Podcasts about wp mayor

The saga of WordPress.org active install data continues as more details trickle out. At WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reported on an appearance by WordPress contributor Samuel Otto Wood on the WPwatercooler podcast. Wood says the decision to remove the data originated from a private Slack conversation amongst contributors that was started by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg back in May. It has also been revealed that the removal was not due to security or privacy issues, as previously indicated. According to Wood, the data chart was removed because “by and large, nobody was using them”. Regardless of the reasoning behind the decision or worthiness of the data, no official outreach appears to have been made by project leadership to the developer community. Meanwhile, WordPress community members continue to voice concerns via a Trac ticket started by RebelCode CEO Mark Zahra. The ticket was created on September 30 and has over 100 comments. Links You Shouldn't Miss The first ever WordPress Documentation team Contributor Day took place on Tuesday, October 25. The virtual event was held to help team members catch up on tasks and onboard new contributors. Development agency Human Made has published 1001 ways to implement Gutenberg blocks. The guide includes a handy flowchart for determining what blocks to use and when to use them. The inaugural WPWealthBuilder Summit has put a call out for speakers and sponsors. The virtual event focuses on building personal wealth through WordPress and takes place on February 3, 2023. Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that the Openverse Audio Catalog now boasts 800,000 files that are available free of charge. Formerly known as Creative Commons Search, Openverse is now part of the WordPress project. Classifieds listings buy yours WebDevStudios WebDevStudios is seeking a full time, remote Engineering Manager candidate interested in joining our growing team.Sitewide Sales Are you literally losing sleep on Black Friday? Schedule your WordPress site's Black Friday sale so you can sleep off Thanksgiving dinner.GapScout Sign-Up for Early Access - AI that scans reviews (on WordPress.org or elsewhere), revealing to you the most profitable opportunities!WP Mayor Reach a larger, targeted audience of WordPress users with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. Get them listed on WP Mayor. F

