I don’t write much about WordPress anymore now that I’m working on GapScout. That said, I enjoy the industry, but now merely as a user of the software rather than a product creator.

Still, I can’t help but always have my business mind turned-on as I witness the emerging trends.

There is a lot of chatter about blocks, and the theme space dying (as it has traditionally been defined). Some folks seem excited, as the feeling resembles the early days of plugins.

I don’t think blocks will become the “new” plugins. Not initially, anyhow. Some maturity needs to happen first. Specifically, with how these solutions are marketed on a wider scale to the average user.

More on that shortly, but for the moment, let’s look at how we got here.

2012-2016: Plugins Generate Revenue

My entrepreneurial stint in WordPress was from 2012-2021, in what I would say was the golden era of WordPress plugins. Prior to these years, it was all about themes. But developers started to get creative with the introduction of custom post types.

The WordPress plugin landscape in 2012 was a different beast altogether. It was young, innovative, and very grassroots. There were very few “big players” at the time. Off the top of my mind, we had WooThemes, iThemes, GravityForms, and Easy Digital Downloads.

The years of 2012-2016 marked the emergence and maturation of WordPress plugins as a business endeavor. Plugins transitioned from being donation-based, to one-time payment, to recurring license fees.

In my mind, WooThemes was the biggest proponent in pushing the industry in this direction. I have them to thank for giving me the confidence to start charging yearly for LearnDash. WooThemes normalized this business model, and it was further validated when they were bought out by Automattic in 2015.

Plugin market Explodes in Growth

Whether it was Automattic validating the plugin approach, or the overall growth of WordPress as a CMS via hosting companies doubling-down on WordPress, 2016 marked the beginning of the upswing in the plugin market.

Each vertical became flooded again with a new wave of players. From memberships, to forms, to learning management systems, and more – there were always five or six viable options available to users.

With more options in the space across the board, we saw a larger range of pricing. From the “buy me a coffee” donation schemes, to hundreds of dollars, and everything in between. WordPress plugins started to compete directly with popular SaaS solutions.

Some people didn’t like this. They felt that the WordPress industry was getting too greedy and losing touch of its original intent. The reality though was WordPress was growing up. Big players, and big money, were now entering the ecosystem.

This expansion continued through the next four years, until…

The Pandemic, Growth, and Exits

The pandemic resulted in a surge of revenue for LearnDash. Like, in a very significant way, and my company wasn’t the only one. Everyone who I talked to in my network experienced the same.

I can’t recall the exact number, but I’m pretty sure I hired roughly 12-15 more people in about three months. It was a crazy, stressful, and extremely profitable time.

For reasons that I have already discussed, selling became the best way forward – and I wasn’t the only one. A record number of WordPress companies sold, particularly in 2021.

These weren’t small “Flippa”-style sales, either. By way of example, I hired investment bankers to manage the sale of LearnDash and I learned quickly that WordPress was a legitimate investment space for many large VC firms. This was big-time stuff, and I knew that I needed top-tier professionals involved in the process.

Market Normalizes, Mass Competition

What no one knew at the time of the pandemic was when (or even if) there would be an end to this “COVID bump”. Today, the consensus is that things have definitely calmed down.

Many established WordPress plugin providers came out the other side of the pandemic with better processes, bigger teams, and bigger pocketbooks. The popular segments (online courses, for example) have seen a surge in competition as everyone tried to get a piece of the pie.

More players, more money, more at stake. No matter which niche you choose today, breaking into the WordPress plugin space is more difficult than ever. The bigger players are part of larger VC portfolios, resulting in more resources and reach. Your best chance is to already have a following (YouTube channel, popular website, etc.) and to sell to your audience.

This has the entrepreneurial-minded folks looking outwards to other opportunities, which brings us to Gutenberg Blocks.

Blocks today are what plugins were in 2010-2012.

There is a lot of hype around blocks, and rightfully so, though I am not yet convinced that we have found the commercial way forward.

People don’t search for blocks, they search for solutions, and currently the market is very “block-focused” with the marketing and terminology. Not only is that boring, it only appeals to the indoctrinated of WordPress.

It reminds me of when everyone was talking about “custom post types”, and describing their plugins in this way, instead of the end-result that they allowed you to accomplish.

Innovation is coming to WordPress in the form of blocks, not plugins. This will lead some to discover some new, profitable segments. Will it be as big of a gold rush as the plugin boom we saw? Maybe – but that hinges on something important.

To be successful, the WordPress community shouldn’t look to Automattic to define the Gutenberg block market.

Plugins grew in popularity because of the third-party players in the space. Full stop. In fact, Automattic’s success with plugins (WooCommerce) was the result of an acquisition, not anything they did. Any other plugin they’ve released is usually a fourth or fifth tier option at best.

This being the case, the community should resist the temptation to look to Automattic for “the path forward”. Objectively, they don’t have a great track record for inherent innovation.

I believe we are seeing community innovation happen, and this is encouraging. From block patterns and frameworks, the transition of themes, and block-powered functionality in popular plugins. The market is starting to innovate and define not only how to use blocks commercially, but why blocks are a good way forward.

So, is this the new gold rush in WordPress? I think it very well could be. It is still in the very early days, which is fun and confusing at the same time. We don’t know how things will play out quite yet because, well, everything is still in flux.

But if you are an entrepreneur and are looking for opportunities in the WordPress space, then you will do well to keep blocks at the top of mind.

