need to make it a priority for 2025.

The Barn2 website

Our website developer Paul worked tirelessly on the Barn2 website all year, implementing some fantastic designs from our designer Daniel. New developments include shiny new About, Team, Media and Author pages, plus a new customer account area.

We also worked very hard to improve the accuracy of our analytics data, comparing the dreaded Google Analytics 4 with Matomo. (Bottom line: Matomo is far more accurate, but not perfect by any means.)

As always, we did 6-monthly analyses of our pricing and implemented changes aimed at finding the right balance of sales vs. profitability. This is an ongoing process that will never be finished, but can make a big difference.

We also started A/B testing again, and are planning lots of tests to grow our conversion rate. Follow me on Twitter for the results!

Team changes

We ended 2024 with a team of 19.5 people - similar to last year.

As a 100% remote company, we have team members in 10 countries: the UK, Spain, Poland, US, Italy, India, Morocco, Germany, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

The team now consists of:

• CEO
• Head of Plugin Development
• 5 Developers (plus a freelance developer for 80 hours per month)
• Quality Assurance Engineer
• Marketing Coordinator
• Video Creator
• Designer
• 8 Support Engineers working across tiers 1, 2 and 3 (one of whom spends half her time as Marketing Assistant)
• Plus Ellipsis who provide a CMO-As-a-Service, content planning and SEO; and some freelance writers

Losing team members 😢

Losing my co-director

The biggest team change in 2024 was that Andy - my husband, co-founder and co-director - left the business and I am now running Barn2 on my own.

I had known for a while that Andy no longer enjoyed his work. The transition from sole developer to manager had been difficult for him and he wasn't getting the satisfaction that he wanted.

In April, he told me that had decided to step down from the business. To be honest, I was relieved because I knew he wasn't happy and it's hard to run a company with someone who has lost their passion for the work.

We discussed the next steps and whether to sell part or all of the company. I love what I do and would be lost without Barn2, so I was adamant that I didn't want to step back too. We considered whether to sell Andy's shares and decided that for now, the best option was for us to retain the current ownership, with me as CEO.

As a result, at the end of June Andy left his role as Technical Director. This gave everyone time to make preparations. We already had a Head of Plugin Development so we redefined their role to include Andy's leadership responsibilities. A big part of Andy's work was quality control so we hired our first QA engineer to fill the gap.

On Andy's last day, I surprised him with a touching video of personal messages from Barn2 team members plus other members of the WordPress community, showing how appreciated he was.

Andy is now a Non-Executive Director of Barn2, as well as remaining as 50% owner. This means that I'm in charge of the day-to-day running of the business, and he's available for advice on a consultancy basis.

People often ask what he's doing now. As well as advising Barn2, he is now fully running the Airbnb that we own in Mallorca, which we had shared responsibility for before. Our 13-year-old daughter Sophia is now at home full-time doing her education online, so Andy is doing the bulk of the work to support her with that. He's also thinking about what sort of work he'd like to do longer-term, which is likely to include starting a new business of some sort.

Difficult decisions

Sadly, I had to let 2 team members go this year - both due to lack of interest and non-performance. This is the most common reason why things don't work out with team members.

When this happens, I always question whether my expectations are reasonable. Admittedly, I'm unusually self-motivated and it may not be realistic to expect everyone to share my work ethic. I also worry that some people suffer from my laid-back approach to team management and may need closer management to help them meet deadlines etc.

However, I have plenty of team members who do work hard and get a lot done, so this helps me to recognize when someone isn't performing. It's a remote team and if someone needs micro-management then it's probably the wrong role for them.

Whenever I have concerns about someone's performance, I set very clear expectations and make sure they understand exactly how they can succeed in the role. This includes setting formal Performance Improvement Plans, milestone plans with clear deadlines, etc. It always amazes me when people fail to live up to such clear expectations, but sometimes it happens.

Managing the team

I've always had a relaxed approach to team management. However, when I took over sole management of Barn2, I started to feel a greater sense of responsibility for the team and the company's future growth.

As a result, I read some leadership books and implemented some changes. This includes more regular 1:1 calls with each team member, and more structured annual performance reviews. The aim is to improve communication and efficiency, as well as keeping everyone and helping them to succeed. It takes a lot more of my time, but I think it's worth it.

How did I spend my time?

A year ago, we switched our project management and time tracking to ClickUp. At the same time, I started tracking my own time as well as requiring team members to do so.

