The more time I spend around web services, the more I see 2% conversion rates show up all over the place. About 2% of people who visit a WordPress.com blog leave a comment. 2% click on “related articles” below a blog post. 2% of Evernote users buy their premium service. Same with 2% of Box.net users. We see similar numbers with WordPress.com premium upgrades. Is this a coincidence, or is there an underlying law that drives this? If you put something for free on the Internet and ask people to engage and take some sort of action, 2% of them will do so on average? I say on average, because I’ve seen 1-5% ranges on various services, but the 2% number seems to be the most common.
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Toni.org 
9 replies on “The 2% rule”
I think the same is true of anything. Those willing to help out with plugin development, or donate, or help at a club will be a tiny minority of the total users. Is it human nature? Are we all selfish at heart?
It will be interesting how this changes as the Internet continues to expand its audience. What happens to that number as Internet users become, on the average, less technical?
Hi Tony — For decades, 2% has been the rule of thumb for expected response rates to direct-mail campaigns. More randomly (or maybe not), when the Washington Post had the concert violinist Joshua Bell play as an anonymous street musician in a commuter plaza, the donations he received amounted to a 2.5% response rate from those who passed by: http://www.stevekrause.org/steve_krause_blog/2007…
Sorry about the name spelling above, Toni!
[…] Toni Schneider notes that this rate is about 2% for WordPress.com, for Box.net, for Evernote, and for many other freemium services. He wonders if there is some kind of “2% rule” at work. […]
You're getting 2%? Tell me your secret. đŸ˜‰
As contacts multiply and grow exponentially, will the 80/20 rule expire and now new on-line business will expect business from 2% of their on-line business contacts? 98/2 now?
And as longas I am not being spamy it always works out about 2% click on ads. So where can we go on this one?
[…] was a good chance that others did too. Assuming there are 10 million WordPress.org blogs, and that only 2% of them made a similar donation, that would amount to $2,000,000 of donations distributed among […]