Podcasts about pagely

How I Did It: The Leadership Victoria Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2022 23:31

“We are going to have two panels - one on acquisitions and another one about the community."— Sabrina ZeidanDavid sits down with Sabrina Zeidan (WCEU Content Team) and Evangelia Pappa (WCEU Public Relations Team) for a preview of the upcoming WordCamp Europe 2022 in Porto, Portugal. Sabrina and Evangelia briefly talk about the conference's COVID safety measures and the overall schedule and theme of WCEU. They offer some tips for things to do while you're attending, and if you're tuning in remotely, there's a surprise waiting for you too. This is the perfect travel episode for anyone en route to WCEU.Why This Matters: WordCamp Europe is one of the first big in-person WordCamp and WordPress events to resume, post-pandemic.Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you important news and insights from guests working in the WordPress space.

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Episode 229: Talking Web Development and GoDaddy

SDM Interview Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2022 40:01

Rob Cairns sits down with Adam Warner and talks Web Devlopement, WordPress and GoDaddy. Show Highlights: Why WordPress. How GoDaddy has changed. The benefit to GoDaddy's Woo managed hosting. The Pagely aquisition. Things comming in the future from GoDaddy.

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The "Sewa" Leadership of Buncy Pagely

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2022 51:24

A conversation with Buncy Pagely. Buncy is a lifelong volunteer and champion for health of women and minority communities, volunteering since the age of 17. Buncy's lifework has been the epitome of providing service for essential healthcare workers; through founding a seniors advocate board to combat racism in the health care community; providing ethnic food to people on long term care; and advocating for women's health increasing access for women to Pap smears and breast exams within communities. She has also created a ‘traveling' cancer assessment clinic to spread awareness to immigrant women; and most recently has led Hathowrne H.E.L.P committee, a group whose efforts are aimed at improving living conditions of seniors being affected by the pandemic. Leadership Victoria helps leaders stand out and change the world, starting here.

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E182 - Selling $100,000+ Projects (Matt Medeiros, Pagely)

WPMRR WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2022 33:22

In today's episode, we get to listen again to Joe and Matt Medeiros' conversation. They talk about how running a family-owned agency honed his entrepreneurial and sales skills, constantly giving value to potential customers, and learning effective sales talk. Matt is a content creator and the Director of Podcaster Success at Castos. He hosts the podcast, Matt Report, where he talks to a wide range of digital business owners and web consultants. People in the product, marketing, and the agency space are the primary guests. Episode Resources: Matt Medeiros on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Pagely Visit the WPMRR Community What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 01:02 Welcome to the pod, Matt! 01:52 How did you start your podcast? 03:46 Transition from entrepreneurship to joining Pagely 07:26 Running a family-owned agency 12:35 Selling perspective from an experienced sales person 15:57 Conveying the value that you're adding for the client 24:21 You learn to speak with people regardless of their position 26:12 This giant clip with several overlays 29:35 Find Matt online

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Business of WordPress news w/ Rae Morey

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2022 39:57

WordPress news is hard. I mean, it's hard to turn it into a real business. I get away with covering WordPress here on the Matt Report because our guests share lessons on how they built their business or spend time telling us how they navigated the community, until they found their way. But news? Well, that's why The WP Tavern has been the only name in town for a while, loaded with two critical components: A dedicated staff and they are funded. If you want to make it, you do things differently, you do things like Rae Morey‘s The Repository newsletter. Today we'll chat about building her WordPress news newsletter, background as a journalist, and explore what it really takes to make all of this work. Thanks goes out to Malcare today for sponsoring a month of Matt Report and The WP Minute. You can help us by visiting buymeacoffee.com/mattrpeort Episode transcript [00:00:00] Rae: It's a completely not in the WordPress world at all. So our processes is, as you said, an experiential design and creative technology company, and we develop experiences for cultural and tourism organizations. [00:00:14] So, you might go into a gallery or museum and experience an audio tour and we create immersive experiences where you can. Wander around a space and he audio that that's designed, especially for that space. It moves with you around, around the gallery or exhibition. We do precinct technology, virtual queuing, augmented reality experiences, and we do exhibition design in. [00:00:40] A lot of different spaces, for example we're doing a a brand new exhibition smack bang in the middle of Montana at the moment for there for first street project there. We do we do the audio guide for the Getty in Los Angeles. So that's an example of the kind of thing I do for my, my day job. [00:00:58] There is communications manager. So I look after Publicity marketing anything to do with words, I guess, on the website? Yeah. That's, that's kind of what I do for a day. [00:01:09] Matt: Does anybody ever give you like a side eye when maybe a customer comes in and they're like, we have a WordPress website that they look at you and be like, Hey, we think we know somebody who kind of knows this to implement whatever project we might have. [00:01:23] Rae: I don't know. I, I, to be honest, I kind of played down what to do with WordPress, because I don't want to be that person that people kind of like go to asking for, help me with my website. Yeah. [00:01:33] Oh, I I hate to say, but our website and our process is actually uses Drupal. So I've had to learn that this year not, not my decision, but yeah, it's been interesting seeing what the competitions. [00:01:44] Matt: Yeah, that was the, the second, most serious application I used to build websites was Drupal before or slightly after a front page. [00:01:51] Well, I guess throw Dreamweaver in there too, but we went front page Dreamweaver and then Drupal and then WordPress triples, fantastic platform. I think I wouldn't use it today, but I th I still think it's a very powerful [00:02:04] Rae: platform using it compared to WordPress at the moment. Very different platforms. [00:02:10] Matt: How do you find time to to do the repository and works by birds and you have a family? How do you, how do you structure your day with all of this stuff? [00:02:20] Rae: The honest answer is I have no idea. [00:02:21] I, I think over the past couple of years I don't know if you're aware, but Melbourne where I live here in Australia has been the most locked down city in the world. We've had the most restrictions lockdowns out of everywhere. It's just the circumstances I guess, here, but it's given me a lot of time to look at. [00:02:36] To spend on side projects, I guess. So when so the, the repository I started that with came guest star from male poet back in November, 2019. And that was just before the pandemic. And so I guess the repository in a way became a bit of a handy pandemic passion project that I was working on while in locked down and has continued through to now. [00:02:59] And. [00:03:00] Yeah, I was, I was also on maternity leave from my day job throughout 2020. So that gave me a lot of time and focus on building up the newsletter and yeah, since returning to my day job part-time I've, I've just I guess structure my week so that, Part time work and also have the repository for a Dane half a week. [00:03:21] So just try to split up the weight to fit everything in. And also I'm very fortunate to have a partner who. Who I cope? Well, shouldn't say co-parent with where to very much together, but we split our parenting duties 40, 50, 50, which is we're very modern family in that respect. So yeah, we both prioritize our careers, but also our son. [00:03:44] So, yeah. So there, there is a way for moms with a lot of things on to, to do all the things that they are passionate. [00:03:53] Matt: Do you have a certain structure and I can, I can share mine as well for, for the WP minute, but you have a certain structure that you would, you wouldn't mind sharing on how you keep track of all of the news. [00:04:05] And this obviously is happening throughout the week. Are you jotting things down and the to-do lists in a notion document. And then at the end you go to write up the email and you just sit down with all of those notes in front of you. How does this all come curated? [00:04:18] Rae: Yeah, look, there's no pulling back the curtain. [00:04:21] There's no special, fancy way that I do it. My background is, is in journalism. I studied journalism at uni and so I naturally just do a lot of note-taking all the time because I'm just every time I see something, I think, oh, that's really cool. And I use apple notes on my my medical kit or my iPhone, I'm an apple person and everything sinks. [00:04:44] And so I'm constantly taking notes. And I guess with the repository I use feedly.com to track something like 70 or 80 different websites and blogs. And so I go through that periodically throughout the week just to track what what's happening and keep on top of everybody's latest updates. I'm also checking Twitter all the time on my phone. [00:05:06] And it's a bit harder to save tweets, so I have to yeah. Finding a way to do that really well, but I'm always checking Twitter, whether I'm No throughout the day or in the evening while I'm watching TV, having having a scroll. And that's mostly, I guess my research for the pository just between those two, just seeing what's going on. [00:05:27] And I guess also just catching up with people throughout the week in the WordPress community, whether it's just aiming on on Twitter or chats over emails and Coles. Those are the kinds of ways that I keep in touch with what's going. [00:05:42] Matt: Sure the the newsletter there's. So there's a, you just said that there, you're probably tracking 70 to 80 sources of, of news or at least new news that you can throw into an RSS feed and put into. [00:05:53] Feedly probably 20% of them. I would reckon are [00:06:00] our newsletters or have a newsletter component to them. Your newsletter is unique to, to me, by the way, or listen, let me take a step. I'm honored for you to be here. I'm not a journalist, I'm not a great writer. I struggled with words, in fact and I look at your piece as something that is it's fantastic. [00:06:19] It's unique. It's creative. I look at it as a conversation that, that ends up in my inbox. Before I knew who you were. I had some other voice in my head, but then I realized that then I found out who you were. And I was like, oh, now it's your voice. Every time I read the newsletter, like I'm hearing it with this Australian accent. [00:06:37] And it's fantastic. But it's, it's much more of to me anyway, like a S a conversation, maybe a story. Was that on purpose? Is that a strategy? I don't want to slap strategy on art, but is that a strategy of yours to make it different than. [00:06:53] Rae: When when Kim and I originally started the repository, or at least before, actually before we started the repository and we were talking about ideas because Kim and I are both journalists in previous life. [00:07:05] And we wanted to bring something to the WordPress community. Then I guess, in a way there was an ulterior motive of showing off male poet platform, but also. Well, as, as former journalists, we just wanted to put something together that brought the WordPress news in a way that was, I guess, a lot of new stories in WordPress tend to include a lot of opinion, but we wanted to bring other people's opinions to the fore as well. [00:07:27] We wanted to increase the diversity in the news, but not just by having lots of different new sources, but bringing people's opinions that you might. You might not otherwise see. So the, the format that we came up with and, we still have to this day was looking for looking at a particular issue from a lot of different perspectives. [00:07:52] So we, like a story recently, like I know the word, it's not just the actual state of the word video, but lots of different blog posts in opinions, from different people and what they make. Of the state of the word. So you can kind of, read about read about a new story, but also get the context of where that story fits within the WordPress world and then varying opinions on what people thought about that. [00:08:15] So, you can get that kind of more nuanced viewpoint from, from different people and, and have that way of understanding any issue. From different viewpoints because not everybody looks at things the same way. It's nice to kind of read something, but then understand where, where it fits in the ecosystem. [00:08:31] And that's, that's the approach that we were going for. [00:08:34] Matt: This is a huge question and I'll let you dissect it and define it and pull pieces out of it as you see fit. [00:08:41] WordPress news, like what is somebody with a journalistic background? What does that really mean? Or what should it really mean? And maybe even before you answer that, can you help clarify, like what at journalists [00:09:00] produces versus let's say an opinion piece or a commentator might produce, because to be honest with you I didn't discover this recently, but for many years I was just like, oh, I don't know the difference. [00:09:12] I didn't know that you, that a journalist doesn't really put opinion into their, into their piece. And there are certain guidelines that one should approach journalism with versus, I would say like somebody like a Kara Swisher, who's what I would say is maybe a celebrity journalist, but no longer a journalist I think is much more on the commentator side. [00:09:33] For probably many different reasons, but anyway, could you help us define what journalists means to you should mean in the WordPress space? [00:09:41] Rae: Yeah, it's interesting because there's definitely. Of everything in the WordPress community. I worked in, in newspaper journalism, and so it was very, and I guess the newspaper I worked for, it was very straight in that it was, new stories to get one report on one side of the debate and the other side. [00:09:58] Of the debate. You make sure you have balanced views on a topic and you present that and that's purely without any kind of opinion. And you try to be as objective as possible in the way that you present it. So that's, I guess, very traditional old fashioned old school journalism. That's kind of where my background is, I guess, in that, in the WordPress community. [00:10:22] I don't really have anything, I guess the closest to that would probably be Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern. And even then some of her pieces can have some opinion inserted here and there for, for her context. She's, she's been in the community for a really long time. So her opinions, I, I find it fairly valid, but but yeah, that's not really, I guess, old school journalism as, as a lot of people would say it And then you get. [00:10:47] Yeah, I think blog, blog posts and things like that, where people offering an opinion that's I wouldn't really class that as news, so much as it's opinion and people adding their perspectives to the debate. It's, it's an interesting one in the WordPress community. We don't have a lot of new sources. [00:11:03] A lot of people have tried to start WordPress news over the years. Haven't been, haven't been that successful because it's. It's not a business that is profitable as we've seen more broadly in, in the news industry with the rise of the internet and, the fighting for advertising and paywalls and, and all of, all of that kind of thing. [00:11:23] In in WordPress, we could, we could definitely use more new sources, that the greater diversity you have with news the more accountability businesses have to have to operate in this environment. The more and more scrutiny, the better, I think, in terms of, businesses operating and, and making sure that they're operating above board It would certainly be nice to have more new sources. [00:11:45] It's, it's certainly great that there are a lot of people who, who blog and share their opinion. But yeah, I think there's definitely room for, for more harder news in the WordPress community, particularly, over the past year, how we've had so many [00:12:00] acquisitions, right. And we were going from an ecosystem full of, I guess, small to medium businesses to, we've got big corporates and multinationals, I guess, like Google that are operating in, in our in our ecosystem. [00:12:12] And, we want to keep those businesses to. No, around what they're doing. And I, I'm not saying way to, to scare them, that they shouldn't be in our ecosystem, but, just to, people want to know what's what's going on and, and, and make sure that they're operating in a, in a fair. [00:12:27] Matt: Let's say news article or piece or research even if you went to an acquisition that happened a year, two years ago we might be checking in on, let's say something like an eye themes was probably the one that I can think of at least off the top of my head, that dates pretty far back, big company getting picked up by a hosting company. [00:12:46] And now Corey who started that company now runs both status. One might say. Let's take a look at what happened with these acquisitions in terms of employment. Are the people still there? Is the products. What it was when they acquired it. What is the price point look like? Have these, big hosting companies, which catch a lot of heat because they are big hosting companies. [00:13:08] Did they just roll it into their mega solution? And the once artismal piece of themes is just gone and it's just another toggle, it's just another toggle on the dashboard, right? Is that a fair assessment to say that's the kind of news that we were journalism that we would want to see in the space, or at least maybe you would want to see in the space, not trying to put words in your mouth, but [00:13:30] Rae: yeah, I think that kind of journalism would be good. [00:13:32] I guess, It's interesting because we work in a space with some really big companies and there are lots of acquisitions going on. It's it's it's, that would be interesting to say, the, the, the the quality and the end product that's offered to, to users is that being maintained, as I know there's been a bit of angst with also motive of buying out people plugin, Sandhills development it'd be interesting to go back in, as you say, in 12 months time. [00:13:56] And from looking at that story as a journalist, you'd probably want to Find long-term users and get their perspectives, whether that's on the record or as background for a story and maybe speak to stuff. If they're happy to speak, even anonymously, get their, their views on how they think the. [00:14:16] Transition has been yeah, those are the kinds of interesting stories that we're not really seeing so much, we're saying the, the, the acquisition and the sale, but we're not really seeing the I guess the journey of how acquisitions are tracking. We're not seeing what's happening to, particularly with automatic buying out so many distances, what are happening to those businesses? [00:14:36] They bought quite a few in the, in the past year and the past few years have been interesting to say, what's, what's happened to the end product house has been absorbed into it, automatic and wordpress.com and, and it has it, has it been for, I guess, the greater good in supporting those employees and, and the businesses, but also providing a a more polished product for the end user. [00:14:57] If that, if that was the purpose of the, of the equity.[00:15:00] [00:15:01] Matt: I think another, another topic would be something like a core, core contributors, which companies are funding core contribution to the WordPress core. I think in Matt's state of the word, which I do have the slides on the WP minute. [00:15:15] So I'll try to link up in the show notes. I think he showed a graphic of automatic somewhere in the seventies. Person, mark a Yoast coming in again, this is just off the top of my head. I think second place with maybe 14 people. And then it's like GoDaddy who just acquired Pagely who's a multi-billion dollar publicly public. [00:15:36] Are they publicly traded? I better not see, this is what, this is what makes a real journalist. They don't just say things like, I think they're a publicly traded company. If they're not, they're really big. And they've got billions and billions of dollars, but I think only four or five people. Actually contributes to core and word press is a massive part of their business. [00:15:53] Why aren't they doing? Why aren't they doing more for, for WordPress what's, what's the reason. And how much are they really benefiting off of open source? I think a lot of people give Matt an automatic, a lot of heat around the fact that, well, this is an open source product and, and this is just all funneling to the top of wordpress.com to make wordpress.com more money, but it's oh, by the way, There are billion dollar hosting companies leveraging this to who are not giving back. [00:16:20] Yeah. And don't [00:16:21] Rae: forget Google as well. They're, they're pretty massive company. And, and I'm not sure exactly how many people they've contributed to the, how are they contributing to WordPress 5.9. But. Yeah, it'd be interesting, but you also mentioned Yost in there and I wonder if they'll increase their contributed the numbers now that new fold digital has acquired them. [00:16:39] It'd be interesting to say, how that contribution space changes and, and also in the state of the word Matt shared how he liked to see that landscape of contribution change in the coming years. So, Yeah, it would be, it would be great to see those big businesses putting back more in as far as five for the five, five for the future goes it's great to see so many smaller individuals and businesses contributing. [00:17:04] But also another interesting story I think is over the, over the past year, there's been a drop in, in volunteers and contributors to the project. And an automatic is picked up the lion's share of that work, which, you can't fault automatic for, stepping in and, and supporting the project in that way. [00:17:22] It would be great to say. Nice. Some of the bigger businesses stepping in and putting out resources for that too. I was really pleased to say XW pays as has, has put up contributors for the performance team and it'd be great to see more businesses like that who have that kind of expertise to be able to, to. [00:17:39] Could contribute their people to different parts of the project. Would that help? Because it's not really just about developers. It's also about marketing and design and mobile. There, there are a lot of different end-to-end education. There are a lot of different spaces that need country. [00:17:54] Matt: And what we've I've hoped we've just done is illustrate how important WordPress news [00:18:00] is and could be if there was more funding in the space. So how do we make money doing this? Ray, I wanna, I wanna pivot and talk about that a little bit because you, you, you have. The, what I'm going to say, the only vehicle for content you put out for WordPress is the newsletter, the repository. [00:18:17] You're just sending out email. You're not doing a blog, you're not doing a YouTube channel. You're not doing a podcast yet. And you monetize that through through sponsorship. It's. Well, I'll let you, I'm not, you don't have to say any numbers. It's not a full-time job for you. In other words, it's not supporting you. [00:18:34] Full-time compared to your day job. Maybe one day will like, what do you think it's going to take to make the repository of full-time job? Is there another. Of an audience in the WordPress news space to build a true air quotes, air quotes business, or should it be selling NFTs to support this [00:18:55] Rae: maybe, but who knows how long that's going to be around for? [00:18:58] To be honest, I don't see their positories a full full-time job for me. I started it as a bit of a side gig. I thought that would take four, maybe four hours a week. And, and how it's more like a donor. So it does take a bit of time to put together because it's, it's solo single stories, reading everything. [00:19:16] And in making sure that, I don't want to just pick any, tweets to include in the newsletter. I want to make sure that I'm trying to find as many views as possible. And the ones that I'm including in the newsletter, a representative of, of the, of the views that you know, are in the community as well as any of that. [00:19:32] It might be a bit unusual. The, I think that it's an interesting one funding. I'm very lucky to have GoDaddy in element or sponsor sponsoring the newsletter this year. They'd been fantastic sponsors. One thing I do is when I enter into an agreement with a sponsor, I make it clear that. [00:19:52] If that, I want to retain editorial independence. So if there are any stories that involve them good or bad, I'm going to include them in the newsletter. Even earlier in the year when automatic mail poll was sponsoring the newsletter for the all of last year and, and And that was fantastic. [00:20:10] It allowed the newsletter to really great. But then when automatic bought out male poet automatic began took over sponsorship of the newsletter for the first quarter of 2021. And that was part of the agreement as well. I made sure that any stories involving automatic rules, you were going to report on those. [00:20:28] I think it's really important. If any publications have sponsorship agreements of that type, that it is very clear that editorial independence is important and, and that's separate from sponsorship. There are lots of other different models as we've discussed before as well, of the podcast. [00:20:48] There are lots of different models for, for funding use. It's, it's a bit of experimentation, I think there's philanthropy as we've seen that philanthropic or philanthropic funding [00:21:00] model. There are a crowdsourced kind of funding models. It's, it's an interesting one because at the end of the day, P everybody wants news, but not everybody's willing to pay for it. [00:21:10] And that's, that's the struggle is real there. It's really hard to overcome that because for a long time, these is. Well, my speed. Well, it's been free on the internet. It's easy to find sources. A lot of people think that they can find it themselves, but the convenience of having a newsletter letter, like the repository brings it all together and makes it more accessible. [00:21:30] Yeah. [00:21:31] Matt: How do we encourage, ah, I'll I'll fall on this grenade. You don't have to agree with me. Okay. I'll be, I'll be the guy who says it out loud, but. How do we encourage better content? To be made. And I say content specifically, because I know not every, not everyone doesn't want to cover the inside baseball of, of WordPress. [00:21:58] They don't want to dive deep into stories. I get it because it's a very small audience. And maybe we'll talk about that in a moment. Like it's kind of a small audience who really cares about this stuff versus like, how do I build this element or site to make a thousand dollars a month? That's a much larger audience who cares. [00:22:16] Again, air quotes cares about WordPress. How do we encourage others to create better content? Or do you have any, any words of wisdom on how to create better content so that we all the content creators in WordPress, whether it's a journalist, a, an opinion piece, or maybe even a tutorial. That businesses take us a little bit brands that sponsor us or donate to us. [00:22:39] Take us a little bit more serious because I've overseen. I've. What I've seen is the over-saturation of asking for like donor donations and sponsorships, and then the content never gets made. And what I feel like is that kind of hurts us. Maybe not, I don't know, but it kind of hurts us where we knock on that, that brand's door. [00:23:02] And we say, Hey, we got this great thing. We're pouring so much effort into it. And they go, yeah, that other person burned me for $5,000. And they didn't really, they didn't do the ad read. Right. Or they didn't create the amount of content that we thought, or, the content didn't bring us that much traction. [00:23:18] So, you have this, I'm giving you 5,000. I want 5,000 in one. Any words of wisdom for elevating the quality of content or is it just like survival of the fittest? [00:23:29] Rae: Yeah, that's a really interesting topic. In the good question. The only way I guess I can answer that is, is from my own experience. [00:23:36] When. I started the ripples of trails or, really fortunate that I guess I was the writer for the project. It was a collaboration between myself and Kim. So I was writing, Kim was basically bankrolling. He didn't, he was, running his own company, didn't have the time. So, there was a collaboration between the two of us. [00:23:53] We talked, discussed the news and, and made the website and we kicked it off with, I think, seven subscribers. I [00:24:00] can't remember in the first issue, not many And we got, got up to about a hundred subscribers and it kind of just plateaued for a while, but we kept on going and slowly and it snowballed, but it took probably a good year of, of the newsletter to really get into. [00:24:21] To really start growing our subscribers. I think by that stage, we might've had two or 300 subscribers by the end of the first year, we were a bit deflated. We thought we'd have more subscribers. And we were trying to try to, become more well known and, and get more people reading. But it's a, it's a pretty hard thing. [00:24:39] And so. When it, when it came time for came to step away when male Paul was acquired and then automatic finished sponsoring after they acquired male poet. I was kind of in a spot where I didn't know where I was going to go next with sponsorship. And it was that, that good year of very slow growth and just focusing on writing something quality that attracted GoDaddy to, to sponsor they would, at their hour, they were our first sponsor who really saw what we were, what we were aiming for with the newsletter or by that stage. [00:25:14] No. I was really luckily. So, Laura Nelson, who works at a male poet in their marketing, she's now at world commerce. She was absolutely critical in helping develop that relationship. She's a fantastic member in the WordPress community, so she helped introduce us and yet he's still a sponsor and it's, it's there. [00:25:34] Adam and Courtney and their belief in the newsletter and, and, and wanting to, they also have a sponsor section in the newsletter that allows them to share events and, and, and other pieces with the community. That's, that's been critical in the, the ongoing. Publishing of the newsletter. [00:25:51] Yeah, these kinds of projects can't really can't happen without money family to support. So it's, it's an interesting one in terms of, how do we keep these kinds of things afloat? And as far as going back to your question about quality content, I think I think a lot of people want to make money really quickly. [00:26:10] And yeah, of course, who doesn't, everyone wants to make money, but sometimes it does take a slow burn and working on something with the aim of producing something high quality. Is going to make some money in the end. And I'm happy to say the, and happy to share that. Then the repository is profitable for me. [00:26:27] It's not going to be a full-time job, but for what it, what it is at the moment. And I don't have plans for, major expansion, but it is not well, I, I don't have big plans to have a podcast or a big website and do lots of reporting. People subscribe the same, pretty happy with what it is at the moment. [00:26:48] And, and I am happy to share that in, in the new year, Allie Emmons is coming on board to help with community outreach and in increasing the number of voices that are in the newsletter. That's really important for me to make sure we not just, rinse [00:27:00] and repeating the same voices over and over again, the newsletter. [00:27:03] We want to make sure that people. Who are doing awesome things and they might not be as vocal. We want to make sure that they're included as well. And, and I want the newsletter to be a source of, of amazing work that's happening across the community, not just the same things over and over again as can happen in, in some spaces. [00:27:22] Yeah. Other than [00:27:25] Matt: one of the things that I think is a challenge is, is that I think. What we want is we want the, maybe not even average WordPress user, but maybe above average WordPress user to want to turn into the news, like turn excuse me, tune into the news. Right? Because Hey, maybe the above average WordPress user is an it professional and she manages a hundred multi-sites for a university. [00:27:53] And. Not in the WordPress community, but my God, wouldn't you like to know when awesome motive buys those, the suite of plugins that you use, and suddenly you're like who the heck is awesome motive. And if I was tuning into a news coverage, maybe somebody doing a piece on who automotive is and the background and the history, et cetera, et cetera Yeah. [00:28:13] I don't know if you've thought about this. I don't know if this is something that maybe you even plan to go into with the newsletter is like, how do we, how do we dip into that segment of the reader of the demographic? I think of a local newspaper, all of a sudden. We're doing fashion week and it's I know what's going on here. [00:28:32] Right? One, you have advertisement that to hope. You're, you're hoping that you're doing fashion week and you're getting some new eyeballs on the, the, the baseline publication, maybe at that it raises more readers in the long run. Is there something like that that we can do without, selling ourselves to affiliate links [00:28:49] Rae: in? [00:28:50] That's a tough question. How do you, how do you broaden your own. It's a hard one because we're pressing uses so smaller niche and how you reach that kind of other level of, of, users is a, is a tough one. I don't know if I have any answers today. I'd be interested to hear from other people who might've done it successfully, because I can't think of how it, it just feels like there's a, almost like a Seton barrier between. [00:29:18] The people who, who read S I guess, serious WordPress knees that, core contributors and developers and small business owners and people who are very involved in the community. And then everybody else, it just seems like a big step. And Yeah, I don't know. I just don't feel that they're that necessarily interested in, in how WordPress comes together or if people who you use a platform like that, every will be. [00:29:47] That's a, that's a really interesting area to explore. [00:29:50] Matt: I'm going to say, I'm going to say something in hopes that Sarah Gooding is listening to this and she, and she uses this in the, in the headline. But I think that the cap on the audience [00:30:00] and you could probably. Again, you don't have to reveal anything from your side, but I think the cap on the audience of people who really care about the inside WordPress news is probably right around 3000 human beings on the face of this earth is the number that I would say of people who actually care about. [00:30:21] What Matt says in the state of the word and how it impacts WordPress, for, for, for years, I was gonna say most months, years to come or really care about, themes getting acquired. I think my number is about 3000, maybe on a good day, 3,500, but I'd say 3000 is the global reach of WordPress news. [00:30:41] Yeah, I can use that, Sarah, if you want. [00:30:45] Rae: Well, I'll tell ya. I don't have that many subscribers to the newsletter. It's it's, it's an interesting one. Like how, how many people are really interested in WordPress news because I've spoken to. People who work at automatic and some other WordPress businesses who work with the community, but aren't necessarily interested in the community or kind of want to be kind of that stick away because they don't want to be too involved in it. [00:31:12] So it, it, it is an interesting number, but also, we've got the English speaking people who are involved in the community, and then we've got the non-English speaking people who have communities in other parts of the world. So who knows, if I assume that number, you're thinking probably English speakers. [00:31:29] So if we think about the people who are non-English speakers and are very involved in WordPress, like you can see all the amazing work that Mary job is doing in Africa. And, The amazing word camp that was held would would camp Spain recently, and the community's just so passionate over there that they even produce a live late night a late night show pre recorded. [00:31:52] But. There, there are people really passionate about WordPress and the community. Oh WordPress the recent word camp in in Portugal, Portugal recently. Yeah, looking at just their their daily schedule of, of, of. Throughout the the two days it was all very community-based and the events I had on day two, where, where everybody getting together and doing things in person together the whole cop that, that whole event was around community and nurturing, connections with people. [00:32:22] And, and so there. You, it could be 3003 and a half thousand people who are really just in WordPress and, and know knowing more about WordPress news. But I would say that number would be. A lot bigger. Once we start thinking about non-English speakers. And I think that's an interesting area to explore that. [00:32:42] How do we kind of bring the, those communities together, the English non-English speakers? How do we bring those people? As just, people who interested in WordPress regardless of language, and that'd be an interesting one to explore the next year or two, as we get closer to exploring when, [00:33:00] when language and translation becomes the, the dominant focus of the program. [00:33:06] Matt: Piggyback off of this conversation of how many max amount of audience I might have the WB minute who has only been around for about six ish months. The biggest piece that it saw was big story that it, so I was Paul Lacey story about Gutenberg and how that Gutenberg has impacted himself, but also his, his opinion on how it impacted. [00:33:25] The community at one saw about 2200 2300 views to the, to the article and about almost 400 downloads to the podcast episode. And of course, anything that you bring up around Gutenberg and. It's impact on whatever mean Gutenberg's impact on whatever the community, the software performance is always going to get a look or view. [00:33:51] Are there any other hard hitting topics you think that might be that we haven't explored yet? By the time this episode goes out, it will be 20, 22 something this year you think, which is kind of interesting that folks should be paying attention to, or the next time. [00:34:07] Rae: Oh, yeah. I'm interested to see how the acquisition train goes next year in terms of more acquisitions in the space. [00:34:16] And also you can't really get away from Gutenberg. That's going to be a big focus of next year. It really jumped out at me during the state of the word. When Matt was saying, we only have a handful of, of block themes and you'd like to see 3000 by the end of next year. So, interesting to see, I, I guess one of the interesting stories will be how, how blockchains become more commercialized as well. [00:34:39] Are we going to see. More, same authors once w 5.9 comes out are they going to feel ready to really explore that space? We're going to see a lot more of those themes on, on ThemeForest and other kinds of Marketplaces like that. Be interesting to say how that rolls out next year, because after that Matt was talking about, venturing into collaboration as the focus of the next phase of the roadmap for, for WordPress. [00:35:03] So are we going to see blocks wrap up next year or continue, kind of fall into the, into the following year? Yeah. And I, I think the, the other thing is also probably most seriously thinking about volunteers and contributors to WordPress, that was a big focus of the state of the word. [00:35:18] And, and with the lack of volunteers, thanks to you, the pandemic, that'd be an interesting thing to watch next year. Where are we? It's, it's mostly sponsored people who are contributing to WordPress. We, we see a lot, a lot of that. I was going to say, more of a drive to have more sponsored people working on the project, or, we're trying to recruit more people who, who aren't sponsored. [00:35:40] That'd be interesting thing to watch next year, as far as contributions go and how that increases or potentially decreases, I guess. [00:35:49] Matt: Gutenberg everywhere blocks. Give me all the blocks. Ray, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really can't. Thank you enough. I could go on for another hour, but I'm sure you're sick and sick and tired of hearing me. [00:35:59] Where can folks [00:36:00] go to sign up to the newsletter and say, thanks online. [00:36:03] Rae: Well, if you interested in joining the repository, it's it comes out every Friday, go to the repository.email to sign up. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Matt. I've been listening for years and yeah, it's, it's really an honor to, to [00:36:18] Matt: be feeding. [00:36:19] No, I, I, I, it's a pleasure and an honor having you here as well. I also love the repository. Go sign up the show. The links will be in the show notes. Hey, if you want to support independent WordPress news or content number one, sign up for the repository. And if you are a big business and you've got some bucks, make sure you knock on raised door to say, Hey, I'd love to sponsor the news. [00:36:44] And then when you're done with her, she will send you my way to spend $79 to join the WP minute membership. Get your hand in the weekly WordPress news in our private discord interact with folks like Ray and others who produce the show@buymeacoffee.com slash Matt report. We'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

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2021 End of Year Member Huddle — Cory Miller on Post Status Live

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2021 31:30

Cory leads the first Post Status Year-End Member Huddle — on Zoom. It's a mix of news about the year ahead for Post Status members, discussion, a year-end exercise for you, and some laughs over the best ugly sweater contest.

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Post Status Excerpt (No. 37) — WordPress Community In Africa

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2021 33:12

"You shouldn't be the one to always take, you want to be the one to always give." —Mary JobIn this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David chats with special guest Mary Job. Mary is a remote, "nomad" worker in Africa who travels from city to city. She is an engineer with Paid Memberships Pro but also spends a large amount of time growing and stimulating the African WordPress community. Mary has helped start WP Africa, a site devoted to the community of WordPress users on the continent. She talks about challenges they face, compares the WordPress presence with Google in Africa, and looks forward to the day when there can be a WordCamp Africa.Also: Mary shares how she got involved in WordPress, and how appreciative she is of the giving nature of the WordPress community. David will have to figure out how to get Mary's invite to Matt.Browse past episodes from all our podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe to them on your favorite players. Post Status' Draft, Comments, and Excerpt podcasts are on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, and Simplecast. (RSS)

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Post Status Comments: State of The Word 2021 Analysis

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2021 63:30

Members of the WordPress Community on Their Takeaways from SOTWThis episode of Post Status Comments features a live conversation in Twitter Spaces that was recorded right after Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word 2021 broadcast on December 14th. Bet Hannon, Eric Karkovack, Maciek Palmowski, and Rae Morey joined David to share their reactions. Others from the audience join in, including Jeff Chandler, Ryan Marks, Hazel Quimpo, Scott Kingsley Clark, Jason Taylor, and Amber Hinds.Among the questions discussed: What stood out in the State of the Word for each of our guests? What did they think of Matt Mullenweg's take on web3, NFTs, and ownership? Was there agreement about Matt's points on WordPress market share, acquisitions, and contributions to WordPress core teams?This engaging conversation went on for a little over an hour.Browse past episodes from all our podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe to them on your favorite players. Post Status' Draft, Comments, and Excerpt podcasts are on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, and Simplecast. (RSS)

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Is this the NEW TikTok? (Future Tribe Show) E82

Future Tribe

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2021 58:00

It's episode 82 of the Future Tribe podcast AND the final show for the year! We're taking an early Christmas break and will be back better than ever next year. On this episode we discuss: We're hiring! Head to futuretheory.co/careers to see the jobs More on YouTube's dislike button Instagram introduces 'badges' to support creators https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22776064/instagram-live-badges-creator-support-launch-us-comments-questions-livestreams GoDaddy acquires Pagely https://wptavern.com/godaddy-acquires-pagely-to-deploy-new-woocommerce-saas-product Top 100 products this holiday season according to Google https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-67nUuAq85Y0VE0ai6lrKmwwN_9TABoi/view Racket, the 99 second audio feed similar to TikTok https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-67nUuAq85Y0VE0ai6lrKmwwN_9TABoi/view Google is rolling out a core update https://searchengineland.com/google-november-2021-core-update-rolling-out-today-376124 Google is showing translated search results https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-translated-serps/427428/ Sydney Film Festival's 2021 Identity https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_identity_for_2021_sydney_film_festival_by_for_the_people.php _______________ Find us on socials: https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/joinfuturetribe Look through our careers page: https://futuretheory.co/careers _______________ Discover who Futuretheory is: https://www.futuretheory.co/ Check out FT Studio: https://ftstudio.com.au/

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This Week in WordPress #185

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2021 82:59

This week’s WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 8th November 2021 Another week, and we’re bringing you the latest WordPress news from the last seven days, including… Pagely has been bought by GoDaddy – what does this mean? WP Builds has released a silly version of the WordPress Awards for 2021, please donate to…

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Tips Tuesday – SiteGround Deindexed, TikTok Creative Exchange, Google Tests IndexNow

BlogAid Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2021 28:02

Tips this week include: • New Recipe Video SEO tutorials are live • A new How to Transfer a Domain from GoDaddy to NameCheap tutorial is live • Update on the specialist we have in our Ecomm Coalition • A few of my plans for 2022 • More live sessions are coming • The return of my live consults to help you make money • Holiday specials are right around the corner and where to get first dibs • Google Dropped SiteGround sites from indexing for a while • How to have Migration success for your site • WP 5.8.2 bug and security release has rolled out • Why I'll be starting the Gutenberg Ninja updates early this time • Where to get your WP 5.9 update instructions when that rolls out soon • The annual WP Survey is out and why I encourage you to take it • The annual State of the Word address will be delivered soon • Pagely sells to GoDaddy and E-comm service that will come from it • Why I'm happy about Google testing IndexNow • Twitter's huge partnership with Viacom and watch parties coming • How you can make money on TikTok with their new Creative Exchange

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This Week in WordPress #185

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2021 82:59

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Episode 48 – Black Friday

Pressing Matters

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2021 48:06

This week Jack and I discuss our approach to Black Friday and email marketing (or lack of), the recent ACF release, the Lemon Squeezy WordPress plugin and GoDaddy’s acquisition of Pagely. This episode is sponsored by FastSpring – the full-service ecommerce solution that enables software companies to sell more, stay lean, and compete big.

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This Week in WordPress #185

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2021 82:59

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#138 – Gestión de licencias de plugins y themes para clientes en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2021 37:58

Síguenos en: En el momento de preparar un presupuesto y desarrollar una web en WordPress para un cliente siempre hay un tema delicado que si no se deja claro desde el principio nos puede traer a la larga malentendidos y problemas, se trata de las licencias de los plugins y themes premium utilizados. ¿Quién debe contratar la licencia y renovarla? ¿Qué ocurre si nosotros ya tenemos esa licencia en modo lifetime o unlimited? ¿Y si el cliente decide no renovarla? De todos estos temas, incluyendo reflexión sobre la GPL y sus aplicaciones, hablamos hoy en Freelandev, pero antes, como siempre.... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Ultimando rediseño tienda online Preparando nuevo karma digital Semana Nahuai Realizando un rediseño web con ACF y maquetación a medida. Contenido Nahuai 2 nuevos tutorial en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Añadir soporte para etiquetas a un Custom Post Type en WordPress Tema de la semana: Por norma general, el cliente debe comprar directamente el plugin o theme y encargarse de las renovaciones. Si optamos por ofrecer nuestra licencia como valor añadido, debemos: InformarSer honestos Tipos de licencia Anuales / Lifetime1 sitio / x sitios / ilimitadas Tipos de plugins De funcionalidad y desarrolloDe mantenimiento y optimización Plugins desarrollo / funcionalidad Podemos ofrecerlas incluidas en el presupuesto como valor añadido, - El 1er año / para siempre - Vinculado o no a un contrato de mantenimiento Ejemplos: Advanced Custom FieldsGravity FormsEasy digital downloadsRestrict Content ProWPML Plugins mantenimiento / optimización Podemos ofrecerlas incluidas con el mantenimiento web Copias Seguridad: UpdraftPlus, BackupbuddySeguridad: Ithemes SecurityMigraciones: Duplicator Pro, All in one migrationWP Optimize, WPRocket Themes Licencias desarrollador / ilimitadas (Genesis, Astra, Divi….)Licencias premium (Themeforest) Sitios low cost de licencias y la GPL Compartir licencias https://www.esthersola.com/plugins-premium-licencias-clientes/ https://www.zonadpw.com/cursos/gestion-de-licencias-para-clientes/ Las 4 libertades del Open Source / GPL: Libertad de usar el programa, con cualquier propósito (uso).Libertad de estudiar cómo funciona el programa y modificarloLibertad de distribuir copias del programaLibertad de mejorar el programa y hacer públicas esas mejoras José Conti expone su visión de la GPL en su último post: Vivir GPL o explotar GPL. Novedades Lemon Squeeze, una nueva alternativa a WooCommerce y EDD. GoDaddy adquiere Pagely para ofrecer un SaaS relacionado con WooCommerce. Tip de la semana https://vanillajstoolkit.com Menciones Elías comparte el recurso de Animista en Twitter. Nora compartió nuestro episodio sobre el Late de WordCamp España. Adrián nos felicita por el programa Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

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News: Sicherheitslücken, WPScan & Pagely wurden gekauft und Ionos will an die Börse

WP Sofa

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2021 98:00

Wir berichten euch von vielen Sicherheitsupdates und wie immer von den neuen Gutenberg Funktionen. Aber auch für andere Pagebuilder haben wir ein Herz und verlinken euch ein paar nützliche Informationen zu Elementor. Viel Spaß mit der Folge und haltet euch mit euren Kommentaren nicht zurück

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Membership and Courses With Sean McCabe

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2021 59:11

Cory Miller talks with Sean McCabe, CEO of Seanwes Media. While it's likely never been easier to sell courses for an audience (especially if you are using a system like WordPress), what hasn't changed — according to Sean — is the marketing and the validation of what you are marketing, how you are marketing it, and how you are pricing it. Sean shares his perspectives on these permanent problems, outlining what has and hasn't worked for him. Sean also shares his thoughts on what comes first — the community, the courses, or both. This is a must-listen for anyone with a membership course or learning site, or anyone who is thinking of starting one.