In 2024, I worked for 1,399 hours. Here's a summary of what I spent the most time on (excluding miscellaneous tasks which took up the biggest chunk of my time):

As CEO, I have many hats and this is reflected in my timesheets. I need to analyze the data and consider which tasks I do which aren't really appropriate for a CEO. I also need to consider which tasks aren't the best possible use of time. For example:

• I know that I'm still too hands-on with marketing and updating existing content. I need to continue developing the marketing team so that I can take a step back.
• What was the opportunity cost of the 80 hours that I spent doing podcasts, and the 84 hours that I spent planning and attending WordCamps?

Technically, I work part-time!

In 2024, I worked for an average of 26 hours per week. Before I started tracking my time, I thought that I worked for over 40 hours per week. Andy and my daughter Sophia say that I'm always working 😅

However, it's nice to see that this isn't really the case. I seem to work a lot because I'm good at multi-tasking and fitting my work around my life. Some days I might work a lot, including on weekends - and other days I'll go out with my friends or Andy and catch up later. Luckily I'm one of the most productive people you'll ever meet, so I can get a lot done in the time available 🦹‍♂️

Being part of the WordPress community

We sponsored our second WordCamp

10 Barn2 team members attended WordCamp Asia in Taipei, Taiwan. The day before, we met up for a food tour of Taipei and an escape room. It was lovely to meet so many people who I had worked with for years but never met in person. And Cheska wins the award for being the only person I have been locked in a jail cell with 🔐😆 (it was a prison-themed escape room)!

WordCamp itself was fun, and we had a sponsor booth. Overall, it wasn't as valuable as sponsoring WCEU last year, but was still a good experience.

Read the full story in my WordCamp Asia write-up. 

On the way home, Andy and I spent a fantastic week exploring Vietnam. I was very grateful to my parents for agreeing to look after our daughter Sophia for so long.

I spoke at a WordCamp for the first time 🙀

Early in the year, Matt Cromwell (one of my WP Product Talk co-hosts) asked if I'd like to submit a talk for WordCamp Europe together. I wasn't super-keen because I'm not very confident with that sort of thing and had no experience speaking in front of such a large group. In fact, the closest thing I had ever done was giving presentations to groups of about 20 potential foster carers and adoptive parents before I started working for myself in 2011!

However, I have learned that you should generally say yes to anything that sounds like an opportunity and figure out the details later. So I agreed and Matt and I worked on a proposal for our talk.

It turned out that a record-breaking 400+ talks had been submitted. However, amazingly, ours was accepted!

I did a lot of work to prepare and despite some technical issues (which we had no control over) and being introduced before I was ready to go on stage 🙄, the talk went well. The room was packed with standing room only, and we received very positive feedback. You can watch it here on WordPress.tv.

Apart from the talk, I had lots of fun at WCEU. I caught up with WordPress friends, took the Barn2 team for a meal at a fancy restaurant, and went to lots of partiesdid lots of networking. I was also a panellist at a discussion about the ROI of sponsoring WordCamps.

Read the full story in my WCEU write-up. 

Being a speaker has given me the confidence to do it again. While I still don't feel ready to do a full-length talk on my own, I was recently accepted to do a lightning talk at WordCamp Asia 2025. Come and watch it if you're going!

WordCamp US

I also attended WordCamp US, making 2024 the first year I have attended 3 WordCamps!

WCUS was very different from the other two because I went alone and had no responsibilities. No team members, no sponsoring, no speaking - just me. I had a fantastic time meeting old friends and making new contacts:

Matt Mullenweg's controversial keynote speech - basically a tirade against the evils of WP Engine - was a shock and changed the tone of the final day (more on that below). However, overall it was a positive and rewarding conference.

Since I had no official Barn2 responsibilities at this WordCamp, I wanted to make sure it was worth my while to attend. I kept a list of all the direct business benefits and was amazed at how much I got out of it. This included getting ideas to implement, being invited to speak at WooSesh, arranging guest posts with high profile companies, and lots more.

People seemed to like the idea of measuring the ROI of WordCamps. My tweet about it got over 11,800 views!

I met so many wonderful people at #WCUS, both old and new contacts and friends. This time, I kept a list of the actual business benefits I got from attending. Here’s a mostly anonymised version of it - do you think this justifies the $2,200 I spent to attend?

Exposure for…

— Katie Keith (@KatieKeithBarn2) September 21, 2024

Speaking at WooSesh

In October, I was a speaker at the WooSesh conference. I was pleased to be seen as an important enough part of the WooCommerce community to be asked. My talk was called "From browsing to buying: How Barn2 built plugins to optimize every step of online shopping" and received positive feedback.

