First off, congratulations to Joshua Strebel and to his wife as they are now first-time parents. Secondly, Joshua has put together a pretty transparent view as to how he created Page.ly, a WordPress specific hosting service. So far, the guide is five parts long but I advise you to start out with part 1, Identifying…
With such head-starts, the five figure medium-sized website cost quickly becomes four. The four figure small business website cost becomes three. The home-grown sideline business goes from three figures to two (many premium WordPress themes designs are available for only $50). You can even get a WordPress website on their sister site for free. Buy…
The WordPress ecosystem is rife with copycats and we’re severely lacking a couple of unique ideas. Due to the popularity of WordPress and the obvious success that designers / developers and businesses have experienced in recent years, many more are flocking to the platform to make a quick buck. Which would’ve been absolutely fantastic for…
During an email conversation one day, Paul Mycroft who operates his own web design firm told me something that I thought was interesting. In fact, he’s been the first one to say such a thing and that is that the commercial themes being produced in the WordPress community are eroding his web design business. When…
Today, I’ve disbanded the WPTavern VIP Program that I launched at the end of May. Everyone that was a part of the program was sent a pro-rated refund. I’ve been keeping tabs on this particular section of the forum and it was under utilized. I’ll take some of the blame for that. While I did…
Francine Hardaway gives her six reasons as to why small businesses need WordPress on the FastCompany blog. While all of the reasons she gives are good ones, I needed to take a moment to correct her on number 1. WordPress does not have an in house e-commerce plugin. Francine probably got confused with the WP…
Cory Miller who heads up iThemes.com along with PluginBuddy.com gives me the low down on what is going on with the company. Cory gives the details regarding what their newest offering, Plugin Mobile Buddy is all about. It sounds like an awesome plugin and once WPTavern.com goes through a minor redesign, this will be the…
Jason Schuller has published a great post that takes us on a journey on how he went from point A to point B. Two years ago, Jason was sitting in a cubicle. Today, he is one of the top guns when it comes to commercial WordPress themes. His story is not only inspirational but it…
This episode was the first in a series discussing the commercialization of WordPress. Within this episode, we talked with three commercial theme authors who are in the midst of maintaining a successful business. Joining us on the round table was Jason Schuller of Press75/ThemeGarden.com, Brian Gardner of Studiopress, and Cory Miller of iThemes. Considering the…
Brian Casel has a great post over on DesignM.ag that showcases the various opportunities that exist to run a freelance business around WordPress. Developers, designers, and copywriters all have a ton of opportunities to make money around WordPress. I suppose I would fit into the freelance journalist category even though I don’t consider myself to…
Andrew Warner who produces the video show Mixergy which interviews entrepreneurs of successful start ups and established businesses has published the video featuring his interview with Adii of WooThemes.com. In the interview, we get a glimpse of just how successful WooThemes has become with net margins now in the 50-60% range and revenue of over…
Over the weekend, I finally had a chance to sit down and beta test a new theme from iThemes called Builder. The theme aims to blow the walls off of Flexx and take theme development to the next level. I won’t dive into a lengthy review here but in the Builder theme, users can easily…
In this edition of WordPress Weekly, we have a fireside chat with Jonathan Davis, lead developer of the Shopp e-commerce plugin. We discuss what it’s like to run a business around open source software, marketing, customer service, the technicalities of the plugin and much more. If you’re a plugin author thinking about going the commercial…
When I initially published information regarding the virtual WordCamp, I was a bit miffed at the price tag as well as a few other things. However, after putting together some information that I discovered through an anonymous source and from what has been added to the Virtual WordCamp website, I’ve come to the conclusion that…