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Post Status Excerpt (No. 20) — Yoast Acquired, Businesses Need To Allow More Play

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2021 21:31

Allowing time to goof off or pursuing a passion improves team connections.Professor Jane Dutton from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business suggests "four ways to build high-quality workplace connections" — respectful engagement, support, trust — and play. Play is what Cory and David focus on in this episode — why should companies set aside time to explore, goof off, or entertain each other with no particular outcome in mind?Also covered in this episode: Only an hour before recording this, Yoast announced it is being acquired by Newfold Digital — formerly known at least in part as Endurance International Group (EIG). David and Cory share their initial thoughts with more analysis still to come.Browse our archives, and don't forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

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Recapture.io: From part time business to world domination

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2021 45:22

I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone slogging away in the cubical but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I'm sure you know all about the “build in open” movement, and today's guest really shocked me with that. See, maybe like you, I've listened to Dave Rodenbaugh on his podcast (with my boss Craig) Rogue Startups, for years now. But what really got me in today's story, is that he was never really even “part-time” into his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. There's lots of fun stuff in today's episode covering everything from managing a day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer to kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. Transcription Recapture – Dave and Matt – Matt Report [00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by paid memberships pro well, actually it's their other product. Site-wide sales at site-wide sales.com. It's a complete black Friday cyber Monday and flash sales tool for WooCommerce or paid memberships pro. Before, you know it, the deal day holidays will be fast upon us. And you want to prepare your WooCommerce or paid memberships pro website. [00:00:20] With the site-wide sales plugin, use it to make custom sale banners, targeted landing pages or apply discounts automatically in the cart. Use it to track the performance of all of these promotional features using the reporting feature, which will paint the picture of your black Friday and holiday shopping sales. I use it to help make your woo commerce or paid memberships pro store more money. [00:00:43] Get the first 30 days for free. And then it's an easy $49 a year. Check out site-wide sales.com. That's site-wide sales.com to make more money. This holiday sale season. [00:00:56]Let me tell you about creator courses.com/matt and how you can save 20% off using code mat to grab a hold of the great courses instructed by none other than Joe Casabona. So, what can you get from creator courses.com/matt. Courses to help business owners create stuff with absolutely no code. Learn how to build a website using beaver builder, Gutenberg, or both. [00:01:23] [00:01:23]And that's not all visit creator courses.com/matt and save 20% off Joe's other courses on PHP, full site editing in my two favorites. Podcasting in automation. I think learning the automation stuff is well worth the ticket in my eyes. Go to creator courses.com/matt. Right now. Seriously, stop the podcast and use code mat at checkout to save 20% off that's creator courses.com/matt and use code mat to save 20% off today. [00:01:52]I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone's slogging away in the cubicle, but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I'm sure you know, all about the building open movement and today's guest really shocked me with that. See maybe like you I've listened to Dave Rohde and bond his podcast with my boss, Craig rogue startups for years now. [00:02:12] But what really got me in today's story is that he was never really even part time into his business. recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business. While being contracted at a corporate gig, he recently had the chance to exit from there's a lot of fun stuff in today's episode, covering everything from managing and day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer. [00:02:38] To kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. You're listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. [00:02:54] Please share this episode. On your social media. We'd love more listeners around here. And side note, [00:03:00] I had to rerecord with Dave after some Zen caster snafoos so we're picking up from our conversation a little bit, warmed up. Okay. I hope you enjoy. [00:03:09] Matt: [00:03:09] One of the things that I caught you at a great time last time because you were only, I think like two weeks a free man on your own you get out of that sort of day job slash consultancy that you were in. I had you at an interesting moment where you were like, everything's coming at me. This is exciting. [00:03:28]I, I'm kind of like looking to go to the next chapter of, of running recapture. Is that feeling still here or now that we're like a month into it, things have settled, like, oh my God, you [00:03:39] Dave: [00:03:39] know, it's kind of funny. It hasn't really, I have not felt that euphoria lift yet. I imagine at some point it probably will. [00:03:48]No, th this is, this is definitely the honeymoon phase, right. And at some point the honeymoon phase will always go. But I still feel it. In fact, I was just having breakfast with my wife this morning. We were sitting outside and, I noted her. I said, Hey, it's been, almost two months since I left the freelance job. [00:04:03] And she went, I know. And I was like, and it's still great. So, I still, I still get up in the morning and we go do our walk and I come back and I have breakfast and coffee and I'm like, I get to spend my day on whatever the hell I want to today, which is of course recapturing my business, but there's something still very energizing about that. [00:04:27] Like, it's all, it's my own experience. I'm not really beholden to anybody other than the customers. I don't have to do. Stupid bullshit meetings and phone calls and status reports and just all of that stuff that I had to deal with in the corporate world. It's just all gone like that lift that sh that weight has still lifted off my shoulders. [00:04:47] And I am just as happy then as I am. One [00:04:51] Matt: [00:04:51] of the things I think you hide really well. And I don't know if this was intentional or I maybe just never even saw it because I've always been just looking at what you were doing with the recapture. You've been on the show, my podcast, before you have the podcast with Craig, who's a happens to be my boss. [00:05:07] I never knew how much. And then we had our discussion more in depth. I never knew how much that freelance gig. Was sort of like weighing you down or how much it consumed when you and I chatted. I think you, throughout the, the ratio of like, it was 90% day job in 10% recapture, and that was kind of mind blowing, like how you manage that, how did you manage like so much of recapture with only 10% of energy. [00:05:37] Dave: [00:05:37] That's an excellent question. And some days I'm amazed that things were able to progress along as well as they had because of that exact issue. And in fact, that was one of the main things I think that sort of drove me into this direction, like recapture could be doing so much better and here I am barely giving it enough oxygen to survive. [00:06:00] [00:05:59] Why, why can't I do more? So, but it wasn't always this way. The freelance thing, it was probably at one point it was like 40% freelance and 60% everything else. But at the time that 60% was a good chunk of the WordPress plugins. I had that I sold last year and recapture, that was the directory, a business directory plugin that was business directory and AWP PCP. [00:06:25] So. Those were things that all consumed my time. And I think when you said, hiding, I think that's an excellent observation because I. I definitely compartmentalize when it comes to things like here's this chunk of my business, here's this other chunk, here's this other chunk. And, I could operate in each of those worlds fairly separately without letting them bleed into each other. [00:06:52] But there came a point when the freelancing just was such a mentally taxing thing to deal with. I had. Just all kinds of toxic stuff going on in the corporate culture that I was there and the project that I was working on and the direction that it was all going. And it just, at some point I was like, this is too much. [00:07:12] I can't deal with this anymore. I can't keep it in the box. It's bleeding out into everything else. So usually when I got onto podcasts, like the Matt. It would give me an opportunity to express the enthusiasm for that box that I didn't get to really express any other way. So, it was like my brief window into positive energy venting, if you will. [00:07:34] And then it was back to the slog of the corporate world and yeah. So [00:07:39] Matt: [00:07:39] that's tough. How much of the success of recaptured thus far? Is because you chose, these are my words. These are not your words. So obviously I hope for you to color in the lines here, but how much of the success of recapture is the market and the product that you chose. [00:07:58] And I'll preface that with saying is like abandoned cart problems are or solutions. I should say. There's a lot of them. I feel like it's a big space, which is. Some people might look from the sidelines going, God, I don't want to get into that space. There's so much competition, but I feel like maybe in your case, it is, and was a good thing. [00:08:19]If you look at I think cart hook probably was where you were at and then just matured into a much larger product and solution, I think right on the heels of. Recording that we had Jilt shut down, which was a sort of like another, I guess, benefit to you. How much of the success do you think has, has leaned on, Hey, I picked the right product and the right market, because sometimes I think that could be something that kind of goes under the radar. [00:08:44] That a lot of people aren't aware of. [00:08:47] Dave: [00:08:47] Well, I talked about this on other podcasts and I'll mention it here as well. I believe very heavily in the notion of luck, surface area. So just quick definition for [00:09:00] somebody who might not be familiar with this, basically. Everyone in business is going to encounter some level of luck and whether you're prepared for that luck or unprepared for that luck has to do with the surface area that you've created. [00:09:17] So in other words, can I capitalize on this lucky opportunity that comes around at this time because. I've made some kind of preparation for it. I'm ready to accept it. I've got the bandwidth to deal with it. Like all of these things have to kind of line up. I've had opportunities that appeared in my space and I wasn't ready to capitalize them. [00:09:37] So they weren't within my luck surface area, but being, being ready for those opportunities makes a huge difference in whether you're successful or not successful. So, there were definitely lots of. We'll call them lucky moments. We all want to think that entrepreneurship is solely about hard work and hard work is a piece of it. [00:09:57] And you can't succeed without the hard work, but at the same time, every element of luck that you encounter that you can capitalize we'll will level up your business. And the more of those that you can do, the better off you will end up. The same thing is true of Castillo's when Craig and I have talked about this on the podcast. [00:10:15] I Craig, you and Craig have encountered many lucky moments in Castro's getting into tiny seed, him having an opportunity to hire you when you were available. Each of these helps build on all of the previous moments that you've had before. And the same thing is true with recapture. So like for example, When I was able to acquire a recapture back in 2016, that was a lucky moment for me because I happened to have the money to do it. [00:10:41] And I was looking specifically for something that was, e-commerce SAS, recurring revenue. And it was in a space that I understood and it was a space that I could be passionate about. So that is a lucky moment where all of those things that kind of I've been preparing for came together in one shot. [00:10:58] And then after that, like the pandemic was another lucky moment. I know this is not lucky for a lot of people that lost loved ones, but if you were in e-commerce. Everything kind of took off in certain verticals and certain services, right? Capture was one of those services. And because we had been spending a lot of time, integrating with woo commerce, integrating with easy digital downloads, integrating with restrict content pro being on Shopify at that point and optimizing our listing all of these things, when that massive uptick in e-commerce store interest went on. [00:11:33] We were there and able to capitalize on it because we were available to people. We, we had enough interest and awareness in the community that people were able to take us and, and use the service at the time that they needed it the most. So that's another lucky opportunity we were able to capitalize on. [00:11:53] And, it's just building on moments like that again and again and again, in your business. [00:12:00] Entails, like I said, a lot of hard work and you've got to get out there and you've got to do the homework. I had to network with, the, I have a relationship with nexus and liquid web, and I think I was trying to, I was badgering poor Chris lemma for life. [00:12:14] 12 months, no joke. Like every two months, I just like ping out and say, Hey, what's going on? Are you guys ready to integrate this yet? And they were like, yeah, no, not talk to me in a little bit. And I just kept doing that and kept doing that and kept doing that. And eventually it turned out. Initial relationship and then Jilt shut down. [00:12:31] And now it's a bigger relationship cause they were relying on Jill. So again, it's about timing and persistence and hard work. And the more you can make that surface area, big, these lucky events that come flying through your space, you can grab a hold of them and, let it ride your busy. [00:12:49] Matt: [00:12:49] Where do you rank the priority of. [00:12:52]Like developing features versus being. Social and networky and markety in the grand scheme of your luck surface area, like if you were sitting in front of a class of one year WordPress plugin entrepreneurs who are mostly developers, Would you tell them to increase the lung surface area by creating those integrations or, Hey, you got to blog more, you got to outreach more, maybe start a podcast. [00:13:24] Where do you set those priorities to, to increase that luck surface? [00:13:30] Dave: [00:13:30] I would never prioritize features on that list until I had some understanding of what's out there in the space. Like we didn't integrate with WooCommerce and easy digital downloads because I love those two so much. It happens that I do, but that's not why I integrated with them. [00:13:48] I integrated with them because there was a huge market opportunity and doing that. That I can go after those opportunities and it allows me to be in other spaces. So I understood the market well enough to know that those were good plays, but part of what I would say to that, younger group of plugin authors, is that the reason that I knew those things is that I created relationships first. [00:14:14] So I had attended events, like word camps, and PressNomics where I talked with these others. Hosting companies and plugin authors and agencies and all of these other things to understand what are their concerns, who are the people in the space that are the movers and the shakers that I can learn more from that. [00:14:34] If I connect with it's going to, improve my sphere. Of being able to do better things in the world, right? It's not about, me personally, it's about how can I improve my impact on the world and that, you're not going to get that sitting around typing features out on a keyboard. [00:14:50] So those things matter, but they don't matter first. Like you need to get the other things before you can get. The features, because you won't know the right features [00:15:00] to build until you've talked to people, talk to your customers, talk to other people that are going to use your tool. Talk to hosting providers that might find a way to use you to improve the offerings to their customers. [00:15:10] If you can make somebody better with your product, then they're going to be interested in you, but you're not going to know that unless you get out there and talk to other people and find out what the hell they're doing, right. Podcasting is another great way to do that. [00:15:22]Matt: [00:15:22] I forget which episode of. Rogue startups. [00:15:24] It was, but it might've been a more recent one when you were talking about the new SMS functionality of the product. And you'll have to remind me of like what the context was, but you said something like here I am working on something else. And like the SMS stuff is just sitting, waiting to go, or at least that's how I kind of remember it. [00:15:45] And you were, you were like, oh God, if I just, I just got to get out there and launch this, like, what am I doing? Spending all this time in this area when I can just, this features almost kind of ready, let me just launch it. I think that that's. Such a common, well, first of all, am I getting that right? [00:16:00] Am I remembering this, this tug of war you had at one point with releasing that feature and other things you were doing? [00:16:06] Dave: [00:16:06] I think so. So there was a, a combination of forces that were coming in at the time. And we were talking about trying to release SMS first. It was going to be an April, then it was going to be in may and then it was going to be in June. [00:16:16] And it finally got released on July 1st. So I don't have to say that anymore, but thank God. But it. I got distracted by a bunch of other things. And one of the things I think that kills us as entrepreneurs is lacking focus. So you see, and I, I'm as guilty as anybody else. Here's a new shiny object over here. [00:16:34] Ooh, look at that. If we develop that boy, that would really make a move on MRR. Oh wait. But we could be doing this marketing hack right here instead. And all of those things are just constantly coming up in your, your field of view and you've got to, nail it down and say, look, I did this. If I don't shove it out the door now I'm in big trouble. [00:16:54] So, for me, with the SMS stuff, what that came down to was that I was distracted by content marketing. And I spent like a month trying to hire a content marketer. And then the Jilt shutdown came along in June and all of a sudden everything got shuffled. Right. So then it was like, oh, geez well, SMS, isn't going to really move the needle with Jilt customers because Jilt didn't support SMS. [00:17:15] So now what do I need to do to make it. Jilt customers would be better served by recapture. Well, I gotta add marketing emails, broadcast emails. And so we were really close on that one too. So we just bundled it all together. SMS was done. And so we just put these two and said, all right, July 1st is when we're launching. [00:17:32] We finished that up inside of a week in June and then pushed it out the door. But yeah, focus was killing me there and that was totally my bad. [00:17:42]Matt: [00:17:42] Back to, I guess, the, the luck surface area. And you hinted about this before too, is, you have a plan. And we, everyone says good, create a plan, create a calendar, like have these automations in these processes and everything will be running smoothly. [00:17:56] And then suddenly it's like, okay, well maybe this. [00:18:00] Yeah. And it blows up and you're like, oh, maybe new feature. And then like you start building a new feature, then suddenly Jill shuts down and that's just a matte, like now you have to be like, okay, I literally have to drop all this other stuff because this is just now a massive opportunity. [00:18:16] And, and this is not really a question, but more of a statement just to frame it. Like we went through this, we're going through this at and I'm only bringing it up because you talked to Craig every week, but it's like, we're doing all of these things where new products, new features, new things are rolling out new enhancements, and then suddenly it's. [00:18:36] There's an opportunity to buy another company. Well, that's pretty big deal. And like, now we do that. So it's just like, there's that? And then there's right. Craig working in is working his butt off to raise money and he raises money for the company. And then it's just like right back to the feature grindstone have finished the migration. [00:18:59] Now we've got this app that just launched literally yesterday. Yesterday. Yep. Monday. And now there's just like right back to the feature grindstone and you're like, wow. Like things move at a pace. That's it's exciting. But also, man, there's no plan for this. There's no playbook, there's nothing, there's nothing. [00:19:17] Dave: [00:19:17] There's no question. Yeah, no. There's, there's a certain chaotic insanity to the whole entrepreneur journey. And in some ways you can do all the planning you want, but no plan survives first contact with the customer. And in many cases, no plan survives first contact. Random events that happen out in the real world, acquiring companies, getting funding, Jilt shutdowns, all of these things, just things happen. [00:19:47] And the speed at which you can react to something is definitely whether your business lives or dies in these events. And it definitely is also whether the business grows or fails in these times as well. Those that were not able to. Advantage of the dynamic nature of the e-commerce, if they weren't pivoting hard during their vertical, like if you were in the travel vertical during COVID shutdown, people were just pounding on you with a sledgehammer into the ground, like six feet deep. [00:20:16] They didn't stop, but if you were in like like a lounge wear sweat pants, hoodies, things like that, you couldn't keep the stuff inside. Your warehouse long enough to sell it. So, you had to be reactive to the act of circumstances there, or it kills your business and, that's what Craig's doing with Castillo's and that's what I've tried to do with [00:20:36] Matt: [00:20:36] recapture, for sure. [00:20:37] Yeah. I want to go back to talking about partnerships which will eventually segue into word PR into woo commerce versus Shopify. But before we get to that flaming ball of chaos, Navigating partnerships in WordPress. I'm interested to hear just your opinion on it. Sometimes. I think, especially for somebody like you with a product that could [00:21:00] really latch onto a hosting company, those are very tricky waters to now. [00:21:04]I know I used to work at Pagely and it was just like, man, like people wouldn't even say WP engine around me. Like it wasn't like, [00:21:13] Dave: [00:21:13] like we don't talk about that. No. Yeah. [00:21:16] Matt: [00:21:16] It wasn't on any of those podcasts where there were other web hosts. Like, it is a very, I feel like in the hosting world, maybe it's getting a little bit better that it was like, you gotta be in a camp and that's the camp you're in and there's isolation there. [00:21:28]Any thoughts around navigating. And also just like critical feedback on products and services in the WordPress space. I feel like doesn't exist in the normal zeitgeists like, I'm looking at my Sony camera right now. And like, if you went online to YouTube and you looked at, or a forum and you went to Sony versus Panasonic and there would be like great debate. [00:21:54] Like critical. Like, but every, at the end of the day, everybody's fine about the two companies. But I feel like in the WordPress space, you don't get that like damn EDD for doing this. And this is why I'm woo commerce. I don't have the right phrase for it, but I feel like that partnership slash criticism in the WordPress space doesn't exist. [00:22:14] Maybe. We're all too friendly with each other. Can I say that like, we're all friendly? I dunno, it's just a weird thing. Like I feel like if you walk down the hall. And talked about your favorite brand of anything else. There could be clear debate, clear, concise, love it, hate it. I could go without it, but in the WordPress space that doesn't exist. [00:22:33] Am I making sense with that? Like, do you feel that thing in the air, like I do. I, I [00:22:37] Dave: [00:22:37] totally hear what you're saying on that one and I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, there's, there's definitely this weird space where it seems like. You can talk about one hosting company, but you can never say hosting company a versus B, right. [00:22:50] Or if you do like that discussion gets shut down real fast. And I don't think it's a conscious thing, but I've seen it on chats. And just over the years on blog posts, like it's very rare that somebody sits down and truly compares one to the other. Head to head and say, look, if you really like these things, this hosting company makes a lot of sense. [00:23:11] And if you like these things, then this other hosting company is a better fit for you. But yeah. So, you were talking about navigating partnerships. I think it's kind of the same thing. Like as soon as you declare allegiance to one. It's almost like the others kind of look at you with a little side eye and with a little bit of stink-eye on top of it. [00:23:32] And they're like, well, you've already got them in your camp, so we can't be in your camp at the same time. I think that goes to the detriment of all WordPress users. Like there's nothing that says you can't be friendly and competitive in the same thing. And I think when you say that they're overly friendly, I wouldn't characterize it like that. [00:23:55] I would characterize it. Yeah. Unwilling to criticize in general, it's something about the [00:24:00] community. I don't know what it is. If they are looking not to drum up drama and they feel like that's going to create unnecessary drama or unhelpful drama, it probably could. I definitely could see that that could get into some real nasty debates that just degenerate into ad hominem attacks. [00:24:16] And, you suck because you picked oh, well, okay. Yeah. Back off, man. That's it. That's that's not necessary. So yeah, I don't know. I've, I've felt that and it's weird, but the partnership thing. [00:24:31] Matt: [00:24:31] Because it's farther back now. Like, I'll say, well, you can do, you can define it. Is it a, is it a partnership with nexus? [00:24:38] And if so, like, do you feel like one, maybe you can't because you've signed something or two, like, do you feel like, ah, man, it's gonna be a little bit harder for me to knock on the door, WP engine to do this because they see me over here with nexus and Chris. So like that kind of friction that you think that holds you back. [00:24:55] Dave: [00:24:55] It doesn't hold me back. Let me say that. Okay. To sign because like the stuff that I set up with nexus, it wasn't exclusive anyway. And it was very friendly. Like, look, I've got this thing, your customers can use this thing. You got this offering and it makes it more valuable to your customers. If we say we put this on your dashboard here, like, it was very much like how can we make this a win-win thing and like help. [00:25:15] I will be happy to help create content to make your customers more successful. Like at the end of the day, That story should play well with any hosting company, right? If I can give you something that helps your customers be more successful and you help me bring more customers, and we're both winning in this relationship, it shouldn't matter how many people I've set that deal up with because your customer success should be the foremost thing at the top of your mind. [00:25:42] But, I don't know from if I have this deal going on with nexus, does that make me. A bit of a hot potato with WP engine. I don't really know. I noticed that before I had any deal in place of any hosting company at all, like just getting to the right person who was interested in what I had to say, and that saw the value of it. [00:26:02] Was kind of a non-trivial thing to navigate, especially when, folks are coming and going and coming and going. Even if you have the right contacts at these companies and the network relationships I've made gives me some ins to most of these hosting companies where I can say, Hey, I want to talk to so-and-so. [00:26:20] It still doesn't necessarily mean that that company is interested in your offering or that they're thinking about things the same way that you are. So. It kind of is another thing where it has to all line up. They've got to be thinking about this the same way that you're thinking about this. And that's where I've met. [00:26:39] The most resistance, I think is that, I say, Hey, are you thinking about a managed WooCommerce hosting? And I'm like, okay, well, we're, we're already missing this each other here. And I don't, maybe it's going to be a better fit in a year or two years or something like that. [00:26:53] So with nexus, they were very much like, yep. We've got that. Yep. We want this. All right. Let's make it all happen. [00:27:00] With a little bit of persistence. It's so. [00:27:02] Matt: [00:27:02] It almost, and really almost makes you appreciate like a bigger business. Right. You kind of have an appreciation for it. And, and again, I'll frame that is when you look at somebody like Austin, like SIADH from awesome motive. [00:27:16] Right. And you see. Well, the, the sheer size, the competency of business and you have a relationship there because that's where you sold the plugins to. Right? So you kind of see there's a trust there. And then you can kind of make sense, because if you're just solo developer, Dave knocking on the door of, big web hosting conglomerate. [00:27:38]They're going to look at you and be like, well, man, we can't, this is way too much of a risk to just take your software, slapping it in front of 30,000 customers potentially. And we are just going to trust you. You start to kind of appreciate, okay. The bigger businesses can kind of win. There's more sustainability, there's better trust. [00:27:56]There's just more invested in the whole thing. And as a small business owner, like you kind of get it once you start going through the throws of, of navigating those, I dunno, corporate waters, enterprise waters whatever you want to call it. Kind of appreciate a little bit more, at least I do anyway. [00:28:10] Yeah, [00:28:11] Dave: [00:28:11] no, I would agree with that. And it's interesting. These larger companies. Because they're so big, like, it's the difference between moving like a cheetah and moving like an elephant. You're the small start-ups. So you can navigate pretty quickly make the fast sprints and turn quickly. They're kind of plotting along in a very straight direction and they're not going to change their direction very quickly. [00:28:34] So it takes them awhile to get going in a direction. And then once they're going in that direction, it takes them a while to change directions. And the bigger the company gets, the bigger the elephant gets, right? Yeah. So by bringing in small companies, I think a lot of them want to increase their agility in that sense. [00:28:53] But of course, there's that whole trust aspect. Like we know you're smaller than us, but are you big enough that you can handle what we hand the hand over to you? And if that trust isn't there, then yeah. That's, that's all gone. So again, this is part of the networking aspect. If you can have that relationship with another person and that they get to know your business and they're like, oh yeah, you've been around for awhile. [00:29:13] Oh, look, you've got some customers. Oh, look, you served a lot of customers. Oh, you've done a pretty decent volume. Hey, maybe you not, might not be a fly by night. Business and we might be able to trust you like that. Trust isn't something that just happens overnight. Right? You got to build it slowly over years. [00:29:28] Matt: [00:29:28] Yeah. Shopify versus a woo commerce when we chatted. Yeah. Forget [00:29:33] Dave: [00:29:33] it. We're done. Now. I have a lot to say about this. Go ahead. [00:29:37] Matt: [00:29:37] We chatted last time. I think one of the things now, look, I have only set up a handful of Shopify. Generally out of just helping some friends and some local entrepreneurs in my area do it. [00:29:47]I think one of the things I'll try to make this a quick question. Like one of the things I really appreciate from Shopify is. On the outside anyway, like their partnership program looks more mature. Like the way they work with [00:30:00] agencies looks more mature. And generally, I feel like they're willing to work with the freelancers of the world versus. [00:30:07] WordPress and WooCommerce is kind of just like, see you later. Bye. Like, we'll see it at the end of the road, by the way, we'll sell $5,000 websites@wordpress.com. Right. And to me, that's like, man, like I look at it Shopify and I'm like, yeah woo commerce, WordPress should have something like this. But I guess at the end of the day, it's not all roses and rainbows from the outside because Shopify is going to. [00:30:35] I guess watch like a watchful eye of, what you're doing as an, as an app, as an integrator, as an agency. And if they see something that's super profitable, I guess they could just go. Yeah, we'll just do that. We'll just do that in house and just demolish your app, I guess in the matter of seconds is what they could do. [00:30:52] So again, sharp road to navigate. I like it from the outset. Like it's an opportunity for a freelancer or a small agency to get more work. But curious on your thoughts on partnership program in generally working with a Shopify versus a WooCommerce. [00:31:09] Dave: [00:31:09] Yeah. So you wanted a short answer, right? Well, I [00:31:14] Matt: [00:31:14] was, I was trying to make a short question, [00:31:16] Dave: [00:31:16] which is okay, so I can have a long answer. [00:31:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let me talk about the platforms first in general. So I think when you're picking Shopify versus woo, there's a lot of things that go into that decision in general, that should make you, focus on what are the strengths of each of those platforms. So with Shopify very easy to get started, low tech threshold, to understand there's lots of stuff that you can do without being a full stack developer. [00:31:47] Integrate apps and just basically get a store up and running. So if you aren't sure, like you're doing it drop shipping or it's a new product and you're trying to find product market fit or product audience bit or whatever it is. I think Shopify gets you up and running quicker to something that's pretty polished that comes at a y'all are costs. [00:32:10] So, the hosting that Shopify, the apps that you're adding on and all of that, but. That can be managed and I think it's simplifies things and gets you going pretty well to where you want be. With that said, once you reach a certain point and you're like, now I want my store to do this. And I want my checkout to have this in it. [00:32:32] And I want to use these payment methods, but not these other ones. And I also want this post purchase, checkout flow to be going on. And I want these kind of abandoned cart emails, and I want this, and I want that like for somebody who knows exactly what they want, Shopify can be incredibly expensive and very frustrating because it has been traditionally difficult to cut it. [00:32:53] So, this is where Woo's strength comes to play. In my opinion, is that, if you're on the right hosting provider [00:33:00] and you have a good agency that you can work with, that knows what they're doing with Boone. These are out there. You can do a nice build and you can customize the hell out of it. [00:33:08] Yeah. And get exactly what you want. And if you've got a good developer on Wu, you can make it run as fast or faster than a Shopify store. So performance, isn't an issue necessarily if you've done the right things and you've done your homework. And, there are plenty of smart wound stores that do that. [00:33:25] The downside to that, of course is complexity. And you got to have a higher threshold of technical knowledge either for yourself or a team to put that together. And, you've got to find the right agencies and the right developers. And if you're talking about the energy and the Wu space and the energy. [00:33:43] Shopify space. They're pretty different. And there's a lot of energy in Shopify and it's hard to ignore that and there's energy and Wu too, but to like sort out the wheat from the chaff is a little more challenging because those really good Wu developers aren't necessarily out there trumpeting themselves, talking about how great their agency is. [00:34:04] I can tell you the top five shops. Development agencies right off the top of my head because of what I see on Twitter, because of what I see in their blogs and just general social media activity, I would have a harder time doing that for woo commerce based on those factors. I know a few of them, but they're harder to pick out. [00:34:21] Matt: [00:34:21] Right. So do you think that's because Shopify helps prop those agencies up to part of their marketing and sales? [00:34:28] Dave: [00:34:28] Yes. So WooCommerce as a platform, doesn't do enough for partners and agencies, not the way that Shopify does, like here at Shopify at unite announced that they were abolishing the 20% at a revenue share on all of their partner apps up to your first million dollars a year. [00:34:49] So basically it's like everybody on the platform got a 25% raise, including recapture, which I was thrilled about. WooCommerce. If you want to go to their store, there was this discussion in post status that I was contributing to. If you are exclusive to the woo commerce store, 40% revenue share. If you're non-exclusive it's 60%. [00:35:09]I understand why WooCommerce didn't want. To just let every person possible onto the platform and turn it into the repo, like the repo turned out to, it's kind of a, we'll call it a mixed bag. I think that's the, the most politically correct way I could say it. Yeah. There's a lot of garbage out there and there's a lot of good stuff and it does take some time to sort through it and figure out, I think they were trying to curate the woo commerce store experience to be a little higher quality than that. [00:35:41] But I think they went about it wrong. And it's [00:35:43] Matt: [00:35:43] been it's 60% to automatic [00:35:45] Dave: [00:35:45] or 60, 60% to automatic. Yes. Wow. Which is, like, come on really. You're taking more than half of my business. How am I supposed to be profitable at that point? It's not this isn't a charity to you. So these numbers are just [00:36:00] wrong in my, like, they don't encourage [00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] catches a lot of flack for 30%, right? [00:36:05]Dave: [00:36:05] Come on, apple, apple at 30 bucks percent is considered untenable and you all at WooCommerce that are doing 40 and 60%. Come on, give me a break. That's why my plugins are never going to be on the WooCommerce repository. I know I'm not alone in this. So, there are some plugins that are there, but guess what? [00:36:23] They're all free. 40% of zero is still zero. So you're good. They're, they're asking for me to share my revenue 60% a month. You just killed my profitability to the point where I can't run my business anymore. So it's that sort of mentality. That I think is hurting the Wu commerce ecosystem. Like there isn't an agency support program. [00:36:44] There isn't a big conference every year. That has the energy of Shopify unite. There isn't a partner program that really nurtures everybody along. Like with Shopify partners. Like you sign up, you're getting an email a day for like 30 days telling you here's some partner tips. Here's this development thing. [00:37:01] Here's this resource. Here's this? Here's this here's this guess how many times we got from WooCommerce? Zero. Yeah. Yeah. I, it they're very different ecosystems and I think it's to the detriment of WooCommerce, that they are not putting more energy into that, that piece of it, because that is a big part of why Shopify has been successful. [00:37:23] Matt: [00:37:23] Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. And again, I have very little experience from the Shopify side. I just know from what I don't receive from support from WordPress and seeing what everything else is happening. And I guess look at when you. Zoom out and take a look at the sheer size of WordPress compared to Shopify just I'm talking like installed platform based like that kind of thing. [00:37:46] Yeah. The, the, the play for WordPress and automatic is when it comes to open source. How are you going to monetize it? It has to be done through like that trust factor. So it's open source. It's super flexible. It's the same message. Automatic and you and I can go out and tell a customer and they'll just win by having the most trusted plugin, a jet pack or a premium ad-ons from woocommerce.com or something like that. [00:38:17] And they'll win. On that trust level where Shopify, you're just going to go there and spend money. Like you're choosing that platform. So you're you, you've made the decision to go there and they're telling you, the whole platform is trusted with WordPress it's. Hey, it's great. It's open source. Do whatever you want. [00:38:34]But by the way, Jetpack is the most trusted way to secure and manage your site. And that also comes with whatever WooCommerce add ons that you buy for those bundles that they have for like 2 99, 3 99 or whatever. And their argument will be you trust it because it comes from ashore. You can go get Dave's go ahead and get Dave's. [00:38:53] But you know, you're going to trust us better because we're the, the company behind it kind of thing. So I can't fault them [00:39:00] for it. It's just, one of those things. So many people have pushed towards jet pack or excuse me, to WooCommerce and WordPress because they love the software and there's no, there's that love doesn't come back to us. [00:39:15] What are we going to do? [00:39:16] Dave: [00:39:16] Nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do, unfortunately. And the other thing. I, I don't like, is that w well, so to contrast this, let me say, oh, Shopify does this. So Shopify does do acquisitions on things, but not like, not at the same level that I've seen automatic do it, where they pull in things like mail poet, right. [00:39:35] Or there pull all this stuff in and turn it into Jetpack. Like Shopify is not doing that. They build stuff and they'll build it to a level like, there was a year, I think it was like the first unite I went to and it was me. Two years after I'd acquired recapture and they released the abandoned cart emails. [00:39:52] And those that knew me at the conference were like, so how do you feel about abandoned cart emails on Shopify now is like, I feel okay about it because they're just, they're 60% solution and I'm a hundred percent solution. And I can tell you like all the shortcomings, it's great for people getting started out and it gives you those tools to get going and get your store off the ground. [00:40:14] It's never serious enough to like take you to the next level. So it'll get you to like the 5,000 a month rate. But after that, it's going to break down pretty quickly. Cause you're just not doing as good of a job as you could be with other apps that are more professional. And I've seen this a little bit in big commerce, too, where they build in these features and then know they're okay, but they're not great. [00:40:35] And you build your store up to a certain level and then you get these other things and you use them instead. I don't see that with WooCommerce. They're trying to pull in everything and say, okay, we're going to be really good at email. We've got mail poet now, but are you really the best at email? Because you got all these other things you're doing too. [00:40:54] And you've got this team, that's doing mail poet, and I don't want them to fault the male poet folks. They're a great plugin and they do a lot. It's just, your priorities are going to be driven by the platform, not the customers that are using it. So. Is that going to make it the best it could possibly be and truly drive be driven by the needs of the customers on the platform, as opposed to the benevolent dictator for [00:41:18] Matt: [00:41:18] life. [00:41:19] Yeah. What's next from, is there a next platform play for you to integrate with? I think I was looking at another W3C techs report the other day and it for specifically for, e-commerce and. I would have to go back and dig this report out. Maybe, I saw woo commerce and in the Squarespace, e-commerce almost like neck and neck. [00:41:41] Is that true? Is there square? I was like, suddenly like what Squarespace e-commerce is this big and even realize it is that like an area you're going into or another platform? That's interesting. [00:41:50]Dave: [00:41:50] We've, I've taken a quick look at Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, all kind of in the same breath. [00:41:57]There is definitely a. [00:42:00] We'll call it an economic shift on this platform where it is. It is aiming for a tier of store that doesn't want to pay as much as you get in Shopify, or you want to get in Wu. And it's difficult for me to convince a customer who's paying $4 a month for their e-commerce website to pay 29 for mine. [00:42:23] And I know this because of how the pricing worked in Shopify, like the base level in Shopify as 29. And the fact that I aligned with that. It makes it easier for me to sell my product because they've already made that mental commitment for 29. They're getting another 29. Isn't that bad. But when you're at four and you jumped to 29, that's too big and that's not a, that's not a battle I want to fight. [00:42:45] That's not a set of customers that I think are easy to deal with in that regard. So, I've looked at other platforms where we can head up markets. So our other e-commerce spaces. So things like Salesforce, cloud commerce. Things like that, but it's a little trickier to get into that because you kind of need to know some stores to have the testability. [00:43:09] Cause it's not like you're just downloading this, installing it and testing it out. You kind of have to work in tandem with somebody else. So, I I've got some plans. We're kind of cooking that up right now. I don't see, I'm keeping an eye on Squarespace and Wix and Weebly. And if they start moving up market. [00:43:25] Mid tiers, which is quite possible. They could, then it would make a lot of sense to integrate because there's going to be a large customer base there, but right now it doesn't look economically viable. Yeah, yeah. [00:43:37] Matt: [00:43:37] Yeah. That makes, that makes total sense. I guess that's probably why I was so shocked at the footprint of the Squarespace. [00:43:42] Cause I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Because then you're like, well, what are these people selling? They're really seriously. Probably something like photo prints, and a couple of handmade things. That's probably about it, certainly not an apparel line or kayaks, which you'll probably find on Shopify, right? [00:44:00] People who are manufacturing, things, stuff like that. Very cool. Dave wrote ball, recapture.io. Congrats on being a free man than the last time I talked to you running the business day to day. Where else can folks find you? What else can they look forward to from. [00:44:15] Dave: [00:44:15] Well, we just did our big release the 1st of July for SMS card abandonment and order notifications on recapture. [00:44:23] So if you've been itching to try that out or see what that's like, come to recapture.io and check that out. We also have broadcast emails out after Jill announced their shutdown, we had to make sure that was working to be able to seamlessly migrate folks over. So if you're. A former Jilt customer and you're looking for a place to land. [00:44:41] We'd love to talk to you at recapture and see if we can make things work for you. If somebody is looking to get a hold of me, you can find me on Twitter at Dave. [00:44:51] Matt: [00:44:51] I heard you're actually making phone calls too. Right? You're calling people up, doing it the old fashioned way [00:45:00] [00:45:00] Dave: [00:45:00] because your cell phone fashioned way, I would like, knock on their doors and press the flashes as it were, but that's not happening. [00:45:08] Matt: [00:45:08] Everyone else. Matt report.com maryport.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Don't forget to tune in to your weekly dose of five minute WordPress news every week@thewpminute.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you. In the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

covid-19 god spotify head trust business social pr talk zoom navigating development podcasting sony spending recording advantage castro hosting zen wordpress rogue salesforce shopify courses initial capture generally sms mid castillo woo automatic sas integrate part time wu squarespace php edd panasonic wix gutenberg jetpacks unwilling wp world domination woocommerce mrr recapture w3c weebly entails joe casabona matt medeiros siadh pagely dave rodenbaugh jilt pressnomics