This week I sat down again with Eric Karkovack to talk about the three top WordPress stories on the top of our minds. Independently, we made nearly the same selections! It seems the temporary loss of active install stats at WP.org has created an opportunity to rethink long-held assumptions and find new ways forward. Our news picks are all related to this in one way or another. So there's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces.Are Active Install Counts Irrelevant to Your Plugin Business's Success? (Even if they were accurate?)There are always going to be developers who push the envelope when it comes to littering the dashboard and just making it a difficult user experience. Maybe data is part of the way we solve that.Eric KarkovacFirst up is Alex Denning's article at Ellipsis, "WordPress.org is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022." Alex argues the likely temporary loss of Active Install Growth data for plugin owners is not a bottom-line, business-relevant concern. Apart from the revelation that that data itself was not just obfuscated and inexact but "basically garbage," Alex draws on Ellipsis' marketing experience and extensive data (as well as Iain Poulson's insights at WP Trends) to show 1-2% conversion rates are the norm for plugins in the WP.org repository. Only a couple of big players can crack the 100k+ install tiers today.The Plugin Repo's Glass CeilingAlex notes this "glass ceiling" has a lot to do with how the repo's search algorithm works. It's biased to favor plugins that have many active installs already, so if you're not there yet, it's not going to help you get there. As a result of these observations, Alex disrecommends the plugin repo for anyone thinking about launching a business there on the freemium model. He considers WP.org a poor distribution channel and assumes the freemium product model's fate is tied to it. On that point, we're doubtful and optimistic about exceptions and opportunities for plugin developers to make their own way, with or without the repo.While Eric and I don't fully agree with Alex, his data-based analysis does establish that the plugin repository is "broken" if it's intended to be a place where a small entrepreneur with a good product can break in and take off.Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model)Matt Cromwell politely disagrees with Alex in a long, thoughtful post of his own: The Case for the WordPress Plugin Freemium Model. (There's a great Post Status Slack thread on it too.) In it, Matt describes ways plugin owners can make the wp.org plugin search engine work better for them, but he also notes a few of its deficiencies as well. His best point is that an average conversion rate is just that — an average. He's seen much better results due to marketing efforts he feels are accessible to many plugin vendors. Matt also points to examples of successful freemium plugin shops, like Paid Memberships Pro which recently did an A/B test with their pricing page, and the version with a freemium option converted better.Where Alex and Matt agree is how much the plugin repo has changed due to market saturation. It isn't an easy place to win in anymore. And I'm pretty sure Alex would agree with Matt this is true across the web as a whole — you can expect to have to work hard with stiff competition and give high attention to Google as well — not to mention all the other things that go into making and supporting a good product.Ideas for Improving the WordPress.org Plugin RepositoryEric and I also discussed the excellent suggestions for useful, actionable data that product owners — and even agencies — would like from a new, improved plugin directory. Vito Peleg's ideas are especially exciting and seemed to draw a nod from Matt Mullenweg on Twitter. We also note how better data for plugin owners might satisfy some needs that historically have led them to try all kinds of (often unpleasant) gimicks in the WordPress backend to connect with users and upsell or cross-market their products. In a comment at Post Status this week, Justin Labadie imagines how this could work as part of the plugin install process, along with other suggestions. Eric connected this line of thinking with Mark Zahra's question in a recent post at WP Mayor, Is Deceptive Marketing Ruining WordPress' Reputation?Plugin Developers Must Make Their Own WayEric asked (and answered) a big question at the WP Minute: What should plugin developers expect from WordPress? You've got to make your own way is a message I agree with, and I brought up my conversation with Till Krüss about Performance and the Plugin Business as an example of all the possibilities that open up if you think about meeting big needs nobody else is meeting or solving big problems others are creating!Follow the Leaders, Adopt StandardsWhere we end up is 10up's newly released resource site for Gutenberg Best Practices. It's got tutorials, resources, references, example code — and they're encouraging use of their GitHub discussion board for the site. It's intended to go beyond the official WordPress documentation, according Fabian Kaegy's launch announcement. It's a “more client-services-centric approach tailored to engineering enterprise-level editorial experiences.”To me, that's a signal WordPress has turned a corner with Gutenberg. Top agency adoption of Gutenberg is huge, and as we see a growing body of accumulated knowledge, standards, and best practices emerging, it signals and amplifies a wave of change.Building Products to Scale Opens Doors and Creates Opportunities for GrowthToward the end of the show I suggest that plugin developers (as well as agencies) targeting middle and low-end markets have tended to neglect standards around performance testing and security because their customers don't need to scale and because they can treat performance and security as a hosting problem. That's a barrier to accessing high-value enterprise clients, hosts, and agencies connected to both. It represents lost opportunities and money left on the table.

The WordPress plugin ecosystem has been a big topic of discussion recently. WP Mayor's Mark Zahra started things off with an in-depth article regarding deceptive marketing practices. Zahra provides specific examples of questionable tactics used by WordPress plugin developers. He also calls on the community - himself included - to think about the potential harm to WordPress' reputation. Zahra didn't stop there. He also noted that the WordPress.org plugin repository has removed the active install growth chart. This feature allowed plugin developers to gauge how their products performed over time. Over at WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reports that there's been no clear indication of why the metric was pulled. Zahra also expanded on the topic over at MasterWP. And if you're interested in learning how to monetize your own WordPress product, be sure to listen to Kim Coleman and Matt Cromwell's WP Product Talk Twitter Space. Links You Shouldn't Miss The WordPress themes team has decided to delay the inclusion of locally-hosted Google fonts in legacy default themes until version 6.2. As Sarah Gooding reports at WP Tavern, the move was originally scheduled for version 6.1. This has some community members concerned, as a German court recently ruled that remotely-hosted fonts are a violation of the European Union's GDPR laws. The 2022 Web Almanac was released by HTTP Archive. The report aims to point out trends in the industry. As you may have guessed, WordPress once again has the top spot in CMS usage, with a reported 35% market share. Last week's story covering the controversial, racially-tinged remarks on a now-removed episode of the WP-Tonic podcast continues to spark discussion. WP Watercool took on the topic of microagression, while Allie Nimmons and Michelle Frechette of Underrepresented in Tech looked at the idea of reverse racism. From the Grab Bag Now it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors. WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 is now available for testing.WordCamp Phoenix has been scheduled for March 24-25, 2023. Outside of WordCamp US, it's the only stateside camp confirmed for 2023.Jonathan Wold discusses Using The Loop To Grow A WordPress Product CompanyDan Knauss at Post Status asks WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Why Do We Make It So Hard?WP Motivate explores