#WordPress

The revenue engine behind most companies is renewal income. Be it a food delivery service or software, compounding renewals is what helps move up your bottom floor up year-over-year.

But the thing that many entrepreneurs don’t realize is that the process of selling customers on your product initially is different from selling customers on the renewal purchase. In theory, selling an existing customer should be easier than getting a new one, but only if you do it right!

Emotional Messaging vs. Validating Actions

I really enjoy the process of positioning a brand. It was my favorite part of running LearnDash, and I got pretty good at it.

What I enjoyed most is that it forced me to be creative, discover gaps in the market, and create messaging around emotional triggers that get people genuinely excited to make a purchase.

But if your product has a renewal (you should), the sales validation process is different. Specifically, you need to move from emotional messaging to validating by actions, and the best way to do this is by:

1. Making customer requested improvements to your product.

2. Effectively communicating these improvements.

Making continual improvements to your product is a given, but you should be thinking about two audiences with these efforts: new customers and current ones.

New functionality designed to bring in more customers is a natural part of any marketing strategy. To remain competitive in a market, you need to be current with the latest trends. This is where you use your intuition to develop (and position) your product accordingly.

Features that you develop for current customers are not a waste of time or effort. In fact, these kinds of releases are more beneficial than features designed solely for bringing in new customers. If you please your current customers, then they are more likely to give you that word-of-mouth marketing that companies dream of, and that is way more valuable than any paid ad campaign.

But aside from this benefit, creating functionality that your customers ask for is a surefire way to keep them around.

Look, there are an endless number of software solutions available today. Some are dirt-cheap, so competing on price isn’t going to get you anywhere.

What does get you somewhere is your responsiveness and willingness to hear out the use-cases of your customers, and then use those drive a portion of your development. This reinforces a customer’s initial decision to purchase your product (people hate to be wrong). It shows them that you are committed to them and their success.

You Need to Bring the Hype!

More important than anything (and I cannot stress this enough), you need to over-communicate what it is you are doing, specifically why it matters to your customers.

This is where most businesses get it wrong.

They listen to customers and develop “crowd pleasing” functionality, but then they suck at getting the word out about it. They fire off an email and that’s about it. I mean, if you do the bare minimum, then expect a bare minimum response.

While it’s not necessary for every release you do, at least once a quarter you should be building a robust marketing hype train with your new releases. Things like:

• Teasing the new functionality on social media with screenshots.
• Creating pre-release videos to share with customers.
• Working with your affiliates to notify them of the new functionality, why it’s good, and how they can spread the word.
• Doing live webinars to show the new stuff in action.
• Creating a release blog post and video(s) to show it all off.
• Holding post-release webinars to demonstrate further.
• Sharing case studies with the new functionality in action.
• Running re-retargeting campaigns.
• Having a limited time sale in conjunction with the announcement.
• Emailing people who didn’t open your initial email (several times).
• Contacting folks who let their license expire and give them a limited-time discount to jump back on board with your product.

Honestly, the above is just scratching the surface on what you should be doing. If you’re excited, that will get other people excited. You show people you are excited by making a lot of noise, plain and simple.

Keep your current customers excited, and they will reward you by sticking around.

The excitement you generate with your releases translates to new customers (because of the hype) but it also shows your commitment to existing ones.

When their renewal hits, they’ll remember that you keep giving them a return on investment. You’ll be giving folks FOMO if they don't renew. People who let their account expire will jump back on board (you should be emailing old customers about the exciting stuff you’re doing).

You need to over-communicate.

You need to beat your own drum and never stop.

Remember that you are competing with an infinite number of other options out there — it pays to be the loudest one in the room.

#WordPress #entrepreneurship

Comment

Once upon a time, calling someone on the phone was the way to go for receiving technical support. I can remember being on the phone with Dell all the time because something was always happening to my desktop computer.

Without fail, these support reps would always insist that you turn off the computer, unplug it, then plug it back in. I now realize how that Level 1 Dell support rep was providing the equivalent of a canned reply that gets sent out today for common troubleshooting issues.

In WordPress, this is the equivalent to: try deactivating all your plugins, then reactivating one-by-one until you find the culprit.

Not that anything is wrong with that advice. Given the nature of WordPress, more often than not an issue is the result of a conflict. The problem is that people often do this process on their live site instead of in a staging or developing environment, and this results in additional frustration and angst.

Which actually brings up a point worth mentioning: if you don’t know how to have a clone of your WordPress website on a development environment, then you should not be using a self-hosted version of WordPress. Just go to WordPress.com instead, where you’ll get 80% of the functionality without all the headache.

But by in large, support for WordPress products doesn’t include chat or phone. The vast majority are ticket based, with some still utilizing forums.

At one point or another, I used every method of support (phone, email, forums, chat).

In the early years of LearnDash, a forum was used to field support requests, with occasional Skype calls if necessary.

That wasn’t sustainable.

I then tried supplementing a ticketing system with chat support. I figured it would be a way to differentiate from the competition. From a pre-sales perspective, chat was outstanding, as I could close multiple sales before lunch. The problem was that after the purchase, these same folks tried to use chat for getting help as well, and they became increasingly frustrated when told that they needed to open a support ticket.

Now, I can concede that some of the support requests were simple enough, so it was possible to just answer it. If the request was more complicated, then I would raise a ticket for the customer. As smooth as that process sounds, it started to create a bottleneck. Also, I found that these individuals had different expectations about the time to resolution for their issue (often wanting same-day service). They would continually open chat again to check on the status.

