WordPress.com has had two new features offered to users in the last few hours.
Private Blogs – the ability for publishers to request your blog be unlisted in search engines and the ability to only enable other WordPress.com members to have access to it.
Custom CSS – this is something that I’ve heard many WP.com publishers asking for – the ability to tweak your blog’s design. Before you rush off to change your templates you should know that this is a paid upgrade option. To buy the upgrade you need to add 15 ‘credits’ (credits costs $1 each). Credits can be purchased via Paypal.
Looking at the ‘upgrades’ page it seems like this is probably the first of numerous upgrades that will be made available to users.
I think this is a pretty good way to go for WP in attempting to find a way to monetize WP.
Many of us have used their platform for free for a long time and hopefully some of their 287,000 blogs will purchase the upgrade and help inject some money back into the system so that they can continue to develop this great product.
Found via Matt