Recapture.io: From part time business to world domination

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2021 45:21

I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone slogging away in the cubical but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I’m sure you know all about the “build in open” movement, and today’s guest really shocked me with that. See, maybe like you, I’ve listened to Dave Rodenbaugh on his podcast (with my boss Craig) Rogue Startups, for years now. But what really got me in today’s story, is that he was never really even “part-time” into his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. There’s lots of fun stuff in today’s episode covering everything from managing a day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer to kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. 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That’s site-wide sales.com to make more money. This holiday sale season. [00:00:56]Let me tell you about creator courses.com/matt and how you can save 20% off using code mat to grab a hold of the great courses instructed by none other than Joe Casabona. So, what can you get from creator courses.com/matt. Courses to help business owners create stuff with absolutely no code. Learn how to build a website using beaver builder, Gutenberg, or both. [00:01:23] [00:01:23]And that’s not all visit creator courses.com/matt and save 20% off Joe’s other courses on PHP, full site editing in my two favorites. Podcasting in automation. I think learning the automation stuff is well worth the ticket in my eyes. Go to creator courses.com/matt. Right now. Seriously, stop the podcast and use code mat at checkout to save 20% off that’s creator courses.com/matt and use code mat to save 20% off today. [00:01:52]I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone’s slogging away in the cubicle, but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I’m sure you know, all about the building open movement and today’s guest really shocked me with that. See maybe like you I’ve listened to Dave Rohde and bond his podcast with my boss, Craig rogue startups for years now. [00:02:12] But what really got me in today’s story is that he was never really even part time into his business. recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business. While being contracted at a corporate gig, he recently had the chance to exit from there’s a lot of fun stuff in today’s episode, covering everything from managing and day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer. [00:02:38] To kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. You’re listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. [00:02:54] Please share this episode. On your social media. We’d love more listeners around here. And side note, [00:03:00] I had to rerecord with Dave after some Zen caster snafoos so we’re picking up from our conversation a little bit, warmed up. Okay. I hope you enjoy. [00:03:09] Matt: [00:03:09] One of the things that I caught you at a great time last time because you were only, I think like two weeks a free man on your own you get out of that sort of day job slash consultancy that you were in. I had you at an interesting moment where you were like, everything’s coming at me. This is exciting. [00:03:28]I, I’m kind of like looking to go to the next chapter of, of running recapture. Is that feeling still here or now that we’re like a month into it, things have settled, like, oh my God, you [00:03:39] Dave: [00:03:39] know, it’s kind of funny. It hasn’t really, I have not felt that euphoria lift yet. I imagine at some point it probably will. [00:03:48]No, th this is, this is definitely the honeymoon phase, right. And at some point the honeymoon phase will always go. But I still feel it. In fact, I was just having breakfast with my wife this morning. We were sitting outside and, I noted her. I said, Hey, it’s been, almost two months since I left the freelance job. [00:04:03] And she went, I know. And I was like, and it’s still great. So, I still, I still get up in the morning and we go do our walk and I come back and I have breakfast and coffee and I’m like, I get to spend my day on whatever the hell I want to today, which is of course recapturing my business, but there’s something still very energizing about that. [00:04:27] Like, it’s all, it’s my own experience. I’m not really beholden to anybody other than the customers. I don’t have to do. Stupid bullshit meetings and phone calls and status reports and just all of that stuff that I had to deal with in the corporate world. It’s just all gone like that lift that sh that weight has still lifted off my shoulders. [00:04:47] And I am just as happy then as I am. One [00:04:51] Matt: [00:04:51] of the things I think you hide really well. And I don’t know if this was intentional or I maybe just never even saw it because I’ve always been just looking at what you were doing with the recapture. You’ve been on the show, my podcast, before you have the podcast with Craig, who’s a happens to be my boss. [00:05:07] I never knew how much. And then we had our discussion more in depth. I never knew how much that freelance gig. Was sort of like weighing you down or how much it consumed when you and I chatted. I think you, throughout the, the ratio of like, it was 90% day job in 10% recapture, and that was kind of mind blowing, like how you manage that, how did you manage like so much of recapture with only 10% of energy. [00:05:37] Dave: [00:05:37] That’s an excellent question. And some days I’m amazed that things were able to progress along as well as they had because of that exact issue. And in fact, that was one of the main things I think that sort of drove me into this direction, like recapture could be doing so much better and here I am barely giving it enough oxygen to survive. [00:06:00] [00:05:59] Why, why can’t I do more? So, but it wasn’t always this way. The freelance thing, it was probably at one point it was like 40% freelance and 60% everything else. But at the time that 60% was a good chunk of the WordPress plugins. I had that I sold last year and recapture, that was the directory, a business directory plugin that was business directory and AWP PCP. [00:06:25] So. Those were things that all consumed my time. And I think when you said, hiding, I think that’s an excellent observation because I. I definitely compartmentalize when it comes to things like here’s this chunk of my business, here’s this other chunk, here’s this other chunk. And, I could operate in each of those worlds fairly separately without letting them bleed into each other. [00:06:52] But there came a point when the freelancing just was such a mentally taxing thing to deal with. I had. Just all kinds of toxic stuff going on in the corporate culture that I was there and the project that I was working on and the direction that it was all going. And it just, at some point I was like, this is too much. [00:07:12] I can’t deal with this anymore. I can’t keep it in the box. It’s bleeding out into everything else. So usually when I got onto podcasts, like the Matt. It would give me an opportunity to express the enthusiasm for that box that I didn’t get to really express any other way. So, it was like my brief window into positive energy venting, if you will. [00:07:34] And then it was back to the slog of the corporate world and yeah. So [00:07:39] Matt: [00:07:39] that’s tough. How much of the success of recaptured thus far? Is because you chose, these are my words. These are not your words. So obviously I hope for you to color in the lines here, but how much of the success of recapture is the market and the product that you chose. [00:07:58] And I’ll preface that with saying is like abandoned cart problems are or solutions. I should say. There’s a lot of them. I feel like it’s a big space, which is. Some people might look from the sidelines going, God, I don’t want to get into that space. There’s so much competition, but I feel like maybe in your case, it is, and was a good thing. [00:08:19]If you look at I think cart hook probably was where you were at and then just matured into a much larger product and solution, I think right on the heels of. Recording that we had Jilt shut down, which was a sort of like another, I guess, benefit to you. How much of the success do you think has, has leaned on, Hey, I picked the right product and the right market, because sometimes I think that could be something that kind of goes under the radar. [00:08:44] That a lot of people aren’t aware of. [00:08:47] Dave: [00:08:47] Well, I talked about this on other podcasts and I’ll mention it here as well. I believe very heavily in the notion of luck, surface area. So just quick definition for [00:09:00] somebody who might not be familiar with this, basically. Everyone in business is going to encounter some level of luck and whether you’re prepared for that luck or unprepared for that luck has to do with the surface area that you’ve created. [00:09:17] So in other words, can I capitalize on this lucky opportunity that comes around at this time because. I’ve made some kind of preparation for it. I’m ready to accept it. I’ve got the bandwidth to deal with it. Like all of these things have to kind of line up. I’ve had opportunities that appeared in my space and I wasn’t ready to capitalize them. [00:09:37] So they weren’t within my luck surface area, but being, being ready for those opportunities makes a huge difference in whether you’re successful or not successful. So, there were definitely lots of. We’ll call them lucky moments. We all want to think that entrepreneurship is solely about hard work and hard work is a piece of it. [00:09:57] And you can’t succeed without the hard work, but at the same time, every element of luck that you encounter that you can capitalize we’ll will level up your business. And the more of those that you can do, the better off you will end up. The same thing is true of Castillo’s when Craig and I have talked about this on the podcast. [00:10:15] I Craig, you and Craig have encountered many lucky moments in Castro’s getting into tiny seed, him having an opportunity to hire you when you were available. Each of these helps build on all of the previous moments that you’ve had before. And the same thing is true with recapture. So like for example, When I was able to acquire a recapture back in 2016, that was a lucky moment for me because I happened to have the money to do it. [00:10:41] And I was looking specifically for something that was, e-commerce SAS, recurring revenue. And it was in a space that I understood and it was a space that I could be passionate about. So that is a lucky moment where all of those things that kind of I’ve been preparing for came together in one shot. [00:10:58] And then after that, like the pandemic was another lucky moment. I know this is not lucky for a lot of people that lost loved ones, but if you were in e-commerce. Everything kind of took off in certain verticals and certain services, right? Capture was one of those services. And because we had been spending a lot of time, integrating with woo commerce, integrating with easy digital downloads, integrating with restrict content pro being on Shopify at that point and optimizing our listing all of these things, when that massive uptick in e-commerce store interest went on. [00:11:33] We were there and able to capitalize on it because we were available to people. We, we had enough interest and awareness in the community that people were able to take us and, and use the service at the time that they needed it the most. So that’s another lucky opportunity we were able to capitalize on. [00:11:53] And, it’s just building on moments like that again and again and again, in your business. [00:12:00] Entails, like I said, a lot of hard work and you’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to do the homework. I had to network with, the, I have a relationship with nexus and liquid web, and I think I was trying to, I was badgering poor Chris lemma for life. [00:12:14] 12 months, no joke. Like every two months, I just like ping out and say, Hey, what’s going on? Are you guys ready to integrate this yet? And they were like, yeah, no, not talk to me in a little bit. And I just kept doing that and kept doing that and kept doing that. And eventually it turned out. Initial relationship and then Jilt shut down. [00:12:31] And now it’s a bigger relationship cause they were relying on Jill. So again, it’s about timing and persistence and hard work. And the more you can make that surface area, big, these lucky events that come flying through your space, you can grab a hold of them and, let it ride your busy. [00:12:49] Matt: [00:12:49] Where do you rank the priority of. [00:12:52]Like developing features versus being. Social and networky and markety in the grand scheme of your luck surface area, like if you were sitting in front of a class of one year WordPress plugin entrepreneurs who are mostly developers, Would you tell them to increase the lung surface area by creating those integrations or, Hey, you got to blog more, you got to outreach more, maybe start a podcast. [00:13:24] Where do you set those priorities to, to increase that luck surface? [00:13:30] Dave: [00:13:30] I would never prioritize features on that list until I had some understanding of what’s out there in the space. Like we didn’t integrate with WooCommerce and easy digital downloads because I love those two so much. It happens that I do, but that’s not why I integrated with them. [00:13:48] I integrated with them because there was a huge market opportunity and doing that. That I can go after those opportunities and it allows me to be in other spaces. So I understood the market well enough to know that those were good plays, but part of what I would say to that, younger group of plugin authors, is that the reason that I knew those things is that I created relationships first. [00:14:14] So I had attended events, like word camps, and PressNomics where I talked with these others. Hosting companies and plugin authors and agencies and all of these other things to understand what are their concerns, who are the people in the space that are the movers and the shakers that I can learn more from that. [00:14:34] If I connect with it’s going to, improve my sphere. Of being able to do better things in the world, right? It’s not about, me personally, it’s about how can I improve my impact on the world and that, you’re not going to get that sitting around typing features out on a keyboard. [00:14:50] So those things matter, but they don’t matter first. Like you need to get the other things before you can get. The features, because you won’t know the right features [00:15:00] to build until you’ve talked to people, talk to your customers, talk to other people that are going to use your tool. Talk to hosting providers that might find a way to use you to improve the offerings to their customers. [00:15:10] If you can make somebody better with your product, then they’re going to be interested in you, but you’re not going to know that unless you get out there and talk to other people and find out what the hell they’re doing, right. Podcasting is another great way to do that. [00:15:22]Matt: [00:15:22] I forget which episode of. Rogue startups. [00:15:24] It was, but it might’ve been a more recent one when you were talking about the new SMS functionality of the product. And you’ll have to remind me of like what the context was, but you said something like here I am working on something else. And like the SMS stuff is just sitting, waiting to go, or at least that’s how I kind of remember it. [00:15:45] And you were, you were like, oh God, if I just, I just got to get out there and launch this, like, what am I doing? Spending all this time in this area when I can just, this features almost kind of ready, let me just launch it. I think that that’s. Such a common, well, first of all, am I getting that right? [00:16:00] Am I remembering this, this tug of war you had at one point with releasing that feature and other things you were doing? [00:16:06] Dave: [00:16:06] I think so. So there was a, a combination of forces that were coming in at the time. And we were talking about trying to release SMS first. It was going to be an April, then it was going to be in may and then it was going to be in June. [00:16:16] And it finally got released on July 1st. So I don’t have to say that anymore, but thank God. But it. I got distracted by a bunch of other things. And one of the things I think that kills us as entrepreneurs is lacking focus. So you see, and I, I’m as guilty as anybody else. Here’s a new shiny object over here. [00:16:34] Ooh, look at that. If we develop that boy, that would really make a move on MRR. Oh wait. But we could be doing this marketing hack right here instead. And all of those things are just constantly coming up in your, your field of view and you’ve got to, nail it down and say, look, I did this. If I don’t shove it out the door now I’m in big trouble. [00:16:54] So, for me, with the SMS stuff, what that came down to was that I was distracted by content marketing. And I spent like a month trying to hire a content marketer. And then the Jilt shutdown came along in June and all of a sudden everything got shuffled. Right. So then it was like, oh, geez well, SMS, isn’t going to really move the needle with Jilt customers because Jilt didn’t support SMS. [00:17:15] So now what do I need to do to make it. Jilt customers would be better served by recapture. Well, I gotta add marketing emails, broadcast emails. And so we were really close on that one too. So we just bundled it all together. SMS was done. And so we just put these two and said, all right, July 1st is when we’re launching. [00:17:32] We finished that up inside of a week in June and then pushed it out the door. But yeah, focus was killing me there and that was totally my bad. [00:17:42]Matt: [00:17:42] Back to, I guess, the, the luck surface area. And you hinted about this before too, is, you have a plan. And we, everyone says good, create a plan, create a calendar, like have these automations in these processes and everything will be running smoothly. [00:17:56] And then suddenly it’s like, okay, well maybe this. [00:18:00] Yeah. And it blows up and you’re like, oh, maybe new feature. And then like you start building a new feature, then suddenly Jill shuts down and that’s just a matte, like now you have to be like, okay, I literally have to drop all this other stuff because this is just now a massive opportunity. [00:18:16] And, and this is not really a question, but more of a statement just to frame it. Like we went through this, we’re going through this at and I’m only bringing it up because you talked to Craig every week, but it’s like, we’re doing all of these things where new products, new features, new things are rolling out new enhancements, and then suddenly it’s. [00:18:36] There’s an opportunity to buy another company. Well, that’s pretty big deal. And like, now we do that. So it’s just like, there’s that? And then there’s right. Craig working in is working his butt off to raise money and he raises money for the company. And then it’s just like right back to the feature grindstone have finished the migration. [00:18:59] Now we’ve got this app that just launched literally yesterday. Yesterday. Yep. Monday. And now there’s just like right back to the feature grindstone and you’re like, wow. Like things move at a pace. That’s it’s exciting. But also, man, there’s no plan for this. There’s no playbook, there’s nothing, there’s nothing. [00:19:17] Dave: [00:19:17] There’s no question. Yeah, no. There’s, there’s a certain chaotic insanity to the whole entrepreneur journey. And in some ways you can do all the planning you want, but no plan survives first contact with the customer. And in many cases, no plan survives first contact. Random events that happen out in the real world, acquiring companies, getting funding, Jilt shutdowns, all of these things, just things happen. [00:19:47] And the speed at which you can react to something is definitely whether your business lives or dies in these events. And it definitely is also whether the business grows or fails in these times as well. Those that were not able to. Advantage of the dynamic nature of the e-commerce, if they weren’t pivoting hard during their vertical, like if you were in the travel vertical during COVID shutdown, people were just pounding on you with a sledgehammer into the ground, like six feet deep. [00:20:16] They didn’t stop, but if you were in like like a lounge wear sweat pants, hoodies, things like that, you couldn’t keep the stuff inside. Your warehouse long enough to sell it. So, you had to be reactive to the act of circumstances there, or it kills your business and, that’s what Craig’s doing with Castillo’s and that’s what I’ve tried to do with [00:20:36] Matt: [00:20:36] recapture, for sure. [00:20:37] Yeah. I want to go back to talking about partnerships which will eventually segue into word PR into woo commerce versus Shopify. But before we get to that flaming ball of chaos, Navigating partnerships in WordPress. I’m interested to hear just your opinion on it. Sometimes. I think, especially for somebody like you with a product that could [00:21:00] really latch onto a hosting company, those are very tricky waters to now. [00:21:04]I know I used to work at Pagely and it was just like, man, like people wouldn’t even say WP engine around me. Like it wasn’t like, [00:21:13] Dave: [00:21:13] like we don’t talk about that. No. Yeah. [00:21:16] Matt: [00:21:16] It wasn’t on any of those podcasts where there were other web hosts. Like, it is a very, I feel like in the hosting world, maybe it’s getting a little bit better that it was like, you gotta be in a camp and that’s the camp you’re in and there’s isolation there. [00:21:28]Any thoughts around navigating. And also just like critical feedback on products and services in the WordPress space. I feel like doesn’t exist in the normal zeitgeists like, I’m looking at my Sony camera right now. And like, if you went online to YouTube and you looked at, or a forum and you went to Sony versus Panasonic and there would be like great debate. [00:21:54] Like critical. Like, but every, at the end of the day, everybody’s fine about the two companies. But I feel like in the WordPress space, you don’t get that like damn EDD for doing this. And this is why I’m woo commerce. I don’t have the right phrase for it, but I feel like that partnership slash criticism in the WordPress space doesn’t exist. [00:22:14] Maybe. We’re all too friendly with each other. Can I say that like, we’re all friendly? I dunno, it’s just a weird thing. Like I feel like if you walk down the hall. And talked about your favorite brand of anything else. There could be clear debate, clear, concise, love it, hate it. I could go without it, but in the WordPress space that doesn’t exist. [00:22:33] Am I making sense with that? Like, do you feel that thing in the air, like I do. I, I [00:22:37] Dave: [00:22:37] totally hear what you’re saying on that one and I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, there’s, there’s definitely this weird space where it seems like. You can talk about one hosting company, but you can never say hosting company a versus B, right. [00:22:50] Or if you do like that discussion gets shut down real fast. And I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but I’ve seen it on chats. And just over the years on blog posts, like it’s very rare that somebody sits down and truly compares one to the other. Head to head and say, look, if you really like these things, this hosting company makes a lot of sense. [00:23:11] And if you like these things, then this other hosting company is a better fit for you. But yeah. So, you were talking about navigating partnerships. I think it’s kind of the same thing. Like as soon as you declare allegiance to one. It’s almost like the others kind of look at you with a little side eye and with a little bit of stink-eye on top of it. [00:23:32] And they’re like, well, you’ve already got them in your camp, so we can’t be in your camp at the same time. I think that goes to the detriment of all WordPress users. Like there’s nothing that says you can’t be friendly and competitive in the same thing. And I think when you say that they’re overly friendly, I wouldn’t characterize it like that. [00:23:55] I would characterize it. Yeah. Unwilling to criticize in general, it’s something about the [00:24:00] community. I don’t know what it is. If they are looking not to drum up drama and they feel like that’s going to create unnecessary drama or unhelpful drama, it probably could. I definitely could see that that could get into some real nasty debates that just degenerate into ad hominem attacks. [00:24:16] And, you suck because you picked oh, well, okay. Yeah. Back off, man. That’s it. That’s that’s not necessary. So yeah, I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve felt that and it’s weird, but the partnership thing. [00:24:31] Matt: [00:24:31] Because it’s farther back now. Like, I’ll say, well, you can do, you can define it. Is it a, is it a partnership with nexus? [00:24:38] And if so, like, do you feel like one, maybe you can’t because you’ve signed something or two, like, do you feel like, ah, man, it’s gonna be a little bit harder for me to knock on the door, WP engine to do this because they see me over here with nexus and Chris. So like that kind of friction that you think that holds you back. [00:24:55] Dave: [00:24:55] It doesn’t hold me back. Let me say that. Okay. To sign because like the stuff that I set up with nexus, it wasn’t exclusive anyway. And it was very friendly. Like, look, I’ve got this thing, your customers can use this thing. You got this offering and it makes it more valuable to your customers. If we say we put this on your dashboard here, like, it was very much like how can we make this a win-win thing and like help. [00:25:15] I will be happy to help create content to make your customers more successful. Like at the end of the day, That story should play well with any hosting company, right? If I can give you something that helps your customers be more successful and you help me bring more customers, and we’re both winning in this relationship, it shouldn’t matter how many people I’ve set that deal up with because your customer success should be the foremost thing at the top of your mind. [00:25:42] But, I don’t know from if I have this deal going on with nexus, does that make me. A bit of a hot potato with WP engine. I don’t really know. I noticed that before I had any deal in place of any hosting company at all, like just getting to the right person who was interested in what I had to say, and that saw the value of it. [00:26:02] Was kind of a non-trivial thing to navigate, especially when, folks are coming and going and coming and going. Even if you have the right contacts at these companies and the network relationships I’ve made gives me some ins to most of these hosting companies where I can say, Hey, I want to talk to so-and-so. [00:26:20] It still doesn’t necessarily mean that that company is interested in your offering or that they’re thinking about things the same way that you are. So. It kind of is another thing where it has to all line up. They’ve got to be thinking about this the same way that you’re thinking about this. And that’s where I’ve met. [00:26:39] The most resistance, I think is that, I say, Hey, are you thinking about a managed WooCommerce hosting? And I’m like, okay, well, we’re, we’re already missing this each other here. And I don’t, maybe it’s going to be a better fit in a year or two years or something like that. [00:26:53] So with nexus, they were very much like, yep. We’ve got that. Yep. We want this. All right. Let’s make it all happen. [00:27:00] With a little bit of persistence. It’s so. [00:27:02] Matt: [00:27:02] It almost, and really almost makes you appreciate like a bigger business. Right. You kind of have an appreciation for it. And, and again, I’ll frame that is when you look at somebody like Austin, like SIADH from awesome motive. [00:27:16] Right. And you see. Well, the, the sheer size, the competency of business and you have a relationship there because that’s where you sold the plugins to. Right? So you kind of see there’s a trust there. And then you can kind of make sense, because if you’re just solo developer, Dave knocking on the door of, big web hosting conglomerate. [00:27:38]They’re going to look at you and be like, well, man, we can’t, this is way too much of a risk to just take your software, slapping it in front of 30,000 customers potentially. And we are just going to trust you. You start to kind of appreciate, okay. The bigger businesses can kind of win. There’s more sustainability, there’s better trust. [00:27:56]There’s just more invested in the whole thing. And as a small business owner, like you kind of get it once you start going through the throws of, of navigating those, I dunno, corporate waters, enterprise waters whatever you want to call it. Kind of appreciate a little bit more, at least I do anyway. [00:28:10] Yeah, [00:28:11] Dave: [00:28:11] no, I would agree with that. And it’s interesting. These larger companies. Because they’re so big, like, it’s the difference between moving like a cheetah and moving like an elephant. You’re the small start-ups. So you can navigate pretty quickly make the fast sprints and turn quickly. They’re kind of plotting along in a very straight direction and they’re not going to change their direction very quickly. [00:28:34] So it takes them awhile to get going in a direction. And then once they’re going in that direction, it takes them a while to change directions. And the bigger the company gets, the bigger the elephant gets, right? Yeah. So by bringing in small companies, I think a lot of them want to increase their agility in that sense. [00:28:53] But of course, there’s that whole trust aspect. Like we know you’re smaller than us, but are you big enough that you can handle what we hand the hand over to you? And if that trust isn’t there, then yeah. That’s, that’s all gone. So again, this is part of the networking aspect. If you can have that relationship with another person and that they get to know your business and they’re like, oh yeah, you’ve been around for awhile. [00:29:13] Oh, look, you’ve got some customers. Oh, look, you served a lot of customers. Oh, you’ve done a pretty decent volume. Hey, maybe you not, might not be a fly by night. Business and we might be able to trust you like that. Trust isn’t something that just happens overnight. Right? You got to build it slowly over years. [00:29:28] Matt: [00:29:28] Yeah. Shopify versus a woo commerce when we chatted. Yeah. Forget [00:29:33] Dave: [00:29:33] it. We’re done. Now. I have a lot to say about this. Go ahead. [00:29:37] Matt: [00:29:37] We chatted last time. I think one of the things now, look, I have only set up a handful of Shopify. Generally out of just helping some friends and some local entrepreneurs in my area do it. [00:29:47]I think one of the things I’ll try to make this a quick question. Like one of the things I really appreciate from Shopify is. On the outside anyway, like their partnership program looks more mature. Like the way they work with [00:30:00] agencies looks more mature. And generally, I feel like they’re willing to work with the freelancers of the world versus. [00:30:07] WordPress and WooCommerce is kind of just like, see you later. Bye. Like, we’ll see it at the end of the road, by the way, we’ll sell $5,000 websites@wordpress.com. Right. And to me, that’s like, man, like I look at it Shopify and I’m like, yeah woo commerce, WordPress should have something like this. But I guess at the end of the day, it’s not all roses and rainbows from the outside because Shopify is going to. [00:30:35] I guess watch like a watchful eye of, what you’re doing as an, as an app, as an integrator, as an agency. And if they see something that’s super profitable, I guess they could just go. Yeah, we’ll just do that. We’ll just do that in house and just demolish your app, I guess in the matter of seconds is what they could do. [00:30:52] So again, sharp road to navigate. I like it from the outset. Like it’s an opportunity for a freelancer or a small agency to get more work. But curious on your thoughts on partnership program in generally working with a Shopify versus a WooCommerce. [00:31:09] Dave: [00:31:09] Yeah. So you wanted a short answer, right? Well, I [00:31:14] Matt: [00:31:14] was, I was trying to make a short question, [00:31:16] Dave: [00:31:16] which is okay, so I can have a long answer. [00:31:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let me talk about the platforms first in general. So I think when you’re picking Shopify versus woo, there’s a lot of things that go into that decision in general, that should make you, focus on what are the strengths of each of those platforms. So with Shopify very easy to get started, low tech threshold, to understand there’s lots of stuff that you can do without being a full stack developer. [00:31:47] Integrate apps and just basically get a store up and running. So if you aren’t sure, like you’re doing it drop shipping or it’s a new product and you’re trying to find product market fit or product audience bit or whatever it is. I think Shopify gets you up and running quicker to something that’s pretty polished that comes at a y’all are costs. [00:32:10] So, the hosting that Shopify, the apps that you’re adding on and all of that, but. That can be managed and I think it’s simplifies things and gets you going pretty well to where you want be. With that said, once you reach a certain point and you’re like, now I want my store to do this. And I want my checkout to have this in it. [00:32:32] And I want to use these payment methods, but not these other ones. And I also want this post purchase, checkout flow to be going on. And I want these kind of abandoned cart emails, and I want this, and I want that like for somebody who knows exactly what they want, Shopify can be incredibly expensive and very frustrating because it has been traditionally difficult to cut it. [00:32:53] So, this is where Woo’s strength comes to play. In my opinion, is that, if you’re on the right hosting provider [00:33:00] and you have a good agency that you can work with, that knows what they’re doing with Boone. These are out there. You can do a nice build and you can customize the hell out of it. [00:33:08] Yeah. And get exactly what you want. And if you’ve got a good developer on Wu, you can make it run as fast or faster than a Shopify store. So performance, isn’t an issue necessarily if you’ve done the right things and you’ve done your homework. And, there are plenty of smart wound stores that do that. [00:33:25] The downside to that, of course is complexity. And you got to have a higher threshold of technical knowledge either for yourself or a team to put that together. And, you’ve got to find the right agencies and the right developers. And if you’re talking about the energy and the Wu space and the energy. [00:33:43] Shopify space. They’re pretty different. And there’s a lot of energy in Shopify and it’s hard to ignore that and there’s energy and Wu too, but to like sort out the wheat from the chaff is a little more challenging because those really good Wu developers aren’t necessarily out there trumpeting themselves, talking about how great their agency is. [00:34:04] I can tell you the top five shops. Development agencies right off the top of my head because of what I see on Twitter, because of what I see in their blogs and just general social media activity, I would have a harder time doing that for woo commerce based on those factors. I know a few of them, but they’re harder to pick out. [00:34:21] Matt: [00:34:21] Right. So do you think that’s because Shopify helps prop those agencies up to part of their marketing and sales? [00:34:28] Dave: [00:34:28] Yes. So WooCommerce as a platform, doesn’t do enough for partners and agencies, not the way that Shopify does, like here at Shopify at unite announced that they were abolishing the 20% at a revenue share on all of their partner apps up to your first million dollars a year. [00:34:49] So basically it’s like everybody on the platform got a 25% raise, including recapture, which I was thrilled about. WooCommerce. If you want to go to their store, there was this discussion in post status that I was contributing to. If you are exclusive to the woo commerce store, 40% revenue share. If you’re non-exclusive it’s 60%. [00:35:09]I understand why WooCommerce didn’t want. To just let every person possible onto the platform and turn it into the repo, like the repo turned out to, it’s kind of a, we’ll call it a mixed bag. I think that’s the, the most politically correct way I could say it. Yeah. There’s a lot of garbage out there and there’s a lot of good stuff and it does take some time to sort through it and figure out, I think they were trying to curate the woo commerce store experience to be a little higher quality than that. [00:35:41] But I think they went about it wrong. And it’s [00:35:43] Matt: [00:35:43] been it’s 60% to automatic [00:35:45] Dave: [00:35:45] or 60, 60% to automatic. Yes. Wow. Which is, like, come on really. You’re taking more than half of my business. How am I supposed to be profitable at that point? It’s not this isn’t a charity to you. So these numbers are just [00:36:00] wrong in my, like, they don’t encourage [00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] catches a lot of flack for 30%, right? [00:36:05]Dave: [00:36:05] Come on, apple, apple at 30 bucks percent is considered untenable and you all at WooCommerce that are doing 40 and 60%. Come on, give me a break. That’s why my plugins are never going to be on the WooCommerce repository. I know I’m not alone in this. So, there are some plugins that are there, but guess what? [00:36:23] They’re all free. 40% of zero is still zero. So you’re good. They’re, they’re asking for me to share my revenue 60% a month. You just killed my profitability to the point where I can’t run my business anymore. So it’s that sort of mentality. That I think is hurting the Wu commerce ecosystem. Like there isn’t an agency support program. [00:36:44] There isn’t a big conference every year. That has the energy of Shopify unite. There isn’t a partner program that really nurtures everybody along. Like with Shopify partners. Like you sign up, you’re getting an email a day for like 30 days telling you here’s some partner tips. Here’s this development thing. [00:37:01] Here’s this resource. Here’s this? Here’s this here’s this guess how many times we got from WooCommerce? Zero. Yeah. Yeah. I, it they’re very different ecosystems and I think it’s to the detriment of WooCommerce, that they are not putting more energy into that, that piece of it, because that is a big part of why Shopify has been successful. [00:37:23] Matt: [00:37:23] Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. And again, I have very little experience from the Shopify side. I just know from what I don’t receive from support from WordPress and seeing what everything else is happening. And I guess look at when you. Zoom out and take a look at the sheer size of WordPress compared to Shopify just I’m talking like installed platform based like that kind of thing. [00:37:46] Yeah. The, the, the play for WordPress and automatic is when it comes to open source. How are you going to monetize it? It has to be done through like that trust factor. So it’s open source. It’s super flexible. It’s the same message. Automatic and you and I can go out and tell a customer and they’ll just win by having the most trusted plugin, a jet pack or a premium ad-ons from woocommerce.com or something like that. [00:38:17] And they’ll win. On that trust level where Shopify, you’re just going to go there and spend money. Like you’re choosing that platform. So you’re you, you’ve made the decision to go there and they’re telling you, the whole platform is trusted with WordPress it’s. Hey, it’s great. It’s open source. Do whatever you want. [00:38:34]But by the way, Jetpack is the most trusted way to secure and manage your site. And that also comes with whatever WooCommerce add ons that you buy for those bundles that they have for like 2 99, 3 99 or whatever. And their argument will be you trust it because it comes from ashore. You can go get Dave’s go ahead and get Dave’s. [00:38:53] But you know, you’re going to trust us better because we’re the, the company behind it kind of thing. So I can’t fault them [00:39:00] for it. It’s just, one of those things. So many people have pushed towards jet pack or excuse me, to WooCommerce and WordPress because they love the software and there’s no, there’s that love doesn’t come back to us. [00:39:15] What are we going to do? [00:39:16] Dave: [00:39:16] Nothing we can do. There’s nothing we can do, unfortunately. And the other thing. I, I don’t like, is that w well, so to contrast this, let me say, oh, Shopify does this. So Shopify does do acquisitions on things, but not like, not at the same level that I’ve seen automatic do it, where they pull in things like mail poet, right. [00:39:35] Or there pull all this stuff in and turn it into Jetpack. Like Shopify is not doing that. They build stuff and they’ll build it to a level like, there was a year, I think it was like the first unite I went to and it was me. Two years after I’d acquired recapture and they released the abandoned cart emails. [00:39:52] And those that knew me at the conference were like, so how do you feel about abandoned cart emails on Shopify now is like, I feel okay about it because they’re just, they’re 60% solution and I’m a hundred percent solution. And I can tell you like all the shortcomings, it’s great for people getting started out and it gives you those tools to get going and get your store off the ground. [00:40:14] It’s never serious enough to like take you to the next level. So it’ll get you to like the 5,000 a month rate. But after that, it’s going to break down pretty quickly. Cause you’re just not doing as good of a job as you could be with other apps that are more professional. And I’ve seen this a little bit in big commerce, too, where they build in these features and then know they’re okay, but they’re not great. [00:40:35] And you build your store up to a certain level and then you get these other things and you use them instead. I don’t see that with WooCommerce. They’re trying to pull in everything and say, okay, we’re going to be really good at email. We’ve got mail poet now, but are you really the best at email? Because you got all these other things you’re doing too. [00:40:54] And you’ve got this team, that’s doing mail poet, and I don’t want them to fault the male poet folks. They’re a great plugin and they do a lot. It’s just, your priorities are going to be driven by the platform, not the customers that are using it. So. Is that going to make it the best it could possibly be and truly drive be driven by the needs of the customers on the platform, as opposed to the benevolent dictator for [00:41:18] Matt: [00:41:18] life. [00:41:19] Yeah. What’s next from, is there a next platform play for you to integrate with? I think I was looking at another W3C techs report the other day and it for specifically for, e-commerce and. I would have to go back and dig this report out. Maybe, I saw woo commerce and in the Squarespace, e-commerce almost like neck and neck. [00:41:41] Is that true? Is there square? I was like, suddenly like what Squarespace e-commerce is this big and even realize it is that like an area you’re going into or another platform? That’s interesting. [00:41:50]Dave: [00:41:50] We’ve, I’ve taken a quick look at Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, all kind of in the same breath. [00:41:57]There is definitely a. [00:42:00] We’ll call it an economic shift on this platform where it is. It is aiming for a tier of store that doesn’t want to pay as much as you get in Shopify, or you want to get in Wu. And it’s difficult for me to convince a customer who’s paying $4 a month for their e-commerce website to pay 29 for mine. [00:42:23] And I know this because of how the pricing worked in Shopify, like the base level in Shopify as 29. And the fact that I aligned with that. It makes it easier for me to sell my product because they’ve already made that mental commitment for 29. They’re getting another 29. Isn’t that bad. But when you’re at four and you jumped to 29, that’s too big and that’s not a, that’s not a battle I want to fight. [00:42:45] That’s not a set of customers that I think are easy to deal with in that regard. So, I’ve looked at other platforms where we can head up markets. So our other e-commerce spaces. So things like Salesforce, cloud commerce. Things like that, but it’s a little trickier to get into that because you kind of need to know some stores to have the testability. [00:43:09] Cause it’s not like you’re just downloading this, installing it and testing it out. You kind of have to work in tandem with somebody else. So, I I’ve got some plans. We’re kind of cooking that up right now. I don’t see, I’m keeping an eye on Squarespace and Wix and Weebly. And if they start moving up market. [00:43:25] Mid tiers, which is quite possible. They could, then it would make a lot of sense to integrate because there’s going to be a large customer base there, but right now it doesn’t look economically viable. Yeah, yeah. [00:43:37] Matt: [00:43:37] Yeah. That makes, that makes total sense. I guess that’s probably why I was so shocked at the footprint of the Squarespace. [00:43:42] Cause I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Because then you’re like, well, what are these people selling? They’re really seriously. Probably something like photo prints, and a couple of handmade things. That’s probably about it, certainly not an apparel line or kayaks, which you’ll probably find on Shopify, right? [00:44:00] People who are manufacturing, things, stuff like that. Very cool. Dave wrote ball, recapture.io. Congrats on being a free man than the last time I talked to you running the business day to day. Where else can folks find you? What else can they look forward to from. [00:44:15] Dave: [00:44:15] Well, we just did our big release the 1st of July for SMS card abandonment and order notifications on recapture. [00:44:23] So if you’ve been itching to try that out or see what that’s like, come to recapture.io and check that out. We also have broadcast emails out after Jill announced their shutdown, we had to make sure that was working to be able to seamlessly migrate folks over. So if you’re. A former Jilt customer and you’re looking for a place to land. [00:44:41] We’d love to talk to you at recapture and see if we can make things work for you. If somebody is looking to get a hold of me, you can find me on Twitter at Dave. [00:44:51] Matt: [00:44:51] I heard you’re actually making phone calls too. Right? You’re calling people up, doing it the old fashioned way [00:45:00] [00:45:00] Dave: [00:45:00] because your cell phone fashioned way, I would like, knock on their doors and press the flashes as it were, but that’s not happening. [00:45:08] Matt: [00:45:08] Everyone else. Matt report.com maryport.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Don’t forget to tune in to your weekly dose of five minute WordPress news every week@thewpminute.com. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you. In the next episode.

covid-19 god spotify head trust business social pr talk zoom navigating development podcasting sony spending recording advantage castro hosting zen wordpress rogue salesforce shopify courses initial capture generally sms mid castillo woo automatic sas integrate part time wu squarespace php edd panasonic wix gutenberg jetpacks unwilling wp world domination woocommerce mrr recapture w3c weebly entails joe casabona siadh matt report pagely dave rodenbaugh jilt pressnomics