What I noticed was that the chat functionality actually slowed down the entire support process as it created an extra, unnecessary touchpoint. If this was just one or two people, then it would probably be no problem. However, LearnDash is not some small-time plugin. Some issues are very complicated and require a lot of digging to resolve given a customer’s particular WordPress configuration. And therein lies the issue.

The WordPress business model is not a feasible environment for offering chat support.

In the world of WordPress, one of the largest cost drivers for a company is support. A popular WordPress company needs more people working in support than a SaaS – plain and simple. Why? Because the WordPress value proposition requires it.

Everyone wants their own unique WordPress configuration, but the reality is that not everyone is good at it. They’ll install duplicate plugins, never update the site, use garbage hosting, and so on. Inevitably, this increases the chances of something going wrong.

Support reps have to learn about the issue within a different context for every support request. This takes a lot of time from very skilled individuals. Multiply this by hundreds of tickets per day, and you can see why WordPress companies have so many folks working in support.

If you want chat support, you’ll have to pay at least $1,000/year.

Offering responsive chat support with so many unknown variables about the environment, and at a cost of just a few hundred dollars per year, is just plain bad for business. That may look different though if the everyday WordPress user is cool with paying a minimum of $1,000 per year.

For some, that expense might be worth it. In fact, I once considered offering chat support for that price as one of the purchase options for LearnDash, and I am confident that it would have been chosen by a segment of customers. The customer gets the chat support that they want, and the company gets more money. That sounds like a win-win, right? No. It’s not. It would have still been a loss to the company, especially at the low $1,000 price point.

First, if you have customers from all over the world, then you need to make sure that they receive the same amount of chat support time. This essentially means that support would need people working around the clock. Not just support people, but mid-level management as well to oversee these folks and to help with escalations. These employees then have to interface with leadership (the bulk of which working in U.S. timezones). The logistics get muddy, fast.

Secondly, let’s not forget that the vast majority of WordPress users do not have $1,000+ to spend on a single plugin, and as such it simply does not make sense to build out an infrastructure to support only a minority of the customer base.

For a business to realize profitability of chat support, they need to build the business around that offering to take advantage of efficiencies of scale. Bolting on live chat support as a “feature” is the opposite of this. It creates far too much overhead.

As long as WordPress businesses care about being profitable, they will not offer chat support – and that is in your best interest.

Listen, I get that there are people who really want chat support. You may be one of them! But you know what you also want? The teams that build the software to remain in business.

It’s Pareto’s principle, and it’s in your favor.

In exchange for an insanely low price, you get enterprise level software, continual development, and competent support on an insanely complex ecosystem of software. The only cost to you (aside from low license payments) is that you don’t get chat support.

But if more support is something you prefer, then my advice would be to take the money that you saved by not paying $1,000/yr for a license and hire a part-timer from UpWork to help out if problems do arise on your website. Let them handle the entire resolution process, and allow them to open tickets with the various support desks if necessary. This way you get white glove support to all the plugins on your site, not just one.

#WordPress

WordPress has been a part of my life in one form or another since 2006 when I started my first blog on WordPress.com. I went from a user of their hosted service, to self-hosting websites for family and friends, to starting (and eventually selling) a premium plugin company.

The WordPress web is everywhere. I can’t help but notice when websites are running WordPress and one of the hundreds of plugins that I know…

“Oh, I bet this site is using Gravity Forms…”

::checks source code::

“Yup. There it is.”

Despite its obvious flaws, WordPress is still the best no-code platform for building a business – I would never argue against that. But as I look at what may lay in store for me in my career, I really don’t see myself working in WordPress anymore. In fact, I question whether I want to be in tech at all.

Seeking for Inspiration

Something that I know about myself is that I tend to gravitate to projects where I can express my creativity. I find joy in the process. Building and growing something (a product & brand), and ultimately automating as much as possible so that it is no longer dependent on me.

This expression of creativity is easy to accomplish in tech, and in my case, WordPress. Well, at least it used to be.

The reality is that I am burnt out from WordPress and have been for some time. The challenges of the industry aren’t something that excite me anymore. I will always be a user of WordPress, but I think I need an extended break from working in the space.

To be fair, I am pretty much out of it already. I am involved with LearnDash still as an advisor behind the scenes, but that role doesn’t fill up my time. I do have bi-weekly WordPress-focused conversations with my friend Ross Johnson at NoFilter.fm, but I wouldn’t really count that as working in the space. It’s just a venue for casual reflections and sharing of success stories in the hopes of helping others.

I have thought about the possibility of getting into a SaaS project. That sounds like a fun challenge, but the more I think about it, the more I know that the fast-moving world of software will bring with it the same stresses that I had in the past.

I know the mentality that it takes to deal with things like security issues, constant new competitors, disgruntled customers & employees … and frankly, I’m just not there. Maybe one day I’ll feel up for the challenge again, but after nearly a decade of dealing with the negative aspects of software, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

All this is to say that I’d rather be a customer of tech solutions, not offering one.

Keeping busy, and Keeping an Eye Open

At present, I am helping Lorena with her online courses. I must say that I really enjoy that process for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of what I mentioned earlier: my love for the building and selling process. I honestly can’t get enough of it and feel grateful to have the opportunity to continue selling online.