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy

Welcome to the WP Mayor Podcast hosted by Gaby Galea, Content Manager at WP Mayor. In this episode, Gaby introduces listeners to the WP Mayor Podcast, what it is, who it's for, and why it was created. Episode Highlights and Topics: WP Mayor’s blog discusses WordPress plugins and services to help you choose the best products for your website. The company behind WP Mayor also develops plugins - Spotlight Social Media Feeds and WP RSS Aggregator. This unique perspective helps to better understand your needs and provide business insights. The podcast will take the form of a discovery call, getting to know the guests' products, how they work, and the team that develops them. The WP Mayor podcast is designed for WordPress users, website owners, designers, and others in the WP community. Resources/Links: Gaby Galea on Twitter Spotlight Social Media Feeds Plugin WP RSS Aggregator Plugin WP Mayor Episode Web Page

With Special Guests Mark Zahra CEO RebelCode The People Behind WP Mayor & SpotlightWP Mark Zahra is the CEO of RebelCode. runs a number of WordPress-related projects including the ever-popular WP Mayor blog, WP RSS Aggregator - the #1 RSS importer for WordPress, and Spotlight Instagram Feeds - the best Instagram solution for your website. Having started out as a content writer for WP Mayor in 2014, I then got involved in customer support for our plugins, eventually leading to a Project Manager role. As we started to grow the company, I was appointed CEO and have been in this role for the past 2 and a half years. We now have a fully remote team of developers, support specialists, and content writers, among others, all of whom contribute to the growth of WordPress in their own ways. https://rebelcode.com/ https://wpmayor.com/ https://spotlightwp.com/

The next in our series of success stories is Mark Zahra, CEO of RebelCode – the company behind WP Mayor, WP RSS Aggregator and several more WordPress plugins. His team launched Spotlight Instagram Feeds, a social feed plugin, which has risen to over 10,000 active installs on WordPress.org in less than 9 months. Let’s see […]

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

The episode is sponsored by Plesk and Freemius. SEO research may sound daunting to some, but there are some basic methods and tools that everyone should be using. The Ahrefs team recently got in touch with me when I published this article on WP Mayor discussing WordPress' performance in comparison to other CMS options. That led to discussions around Ahrefs, and eventually, this episode. I'm joined by Joshua Hardwick, the Head of Content at Ahrefs, to discuss SEO research techniques using tools from Google, Ahrefs, and others. We delve into a number of areas that every site owner should be aware of and a few technical ones for those who already know the basics. Among the topics we discussed are: What is SEO? What is keyword research and what tools can we use for it? What are backlinks and how can we build more? How to understand what type of content you should focus on to bring in more visitors? Analyzing your competition through tools such as Ahrefs. Finding competing domains that you weren't aware of. Does social outreach have an impact on SEO? We went a little deeper in certain areas so it's certainly worth listening to the entire episode. Whether you're just getting started with SEO research or you're looking for some new ideas, Joshua's got you covered. Links: Ahrefs Free SEO tools recommended by Ahrefs Google's SEO Starter Guide Twitter: @ahrefs Twitter: @JoshuaCHardwick Youtube: Ahrefs Channel