Mindful School Marketing: Finding a great podcast co-host

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2021 32:11

Forming a successful partnership in business might be the most powerful, yet, most challenging things to do right. This goes beyond simply linking to each others business or handing over the occasional customer referral. I’m talking about two (or more) partners both handling responsibilities and working towards a shared goal for the overall mission. Tara Claeys, founder of Design TLC, has a certain knack for this stuff. She co-hosted the WordPress podcast Hallway Tracks along side Liam Dempsey and is now laying down the roots with a new partner in podcasting, Aubrey Bursch. So I think it goes a little something like this: Aubrey invests her knowledge and experience with Easy School Marketing into the podcast content, while Tara flexes her strengths in design, compassion and years of podcast experience. Together they host Mindful School Marketing, The Go-To Podcast for Independent School Professionals. Transcription Tara Mindful School Marketing Matt Report + 2 [00:00:00] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by mal care. Learn more about Malik here at Dot com. You’ve heard me talk about mal care before, but they’re back with some interesting updates. Not only are they the WordPress plugin with instant WordPress malware removal. Well, let me read some of these features. [00:00:15] Deep malware scanning. They know about malware that other plugins don’t. Number two, that one click malware removal process makes it super easy to remove from your WordPress website and number three, a new feature called auto bot ultra defense system. Okay. I made that ultra defense system part up, but get this, it automatically blocks the bots hitting your website. [00:00:35]So, not only does that protect your website, but in the long run, it’ll improve speed of your site from not letting those bots through the doors. Check out mal care at care.com that’s mal care.com. I don’t want to be a malware specialist. You don’t either check out mal. care.com. thanks for supporting the show [00:00:56]Matt: [00:00:56] episode of the Matt report is brought to you by search WP. Find search wp@searchwp.com. Let’s talk about the power of their metrics. Add on for a moment. Since I redesigned the Matt report website, I put search front and center on my homepage. Why search WP metrics metrics. Give me the inside data to what visitors on my site are looking for. [00:01:18] I love the graphs and the actionable advice that it provides me. I can make informed decisions to create new content or optimize existing content that my audience is searching for. Remember when Google gave you all of that search data? Yeah, it was great. Back then, way back then when they gave it to us, they don’t give it to us anymore. [00:01:36] Put on-site search front and center for your visitors. Get that data back. Get searched wp@searchwp.com along with their metrics. Add on that search wp.com. Thanks for supporting the show. [00:01:49] Forming a successful partnership in business might be the most powerful, yet most challenging things to do. Right. That’s probably an understatement of the year. This goes beyond simply linking to each other’s businesses or handing over the occasional customer referral. I’m talking about two or more partners, both handling responsibilities and working towards a shared goal for the overall mission. [00:02:10] Tara clays, founder of design TLC has a certain knack for this stuff. She co-hosted the WordPress podcast hallway tracks alongside Liam Dempsey, and is now laying down roots with a new partner in podcasting, Aubrey Birch. So I think it goes a little, something like this. Aubrey invests her knowledge and experience with easy school marketing into the podcast content while Tara flexes her strengths and design compassion, and years of podcast experience. Together. They host mindful school marketing, the go-to podcast for independent school professionals. [00:02:40]You’re listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter at maryport.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts better yet. Please share this episode on social media. We’d love more listeners around here. [00:02:56] Okay. Let’s talk to tara and aubrey and why they started this [00:03:00] crazy podcasting thing that they [00:03:02] Tara: [00:03:02] First of all. Thanks for that. Nice mention and hallway chats is really a labor of love that Liam Dempsey and I did for three years. And I think that was it a great experience for us and introduced me to podcasting and it was a complete community donation, there was no business development involved with it at all. [00:03:21] And so, and we loved it and I continue to love it. But As time went on during that three-year period of time, I started niching down my own WordPress agency to do work for mainly schools and nonprofits. And as part of that process reached out and met other people in the school, community, marketing community, Adria among them. [00:03:38] And she and I have been in a mastermind for over a year now. And so we struck up a good friendship and also collaboration, our services sort of overlap. And so the long answer is that we in that. In that relationship that we built as hallway chats was sort of winding down. I really didn’t even miss a beat before reaching out and seeing if Abby would like to do a podcast that that was directed toward our, our common target audience, but also that we could have fun doing as well. [00:04:12]So there is a business development aspect of this for us, as well as a community aspect as well. [00:04:18]Matt: [00:04:18] The, yeah, you’ve obviously have a knack for finding. [00:04:25] Great co-hosts, which is not an easy feat in the podcasting world. It’s one that I have failed miserably at for about nine years as a podcast. It’s like just trying to find somebody who just wants to talk to me for an hour every week. What’s wrong with that. [00:04:39] Shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s very difficult. Aubrey, I’m going to pass the question over to you. Is this your first time into podcasting? And if so, how did you feel [00:04:49] joining [00:04:50] Aubrey: [00:04:50] And it’s been a blast. And I am so thankful every day that Tara actually asked me to do a podcast with her because I was thinking around February, 2020, I was like, I should launch it. Podcast. And I’m so glad I didn’t act on that first impulse because Tara’s kind of taken me under her wing and really like showed me everything that goes into, preparation for a podcast, execution, everything. [00:05:15] And it’s just been a great learning process for me. And also Tara? [00:05:19] is one of the most generous, amazing. Like solid people you’re you’ve ever met. I, as you probably know, Matt. And so we just kind of hit it off in terms of, understanding each episode and what our flow was with the episode. [00:05:34] And so we jumped right in and she’s been just such a great guide and such a great co-host. I couldn’t have asked for a better one and I’m so grateful for the opportunity for sure. [00:05:45]Matt: [00:05:45] I’m looking at the website right now. Mindful school marketing.com seven episodes in you probably have a couple others you haven’t finished and uploaded yet. Has there been one major surprise to you Audrey about this whole podcasting thing, [00:06:00] something more challenging or more exciting than you [00:06:03]Aubrey: [00:06:03] Well, I would say the challenging [00:06:04] thing is I guess when you have a co-host and it’s not a challenge, it’s more like putting together the pieces, right? Like we’ll be talking and we’ll be typing in the chat. Sometimes we’ll be like, oh, like, okay, this is conversation is going. Do you want to ask the next question? [00:06:17] Or should I, and so that I had never, I’ve never, Co-hosted or co interviewed anyone. So that was, I don’t want to say it was a challenge, but it was like a new experience. And just what was it challenging and rewarding? I would say this whole, just the people we meet, it’s just amazing, like the, the little hidden gems that they sprinkle throughout their conversation. [00:06:37] I just feel like, my bookshelf has grown tremendously because we always ask like a question about like, what’s your favorite book? Or like, what book would you Recommend for the high school curriculum or something like that. And we are getting some great books in there and like, there’s, what is it? [00:06:52] The anglers fly fishing, person we add on. That’s just fantastic stuff. Things come up like really good conversations that, in this busy life that we live, it’s so rare to kind of dive deep in like center and focus on, on someone for like 30 or 40 minutes. So it’s been fantastic. [00:07:08]Matt: [00:07:08] I feel like just picture like a smoke-filled bar and me and Tara, just sitting at the bar with our whiskies going, oh, she’s got, oh, that’s what she thinks right now until, until we’re on like episode 20. And, and then Arby’s. The whole demeanor changes about podcasting. This sucks. Why didn’t you tell me to do this, that’s exactly what we’ll hear in about three months, but Hey, everything’s great right now. [00:07:30] Tara, how much of your. Of doing the hallway chats and, and marketing and everything you’ve done up until this point in your career. Did you, how did you funnel into, I’m going to read the byline of the podcast right now, the go-to podcast for independent school professionals. [00:07:45] There’s no messing around. We know what this is about. How did you come to this and what are some tips for people who are struggling to get a premise [00:07:54] Tara: [00:07:54] well, I think there are a [00:07:55] couple of things. Aubrey has a great personality. She’s got so much energy that I think it’s really easy to work with her and to have a team that way. So thinking about going to your question about, choosing co-hosts and Liam and I had a similar kind of, we each covered the basis, I think. [00:08:10] For this podcast, positioning ourselves that way. One of the things that we thought about a lot was the fact that there were really no other women in this space doing a podcast. And that a lot of the people that, that do these jobs, these marketing jobs within schools, private schools, independent schools are women. [00:08:28]So we saw an opportunity there to bring a sensibility that we have as moms, as women entrepreneurs, as women in general too. Should this space. So I think that sets us apart from there. Aren’t that many, to be honest, like enrollment related podcasts for schools like this. So, there was an opportunity there, but I think what we wanted to do was to, to feed our own sensibility that we learned about each other during the, our mastermind. [00:08:56]As we’ve gotten to know each other, is that. We’re both super [00:09:00] interested in. Self-improvement like, we both love all the books about that. Oh, we’re we just are. Really can’t get enough of that kind of thinking , and to have that mindset and apply it to any job, you can, this podcast could be the, anything mindful school marketing podcast, really, because it is about, I there are specific things, certainly that we. [00:09:21] Talk about that are related to challenges that schools face, but in general, to do a good job at anything, you have to be mindful about it. And so it’s been really fun for us to talk to people who, who deal with that. People who work with different personality assessments and continuous learning and self-improvement type stuff. [00:09:43] And it also has helped us. I think we identify. The roles that we play in this podcast partnership based on those types of personalities. So it’s a really, well-rounded I think conversation that we have in general on the podcast. And that’s what I think makes it a go-to podcast is that it’s not one, it’s not one week after another, about Facebook ads and marketing funnels and stuff like that. [00:10:05] It’s it really, we touch on those things, but we also bring into it lifestyle stuff, which is really [00:10:10] great. I think. [00:10:12] Matt: [00:10:12] is this a fair statement? In the WordPress space? And RB, I’m not sure how much you know about WordPress podcasts, but there are many, there are many, sometimes too many, sometimes not enough, but there’s like probably 20, at least reoccurring WordPress podcasts and as exciting and as large as the WordPress market is. [00:10:34]Folks like Tara and I, there’s very few of us who actually care so much about the inside baseball of WordPress to do a podcast. And that is to say that a lot of folks show up on Tara’s old podcast, my podcast, other podcasts, it’s the same person doing the same, routine and there’s nothing wrong with it. [00:10:51] It’s just that the listener, the audience says. I heard her story on this other podcast. I’ll skip this episode or I heard his thing over there. I’m going to skip this episode. Do you feel a little bit of that? Not to put words in your mouth, Tara, this is a long way of getting it. Do you feel like that’s alleviated when you’re doing a podcast like this? [00:11:10] Because it’s so concrete, it’s so precise versus the [00:11:14] hallway chats. [00:11:14]Tara: [00:11:14] I would say what hallway chats was designed to absolutely. Get around that. So we talked to people who didn’t share their story before in this case, I think because we’re not talking to people who are only in that space. We the people who are listening to our show, maybe haven’t heard that story before, because they’re not familiar with that person. [00:11:35] So, in WordPress, there are the WordPress people who, people, the stories who we’ve heard and who are super smart and have great things to share on podcasts. But if you brought in somebody from Squarespace or, some other kind of web world, they would. They may be famous in their world or popular or well-known, but they’re coming into a new environment. [00:11:55] So I kind of see that. I don’t know ABI [00:11:57] if you agree, but we’re not just talking to [00:11:59] people in the [00:11:59] school [00:12:00] [00:11:59] Aubrey: [00:11:59] yeah, I would absolutely agree. I think that’s what makes it really interesting. And I think valuable for people listening are independent school market because they are used to hearing from the same people over and over in the space and by Making our podcast about so much more than just, delivering the hardcore marketing behind and for independent schools, I think that’s really opened the doors to some very interesting conversations and some unique guests that our audience would not hear from [00:12:27] otherwise. [00:12:28]Matt: [00:12:28] Aubrey on the marketing side, pass the questions back to you on the marketing side. Is there anything that you’re doing on a. Or how you think or how you approach or how you edit the show on either a per episode base or just podcasts from a 50,000 foot view. Anything you’re doing specifically on marketing to make sure that I hate to say the word return on investment, because a lot of people in the podcasting space get caught up in that three letter acronym, but is there anything you’re doing hyper-specific on the marketing side to say every episode that goes out is a chance for us [00:12:59] to get [00:13:00]Aubrey: [00:13:00] And please tear, add to this. I would say it’s a lot about brand awareness for us at this point. And we’ve strategically made sure that? we’re sending to an email list. We share it on our email lists. We have our guests share the podcast on their platforms. We use it at least I use it as an entry way also to other speaking engagements too, because it adds to your credibility in the space. [00:13:22] Immediately. Oh, you have a podcast. It’s a great conversation starter too. So, we’ve definitely utilized obviously the social platforms to promote it. And then some of our colleagues have shared it on their lists too, which they have quite large lists. So it’s really been quite easy. I would say to promote at this point just naturally using using the resources we already have. [00:13:44]Matt: [00:13:44] Yeah, my full-time job is at a podcast hosting company and fielding questions from, beginner, podcasters and veteran podcasters alike. And a lot of the questions are around monetization advertisement, sponsorship. How many downloads do I need before Coca-Cola knocks on the door and says, we want to sponsor your podcast. [00:14:01] It’s like, well, get in line with the rest of us. So you’re either going to do direct sales or you’re going to find a creative way to do it. What people often forget is the relationships that you build in the random opportunities that show up because you have a podcast. I can’t even account how many dollars that has added up for me over, eight or nine years as a podcast, or it’s tremendous, very hard to measure, very hard to rely on, but it happens. [00:14:31] It’s almost like if you. Yeah. Like you can do a podcast and nobody can listen, but they just know you do a podcast. And they’re like, oh yes, they’re putting in the work over there. But if you ever stopped doing a podcast, they’d be like, oh, they gave up, oh, why do they give up? Just the mere fact that you do a podcast heightens your investment in. [00:14:50] Tara: [00:14:50] Yeah, that’s an interesting point. Actually, when you say that I’m thinking about it because our podcast is relatively new. We launched with four episodes and we’ve had, about, we’re doing two per month. So yeah. When we [00:15:00] look at the download numbers, it, they’re not huge at this point. And so if you focus only on the download numbers, I think then you’re, it’s going to be harder to translate that to that return on investment. [00:15:11] But what you’ve described, what ABI was talking about, just the, the authority that it brings to each of us and to us as a team is I think not measurable, but really, really helpful. And that’s probably right now at this phase in our. Podcasting career is, is the key. And then once that grows and then the downloads, I think will follow because people will know more about us. [00:15:33] So, and we haven’t delved into sponsorship yet, but that’s on our list. That’s something I don’t have experience with because we didn’t do that on holiday chat. So [00:15:40] I’ll be reaching out to you, Matt, for help when we get to that point. [00:15:44] Matt: [00:15:44] Yeah, well, this is an, it’s an interesting segue, cause I literally have your sponsorship page in front of me. Cause I wanted to talk about this. It’s sponsored by of course the both of you. So you have easy school marketing and design TLC, but this is very interesting because I’m interested to know how you balance and I know you. [00:16:01] I know you’re obviously both not shouldering to have the best call to action up in front of everybody every time. Like it’s my turn this week, or maybe you do a interested to learn like design TLC has a special offer. Take our free website test, right? So you can click and get that. Or easy school marketing has joined our free virtual monthly school leaders, power hour meetups, two vastly different sort of call to actions and values split amongst two. [00:16:26] Co-hosts kind of interesting. Have you seen some good. Return on. I know it’s young, still seven episodes in, but it’s an interesting way to think about it. How did you think about it? And will you go to the [00:16:38] paid sponsorships? [00:16:39] Tara: [00:16:39] Do you want me to answer that Aubrey? So I built the website and we did is, did a sponsorship page. And so it was really, to be completely blunt, it was the natural way to put content on that page was to have us each put our own information because right now, yes, we are funding it and producing it. [00:16:55] And so we are the sponsors of it. We’re not driving traffic to that page. I think. Once we have a little bit more time and downloads under our belt, then the plan is to go to some authoritative companies within the school marketing space and, and, and share some sponsorship package ideas with them. But we are not quite there yet. [00:17:19] And I think That’s something that we need to think about and plan, I always had this issue with, with hallway chats or issue concern. I want to make sure that any sponsorships, I see them also as endorsements. And so, I think you have to be particular about that. And especially in these times that you’re choosing companies that you feel good about having involved this year podcast. [00:17:43] So that’s, that’s a key element [00:17:44]Matt: [00:17:44] When I booked on your calendar, it was like three months out or something like that. You had, you have a pretty good pipeline already of shows. Do you feel like you’re already getting booked too far out ahead? [00:17:55] Aubrey: [00:17:55] Think we’re in the sweet spot [00:17:57] right now. The w w what we did was we [00:18:00] actually intentionally batched as many episodes as possible, and the first couple of months it was a whirlwind, but actually it was really good. And I think good practice for me being new to podcasting. To do that. [00:18:12]And we strategically set the episodes to go the more timely ones, obviously we’ll go before the ones that are more timeless. So I think we’re set and we’re set for the summer, which I think was key to both of us who are looking for work-life balance which we talk about on our show. So we’re living it too. [00:18:30]And then we have a funnel for potential guests that we want to have on. Moving forward into the fall, like, and we’ll start reaching out to them and then creating another batch wave. I think that’s key for us. My schedule is incredibly busy. I know Tara’s is due. So it’s, it’s really planning strategically and then making sure we have the right people in line next. [00:18:50]Matt: [00:18:50] Aubrey as the marketer in you, or does the marketer in you scream to say, look, I got all this content now. Like I can do clips. I can do Instagram posts. I can do top 10 episodes. Like there’s all these things I can do. Is that starting? Are you starting to get the itch for that already? As, as you start to plan and plot going into the fall [00:19:09] Aubrey: [00:19:09] I talk to my clients about all the time. I think we have to look at our bandwidth, and what’s realistic. So what can we do given the time and the energy and the resources that we currently have, and then figuring out strategically. Okay. Obviously I would love to do all those things, man. [00:19:24] I’m a creative by nature and I’m a marketer and terrible tell you I’ll throw a million ideas to Sunday, right? So it’s picking and choosing which ones to use and then, putting those into practice because we can all try to be perfectionist and try to create the perfect podcast plan with the top 10 list and everything like that. [00:19:43] But that’s, it’s just not. It’s not going to be executed well, and it’s either going to burn us out and then we’re going to lose the joy for what we’re doing. So I think that’s the key and that’s how the mindset I’m going into it with. And Tara, please feel free to chime in, but I think that’s really important. [00:20:00] It’s like we’re doing it and we love doing it. And so we want to keep looking, do we want to keep, keep loving doing it? And so, we’re, we have to just be strategic about where our time and energy goes and what, and how we’re going to market, how we’re going to market it. [00:20:14]Matt: [00:20:14] is there an inverse there where the, where. I remember when I, the reason why I started well, the podcasts that we’re talking on today was to try to find a way to grow my, at the time WordPress agency, that I was running day to day. And I use the episodes as leverage in, in sales, not. You’re not a known agency, didn’t have any real brands or logos in the portfolio of recognition. [00:20:37] So the only leverage I had was, Hey, check out these at the time, whatever 50 or 60 episodes, that was an iTunes. If you like what I’m talking about there, maybe we’ll, we should be pretty good for doing business. Have you seen it the other way around where you’re now leveraging this podcast for the business in, in specifically in sales opportunities for people to get to know you a little bit better? [00:20:57] Tara: [00:20:57] Yeah, I think we talked about before this whole [00:21:00] idea of authority and, our tagline is the go-to podcast and there’s a great book called be the go-to that I’ve been reading, as I explored diving into this, this vertical of schools and how to, how’d you approach that it’s a very, it’s a very small market, I think relative, relatively, so becoming known in it. [00:21:21] Requires putting your name out there and in a certain number of ways, speaking at conferences well, COVID, kind of has put the kibosh on that. And and so the podcast is a way. To build that authority. So I think I’m not sure if that’s answering your question, but I do an Abra does when, whenever we do presentations, we mentioned this podcast. [00:21:38] I mentioned it when I’m chatting with clients about about our services prospective clients. And then there are episodes also that have good pieces of information that I think are, are easy to share. As well with existing clients. And I will point them to this episode. This is a great tidbit that we heard about Facebook advertising, check it out, that type of thing. [00:21:59] So yeah, it’s, it’s multilevel something that will help our businesses grow. We hope right. And if not, we’re having fun and we’re sharing great information with people and meeting really cool people. So that’s, I think you have to have that perspective. We committed to a year of doing it and we’ll see what happens and, and [00:22:16] hopefully it’ll go on from there. [00:22:18]Matt: [00:22:18] Remember when you said you [00:22:19] Tara: [00:22:19] We did. Yeah. Each year, one at a time. [00:22:22] Well, like you said, you have to, like, if you can’t commit to a year, you’re you shouldn’t be doing it. So [00:22:27]Matt: [00:22:27] Let’s shift to the, to the business side of the businesses that, that you both run. And specifically in that, in the market of, let’s just say educate, and maybe I can’t bucket this in to this category, but education school, the school department, school systems. I remember when I sold a WordPress hosting for a company called Pagely primarily to higher education, like the sales process. Was like year and a half long, to just to get, Hey, we’ve got this idea. We want to switch hosting to a year and a half later, they finally made the switch. If I was lucky when I was selling websites at my agency, just local school systems, nothing major, but local school systems, same thing, huge long drawn out decision by committee process, I guess. [00:23:11] Rightfully so. Has COVID changed this at all for web and marketing, from what you both see in, in your respective spaces, are people moving a little bit faster or are they a little bit more open to being flexible or is it same thing? [00:23:24] Same day [00:23:25]Aubrey: [00:23:25] COVID change has changed many things in the educational space. Both public and private. And so. The clients that I work with, which are mostly private school heads of school for small and medium sized independent schools. It, I think this time period has, has opened their eyes to the necessity of marketing. [00:23:46]A lot of schools unlike businesses. Well, that’s not true. Some businesses are like this too, but haven’t really expanded their marketing dollars or marketing team. To meet the new needs of what marketing looks like [00:24:00] now. And with independent schools, what a lot of schools saw was that in spring 2020, They sell massive attrition. [00:24:06] And so there was a scrambling during that summer to really market hard. And then a lot of what happened was, some public schools went back virtual and so then the private school sector saw a swing in the opposite direction with enrollment. So I do think there’s, there’s been at least over the past two years, I’ve really seen schools more likely to embrace. [00:24:28] Marketing efforts. And to truly understand that they might have an admissions team of like two, but the marketing is like half a person. Who’s also the receptionist who does like 18 other things. Like they’re seeing the need to really grow, grow that and expand and use strategies that are not necessarily used traditionally in independent schools. [00:24:50]Tara: [00:24:50] Yeah, I would echo that and I work specifically on their websites, obviously. So, I’ve seen. I’ve seen people holding off and also refreshes and updates are tricky because all of the content that they have is from the past year, if they want to update their photos and stuff, all the kids have masks on. [00:25:08] And so how do you deal with that? You have to bring in people over the summer and do different Photo shoots and things like that. So I think schools are trying to balance the reality of the future with the present and the recent past in their communication strategy and in their messaging and their imagery and all of that type of thing too. [00:25:29] So, and, and because we work mostly with small private schools, it’s different than higher ed for sure. Way different. I’ve done a little bit with higher ed and yeah, that is a whole different ball game. One of the. One of the blessings. One of the things I love working with the organizations that I work with is that they are small. [00:25:47] So they actually can pivot really fast. And that really helps them during COVID because they were able to make really quick decisions. And they were the schools that were doing hybrid or doing in person. And so a lot of them had a really great year with enrollment because a lot of families wanted their kids in school. [00:26:04] it’s really makes it easier working with them because they can make those decisions. They don’t have to go through five levels, same way with a public school. Also, you have boards and, and, and just word of education and all of that to go through. So, so they’re nimble, which [00:26:17] is nice. [00:26:18]Matt: [00:26:18] I had some friends that I have young children. They’re not, my oldest will be going into kindergarten this year. But I had some friends that have their kids are older, but they’re in private school like elementary level private school. And they were in, they were in class, I think probably like 90%. [00:26:36] Throughout like this whole COVID thing. Whereas the flip side is like all my friends who have kids in private, in public schools, everybody was home losing their minds, trying to balance this and then the hybrid stuff. And that was, and the thing, luckily I avoided that I think going into the fall, I don’t think I’ll be dealing with that for like a kindergarten level. [00:26:58]But it’s amazing how things like [00:27:00] this. I don’t really have a question here. It’s more of just like a. Noticing this it’s amazing how COVID shook up things that you’d never expect till it, for it to unearth like, like private schools, right? You might all of a sudden find more private schools coming online. [00:27:16] Because of what just happened, where maybe it was reserved for high income, communities. Now you might have somebody like, Hey, it makes sense now to put my kids in private school, because it’s just a different level of service with air quotes in the air. If you’re not watching this, it’s amazing what COVID did to shake up all these different impact, these different industries, [00:27:36] education [00:27:37] Tara: [00:27:37] yeah, for sure. Yep. And also doing more online stuff too. I have some clients that do after-school programming and so they had to completely pivot to offer online learning, offer cooking classes, online, developing whole curriculum. In a totally different way than they were used to doing with videos and all that type of thing. [00:27:56] So pivoting has been a key word and in the past year, and it’s been, it’s been exciting to see some of these smaller businesses organizations accomplish that pretty smoothly. [00:28:08] Yeah. [00:28:10] Matt: [00:28:10] I assume you’re still using WordPress. Aubrey, are you a diehard WordPress [00:28:15] Aubrey: [00:28:15] but I always send all my WordPress questions to Tara. [00:28:18]That’s pretty much it. I my website platform is don’t. I feel like uttering, these words might, hate mail might come my way, but like right now, my platforms on Kajabi, just because I started building out online courses on the backend, but I am not selling Kajabi, nor am I. [00:28:34] Saying that’s your go-to WordPress is much more functional and you can do all sorts [00:28:38] of cool stuff with it. [00:28:41] Tara: [00:28:41] I’ve trained her very well. You can see. [00:28:43] Matt: [00:28:43] I was just about to say that sounds like Tara speaking right through her. [00:28:47] Tara: [00:28:47] Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:49] Matt: [00:28:49] so you haven’t, so you haven’t convinced Aubrey to switch to like lifter LMS and build all her [00:28:54] Tara: [00:28:54] no, her website’s great. And I think, I actually am looking into Kajabi a little bit just to understand what it does, because I think it is a good resource. WordPress is not for everybody and for everything. And I think we learned that more and more now. And so a lot of times. Third-party platforms that are built for a specific purpose, like membership or online courses. [00:29:14], it’s a lot easier. It’s a lot more user-friendly and they don’t have the maintenance to have to deal with. So yeah, I think that’s fine at WordPress is a great solution for the target audience that we serve. And there are a lot of small schools who use WordPress. There are some third-party CMS is out there that that do. [00:29:35] A really great job and they’re really, really expensive. So, some schools use Wix, some use Squarespace. Most of them use the third party system or WordPress. So there is, there is definitely a good opportunity there to, to help schools with [00:29:49] their WordPress websites. Yeah, [00:29:52] Matt: [00:29:52] it’s always interesting to see WordPress users, heads explode when they’re like somebody pays for a CMS. Well, yet, because it works and it [00:30:00] works well. And then that’s what they need at the end of the day. It’s, it’s, it’s amazing. I’ve been interviewing a lot more folks on no-code platforms, bubble web flow. [00:30:09] And there’s another one that’s escaping escaping me right now that is very popular, but that community loves the tools that just empower them to get the job done. And they’re happy to just give up that ownership side of the code to just [00:30:27] have it work and do the [00:30:29] thing that they’re paying for it to [00:30:30] Tara: [00:30:30] I just, yeah, I just talked to a PTA president this morning, whose website I’ve been managing for a while and they had a parent redesign it and. So the licenses are all out of, they’re not on the site anymore and I’m trying to manage it and it’s just kind of a headache. And when you have organizations like a PTA that you have transition in leadership, and then you have loss of information and continuity, something like WordPress. [00:30:54] If you don’t have a con a con. Continuous person managing it like an agency, then you can really be in trouble because all that information gets lost. Whereas if you put it on Squarespace or something like that, sorry to mention that. But I think Squarespace has a great, it serves a great need. You don’t have any of that. [00:31:11] It’s all there. It’s all. Or some or Kajabi or whatever. You don’t have any of that. Plugins to maintain and licenses to update and all that kind of stuff. So there definitely are use cases where WordPress is not the best solution. And I’m the first person to say that as much as I love [00:31:26] WordPress [00:31:26]Matt: [00:31:26] mindful school marketing.com mindful school marketing.com. Get the podcast where everywhere, right? What else? What else can people say? Thanks. Where else can people go to say thanks for joining us on the show today. [00:31:38]Tara: [00:31:38] I’m Tara clays on Twitter. I am a LinkedIn and design tlc.com [00:31:44] is [00:31:44] Aubrey: [00:31:44] Great. And I’m Audrey bursch@easyschoolmarketing.com. You can find me ABI Bursch at LinkedIn. That’s my platform of choice. [00:31:50]Matt: [00:31:50] Go subscribe to mindful school marketing on apple, Google, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts, leave them a review in iTunes. Build that up. And as soon as they have their pod chaser account, okay. Even leave them a review there. It’s going to be an amazing way to find and discover other podcasts, airport.com/subscribe. [00:32:08] Join the mailing list and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Mindful School Marketing: Finding a great podcast co-host

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2021 32:12

Forming a successful partnership in business might be the most powerful, yet, most challenging things to do right. This goes beyond simply linking to each others business or handing over the occasional customer referral. I'm talking about two (or more) partners both handling responsibilities and working towards a shared goal for the overall mission. Tara Claeys, founder of Design TLC, has a certain knack for this stuff. She co-hosted the WordPress podcast Hallway Tracks along side Liam Dempsey and is now laying down the roots with a new partner in podcasting, Aubrey Bursch. So I think it goes a little something like this: Aubrey invests her knowledge and experience with Easy School Marketing into the podcast content, while Tara flexes her strengths in design, compassion and years of podcast experience. Together they host Mindful School Marketing, The Go-To Podcast for Independent School Professionals. Transcription Tara Mindful School Marketing Matt Report + 2 [00:00:00] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by mal care. Learn more about Malik here at Dot com. You've heard me talk about mal care before, but they're back with some interesting updates. Not only are they the WordPress plugin with instant WordPress malware removal. Well, let me read some of these features. [00:00:15] Deep malware scanning. They know about malware that other plugins don't. Number two, that one click malware removal process makes it super easy to remove from your WordPress website and number three, a new feature called auto bot ultra defense system. Okay. I made that ultra defense system part up, but get this, it automatically blocks the bots hitting your website. [00:00:35]So, not only does that protect your website, but in the long run, it'll improve speed of your site from not letting those bots through the doors. Check out mal care at care.com that's mal care.com. I don't want to be a malware specialist. You don't either check out mal. care.com. thanks for supporting the show [00:00:56]Matt: [00:00:56] episode of the Matt report is brought to you by search WP. Find search wp@searchwp.com. Let's talk about the power of their metrics. Add on for a moment. Since I redesigned the Matt report website, I put search front and center on my homepage. Why search WP metrics metrics. Give me the inside data to what visitors on my site are looking for. [00:01:18] I love the graphs and the actionable advice that it provides me. I can make informed decisions to create new content or optimize existing content that my audience is searching for. Remember when Google gave you all of that search data? Yeah, it was great. Back then, way back then when they gave it to us, they don't give it to us anymore. [00:01:36] Put on-site search front and center for your visitors. Get that data back. Get searched wp@searchwp.com along with their metrics. Add on that search wp.com. Thanks for supporting the show. [00:01:49] Forming a successful partnership in business might be the most powerful, yet most challenging things to do. Right. That's probably an understatement of the year. This goes beyond simply linking to each other's businesses or handing over the occasional customer referral. I'm talking about two or more partners, both handling responsibilities and working towards a shared goal for the overall mission. [00:02:10] Tara clays, founder of design TLC has a certain knack for this stuff. She co-hosted the WordPress podcast hallway tracks alongside Liam Dempsey, and is now laying down roots with a new partner in podcasting, Aubrey Birch. So I think it goes a little, something like this. Aubrey invests her knowledge and experience with easy school marketing into the podcast content while Tara flexes her strengths and design compassion, and years of podcast experience. Together. They host mindful school marketing, the go-to podcast for independent school professionals. [00:02:40]You're listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter at maryport.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts better yet. Please share this episode on social media. We'd love more listeners around here. [00:02:56] Okay. Let's talk to tara and aubrey and why they started this [00:03:00] crazy podcasting thing that they [00:03:02] Tara: [00:03:02] First of all. Thanks for that. Nice mention and hallway chats is really a labor of love that Liam Dempsey and I did for three years. And I think that was it a great experience for us and introduced me to podcasting and it was a complete community donation, there was no business development involved with it at all. [00:03:21] And so, and we loved it and I continue to love it. But As time went on during that three-year period of time, I started niching down my own WordPress agency to do work for mainly schools and nonprofits. And as part of that process reached out and met other people in the school, community, marketing community, Adria among them. [00:03:38] And she and I have been in a mastermind for over a year now. And so we struck up a good friendship and also collaboration, our services sort of overlap. And so the long answer is that we in that. In that relationship that we built as hallway chats was sort of winding down. I really didn't even miss a beat before reaching out and seeing if Abby would like to do a podcast that that was directed toward our, our common target audience, but also that we could have fun doing as well. [00:04:12]So there is a business development aspect of this for us, as well as a community aspect as well. [00:04:18]Matt: [00:04:18] The, yeah, you've obviously have a knack for finding. [00:04:25] Great co-hosts, which is not an easy feat in the podcasting world. It's one that I have failed miserably at for about nine years as a podcast. It's like just trying to find somebody who just wants to talk to me for an hour every week. What's wrong with that. [00:04:39] Shouldn't be that difficult. It's very difficult. Aubrey, I'm going to pass the question over to you. Is this your first time into podcasting? And if so, how did you feel [00:04:49] joining [00:04:50] Aubrey: [00:04:50] And it's been a blast. And I am so thankful every day that Tara actually asked me to do a podcast with her because I was thinking around February, 2020, I was like, I should launch it. Podcast. And I'm so glad I didn't act on that first impulse because Tara's kind of taken me under her wing and really like showed me everything that goes into, preparation for a podcast, execution, everything. [00:05:15] And it's just been a great learning process for me. And also Tara? [00:05:19] is one of the most generous, amazing. Like solid people you're you've ever met. I, as you probably know, Matt. And so we just kind of hit it off in terms of, understanding each episode and what our flow was with the episode. [00:05:34] And so we jumped right in and she's been just such a great guide and such a great co-host. I couldn't have asked for a better one and I'm so grateful for the opportunity for sure. [00:05:45]Matt: [00:05:45] I'm looking at the website right now. Mindful school marketing.com seven episodes in you probably have a couple others you haven't finished and uploaded yet. Has there been one major surprise to you Audrey about this whole podcasting thing, [00:06:00] something more challenging or more exciting than you [00:06:03]Aubrey: [00:06:03] Well, I would say the challenging [00:06:04] thing is I guess when you have a co-host and it's not a challenge, it's more like putting together the pieces, right? Like we'll be talking and we'll be typing in the chat. Sometimes we'll be like, oh, like, okay, this is conversation is going. Do you want to ask the next question? [00:06:17] Or should I, and so that I had never, I've never, Co-hosted or co interviewed anyone. So that was, I don't want to say it was a challenge, but it was like a new experience. And just what was it challenging and rewarding? I would say this whole, just the people we meet, it's just amazing, like the, the little hidden gems that they sprinkle throughout their conversation. [00:06:37] I just feel like, my bookshelf has grown tremendously because we always ask like a question about like, what's your favorite book? Or like, what book would you Recommend for the high school curriculum or something like that. And we are getting some great books in there and like, there's, what is it? [00:06:52] The anglers fly fishing, person we add on. That's just fantastic stuff. Things come up like really good conversations that, in this busy life that we live, it's so rare to kind of dive deep in like center and focus on, on someone for like 30 or 40 minutes. So it's been fantastic. [00:07:08]Matt: [00:07:08] I feel like just picture like a smoke-filled bar and me and Tara, just sitting at the bar with our whiskies going, oh, she's got, oh, that's what she thinks right now until, until we're on like episode 20. And, and then Arby's. The whole demeanor changes about podcasting. This sucks. Why didn't you tell me to do this, that's exactly what we'll hear in about three months, but Hey, everything's great right now. [00:07:30] Tara, how much of your. Of doing the hallway chats and, and marketing and everything you've done up until this point in your career. Did you, how did you funnel into, I'm going to read the byline of the podcast right now, the go-to podcast for independent school professionals. [00:07:45] There's no messing around. We know what this is about. How did you come to this and what are some tips for people who are struggling to get a premise [00:07:54] Tara: [00:07:54] well, I think there are a [00:07:55] couple of things. Aubrey has a great personality. She's got so much energy that I think it's really easy to work with her and to have a team that way. So thinking about going to your question about, choosing co-hosts and Liam and I had a similar kind of, we each covered the basis, I think. [00:08:10] For this podcast, positioning ourselves that way. One of the things that we thought about a lot was the fact that there were really no other women in this space doing a podcast. And that a lot of the people that, that do these jobs, these marketing jobs within schools, private schools, independent schools are women. [00:08:28]So we saw an opportunity there to bring a sensibility that we have as moms, as women entrepreneurs, as women in general too. Should this space. So I think that sets us apart from there. Aren't that many, to be honest, like enrollment related podcasts for schools like this. So, there was an opportunity there, but I think what we wanted to do was to, to feed our own sensibility that we learned about each other during the, our mastermind. [00:08:56]As we've gotten to know each other, is that. We're both super [00:09:00] interested in. Self-improvement like, we both love all the books about that. Oh, we're we just are. Really can't get enough of that kind of thinking , and to have that mindset and apply it to any job, you can, this podcast could be the, anything mindful school marketing podcast, really, because it is about, I there are specific things, certainly that we. [00:09:21] Talk about that are related to challenges that schools face, but in general, to do a good job at anything, you have to be mindful about it. And so it's been really fun for us to talk to people who, who deal with that. People who work with different personality assessments and continuous learning and self-improvement type stuff. [00:09:43] And it also has helped us. I think we identify. The roles that we play in this podcast partnership based on those types of personalities. So it's a really, well-rounded I think conversation that we have in general on the podcast. And that's what I think makes it a go-to podcast is that it's not one, it's not one week after another, about Facebook ads and marketing funnels and stuff like that. [00:10:05] It's it really, we touch on those things, but we also bring into it lifestyle stuff, which is really [00:10:10] great. I think. [00:10:12] Matt: [00:10:12] is this a fair statement? In the WordPress space? And RB, I'm not sure how much you know about WordPress podcasts, but there are many, there are many, sometimes too many, sometimes not enough, but there's like probably 20, at least reoccurring WordPress podcasts and as exciting and as large as the WordPress market is. [00:10:34]Folks like Tara and I, there's very few of us who actually care so much about the inside baseball of WordPress to do a podcast. And that is to say that a lot of folks show up on Tara's old podcast, my podcast, other podcasts, it's the same person doing the same, routine and there's nothing wrong with it. [00:10:51] It's just that the listener, the audience says. I heard her story on this other podcast. I'll skip this episode or I heard his thing over there. I'm going to skip this episode. Do you feel a little bit of that? Not to put words in your mouth, Tara, this is a long way of getting it. Do you feel like that's alleviated when you're doing a podcast like this? [00:11:10] Because it's so concrete, it's so precise versus the [00:11:14] hallway chats. [00:11:14]Tara: [00:11:14] I would say what hallway chats was designed to absolutely. Get around that. So we talked to people who didn't share their story before in this case, I think because we're not talking to people who are only in that space. We the people who are listening to our show, maybe haven't heard that story before, because they're not familiar with that person. [00:11:35] So, in WordPress, there are the WordPress people who, people, the stories who we've heard and who are super smart and have great things to share on podcasts. But if you brought in somebody from Squarespace or, some other kind of web world, they would. They may be famous in their world or popular or well-known, but they're coming into a new environment. [00:11:55] So I kind of see that. I don't know ABI [00:11:57] if you agree, but we're not just talking to [00:11:59] people in the [00:11:59] school [00:12:00] [00:11:59] Aubrey: [00:11:59] yeah, I would absolutely agree. I think that's what makes it really interesting. And I think valuable for people listening are independent school market because they are used to hearing from the same people over and over in the space and by Making our podcast about so much more than just, delivering the hardcore marketing behind and for independent schools, I think that's really opened the doors to some very interesting conversations and some unique guests that our audience would not hear from [00:12:27] otherwise. [00:12:28]Matt: [00:12:28] Aubrey on the marketing side, pass the questions back to you on the marketing side. Is there anything that you're doing on a. Or how you think or how you approach or how you edit the show on either a per episode base or just podcasts from a 50,000 foot view. Anything you're doing specifically on marketing to make sure that I hate to say the word return on investment, because a lot of people in the podcasting space get caught up in that three letter acronym, but is there anything you're doing hyper-specific on the marketing side to say every episode that goes out is a chance for us [00:12:59] to get [00:13:00]Aubrey: [00:13:00] And please tear, add to this. I would say it's a lot about brand awareness for us at this point. And we've strategically made sure that? we're sending to an email list. We share it on our email lists. We have our guests share the podcast on their platforms. We use it at least I use it as an entry way also to other speaking engagements too, because it adds to your credibility in the space. [00:13:22] Immediately. Oh, you have a podcast. It's a great conversation starter too. So, we've definitely utilized obviously the social platforms to promote it. And then some of our colleagues have shared it on their lists too, which they have quite large lists. So it's really been quite easy. I would say to promote at this point just naturally using using the resources we already have. [00:13:44]Matt: [00:13:44] Yeah, my full-time job is at a podcast hosting company and fielding questions from, beginner, podcasters and veteran podcasters alike. And a lot of the questions are around monetization advertisement, sponsorship. How many downloads do I need before Coca-Cola knocks on the door and says, we want to sponsor your podcast. [00:14:01] It's like, well, get in line with the rest of us. So you're either going to do direct sales or you're going to find a creative way to do it. What people often forget is the relationships that you build in the random opportunities that show up because you have a podcast. I can't even account how many dollars that has added up for me over, eight or nine years as a podcast, or it's tremendous, very hard to measure, very hard to rely on, but it happens. [00:14:31] It's almost like if you. Yeah. Like you can do a podcast and nobody can listen, but they just know you do a podcast. And they're like, oh yes, they're putting in the work over there. But if you ever stopped doing a podcast, they'd be like, oh, they gave up, oh, why do they give up? Just the mere fact that you do a podcast heightens your investment in. [00:14:50] Tara: [00:14:50] Yeah, that's an interesting point. Actually, when you say that I'm thinking about it because our podcast is relatively new. We launched with four episodes and we've had, about, we're doing two per month. So yeah. When we [00:15:00] look at the download numbers, it, they're not huge at this point. And so if you focus only on the download numbers, I think then you're, it's going to be harder to translate that to that return on investment. [00:15:11] But what you've described, what ABI was talking about, just the, the authority that it brings to each of us and to us as a team is I think not measurable, but really, really helpful. And that's probably right now at this phase in our. Podcasting career is, is the key. And then once that grows and then the downloads, I think will follow because people will know more about us. [00:15:33] So, and we haven't delved into sponsorship yet, but that's on our list. That's something I don't have experience with because we didn't do that on holiday chat. So [00:15:40] I'll be reaching out to you, Matt, for help when we get to that point. [00:15:44] Matt: [00:15:44] Yeah, well, this is an, it's an interesting segue, cause I literally have your sponsorship page in front of me. Cause I wanted to talk about this. It's sponsored by of course the both of you. So you have easy school marketing and design TLC, but this is very interesting because I'm interested to know how you balance and I know you. [00:16:01] I know you're obviously both not shouldering to have the best call to action up in front of everybody every time. Like it's my turn this week, or maybe you do a interested to learn like design TLC has a special offer. Take our free website test, right? So you can click and get that. Or easy school marketing has joined our free virtual monthly school leaders, power hour meetups, two vastly different sort of call to actions and values split amongst two. [00:16:26] Co-hosts kind of interesting. Have you seen some good. Return on. I know it's young, still seven episodes in, but it's an interesting way to think about it. How did you think about it? And will you go to the [00:16:38] paid sponsorships? [00:16:39] Tara: [00:16:39] Do you want me to answer that Aubrey? So I built the website and we did is, did a sponsorship page. And so it was really, to be completely blunt, it was the natural way to put content on that page was to have us each put our own information because right now, yes, we are funding it and producing it. [00:16:55] And so we are the sponsors of it. We're not driving traffic to that page. I think. Once we have a little bit more time and downloads under our belt, then the plan is to go to some authoritative companies within the school marketing space and, and, and share some sponsorship package ideas with them. But we are not quite there yet. [00:17:19] And I think That's something that we need to think about and plan, I always had this issue with, with hallway chats or issue concern. I want to make sure that any sponsorships, I see them also as endorsements. And so, I think you have to be particular about that. And especially in these times that you're choosing companies that you feel good about having involved this year podcast. [00:17:43] So that's, that's a key element [00:17:44]Matt: [00:17:44] When I booked on your calendar, it was like three months out or something like that. You had, you have a pretty good pipeline already of shows. Do you feel like you're already getting booked too far out ahead? [00:17:55] Aubrey: [00:17:55] Think we're in the sweet spot [00:17:57] right now. The w w what we did was we [00:18:00] actually intentionally batched as many episodes as possible, and the first couple of months it was a whirlwind, but actually it was really good. And I think good practice for me being new to podcasting. To do that. [00:18:12]And we strategically set the episodes to go the more timely ones, obviously we'll go before the ones that are more timeless. So I think we're set and we're set for the summer, which I think was key to both of us who are looking for work-life balance which we talk about on our show. So we're living it too. [00:18:30]And then we have a funnel for potential guests that we want to have on. Moving forward into the fall, like, and we'll start reaching out to them and then creating another batch wave. I think that's key for us. My schedule is incredibly busy. I know Tara's is due. So it's, it's really planning strategically and then making sure we have the right people in line next. [00:18:50]Matt: [00:18:50] Aubrey as the marketer in you, or does the marketer in you scream to say, look, I got all this content now. Like I can do clips. I can do Instagram posts. I can do top 10 episodes. Like there's all these things I can do. Is that starting? Are you starting to get the itch for that already? As, as you start to plan and plot going into the fall [00:19:09] Aubrey: [00:19:09] I talk to my clients about all the time. I think we have to look at our bandwidth, and what's realistic. So what can we do given the time and the energy and the resources that we currently have, and then figuring out strategically. Okay. Obviously I would love to do all those things, man. [00:19:24] I'm a creative by nature and I'm a marketer and terrible tell you I'll throw a million ideas to Sunday, right? So it's picking and choosing which ones to use and then, putting those into practice because we can all try to be perfectionist and try to create the perfect podcast plan with the top 10 list and everything like that. [00:19:43] But that's, it's just not. It's not going to be executed well, and it's either going to burn us out and then we're going to lose the joy for what we're doing. So I think that's the key and that's how the mindset I'm going into it with. And Tara, please feel free to chime in, but I think that's really important. [00:20:00] It's like we're doing it and we love doing it. And so we want to keep looking, do we want to keep, keep loving doing it? And so, we're, we have to just be strategic about where our time and energy goes and what, and how we're going to market, how we're going to market it. [00:20:14]Matt: [00:20:14] is there an inverse there where the, where. I remember when I, the reason why I started well, the podcasts that we're talking on today was to try to find a way to grow my, at the time WordPress agency, that I was running day to day. And I use the episodes as leverage in, in sales, not. You're not a known agency, didn't have any real brands or logos in the portfolio of recognition. [00:20:37] So the only leverage I had was, Hey, check out these at the time, whatever 50 or 60 episodes, that was an iTunes. If you like what I'm talking about there, maybe we'll, we should be pretty good for doing business. Have you seen it the other way around where you're now leveraging this podcast for the business in, in specifically in sales opportunities for people to get to know you a little bit better? [00:20:57] Tara: [00:20:57] Yeah, I think we talked about before this whole [00:21:00] idea of authority and, our tagline is the go-to podcast and there's a great book called be the go-to that I've been reading, as I explored diving into this, this vertical of schools and how to, how'd you approach that it's a very, it's a very small market, I think relative, relatively, so becoming known in it. [00:21:21] Requires putting your name out there and in a certain number of ways, speaking at conferences well, COVID, kind of has put the kibosh on that. And and so the podcast is a way. To build that authority. So I think I'm not sure if that's answering your question, but I do an Abra does when, whenever we do presentations, we mentioned this podcast. [00:21:38] I mentioned it when I'm chatting with clients about about our services prospective clients. And then there are episodes also that have good pieces of information that I think are, are easy to share. As well with existing clients. And I will point them to this episode. This is a great tidbit that we heard about Facebook advertising, check it out, that type of thing. [00:21:59] So yeah, it's, it's multilevel something that will help our businesses grow. We hope right. And if not, we're having fun and we're sharing great information with people and meeting really cool people. So that's, I think you have to have that perspective. We committed to a year of doing it and we'll see what happens and, and [00:22:16] hopefully it'll go on from there. [00:22:18]Matt: [00:22:18] Remember when you said you [00:22:19] Tara: [00:22:19] We did. Yeah. Each year, one at a time. [00:22:22] Well, like you said, you have to, like, if you can't commit to a year, you're you shouldn't be doing it. So [00:22:27]Matt: [00:22:27] Let's shift to the, to the business side of the businesses that, that you both run. And specifically in that, in the market of, let's just say educate, and maybe I can't bucket this in to this category, but education school, the school department, school systems. I remember when I sold a WordPress hosting for a company called Pagely primarily to higher education, like the sales process. Was like year and a half long, to just to get, Hey, we've got this idea. We want to switch hosting to a year and a half later, they finally made the switch. If I was lucky when I was selling websites at my agency, just local school systems, nothing major, but local school systems, same thing, huge long drawn out decision by committee process, I guess. [00:23:11] Rightfully so. Has COVID changed this at all for web and marketing, from what you both see in, in your respective spaces, are people moving a little bit faster or are they a little bit more open to being flexible or is it same thing? [00:23:24] Same day [00:23:25]Aubrey: [00:23:25] COVID change has changed many things in the educational space. Both public and private. And so. The clients that I work with, which are mostly private school heads of school for small and medium sized independent schools. It, I think this time period has, has opened their eyes to the necessity of marketing. [00:23:46]A lot of schools unlike businesses. Well, that's not true. Some businesses are like this too, but haven't really expanded their marketing dollars or marketing team. To meet the new needs of what marketing looks like [00:24:00] now. And with independent schools, what a lot of schools saw was that in spring 2020, They sell massive attrition. [00:24:06] And so there was a scrambling during that summer to really market hard. And then a lot of what happened was, some public schools went back virtual and so then the private school sector saw a swing in the opposite direction with enrollment. So I do think there's, there's been at least over the past two years, I've really seen schools more likely to embrace. [00:24:28] Marketing efforts. And to truly understand that they might have an admissions team of like two, but the marketing is like half a person. Who's also the receptionist who does like 18 other things. Like they're seeing the need to really grow, grow that and expand and use strategies that are not necessarily used traditionally in independent schools. [00:24:50]Tara: [00:24:50] Yeah, I would echo that and I work specifically on their websites, obviously. So, I've seen. I've seen people holding off and also refreshes and updates are tricky because all of the content that they have is from the past year, if they want to update their photos and stuff, all the kids have masks on. [00:25:08] And so how do you deal with that? You have to bring in people over the summer and do different Photo shoots and things like that. So I think schools are trying to balance the reality of the future with the present and the recent past in their communication strategy and in their messaging and their imagery and all of that type of thing too. [00:25:29] So, and, and because we work mostly with small private schools, it's different than higher ed for sure. Way different. I've done a little bit with higher ed and yeah, that is a whole different ball game. One of the. One of the blessings. One of the things I love working with the organizations that I work with is that they are small. [00:25:47] So they actually can pivot really fast. And that really helps them during COVID because they were able to make really quick decisions. And they were the schools that were doing hybrid or doing in person. And so a lot of them had a really great year with enrollment because a lot of families wanted their kids in school. [00:26:04] it's really makes it easier working with them because they can make those decisions. They don't have to go through five levels, same way with a public school. Also, you have boards and, and, and just word of education and all of that to go through. So, so they're nimble, which [00:26:17] is nice. [00:26:18]Matt: [00:26:18] I had some friends that I have young children. They're not, my oldest will be going into kindergarten this year. But I had some friends that have their kids are older, but they're in private school like elementary level private school. And they were in, they were in class, I think probably like 90%. [00:26:36] Throughout like this whole COVID thing. Whereas the flip side is like all my friends who have kids in private, in public schools, everybody was home losing their minds, trying to balance this and then the hybrid stuff. And that was, and the thing, luckily I avoided that I think going into the fall, I don't think I'll be dealing with that for like a kindergarten level. [00:26:58]But it's amazing how things like [00:27:00] this. I don't really have a question here. It's more of just like a. Noticing this it's amazing how COVID shook up things that you'd never expect till it, for it to unearth like, like private schools, right? You might all of a sudden find more private schools coming online. [00:27:16] Because of what just happened, where maybe it was reserved for high income, communities. Now you might have somebody like, Hey, it makes sense now to put my kids in private school, because it's just a different level of service with air quotes in the air. If you're not watching this, it's amazing what COVID did to shake up all these different impact, these different industries, [00:27:36] education [00:27:37] Tara: [00:27:37] yeah, for sure. Yep. And also doing more online stuff too. I have some clients that do after-school programming and so they had to completely pivot to offer online learning, offer cooking classes, online, developing whole curriculum. In a totally different way than they were used to doing with videos and all that type of thing. [00:27:56] So pivoting has been a key word and in the past year, and it's been, it's been exciting to see some of these smaller businesses organizations accomplish that pretty smoothly. [00:28:08] Yeah. [00:28:10] Matt: [00:28:10] I assume you're still using WordPress. Aubrey, are you a diehard WordPress [00:28:15] Aubrey: [00:28:15] but I always send all my WordPress questions to Tara. [00:28:18]That's pretty much it. I my website platform is don't. I feel like uttering, these words might, hate mail might come my way, but like right now, my platforms on Kajabi, just because I started building out online courses on the backend, but I am not selling Kajabi, nor am I. [00:28:34] Saying that's your go-to WordPress is much more functional and you can do all sorts [00:28:38] of cool stuff with it. [00:28:41] Tara: [00:28:41] I've trained her very well. You can see. [00:28:43] Matt: [00:28:43] I was just about to say that sounds like Tara speaking right through her. [00:28:47] Tara: [00:28:47] Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:49] Matt: [00:28:49] so you haven't, so you haven't convinced Aubrey to switch to like lifter LMS and build all her [00:28:54] Tara: [00:28:54] no, her website's great. And I think, I actually am looking into Kajabi a little bit just to understand what it does, because I think it is a good resource. WordPress is not for everybody and for everything. And I think we learned that more and more now. And so a lot of times. Third-party platforms that are built for a specific purpose, like membership or online courses. [00:29:14], it's a lot easier. It's a lot more user-friendly and they don't have the maintenance to have to deal with. So yeah, I think that's fine at WordPress is a great solution for the target audience that we serve. And there are a lot of small schools who use WordPress. There are some third-party CMS is out there that that do. [00:29:35] A really great job and they're really, really expensive. So, some schools use Wix, some use Squarespace. Most of them use the third party system or WordPress. So there is, there is definitely a good opportunity there to, to help schools with [00:29:49] their WordPress websites. Yeah, [00:29:52] Matt: [00:29:52] it's always interesting to see WordPress users, heads explode when they're like somebody pays for a CMS. Well, yet, because it works and it [00:30:00] works well. And then that's what they need at the end of the day. It's, it's, it's amazing. I've been interviewing a lot more folks on no-code platforms, bubble web flow. [00:30:09] And there's another one that's escaping escaping me right now that is very popular, but that community loves the tools that just empower them to get the job done. And they're happy to just give up that ownership side of the code to just [00:30:27] have it work and do the [00:30:29] thing that they're paying for it to [00:30:30] Tara: [00:30:30] I just, yeah, I just talked to a PTA president this morning, whose website I've been managing for a while and they had a parent redesign it and. So the licenses are all out of, they're not on the site anymore and I'm trying to manage it and it's just kind of a headache. And when you have organizations like a PTA that you have transition in leadership, and then you have loss of information and continuity, something like WordPress. [00:30:54] If you don't have a con a con. Continuous person managing it like an agency, then you can really be in trouble because all that information gets lost. Whereas if you put it on Squarespace or something like that, sorry to mention that. But I think Squarespace has a great, it serves a great need. You don't have any of that. [00:31:11] It's all there. It's all. Or some or Kajabi or whatever. You don't have any of that. Plugins to maintain and licenses to update and all that kind of stuff. So there definitely are use cases where WordPress is not the best solution. And I'm the first person to say that as much as I love [00:31:26] WordPress [00:31:26]Matt: [00:31:26] mindful school marketing.com mindful school marketing.com. Get the podcast where everywhere, right? What else? What else can people say? Thanks. Where else can people go to say thanks for joining us on the show today. [00:31:38]Tara: [00:31:38] I'm Tara clays on Twitter. I am a LinkedIn and design tlc.com [00:31:44] is [00:31:44] Aubrey: [00:31:44] Great. And I'm Audrey bursch@easyschoolmarketing.com. You can find me ABI Bursch at LinkedIn. That's my platform of choice. [00:31:50]Matt: [00:31:50] Go subscribe to mindful school marketing on apple, Google, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts, leave them a review in iTunes. Build that up. And as soon as they have their pod chaser account, okay. Even leave them a review there. It's going to be an amazing way to find and discover other podcasts, airport.com/subscribe. [00:32:08] Join the mailing list and we'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