In addition, I am also exploring non-tech related projects that may excite me. I am still trying to figure out what that is, and if I am honest, it can be frustrating at times as I am eager to start with something, but I just don’t know what at this point. I have to remind myself that this is okay because I know that these things can’t be forced. At the same time, they don’t just come out of nowhere. A little effort is needed.

After selling software, I am finding the “old-fashioned” industries to be quite appealing. Real estate, for example. I also like challenges, and an industry that is outside the tech space will test my entrepreneur skills in new ways. I have always thrived when I had to “prove people wrong” (even if only proving it to myself), and getting involved with a different industry gives me that opportunity.

Wherever I land, you can bet I will be documenting my journey here on my site. And while I don’t intend to work in tech for the time being, I will still be offering insights and opinions for entrepreneurs in this space (especially as it relates to WordPress) as I think there is value for others in sharing my honest, experienced-based takes.

And who knows, my path may lead me back to tech at some point. Possibly, even WordPress.

#WordPress

I created my first WordPress blog like most people did: using WordPress.com. I remember the entire concept of blogging being pretty new back in 2006, and I cut my teeth in the industry by setting-up and writing with WordPress.

It wasn’t long after starting that I learned about the benefits of self-hosting a WordPress installation, and from that point forward (probably about 14 years now) that is what I have always done.

The way I see it, WordPress is still the best choice out there for building a website that needs to do things like generate leads, offer courses, content marketing, and so on. If you need a Swiss Army Knife, then WordPress is the way to go.

Today, I have a few sites going. Not from a pure blogging standpoint, though, as WordPress isn’t a good choice for that anymore (for this blog I prefer write.as). But I am helping Lorena with her online course program, and that of course is running on WordPress with LearnDash, hosted at Nexcess. That has been going well as it continues to keep my WordPress skills sharp, and seeing as her website is in Spanish, the added bonus is that I’m practicing my Spanish when working on it!

While I will always be a proponent for owning your data, self-hosting a WordPress site is a pain in the ass.

The truth is, it has always been a pain to self-host. I am reminded about this fact daily as I manage Lorena’s site. Maybe I am just jaded now, but I swear there has not been a single time that I have logged into that site where I wasn’t greeted by a barrage of update nags.

On one hand, I am delighted to see developers continuing to work on their product, but on the other hand, I see it as a daily homework assignment where I need to go run the updates first on a staging environment, backup the live site, and eventually (after troubleshooting any issues) update the production site.

I have to be honest, this shit is annoying.

I am not a developer, nor pretend to be one. Furthermore, I don’t love working on WordPress backend stuff or doing QA testing. When something goes wrong, it’s stressful. Yes, I figure it out, but it’s always a mental drain.

This frustration was at the forefront of my mind recently as I wanted to create a small, two-page website: just a homepage and a blog. I considered using another website platform and even researched a few of the main competitors to WordPress. I didn’t need anything fancy, nor countless plugins. Just something simple.

After a few days of research, I thought about the possibility of using WordPress.com for this purpose. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the first option to come to mind, but I created my free account and went to have a look.

This is why most people should use WordPress.com (at first).

First, a disclaimer: WordPress.com isn’t super easy to use, in that it won’t be intuitive to a first-timer. I knew how to navigate it because I’m seasoned with WordPress. I’ll refrain from getting into the weeds on that topic, as it would result in an additional 5,000 words.

Potential learning curves aside, the more that I dug around in WP.com, the more I realized that most folks would probably benefit by starting off there, and then moving to self-hosted at a later date.

Why do this? To save time and money. WordPress is an industry of distractions, especially given the premium theme and plugin market. I can’t tell you the number of times I have seen people just jump between different plugins trying to find “the right one”, when in reality it didn’t even matter.

When you’re on WP.com, your options are limited. Yes, you can still go down a rabbit hole of functionality, but not to the same extent – and there is a 0% chance that you’ll break something else on your website since the WP.com ecosystem prevents this, which means:

• No installing endless plugins
• No support tickets with different vendors
• Less wasted time
• Less wasted money

People who have dreams of starting an online business can start doing just that when they use WP.com, especially if they are going to rely on content marketing. Spend a day or two getting things configured, then get to work creating content!

Don’t worry about installing (illegal) Google Analytics, just use the WP.com analytics.

Don’t fiddle around with the endless number of WordPress contact form options, just use the WP.com contact form.

Don’t install every social sharing plugin available, just use the built-in post sharing features.

See what I’m getting at? No more pointless activities – just get to work!

The mental freedom of WP.com is why I am using it.

Not every use-case needs a self-hosted WordPress installation, and this is particularly true with the website I mentioned earlier. I just want it to look decent for now and to not require any mental bandwidth. The site is about finished because I didn’t have to dick around with all the normal WordPress configuration stuff. If I ever want to self-host it, I can just use the WP.com export options.

If you pay for the personal account, that will set you back about $48 or something. Sure, there are little hidden attributes to WordPress on the front-end, but they are hard to see, and it doesn’t matter (you can get rid of those by paying for the business account, which is around $25/mo).

As to what my site is about — I’ll be sharing it in another blog post, so subscribe below if you want to be notified when that’s available.

Eliminate the noise, so that you can reach your first goal.

I’ll end this with a request: that you challenge your assumptions about the best ways to use WordPress. Not all situations require the same thing. Figure out what is most important for the present, and then choose your path accordingly.

Just like you wouldn’t go and create a full-blown iOS app before you have an audience, do you really need all those marketing plugins on your site from Day 1? Probably not. Eliminate the distractions and your energy will be hyperfocused on reaching your first goal.