The episode is sponsored by Plesk and Freemius. This week I welcomed back Jean Galea to the podcast as we found some time to discuss the plugins we're using at the moment, and why we chose them. Although Jean and I work together, we rarely find the time to have discussions such as these since we tend to focus on different projects, so this was an opportunity to see what each of us was doing. At the same time, we're hoping to give you a better idea of how we run our websites and perhaps point out some plugins you weren't aware of before. Throughout our discussion we focus on plugins and a few SAAS tools that have integrations with WordPress. Since the WordPress sites that we run are focused around either content (WP Mayor) or e-commerce (WP RSS Aggregator, EDD Bookings), our choice of plugins is also centred around these markets. Even if your sites are not focused around heavy content or e-commerce specifically, there are some great little nuggets in there for you. I won't list down all the plugins we use here, but here is a quick overview of the main ones we have used on all or most of our sites over the years.  Content & Subscriber Management Nelio Content to manage our posts more easily Replyable to be able to reply to post comments through email, without having to log in to the dashboard Akismet or Anti-Spam to prevent spam comments from, well, spamming your site MailPoet to send out newsletters and to reach out to subscribers Optin Monster to run various campaigns on our sites to attract subscribers SEO Framework or Yoast SEO to ensure that our content is as optimized as possible Forms Ninja Forms as our main go-to plugin, having been introduced to it by James Laws, the other founder of this podcast Gravity Forms is an established solution we used before and still do on some sites E-Commerce & Marketing Easy Digital Downloads and its extensions WooCommerce and its extensions Official extensions Trusted 3rd-party WooCommerce extension stores Analytics Monster Insights, a great tool from Syed Balkhi Hotjar Connecticator to connect to the Hotjar service for heatmaps, site visitor recordings, polls and more Social Media SNAP by NextScripts Affiliate Management AffiliateWP to run our affiliate programs on-site Thirsty Affiliates to store affiliate links from other programs and cloak them Impact and Shareasale as alternative ways to run an affiliate program when you need a more professional solution Backups & Security BlogVault to manage our site security and backups in a simple and reliable way ManageWP to manage multiple sites from one dashboard, including running updates WP Security Audit Log to track how multiple users are using our websites, which is especially useful when you have multiple authors or editors Others Advanced Custom Fields to be able to customise our websites with custom fields where we need them Elementor as our page builder of choice when we need to create a quick website for which a default theme won't do the job Classic Editor; given that we are unsure of what Gutenberg will bring with it in WordPress 5.0, this is a safety net of sorts PerfMatters, probably the most important of all, to control on which pages certain plugins run, which is essential if you have certain functionality that you only need on a few pages (giving you better performance site-wide) We mention a few more plugins throughout the show that meet certain other needs, so be sure to listen in and learn more. Are there any other plugins which you use religiously on your WordPress sites? Let us know in the comments to give them the exposure they deserve.

The episode is sponsored by Plesk and Freemius. In episode 103 I am joined by Markus Schwingenschlögl, CTO of ThemeFusion, the company behind the Avada WordPress theme. Markus had recently answered a Q&A for us over on WP Mayor, hosted by David Scott, Envato's PR and Communications manager. This episode is a follow-up to that Q&A, so I recommend reading the Q&A before starting to listen to our conversation here. Marcus is an integral part of the Avada theme's incredible growth on ThemeForest, the WordPress theme marketplace from Envato. They recently hit the $25 million mark in sales with an average rating of 4.77 out of 5 stars from over 21,000 reviews. Those numbers do not lie - the ThemeFusion team is doing a lot of things right. In our discussion we go over a number of the areas that ThemeFusion has focused on in order to achieve this feat. These included: The idea of focusing on the development of a single theme with the introduction of one-click install demos for various use-cases. Methods of gathering and using user feedback through comments, reviews, support and a community Facebook group. The tracking of feature requests through Github and the idea of building new features according to use-case requests, not just feature requests. Other ways of gathering ideas for new features and use-cases. The importance of design and attention to detail. Why it's vital for all your team, developers included, to maintain a connection with your user-base. The need for a solid company structure to take things in the right direction. The premise of releasing a mature product rather than being first to market, even if it means playing catch-up at first. The importance of the WordPress community at every stage of developing a product or service. I would like to thank Markus for sharing his thoughts and insights with us. Remember, if you haven't read the Q&A we did on WP Mayor, I recommend starting with that here. Links: Q&A on WP Mayor Get the Avada Theme on Themeforest ThemeFusion's website: theme-fusion.com ThemeFusion's Twitter: @Theme_Fusion Markus' Twitter: @mschwing ThemeFusion's Facebook Page Avada Facebook Community Group