Brad Touesnard on the Acquisition of Advanced Custom Fields

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2021 22:41

Raising eyebrows in the WordPress community — especially among developers — Delicious Brains announced they have acquired Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). Elliot Condon is the creator and has been the sole developer for ACF for about a decade. While Elliot will be involved in the transition, he will not stay with the Delicious Brains team in the long term, according to his blog post.In this episode of Post Status Draft, Cory Miller talks with Brad Touesnard of Delicious Brains following the announcement that his company has acquired the Advanced Custom Fields plugin from Elliot Condon.

peace raising stitcher google podcasts wordpress acquisition devops simplecast acf cory miller advanced custom fields pagely delicious brains brad touesnard managed wordpress hosting

This Week in WordPress #166

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2021 94:37

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 31st May 2021

news wordpress chrome gutenberg woocommerce yoast acf wordcamp pagely wceu twiw

Brian Jackson: From marketing Kinsta to building a plugin business

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2021 40:23

Today's guest used to sit on the opposite sides of the WordPress hosting competition table from me. At one point in his career, he was pumping out content on Kinsta's blog like an absolute machine while I was raging against that machine, selling would-be customers on Pagely's hosting stack. So where is Brian Jackson, former marketer at Kinsta now? He co-found Forgemedia with his brother Brett, and have released 3 unique plugins, two of which help WordPress site owners optimize their sites for ranking and social sharing. Oh, they tossed a coupon plugin in there too to help affiliates increase sales for good measure. Once frienemy now Matt Report guest, I'm excited to share this conversation with you today. Transcription Brian Jackson Forgemedia Matt Report [00:00:00] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by mal care. Learn more about Malik here at Dot com. You've heard me talk about mal care before, but they're back with some interesting updates. Not only are they the WordPress plugin with instant WordPress malware removal. Well, let me read some of these features. [00:00:15] Deep malware scanning. They know about malware that other plugins don't. Number two, that one click malware removal process makes it super easy to remove from your WordPress website and number three, a new feature called auto bot ultra defense system. Okay. I made that ultra defense system part up, but get this, it automatically blocks the bots hitting your website. [00:00:35]So, not only does that protect your website, but in the long run, it'll improve speed of your site from not letting those bots through the doors. Check out mal care at care.com that's mal care.com. I don't want to be a malware specialist. You don't either check out mal. care.com. thanks for supporting the show [00:00:56]Matt: [00:00:56] episode of the Matt report is brought to you by search WP. Find search [00:01:00] wp@searchwp.com. Let's talk about the power of their metrics. Add on for a moment. Since I redesigned the Matt report website, I put search front and center on my homepage. Why search WP metrics metrics. Give me the inside data to what visitors on my site are looking for. [00:01:18] I love the graphs and the actionable advice that it provides me. I can make informed decisions to create new content or optimize existing content that my audience is searching for. Remember when Google gave you all of that search data? Yeah, it was great. Back then, way back then when they gave it to us, they don't give it to us anymore. [00:01:36] Put on-site search front and center for your visitors. Get that data back. Get searched wp@searchwp.com along with their metrics. Add on that search wp.com. Thanks for supporting the show. [00:01:49] today's guest used to sit on the opposite sides of the WordPress hosting competition table. For me, at one point in his career, he was pumping out content on blog, like an absolute machine. [00:02:00] Well, I was raging against that machine selling would be customers on Paisley's hosting stack. So where is Brian Jackson? [00:02:06] Former marketer at Kinston now. He co-founded forge media with his brother, Brett and have released three unique plugins, two of which help WordPress site owners optimize their sites for ranking and social sharing. Oh, they tossed that coupon plugin in there too. [00:02:20] To help affiliates increase their sales for good measure. Once frenemy now, Matt report guests. I'm excited to share this conversation with you today. You're listening to the Maryport podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter now. report.com/subscribe and follow us on apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, better yet. [00:02:40] Please share this episode on social media. More love we get more listeners. There are around here. Okay. Don't forget to listen to the WP minute podcasts. It's weekly. WordPress news. And under five minutes while I just said it every week, the WP minute.com. It's the WP minute.com. Subscribe to the [00:03:00] newsletter there. [00:03:00] Brian Jackson, here we go. [00:03:02] Brian: [00:03:02] I am running just a small little agency with my brother. We're both the co-founders of forge media is what it's called. [00:03:09] And we have a, kind of a marketing blog where we talk about WordPress related stuff in marketing and SEO. And then our main focus is actually our, we have three different WordPress plugins that we develop. One is a coupon plugin for like affiliate marketers, and other one is a social sharing plugin. [00:03:27] That's really kind of focused on the performance aspect of it. And then we have our perf matters plugin, which is basically trying to tweak, WordPress to get it to be as fast as he can kind of a compliment to. Some of the other performance plugins that are already out there. So like we see a lot of people are using ours along with another one. [00:03:47] Matt: [00:03:47] I'm going to take this in the reverse order when we had our pre-interview something that just struck me. What is the attraction to. Social sharing plugins. I feel like it's one of [00:04:00] those things, whereas , isn't this solved already. Shouldn't it be solved by WordPress at this point. [00:04:06]Social media is obviously here to stay. We're recording this in the year 2021. You'd think that those buttons, those things for sharing your articles and your posts out would have been solved already. What is the attraction to that? What's so good about that. [00:04:22]Brian: [00:04:22] And actually. I would actually say since we've been in developing our programmatic plugin for a while, and now we're developing our social sharing plugin, the social sharing plugin is actually more complex to develop than our performance. [00:04:36] One sounds strange, but behind the scenes, there's a lot more that goes on. Especially once you get into. Doing the social share counters and how to make that work for performance stuff. And then just Pinterest is just a nightmare to work with because you have your things, like you click a Pinterest image and it brings up all the images on the page. [00:04:57] There you can select there's different [00:05:00] things you have to go through. And WordPress is just never going to be up to par compared to The social sharing plugins. I think WordPress will get to the point where you'll eventually have a nice block with, I want these three buttons. Here's my block. [00:05:11] I'll drag it into the widget. We're pretty much close to that. But as far as going beyond that, I don't think we're press ever wants to even tackle what we're kind of doing with the social sharing plugins. And as a marketer, I've always liked sharing plugins because especially working at Ken's still, like, we saw a lot of the data, like lots of people shared our content. [00:05:30] And so I, I know they work. And then you have other people using tools like buffer, that maybe don't click the buttons, but they do it a different way. So yeah. [00:05:38]Matt: [00:05:38] I'll become, come clean on this conversation. Like I never use a social share button on a site, largely because I just use the native integration with my iPhone. [00:05:49] Generally when I'm reading something or from on my laptop, I copy paste or hit the old buffer. Buffer icon in my in my brief extension. And I, I run it that [00:06:00] way, but all of that is to say that probably there's some psychological sense in the mere fact of having an icon on a page to remind somebody like, oh yes, you should be sharing this. [00:06:11] Don't don't forget it. So there's probably a little bit of that baked [00:06:14] Brian: [00:06:14] in, even if you don't use the button and what's the social share counts too. I've actually, I wish social share counts never existed to begin with. I just. I w I hope they all die eventually in my opinion. But the reason they work is like you said, that there's a psychological thing behind seeing like, oh, this post has 1200 shares. [00:06:31] Like maybe I should actually read through this or something. See what's what is in here. So yeah, a lot of it is psychological, I think, with the social sharing for sure. [00:06:38] Matt: [00:06:38] Product owners slash make, or I presume that. You're the sort of like the, the architect, you sort of do the blueprint, but then your brother goes in and develops the features that, that you might, sketch out let's for lack of a better phrase sketch out. [00:06:54] And then you say, Hey, this would be a great way to use it. I assume something like the Nova share plugin, [00:07:00] like you said, it's a complex plugin behind the scenes, but at the same time, like you're trying to dumb it down. To as simplistic as possible so that somebody who's just, futsing around. [00:07:10] Like, I need to get a social share plugin on this site right now. I need to activate it. Like you have milliseconds to. Get that person to experience adding a social share plug in, or they're just like, Nope. The activate delete one to move onto the next one. Like it's, it's a fine craft in order to get the most simplistic plugins activated and usable [00:07:31]Brian: [00:07:31] One thing that works in our advantage, I think is neither of us are good designers. We're just, we can't do it. If you give me a blank slate, I can't do anything with it. Now if you give me blank slate and I have to write something, I can do that, but I can't design worth crap and neither can my brother. [00:07:45]So we actually take advantage of the native WordPress UI in all of our plugin settings. So I actually like it that way better because then you don't have to learn a whole new UI all over again. I hate these plugins with these brand new UIs. You have to learn like where's all this [00:08:00] stuff. So we just take advantage default WordPress UI for all the settings. [00:08:03]And works for us. Cause we're not designers. It just looks like word press still. And then I actually think it improves the onboarding because you're not like where's w why does this looks crazy? What are these toggles? All this stuff. So, yeah, so I, it, like you said, though, you have a few seconds until you lose someone. [00:08:19] I'm the same way too. I'll go into a new plugin, I'd try it. And like, if I can't figure out something or see it, a doc explaining how to do it, like I'm, I'm probably gone. So. [00:08:29]Matt: [00:08:29] So th this is a good segue into just talking about like all the plugins that you're building including the, the perf matters plugin and the coupons plugin. [00:08:39] How do you allow yourself, or how do you wrangle in that expectation to just put all the features and everything, the kitchen sink into all of these. Plugins. [00:08:51] Brian: [00:08:51] Yeah, that's a good point. And I think what has worked. Well for us in the past, and hopefully we'll continue to work is being a WordPress user for so long myself [00:09:00] for like over a decade. I've used every social sharing plugin in the book, try them all. [00:09:04]And I've used all the performance optimists as you plug in. So I've used them all. And just over the years, finding things that really annoyed me. And I couldn't do easily. That's kind of what we've started our business around. Like here's how I would do it myself in a different way. We started building on that kind of methodology. [00:09:20]And then right now it's kind of morphed into what are we still trying to do? Because, because Google's constantly changed stuff with performance, you have the web vitals stuff coming. So like, there's things constantly changing. Like Facebook's updating their share API. You're always having to change and adapt as the plugins go on. [00:09:37]But I think we, my brother and I just always looked at it like, how would we do this if we were the user? Because we are the user still. And that's worked really well for us in the past. So [00:09:48]Matt: [00:09:48] There's an overhead to this stuff that a lot of people are not aware of. The more features you put in. Especially in your case where not only do you have to build the feature and support that feature, you [00:10:00] also have to be aware what Google's changing, what Pinterest is changing. [00:10:04] You start rolling features and you're like, Hey, there's 15 social media sites we integrate with, and now that's 15 API or whatever you have to, you have to watch. And I think a lot of people forget about that. And also to the point of view or UI decisions. Not being a designer. The worst thing the product makers do is attempt to be a designer. [00:10:27] And then they're like, they, then they make those interfaces and you're like, why did you even just use what WordPress gave you? You would have saved time, money, and no, one's trying to figure out how the heck do you use this thing? [00:10:36]Brian: [00:10:36] The UI is actually a good point too. With, if you keep adding features over time, say you want to move this stuff to a different tab. Usually it's stuff like that's going to actually require a Migrator is what we call my brother. And I call it a Migrator on the backend running code to migrate the feature as that person talks at all in there. [00:10:54] To get rid of the old one. And that Migrator code has to stay in there. Until [00:11:00] I'm pretty much forever, or you can rip it out like two or three years later and say like, I think everyone's probably gone and toggled this on here and moved. But like all of that stuff adds overhead. So like, we are always thinking like, where can we put this longterm? [00:11:13] Because we don't want to put migrators in here later down the road to move everything again. So like, Lots of people don't think that through even we were consumed with that a little bit. I was like, wow, this is, yeah, this is hard to change later down the road too. So, [00:11:26]Matt: [00:11:26] so let's talk about perf matters, plugin. [00:11:29]It doesn't seem to me anyway, like the easiest plugin to bring it to the market. I feel like it takes, not taking anything away, I think away from you and your brother, but it takes a lot of technical stuff that one would look at and be like, man, do we really want to build and test this, trying to find market adoption at the same time of as developing. [00:11:48] And it's like, Hmm, social plugin or another form plugin, probably, sometimes it'd be sometimes you're like, I should have built a form plugin. How did you prepare to jump into the market with that? What did, what did you do [00:12:00] in the past that said, you know what, this is the plugin for me. [00:12:02] Brian: [00:12:02] And I think that plugin itself. We actually started developing it while I was at Kinston. And mainly because, you know how hosting goes, like, no matter how good the host is, it doesn't fix all the WordPress problems it on the site itself. So like a host won't fix all the code issues. Usually it will help speed it up to as fast as you can get it. [00:12:22]And that's why I always recommend using the host, like, can store a page the, or. Even, even WP engine, like any of those bigger tier hosts. But I just kept seeing thing to like, I need to tweak this and tweak this. And so over time I there's a free plugin, like called code snippets. I don't know if you've ever used that one, but I ended up with, 20 to 30 code snippets, running all these different filters and functions on my side. [00:12:43] And I was like, This is getting ridiculous. Let's and so I actually asked my brother if we could put it into a plugin and then I started using it myself just on our own sites for awhile, and eventually it morphed into, like what if we just package this up and. Actually, maybe other people would be interested in it. [00:12:59]And what we [00:13:00] found was a lot of other developers and agencies were doing the same thing. They had like all these code snippets, running all these different places and just having one plugin where they could kind of do all these tweaks just with little toggles, made it a lot easier. , [00:13:12] Matt: [00:13:12] Was your brother already doing your [00:13:14] Brian: [00:13:14] business development? [00:13:14] He was a full-time WordPress developer, but for a He was in like the health space for a different corporation. So, got [00:13:20] Matt: [00:13:20] it. So you didn't really have to twist his arm to convince you or to convince him [00:13:25] Brian: [00:13:25] to join. He actually used to live out here in Arizona and he worked there based here locally. I actually used to work for the same company too. [00:13:32]But he used to work in a cubicle and all this stuff, and eventually he moved back to Washington state. But still was like, when you're coding things to help fix people's back pain, it's just, it's not as exciting as a, it gets old after awhile. And that's actually why I left that company venture too. [00:13:49] Cause like I'm trying to market cert back surgeries and all this stuff is just like, I don't really, I want to help people, but like, yeah, I don't have, I don't know. I can't put my whole heart into [00:14:00] this really. So, Finally started getting into the performance stuff and left that place. [00:14:04] And, but yeah, he, I didn't have to twist his arm at all. He was ready to do his own thing too. So it kind of worked out great. [00:14:10]Matt: [00:14:10] So for the person who's listening, who's developing her new plugin right now, or her new SAS service or some service from product based in the WordPress world. If you can recall back to , when you first launched. [00:14:21]The plugin. What was on your to-do list first in terms of marketing blog, email. If you could do it again, would you do something different in order to get the word out, [00:14:31] Brian: [00:14:31] one thing I've never done. And I hate myself for doing this as a marketer, especially is I should never set up an email list for our plugins. [00:14:40]And then over time it morphed into like, well, now I don't have half the people and I just never did it. So. I wish I would have done that from day one, because we were so heavy into email marketing at kids. So I know it works. It's one thing I do email marketing from day one, like have a checkbox there. [00:14:57] If they buy your plugin or product, [00:15:00] whatever it is, like, have them at least the ability to opt into your newsletter. It's I wish I had done that from day one. I might still go back and do that, but again, you're like, I've lost two or three years worth of people in there. So that's one thing. [00:15:12]I think choosing the right e-commerce system is really, really important. I don't regret what we did. We went with easy digital downloads. I'm not a huge fan of WooCommerce just cause it's, the overhead is a lot more than EDD, but it depends on what you're selling to. If you're going to a physical product, I would have probably gone with WooCommerce. [00:15:29] So, if you're yeah. And [00:15:31] Matt: [00:15:31] by overhead you're PR you're probably referring to like the same thing we were just talking about. Like, it's not even just like the price, but it's, it's just like all just the way that approaches digital sales and like all the stuff you have to do to just get a [00:15:43] Brian: [00:15:43] digital too. Like, it just has to run more with all that stuff. [00:15:46] It's a bigger product. And there's no way you can get the scripts, as small as like easy digital downloads. Cause there are a lot more niche focused. So. But if you're doing just digital stuff, I love you to never have regretted that decision. They're about to roll out. They've [00:16:00] been working on like EDD 3.0 for like a year plus now, and it's going to be really cool. [00:16:05] So I'm excited. Well, yeah, it gives them the benefit of the doubt, but yeah, it really has been like five years, but it really is. Yeah. Cause I've been playing with the beta of that and it's really cool reports coming in. So, but. E-commerce platforms definitely important. I probably, I, so what I did was I'm a big fan of SEO and content. [00:16:25] And what I did was I actually strategically wrote our docs. To rank, instead of doing the blog route, I, I do like keyword research on every documentation thing we write. So if there's different ways I can word it slightly to kind of a keyword that better. I do that. So that has kind of been like a replacement for a blog. [00:16:45] And if you have that's worked really well. For us. So like maybe if you're a developer have a plugin, if you don't have time for a blog. Cause really we didn't, we didn't either, but I knew content works. So we kind of went with the documentation approach. Just you can [00:17:00] go like treated as a 2000 and 3000 word documentation post. [00:17:05] Awesome. [00:17:05]Matt: [00:17:05] Yeah. And as it might be like how to optimize or how to optimize the WordPress site on kin sta. And it might be, your article talking about your documentation article. Maybe you have a special API key that integrates with Kinsler, something like that. But, you'd have those keywords where you're answering what, will be an eventual question from a customer, but you're, you're also, giving it that sprinkle on top where. [00:17:29] If somebody's searching for it in Google, it's also gonna, solve that [00:17:33] Brian: [00:17:33] fall. We have seen from that is, and it's not really a huge issue, but if you have any like voting system in place, we have a little like thumbs up, thumbs down thing on our docs that if you put the thumbs down, it just lets you like put in a comment to say like, why you didn't like it or what we could improve. [00:17:48] We get a lot of thumbs down because I guess I've done too good with documentation or something. So like people like how to disable emojis and WordPress. And like our documentation is how to use our plugin [00:18:00] to disable emojis and WordPress. And everyone wants to not buy our plugin, but figure out how to disable emotions. [00:18:06] WordPress still they're like thumbs down or joining us up on your plugins. And I was like, I'm sorry, I re too good of a dog, I guess. Sorry. That's Google's fault. In my opinion, the, the [00:18:16] Matt: [00:18:16] internet. The Internet's a funny place. I have a eight year old gravity forms video that people still comment on this. [00:18:23] Isn't like, how did this wasn't even look the same? Like, did you look at the date of the YouTube video? It's eight years old? What did you, what did [00:18:30] Brian: [00:18:30] you think was going to happen regardless? Free traffic is free traffic, so it's never a bad thing. [00:18:36]Matt: [00:18:36] I'm just going to pause for a second here. I don't know why this AC units making the sound one second and it's back it's it's on the phone. I don't know why. All right. The, the YouTube viewers will enjoy that. Cause the YouTube is totally unedited. That's the value of watching the YouTube, watching the YouTube channel. [00:18:53]Let's talk about the product market fit itself. You start writing the documentation. It starts [00:19:00] ranking. What was your first order of operation to get connected with agencies and hosting providers? [00:19:06]Brian: [00:19:06] A lot of it was cause again, we, with our first plug in there, we started building it while it was at Ken star. [00:19:12] Ready. So like, I would say we had a little traction when we finally left. Like we had been, I had probably been writing docs for like a year, like just in the evening, slowly building it up and stuff. So. Our Nova shirt. One is probably a better example because that one we launched after I left Ken's to. [00:19:28] So like that was a brand new play we launched just with nothing. And that one we've slowly just been ranking the docs. Huge, important thing. Social media has been another thing. I love using Twitter and Facebook, so that's not a hard thing for me because I actually enjoy doing it. And another thing was affiliate marketing program. [00:19:46] That was, that's been a huge thing for us actually. We saw it work. I saw it work pretty good at Kinsa and I've seen it actually even work even better with the plugins. So I'm not sure, maybe it works just better with plugins in general all the time, or I've [00:20:00] seen that work really well for us. [00:20:01] So, so, oops. But yeah, reaching out to bloggers and letting them know we have an affiliate program and kind of describing like our our plugin and what it does, and like how it might stack up to, some of the other ones that are out there already. And then just kind of going from there and then kind of building all the affiliate marketers, and that kind of will snowball over time, but it's not, there's no overnight easy success. [00:20:22] So just a fair warning to everyone. It's like, it's a slow, it's a slow grind. [00:20:26]Matt: [00:20:26] Yeah. I Especially affiliates, right? Cause you, you want to try to reach out to the air quotes, good ones that are out there. Right. And you want to make sure that they're providing the most accurate and up-to-date information, which plugin did you use for affiliates in the back? [00:20:40] Also Pippin's [00:20:41]Brian: [00:20:41] affiliate VP. That's where we usually WB works really great. We've I've never had a single problem with it. [00:20:46]Matt: [00:20:46] The. Supporting the business let's move into or supporting the plugins either one was that new to you? Coming from Kinsel, you probably saw what it was like to support a WordPress website or an end-user. You start marketing, you [00:21:00] are ranking, you're making these connections, you're selling it now. [00:21:03] Any surprise on supporting this stuff. Because again, I feel like at least the perf matters is. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're probably going to have people ask you some real technical questions where it's not just restart your laptop, try it again. It's going to be something like, Hey, these three lines of my JavaScript file are getting corrupted. [00:21:20] Every time I hit, it's like, oh man, like I have to get really deep with [00:21:23] Brian: [00:21:23] these customers. So like for our providers, I would say we get 10 times the amount of tickets as we do for our social media plugin or a coupon plugin. And we knew that was going to happen. Optimization is tricky. And even if you make it a single toggle, like it might not work on someone else's site, it might need a slight fix on our end to work with that theme. [00:21:44] Or there's all sorts of different problems that can go with performance optimization. And so like a part of my day is doing support tickets. Like every single day. Like I wake up and basically my brother and I wake up and we try to bang out support tickets, first thing. So by noon, we can [00:22:00] actually. [00:22:00] Like, he goes back to like coding and I don't really hear from him for a couple hours. And then, yeah. And then I'll go back into, in documentation and like whatever's in my Trello board. But yeah, I would say a good half of our day now is spent just doing tickets and we use just a shared Gmail inbox. [00:22:17] We found that it works really great for us. With two people. I know that doesn't work once you get lots of people, but we use 'em. The filters aggressively. And then we have our contact form push in different labels, dynamically based on what they choose. So when it comes in, we can see like, oh, this is a feature request for perf matters. [00:22:35]And then a filter is applied to it in Gmail. And so when we get up, like we can see boom, boom, boom, like kind of what we have already without, without any work. So, [00:22:43] Matt: [00:22:43] There's a, there's a lead of customer success right now. Just throwing a laptop around the room going, I can't believe they just use a single [00:22:50] Brian: [00:22:50] g-mail inbox. [00:22:51] Yeah. Well, coming from Kenzie, we used Intercom and all of these crazy tools to do the, to do the support and stuff. And you had, and then just [00:23:00] going to a shared Gmail inbox, it's kind of refreshing to be honest, because it was very, very simple. But yeah, that's our workflow. And like, I have my Trello board, my brother has his development, Trello board. [00:23:10] So that's how we do that. But yeah. [00:23:11]Matt: [00:23:11] What does a long-term what does a long-term vision of this? This company with your brother look like, like, are you, are you looking to just keep it you and him? Or is it you starting to feel like, okay, we're growing this whole, like nine to 12, just doing support. We need to bring somebody on. [00:23:28] Is that a, is that in the cards in the future, [00:23:30] Brian: [00:23:30] or I think we're going to try to see how it goes here within the next year or two. We. We're trying not to bring anyone else on board because I've seen at multiple startups, how that works and it just had so much more complications to things like, and then if you grow too big, you got to do an HR department. [00:23:48] And it just gets out of control really, really fast. So like we're purposefully wanting to stay very, very small. And the nice thing about that is our overhead is also really small too. So, that's one [00:24:00] reason why we're, we're also not just trying to add every single feature in the book to try to just get every sale we possibly can. [00:24:05] We're we're more specific about what we're adding and trying to stay small and nimble. I would, I would say for people out there staying small and nimble definitely has a lot of advantages. Even things like, yeah. Taking advantage. I'm not a big fan of lifetime deals. But you know, I snagged them when I see them too. [00:24:23] I'm not, you'd be stupid if you don't. And so, like EDD had a lifetime sale last year, they ran. I was like, okay, I know I bought it without hesitation within minutes. And just. Yeah. It's like, it's got bills like that, that you can just get where of live wife amount, forever. [00:24:39]If you're small and nimble, like, it makes a huge difference. Whereas, if you're a 30 person company might not, might not matter as much, but yeah. So yeah, staying small and nimble has advantages, I would say for sure. [00:24:49] Matt: [00:24:49] Yeah. How do you balance the, the response of the, of the folks? Well, let's talk about how perf matters sits into the overall competition of plugins. [00:24:59] And when [00:25:00] we had our pre-interview, I asked you about like the caching plugins and stuff like that seems to be a booming market. If there, if you're doing it well, Do you have customers who come to you who are like, even on this whole thing of, of pricing and value and lifetime deals, I feel like sometimes people go, we're average, WordPress customers go, oh, a hundred dollars for this. [00:25:19] All it does is this one little thing. I'm not going to pay a hundred dollars when X plugin does it. I bought a lifetime license for $49. I'll never have to pay again for free. How do you position. Perf matters to a caching plugin, heck even, even a Yoast SEO, because I think sometimes people throw that into the mix of, of site optimization. [00:25:39] How do you position it to your customers when they ask you that the [00:25:42] Brian: [00:25:42] differences first off, I think with all of our plugins, we've approached them in a slightly different way. So like, and I probably every in the battle for I'll say that, but I, I think we do have some things that are unique to us. But another thing that is another advantage of staying small and nimble is like, I, [00:26:00] I think our support is hands down the best out of. [00:26:02] Probably any of the other plugins out there. And it's, we clear our tickets out by noon every single day. We respond typically within 20 minutes sometimes to people like your ticket will be solved the same day. Regardless. I won't go to sleep until it's solved. That's that's one advantage to us. And so, we get a lot of people reaching out saying, can you do this? [00:26:20] Or can you do that? And I'll take the time. I'll take 20 minutes and respond to them with a lengthy email. Sometimes here's how to do this. And then, we'll win over a customer that way. So, once you grow too big, you have to bang things out quicker and as fast as possible, and the quality just goes down. [00:26:35]And so I don't mind taking more time out and, doing emails like that. So that's one advantage. I think we have over some of our competitors. And another thing is we've kind of put ourselves in the niche to kind of work alongside. The competitors. So like WP, rocket. Great example, everybody has it. [00:26:53] I was probably on 90% of the sites I work on for clients. But like they started primarily as a caching plugin. [00:27:00] That's how they started. And they started adding, all the optimizations after that. But for us. We're like there's already all these great caching solutions hosts, like Kinston Pagely WP engine. [00:27:11] You don't need a caching plugin. So we're like, you know what, we're not going to do caching, skip that. There's other, there's other great people doing it, hosting providers now do it. So, we're not going to spend time on that. And that's kind of how we've approached everything out there. Like. Image optimization, never going to do it. [00:27:27] You have, you have short pixel. Imagify great plugins out there already that do that. Do it really well. We use those plugins. So you know what we're to going to do that. We then focus on things that other people aren't doing. We're trying to fix problems that haven't been solved yet. So. [00:27:43]Matt: [00:27:43] Yeah. And you mentioned to me that your best customers are agencies, obviously they're, well-informed, they're developing the sites, they understand WordPress. So it's a great sort of, and you saw firsthand that other agencies were using the code snippets. Plugin. So you're like, yeah, this makes total sense. [00:27:59] And if I [00:28:00] can address that market and shape my messaging to it, chances are the support won't be as challenging. You still probably have challenging support, but at least if you're focusing on agencies, they have some money. Yeah. [00:28:12] Brian: [00:28:12] Yep. No, exactly. And we do get all sorts of users. I We'll get the, I've had people email us saying. [00:28:18] I just created my first website, WordPress website today. And for some reason they bought our plugin. I would be like, you know what, I, I think you need to learn a little more before you go down, even the optimization route. Like so, but and then we have people that have installed like literally like 10 different optimization, plugins thinking, the more they install the faster it will get, which it doesn't work like that, unfortunately. [00:28:41]And so, we have to help those people. Fortunately, I. Being small and nimble, I can take the time and help those people that need a little more help than, like the agencies that, sometimes we'll probably never hear from them because they already have a developer that knows WordPress knows what they're trying to do. [00:28:55] And yeah, we just never even get a ticket from them ever. So. [00:28:58]Matt: [00:28:58] Yeah. You mentioned in [00:29:00] pre-interview something about Google core web vitals and how your plugin will at least help you get started, not solve it. I don't think unless you, unless you do solve it through your plugin or solve a ranking well or optimizing well do you have any thoughts that you would like to share with people who might not. [00:29:18] No much about what this upcoming Google core web vitals is including yours truly because I haven't really dug into any of the stuff that they're rolling out. Is there anything that you're plugging aides with that folks should get [00:29:31] Brian: [00:29:31] chance to viral? So there's all these different kinds of warnings and rules they want you to meet or thresholds. [00:29:38]And so basically with our plugin, that's, we're entirely focused on Google core web vitals. That's all we're focused on. And we're looking at each individual, one of those kind of born into the scene, how we can fix those basically on people's sites. So yeah, are a lot of people are buying a plugin, installing it to help increase their scores with Google core web vitals. [00:29:55]Now if you had asked me five years ago, I would've told you don't use page speed [00:30:00] scores at all. Don't scores don't matter. Unfortunately the times have changed and I will be the first to a minute. You need to go by the scores now. Unfortunately, that's where we're at. And. [00:30:10]Matt: [00:30:10] Which is a whole different conversation on [00:30:13] Brian: [00:30:13] like Google. [00:30:13] Yeah. Oh yeah. [00:30:15] Matt: [00:30:15] And [00:30:15] Brian: [00:30:15] antitrust. Sure. It is. And, but you know, the times before, when I started at kids to, this Google core web vitals wasn't even existing, you had page speed insights. But it wasn't really a ranking factor. So like, then you were like looking at total load time now. Load time matters, but you don't look, I don't look at that metric ever. [00:30:33] I haven't looked at load time for. Probably months what I'm looking at or the Google core web vital scores. Now they do correlate pretty well. So if you score high there, you're probably in loading fast anyways. So, but it's changed into before is how fast is your site load? And now it's about. How well does the code on your site run basically? [00:30:52] Like how, how are you loading the code? It's a lot more complicated than it was three or four years ago. So [00:31:00] that's what we're focused on now. And a lot of the optimization plugins are, are also focused on that too. Now. [00:31:04]Matt: [00:31:04] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What's next in for marketing for you? Sounds like it's still probably documentation building. [00:31:13] You have that chunk of the third of your day or whatever, doing support. Do you have a next big idea without sharing maybe the secret sauce of what you're doing, but maybe giving people some, some framework of. Of what you think you're going to do next for the company, because we're about what two, two and a half years [00:31:30] Brian: [00:31:30] company. [00:31:30] Yeah. Yeah. Raleigh legally. Yeah. On paper. So like this. Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:36]Matt: [00:31:36] So at this stage of the game, like, it's not just the, a beta test anymore. Like things are rocking and rolling for, for what we can tell you and your brother, you spending time supporting people. So you got customers you're rolling out products, rolling out new features. [00:31:49] What does marketing look like next for you? What's the next big leap you think you'll [00:31:53] Brian: [00:31:53] take not a podcast. I'm going to leave that to people like you, that are professionals that I know nothing about podcasts. [00:32:00] So, I kudos to you cause it's one thing, man. I, I could not do that. I, I wouldn't even know where to start, but it's the same with like YouTube. [00:32:06] I, I've never done YouTube videos in my life. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I'm a blogger. That's what I know what to do. So I think a big focus for me is actually more content this next year. We actually, my brother and I got into a, kind of a bad habit this last year with partially, maybe because of COVID too, we got into a slump of like, I was just doing primarily most of the tickets trying to get them off so he could just do development. [00:32:32] And most of my day was just doing tickets and then, and I wasn't doing any writing. And so this year we've kind of been like, okay, let's both wake up. We're both hanging out together. And that way we can both, I'll go right then, and then you can go do a element. So that's actually worked better for us. [00:32:48] So rebalancing our kind of workflow. And so yeah, I have a Trello board with probably like, Over a hundred topics I want to write on. It's just, for me, it's always a matter of a time. It's never of what to do. It's [00:33:00] just a matter of time. [00:33:00] Matt: [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah, because you're not, you're not the type to just rip up, but like a 300, three to 500 word article, like you're putting a lot of meetings [00:33:09] Brian: [00:33:09] when you're creating a blog post. [00:33:11] And that's another piece of advice for anyone listening. Yeah, I would two blog posts that are like 5,000 words. Each are way, way better than 10 blog posts that are, three or four, 500 words each. So just spend more time and less is, is, is fine. Yeah. [00:33:25] Matt: [00:33:25] For sure what's next for product development, anything new and exciting coming a plugin we don't know [00:33:31] Brian: [00:33:31] about yet or a new product. [00:33:34] We have enough under our boat for right now. As long as we can keep continuing seeing growth, being small and nimble, we're really not looking for new, new plugins to drink and more money because we're really focused on these right now. And I think for perf matters we have new features coming for. [00:33:50] Google core web vitals, everything we're pushing out is how to solve more of those crazy warnings or how to fix things. So definitely be that that update [00:34:00] is coming in June. So yeah, everyone listening, just, I would take time, look at your sites, see where you're standing at the moment. You don't want to get caught off guard with that stuff. [00:34:07]And then for our social sharing plugin we're actually going to be doing probably more focused on some block stuff. With Gutenberg. So, like widgets, I think here in five eight, or I forget if they delayed it again, they keep delaying stuff, but if it. There's going to be blocks and widgets eventually. [00:34:23] And so we're going to be doing some stuff with that. Taking advantage of that stuff that way, because right now we have a widget and like short codes, but it's kinda, like the old school way of doing things. And I'd love to, drag a block here or drag a block there. Like it'll, it'll be awesome. [00:34:36] I think so Be focused on that. And then that's pretty much it, our other affiliate marketing plugin. We don't have any new, crazy, huge features that one's pretty well built out. So we're kind of just adding things as customers request it kind of getting feedback, fixing bugs, obviously here and there. [00:34:52] So. [00:34:52]Matt: [00:34:52] Well, I'm going to do a new segment, which I have. I haven't done segments in my podcast in, in literally years, but you know, there's all of this [00:35:00] WordPress consolidation happening. I'll predict that you will get acquired by. Insta in a year. That's, that's my prediction because what'll happen is Chris lemma from liquid web will come knocking on your door and say, Hey, this is a great plugin that would work amazing with our hosting stack. [00:35:18] And then you'll take his offer and bring it back to the kids, the guys, and say, Hey, remember me, I get this offer from your competitor, Chris. Wouldn't you rather buy me instead. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw that out there on May 27th as we [00:35:31] Brian: [00:35:31] record it. Well, I can't tell you, I don't mind sharing. We've had multiple offers already. [00:35:35] And I'm pretty, probably every plugin developer has at this point. But the thing is we don't want to sell because we don't want to work for other people again, that's, that's the reason we quit our jobs was so we don't have to work for other people and have a more chillax, like, if I want to leave in the middle of the day to go get food, I can do that. [00:35:52]So. Just cause he worked from home for another company, it still doesn't mean you can like your schedules that July sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:00] [00:36:00] Matt: [00:36:00] Well, you, you just respond to Chris and say white Nia chillax check. I want chillax bucks. That's what I want. I want it. So I don't have to work for you. And then I can take a couple [00:36:07] Brian: [00:36:07] of years off, but the, the one thing people might not realize about those acquisitions is that. [00:36:12]A lot of times you can't just step away because a lot of times they won't have developers that understand your plugin or like there'll be a long lead time to where you can step away from. And so, like, that's something not either of my my brother and I are interested in, but yeah, you never know what's going to happen five years from now. [00:36:29]Liquid web has been smashing up things left and right. Cadence. Good. Yeah, the list goes on and on. It does actually worry me a little bit as far as what WordPress is going to look like, like five, 10 years from now. Like, is it going to be more just like Google, Amazon, Facebook? [00:36:46] I You're just going to have these huge companies running everything and no more little small guys anymore. So. It'll be interesting to see what happens. We're going to Brett and I are my brother and I are just going to chug along until we ride the wave until we maybe if, until it [00:37:00] ends or so. [00:37:00] But but yeah, it will be interesting to see what happens. [00:37:04]Matt: [00:37:04] Yeah. I think not to go into another segment, which I call the tinfoil hat segment is the I think. Jetpack and automatic and Matt have sort of brought this a little bit. More to the forefront or, brought it upon themselves kind of thing. [00:37:20] When you see Jetpack doing absolutely everything. I think when I interviewed him, he might've called it like a market correction. I see that as just big dominant player, rolling out a feature that small player can't compete with from everything from CRM to CDN to whatever, everything. [00:37:39] Literally in jet pack. And this will be the natural reaction to web hosts from web hosts because web hosts look at that and they go, well, we see what's coming. You'll just in another year or so, make a click and host your free WordPress site on wordpress.com with a click of a button. A lot of web hosts are going to get scared from that or of that. [00:37:59] Right. There's [00:38:00] just this quick mechanism. They have to start to connect in, right. Or serve static. You serve your site static with Jetpack CDN, right. And which is all already, almost there kind of thing. And there's less of a need for that host and their plans and all this stuff. So yeah, I can definitely see this all happening. [00:38:17] It's going to be interesting to see how we react and, that's why I always say it's fine to start at a foreign plug these days who cares because someone's going to acquire someone and then they'll, you'll just slide right into that next spot and say, Hey everybody, I'm here to. I, come and get me there's plenty of opportunity to, [00:38:32] Brian: [00:38:32] at least at this stage actually chatting. [00:38:34] I won't say who, but chatting with another plugin developer that was actually asking my advice about an acquisition, like, and they were running into the problem of how to scale to the next level, essentially. And like they were running into things that I've dealt with myself as far as like, how do we handle all this tax stuff, all the VAT stuff, all the, they're a smaller team and they were wanting. [00:38:57] They were just getting inundated with all these random things that [00:39:00] like, if you like take an acquisition, you do get the benefit of they handle all the taxes, they handle all the accounting. So, there are definitely advantages to say, like, maybe you don't want to go work for another company, but like maybe, maybe your day would be easier because all you have to worry about is, oh, okay. [00:39:17] I can keep helping code the plugin, but I don't have to worry about any of the other crap that comes, comes with it. So, there's another, yeah. [00:39:23]Matt: [00:39:23] Yeah, we eventually, we eventually see these, these founders come back around, right? They, they do their year stint or two years at, at the company, whatever the contract states and they're back again, developing something, All over again. [00:39:34] I, really depends on, on your taste as a founder and as a business builder, Brian Jackson, everybody, you can find him well, you can find them in a lot of places. You can find that perfect matters.io, Nova share.io forge media.io. You can find them at those three websites anywhere. [00:39:50] Brian: [00:39:50] Yeah, I, I pretty much live on Twitter. [00:39:52] It was just Brian Lee Jackson. You'll find me Bri and, and yeah. Send me a tweet or DM or if you're ever in Scottsdale, [00:40:00] Arizona tweet me, we'll meet up for coffee. I try to meet up anyone that twists me here. I always meet them for coffee. It's kind of like a little thing I like doing so genuine in the area. [00:40:08] I'd love to meet you. Hm, [00:40:09]Matt: [00:40:09] cool man. Everyone else. All right. put.com. airport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list. Don't forget to tune into the WP minute podcast@thewpminute.com. We'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