#WordPress

Over the past 15+ years, I have had the pleasure of meeting some incredibly smart people in the WordPress industry. Some of these people have businesses (such as selling courses), and others are building products for WordPress users (plugins & themes).

With recent news that WordPress now has 43% CMS market share, one thing is for certain: the WordPress business landscape is maturing.

We are seeing consolidation, higher pricing, more complex offerings, mature advertising campaigns, and more. It’s truly an exciting time!

There is also a lot at stake. So much so, that the people who have helped create this new, mature WordPress environment are feeling like they need to self-sensor for fear of retribution.

I understand this fear.

For many years, I would just sit, observe, and discuss with my friends in the WordPress space my unfiltered view about what was going on. Topics like:

• Product pricing
• Dealing with pain-in-the-ass customers
• Gutenberg
• Product sales and promotions
• Maximizing profitability
• WTF moments from Automattic
• WordPress idealism
• Unexplored opportunity areas

And the list goes on.

These backroom conversations that I had with my friends were incredibly helpful to my business, and in some ways therapeutic. The problem is, these conversations were behind closed doors.

There is a real, tangible benefit to having tough (somewhat controversial) conversations in a public setting. So far, very few folks do this in WordPress. For me, Matt Mederos from The Matt Report and The WPMinute is one of the few daring to occasionally broach these topics.

There is no shortage of podcasts in the WordPress space, but there is a shortage of conversations backed by proven success.

At the beginning of January, Matt put out a tweet asking folks what they wanted out of a WordPress focused podcast in 2022, so I threw in my two cents:

Honest, experience-based commentary on WP norms and business practices. What works and why, what could be better and how. Less platitudes and more specific (straight to the point) advice/opinions/guidance.

Too much?? ?

— Justin Ferriman ? (@JustinFerriman) January 4, 2022

The more I thought on my reply, the more I realized that I could help bring this to fruition. Since the sale of LearnDash, I have more time. So, I got to thinking…

I should take the backroom conversations (the ones that helped me create a multimillion dollar, international brand) out into the public.

So, that’s what I am doing with…

NoFilter.fm — No BS WordPress Business Commentary

Every two weeks, I will host a gathering on Twitter Spaces to share proven methodology, tactics, and opinions directly responsible for generating multiple millions of dollars in revenue.

Co-hosting with me will be Ross Johnson from 3.7Designs.

Ross started as a freelancer right out of college and today with his wife runs a 7-figure WordPress design agency. He also has a handful of WordPress products that result in over $100,000 of revenue each year.

Over the years, Ross and I have bounced ideas off of each other as we grew our respective companies to millions of dollars.

Our goal is to help other WordPress entrepreneurs by discussing business topics that I wish were talked about when I was first starting. We will also discuss business themes as it relates to the industry as a whole.

The conversations will be recorded and published later as a podcast.

Here is what you should do next…

• Follow the NoFilter.fm Twitter account (this is where the spaces will be hosted).
• Subscribe for updates on the NoFilter.fm website (replays will be here and on major platforms such as Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts).
• Last, just show up and join the conversation!

I look forward to seeing you join us in the next conversation!

#WordPress

I remember when Matt Mullenweg first announced the Gutenberg editor for WordPress, there were a slew of review posts (many critical). I have been largely quiet on the matter, as I have always felt that time was needed to give it a chance to fully develop.

When I heard news that the classic editor in WordPress was going to be replaced, I was pretty happy about it. Truth be told, the classic editor was so dated it was becoming embarrassing. While once a class leader, by 2018 it was more enjoyable to write in a Google Doc.

WordPress was ready for an upgrade. While I knew it would mean a lot of work for my developers to update LearnDash accordingly, I was pleased with the direction Matt and the WordPress core team were taking to remain competitive (and to keep their investors happy).

What I didn’t expect was a complete shift from the typical WordPress value proposition.

In my ignorance, I thought that the updated experience would focus on making a killer writing experience for bloggers. Something like Medium or Substack, but better. Something done the “WordPress way” that helped writers bring their words to life on the world’s greatest CMS.

What we got was something in-between a page builder and writing tool, and as of the date of this article, it’s not a class leader in either category.

You can’t be two things at once, at least not very well. Yet, this is what we have with the Gutenberg editor.

From Day 1, Gutenberg was sold to us as a front-end page builder.

First, it was pretty apparent to everyone that it was nothing close to a front-end builder. Like, not at all.

That was a mistake, and I think the core team realized it afterwards. Since then, corporate has changed that terminology slightly to “full-site editing”, and it has caught on. This is probably for the best, as there is nothing front-end about Gutenberg, but it still conveys a similar value proposition to users.

But not only were we promised a site builder, we were also told that the new editor experience was an excellent writing tool. It was clear to all of us in attendance during its unveiling that Gutenberg was definitely not that, either.

I was okay with this at the time because everything was new. It has been years since then, and Gutenberg has come a long way (in particular as a page builder). I have seen folks create some pretty attractive websites using it. I particularly think that Kadence does an impressive job with their layouts. Websites using Gutenberg also load very fast, which is of critical importance.

But I feel that these page building developments have come at a cost: the writing experience in the Gutenberg editor is pretty bad. Is it the worst thing out there? No. It’s sufficient, but its performance largely depends on your site and the number of plugins you may have installed.