In this episode, Mark Zahra from WP Mayor, WP RSS Aggregator and EDD Bookings continues his foray into podcasting through a long discussion with Joe Casabona. Joe Casabona has been around WordPress for many years, starting off like many of us building small WordPress sites, to now coaching and teaching others about WordPress and how to run a business around it. Mark got in touch with Joe recently in the Post Status slack community and through their conversations, he learnt about how Joe transitioned from working for Crowd Favorite while working side-jobs as a freelancer to freelancing full-time in various, less-discussed areas of WordPress. The call lasted almost an hour and a half. That's why we have split the episode into two parts. In part one Mark and Joe discuss Joe's background, the struggles he faced and benefits he got in transitioning to freelance, as well as his popular podcast, How I Built It, and what he has learnt from the interviews. Given that the podcast has surpassed 67 episodes now, we hear Joe's thoughts on WordPress businesses as well as development. The two then delve into the shifts that have been happening in the way products are built, the ways they are marketed, and the problems being faced by product owners today within the WordPress community. The discussion finally turns to hosting a podcast and how this can be made into a business of its own. Similarly to Mastermind FM, Joe's podcast began as a mastermind with other individuals and grew from there. Part two, which will be coming in a couple of weeks, will discuss other projects that Joe has undertaken - a WordPress Business Coaching Program as well as Creator Courses. Sign up below to get notified when it's published. Show Notes: Website: casabona.org Twitter: @jcasabona Post Status Crowd Favorite Chris Lema Karim Marucchi How I Built It Podcast Episodes mentioned: Joost de Valk (Yoast SEO) Pippin Williamson (Easy Digital Downloads and Restrict Content Pro) Daniel Bachhuber Jason Coleman (Paid Memberships Pro) GiveWP Tools mentioned: ConvertKit Facebook Pixel Google Analytics

In this episode, Donnacha MacGloinn and Mark Zahra take over as guest hosts. Donnacha has been involved with WordPress since the early days while working on various projects, while Mark is the Project Manager for WP Mayor as well as the WP RSS Aggregator and EDD Bookings WordPress plugins. This week we delved into a current hot-topic in the WordPress community, the Gutenberg editor and what it means for WordPress. We look at what Gutenberg is, where it’s going, and what brought it about. The discussion then delves deeper into the macro idea behind such projects as Gutenberg, WooCommerce and many others that Automattic and Matt Mullenweg are under-taking. While the community seems to be happy with the new, modern approach being taken in WordPress, there is a lot of uncertainty about its future. Shownotes & Links Gutenberg Plugin Gutenberg on Github WordPress.com WordPress.com Plugins (for Business Plan) Automattic Matt Mullenweg

Jean recently attended WordCamp Europe and with the help of Donnacha McGloinn interviewed a few other attendees. For a full review of WordCamp Europe 2017 from Jean's viewpoint, you can check out his blog post on WP Mayor. In the meantime enjoy our interviews. Mentioned on the show: WordCamp Europe 2017 Carl Alexander's blog Tesla themes Admin Columns plugin Webdevstudios Yithemes

Welcome to episode 18 of Mastermind.fm! This week our resident masterminds Jean and James will continue last week’s discussion of office hardware & tech. Last week we talked about standing desks, ergonomic office chairs, and the monitors of choice around the WP Mayor and WP Ninja offices. This week we’ll explore more of what we use around the office. As always, the shownotes are below for your convenience, but tune in so that you don’t miss a thing! Keyboards Jean swears by his wireless Apple keyboard. It’s slim, lightweight, and you don’t have to fool with batteries on the newest model- you just charge it with a USB cable. It’s perfect for traveling and hauling around in general. It’s also rechargeable and holds its charge for a long time. James concurs here: the newest model Apple keyboard is his bread and butter. He does point out that there are a handful of different keyboards around his office, though. The WP Ninjas dev team prefers mechanical keyboards with lots of tactile feedback, for example. Mice Jean is using a Logitech MX Master and feels it’s one of the best on the market currently. It can be connected via USB or Bluetooth, has a number of programmable buttons, and is comfortably ergonomic. He also uses an Apple trackpad for gesture navigation at his left hand. James prefers the Apple Magic Mouse. The native functionality means a lot to him for navigation. While he concedes that it’s not terribly ergonomic, his use case finds his hands on his keyboard much more frequently than on his mouse, so it’s not that big of a deal for him. Headphones James uses three different headphones for the different tasks he takes on from day to day. The basic Apple headphones serve for common tasks, Bluetooth Beats headphones come into play for exercising, and V-Moda Bluetooth headphones for traveling and noise reduction. Jean uses B&O Play and Bose headphones. He uses his B&O Play primarily for watching movies and relaxing to music. The Bose headphones are work headphones that reduce office noise nicely. Several other bluetooth headphones get use when he’s moving around or at the gym. Kindle Jean and James both emphasize the importance of continuing education in business. Both of them appreciate the Kindle for reading and staying up on news and industry movements. Jean swears by the Kindle exclusively for reading, while James oscillates back and forth between that and his iPad. They both agree that nothing really beats the Kindle for reading, though. Backups James primarily backs up to the cloud, which is a practice he’ll tell you quickly that he doesn’t recommend. Physical backups are important. Jean uses BackBlaze and Apple Time Capsule. Photo backups and cross-device photo management is an area that they both find a lack of solutions for. Suggestions are welcome! Featured On The Show: Magic Keyboard Apple Logitech MX Master Wireless Mouse Magic Mouse Apple Magic TrackPad Apple Apple EarPods Beats Headphones V-Moda Crossfade Headphones MyHeadphoneCollection by Chris Lema The Wirecutter BeoPlay H6 Headphones Bose Quiet Comfort 20 Headphones Monster iSport Wireless Headphones Klipsch S4 In-ear Headphones Aftershokz Bluez 2S Wireless Headphones Kindle Voyage BackBlaze AirPort Time Capsule Apple Transcend StoreJet External Drive Sony RX 100 Mark III Camera Go PRO 3 + Joby Gorilla Pod DxO One MomentLens