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Brian Jackson: From marketing Kinsta to building a plugin business

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2021 40:22

Today’s guest used to sit on the opposite sides of the WordPress hosting competition table from me. At one point in his career, he was pumping out content on Kinsta’s blog like an absolute machine while I was raging against that machine, selling would-be customers on Pagely’s hosting stack. So where is Brian Jackson, former marketer at Kinsta now? He co-found Forgemedia with his brother Brett, and have released 3 unique plugins, two of which help WordPress site owners optimize their sites for ranking and social sharing. Oh, they tossed a coupon plugin in there too to help affiliates increase sales for good measure. Once frienemy now Matt Report guest, I’m excited to share this conversation with you today. Transcription Brian Jackson Forgemedia Matt Report [00:00:00] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by mal care. Learn more about Malik here at Dot com. You’ve heard me talk about mal care before, but they’re back with some interesting updates. Not only are they the WordPress plugin with instant WordPress malware removal. Well, let me read some of these features. [00:00:15] Deep malware scanning. They know about malware that other plugins don’t. Number two, that one click malware removal process makes it super easy to remove from your WordPress website and number three, a new feature called auto bot ultra defense system. Okay. I made that ultra defense system part up, but get this, it automatically blocks the bots hitting your website. [00:00:35]So, not only does that protect your website, but in the long run, it’ll improve speed of your site from not letting those bots through the doors. Check out mal care at care.com that’s mal care.com. I don’t want to be a malware specialist. You don’t either check out mal. care.com. thanks for supporting the show [00:00:56]Matt: [00:00:56] episode of the Matt report is brought to you by search WP. Find search [00:01:00] wp@searchwp.com. Let’s talk about the power of their metrics. Add on for a moment. Since I redesigned the Matt report website, I put search front and center on my homepage. Why search WP metrics metrics. Give me the inside data to what visitors on my site are looking for. [00:01:18] I love the graphs and the actionable advice that it provides me. I can make informed decisions to create new content or optimize existing content that my audience is searching for. Remember when Google gave you all of that search data? Yeah, it was great. Back then, way back then when they gave it to us, they don’t give it to us anymore. [00:01:36] Put on-site search front and center for your visitors. Get that data back. Get searched wp@searchwp.com along with their metrics. Add on that search wp.com. Thanks for supporting the show. [00:01:49] today’s guest used to sit on the opposite sides of the WordPress hosting competition table. For me, at one point in his career, he was pumping out content on blog, like an absolute machine. [00:02:00] Well, I was raging against that machine selling would be customers on Paisley’s hosting stack. So where is Brian Jackson? [00:02:06] Former marketer at Kinston now. He co-founded forge media with his brother, Brett and have released three unique plugins, two of which help WordPress site owners optimize their sites for ranking and social sharing. Oh, they tossed that coupon plugin in there too. [00:02:20] To help affiliates increase their sales for good measure. Once frenemy now, Matt report guests. I’m excited to share this conversation with you today. You’re listening to the Maryport podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter now. report.com/subscribe and follow us on apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, better yet. [00:02:40] Please share this episode on social media. More love we get more listeners. There are around here. Okay. Don’t forget to listen to the WP minute podcasts. It’s weekly. WordPress news. And under five minutes while I just said it every week, the WP minute.com. It’s the WP minute.com. Subscribe to the [00:03:00] newsletter there. [00:03:00] Brian Jackson, here we go. [00:03:02] Brian: [00:03:02] I am running just a small little agency with my brother. We’re both the co-founders of forge media is what it’s called. [00:03:09] And we have a, kind of a marketing blog where we talk about WordPress related stuff in marketing and SEO. And then our main focus is actually our, we have three different WordPress plugins that we develop. One is a coupon plugin for like affiliate marketers, and other one is a social sharing plugin. [00:03:27] That’s really kind of focused on the performance aspect of it. And then we have our perf matters plugin, which is basically trying to tweak, WordPress to get it to be as fast as he can kind of a compliment to. Some of the other performance plugins that are already out there. So like we see a lot of people are using ours along with another one. [00:03:47] Matt: [00:03:47] I’m going to take this in the reverse order when we had our pre-interview something that just struck me. What is the attraction to. Social sharing plugins. I feel like it’s one of [00:04:00] those things, whereas , isn’t this solved already. Shouldn’t it be solved by WordPress at this point. [00:04:06]Social media is obviously here to stay. We’re recording this in the year 2021. You’d think that those buttons, those things for sharing your articles and your posts out would have been solved already. What is the attraction to that? What’s so good about that. [00:04:22]Brian: [00:04:22] And actually. I would actually say since we’ve been in developing our programmatic plugin for a while, and now we’re developing our social sharing plugin, the social sharing plugin is actually more complex to develop than our performance. [00:04:36] One sounds strange, but behind the scenes, there’s a lot more that goes on. Especially once you get into. Doing the social share counters and how to make that work for performance stuff. And then just Pinterest is just a nightmare to work with because you have your things, like you click a Pinterest image and it brings up all the images on the page. [00:04:57] There you can select there’s different [00:05:00] things you have to go through. And WordPress is just never going to be up to par compared to The social sharing plugins. I think WordPress will get to the point where you’ll eventually have a nice block with, I want these three buttons. Here’s my block. [00:05:11] I’ll drag it into the widget. We’re pretty much close to that. But as far as going beyond that, I don’t think we’re press ever wants to even tackle what we’re kind of doing with the social sharing plugins. And as a marketer, I’ve always liked sharing plugins because especially working at Ken’s still, like, we saw a lot of the data, like lots of people shared our content. [00:05:30] And so I, I know they work. And then you have other people using tools like buffer, that maybe don’t click the buttons, but they do it a different way. So yeah. [00:05:38]Matt: [00:05:38] I’ll become, come clean on this conversation. Like I never use a social share button on a site, largely because I just use the native integration with my iPhone. [00:05:49] Generally when I’m reading something or from on my laptop, I copy paste or hit the old buffer. Buffer icon in my in my brief extension. And I, I run it that [00:06:00] way, but all of that is to say that probably there’s some psychological sense in the mere fact of having an icon on a page to remind somebody like, oh yes, you should be sharing this. [00:06:11] Don’t don’t forget it. So there’s probably a little bit of that baked [00:06:14] Brian: [00:06:14] in, even if you don’t use the button and what’s the social share counts too. I’ve actually, I wish social share counts never existed to begin with. I just. I w I hope they all die eventually in my opinion. But the reason they work is like you said, that there’s a psychological thing behind seeing like, oh, this post has 1200 shares. [00:06:31] Like maybe I should actually read through this or something. See what’s what is in here. So yeah, a lot of it is psychological, I think, with the social sharing for sure. [00:06:38] Matt: [00:06:38] Product owners slash make, or I presume that. You’re the sort of like the, the architect, you sort of do the blueprint, but then your brother goes in and develops the features that, that you might, sketch out let’s for lack of a better phrase sketch out. [00:06:54] And then you say, Hey, this would be a great way to use it. I assume something like the Nova share plugin, [00:07:00] like you said, it’s a complex plugin behind the scenes, but at the same time, like you’re trying to dumb it down. To as simplistic as possible so that somebody who’s just, futsing around. [00:07:10] Like, I need to get a social share plugin on this site right now. I need to activate it. Like you have milliseconds to. Get that person to experience adding a social share plug in, or they’re just like, Nope. The activate delete one to move onto the next one. Like it’s, it’s a fine craft in order to get the most simplistic plugins activated and usable [00:07:31]Brian: [00:07:31] One thing that works in our advantage, I think is neither of us are good designers. We’re just, we can’t do it. If you give me a blank slate, I can’t do anything with it. Now if you give me blank slate and I have to write something, I can do that, but I can’t design worth crap and neither can my brother. [00:07:45]So we actually take advantage of the native WordPress UI in all of our plugin settings. So I actually like it that way better because then you don’t have to learn a whole new UI all over again. I hate these plugins with these brand new UIs. You have to learn like where’s all this [00:08:00] stuff. So we just take advantage default WordPress UI for all the settings. [00:08:03]And works for us. Cause we’re not designers. It just looks like word press still. And then I actually think it improves the onboarding because you’re not like where’s w why does this looks crazy? What are these toggles? All this stuff. So, yeah, so I, it, like you said, though, you have a few seconds until you lose someone. [00:08:19] I’m the same way too. I’ll go into a new plugin, I’d try it. And like, if I can’t figure out something or see it, a doc explaining how to do it, like I’m, I’m probably gone. So. [00:08:29]Matt: [00:08:29] So th this is a good segue into just talking about like all the plugins that you’re building including the, the perf matters plugin and the coupons plugin. [00:08:39] How do you allow yourself, or how do you wrangle in that expectation to just put all the features and everything, the kitchen sink into all of these. Plugins. [00:08:51] Brian: [00:08:51] Yeah, that’s a good point. And I think what has worked. Well for us in the past, and hopefully we’ll continue to work is being a WordPress user for so long myself [00:09:00] for like over a decade. I’ve used every social sharing plugin in the book, try them all. [00:09:04]And I’ve used all the performance optimists as you plug in. So I’ve used them all. And just over the years, finding things that really annoyed me. And I couldn’t do easily. That’s kind of what we’ve started our business around. Like here’s how I would do it myself in a different way. We started building on that kind of methodology. [00:09:20]And then right now it’s kind of morphed into what are we still trying to do? Because, because Google’s constantly changed stuff with performance, you have the web vitals stuff coming. So like, there’s things constantly changing. Like Facebook’s updating their share API. You’re always having to change and adapt as the plugins go on. [00:09:37]But I think we, my brother and I just always looked at it like, how would we do this if we were the user? Because we are the user still. And that’s worked really well for us in the past. So [00:09:48]Matt: [00:09:48] There’s an overhead to this stuff that a lot of people are not aware of. The more features you put in. Especially in your case where not only do you have to build the feature and support that feature, you [00:10:00] also have to be aware what Google’s changing, what Pinterest is changing. [00:10:04] You start rolling features and you’re like, Hey, there’s 15 social media sites we integrate with, and now that’s 15 API or whatever you have to, you have to watch. And I think a lot of people forget about that. And also to the point of view or UI decisions. Not being a designer. The worst thing the product makers do is attempt to be a designer. [00:10:27] And then they’re like, they, then they make those interfaces and you’re like, why did you even just use what WordPress gave you? You would have saved time, money, and no, one’s trying to figure out how the heck do you use this thing? [00:10:36]Brian: [00:10:36] The UI is actually a good point too. With, if you keep adding features over time, say you want to move this stuff to a different tab. Usually it’s stuff like that’s going to actually require a Migrator is what we call my brother. And I call it a Migrator on the backend running code to migrate the feature as that person talks at all in there. [00:10:54] To get rid of the old one. And that Migrator code has to stay in there. Until [00:11:00] I’m pretty much forever, or you can rip it out like two or three years later and say like, I think everyone’s probably gone and toggled this on here and moved. But like all of that stuff adds overhead. So like, we are always thinking like, where can we put this longterm? [00:11:13] Because we don’t want to put migrators in here later down the road to move everything again. So like, Lots of people don’t think that through even we were consumed with that a little bit. I was like, wow, this is, yeah, this is hard to change later down the road too. So, [00:11:26]Matt: [00:11:26] so let’s talk about perf matters, plugin. [00:11:29]It doesn’t seem to me anyway, like the easiest plugin to bring it to the market. I feel like it takes, not taking anything away, I think away from you and your brother, but it takes a lot of technical stuff that one would look at and be like, man, do we really want to build and test this, trying to find market adoption at the same time of as developing. [00:11:48] And it’s like, Hmm, social plugin or another form plugin, probably, sometimes it’d be sometimes you’re like, I should have built a form plugin. How did you prepare to jump into the market with that? What did, what did you do [00:12:00] in the past that said, you know what, this is the plugin for me. [00:12:02] Brian: [00:12:02] And I think that plugin itself. We actually started developing it while I was at Kinston. And mainly because, you know how hosting goes, like, no matter how good the host is, it doesn’t fix all the WordPress problems it on the site itself. So like a host won’t fix all the code issues. Usually it will help speed it up to as fast as you can get it. [00:12:22]And that’s why I always recommend using the host, like, can store a page the, or. Even, even WP engine, like any of those bigger tier hosts. But I just kept seeing thing to like, I need to tweak this and tweak this. And so over time I there’s a free plugin, like called code snippets. I don’t know if you’ve ever used that one, but I ended up with, 20 to 30 code snippets, running all these different filters and functions on my side. [00:12:43] And I was like, This is getting ridiculous. Let’s and so I actually asked my brother if we could put it into a plugin and then I started using it myself just on our own sites for awhile, and eventually it morphed into, like what if we just package this up and. Actually, maybe other people would be interested in it. [00:12:59]And what we [00:13:00] found was a lot of other developers and agencies were doing the same thing. They had like all these code snippets, running all these different places and just having one plugin where they could kind of do all these tweaks just with little toggles, made it a lot easier. , [00:13:12] Matt: [00:13:12] Was your brother already doing your [00:13:14] Brian: [00:13:14] business development? [00:13:14] He was a full-time WordPress developer, but for a He was in like the health space for a different corporation. So, got [00:13:20] Matt: [00:13:20] it. So you didn’t really have to twist his arm to convince you or to convince him [00:13:25] Brian: [00:13:25] to join. He actually used to live out here in Arizona and he worked there based here locally. I actually used to work for the same company too. [00:13:32]But he used to work in a cubicle and all this stuff, and eventually he moved back to Washington state. But still was like, when you’re coding things to help fix people’s back pain, it’s just, it’s not as exciting as a, it gets old after awhile. And that’s actually why I left that company venture too. [00:13:49] Cause like I’m trying to market cert back surgeries and all this stuff is just like, I don’t really, I want to help people, but like, yeah, I don’t have, I don’t know. I can’t put my whole heart into [00:14:00] this really. So, Finally started getting into the performance stuff and left that place. [00:14:04] And, but yeah, he, I didn’t have to twist his arm at all. He was ready to do his own thing too. So it kind of worked out great. [00:14:10]Matt: [00:14:10] So for the person who’s listening, who’s developing her new plugin right now, or her new SAS service or some service from product based in the WordPress world. If you can recall back to , when you first launched. [00:14:21]The plugin. What was on your to-do list first in terms of marketing blog, email. If you could do it again, would you do something different in order to get the word out, [00:14:31] Brian: [00:14:31] one thing I’ve never done. And I hate myself for doing this as a marketer, especially is I should never set up an email list for our plugins. [00:14:40]And then over time it morphed into like, well, now I don’t have half the people and I just never did it. So. I wish I would have done that from day one, because we were so heavy into email marketing at kids. So I know it works. It’s one thing I do email marketing from day one, like have a checkbox there. [00:14:57] If they buy your plugin or product, [00:15:00] whatever it is, like, have them at least the ability to opt into your newsletter. It’s I wish I had done that from day one. I might still go back and do that, but again, you’re like, I’ve lost two or three years worth of people in there. So that’s one thing. [00:15:12]I think choosing the right e-commerce system is really, really important. I don’t regret what we did. We went with easy digital downloads. I’m not a huge fan of WooCommerce just cause it’s, the overhead is a lot more than EDD, but it depends on what you’re selling to. If you’re going to a physical product, I would have probably gone with WooCommerce. [00:15:29] So, if you’re yeah. And [00:15:31] Matt: [00:15:31] by overhead you’re PR you’re probably referring to like the same thing we were just talking about. Like, it’s not even just like the price, but it’s, it’s just like all just the way that approaches digital sales and like all the stuff you have to do to just get a [00:15:43] Brian: [00:15:43] digital too. Like, it just has to run more with all that stuff. [00:15:46] It’s a bigger product. And there’s no way you can get the scripts, as small as like easy digital downloads. Cause there are a lot more niche focused. So. But if you’re doing just digital stuff, I love you to never have regretted that decision. They’re about to roll out. They’ve [00:16:00] been working on like EDD 3.0 for like a year plus now, and it’s going to be really cool. [00:16:05] So I’m excited. Well, yeah, it gives them the benefit of the doubt, but yeah, it really has been like five years, but it really is. Yeah. Cause I’ve been playing with the beta of that and it’s really cool reports coming in. So, but. E-commerce platforms definitely important. I probably, I, so what I did was I’m a big fan of SEO and content. [00:16:25] And what I did was I actually strategically wrote our docs. To rank, instead of doing the blog route, I, I do like keyword research on every documentation thing we write. So if there’s different ways I can word it slightly to kind of a keyword that better. I do that. So that has kind of been like a replacement for a blog. [00:16:45] And if you have that’s worked really well. For us. So like maybe if you’re a developer have a plugin, if you don’t have time for a blog. Cause really we didn’t, we didn’t either, but I knew content works. So we kind of went with the documentation approach. Just you can [00:17:00] go like treated as a 2000 and 3000 word documentation post. [00:17:05] Awesome. [00:17:05]Matt: [00:17:05] Yeah. And as it might be like how to optimize or how to optimize the WordPress site on kin sta. And it might be, your article talking about your documentation article. Maybe you have a special API key that integrates with Kinsler, something like that. But, you’d have those keywords where you’re answering what, will be an eventual question from a customer, but you’re, you’re also, giving it that sprinkle on top where. [00:17:29] If somebody’s searching for it in Google, it’s also gonna, solve that [00:17:33] Brian: [00:17:33] fall. We have seen from that is, and it’s not really a huge issue, but if you have any like voting system in place, we have a little like thumbs up, thumbs down thing on our docs that if you put the thumbs down, it just lets you like put in a comment to say like, why you didn’t like it or what we could improve. [00:17:48] We get a lot of thumbs down because I guess I’ve done too good with documentation or something. So like people like how to disable emojis and WordPress. And like our documentation is how to use our plugin [00:18:00] to disable emojis and WordPress. And everyone wants to not buy our plugin, but figure out how to disable emotions. [00:18:06] WordPress still they’re like thumbs down or joining us up on your plugins. And I was like, I’m sorry, I re too good of a dog, I guess. Sorry. That’s Google’s fault. In my opinion, the, the [00:18:16] Matt: [00:18:16] internet. The Internet’s a funny place. I have a eight year old gravity forms video that people still comment on this. [00:18:23] Isn’t like, how did this wasn’t even look the same? Like, did you look at the date of the YouTube video? It’s eight years old? What did you, what did [00:18:30] Brian: [00:18:30] you think was going to happen regardless? Free traffic is free traffic, so it’s never a bad thing. [00:18:36]Matt: [00:18:36] I’m just going to pause for a second here. I don’t know why this AC units making the sound one second and it’s back it’s it’s on the phone. I don’t know why. All right. The, the YouTube viewers will enjoy that. Cause the YouTube is totally unedited. That’s the value of watching the YouTube, watching the YouTube channel. [00:18:53]Let’s talk about the product market fit itself. You start writing the documentation. It starts [00:19:00] ranking. What was your first order of operation to get connected with agencies and hosting providers? [00:19:06]Brian: [00:19:06] A lot of it was cause again, we, with our first plug in there, we started building it while it was at Ken star. [00:19:12] Ready. So like, I would say we had a little traction when we finally left. Like we had been, I had probably been writing docs for like a year, like just in the evening, slowly building it up and stuff. So. Our Nova shirt. One is probably a better example because that one we launched after I left Ken’s to. [00:19:28] So like that was a brand new play we launched just with nothing. And that one we’ve slowly just been ranking the docs. Huge, important thing. Social media has been another thing. I love using Twitter and Facebook, so that’s not a hard thing for me because I actually enjoy doing it. And another thing was affiliate marketing program. [00:19:46] That was, that’s been a huge thing for us actually. We saw it work. I saw it work pretty good at Kinsa and I’ve seen it actually even work even better with the plugins. So I’m not sure, maybe it works just better with plugins in general all the time, or I’ve [00:20:00] seen that work really well for us. [00:20:01] So, so, oops. But yeah, reaching out to bloggers and letting them know we have an affiliate program and kind of describing like our our plugin and what it does, and like how it might stack up to, some of the other ones that are out there already. And then just kind of going from there and then kind of building all the affiliate marketers, and that kind of will snowball over time, but it’s not, there’s no overnight easy success. [00:20:22] So just a fair warning to everyone. It’s like, it’s a slow, it’s a slow grind. [00:20:26]Matt: [00:20:26] Yeah. I Especially affiliates, right? Cause you, you want to try to reach out to the air quotes, good ones that are out there. Right. And you want to make sure that they’re providing the most accurate and up-to-date information, which plugin did you use for affiliates in the back? [00:20:40] Also Pippin’s [00:20:41]Brian: [00:20:41] affiliate VP. That’s where we usually WB works really great. We’ve I’ve never had a single problem with it. [00:20:46]Matt: [00:20:46] The. Supporting the business let’s move into or supporting the plugins either one was that new to you? Coming from Kinsel, you probably saw what it was like to support a WordPress website or an end-user. You start marketing, you [00:21:00] are ranking, you’re making these connections, you’re selling it now. [00:21:03] Any surprise on supporting this stuff. Because again, I feel like at least the perf matters is. You’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re probably going to have people ask you some real technical questions where it’s not just restart your laptop, try it again. It’s going to be something like, Hey, these three lines of my JavaScript file are getting corrupted. [00:21:20] Every time I hit, it’s like, oh man, like I have to get really deep with [00:21:23] Brian: [00:21:23] these customers. So like for our providers, I would say we get 10 times the amount of tickets as we do for our social media plugin or a coupon plugin. And we knew that was going to happen. Optimization is tricky. And even if you make it a single toggle, like it might not work on someone else’s site, it might need a slight fix on our end to work with that theme. [00:21:44] Or there’s all sorts of different problems that can go with performance optimization. And so like a part of my day is doing support tickets. Like every single day. Like I wake up and basically my brother and I wake up and we try to bang out support tickets, first thing. So by noon, we can [00:22:00] actually. [00:22:00] Like, he goes back to like coding and I don’t really hear from him for a couple hours. And then, yeah. And then I’ll go back into, in documentation and like whatever’s in my Trello board. But yeah, I would say a good half of our day now is spent just doing tickets and we use just a shared Gmail inbox. [00:22:17] We found that it works really great for us. With two people. I know that doesn’t work once you get lots of people, but we use ’em. The filters aggressively. And then we have our contact form push in different labels, dynamically based on what they choose. So when it comes in, we can see like, oh, this is a feature request for perf matters. [00:22:35]And then a filter is applied to it in Gmail. And so when we get up, like we can see boom, boom, boom, like kind of what we have already without, without any work. So, [00:22:43] Matt: [00:22:43] There’s a, there’s a lead of customer success right now. Just throwing a laptop around the room going, I can’t believe they just use a single [00:22:50] Brian: [00:22:50] g-mail inbox. [00:22:51] Yeah. Well, coming from Kenzie, we used Intercom and all of these crazy tools to do the, to do the support and stuff. And you had, and then just [00:23:00] going to a shared Gmail inbox, it’s kind of refreshing to be honest, because it was very, very simple. But yeah, that’s our workflow. And like, I have my Trello board, my brother has his development, Trello board. [00:23:10] So that’s how we do that. But yeah. [00:23:11]Matt: [00:23:11] What does a long-term what does a long-term vision of this? This company with your brother look like, like, are you, are you looking to just keep it you and him? Or is it you starting to feel like, okay, we’re growing this whole, like nine to 12, just doing support. We need to bring somebody on. [00:23:28] Is that a, is that in the cards in the future, [00:23:30] Brian: [00:23:30] or I think we’re going to try to see how it goes here within the next year or two. We. We’re trying not to bring anyone else on board because I’ve seen at multiple startups, how that works and it just had so much more complications to things like, and then if you grow too big, you got to do an HR department. [00:23:48] And it just gets out of control really, really fast. So like we’re purposefully wanting to stay very, very small. And the nice thing about that is our overhead is also really small too. So, that’s one [00:24:00] reason why we’re, we’re also not just trying to add every single feature in the book to try to just get every sale we possibly can. [00:24:05] We’re we’re more specific about what we’re adding and trying to stay small and nimble. I would, I would say for people out there staying small and nimble definitely has a lot of advantages. Even things like, yeah. Taking advantage. I’m not a big fan of lifetime deals. But you know, I snagged them when I see them too. [00:24:23] I’m not, you’d be stupid if you don’t. And so, like EDD had a lifetime sale last year, they ran. I was like, okay, I know I bought it without hesitation within minutes. And just. Yeah. It’s like, it’s got bills like that, that you can just get where of live wife amount, forever. [00:24:39]If you’re small and nimble, like, it makes a huge difference. Whereas, if you’re a 30 person company might not, might not matter as much, but yeah. So yeah, staying small and nimble has advantages, I would say for sure. [00:24:49] Matt: [00:24:49] Yeah. How do you balance the, the response of the, of the folks? Well, let’s talk about how perf matters sits into the overall competition of plugins. [00:24:59] And when [00:25:00] we had our pre-interview, I asked you about like the caching plugins and stuff like that seems to be a booming market. If there, if you’re doing it well, Do you have customers who come to you who are like, even on this whole thing of, of pricing and value and lifetime deals, I feel like sometimes people go, we’re average, WordPress customers go, oh, a hundred dollars for this. [00:25:19] All it does is this one little thing. I’m not going to pay a hundred dollars when X plugin does it. I bought a lifetime license for $49. I’ll never have to pay again for free. How do you position. Perf matters to a caching plugin, heck even, even a Yoast SEO, because I think sometimes people throw that into the mix of, of site optimization. [00:25:39] How do you position it to your customers when they ask you that the [00:25:42] Brian: [00:25:42] differences first off, I think with all of our plugins, we’ve approached them in a slightly different way. So like, and I probably every in the battle for I’ll say that, but I, I think we do have some things that are unique to us. But another thing that is another advantage of staying small and nimble is like, I, [00:26:00] I think our support is hands down the best out of. [00:26:02] Probably any of the other plugins out there. And it’s, we clear our tickets out by noon every single day. We respond typically within 20 minutes sometimes to people like your ticket will be solved the same day. Regardless. I won’t go to sleep until it’s solved. That’s that’s one advantage to us. And so, we get a lot of people reaching out saying, can you do this? [00:26:20] Or can you do that? And I’ll take the time. I’ll take 20 minutes and respond to them with a lengthy email. Sometimes here’s how to do this. And then, we’ll win over a customer that way. So, once you grow too big, you have to bang things out quicker and as fast as possible, and the quality just goes down. [00:26:35]And so I don’t mind taking more time out and, doing emails like that. So that’s one advantage. I think we have over some of our competitors. And another thing is we’ve kind of put ourselves in the niche to kind of work alongside. The competitors. So like WP, rocket. Great example, everybody has it. [00:26:53] I was probably on 90% of the sites I work on for clients. But like they started primarily as a caching plugin. [00:27:00] That’s how they started. And they started adding, all the optimizations after that. But for us. We’re like there’s already all these great caching solutions hosts, like Kinston Pagely WP engine. [00:27:11] You don’t need a caching plugin. So we’re like, you know what, we’re not going to do caching, skip that. There’s other, there’s other great people doing it, hosting providers now do it. So, we’re not going to spend time on that. And that’s kind of how we’ve approached everything out there. Like. Image optimization, never going to do it. [00:27:27] You have, you have short pixel. Imagify great plugins out there already that do that. Do it really well. We use those plugins. So you know what we’re to going to do that. We then focus on things that other people aren’t doing. We’re trying to fix problems that haven’t been solved yet. So. [00:27:43]Matt: [00:27:43] Yeah. And you mentioned to me that your best customers are agencies, obviously they’re, well-informed, they’re developing the sites, they understand WordPress. So it’s a great sort of, and you saw firsthand that other agencies were using the code snippets. Plugin. So you’re like, yeah, this makes total sense. [00:27:59] And if I [00:28:00] can address that market and shape my messaging to it, chances are the support won’t be as challenging. You still probably have challenging support, but at least if you’re focusing on agencies, they have some money. Yeah. [00:28:12] Brian: [00:28:12] Yep. No, exactly. And we do get all sorts of users. I We’ll get the, I’ve had people email us saying. [00:28:18] I just created my first website, WordPress website today. And for some reason they bought our plugin. I would be like, you know what, I, I think you need to learn a little more before you go down, even the optimization route. Like so, but and then we have people that have installed like literally like 10 different optimization, plugins thinking, the more they install the faster it will get, which it doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. [00:28:41]And so, we have to help those people. Fortunately, I. Being small and nimble, I can take the time and help those people that need a little more help than, like the agencies that, sometimes we’ll probably never hear from them because they already have a developer that knows WordPress knows what they’re trying to do. [00:28:55] And yeah, we just never even get a ticket from them ever. So. [00:28:58]Matt: [00:28:58] Yeah. You mentioned in [00:29:00] pre-interview something about Google core web vitals and how your plugin will at least help you get started, not solve it. I don’t think unless you, unless you do solve it through your plugin or solve a ranking well or optimizing well do you have any thoughts that you would like to share with people who might not. [00:29:18] No much about what this upcoming Google core web vitals is including yours truly because I haven’t really dug into any of the stuff that they’re rolling out. Is there anything that you’re plugging aides with that folks should get [00:29:31] Brian: [00:29:31] chance to viral? So there’s all these different kinds of warnings and rules they want you to meet or thresholds. [00:29:38]And so basically with our plugin, that’s, we’re entirely focused on Google core web vitals. That’s all we’re focused on. And we’re looking at each individual, one of those kind of born into the scene, how we can fix those basically on people’s sites. So yeah, are a lot of people are buying a plugin, installing it to help increase their scores with Google core web vitals. [00:29:55]Now if you had asked me five years ago, I would’ve told you don’t use page speed [00:30:00] scores at all. Don’t scores don’t matter. Unfortunately the times have changed and I will be the first to a minute. You need to go by the scores now. Unfortunately, that’s where we’re at. And. [00:30:10]Matt: [00:30:10] Which is a whole different conversation on [00:30:13] Brian: [00:30:13] like Google. [00:30:13] Yeah. Oh yeah. [00:30:15] Matt: [00:30:15] And [00:30:15] Brian: [00:30:15] antitrust. Sure. It is. And, but you know, the times before, when I started at kids to, this Google core web vitals wasn’t even existing, you had page speed insights. But it wasn’t really a ranking factor. So like, then you were like looking at total load time now. Load time matters, but you don’t look, I don’t look at that metric ever. [00:30:33] I haven’t looked at load time for. Probably months what I’m looking at or the Google core web vital scores. Now they do correlate pretty well. So if you score high there, you’re probably in loading fast anyways. So, but it’s changed into before is how fast is your site load? And now it’s about. How well does the code on your site run basically? [00:30:52] Like how, how are you loading the code? It’s a lot more complicated than it was three or four years ago. So [00:31:00] that’s what we’re focused on now. And a lot of the optimization plugins are, are also focused on that too. Now. [00:31:04]Matt: [00:31:04] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What’s next in for marketing for you? Sounds like it’s still probably documentation building. [00:31:13] You have that chunk of the third of your day or whatever, doing support. Do you have a next big idea without sharing maybe the secret sauce of what you’re doing, but maybe giving people some, some framework of. Of what you think you’re going to do next for the company, because we’re about what two, two and a half years [00:31:30] Brian: [00:31:30] company. [00:31:30] Yeah. Yeah. Raleigh legally. Yeah. On paper. So like this. Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:36]Matt: [00:31:36] So at this stage of the game, like, it’s not just the, a beta test anymore. Like things are rocking and rolling for, for what we can tell you and your brother, you spending time supporting people. So you got customers you’re rolling out products, rolling out new features. [00:31:49] What does marketing look like next for you? What’s the next big leap you think you’ll [00:31:53] Brian: [00:31:53] take not a podcast. I’m going to leave that to people like you, that are professionals that I know nothing about podcasts. [00:32:00] So, I kudos to you cause it’s one thing, man. I, I could not do that. I, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but it’s the same with like YouTube. [00:32:06] I, I’ve never done YouTube videos in my life. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’m a blogger. That’s what I know what to do. So I think a big focus for me is actually more content this next year. We actually, my brother and I got into a, kind of a bad habit this last year with partially, maybe because of COVID too, we got into a slump of like, I was just doing primarily most of the tickets trying to get them off so he could just do development. [00:32:32] And most of my day was just doing tickets and then, and I wasn’t doing any writing. And so this year we’ve kind of been like, okay, let’s both wake up. We’re both hanging out together. And that way we can both, I’ll go right then, and then you can go do a element. So that’s actually worked better for us. [00:32:48] So rebalancing our kind of workflow. And so yeah, I have a Trello board with probably like, Over a hundred topics I want to write on. It’s just, for me, it’s always a matter of a time. It’s never of what to do. It’s [00:33:00] just a matter of time. [00:33:00] Matt: [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah, because you’re not, you’re not the type to just rip up, but like a 300, three to 500 word article, like you’re putting a lot of meetings [00:33:09] Brian: [00:33:09] when you’re creating a blog post. [00:33:11] And that’s another piece of advice for anyone listening. Yeah, I would two blog posts that are like 5,000 words. Each are way, way better than 10 blog posts that are, three or four, 500 words each. So just spend more time and less is, is, is fine. Yeah. [00:33:25] Matt: [00:33:25] For sure what’s next for product development, anything new and exciting coming a plugin we don’t know [00:33:31] Brian: [00:33:31] about yet or a new product. [00:33:34] We have enough under our boat for right now. As long as we can keep continuing seeing growth, being small and nimble, we’re really not looking for new, new plugins to drink and more money because we’re really focused on these right now. And I think for perf matters we have new features coming for. [00:33:50] Google core web vitals, everything we’re pushing out is how to solve more of those crazy warnings or how to fix things. So definitely be that that update [00:34:00] is coming in June. So yeah, everyone listening, just, I would take time, look at your sites, see where you’re standing at the moment. You don’t want to get caught off guard with that stuff. [00:34:07]And then for our social sharing plugin we’re actually going to be doing probably more focused on some block stuff. With Gutenberg. So, like widgets, I think here in five eight, or I forget if they delayed it again, they keep delaying stuff, but if it. There’s going to be blocks and widgets eventually. [00:34:23] And so we’re going to be doing some stuff with that. Taking advantage of that stuff that way, because right now we have a widget and like short codes, but it’s kinda, like the old school way of doing things. And I’d love to, drag a block here or drag a block there. Like it’ll, it’ll be awesome. [00:34:36] I think so Be focused on that. And then that’s pretty much it, our other affiliate marketing plugin. We don’t have any new, crazy, huge features that one’s pretty well built out. So we’re kind of just adding things as customers request it kind of getting feedback, fixing bugs, obviously here and there. [00:34:52] So. [00:34:52]Matt: [00:34:52] Well, I’m going to do a new segment, which I have. I haven’t done segments in my podcast in, in literally years, but you know, there’s all of this [00:35:00] WordPress consolidation happening. I’ll predict that you will get acquired by. Insta in a year. That’s, that’s my prediction because what’ll happen is Chris lemma from liquid web will come knocking on your door and say, Hey, this is a great plugin that would work amazing with our hosting stack. [00:35:18] And then you’ll take his offer and bring it back to the kids, the guys, and say, Hey, remember me, I get this offer from your competitor, Chris. Wouldn’t you rather buy me instead. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna throw that out there on May 27th as we [00:35:31] Brian: [00:35:31] record it. Well, I can’t tell you, I don’t mind sharing. We’ve had multiple offers already. [00:35:35] And I’m pretty, probably every plugin developer has at this point. But the thing is we don’t want to sell because we don’t want to work for other people again, that’s, that’s the reason we quit our jobs was so we don’t have to work for other people and have a more chillax, like, if I want to leave in the middle of the day to go get food, I can do that. [00:35:52]So. Just cause he worked from home for another company, it still doesn’t mean you can like your schedules that July sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:00] [00:36:00] Matt: [00:36:00] Well, you, you just respond to Chris and say white Nia chillax check. I want chillax bucks. That’s what I want. I want it. So I don’t have to work for you. And then I can take a couple [00:36:07] Brian: [00:36:07] of years off, but the, the one thing people might not realize about those acquisitions is that. [00:36:12]A lot of times you can’t just step away because a lot of times they won’t have developers that understand your plugin or like there’ll be a long lead time to where you can step away from. And so, like, that’s something not either of my my brother and I are interested in, but yeah, you never know what’s going to happen five years from now. [00:36:29]Liquid web has been smashing up things left and right. Cadence. Good. Yeah, the list goes on and on. It does actually worry me a little bit as far as what WordPress is going to look like, like five, 10 years from now. Like, is it going to be more just like Google, Amazon, Facebook? [00:36:46] I You’re just going to have these huge companies running everything and no more little small guys anymore. So. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. We’re going to Brett and I are my brother and I are just going to chug along until we ride the wave until we maybe if, until it [00:37:00] ends or so. [00:37:00] But but yeah, it will be interesting to see what happens. [00:37:04]Matt: [00:37:04] Yeah. I think not to go into another segment, which I call the tinfoil hat segment is the I think. Jetpack and automatic and Matt have sort of brought this a little bit. More to the forefront or, brought it upon themselves kind of thing. [00:37:20] When you see Jetpack doing absolutely everything. I think when I interviewed him, he might’ve called it like a market correction. I see that as just big dominant player, rolling out a feature that small player can’t compete with from everything from CRM to CDN to whatever, everything. [00:37:39] Literally in jet pack. And this will be the natural reaction to web hosts from web hosts because web hosts look at that and they go, well, we see what’s coming. You’ll just in another year or so, make a click and host your free WordPress site on wordpress.com with a click of a button. A lot of web hosts are going to get scared from that or of that. [00:37:59] Right. There’s [00:38:00] just this quick mechanism. They have to start to connect in, right. Or serve static. You serve your site static with Jetpack CDN, right. And which is all already, almost there kind of thing. And there’s less of a need for that host and their plans and all this stuff. So yeah, I can definitely see this all happening. [00:38:17] It’s going to be interesting to see how we react and, that’s why I always say it’s fine to start at a foreign plug these days who cares because someone’s going to acquire someone and then they’ll, you’ll just slide right into that next spot and say, Hey everybody, I’m here to. I, come and get me there’s plenty of opportunity to, [00:38:32] Brian: [00:38:32] at least at this stage actually chatting. [00:38:34] I won’t say who, but chatting with another plugin developer that was actually asking my advice about an acquisition, like, and they were running into the problem of how to scale to the next level, essentially. And like they were running into things that I’ve dealt with myself as far as like, how do we handle all this tax stuff, all the VAT stuff, all the, they’re a smaller team and they were wanting. [00:38:57] They were just getting inundated with all these random things that [00:39:00] like, if you like take an acquisition, you do get the benefit of they handle all the taxes, they handle all the accounting. So, there are definitely advantages to say, like, maybe you don’t want to go work for another company, but like maybe, maybe your day would be easier because all you have to worry about is, oh, okay. [00:39:17] I can keep helping code the plugin, but I don’t have to worry about any of the other crap that comes, comes with it. So, there’s another, yeah. [00:39:23]Matt: [00:39:23] Yeah, we eventually, we eventually see these, these founders come back around, right? They, they do their year stint or two years at, at the company, whatever the contract states and they’re back again, developing something, All over again. [00:39:34] I, really depends on, on your taste as a founder and as a business builder, Brian Jackson, everybody, you can find him well, you can find them in a lot of places. You can find that perfect matters.io, Nova share.io forge media.io. You can find them at those three websites anywhere. [00:39:50] Brian: [00:39:50] Yeah, I, I pretty much live on Twitter. [00:39:52] It was just Brian Lee Jackson. You’ll find me Bri and, and yeah. Send me a tweet or DM or if you’re ever in Scottsdale, [00:40:00] Arizona tweet me, we’ll meet up for coffee. I try to meet up anyone that twists me here. I always meet them for coffee. It’s kind of like a little thing I like doing so genuine in the area. [00:40:08] I’d love to meet you. Hm, [00:40:09]Matt: [00:40:09] cool man. Everyone else. All right. put.com. airport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list. Don’t forget to tune into the WP minute podcast@thewpminute.com. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Podcast E141: Options on not getting angry during code review

The Get Options Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2021 49:12

Life Updates Kyle: adding role at Sandhills at Product Mgr for EDD Adam: Dad turned 90. applied for FAFSA for Parker. Yikes! Changes Aaron Campbell moved over to NewFold Digital Christie Chirinos leaving WPMRR podcast. Josh Pollock and Joel Worsham join 10up David Beja and Nina Pacifico join Sandhills Development Wearing/Drinking/Reading Adam: Pagely hoodie / coffee…

business marketing dad code options angry wordpress themes cms plugins fafsa sandhills pagely josh pollock

EP184 - Innovative Marketing in the WordPress Ecosystem with Sally Strebel

WPblab - A WordPress Social Media Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2021 60:48

“Managed WordPress Hosting” is as commonly known now, thanks to Sally Strebel as Kleenex. Pagely continues to be a market leader in the hosting space. And they’re privately funded! Their business conference Pressnomics is also Sally’s brainchild and attended by a host of entrepreneurs. In this episode, Sally chats with Bridget and Jason about how our previous experiences can help us see a path forward. Follow Sally Strebel on Twitter @BizGirl “Last, being underestimated is a gift. They’ll never see you coming until they can’t help but notice. If you’re with the right people while that’s happening, there’s no better feeling.” Read her essay, “Marginalized” on HeroPress https://heropress.com/essays/marginalized/ Show Sponsors Desktop Server – ServerPress https://serverpress.com/ WPsitesync https://www.wpsitesync.com/ Become A Patron And Support Us On Patreon!

wordpress ecosystem marginalized kleenex innovative marketing pagely heropress managed wordpress hosting pressnomics