Now, I know of regular bloggers who think it’s somewhat enjoyable. While that’s great, I have to ask: is the writing experience actually better than platforms such as Medium and Substack?

I put out a tweet about how I felt Matt’s Gutenberg editor was positioned more as a page builder, and not for writing. I received some replies from folks who said they have grown to appreciate it, like this one from my friend Alex:

I like the block editor. It’s a little quirky sometimes, but I’ve gotten quite comfortable with it. Now when I go back to classic I feel the same as you.

— Alex Standiford (@AlexStandiford) August 28, 2021

This seems to be the prevailing sentiment. The experience is something that you get used to using. Though, I am not certain if that's the tagline WordPress would want to use:

“Writing in WordPress: you'll get used to it!”

The lack-luster writing experience is what gets to me the most. So much so that I don’t even bother using WordPress for this blog. I use WriteFreely instead, another open-source software but with an emphasis on writing and simplicity (I have a deep-dive article that I am finishing related to this. If you’re interested, subscribe at the end of this post to get notified).

All of this said, I always recommend WordPress to people looking to build a business that relies upon organic traffic from Google. And as a CMS, WordPress can’t be beat! You can create super advanced functionality without any code.

So, what is the real plan here?

I have to believe that there is a long-term plan with the editor experience that we are not privy to in the WordPress community. This feels especially true given the large amount of investment to come Automattic’s way in recent years. But to be fair, long-term plans are never shared from corporate. Two and three-year plans maybe, but not five to seven-year objectives.

And while the community has for the most part adopted Gutenberg, it did feel a little forced. Meanwhile, Elementor continues to crush it. This is starting to create an awkward scenario where Matt’s homegrown page builder is losing out to a third-party page builder for WordPress. It’s not a good look currently, but I do think that the gap is starting to narrow.

I continue to pull for Gutenberg. I know that it will grow as a page builder, and maybe along the way it can become a decent writing tool as well, but I am not confident that this is a top priority. Regardless, there are smart people behind the whole project, and it shows.

#WordPress

LearnDash is now part of the Liquid Web family of brands, I learned a ton along this journey.

Selling my business was one of the most stressful and challenging things that I have ever done as an entrepreneur. In the end, it took just about a year from start to finish (October 2020 – September 2021).

If you’re interested, you can check out the official announcement on the LearnDash blog, or check out Liquid Web’s press release.

LearnDash started making sales in early 2013. It was meant to be a lifestyle business for me, initially. But slowly over time the company grew into something more than that. With employees and customers from all over the world, LearnDash carved out a unique space in both the WordPress and e-learning industries.

When the pandemic arrived in 2020, LearnDash was very well poised to be found as people scrambled to create online courses – be it for extra income or to augment their entire business model. It was an insane time in more ways than one. The already healthy company grew even more in team size and in revenue. It was clear that the business was bigger than me, and far from the lifestyle business I created.

It didn’t take too long before I started receiving offers for LearnDash from venture capitalists. Truth is, this has been the case for the past few years, but during the pandemic that interest skyrocketed. I would get contacted literally every other day from investment firms looking to get a piece of the e-learning pie.

Now, I have always been one to pursue happiness, and this was the main driver for selling LearnDash. The truth was that I no longer had the same inspiration that I did for the industry, and this meant that I was getting in the way of the company’s true potential. LearnDash is bigger, and more important, than me. It deserved more so that it could reach that next phase of its potential.

The continued growth trajectory for LearnDash is huge, especially since it straddles both the WordPress and e-learning industries so well (which is unlike any other WordPress product, ever). Both the WordPress and e-learning markets will continue to grow in importance, and LearnDash will continue to be a leader in that space. Even more so with the backing and leadership of Liquid Web.

I hired investment bankers to market and sell LearnDash.

Given LearnDash’s unique position across two industries, I felt like professional representation was needed for the sale. In October 2020, I was introduced to the investment banking firm, Angle Advisors. I can say with confidence that had I not done this, LearnDash would have never found its new home with Liquid Web.

These folks are incredibly smart. Much smarter than me. We spent the remainder of 2020 preparing the financials and creating a management presentation. In January of this year, Angle Advisors reached out to hundreds of potential buyers. A large percentage of these companies were interested in learning more. They indicated this by presenting an offer for the company (usually a range). Those that made respectable offers were invited to a management presentation.

Let me tell you something about management presentations: they are stressful, and they are long. Each one that I gave was about two to three hours long, and in it, I discussed everything about the business. Its history, its present status, its position across the markets, the growth opportunities, and so on. It’s an informative presentation and a sales presentation all in one.

When all the presentations were done, the stopwatch began. The companies had to decide if they wanted to make a formal offer. Only three companies decided to drop out of the process. The rest submitted offers.

Moving into the due diligence phase.

With Angle Advisors’ guidance, an offer was accepted and the “one-on-one” relationship with the potential buyer could begin. I know that I said the management presentation is stressful, but honestly the due diligence phase is the most stressful part of it all. Just because you enter into this phase doesn’t mean that you will for sure close the deal. Either party can decide to move on for a variety of reasons.

In this phase, you set an agreed upon closing date for the deal. Leading up to that date, you have to provide the buying company with any piece of information that they request. Information on financials, market, product, legal, and so on — reaching back three to four years (sometimes longer). There are meetings, many meetings. The days are long and tiring for everyone involved.

In the latter stages of this phase is when the lawyers really start to get involved. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to worry about that too much since I was working with Angle Advisors (and they brought in Varnum Law to provide the counsel).