Welcome to Episode 9 of Mastermind.fm! Last week Jean and James began a multi-part series discussing different WordPress business models. Episode 8 tackled  free and premium business models, and this week we continue with a discussion of licensing strategies, the freemium model, productized service model, and membership model. Recurrent vs. Lifetime License Models The topic of conversation turns first to recurrent versus lifetime license models. Recurrent licenses typically require annual renewal to continue receiving basics like product support and updates, whereas lifetime licenses are exactly what the name implies. Jean and James point out that WordPress plugins typically favor recurrent licensing while most themes choose lifetime licenses. James parses the reasoning behind that split in fairly simple terms. If you have recurrent expenses that customers benefit from, a recurrent payment structure ensures that you always have the income to provide those benefits. It also establishes a sustainable business model for your company that can grow over time. On the other hand, a lifetime license often makes better sense for theme providers as themes usually don't require frequent support (assuming solid documentation) or updating. They are more static over time. Additionally, theme companies tend to be more diversified into other products or services and generally do not bring in the majority of their revenue from the themes themselves. StudioPress is one such example. Freemium Model Freemium is a licensed based model exemplified by the like of MailPoet, iThemes, Soliloquy, BeaverBuilder, Migrate WP Pro, Advanced Custom Fields, MailChimp, and others. The basic idea of the freemium model is to offer a free or lite version that acts as a channel to a more robust, paid version of the product.There are 2 factors that Jean and James raise as points of consideration here: Support still has to be provided for the free or lite version of the product. The risk of not doing so is a ton of bad press and 1 star reviews surrounding your product. The question of how to provide support for a free product is something you have to tackle early. You must choose wisely in selecting features to be limited in the the free or lite version. There are good and bad ways to implement these artificial limitations. A good rule of thumb is to stick to features that require resources for you to support. Examples include the Slack plugin that limits messages sent, and MailPoet which limits emails sent. Both these things require resource expenditure on their part. Limits that are arbitrary or deny basic functionality expected from your product type should be avoided. Our resident masterminds also direct our attention to the product's codebase in this model. Even though you may be offering both a free/lite version and a paid version, splitting the codebase to differentiate the versions introduces challenges both for future development and user experience. License based products should be built from a single, highly extensible codebase, and it's important to do this early on. The larger your customer base becomes, the harder it is to turn the ship and effect major change. Product Services Model Jean addresses Productized Services from his position of experience with WP Mayor. The idea behind this model is scalability. As a freelancer or agency you typically meet with a new client, discuss the project requirements, then provide them the service. Employing the productized service model cuts out initial inquiry and discussion phase and alternatively offers a select choice of predefined service packages; the customer selects the package they want and people can see price right away and order with minimal or no sales contact. This model has the advantage of enabling you to work with a higher volume of clients than typical freelancing or per customer agency work. It is a great strategy when you don’t have a product per se,

Our guest this week is Jean Galea, the man behind the popular WP Mayor blog and the WP RSS Aggregator plugin. We discuss the upcoming WP Mayor podcast, networking and conferences, and more.