I co-authored an eBook ✍️

In March, I was proud to be asked to co-author an eBook with Filter agency. The eBook is called The Marketer's Guide to WooCommerce and is available as a free download to anyone who wants to build a successful WooCommerce store.

Barn2 team members in the community

In 2024, I was proud to see various team members being part of the WordPress community. This included speaking at local events, and attending various local WordCamps. Our newest team member Satya is also a regular volunteer at various WordCamps.

My personal brand

I only really started growing my "personal brand" in 2023, and this continued in 2024. The main ways in which I have done this are:

Hosting 2 podcasts 🎙️

I am co-host WP Product Talk and Woo BizChat at Do the Woo. They're both excellent opportunities to chat with my experienced co-hosts and guests about different areas of growing a WordPress business. As well as being good exposure, I learn so much which I put into practice at Barn2.

Twitter is where the work gets done!

My Twitter (sorry, X 🙄)  followers grew from 2,800 to 4,700 people in 2024.

As well as getting to know some fantastic people - many of which I have now met in person at WordCamps - I have continued to get direct business benefits from it. This includes lots of free business advice from other WordPress experts, and even selling my plugins to Kestrel as mentioned above!

In fact, sponsoring WordCamp Asia was slightly frustrating because instead of meeting lots of potential customers, most of the people approaching our booth just wanted to meet me after following me on Twitter!

If you don't already, follow me here 😉

The suitcase saga 🧳

While I hope people respect me as a WordPress professional, unfortunately the thing that I was best known for in 2024 was...... losing my luggage 🤦‍♀️. Here's the full story.

Lost suitcase #1

For my journey to WCEU, I checked in a suitcase and was really proud that my hand luggage bag was so light. It literally only contained my iPhone and MacBook Air. Sadly, the airline managed to lose the suitcase so I arrived in Italy with absolutely nothing.

It's strange how much stuff you rely on every day - I had no spare contact lenses, clean underwear, change of clothes, make-up, phone charger, medication...... nothing.

Luckily, WCEU was right next to a shopping mall so I spent the next day buying everything I needed, which I later reclaimed from the airline. Everyone spent the whole week asking about my lost suitcase and it made me surprisingly famous!

The lost suitcase was returned to me a few days later and I thought that was the end of it.

Lost suitcase #2

I checked in my suitcase to return home to Mallorca and surprise surprise, the airline lost it AGAIN! This didn't matter because I had everything I needed at home, but it made me even more famous on Twitter 🤷🏻‍♀️

Lost suitcase #3

3 months later, it was time for WCUS. I decided to check in a bag because 7kg hand luggage wasn't enough for a week. Learning from my previous mistakes, I took advice from my Twitter friends and put an AirTag inside, and put all the essentials in my hand luggage.

My journey was Palma → Frankfurt → Seattle → Portland. At Seattle, I had to collect my bag and re-check it. When I did this, I discovered that the airline had damaged it 👏. They kindly taped it up - and then lost it on the way to Portland 👏👏

This didn't cause much inconvenience because I received it the next day and they bought me a new suitcase before I returned home. However, it was pretty much the only thing that anyone wanted to talk to me about at WCUS. I would much rather have discussed business and partnership opportunities, but apparently my suitcase was more interesting 🙄

Awards and recognition 🏆

In November, we were delighted to win 2 Seshie awards at the WooSesh conference:

• I won 'Advocate of the Year', which was amazing as I was up against some incredible people in the WooCommerce community!
• Our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin won 'Extension of the Year'.

We had also won 2 Seshies in 2023 and it was fantastic to see Barn2 continue to be recognized.

In addition, in December I was featured in 2 articles about the top 10 WordPress influencers to follow in 2024. I have no idea why they included me alongside people who are so much higher profile and more successful, but it was incredibly flattering 😊

WordPress drama (+ future-proofing the business)

The final few months of the year were a turbulent time for the WordPress community. That's because of the war against WP Engine which Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, launched at WCUS. His controversial speech and subsequent actions caused what felt like a constant wave of shocks which rattled the community, as well as major legal action from WP Engine against Matt and his company Automattic.

While I tried not to get too involved in public discussions about the legal side of things, I did express concern about the effect on the reputation of WordPress. After all, if people lose confidence in WordPress as a platform then its user base could drop, which would hurt all of us.

I tweeted about my concerns and was surprised when Matt Mullenweg sent me a direct message asking for a call! We had an honest but respectful discussion, but ultimately we had different opinions on the risk that all of this was posing to WordPress as a whole.