Once all the requested information has been shared, all questions answered, and all contractual agreements made from a legal standpoint, the closing can occur, and the buyer becomes the new owner. You finally can “hand over the keys to the house”.

LearnDash is in the perfect home with Liquid Web, and holy crap are they ready to take it to the next level! I’m especially thrilled that Chris will be taking an active role as General Manager. He is incredibly smart, and has deep roots in the online education space. He gets it.

What is next after you sell a business?

This is probably the most common question people have for a founder after they sell a business (besides curiosity on the sales price, which I am not sharing, sorry).

As I mentioned earlier, I live my life by prioritizing happiness. This has led LearnDash into the Liquid Web portfolio, and in the near term I am still very much part of the LearnDash team. I am in the middle of some exciting initiatives that I’ll be helping to see to the end (LearnDash 4.0 being one that I’m very eager about getting released). I will then be an active advisor to the company.

I get excited about new challenges. WordPress and e-learning have been good to me, but I’m running on fumes at this point. I’ve been involved in these two industries my entire life (e-learning since 2004 and WordPress since 2006).

I have interests outside of software and WordPress that I will have time to pursue. One in particular is starting a fitness brand with my wife, Lorena. I will be documenting this journey, so if you’re interested in hearing about the ups-and-downs of that adventure, check back here often.

I have learned from people sharing, so I plan to do the same.

I have learned a lot over the years about running (and now selling) a business. Things like competing, brand positioning, driving sales, and more. I plan to share these lessons learned on this blog. I’ll share exactly what it takes to build a multi-million dollar WordPress business across two industries.

Think of it like a conversation between friends. I had so many questions when starting out, and while there is no substitute for direct experience, a little guidance from someone who has been there before can be reassuring.

I won’t be selling courses or products, just writing. If you would like these insider tips, then just sign-up below. By doing so, you can also email me at anytime with your questions. All you have to do is click “reply” on a new post, and it’ll land in my inbox.

#WordPress #entrepreneurship

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WordCamps will eventually become a thing again. The clock is going to be re-set a few years.Remember when WordCamps were a thing?

It seems like so long ago when people would pack up for a long weekend to attend talks and cruise sponsorship tables.

The idea of a WordCamp now sounds pretty nice. Especially because every conference since COVID has been a virtual event. People are burnt out of those. Virtual events are flat-out boring.

But you know what? Before COVID, I remember people getting burnt out from the WordCamp experience. The same old talks, same old swag, same old travel issues, same old tiredness due to staying out too late.

When we get through the worst of the pandemic, WordCamps will feel special again.

We were at a tipping point for WordCamps before 2020. Something needed to change.

Organizers were struggling to find ways to make their event special, always trying to “one-up” the previous year. Speaker & sponsor dinners, after parties, and free stuff were all starting to lose their appeal.

This is not to imply that they were poorly organized. The folks planning these events put in a lot of their free time and energy to make them happen. Some of my close friends in WordPress were organizers. They wore themselves out in an effort to make the event enjoyable for everyone.

The problem was that the organizers were almost too good. They all leveraged the same winning formula for the event experience and flow. It worked, but it was predictable after the third year.

As a result, WordCamps started to lose their uniqueness. The presentations themselves were going too broad instead of deep.

All that said, in (what looks like) 2022, that slate will be wiped clean!

If there is ever a time to be a WordCamp organizer, it will be in 2022-2023.

People are aching to be back to normal. They want to mingle with others, chat in hallways, attend talks, and network with handshakes (okay… elbow bumps) instead of Zoom. Sponsors will have dollars to spend as well!

The events will be a breath of fresh air! No need to try to “one-up” the previous year. Getting back to basics will be perfectly fine.

Sure, some new health and safety guidelines will be in place, but those will make the experience all that much more enjoyable.

And by 2025, we'll need to start thinking again about innovating the experience. How that looks, I don't know.

One option is to go smaller instead of going bigger. Stop trying to outdo the previous year. Get back to basics and focus on the content.

#WordPress

The answer may surprise you.

If you are creating a WordPress plugin today, then you probably have just assumed that you should have a free version. I mean, it makes sense. You can potentially get a ton of exposure right away from the WordPress Repo.

But what if you don’t?

What if you experience the fate of so many others where you put your heart and soul into your free plugin, create a “pro” version, and adoption rates are low? What is your Plan B?

Most WordPress entrepreneurs don’t realize that there is another way to approach the market, and that’s by creating a paid (premium) offering only. It’s more work, but the work that you do can pay off big just like if you had a free version that became popular on the Repo.

I should clarify that this post does not necessarily apply to plugin creators who have created an add-on to another plugin. That said, it could apply as I have seen folks have success with this approach.

LearnDash has never had a free version.

This comes as a surprise to some folks. LearnDash has never had a free version. The choice was out of necessity more than anything.

When I started LearnDash, I was working as an e-learning consultant. My days were full already, so I couldn’t spend my time supporting free users. I honestly never even considered having a free version.

Instead, the year prior I spent all of my time building up a search engine presence though blogging, and that paid off. But not just in a monetary sense. It allowed LearnDash to venture into “non-WordPress” markets more easily because the brand recognition wasn’t dependent on the WordPress Repo.

What I often see today is that folks will create their free version and really depend on it for getting traction. It’s not impossible by any means as there are plenty of popular plugins and themes that have started this way. But, it’s putting all your eggs into one basket. On top of it, it’s a basket that you have absolutely zero control over.

