The Art & Science of Premium in the WordPress Open-Source Community The Capitalist in The Co-Op

@justlikeair #wcsea

A WordPress Powered Company Hi, I’m Shane & I run a WordPress Powered company.  

AN EVENTS FRAMEWORK TO HELP YOU KICK ASS (and a lot of awesome free plugins)

(some people call them clients)

http://tri.be

A COUPLE OF OUR FRIENDS

WORDPRESS PREMIUM BUSINESS CALLS FOR

A NIMBLE APPROACH 1.  The Wild West 2.  The Marketplace Debate 3.  Going Solo 4.  Platforms & Solutions 5.  Code Is Support 6.  Conclusion

Welcome to the wild west WELCOME TO THE WILD WEST

Figure out

The ONLY reason to be in business is to have the life you dream of. Make sure that you have a solid vision for where

you want to go. Then pick your business model.

THE WHY

“

Scott Berkun: “WordPress in 2020” (WordCamp SF 2010) from 27:00 – 32:00 http://bit.ly/berkun2020

Why Pay in a World of Free?

I Would Pay Money for A Plugin I Could Trust.

(Paraphrased)

COMMODITIZE YOUR BYPRODUCTS

Test your Ideas & Build a Market for “FREE” WORDPRESS.ORG IS A GIFT

RIFLE SHOTGUN

“

Author: Vladimir Prelovac Date: March 8, 2012 http://bit.ly/80kplugin

With growing plugin popularity, one thing was inevitable – increased support and feature requests. This was just one out of 20 free plugins I’d developed, so the amount of day-to-day work responding to users was ridiculous, greatly exceeding my free time.

(Paraphrased)

How I Made 80k With a Single Plugin

ONE WORD

Adoption rates for FREE WordPress themes & products is huge and when converted into paying customers seem to

outstrip club / private sales. (via presstrends.io)

FREEMIUM

Code Canyon

You need recurring revenue We Joined a Marketplace & ECP Became their #1 Grossing Plugin

Fast. Easy. Powerful.

Welcome to the wild west THE MARKETPLACE DEBATE

•  Drive customers & sales. •  Provide the e-commerce engine. •  Fastest way to get started. •  Low barrier to entry. •  Awesome venue for low cost / value products. •  Unified location for buyers.

ADAVANTAGES OF A MARKETPLACE

•  Lose a cut of traffic you personally drive. •  No control of the user relationship. •  Business model is often pre-defined. •  Lack of transparency into visitor stats. •  No support for licensed managed auto-upgrade. •  Expose your fans to your competitors.

TRADEOFFS OF A MARKETPLACE

Can You Make

REAL MONEY?

215 grossed $75,000+

50 passed $200,0000

12 broke $500,0000

8,700 products. 45 with no sales Pretty much everyone makes money

Envato Marketplace The Envato Marketplaces

2 new Millionaires

According to PressTrends, the most adopted premium themes have free lite versions available.

WordPress.org drove 22.4% of all visitors to tri.be this month

We released 5 Products on Code Canyon about the same time and one had a free .org version with a genuine following. Guess which one?

Revenue via Code Canyon 2010/2011

GET ACCESS TO YOUR

* Validate legitimate buyers to control support costs. * Gather genuine feedback to drive development. * Selling to your raving fans requires find them.

Newsletter Signup | Support Forum Signup | Social Media

USERS

You need recurring revenue FIND WAYS TO GET RECURRING REVENUE A Single Purchase Does Not Entitle A Lifetime of Servitude

TO: Code Canyon Sydney, Australia

“Adios Amigos”

(thanks for all the fish)

Welcome to the wild west GOING SOLO & SELLING DIRECT

•  Design and implement a store. •  Define the financial model. •  Member management and migrate user base. •  Integrate an auto-update engine into products. •  Integrate commerce with the support forum. •  Create an email list / newsletter. •  Develop affiliate support.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

Welcome to the wild west Auto-Update Solutions

Plugin Update Engine (Darren Ethier) pluginupdateseng.in/ Plugin Update Engine (Brandon Dove) github.com/brandondove/plugin-update-engine (I’ve heard of others but nothing I could hunt down)

You Don’t Need A Traditional

MARKETING PLAN When You Launch

Marketing Plan: Banner Ads You need recurring revenue Banner Ads: #FAIL The very best return we saw converted $350 of sales for $700 spent on ads.

Have Not YET Converted Profitably We focused on high volume (expensive) topic relevant searches like “WordPress Events Calendar”. Definitely

worth experimenting more, so we are…

ADWORDS

Marketing Plan: Niche Landing Pages You need recurring revenue Niche Landing Pages? Create a host of very focused landing pages and point long-tail ad words.

DRIVE SALES WITH

So we heard from a lot of shops. We are almost done setting up a private partner-only program.

AFFILIATES

A/B Testing You need recurring revenue A / B Test Your Key Pages Did making the business license button GREEN increase higher value conversions?

Metrics You need recurring revenue Study Your Metrics Good data is the difference between making a profit and massive failure.