Highlighting my concerns obviously had no impact because since then, he has continued his rampage against WP Engine and many members of the WordPress community who have spoken out against him. He hasn't blocked me yet - presumably because I always keep my criticisms professional and never stoop to the level of personal insults - but it has been unpleasant and unnerving to watch.

Diversifying into Shopify

While I believe that WordPress isn't going anywhere, I do believe that Matt Mullenweg's public and very unprofessional war against WP Engine is putting the wider WordPress ecosystem at risk. For the first time, I feel vulnerable that Barn2 are 100% dependent on WordPress.

Other factors are adding to this feeling of vulnerability. We have been building WooCommerce extensions for 8 years and while it has always been a risk, none of their features have even been added to core. However, Woo's new "More in core" policy means that this is likely to happen to at least 2 Barn2 plugins, which will drastically reduce their sales. While "More in core" could benefit Barn2 in the long run by growing WooCommerce's total user base, we need to protect ourselves from the impact on specific plugins.

Due to these new threats, in October I made the decision that as well as continuing to sell WordPress and WooCommerce plugins, we will diversify into building Shopify apps.

Shopify feels like an excellent fit for Barn2 because:

• We already specialize in WooCommerce and can use our existing knowledge to get a head start.
• It has a similarly sized user base to WooCommerce (arguably even bigger) and is likely to keep growing because it is owned by one company who are investing billions in its growth and marketing. I would love to see WordPress and WooCommerce receive the same level of marketing input.
• If Mullenweg’s actions do damage WordPress and WooCommerce in a way that directly affects the number of people using them, then a big proportion of former WooCommerce users will move to Shopify, allowing it to grow even more.
• Shopify is far more monetized than WooCommerce and users are more likely to be willing to pay for apps.
• It’s a better revenue model because customers must keep renewing in order to use the app, and monthly payments are common.
• You can use any technology to build Shopify apps, which minimizes the learning curve for our WordPress developers.

I still love WordPress and WooCommerce and have mixed feelings about working on multiple platforms. However, I need to safeguard Barn2's future and believe that this is the best way to do it.

What's next?

So far, I have done lots of research to learn about Shopify, and sought advice from with several contacts who have experience of Shopify. I've started building links with other Shopify app developers so that I can learn from them, as I do from people in the WordPress industry. Our Head of Development produced some comprehensive technical guidelines which all our apps will follow. We're now in the process of building our first two apps.

I've started tweeting a daily "Shopify diary" so that people can see how we get on.

What’s in store for 2025?

Did we meet our 2024 goals?

Before we set new goals, let's see whether we meet our 2024 goals!

2024 Goal	Achieved?
Revenue and profitability: Increase revenue by 15% and profitability by 10%.	❌✅ Revenue increased by 12%, and profitability by 11%.
Product development: Finally launch the WooCommerce Discount Manager, WooCommerce Checkout Manager, and WooCommerce Product Table table builder projects which have taken up so much of our development capacity in 2023.	✅❌✅ Launched Discount Manager and the table builder. Checkout Manager is indefinitely on hold for various reasons.
Marketing and workload: Delegate more marketing tasks to the team so that I can comfortably take 1-2 days off per week without compromising the business.	❌ I still do too many marketing tasks myself, and struggle to catch up after taking time off.
Efficiency: Improve automation and efficiency within the development team, including development of the Barn2 library of shared code.	✅ but it's an ongoing process.
Quality control: Train all members of the development team in taking responsibility for the quality of their work so that Andy and I don't need to oversee everything.	✅ by hiring a QA Engineer.
Customer satisfaction: Listen to customer feedback on our newly released plugins and made sure they are the best they can be. Also add significant new features and improvements to our top selling plugins and measurably increase their sales.	✅ but it's an ongoing process.

With that in mind, here are my goals for 2025:

• Revenue and profitability: Increase revenue by 15% and profitability by 10%.
• Diversification: Launch at least 2 Shopify apps and start generating regular sales.
• Existing plugins:
  • Continue to improve WooCommerce Product Options, particularly the live preview.
  • Develop a purpose-built way to use Document Library Pro to create private document libraries.
• Customer support: Reduce the average response time for support tickets by 20%.
• Website: Focus on improving areas of the Barn2 website that will directly improve conversions.
• Community:
  • Attend all 3 flagship WordCamps, including speaking at WordCamp Asia 2025 in the Philippines.
  • Attend the first ever PressConf, a new conference for WordPress professionals.
  • Maybe attend a Shopify event, too.

I'll tell you how I get on next year! In the meantime, thanks to my fantastic Barn2 team members, Andy, our affiliates and the wider WordPress community for a year to remember - I couldn't do it without you ❤️