The rating system on the WordPress Repo sucks.

Before you jump all over this comment, let me say that I am not implying the volunteers who manage and monitor the reviews are doing a bad job. They are doing the absolute best that they can, and we owe them our thanks!

It’s not the people, it’s the process. I have never been a fan of it.

From both a business and consumer standpoint, the ratings on the WordPress Repo are getting close to the point of being completely useless.

That may seem harsh, and perhaps it is to some degree. But it’s the byproduct of the simple fact that the Repo ratings are so easily gamed.

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five plugins that are gaming it for bogus five-star reviews. You know, the ones where the reviewer just opened the account and that same day left a four word, five-star rating.

It would be so easy to add some measures in place to help combat this. For example, just have a waiting period on an account before it can be used to make any kind of review.

Fake reviews aside, there is something else frustrating about the review system, and it’s a major reason why I have avoided it. In WordPress there is a subset of users who will use plugin reviews as a way to “blackmail” creators at the worst, and to “make a point” at best.

Some of my closest contacts in WordPress have great plugins on the Repo. I’m talking extremely robust pieces of software… for FREE!

They pour their entire energy into creating best-in-class functionality. Yet, every month they get 1-star reviews because someone has a misunderstanding about a setting, and they blow up on the reviews giving it one-star in the process.

There is another benefit to not being on the Repo beyond my opinion of the reviews.

My opinion of the Repo review system is just that, my opinion. Some people agree with me, while others understand that this exists but see the upside to it.

But there is a very real business reason why the Repo isn’t ideal for software creators. It reinforces a certain perception of the software: that its only use is in the WordPress ecosystem.

Since the very beginning, I positioned LearnDash to be a competitor against the other LMS options out there, outside the direct WordPress space. This meant I had to be where my competitors were located, and they weren’t located on the WordPress Repo.

I found that this switch in focus also helped drive the sales messaging and framing of the LearnDash value proposition. It gave a great degree of clarity to the User Models that I targeted in the last brand refresh.

Today, LearnDash competes with the biggest brands in the online course creation and LMS space – and that’s not accidentally. That was 100% intentional from the very beginning of the project.

Again: all about message focus.

This focus extended to support as well. With no free version, the support team could focus on helping only paying customers.

There is something very refreshing about this. The relationship is more clearly defined in that context. Customers (most anyhow) are far more committed.

I’ve seen some outlandish demands and expectations from people asking for support on the WordPress Repo. I honestly don’t understand what people expect… it’s free, of course there won’t be instant access or overly in-depth replies.

That said, you can get a ton of visibility on the Repo.

Today is a lot different from 2012.

When I started LearnDash from a blog in March 2012, getting rankings was a lot easier. Search engine optimization was a different beast. It’s a lot harder today. Not impossible, but harder.

So if I am 100% honest, if I were to launch a new piece of software today that relied upon WordPress, then I would consider the benefits of a free version and gaining visibility from the Repo.

But with a (very big) caveat: the upgraded versions would be SaaS.

This is going to become the next evolution in WordPress in my opinion. We see it to some degree today, but this will start to become the norm. Especially true as we see more and more investment into the open source project from the world’s biggest brands.

The most successful solutions will SaaS-up their offerings, so they can have a little more control over the environment, and more insight into their users. In turn, their products will be better, both from a feature standpoint and support. The businesses will be more profitable and hold higher valuations than plugin and theme businesses today.

So if it were me, my intent would be to use the free version on the Repo to allow for a quicker path for obtaining users and getting real-time feedback. This in turn would help drive the development roadmap for the SaaS.

To make the free version a good sales tool, I would make sure that:

1. It has features that solve a major pain-piont or makes people money.

2. It has a full-time staff dedicated to replying to every support message.

3. It has an eloquent way to nudge people to the pro versions.

Since it will be a SaaS, a two-week free trial of upgraded features would be effortless to do and allow for additional customer nurturing campaigns during that time.

Imagine installing a free plugin and allowing folks to get a free trial of all the Pro features (on the SaaS) with a single click in the dashboard. They get used to the cool functionality and if they don’t pay — whoops — it’s gone. Not against GPL because this cool functionality is being delivered from the SaaS platform. The plugin is merely the conduit.

In order for this approach to work, the free version can’t be bare bones. It needs to provide actual value to people who decide that they don’t want to upgrade.

Right now, there are plugins on the Repo that attempt to do this but their free versions are so limited that it feels like a bait-and-switch. This has to be avoided to gain trust upfront from users.

I like this model a lot because a traditional SaaS is also more “sticky” so renewal rates will be a lot higher than in the traditional WordPress business model. More predictable long-term revenue allows businesses to deliver a positive experience in a more efficient manner for their users.

The WordPress Repo shouldn’t be avoided, but it most certainly shouldn’t be your only market strategy.

In the end, you should not avoid the WordPress Repo entirely. It’s a great marketing channel that can give you visibility quickly compared to the traditional marketing efforts.

And you know what? I have faith that the gripes I outlined earlier will eventually be addressed by the great folks who give their time to the WordPress project, making those complaints a moot point (which would be a great thing).

The key takeaway here is not that the WordPress Repo is bad. It’s that you really need to think bigger about how you market software on WordPress. Who exactly is it that can benefit from your product? And that answer should 100% not be “people using WordPress”.

Think bigger. 🙌

#WordPress