Downloads VS Active Installs The Events Calendar 212k 153rd

All in One Event Calendar 152k 195th Event Espresso 50k 215th

Ajax Event Calendar 86k 341st

Calendar 307k 443rd

My Calendar 155k 1.3krd

WP Calendar 52k 1.7kth

Events Calendar 458k 4.3krd

Provided by PressTrends.IO

Find a Value Proposition FIND A VALUE PROPOSITION BEYOND CODE People will steal your shit, and even resell it. And they can thanks to GPL.

Raising Our Base Prices

Had No Impact on Sales From $30 > $40 > $50. We haven’t found our sweet spot yet?

Create Multiple Buying Options You need recurring revenue Create Multiple Buying Options Help developers with a solution that allows them to easily use your product on many client sites.

12% Developer 22% Business

66% Personal

Since 2.0, our PRO plugin revenue has come from:

Going Indy Was the Right Call Financially You need recurring revenue Going Solo Was the RIGHT Call Financially Our biggest month at code canyon grossed us $4,795. Our biggest month indy was $21,390.

Welcome to the wild west PLATFORMS & SOLUTIONS

Time to Go Beyond A Plugin / Theme

Extend functionality, reach & profits with add-ons.

Provide a way for people to contribute rather than compete.

BUILD A PLATFORM

Gravity Forms

You need recurring revenue Need More POWER? Upgrade.

WooCommerce

You need recurring revenue Kicking Ass Financially WooCommerce Launched & It Is

(and you can share it with them)

Modern Tribe

You need recurring revenue 2 New Add-ons This Month = 148 Additional Orders So far

Multiple Streams of Income LOOK FOR MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME

Eventbrite referral We’ve made more $$ referring Eventbrite new customers than in plugin sales so far (launched May 2012). ONE e≠ort. TWO pay days!

Start Selling

SOLUTIONS To Capitalize on Your Platform

Happy Tables

You need recurring revenue Theme Shop -> Niche SaaS

ManageWP

You need recurring revenue Free Repo >> Premium Plugins >> Utility SaaS

Keep Your Goals Clear

AND YOUR TACTICS NIMBLE Be as agile with your business model as you are with your code. After all, it is the Wild West. Use

metrics to drive decisions.

Welcome to the wild west CODE IS SUPPORT

Long-Term Revenue is Driven by

SUPPORT

Users Want Stability QUIT TRYING TO BUILD BADASS UNICORNS Users want stability far more than they want the killer feature

How I usually feel when I read other people’s code.

•  Document, document, document! •  Lots of people will read your code, please be organized

and indent. •  Unit tests are your friend. •  Separate branches for feature and bug releases. •  Plan hooks & filters early. •  Internationalize properly. •  Get your code reviewed for security vulnerabilities. •  Think backwards compatible. •  Run ALL the validators

Great Support Starts with Great Code

40% of our costs this year came from talking to customers & QA. That does not include a single bug fix or line of code. “Support takes up about 80-90% of my time and that is with a second person helping” Brandon, owner of Epic Era, one of Theme Forest’s Top Sellers.

SUPPORT WILL BE YOUR BIGGEST EXPENSE

Make Support Searchable You need recurring revenue Make Your Support Public & Searchable It is a key marketing strategy & will save you a ton of time.

Use Video + Text You need recurring revenue Use VIDEO + TEXT Documentation Every shop I have talked to has specifically mentioned this!

Use Video + Text You need recurring revenue Set Expectations & Reply Quickly

When  I  turn  on  your  plugin  my  sidebar  breaks?!?  Help!  

Hey  Big  Buddy,  We  Hear  You.  That’s  frustra@ng.  We’ll  take  a  quick  look  at  your  site  in  the  morning  and  get  you  an  answer  tomorrow  aDernoon.  

Say your are sorry You need recurring revenue You Can Be Profitable or You Can Be Right Apologize when you screw up. And when they screw up. It can’t hurt and creates a ton of good will.

Be transparant You need recurring revenue Be Transparent to Build a Loyal Community Make your customers see you as another human being on a mutual adventure.

Cultivate

The experience that people have interacting with your company goes far beyond your product and it

lasts a VERY LONG TIME. Make it a good one.

YOUR BRAND

MARKET

PATTERNS COMMUNICATION

6. CONCLUSION

WordPress runs14.7% of the top 1 Million ranked sites & 49% of the top 100 blogs on the Internet and shows no sign of slowing. This is a huge market and it demands stability.

This is not a fad

Jack be nimble Who knows what will happen tomorrow to alter the playing field. Expect change and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Set them up to win Provide the information, support and consistency your users will need to succeed fabulously.

Plan Scope, Budget & Timeline Act like a business

Use the community The great power of open source is available to your business.

And in the famous words of Bobby McFerrin

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

@justlikeair shanepearlman.com

Shane Pearlman, CEO Modern Tribe

Peter, Reid & Rob (Modern Tribe)"Joachim Kudish (Automattic)"

JR Farr (Mojo themes)"George Ortiz (Presstrends.io)"

Brandon Jones (Make Design)"Dan Cameron (Group Buying Site)"

Daniel Dvorkin (WPML)"Adii Pienaar (Woo Themes)"

Collis Ta’eed (Theme Forest / Code Canyon)

THANK YOU SO MUCH