Funding a WordPress podcast

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2020 27:16

Monetizing “WordPress content” like a blog, a podcast, or a YouTube channel is tricky business. Results are rarely immediate for most creators, with the Google SERP odds being stacked against you. If you want to fast track it: You will find more opportunity producing largely searched for content like how-to tutorials or topics on design and development. It's just a numbers game, really. Reporting on the plumbing of WordPress the software, the crossover of Automattic/.org, and the community might be a longer burn. Few brands do it successfully like Post Status (privately owned) and WP Tavern (owned by Audrey Capital). I earn roughly $15-20k a year through my side-hustle of WordPress content creation. It only took about 8 years to get here. If you want to learn more about it how I approach my content efforts, why I give 20% to Big Orange Heart, and what big opportunities you can tackle — better than me! — give today's episode a listen. Read the transcript Welcome back to the Matt report podcast, mattreport.com – mattreport.com/subscribe. Join that mailing list. Leave us a five star review on iTunes. Everyone says it. Everyone says it. I say it every other podcast or says it's a, it's a form of validation. That people are listening to the show. People are happy with the show. I have a stretch goal of 200 reviews on iTunes. I'd love to get there. I'm at 130 right now. If you have a moment, jump on over to iTunes you have in your iPhone. Did you get the brand new iPhone? Is it your you're already listening to this on your iPhone 12 who an Android user. I've never even logged in to my Google dashboard to see how many reviews I got over there. Probably zero. Well, wherever reviews are found. Go ahead and leave us a review there really appreciate it. That makes me feel good. I feel like I'm getting something done that they have some value here. We're going to talk about that today. We're gonna talk about why monetize content, how much money I make as a content creator, hopefully. Yeah. To set the stage for you. Maybe you're making way more money than I am creating content. Maybe you're not making a nickel yet, but you want to get into it. So I give you my perspective on this crazy WordPress space, making money specifically in the WordPress space, and then sort of how I'm trying to broaden the horizons. Hey, you want to listen to our sponsors today? Cause we're going to talk all about sponsors today. There are no official sponsors, like there's nobody paying me today except for my own plugin, easy support videos. Easy support videos. If you just Google that. My God, I hope that the first result will be easy support videos in the WordPress plugin directory. We have a new version coming out. early November. Maybe if you're looking for ways to embed video support for your customers or for people you've built WordPress websites for your organization, your internal company. Easy support videos allows you to embed a video in the admin. We give you a little own admin action. You can embed a whole library of videos for helpful support tutorials. A little note that goes along with each video, don't forget how to register users. Don't forget how to write this awesome blog post. Don't forget how to use this Beaver builder template. You take your video from any OEM bed source, you drop it right into the admin of WordPress, and it's just for your users. You can do things like member roll access and things like that. To see who can modify videos, who can't, who can see the videos who can't. We have a new version coming. Like I said, it's going to do some fun things. It's going to get a little bit faster. It's going to get a little bit more efficient. You're able to serve up some videos in other areas of WordPress. When you're logged into WordPress, check it out. Easy support videos, easy support videos. All right. Okay. So how much money do I make creating content in the WordPress space? And again, I'm putting this out there. One, because I've gotten into sponsorships recently. I just generally want to talk about my approach to it, to want, to help educate others who are thinking about creating content in the space, or maybe you're making a ton of money in this space, creating content. And you want to say, Hey Matt, you're doing it all wrong. Here's how you can make more. Hey, I'm all ears. So I make anywhere between 15 to $20,000 a year through monetizing content through being a content creator. And that's both on the podcast side and YouTube side. So 15 to 20 K a year. This is a, this is a side hustle for me, right? This is a side gig. This is a complimentary to of course my, my full time job over at Castillo's. And, you know, one of the other reasons why I'm bringing this up is, you know, I read a blog post recently. I don't want to get into the minutia of the, of the premise of that blog post, but they, you know, they use the word, uh, sort of set their sights on, on podcasters at large, in the WordPress space, uh, being somewhat problematic and, um, That they shouldn't be funded or they shouldn't, you know, we should turn our sites away from the typical WordPress podcast or, uh, because we shouldn't be helping them fund these things. And look, that's a discussion for another time, but the idea is this is not at least from my perspective, not this media giant. right. I did not get rich quick quote, unquote, being a WordPress podcaster. I mean, I got to this point because I started a podcast eight years ago. I thought I wanted to grow my WordPress agency through a podcast. It worked, you know, when we talk about making money in the word press or in podcasting, there is an opportunity to sell your services, to build up your profile, to connect with people. There's hundreds of thousands of dollars tied to that, which I'm not accounting for here. Cause, you know, it's very hard to measure that metric, but yes, people who have listened to this podcast have hired me to do jobs back in the day or referred my agency back in the day, I use my podcast as a sales tool back in the day, to, to filter into services clients. It's a, it's a strategy that you know, that you might take, but if you're looking to specifically monetize podcasts and content, that's what this discussion is about. And I brought that up because it just made me think like, wow, I don't know how many podcasts are quote, unquote funded. Like they're this big media empire with a, with a, with a thing that they're trying to accomplish. Right. I mean, uh, we have, uh, doc pops show, uh, which I was on. He's paid, he's a WP engine employee. He runs torque mag. Right? They do media. So I think they do a podcast. They definitely do a Google live stream. I was on there a couple of weeks ago, WP Tavern, which is owned by, uh, Audrey capital, AKA Matt Mullenweg, uh, before Jeff left, which feels like just yesterday, but maybe it's a couple of years now. I don't remember at least a year. I can't, I don't really know the timeframe he did a podcast. I guess you could consider those two funded. When you talk about, you know, companies that are behind them with millions and millions of dollars in the bank. Uh, WPM U dev, I think still has a podcast. I should have done my notes here first, but let me just WPM you dev podcast. Hello WP yet. It doesn't look like it was, or the last episode was put out in 2019. Tell you, I was jealous of that show is highly produced. They had some good, some good folks running it, but you know, WPM, you dev million. Yeah. I mean, at least a company with a few million bucks in the bank, I'd assume funded podcast perhaps. I don't know many WordPress podcasters that start out and say, I'm going to get rich from this. I think if, well, if you're a podcast WordPress podcast or listening to this chances are like myself, you kind of just fell into this. Like maybe you just started, you're only six episodes in. You like, this is awesome. Maybe like me, you're a 600 episodes and you're like, this is work, right. There's at one point at the height of WordPress podcasters, which might have been three years ago. I want to say we were up to like 20 WordPress podcasts. I mean, if you Google top WordPress podcasts, somebody out there let's do it right now. This is the kind of high, high quality content people come to the show for top WordPress podcast. Uh, I'm not on any of these lists female. So first result I'm logged in. I'm not doing this in incognito. I'm not doing this the SEO way. I'm first on this list though. It's kind of funny. Um, I'm first in the Google result, uh, theme I'll T the best seven, the seven best WordPress podcasts. Oh, that's plugins 20 best WordPress podcast to listen to WP Explorer. The 24 best WordPress podcasts to help 10 X your business WP buffs, maybe be Astro 20 plus best WordPress podcasts to listen to. All right. So at the height, there were at least 20 podcasts. I don't know if they're all still going. It's a hard job. You know what I mean? If you're like me, you kind of just fell into this. You didn't, I didn't plan to be a podcaster for eight years talking about WordPress, doing my damnedest to get out of it, trying to broaden that, broaden the horizons, which I've talked about forever, trying to get out of this WordPress space and, and grow an audience. Why? Well, look, when we talk about the funding of this podcast, let's, let's do the back of the napkin math. Sorta jumping around my notes here. So I charge here's how I structure sponsorships of the Matt report podcast. As of late, I used to do it in seasons. I used to sell entire seasons and sponsor and make a lot more money. Um, well, not a lot more, a little bit more, but here's how I structure podcast sponsorship today. It's a hundred dollars per ad read. Times two. So every episode earns me $200 in ad revenue. Now I'm not good at math, but if I attempt to get four episodes out in a month, it's 800 bucks a year, a month, which comes out to $9,600 a year. If my multiplication tables are correct. So $9,600 a year, which is nearly half of what I make. In my 15 to $20,000 a year, uh, revenue for creating content 9,600 bucks is what I make on this podcast. Now I shave 20% of that to give to charity, shave it right off the top 20%. I give that to a big orange heart. I think that. What they do as an organization is very important to freelancers. I mean, to humans at large, but specifically to freelancers who they, who they help in the WordPress space developer space, right? Building a business is tough. Being a freelance freelance, right at the same time is even more difficult. You're doing this stuff alone quite often, especially now in the covert world. It's very difficult to get out there and meet with other people. So they help with that. And I've known a few people in the WordPress space, uh, who are sadly not with us anymore because they've had those struggles or part of it was a part of the struggle. So this is why I do it. There's no special relationship. No one asked me, I like Dan. Maybe I know some of the trustees, Corey Miller, but I don't, uh, there's there's no, you know, no one asked me to do it. I'm doing it because. That's what I want to do with this podcast. This podcast is not a moneymaking machine. As you just heard. $9,600 is not allow me to quit my job as a full time podcaster@castles.com. So I do it. Number one, because I love it. I love podcasting. I love the WordPress software. I love the work, the idea of WordPress. I love the people in this community. That is what charges me to do this. And the sponsorship stuff is one. So I can give to the community. Would that 20% for ad reads, by the way, my merchandise store stored up Matt report.com stored on that report.com where you can buy a hat or a tee shirt. I give a hundred percent of the profits of that to a big orange heart. So if you buy a tee shirt, you buy a hat that all those profits are going there. They're not going to me. That's a nice way to support the brand. I'd love to see you on a live stream wearing a hat or a tee shirt or something like that, but just know that a hundred percent of that goes to a big orange. I'm just giving it away. Now it's not a lot of money, you know, I think I did a holiday push last year or right around Thanksgiving last year we did, um, 1200 bucks or something like that, which was awesome. I'm gonna try to do it again. What I'm getting at here is this space. Isn't huge. Like if you. No pun intended, take a jet pack, ride 50 miles above the earth and you look down and you say, Hey earth, how many of you actually care about WordPress? How many of you care to listen about WordPress on a podcast? Think about that. How many actually care about WordPress? The listen to a podcast, a few thousand of you. I know because I run a podcast about WordPress. This is not a huge space. Now I have podcasting friends who might be listening to this show who charge a lot more money for ads. And that's awesome. At one point I did as well. I checked the way I structure the podcast sponsorship, the a hundred dollars times two. And by the way, so how I do this as in sort of a lottery fashion. I know I could make more money, but I don't want to, it comes with a whole bunch of other overhead. Plus what it does is allows a, an advertiser to come in and buy up all the spots. And you're just hearing the same advertisers over and over again, which anyone with some business acumen would say, Matt, yeah, that's what you should do. I know I don't want to. So I do it in the lottery fashion where I open up eight spots. Which is four episodes, which is a month. And I say, Hey, every month at a random date, quite literally, because I'm doing a million things in life that I not just ate. I don't say every Monday, I can't. My schedule is different all the time. Three kids, my wife works like this is the, this is the dirty inside baseball of this quote unquote business. So at random time I shall open up eight spots to sell. These sponsorship spots at a hundred bucks a piece so that somebody else gets a chance to get in front of my audience. And I feel like the hundred dollar Mark is enough, uh, is a low enough price for somebody to say, okay, I'm not breaking the bank. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't sponsor some of my colleagues podcasts at more money. It's certainly worth the value that they deliver. I'm just what I'm doing is saying, look, I'm trying to make this available to everyone and I can, I can move the needle for a big orange heart, and I can reinvest this back into my hard costs. So this whole like earning revenue, it allows me, once you get into podcasting, you need to have these goals set head of you. To keep going. It's fun at first. It's awesome. At first you're meeting all these new people, but before you know it you've met everyone. Right. And then you hear the complaints on Twitter of, Oh, it's the same old person talking about the same old thing on their podcast marathon. You know, it used to be called WordCamp track. Uh, I think is what people call their right. And it's just the same people talking and working, but everybody complains about it. They want to see more people. I, I totally get it. But, you know, like I said, this is a small audience and you chop down my audience even more by saying, I am, I'm really only talking to people who are building businesses, using WordPress. So if you're running a business, let's say you're running an eCommerce store and you just happen to use what WooCommerce would love or WordPress would love to talk to you. If you're building a custom plugin, SAS service or a theme, you know, or you're running an agency and you've got some unique angle on it. We'd love to talk to you. This isn't just WordPress out large, right? I'm not covering community happenings. People who just simply use WordPress. I mean, you'd have to have a pretty unique story here to, to come on the show. I'm not going to get into the, the pitches that I get. I've I've ranted about this before on the pitches. I get people just like, Hey, just put me on your show. I use WordPress. You should just put me on your show. That's not gonna happen. I, I gotta have, I gotta have some story here. I'm got to have some angle. I care about my audience. So it's a very small, uh, Segment of population of the world that care about this stuff. So I structure it this way, lottery style. I don't want everyone locked in. I like the ability to rotate it and I haven't run up against a wall. And I know I'm lucky, extremely lucky that I have sold all of these sponsorship spots within an hour of me tweeting. I literally put out one tweet and in one hour, $800 of revenue comes in. It took me eight years of podcasting to get to this point. And I'm framing that for you. If you're looking to make money with podcasting or WordPress content, that's how I do it. And there's people that make even more money than me in the WordPress space with just their podcast. So I'm just trying to frame it up for you. So maybe you can hit that target. Uh, let's talk about YouTube content. I have a love, hate relationship with YouTube been doing it. I've been doing it since, uh, I started my agency, you know, 10 ish years ago. More than that, I think at this point, I mean, we're, I remember recording videos. Uh, we had an icon camera. My father's a pro photographer. When we were running the agency together, he had an icon camera again, this is years and years ago when this camera was one of the first cameras to be able to record 10 80. And I don't even think we could record at 10 80 because the SD cards were too small for us to get any length of the show out. So we did seven 20, I think, but these files were massive. We're talking about massive files back then were gigabytes in size when hard drive space. Wasn't that big when processors editing video was slow as all hell. So I started back then and I continue to do it. I have a YouTube channel called youtube.com/plugin Tut, where I do WordPress tutorials and plugins. And I've told this story over and over again, when I was, you know, knee deep in, in between jobs, you know, when I was sort of getting out of the agency space and before I started at Pagely, I was all in, on creating content and I was burning myself out. I was doing the podcast, I was doing YouTube. I was doing all kinds of stuff and YouTube really burned me out. Cause I was just pounding away at making videos. And I just, I hated it. Hated doing it. Wasn't interesting to me. And you like, if you're sitting back listening to this, you're saying where's the biggest opportunity? Is it the podcast? Is it YouTube is a blogging and affiliates. Well, it's everything really, but if you can only do one, YouTube is massive right now. Go ahead. I have a tiny audience. It's 12,000 people on my YouTube channel that subscribed to me. And half of my revenue comes from YouTube. So if I look at, uh, the ad sense, there is 43 to depends on how many views I'm getting that month is between like three 50 to four 50, $350, $450 a month in YouTube ads, depending on what my view count is. And then you sprinkle in some affiliate links that I put on those videos, which primarily come from a page builders and formed plugins. I don't do anything in the hosting space. But I make a few hundred bucks. If I'm lucky on an affiliate link per month element or Beaver builder generate press Astra. These are products that I like. I use. I trust them. I know the whole Astro things, a little, little wonky, but I do trust all of these, these affiliate links that I put out there and I don't push it. I mean, if you're looking to optimize, so let's take a step back. That YouTube revenue is roughly, you know, that six grand a year in ads, maybe another two to $3,000 in, in affiliate links. If I'm lucky throughout the year. So that's, that's the other big component of that, you know, anywhere between 15 to $20,000 a year, it fluctuates because affiliate links, ad revenue. It all depends. Uh, the podcast much more static, a hundred, a hundred bucks, a spot times, two 9,600 bucks a year, guaranteed. But YouTube has massive opportunity. I mean, I see these people grow from, you know, One day they're at 4,000 subscribers. The next day, they're at 70,000 subscribers and I sit back, I'm like, God, why can't I do that? It's because they're, you know, they're much more consistent at it than I am. And maybe they're better. That's a thing too. They could be better than me. A hundred percent, you know, a hundred percent. I don't deny it. So if you're looking for opportunity, YouTube is massive for that. It's a perfect search platform for teaching people, how to do something. It's why, you know, I gave up on my channel and I didn't even log into my YouTube account for a year. And the subscriber count tripled without me even number one, looking at the dashboard, number two, uploading something. So you can make money there. And those, those guys and gals that are in that, you know, 50, 60, 70,000 subscriber count a hundred thousand, 200,000 subscriber count. I mean, just think of the ad revenue alone. They're probably making a couple grand a month and just the Google ads, nevermind all the affiliate deals. And if you, how do you do it? Will mimic some of them mimic the good ones mimics the good ones. I've had them. If you go to youtube.com/plug and touch, I got the last few interviews I've had and look at how people, you know, structure their offerings. You know, it's not always about pushing affiliate links all the time. It gets daunting when it's just that, you know, my friends, Dave Foye and Paul Charlton from WP tuts. They do a great job, too. Fantastic educators first and foremost. And they have great personalities. That's why they do better than me. That's why they do better than me. So that's the bulk of it. That's where most of the revenue comes from podcasts and, uh, and the YouTube channel. And this is more of like a bonus piece, but I have user feedback, videos, user feedback, videos.com. And this is like a productized service. So oftentimes people will say, Hey, can I get on your podcast? Hey, can I get, can you review my plugin for a youtube.com/plugin Tut? What are the costs? You know, what do you charge for me to be on your podcast? What do you charge for me to do plugin Tut? I don't have a hard cost you can sponsor. Um, but if you're just looking for. You know, number one, you're not going to pay to get on the podcast or to get on the YouTube channel. Maybe the YouTube channel will have a future sponsored content because I think that's a thing that I can expand into, but oftentimes I'll tell people, look, if you just want my feedback, like, Hey, sorry, you can't buy your way into this, but you can pay me $159 and I'll review your plugin or a theme for you. And give you some unfiltered feedback on it. If you go to user feedback, videos.com, a site that I have sadly, um, haven't really update visual, updated visually in quite some time. But I do plan to, and that, you know, accounts for maybe 500 bucks, a thousand bucks for the year happens every so often somebody wants some advice. I have some repeat customers that come back. It's just a quick way to get some, you know, a video feedback of your product or service. And that's like the third thing that I count towards this content thing, cause it sort of sits by as a, as a standby option for those who are looking to do business with me. So that's what I have 15 to 20 grand a year creating content in the WordPress space. And I'm looking to expand that, uh, at least expand the reach, get out of the WordPress space, move into other territories. And I'm bringing this all up one because soap box moment. I saw this whole like darn those funded podcasts as if we're some media giant. Certainly not me. Maybe there's others out there too. I wanted to just to give you the inside look. Of how I approach this stuff, why I do it, how I'm trying to give back to the community, my approach, to all that stuff, my thought process, as scary as it is. And you look, if you're looking for opportunity, you want to reverse engineer what I'm doing. 100% do what I do. Copy it, do it better. Do it more often, have an opinion. Get out there, get your voice heard. Well, if you're looking to start a podcast, you can go to castles.com. That's where I work. Now, email me, Matt at dot com. But Hey, if you're a content creator out there and you just want to shoot the breeze, you can always tweet at me at Matt Madeiras on Twitter at Maryport whichever one, or if you want to keep something sort of more offline, you don't want other people to see it@reportblogatgmail.com. Let me know what you're thinking. Let me know if you like this episode tweet at me. All right. The next episodes coming up. Uh, it's going to be with my good friend, Brian castle process kits in all things, bootstrap, web, and other podcasts. All right, we'll see you in the next episode. show less ★ Support this podcast ★

god thanksgiving google building iphone android seo ecommerce funding fantastic results reporting wasn copy wordpress castillo hated sd astro beaver sas my god sorta oem tut wp woocommerce automattic wordcamp corey miller wpm google serps matt medeiros pagely post status wp tavern

Podcast E135: Where so I look for funding to grow my business?

The Get Options Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2020 45:13

The Get Options Podcast – Episode 135 Life Updates Kyle: I've been doing some long-distance running. Adam: It. Is. Done! Launched the new site! BackupSpeaker.com Good night! 😉 / Taking time off — I think. News Google Delays mobile indexing to 2021 Changes Jeremy Ward joins Rocket Genius Matt Medeiros leaves Pagely. Heads to CastosHQ…

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Sales Automation and Startups w/ Sean Tierney

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 36:17

Working and learning from Sean during his time at Pagely was a real blessing for me. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but Sean has a way of solving challenges through methods that would never occur to me. His approach to automating and systemizing the pre-sales process was an experience that transcends the phrase, “work smarter not harder.” You can read about it here. We'll cover a few ways you can start your own automation framework, how leading his nomad lifestyle began, and most importantly his new startup Charity Makeover. I hope you enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to thank Sean and my sponsors below. Stay safe! Thank you to lockedownseo.com and searchwp.com for sponsoring the show.If you're looking for an SEO specialist for manufacturing clients, check out lockedownseo.com!Want better search results in WordPress? Look no further than searchwp.com! ★ Support this podcast ★

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Sales Automation and Startups w/ Sean Tierney

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 36:16

Working and learning from Sean during his time at Pagely was a real blessing for me. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but Sean has a way of solving challenges through methods that would never occur to me. His approach to automating and systemizing the pre-sales process was an experience that transcends…

startups sales automation sean tierney pagely

Sales Automation and Startups w/ Sean Tierney

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 36:16

startups sales automation sean tierney pagely

Episode 125 – Matt Medeiros

Hallway Chats

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2020 35:28

Matt Medeiros is the host of the Mattreport.com, and you can find him in his day job over at Pagely.com. The post Episode 125 – Matt Medeiros appeared first on Hallway Chats.

matt medeiros pagely

Ep 23: Craig Martin. On tuning high-traffic WP sites, creating one of the first Travel podcasts & growing an all-remote consulting business

PressNomics Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2020 71:41

For links, transcript, show notes, video and more visit: https://pagely.com/podcast/episodes/ep-23-craig-martin/ Craig Martin of Performance Foundry is one of the most long-standing partners of Pagely having helped to resolve performance bottlenecks and tune high-traffic WordPress sites. In this conversation Sean interviews Craig about what's involved in diagnosing performance issues and resolving performance scaling issues, Craig's long history of nomadic travel and how he's built his company to be location-independent, how he won the Lonely Planet award for Travel Podcasts and more. Enjoy!

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The Bulletproof Proposal Template with Troy Dean

Business Processes Simplified Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2019 29:25

Guest’s Background: Troy Dean is an online marketing speaker, coach, consultant and podcaster. He specialises in helping businesses and entrepreneurs use the Internet to attract new customers and build their communities. He also managed the online strategy for Jessica Watson, the 16-year-old Australian girl who sailed around the world and helped FebFast raise over $1 million in 2011 and 2012 for the drug and alcohol sector. He’s also a professional voice-over artist and has voiced campaigns for hundreds of brands including Ford, Telstra, ANZ, Hungry Jacks, Mitsubishi, AFL and Cricket Australia. Plus, he sang the Cadbury jingle – “Wouldn’t it be nice if the world was Cadbury?” His clients include: QuickBooks Law Institute of Victoria Westpac Melbourne Business Network Australian Anthill Edge of the Web Business Blueprint Uniting Care Wesley Website: troydean.com.au SNAPSHOT XXX is a [describe company here]. XXX has operated a website for some years. With advancing technology and the rise of social media, XXX needs to redesign their website to align with the goals of the business and the target audience. XXX needs a website that functions as a powerful marketing and communications tool to attract new clients, position itself as a thought leader in the industry and provide credibility to potential joint venture partners. XXX has approached [insert your name here] to design and develop a new website. BUSINESS NEEDS Specifically, the new website needs to fulfil the following business needs: [insert business need here] [insert business need here] [insert business need here] [insert business need here] Also required is a content management system that will allow XXX to easily manage content on the site and reduce administration costs. TARGET AUDIENCE NEEDS The target audience for the XXX website is defined as [describe target audience here]. The new website needs to assist the target audience to do the following: [insert target audience need here] [insert target audience need here] [insert target audience need here] [insert target audience need here] Ultimately, the XXX website should be a useful resource for existing clients, potential new clients and potential new partners. SOLUTION We recommend the development of a completely new website, built from the ground up, with a custom design to convey the value that XXX adds to its members. The new website will be designed to: [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] [insert benefit here that helps achieve needs from above] Additionally, the following “behind the scenes” features will be built-in to the website: regular pings to Google, Yahoo and Bing Google analytics performance reporting High-speed page loading anti-spam features on contact forms video tutorials and a user manual for the content management system Web hosting services are provided on a monthly or annual basis by our preferred hosting partner or by XXX’s existing hosting company. FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS Successful websites of those websites that continue to attract the right type of visitors and lead them down a path towards becoming a customer. This requires consistent content publishing and monitoring of the website to make sure it is achieving its objectives. Once the website has been launched we can assist you with your content strategy and make incremental improvements to the website to make sure that it continues to deliver a positive return on your investment. We would be happy to speak with you about this in more detail and answer any questions you may have. In the meantime, you can see more about our service here [insert link to website care plans]. PROJECT TIMELINE We offer the following timeline for the redesign of the XXX website: Discovery – 4 Weeks Development of a sitemap and interactive prototype so that all functionality can be tested and approved in the browser. Design – 3 Weeks The design of website user experience and user interface to allow the target audience to easily navigate and use the website to achieve their needs. Development – 4 Weeks Development of working website on the WordPress content management system. Testing – 1 Week Final testing and debugging on a development server before launching. INVESTMENT Project Essentials – $7,200 The following elements are considered essential to the project: Development of information architecture into the sitemap Development of interactive prototype to finalise functionality and any third-party integrations Design user experience and user interface Develop working HTML/CSS website to best practice web standards Develop responsive breakpoints for tablet and mobile experience Integrate website into WordPress content management system Integrate Search Engine Optimisation best practices to increase visibility in popular search engines such as Google and Bing Test and debug beta version of the website before launch Launch live website Integrate a daily and weekly backup schedule to protect the website Integrate Google analytics software Training and comprehensive video tutorials included Project Options – $3,000 The following options are recommended to enhance the performance of the website and help XXX achieve the strategic objectives outlined in this proposal: Develop a highly targeted lead capture strategy to convert website visitors into leads Develop a well-structured blogging platform to allow XXX to post thought-leading articles in order to attract the targeted visitors to the website Develop a commenting module to allow website visitors to leave comments on the blog articles as a way of encouraging engagement and conversation Integrate social media sharing facilities to allow web visitors to share articles with their friends and colleagues on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Project Total – $10,200 The above pricing is effective for 30 days. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is information architecture? Information architecture is the relationship of how all the different pages of a website are related to each other. This is communicated visually through a sitemap. Here is an example of a sitemap: http://sitemaps.thewpdevshop.com/proctormajor/ What is an interactive prototype? An interactive prototype is a black and white version of your website that is designed to prove the functionality and features as they will work in the browser. No design elements are applied at this stage as the prototype is just built to allow all parties to make final decisions on the functionality. Here is an example of a prototype: http://prototypes.thewpdevshop.com/proctormajor/ Why do you use WordPress? WordPress is open source content management software and currently powers around 25% of all websites on the Internet. The project is contributed to by tens of thousands of developers all over the world and is growing from strength to strength. WordPress allows us to develop flexible and customisable websites to modern standards and observes web development best practices. Furthermore, the community of web developers that use WordPress reaches far and wide and allows us to tap into this collective intelligence and bring that wealth of experience to your project. Where is the website hosted? Your website needs to be hosted by a hosting company that specialises in WordPress hosting. There are many companies that do this. WP Engine, Siteground, Pagely and Pantheon are just a few who specialise in this area. We are more than happy to make a personal recommendation should you require one. Who do I call if something goes wrong with the website or I can’t figure something out? Provided you subscribe to one of our ongoing website care plans, we will be your first point of call should something go wrong with your website. We will determine whether it is something the hosting company needs to fix something that is covered by your website care plan. We will provide training and video tutorials to assist you in using your website once it is launched. What happens after the website is launched? Once your website is launched, we will provide 30 days of support to make sure any bugs have been ironed out and that you are confident using your new website. After this, you will need to subscribe to one of our ongoing website care plans to make sure your website is looked after and maintained. These website care plans include updating your software, regular backups, security checks and making sure your website is online and open for business 24/7/365. More information on our website care plans are available upon request. How long will it take to appear at the top of Google? The time it takes for your website to appear on page 1 of Google depends on a number of factors. It depends on the search phrase people are using to find your website and the number of other websites that are also available for those search phrases. Nobody can truly say how long it will take for your website to appear at the top of search engine results pages (including people who actually work for Google), however, there are a number of factors that can improve your chances. Building your website on WordPress is a good start as WordPress has some great Search Engine Optimisation fundamentals built-in. Creating unique and interesting content on a regular basis for your website is also critical to increase your visibility amongst search engines. Launching your website and then forgetting about it is a surefire way to get lost amongst the noise. We are happy to talk to more about your search engine strategy if we haven’t already. How will I know if anyone is visiting my website? We will install Google analytics software on your new website and show you how to log into your Google Analytics account where you can see a wide range of statistics about your website including a number of visits, page views than the amount of time people are spending on your website. Once you subscribe to one of our website care plans you will also receive more detailed analysis about your website performance and recommendations on how to improve. What happens if I want to add some features to the website while you’re building it? Whilst we like to be flexible and responsive to your needs, we also like to deliver what we promise within the time frames and budgets we have allowed. If you ask us to add new features to your website while we are building it, will most likely ask why? If we all agree that your new request will help us achieve our objectives then we will be more than happy to oblige. If your new feature is something you would like to add to your website but is not directly tied to your original objectives then we will suggest to schedule it for a second iteration of the website once it has been launched. This will require a new proposal. NEXT STEPS To proceed with this project, XXX is required to take the following steps: Accept the proposal as is by clicking on the “Accept” or “Approve” button, or discuss desired changes. Please note that changes to the scope of the project can be made at any time, but additional charges may apply. Submit an initial payment of 50% of the total project fee. Once these steps have been completed we will begin the project with an introduction of all relevant people and begin the discovery process. MUTUAL AGREEMENT This is a variation of the original Contract Killer template by Andy Clarke which can be found here: http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/projects/contract-killer/ Between us, XXX and you XXX. Summary We will always do our best to fulfil your needs and meet your goals, but sometimes it’s best to have a few things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and what happens if stuff goes wrong. In this contract, you won’t find complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We have no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. We do want what’s best for the safety of both parties, now and in the future. In short You (XXX) are hiring us (XXX Pty Ltd) located at XXX to design and develop a website for the estimated total price as outlined in our proposal. Of course, it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that. What Do Both Parties Agree To Do? As our customer, you have the power and ability to enter into this contract on behalf of your company or organisation. You agree to provide us with everything that we’ll need to complete the project – including text, images and other information – as and when we need it and in the format, we ask for. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you’ll also be bound by any dates that we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.organisation. You agree to provide us with everything that we’ll need to complete the project – including text, images and other information – as and when we need it and in the format, we ask for. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you’ll also be bound by any dates that we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract. We have the experience and ability to perform the services you need from us and we will carry them out in a professional and timely manner. Along the way, we will endeavour to meet all the deadlines set but we can’t be responsible for a missed launch date or a deadline if you have been late in supplying materials or have not approved or signed off our work on-time at any stage. On top of this, we’ll also maintain the confidentiality of any information that you give us. Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty Design If we are designing your application we’ll create designs for the look-and-feel, layout and functionality of your website. This contract includes one main design plus the opportunity for you to make up to two rounds of revisions. If you’re not happy with the designs at this stage, you will pay us in full for all of the work that we have produced until that point and you may either cancel this contract or continue to commission us to make further design revisions at our standard design rates. HTML and CSS Layout Templates If the project includes HTML markup and CSS templates, we’ll develop these using valid HTML and CSS code. The landscape of web browsers and devices changes regularly and our approach is to look forward, not back. With that in mind, we will test all our markup and CSS in current versions of all major desktop browsers to ensure that we make the most of them. Users of older or less capable browsers or devices will experience a design that is appropriate to the capabilities of their software. We do not cater to people using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and cannot predict the behaviour of that browser. We will also test that these templates perform well on Apple’s iPad. We will not test old or abandoned browsers, for example, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 5.5 for Windows or Mac, previous versions of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox or Opera unless otherwise specified. If you need us to consider these older browsers, we will charge you at our standard old browser rate for any necessary additional design work, development and testing. Text Content We may have written a hundred blog posts but we’re not responsible for writing or inputting any text copy unless we specified it in the original estimate. We’ll be happy to help though, and in addition to the estimate, we will charge you at our standard copywriting or content input rate. Photographs You will supply us photographs in digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs we can suggest vendors of stock photography. Any time we spend searching for appropriate photographs will be charged at our standard discovery rate. Changes and Revisions We know from plenty of experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your first idea about how something should look, or how it might work. We don’t want to limit either your options or your opportunities to change your mind. The estimate/quotation prices at the beginning of this document are based on the amount of work we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything that you have told us you want to achieve. If you do want to change your mind, add extra pages or templates or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. However, you will be charged accordingly and these additional costs will need to be agreed to before the extra work commences. This additional work will affect deadlines and they will be moved accordingly. We’ll be upfront about all of this if and when it happens to make sure we’re all on the same page before proceeding. We may also ask you to put requests in writing so we can keep track of changes. If the nature or functions of the project change significantly throughout the process, we reserve the right to deem the current project cancelled. At this, point you will pay us in full for all the work we have done and may commission us to complete the new project based on the new requirements. This will require a new quote and contract. Technical Support You may already have professional website hosting, you might even manage that hosting in-house; if that’s the case, great. If you don’t manage your own website hosting, or your current hosting environment does not support the solution we are providing, we can set up an account for you at one of our preferred, third-party hosting providers. We will charge you a one-off fee for installing your site on this server, plus any statistics software such as Google Analytics, then the updates to, and management of that server, plus any support issues will be up to you. We are not a website hosting company and so do not offer or include technical support for website hosting, email or other services relating to website hosting. Legal stuff We can’t guarantee that the functions contained in any web page templates or in a completed website will always be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate this website and any other web pages, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages. If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason is unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions. Phew! Copyrights You guarantee to us that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork that you provide us for inclusion in the website are either owned by your good selves or that you have permission to use them. When we receive your final payment, copyright is automatically assigned as follows: You own the graphics and other visual elements that we create for you for this project. We’ll give you a copy of all files and you should store them really safely as we are not required to keep them or provide any native source files we used to make them. You also own text content, photographs and other data you provided unless someone else owns them. We own the markup, CSS and other code and we license it to you for use on only this project. We love to show off our work and share what we have learned with other people, so we reserve the right to display and link to your completed project as part of our portfolio and to write about the project on websites, in magazine articles and in books about web design. Payments We are sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule. 50% deposit upfront 30% instalment once functionality and design has been agreed upon 20% balance once the application has been tested and everyone agrees it is ready to go live. NB: If you are unable to supply all of the right content at this stage, it does not mean we have not done our job. Once the site has been tested and is ready to go live, either with your content or placeholder images and dummy text, we will issue the final invoice. Once the final invoice is paid we will hand over the keys and show you how to put your own content in once it’s ready. If the final invoice is not paid within the credit terms we have given you, we are under no obligation to keep the site on our testing server or continue with the project in any way. But where’s all the horrible small print? Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place. Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of [insert your location here]. Authorising this project requires a signature below or approval of this proposal by clicking the “Accepted” or “Approved” button on the proposal website. Signed for XXX Signed for XXX. Support the show.

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Episode #235 - Joshua Strebel on Pagely’s Origins and Its Future

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2019 31:34

As Pagely moves into a new era with serverless application hosting, CEO and co-founder Joshua Strebel takes a trip down memory lane in this episode of the WP Elevation podcast. He and Troy talk about managed hosting, chasing the top of the stack, using revenge as fuel as well as Joshua’s predictions for the future of WordPress. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/235

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#427 WP-Tonic Round Table Show 6th of September, 2019 at 8:30am PST

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2019 70:00

We Have A Special Guest Panelist Joe Casabone - https://casabona.org/ #1 - WordPress Governance Project Looks for New Leadership https://wptavern.com/wordpress-governance-project-looks-for-new-leadership #2 - CS department hires Ethics TAs http://www.browndailyherald.com/2019/09/05/cs-department-hires-ethics-tas/ #3 - Toolbelt: A New Jetpack-Inspired Plugin with a Focus on Speed and Privacy https://wptavern.com/toolbelt-a-new-jetpack-inspired-plugin-with-a-focus-on-speed-and-privacy #4 - Margaret Atwood Fans Rejoice as Amazon Completely Screws Other Retailers https://gizmodo.com/margaret-atwood-fans-rejoice-as-amazon-completely-screw-1837877525 #5 - Working for WebDevStudios (After Self-Employment) https://webdevstudios.com/2019/09/03/working-for-webdevstudios/ #6 - Pagely and Managed WordPress – 10 years strong. https://pagely.com/blog/pagely-turns-ten/ Panel Recommendations of the Week Go To The WP-Tonic's Website.

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#427 WP-Tonic Round Table Show 6th of September, 2019 at 8:30am PST

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2019

focus speed roundtable privacy cs new leadership pagely managed wordpress wp tonic

Chat with a WordPress skeptic

The Maverick Show with Matt Bowles

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 15, 2019 37:15

I talked with Kira Leigh, a full-stack creative entrepreneur and consultant. Skeptic may be too strong of a word, but she makes it clear that she thinks WordPress is too often used when it’s not necessary. Kira handles every part of her projects, which typically stem with marketing and copywriting, but she takes on design, development, and whatever is required to get the job done. She is the type of person who WordPress should be able to serve quite ably. But more than not, she would rather steer clear. In this episode of the Draft Podcast, I talk to her about her work, why she is pained by WordPress, and try to come to some conclusions from it all. I am not sure if I accomplish much, but I do feel like I am better able to see where she’s coming from. This conversation stemmed from a friend linking me to a post Kira wrote that was (to my mind) a bit aggressive toward WordPress — and while perhaps not 100% accurate, it is 100% her perception of the reality that is working with WordPress. Links from the show There Is No Design — Kira’s businessKira on LinkedInAssembly — a pretty neat page builder I’ve never seen before Sponsor: Pagely Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Pagely helps big brand scale WordPress. Their new brand Northstack is a completely serverless solution for managed application hosting. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.

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39: Intrapreneurship, Charity Makeovers and The Key to Closing Sales with Sean Tierney

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2019 81:23

Sean Tierney starts off by sharing the beginnings of his entrepreneurial tendencies and tells the story of how he made over $1,000 on one sales initiative in 8th grade. He then takes us through his decade long journey as a serial entrepreneurial, running party bus and pub crawl companies, raising 750K for his startup Jumpbox, creating a short-sale real estate education company, experimenting with art and music businesses, trying to launch Survival School TV, and running the Lean Start Up Circle in Phoenix Arizona. Sean then explains how he gravitated towards “Intrapreneurship” and ended up taking a job as the Sales Director at Pagely, where he can be very creative and innovative and act with a high degree to autonomy but still be in a salaried position with a paycheck and not have to take the risks associated with entrepreneurship. He talks about the Leviathan system he developed for Pagely and some of the lessons he has learned. He also talks about the key to closing any sale, whether it's an individual customer or a Fortune 500 company. Sean goes on to talk about how he works remotely as a nomad and shares a story about closing a deal while tethered to his phone driving through a hail storm in Ireland. Sean shares other travel adventures as well, including how he got his paragliding certification in complete white out conditions. Sean also shares his musical background, talks about his love for hip hop, and performs his original song “Blind”. He also talks about his Charity Makeover initiative, Season 2 of his Nomad Podcast, and explains how his Nomad Prep Academy helps people become digital nomads. He also shares his morning routine, productivity habits and explains his concepts of “punching past the board” and “reverse goal planning”. Full Show Notes Available at www.TheMaverickShow.com

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Marketing Managed WordPress Hosting in a Saturated Market

WPblab - A WordPress Social Media Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2019 51:32

In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard were joined by Jeff Matson from Pagely's NorthStack. He gave insight into Managed WordPress, WordPress Hosting, and Managed AWS Service.Thank you to our sponsor!The WPwatercooler network is sponsored by ServerPress makers of DesktopServer. Be sure to check them out at https://www.serverpress.com as well as PeepSo.If you're interested in sponsoring the 40 minute mark of this show, check out the details on our sponsor page. We offer episode by episode spoken ads, rather than large contracts. A show by you for you.Stop Getting Cheep-A$$ HostingWordPress hosting matters. Hosting is hosting is hosting until it's not. When it comes to your "hobby," if you take it seriously, it has the potential to become your career.It seems like WordPress hosting is saturated, but it's really not. Pagely was the first to create Wordpress Managed hosting back in the day. You can hear Joshua Strebel talk about the last ten years in his WordCamp Phoenix talk.So, how do we convince content creators, bloggers, and non-inside baseball writers to think good hosting is important?When you pay for $5 hosting, you get $5 hosting. They're digital slumlords, Bridget says in jest. If the support folks are getting paid minimum wage ($7 something in VA), the Five Dollar Host loses money every time one of their customers calls."Even if they are getting paid minimum wage, if they talk to you for an hour, the company lost money on you." Jeff MatsonBridget spends $25 a month on Pressable and thinks that's a reasonable amount for anyone to spend. To her, it matters that the company she chooses has a reputation of treating their employees well."I don't want to use a service that has a big turnover. If they can't keep their employees, they have internal issues." Bridget WillardHobbyists Learn Everything When Their Sites Blow UpIt's true. When your blog gets notices, as Jason points out, and all of a sudden you're getting traffic, your site may not be able to handle that. Managed hosts will scale the traffic.Do you want to learn the hard way? Your hobby or small business needs to value website hosting."You teach them that their business is important." Jeff MatsonYou don't need more web hosting than your site requires, especially if you're getting only 20 hits a week. But with something like a managed service, you can scale up and then down when you need it.What do you get with Managed WordPress Hosting?If you're in the $250 a month or $25 a month plan, when you pay for managed WordPress hosting, you're paying for support. Larger fees at the front pay for concierge-level service. Jeff recalls how Pagely had top-tier folks in their slack helping with Gravity Forms site migrations at midnight. That's the kind of service you get with top-tier Managed WordPress Hosting.Why not run your own box?You could run your own DigitalOcean box, but why? If you're running your own box, you have to do all of the security maintenance, patches, and updates. Also, if you're facing a DDOS attack, you have to face those trials, too.Almost any level of business should outsource these types of things so they can focus on working on your business."Is that really what you want to spend your billable hours on?" Bridget WillardSo, the perfect solution between running your own box and buying high-end Managed WordPress hosting is managed AWS service.What is a Managed AWS Service?With NorthStack, Pagely is bringing the same level of product without the support. You can get a fast site that scales when someone posts your article to Reddit."It's an unbelievable product to host your sites on without all the extra stuff that you might not need." Jeff MatsonThis is made for developers who use GitHub and CLI to create apps and build sites. For now, that's where NorthStack is focusing. You pay for the amount of resources you're using instead of a general bucket. Automated deployments for the win.This product better suited for small to enterprise agencies. Not everyone needs Disney-level service.How do you market your product?Marketing products in a word-of-mouth space like WordPress requires finesse. Jeff makes recommendations on products based upon his personal experience. He regards his recommendations as a reflection of himself. In short, Jeff manages his personal branding and that's how he recommends products."I keep my reputation above all else and that's what I use to market products. "Jeff MatsonTool or Tip of the WeekThis week's Tool or Tip of the Week is brought to you by PeepSo. PeepSo is a super-light, free, social network plugin for WordPress that allows you to quickly and effortlessly add a social network or an online community right inside your WordPress site. Your Community. Your Way. Find out more at at PeepSo.comBridget recommends Everybody Writes by Ann Handley. It gives actual and practical tips on effective copywriting.Jeff recommends The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.Jason recommends the app Vignette which allows you to (at a minimal cost) add and update photos for your contacts.Do you have any tools or tips we should know about?We'd love to hear from you. Also, how are you marketing yourself? Tell us in the comments below. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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E43 - The Witch King of Angmar on selling $100,000+ projects (Matt Medeiros, Pagely)

WPMRR WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2019 34:15

Today we’re talking about selling, how to do it big and how to do it right! Why telling your story and putting yourself out there on the internet (blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos) is key to growing your business. And his process of selling six-figure projects.

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E36 - The Future of Cloud Computing with Joshua Strebel from Pagely

Hacker Noon Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2019 44:53

Episode 36 of the Hacker Noon Podcast: An interview with Joshua Strebel, CEO of Pagely and NorthStack In this episode Trent Lapinski and Joshua Strebel discuss serverless, cloud computing, devops, WordPress, and Joshua’s new project NorthStack. “You talk about AI and specifically around content publishing, there’s those crazy algorithms now that you can give it a sentence and a closing and it’ll write a thousand words in between and it will be on point. You’re like ‘I couldn’t have written this any better!” — Joshua Strebel Production and music by Derek Bernard — haberdasherband.com/production Host: Trent Lapinski — https://trentlapinski.com

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WordPress Hosting Pioneer Josh Strebel on Growing Pagely to Be a $10 Million Business

The Side Hustle Project

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2019 34:17

In today's episode, we're talking to Josh Strebel, the web developer turned WordPress hosting pioneer and CEO of Pagely, the first (and still one of the most popular) managed WordPress hosting platforms.

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Episode 107 – Matt Medeiros Shares Some of His Wisdom

Mastermind.fm

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2019 44:22

The episode is sponsored by Plesk and Freemius. I have been following Matt Medeiros' work for a few years through Twitter, Youtube, podcasts and so on. Recently I got in touch with Matt and purchased one of his services, User Feedback Videos, for our WP RSS Aggregator plugin. I loved his take on things and we got talking from there. Matt accepted my invite to the Mastermind.FM podcast without any hesitation and we were on Skype just a few days later. To me this was a bit surreal as I was used to watching videos of Matt for so long. In fact, at one point in the recording you may notice I seem a bit lost... that's just because I thought I was watching a video while Matt was explaining something. It then clicked that this was a call and I had to speak, so on we went. This episode focuses around the topic of managing multiple projects at different stages. Matt has been involved in many areas of the WordPress space, even having a background as a car salesman, so he has been juggling multiple jobs and projects throughout the years. At the moment he works as an Account Executive with Pagely while doing a number of other stuff, including User Feedback Videos and hosting the Matt Report podcast. I've taken on a more managerial role in the past couple of years, even more so now as the CEO of the team behind WP Mayor, WP RSS Aggregator and EDD Bookings. Recently we also made some changes to our team, so figuring out what to focus on at what time (and why) remains a major task. In our call, Matt and I discuss some of the pain points one could face in such a situation, how to approach them, and how to overcome them. Listen to the full episode to learn more and understand why even the most experienced minds and the best teams sometimes struggle in these areas. Enjoy the show! Mark Links: Twitter: @mattmedeiros Podcast: The Matt Report Matt's stuff on the web: CraftedByMatt.com

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21: Increasing Sales 70% in a Year While Working Remotely from 18 Countries and Closing Deals in a Moroccan Bowling Alley with Sean Tierney.

The Maverick Show with Matt Bowles

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2019 104:54

Sean Tierney shares his background as a musician, kite surfer, entrepreneur, podcast host, digital nomad and, since 2015, the Director of Sales at Pagely. Tasked with selling B-to-B to Fortune 500 companies, he explains the techniques he used to increase Pagely's sales by 70% in a single year while traveling the world with Remote Year, living in 18 countries, and closing his single largest deal from a Moroccan bowling alley. Sean then breaks down the sales systems he developed into 7 steps but emphasizes the importance of establishing product-market-fit before attempting any scaling techniques. Post-product-market-fit, he explains the importance of starting with "flow mapping" the lead experience. He then shares the next step of measuring metrics and KPIs. Next he explains how to build a sales "process". Then he explains his concept of "Flintstoning" and why it is so important. After that he explains how to start "delegating", and eventually to start "automating". And finally, he talks about the more advanced technique of "Scaling Personal Attention", and discusses the "Choose Your Own Adventure" interactive video experience he developed or Pagely. We then move on to talk about Sean's world travel adventures and his experience hosting The Nomad Podcast. He then explains the scope of his "Nomad Prep Academy" that he created as a course for helping people get into the digital nomad lifestyle. And finally he shares his vision of the future of the remote work and how the digital nomad ecosystem is evolving, and he explains why he thinks people deserve to lead extraordinary lives and how nomadic travel can help them to do so.

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Why exiting solopreneurship is the right move

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2018 47:54

Matt Medeiros continues Season 8 with the roundtable format asking the question is there change in the WordPress ecosystem? John Turner and Phil Derksen are the special guests that share what significant changes they have made in their careers and what they see in the WordPress ecosystem. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Why exiting solopreneurship is the right move Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:47:53 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:47:53 John Turner joined Awesome Motive through their customer accelerator portal to help his company grow. Syed Balkhi, Awesome Motive's owner, suggested that John join the company as a partner since his product and strategy aligned with Awesome Motive. (3:10) Phil Derksen recently joined Sandhills Development LLC after running a one-man shop company called WP Simple Pay, which is a stripe payment and subscription program. Sandhills Development, LLC has a whole suite of products that was founded by Pippin Williamson. (4:20) What you will learn in this Episode: Startups in the WordPress economy were easy to start as a fully bootstrapped business. It can be a roller coaster ride of going solo and joining a company, then trying to go solo again. (6:48) John – Worked for 6 or 7 years and did not feel like he was continually growing. When the opportunity became available with Syed and Awesome Motive John decided to give it a try and take the growth to the next level. It was difficult where the uncertainty and change is concerned, but he is excited to be a part of the company. (7:48) Phil – Phil had many happy customers with his product and support. Although he had a level of comfort with his company, he did not feel like he could release the features that customers were requesting. For example, EDD could offer many things that his product couldn't do. Phil had one product to focus on, but it was distracting to jump from being a developer, then marketing and support. It is exciting to work with a team and see the growth of the products. (11:11) Product Growth – Marketing or the Product Alone? Phil – Product features and planning for the future is critical. Then the focus needs to change to marketing to get the word out to the customers. (11:59) John– Marketing is the most important focus and the lesson to learn. You can have an awesome product, but you need to have the time and focus on marketing. (12:23) Matt – For people to scale their business they need to market their product successfully and make more money. It takes a lot of time and money to do marketing correctly. (13:41) Marketing John – There is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. When you find out what is working you need to concentrate on it. When your business is small, you don't have a lot of money to spend on marketing. You need to focus on one or two channels (like Facebook and Content Marketing) and focus on what is working for you. It could take awhile. (15:19) Phil – Phil has recently spent money and time on content marketing. Finding what works and knowing that changes over time are important. It is tough to get noticed with new plugins or themes on WordPress.org. Sandhills Development has a marketing team that reaches out and promotes products. (17:19) Matt – Some businesses try a blanket approach with marketing and cover too much. The person in the WordPress Community that is doing marketing well seems to be Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains. His company does a great job with their brand and content marketing. Pagely is another company that does a great job with their quality and material. Phil: Chris Badgett at LifterLMS does a great job with content marketing and his podcast concentrating around learning systems. John: LifterLMS has very focused content with their brand and audience. The material has intent. Content Marketing Focus: Matt – Content Marketing is very expensive and very hard to do as a business owner. If you are preparing webinars and podcasts, it takes a lot of time when launching a podcast. It can be hard to produce quality content consistently. (19:54) John – To test the market in the WordPress space getting on WordPress.org is the best place to start and get some eyes on your product. It is essential to focus on the product name and reviews. You need to start somewhere and then figure out how to rank it. (21:03) Phil – Some people go to the content route first without a free version of their product. Phil likes the podcast/YouTube style. Joe Howard has started the WPMRR Podcast and focuses on monthly revenue. When you find something that is working, you can double down on it. While you are adjusting your approach, you should be concentrating on your email list. (22:09) John – Many niches are very competitive in the WordPress space. You need to build up the business and take baby steps slowly. It is not easy. (22:53) Matt – There are two sides to this. You can try to rank in WordPress. org. But as competition starts to grow, some new business owners find they start too late with the ideas for marketing. One great idea is to leverage customer stories with a podcast and repurpose the content. (24:21) Forecasting the Future of WordPress: Matt – WordPress is becoming more competitive, and pricing in the marketing is still a challenge. How is pricing changing in the WordPress space? (26:07) John – Many themes and plugins have gone to automatic subscription. Many customers are renewing without a discount in subsequent years (especially with hosting or SaaS products) (26:46) Phil – Larger companies can adapt to charge more because they have a reputation and support behind the product. The customer can count on them with staying power. (28:04) Matt – Prices in the space are tiered for support for products. Customers seem to value the product and as an end user, they see the value. (28:50) John – Customers are buying the products and making money. There was a positive response from his customers with his joining a larger company. Phil – There were no complaints coming from customers when features were released and annual subscriptions were occurring. SaaS products seem to do this annually. Phil got a great response from his customers when he joined Sandhills Development. They were excited with the partnership and the solutions that can be offered. (30:32) Balancing User Requests and Feedback: John: He would produce a yearly survey to stay on pace with his customers including the feedback that he received over the year. Every feature that you include will be a support burden down the line. (33:16) Phil – Sent out a survey as well as tracking support requests that looked like new features. Phil collected responses all year and weighed those requests with what it would take to develop and support. Phil was very cautious about adding features while trying to not take any feature away. (33:59) Monetization with Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 John – Waiting to see what happens after the release. There seems to be a lot of opinions about what will happen with the newest release. (35:47) Phil – Is expecting support to be overwhelmed after the release. Documents and videos will help people with the release. WP Simple Pay will not be that impacted. The page builder and themes could be impacted but uncertain by how much and in what way. (36:36) Matt – There are a lot of folks jumping into the opportunity around Gutenberg with an opportunity to sell to customers. The release seems to be a way to create a SaaS around WordPress.org. With Jetpack enabled you will be able to remind the customer about what is coming and create upsells. (38:45) To Keep in Touch: John Turner: Hooked on Products Podcast Twitter – @johnturner seedprod.com Phil Derksen: Twitter – @philderksen Phil Derksen Episode Resources: Awesome Motive MemberPress Formidable Forms Syed Balkhi Sandhills Development, LLC EDD Affiliate WP Restrict Content Pro Sugar Calendar Delicious Brains Pagely LifterLMS LMSCast WPMRR Jetpack To Stay in Touch: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

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Ryan Sullivan on joining Southern Web

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2018 53:49

With the kick-off episode of Season 8, Matt Mederios interviews Ryan Sullivan about entrepreneurial fears and changes that occur in a business. Ryan recently sold WP Site Care, a maintenance business to Southern Web and wrote an article about this change. Matt is now working for Pagely. They each have an honest discussion of what happens to all business owners and what changes they see occurring around WordPress. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Ryan Sullivan on joining Southern Web Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:53:48 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:53:48 What you will learn from this Episode: The WordPress market is changing and does not seem to be centered around productized services anymore. (3:03) The trend has been that the customer wants to go to one vendor that is offering a wide range of services. (3:38) Many other platforms are pitching simplicity to website customers. (5:11) It appears to be easy to spin up a WordPress business and people want to start a business to create revenue right away without making a big commitment about what it takes to run the business with great service. (6:40) To be a solid WordPress consultant today, you should look to specialize for the greatest opportunity. (ex: writing WooCommerce APIs) (25:39) Marketing is often a missed opportunity for most providers. The most successful marketing for people comes from when you solve a problem that somebody is having. (27:37) Entrepreneurs need to build a brand that sustains it beyond the operational running of it. You do not have to be good at everything. (30:46) Common Business Mistakes: It is hard to identify when a progressive slide is occurring in your business and when you should be asking for help. (13:33) Use Software that can solve a lot of problems that you bump up against operationally. (14:12) Get your ducks in a row before you start adding employees. (14:35) Make sure you understand money and how finance works in the context of your business. (15:04) Finding a consultant or CPA at the beginning can keep you focused on running your business. (15:33) Do not let the unexpected sale or growth of the business trip you up as you are scaling your business. (16:30) People start off not charging enough for their product or service. (17:46) Adjusting prices as your business grows is necessary to support your current clients. (18:48) Business Growing Pains: Identify what your weaknesses are early and reach out to people that can help you focus on what you enjoy doing. (32:32) Know that you are not alone in your startup effort. (35:00) If you have investors, know that they are investing in you (not the idea). (37:00) Know that businesses change and that everyone struggles. (40:06) Do not let social media impact your progress and efforts. (42:51) You can use the realistic metric of 1000 fans as a reference point for your social media success. (44:19) Your digital handshake is what helps you compete with the massive players online. (46:30) Episode Resources: Changes E-Myth Revisited Gusto Jason Resnick A Thousand Raving Fans The Matt Report Gutenberg Conductor Plugin To Stay in Touch with Ryan: Southern Web Ryan on Twitter To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. Featured image credit If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

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Ryan Sullivan on joining Southern Web

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2018 53:48

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TSE 921: The 7-Step Approach Pagely Used to Systematize Sales

The Sales Evangelist

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2018 25:31

Whether you're working a sales campaign or building a fantasy football league, preparation and process will always improve your outcome. You absolutely have to have a sales process to systematize your sales. On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we'll hear from Sean Tierney, Director of Sales for managed WordPress hosting provider Pagely. Sean will share the […] The post TSE 921: The 7-Step Approach Pagely Used to Systematize Sales appeared first on The Sales Evangelist.

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Working on your own website

LMScast with Chris Badgett

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2018 40:40

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards. In this episode, the Brians discuss the challenges of working on your own business website, when your company offers services or makes products for websites. Agencies often disregard their own websites, as do product companies. We discuss our own histories of attempting in-house redesign projects, strategies to get them done, and how we approach things today owning our own tiny businesses. Links CodeInWP Transparency Report: Redesigning Your Business Website Sponsor: Pagely Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Post Status is proudly hosted by Pagely. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner

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YouTube for Business Online Video Marketing for Course Creators and Membership Site Entrepreneurs with Matt Medeiros

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2018 49:53

We get into YouTube for business online video marketing for course creators and membership site entrepreneurs with Matt Medeiros from the Matt Report and Pagely in this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris and Matt share a lot of tips for building out your content with video marketing strategies. Matt has been very interested in video and radio for much of his life, and he had been doing videography work before everyone had an iPhone and was able to record videos and take pictures everywhere. The editing process was long and arduous, but he predicted video would … YouTube for Business Online Video Marketing for Course Creators and Membership Site Entrepreneurs with Matt Medeiros Read More » The post YouTube for Business Online Video Marketing for Course Creators and Membership Site Entrepreneurs with Matt Medeiros appeared first on LMScast - LifterLMS Podcast.

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How Pagely is Using a New Form of Marketing VBO - Value Based Outreach - to Grow in a High Competition Market

SaaS Breakthrough

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2018 28:12

Meet Rod Austin the Director of Marketing at Pagely, the premier Managed WordPress Host. In this podcast episode you'll hear the exact steps that Rod took to really streamline the marketing process for Pagely, to figure out the best channels to take their marketing forward and actually finding which ones were not as successful as they thought they would be, as they found a new niche to a new market to go after they made some really big changes based on what they learnt from their data in 2017. Now the big win from this episode is a new form of marketing that they're doing called Value Based Outreach - VBO that is a really really powerful way to reach out to your target audience. 02:31 Ron Joins Pagely 03:26 Focusing on Revenue and Leads 04:31 Low Hanging Fruit and Business Intelligence 05:57 Establishing a Formal Approach to Persona Identification 07:18 The 5 Weekly KPIs 08:41 What Happened When They Changed the Lowest Plan Price 11:50 The Question They Started Asking Themselves and Their Target 13:07 Moving from PPC to ABM (Account Based Marketing) 14:49 VBO - Value Based Outreach 18:38 The Process Ron Uses for VBO 22:29 What Ron Would Do First If He Was Starting Again 23:20 Marketing in 2018: Optimizing For People With Value 25:30 Lightning Questions

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The Future of Content Distribution

Creative Studio - podcasting experiments

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2018 48:14

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards. This week the Brians put their brains together and discuss content distribution across various mediums and platforms as well as subscriptions for both digital and physical products. The conversation shifts between different tooling and platforms that exist for enabling content distribution as well as some of the societal shifts that have shaped how we share and consume both content and products. This is a good episode for anyone who is developing sites and selling solutions around content distribution or subscriptions as well as anyone who is running (or looking to run) a business based around a subscriber model (paid or otherwise). Links WP Jargon Glossary Google News subscription initiative Brent's blog post Teams for WooCommerce Memberships Target acquires Shipt Sponsor: Pagely Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Post Status is proudly hosted by Pagely. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner

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501: Netflix Style Podcasting with Matt Medeiros

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2017 18:20

Welcome to the Creative Studio, the podcast where we conduct experiments in podcasting. Most podcasters stick with the “normal” podcasting practices, but you - you’re different. You like to try different things. “You do it like this, and then you break the mold.” This fifth season of the Creative Studio is a production of Podcast Guy Media, LLC. We will be talking with people that are doing something unique with their podcast. Maybe it’s their format, their philosophy, their niche. Whatever it is, we’ll find out what makes it tick. We’ll see what works...and what doesn’t. We’ll see what we can learn and apply to our own podcasts. Visit our website at PodcastingExperiments.com. We will be talking with Matt Medeiros today from the Matt Report Podcast. We’re going to hear about the way he experimented with publishing Netflix style, the power of video, and his approach to sponsorship. Matt’s podcasting journey Matt first began podcasting about 4 or 5 years ago. It began a few years before that, when he’d first started running his WordPress agency and went to an event and saw the potential for people to be talking with each other in the WordPress space. He was starting his agency and had other colleagues doing the same, growing fast and putting a lot of stock into their relationships in the space. At the time there were maybe 2 other WordPress podcasts, whereas now there are at least 15. It all started with the idea of getting connected in the community and growing his business, which for Matt, it has. Matt’s podcast is the Matt Report. It’s an interview podcast that is basically a breakdown of what’s happening in the WordPress space. The interviews are with people in the space—developers and agency owners, as well as general tech and business owners—to help his audience learn from a variety of differnet perspectives. His audience ranges from people running small software startups doing anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to $5000-$50,000 per month in sales of digital products. The changing way Matt has published the last season Like everybody else, Matt started doing his show every week. He did that for nearly 100 episodes, but without a hard schedule or plan on how he approached it. After a while that becomes a lot of work, and becomes a little stale, for the host but possibly even for the listeners. So Matt decided to change things up a little bit. He decided to release a whole season onto the website and Soundcloud ‘Netflix style’. However, they’re still released through iTunes once per week. That way, superfans can listen to them all at once on the side, but the normal cadence still happens every week. This has been a benefit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it allowed Matt to really focus and spend a month or so preparing the season. It also allowed him to dedicate an entire landing page to his season’s sponsors. It’s great for Matt because it’s easier to pitch sponsors that way, it’s great for the sponsors because they have more focused attention for a whole season and it’s great for listeners who aren’t getting hit with new sponsors every week. More podcasting experiments In Season 5, Matt also introduced 2 new co-hosts of the show, so he only hosted half the season. The other half was co-hosted by 2 other gentlemen who took the lead talking about software as a service. That was an experiment to get some new voices and a new perspective. In Season 6, which is due in August, the podcast will go audio and video and feature an educational component. Everybody who was on the show was interviewed for 15 minutes and then presented some form of topic for 15 minutes. There will also be slides people can download so it will be a more value-based season for the audience. The power of video When Matt first started the show, 4-5 years ago, he did it on YouTube as well as audio. However, it was a lot more work back then. Now, the software is getting better, live streaming is more accessible and editing software is much more powerful so it’s easier to produce video and audio on the post-production side. Matt has three YouTube channels and he knows there’s a huge connection for audiences with video. It’s the personal effect and that’s what makes some people tune in. There’s a stronger audience on the audio side because it’s so much more portable than video. However, video is very powerful for growing audience retention so he recommends it. How Matt is approaching sponsorship WordPress is an interesting space because although there are a lot of products and services, the everyday consumer doesn’t know about them and isn’t going to sign up. It has a lot to do with trust and referrals. Those pockets of companies that have something to sell—products, themes, hosting—do recognize authority in the space is valuable, so Matt is able to position his show quite well, even with numbers of listeners that are nowhere near like a mainstream podcast, or a tech podcasts and YouTube channels. For those mainstream channels, it’s a big ocean to swim in so they have to get big numbers to make it work. WordPress isn’t a big ocean but you can get big numbers when you have the trust and authority both of companies willing to sponsor you and of your listenership. Matt is a trusted voice in the community, which means he can command a little bit more in sponsorship dollars. He has one of the most popular and certainly the highest rated WordPress podcast, so he is that authority. There’s no magic to his strategy: he simply goes to popular companies that he knows have advertising money to spend and pitches them to sponsor the show. He also limits the sponsorships to two per season so they don’t get drowned out, and that also makes it more attractive to sponsors. The next steps for Matt and his advice to other podcasters Season 6 is going to be a continuation of the experiment theme in terms of structure. Matt is also considering going outside the WordPress pocket, and expanding the show topic a little. He also plans to be more consistent with live shows. His advice to people questioning whether or not to start a podcast is to just start, but don’t worry about going the full monty right away. You can just dip your toe in the water with some consistent kind of audio or video content. It could be on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or even Twitter. Find the platform you are most comfortable with right now and just start with getting your message out. Don’t worry about subscribers or microphones going into Skype going into a recorder. Just dip your toe in the water and start. Where to find more from Matt Check out the podcast at https://mattreport.com/ Matt’s fulltime job is representing Pagely at https://pagely.com/ which is Enterprise WordPress hosting. The agency he cofounded helps a lot of higer end and larger implementation of WordPress for startups that are using it in different ways, not just as a website. He also has a YouTube channel that covers tutorials for WordPress: www.YouTube.com/plugintut Or to have Matt review your website at a very affordable price, go to www.UserFeedbackVideos.com

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S5B: E11: Thomas Griffin

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2017 46:05

In this episode Sam and Corey interview Thomas Griffin from OptinMonster. The discussion is how you can successfully shift your business from a plugin model to SaaS model. Listen to the show Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5B: E11: Thomas Griffin Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:46:04 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:46:04 Guest: Thomas Griffin is the co-founder of OptinMonster and CTO of Awesome Motive which houses the brand. Prior to OptinMonster, he founded Soliloquy, the fastest WordPress slider plugin, and Envira Gallery, a revolutionary gallery solution for photographers. He is an expert developer with deep knowledge of building products for mass-market. Thomas knows firsthand that software for marketers is generally poor in quality. He's proud that OptinMonster is changing that by creating extremely easy to use and technologically sound SaaS (Software as a Service) that works for users outside of the WordPress framework. Thomas is a frequent speaker on topics of performance and scalability. What you will learn from this episode: The decision was made from Awesome Motive – which houses the OptinMonster Brand to move to a SaaS product in January 2013. (4:56) OptinMonster used to be a WordPress plugin managed through the dashboard. (6:03) The product was tested out from the WPBeginner website when it was realized that there were problems scaling. (7:24) Data portability was available in WordPress and Thomas had that experience from the Soliloquy product. (7:40) The demand to use OptinMonster was coming out of the WordPress ecosystem, so it was profitable to look at the product as a SaaS. (9:15) The host partner for the SaaS is Pagely and they have the expertise to scale the product quickly. (13:00) Your website visitors need to have meaningful data available. (21:18) You can have page level targeting and categories on your site with a lead magnet. (Ex: Target baseball enthusiasts instead of all sports). (21:20) You can segment your list to get immediate value out of your subscribers. (22:18) The technology exists in OptinMonster called the display rules engine with very powerful targeting that can be used by people outside of WordPress. (22:52) Challenges of going from a WordPress Plugin to a SaaS: The onboarding was very critical and the focus is on clear documentation when the product is purchased. (24:49) You bypass the WordPress download, install, etc. (25:00) There is strong documentation on connecting to the WordPress plugin. (25:06) The SaaS provides the user with a dashboard and a guided tour of the product. (25:56) Most questions about WordPress connectivity come through the presales calls. This is where the education of how OptinMonster works with WordPress is handled. (11:36) There is a strong user base that uses Shopify and other CMS platforms. (28:30) Moving to a SaaS product for OptinMonster was a necessity and an organic migration. (29:28) OptinMonster is powered by WordPress but scaled without “using the WordPress way” with the SaaS product. (30:42) Pricing from the WordPress Plugin to the SaaS: The WordPress payment ecosystem was not mature when the SaaS product was launched. (31:55) There was not a good WordPress solution for subscriptions. (32:00) The SaaS subscription model was difficult. OptinMonster was established from the start as a premium paid product so you started by buying a one-year license with support. (32:46) It was discovered that the yearly subscription was not a way to build business and continue to add value. A subscription service was added where you paid every month or for the year. (34:09) As the application was updated it added more value by providing subscribers with features and support. (35:08) Users transitioning from the lifetime plugin purchase of OptinMonster were grandfathered into the SaaS product. (35:50) The Business decision was made for lifetime users because it was the right thing to do. People and customers come first. (37:00) You need to manage expectations when moving from a WordPress plugin to a SaaS. Communication is so important. (39:30) The best marketing is having a great product with great customer service. (40:19) Episode Resources: Awesome Motive WPBeginner OptinMonster API connector plugin OptinMonster Thomas Griffin Twitter To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. Sponsors: Pagely Gravity Forms ★ Support this podcast ★

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An entrepreneurial journey around eCommerce, with Patrick Rauland

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2017 50:09

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by the creator and editor of Post Status, Brian Krogsgard, and this week's guest host, Patrick Rauland. In this episode, Brian and Patrick Rauland discuss the state of eCommerce today, both from a product perspective, and for store owners. They also discuss Patrick’s own journeys in the land of eCommerce, as a former product manager for WooCommerce, a course author for Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning), consulting, and putting on an online eCommerce conference. Links Patrick's programming blog Lift Off Summit Amazon FBA for WooCommerce ShipStation Stitch Labs Tropical MBA WooConf eCommerceFuel Post Status Publish Photo Credit Sponsor: Pagely Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Post Status is proudly hosted by Pagely. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.

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Episode 78: Payment Gateways, Tax Season, and Other Listener Questions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2017 37:22

Today's episode is sponsored by Pagely, the original gangsters of WordPress hosting. They've been around for a long time, but they've gone from humble beginnings to hosting huge brands. They've been able to figure out... The post Episode 78: Payment Gateways, Tax Season, and Other Listener Questions appeared first on Apply Filters.

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Episode 78: Payment Gateways, Tax Season, and Other Listener Questions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2017 37:22

Today’s episode is sponsored by Pagely, the original gangsters of WordPress hosting. They’ve been around for a long time, but they’ve gone from humble beginnings to hosting huge brands. They’ve been able to figure out... The post Episode 78: Payment Gateways, Tax Season, and Other Listener Questions appeared first on Apply Filters.

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Episode 77: How to Build a Batch Processing System with Drew Jaynes

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2017 48:55

Today's episode is sponsored by Pagely, who are the original gangsters of managed WordPress hosting. They come from humble beginnings, but now they host huge brands like Disney, Visa, eBay and more. They know their... The post Episode 77: How to Build a Batch Processing System with Drew Jaynes appeared first on Apply Filters.

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Episode 77: How to Build a Batch Processing System with Drew Jaynes

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2017 48:55

Today’s episode is sponsored by Pagely, who are the original gangsters of managed WordPress hosting. They come from humble beginnings, but now they host huge brands like Disney, Visa, eBay and more. They know their... The post Episode 77: How to Build a Batch Processing System with Drew Jaynes appeared first on Apply Filters.

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Moving your business up channel with Josh Strebel of Pagely

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2017 53:23

Doubling your agency rate is a great way to grow your business. Even if you're a beginner freelancer, moving from $50/hr to $75/hr can start to move the needle considerably. Sounds obvious, but so many people that I talk to still won't take the leap. Which totally makes sense, it's a move filled with fear and uncertainty. You've been selling your work at a set price, for the last 3 years, and asking clients for more money can be jarring. Further, moving your price up will also change the expectations from clients, and you'll discover new issues like more legal paperwork or insurances. In today's episode with Josh Strebel, founder of Pagely (sponsor of this podcast) we'll discuss all of the intricate points of moving your business up channel, and how to shift your mindset to focusing on customer service. We'll also dive into the deep end of where WordPress is going from a user experience perspective, and how WordPress hosting companies have a particular advantage in shaping it's future. Make sure to buy your tickets for PressNomics 5 Enjoy the episode, don't forget to thank our sponsors Pagely & Valet. Watch the live stream Interview with Josh Strebel Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Moving your business up channel with Josh Strebel of Pagely Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Photo credit Brian Krogsgard ★ Support this podcast ★

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Moving your business up channel with Josh Strebel of Pagely

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2017

Doubling your agency rate is a great way to grow your business. Even if you’re a beginner freelancer, moving from $50/hr to $75/hr can start to move the needle considerably. Sounds obvious, but so many people that I talk to still won’t take the leap. (more…)

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S4 E6: AJ Morris on small agency ownership

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2016 60:19

AJ Morris, Product Manager at Liquid Web, shares the lessons he learned from running his own boutique agency before joining the web hosting company. There's a lot of little lessons threaded throughout our conversation, but there's one stand out point, every WordPress business owner should be thinking about. Interview with AJ Morris of Liquid web Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E6: AJ Morris on small agency ownership Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Know your limits Limits in terms of customers you want to serve, and customers you can serve. I run into a lot of freelancers, or boutique agency owners, that don't have a clear understanding of their own limits. Here's an example, a local colleague reached out and asked me if I knew of anyone that “did Visual Basic coding.” I don't. He explained that it was how they managed their website internally, and they needed to make changes. Some convoluted system that someone built in-house, which hasn't been touched in years, now needs repairs. The original creator? Not there anymore. I briefly explained that it's time to sell them on moving off of that platform, for obvious reasons. He said just wanted to get it fixed for them and move on, by either trying to get someone on his team to figure it out or hire someone. If the problems aren't obvious by now, I'll highlight a few scenarios: He's about to make promises, and get paid on them, of which he doesn't have the slightest clue on how to deliver or support. If he doesn't explain a better, more open, solution for the customer, he's doing them a long-term disservice. If you find yourself in this situation, I highly suggest that you know your limit, and don't take a project like this. At the very least, don't try and put your brand in front of it, and represent the work being done. Be transparent with your customer, and advise them that you're probably not the best fit for this job. Focus on your core competencies, and be great at them. I hope you enjoy today's episode with AJ Morris, and always, thank our sponsors, Pagely & Valet! ★ Support this podcast ★

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S4 E5: Beka Rice from SkyVerge

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2016 59:49

The word of the day is: Evolve. Beka Rice, WooCommerce Team Lead at SkyVerge, joins the Matt Report to discuss the makings of a modern day WordPress agency. SkyVerge is a WooCommerce service agency, the largest developer of 3rd party add-ons in the WooCommerce marketplace, the company behind SellWithWP.com, and they've expanded into the SaaS market by forging a new branded app, Jilt. They evolve — a lot. So let's take a step back and break this down: Client services WordPress plugins Content media site SaaS app Each forward step is an evolution of the previous, and that's the lesson that Beka teaches us in today's episode. In my opinion, client services life isn't as linear as it used to be. That is to say, it's not about filling the pipeline and doing the work anymore. Partly because the market has become much more competitive over time, and clients require a wider range of deliverables. Who cares about designing a website, putting current web technology and social technology to work for it, is the real goal. Building a smarter, more measurable solution for our client, not just a brochure. You're probably going to want to queue this episode up more than once — it's that good. Hope you learn something today, and if you do, please thank Beka and our sponsors — Pagely and Valet — on Twitter. Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E5: Beka Rice from SkyVerge Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window You should subscribe to my newsletter, I send personal videos out, one of which is for WordCamp US this week! ★ Support this podcast ★

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144 Qualities of High End WordPress Hosting

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2016

AJ Morris of Liquid Web joins our Saturday panel as we discuss the qualities of high-end WordPress hosting. We find out what differentiates a high end managed WordPress host from the average hosting companies that cost a few bucks a month. Why is it important to have a quality web host? What are you looking for in web hosting for your WordPress website? We'll answer these questions and many more. Our panel this week: AJ Morris of Liquid Web (@ajmorris on Twitter) Jackie D'Elia of Jackie D'Elia Design (@jdelia) Jonathan Denwood of WP-Tonic (@jonathandenwood) John Locke of Lockedown Design (@Lockedown_) Episode 144 Table of Contents 0:00 Podcast Intros 1:50 WordPress News Story #1: Nashville to Host WordCamp US 2017-2018 https://wptavern.com/nashville-to-host-wordcamp-us-2017-2018 10:03 The .blog Bait & Switch http://chrisschidle.com/the-dot-blog-bait-and-switch/ 18:23 Upvato Backup Service Confirms Files Are Lost, Plans to Relaunch on New Provider https://wptavern.com/upvato-backup-service-confirms-files-are-lost-plans-to-relaunch-on-new-provider 25:31 Main Topic: Qualities of High End WordPress Hosting 25:44 What is the advantage of having a managed WordPress host vs having just regular web hosting? 27:30 What are the differences between an inexpensive web host and a quality web hosting company? 29:55 How do you try to convince people to improve their web hosting? 32:58 Some interesting user stats that Liquid Web found when they did due diligence, and some great features that Liquid Web offers. 36:07 Why WP Engine has been the market leader in WordPress hosting so far, and what Liquid Web is doing to compete with them. 37:47 A few words about SSL and WordPress hosting. 41:00 Some hosting companies that let you manage several client sites from one panel, and some common problems web developers face when it comes to getting clients to the right hosting package. 48:01 How will HTTP/2 affect server configurations in the next year or two? 50:26 Page speed is important. How do customers evaluate hosting speed stats and different benchmark studies? 57:01 What security practices make you feel better when you are choosing a web host? What does the hosting landscape look like right now? 1:01:12 What are the unique challenges that come with providing hosting to web agencies? 1:05:05 The importance of technical support in web hosting. 1:08:20 Podcast outros ======================== Recommended WordPress hosting companies mentioned during the show: Liquid Web https://www.liquidweb.com/wordpress/ WP Engine https://wpengine.com/ Flywheel https://getflywheel.com/ Kinsta https://kinsta.com/ Siteground https://www.siteground.com/ Pagely https://pagely.com/ Other Links Mentioned During the Show: Let's Encrypt https://letsencrypt.org/ Comodo SSL https://ssl.comodo.com/ GT Metrix https://gtmetrix.com/

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S4 E4: Solopreneur Dan Cameron of Sprout Apps

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2016 74:51

Remember that line in the Social Network, “A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars.” Well…maybe not for all of us. Dan Cameron of Sprout Apps, is a great example of an entrepreneur that wants to stay small and isn't motivated by the billion dollar dream. That's not to say he doesn't want to see his revenue move up and to the right, but it's not his motivating factor. There's a certain level of control that one has in business, by not scaling as fast as possible. You don't worry about hiring, paying more taxes, and expanding the product line. You do what you do, and you do it well. Storylines that won't make the rounds on TechCrunch, but serve as positive dialogue for those of us embracing a lifestyle business. In today's episode, we'll unpack the reasoning behind Dan's decisions, both good and bad. We'll also explore some of the growing pains Sprout Apps has experienced in the marketplace, like when a big brand started buying adwords with his branding. I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to thank our sponsors Pagely and Valet! Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E4: Solopreneur Dan Cameron of Sprout Apps Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window The links Sprout Apps Dan Cameron on Twitter ★ Support this podcast ★

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S4 E1: Logan Nickelson of MusicForMakers.com

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2016

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S4 E1: Logan Nickelson of MusicForMakers.com

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2016 45:18

Hooray! Season 4 is here! First and foremost, thanks for always tuning into the Matt Report, and craving great stories and how-to from our guests. Second, thanks to my two content sponsors for this season: Pagely.com & Valet.io. Without them, the Netflix style release wouldn't have been possible. Kicking of Season 4 is my friend Logan Nickelson, founder of MusicForMakers.com. He built a recurring membership business built on WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro enabling him to sell his royalty-free music. You might be thinking that a musician turned digital product seller, might not relate to your more traditional WordPress product or digital marketing product — oh, but it does! The parity between a music artist, and today's freelance developer/designer, is uncanny. He pulls on a lot of similar threads that we in the freelance consulting world experience in our own business. He's also a digital content marketer by day, and he's building this business in his spare time. And when you're making the music, building the website, marketing the goods, and supporting your customers — it becomes quite a feat! I hope you enjoy Season 4 Episode 1 with Logan Nickelson! Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E1: Logan Nickelson of MusicForMakers.com Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window ★ Support this podcast ★

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Ask Post Status: Innovation in WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2016 63:04

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Joe Hoyle -- the CTO of Human Made -- and Brian Krogsgard. In this episode, Joe and Brian answer listener questions. You can go to poststatus.com/ask to ask questions for a future episode. We spent the second half of the show talking about innovation in WordPress and what makes big innovation difficult. Topics and Links What is Publish going to be about? Post Status Publish What is A Day of Rest? A Day of Rest Boston 2017 Managing sites between local, development, staging, and live Mergebot VersionPress Theme review process Theme handbook WP Test Donations for free plugins The patronage model for free software freelancers Using Kickstarter to fund open source How can the WordPress project innovate? Sponsor: Pagely Pagely helps the world’s biggest brands scale and secure WordPress. They are the original managed host, and have been at it for seven years now. Check out Pagely today, and thanks to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.

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Episode 26 – WordPress Hosting

Mastermind.fm

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2016 36:19

Welcome to Episode 26 of Mastermind.fm! This week our masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws tackle hosting! Hosting can be a nightmare of trial and error to find what works for you in the often weird world of WordPress hosting. Jean and James have been through the wringer on this one, and have come out on the other side ok. Come listen in to the decades of hosting experiences that they've racked up between the two of them and make your own hosting decisions better! As always, show notes are below. Types of Hosting Basic hosting Managed hosting Managed WordPress hosting What's the difference? Typically, basic hosting simply gives you a place to run your website from, and leaves everything else to you. Managed hosting takes the responsibility of maintenance, security, updates, etc on their shoulders. Managed WordPress does all of that too, but they specialize in WordPress hosting management. Some Tips to Keep in Mind Research your host! Make sure they are actually the people running the hosting software, not just someone reskinning a control panel with their own branding! A good host doesn't always have to manage their own hardware, but they should definitely be in charge of their own hosting software, database management, etc. Is Managed Hosting Expensive? It can be, but it isn't always. It's often done in tiers just like regular hosting. You can get managed WordPress hosting within almost any budget, you just have to shop around. What Host is Best? There isn't an answer to this question that isn't unique to your needs. Jean uses Digital Ocean because they fit his unique needs. James uses Pagely because they meet his unique needs. What host you want should also be based on your needs. How About a Shared Host? On a shared host, you share hardware resources with other websites on the same hardware. It is a great way to start and is really cheap. You should consider it a starting point only for any business though, something that you're going to grow out of. As your traffic grows, you're going to quickly outgrow the shared hardware resources. There's also a security risk, as other websites that share the hardware with you can potentially compromise your own security. Email Email often is either not covered in a hosting plan or not reliable through the host, but is an essential consideration for your website. Jean prefers Gmail, Zoho Mail, and Sendgrid as alternatives. James mentions Mandrill and Mailgun. Essentially, if you're looking for a service that will allow you to send bulk email, you need to find a transactional email service. If you're not sending in bulk, WordPress SMTP plugins are a good alternative. Backups? Yes. Do them. Jean strongly recommends you take responsibility of website backups for yourself. Even with a very reliable host, disasters can happen. Make regular high quality backups on your own and in addition to your host. Do be mindful that some hosts ban backup plugins that make whole site backups and store them on their servers. Featured On The Show: WP Engine Pagely SiteGround DigitalOcean GoDaddy Zoho Mail SendGrid Mandrill Mailgun BlueHost GravityView

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WordPress Security -- Draft podcast

WPwatercooler - Weekly WordPress Talk Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2016 71:12

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Joe Hoyle -- the CTO of Human Made -- and Brian Krogsgard. Security -- in WordPress core, distributed plugins and themes, and in our custom code -- is a constant battle. It’s important to be vigilant with our security practices, from the perspective of managing our websites and when writing code. In this episode, Joe and Brian discuss the nature of WordPress security, best practices for writing secure code, and dig into various situations WordPress developers and site owners may run into. Links Hardening WordPress About WordPress Security A Guide to Writing Secure Themes Writing Secure Plugins & Themes by Ben Lobaugh $wpdb WP Scan Understanding Vulnerabilities Sponsor: Pagely Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Post Status is proudly hosted by Pagely. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.

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EP181 – Recommended WordPress Caching Plugins

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2016

This week on WPwatercooler we'll be discussing caching plugins and which ones we recommend and why.Show airs Mar 28 at 11am PDT / 2pm EDT / 7PM UTC* Frederick Townes Confirms W3 Total Cache is Not Abandoned – WordPress Tavern* Caching Plugin for WordPress – Speed up your website with WP Rocket* Comparison of Popular WordPress Caching Solutions – Taylor Lovett* Sandwich – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia* Batcache — WordPress Plugins* WP Super Cache — WordPress Plugins* OSI vs Taco Bell – SlashdotAwesome hosts* WordPress Hosting, Perfected. WP Engine®* WordPress Hosting by Pagely®. VPS and Enterprise Managed WordPress* SiteGround: Quality-Crafted Hosting Services[LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep181-recommended-caching-plugins-5-56f879ce2a4b4″ show_gravatar=”true”] See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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EP022 – #WordPress Optimal Post Times – WPblab

WPblab - A WordPress Social Media Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2016 98:23

This is a replay of the live broadcast with Jason Tucker, Bridget Willard, Jen Miller, and Colin PorterBoost Up Your Visual Storytelling with Instagram Feed – WordImpressIngot: WordPress A/B TestingNugget by Ingot: Easy, automated and native A/B testing for everyone — WordPress PluginsSiteGround: Quality-Crafted Hosting ServicesWordPress Hosting, Perfected. WP Engine®WordPress Hosting by Pagely®. VPS and Enterprise Managed WordPressSucuri Security — Website Security, WAF, Website AntiVirusiovideo – HomeNamecheap.com • Cheap Domain Name Registration & Web HostingGoDaddyBridget Willard on PinterestWPblab on PinterestWPblab – WordPress Optimal Posting Times 7:30pm PDT Tonight | Jason Tucker | LinkedInTweet JukeboxJason Tucker (@jasontucker) • Instagram photos and videosMarketing and Content Calendar for Blogging, Marketing + Social MediaPublicize — Jetpack for WordPressWordCamp Baltimore 2015 – The Official InMotion Hosting BlogRevive Old Post (Former Tweet Old Post) — WordPress PluginsThe post EP022 – #WordPress Optimal Post Times – WPblab appeared first on WPwatercooler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Pricing the First WordPress Host with Joshua Strebel – 039

Art of Value Show - Discover Value | Create Options | Start Pricing

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2015 44:47

Joshua Strebel is a husband, a father and co-founder and CEO of Pagely, the first managed WordPress hosting company. He graduated college on a Friday, got married on a Saturday and started his business 90 days later with the leftover honeymoon money. Pricing WordPress Hosting What is the most important thing you can share about […] The post Pricing the First WordPress Host with Joshua Strebel – 039 appeared first on Art Of Value.

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The Excerpt Episode 2 -- WordPress news with Julie Kuehl

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2015 16:19

Welcome to The Excerpt, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can also find on iTunes. Draft consists of two formats: long form interviews like I’ve done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to 15 minutes. Content covered in The Excerpt will largely be samples from the members only content, but may also cover free articles and resources. You don’t have to be a member to enjoy The Excerpt, but it is a nice way to preview what members get every day. Here’s Episode 2, which Julie Kuehl hosted with me: Shiny Installs removed from 4.2, in Beta 3 release, (Beta release and Aaron's post). Pagely and WP Engine are growing. Finding your place, by Rarst on HeroPress 1.2 of the REST API (Original release post).

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Pantheon for WordPress: a website hosting and management platform