Business

Automattic trial data and employee retention

Brian Krogsgard

December 16, 2013

Matt Mullenweg does a lot of interviews, and much of this one at the Lean Startup Conference is similar to many others, highlighting how WordPress got started, the culture of open source and how Automattic works. But at the end he mentioned…

Envato community lifetime earnings are over $140 million

Brian Krogsgard

December 11, 2013

Business

It's amazing to think that in only seven years, Envato has grown to 200+ employees and helps so many thousands of people in their community distribute their work. That work, as announced for the first time in Collis Ta'eed's 2013…

iThemes acquihires Better WP Security, a million+ download WordPress security plugin

Brian Krogsgard

December 4, 2013

BusinessSecurity

iThemes has hired Chris Wiegman and taken over his very popular plugin, Better WP Security. Better WP Security has over a million downloads on WordPress.org and sells commercial support and installation services on FooPlugins. Better WP Security also has excellent…

Documentation marketing: how opening up docs turned into 60% of the sales funnel at WooThemes

Brian Krogsgard

November 21, 2013

Business

Warren Holmes is the Chief Information Officer at WooThemes. He tells a story on his personal blog how WooThemes opened up their documentation site from behind the paywall, and now that site is the referrer for 60% of their revenue.…

Sources of growth for a membership site

Brian Krogsgard

November 19, 2013

Business

Shawn Hesketh runs WP101, a WordPress tutorials membership site. He recently received a question about how he markets his site, and his answer is thorough and insightful, and definitely worth a read for anyone trying to grow their product or…

Crowd Favorite to be acquired by VeloMedia

Brian Krogsgard

November 15, 2013

BusinessWordPress News

Crowd Favorite and VeloMedia have reached an agreement where VeloMedia will acquire Crowd Favorite, with the transaction to occur early next year. Crowd Favorite was founded by Alex King, one of the earliest regular contributors to WordPress. King's freelance web…

ZippyKid relaunches as Pressable, makes changes to business

Brian Krogsgard

November 14, 2013

BusinessHosting

ZippyKid is a managed WordPress host that's been around around three and a half years. They have grown their business consistently since their launch in May 2010, and today have a number of high profile blogs and corporate profiles as…

Basis, a business theme with an intuitive content builder

Brian Krogsgard

November 13, 2013

BusinessWordPress News

The Theme Foundry has released their vision of a business WordPress theme, called Basis. Basis is yet another theme by The Theme Foundry that reiterates why I like having them as a partner. Basis has a content builder in it…

Interview with Mark Forrester, co-founder of WooThemes

Brian Krogsgard

November 12, 2013

BusinessDraft

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting WooThemes HQ in Cape Town, South Africa. Throughout the week I had the opportunity to interact with WooThemes' co-founders Mark Forrester and Magnus Jepson, as well as the rest of the Cape…

Ten bootstrapping tips from Collis Ta’eed, CEO of Envato

Brian Krogsgard

November 7, 2013

Business

Collis Ta'eed recently did a Twitter "series", if you will, highlighting ten bootstrapping tips of his to celebrate the seven year anniversary for Envato. They haven't blogged the list anywhere that I can tell, and I don't want it to…

Half ski getaway, half mini conference for WordPress business owners

Brian Krogsgard

October 30, 2013

BusinessWordPress News

It's called Big Snow Tiny Conf, and it's happening at Sugarbush, VT in January. Spots are limited so act now if you want in!

Explicit browser support

Brian Krogsgard

October 29, 2013

BusinessDesign

Browser support is not a minor thing to consider when building web projects. Whether developing a website for a client or building a product, one of the most important things to clarify right away is what level of browser support…

WordPress websites and businesses acquisitions

Brian Krogsgard

October 23, 2013

Business

Oli Dale has done a pretty thorough roundup of the history of WordPress websites and businesses that have been purchased. I'm a little disappointed that so many people do not reveal the price of their transactions. I know there is…

Why did Automattic gobble up an iCloud alternative?

Brian Krogsgard

October 23, 2013

Business

You should remember from earlier this year that Automattic acquired Simperium, maker of Simplenote. Simplenote is a great app by the way. John Paul Titlow, of FastCompany, interviews Matt Mullenweg and writes about the technology behind Simperium and how their…

Interview the interviewer: Matt Medeiros of Matt Report

Brian Krogsgard

October 22, 2013

BusinessDraft

Matt Medeiros is a WordPress entrepreneur and podcaster from a town between Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts. Matt is also a co-founder of Slocum Studios, a web consultancy. One of Matt's podcasts is the Matt Report, where he interviews…

Lessons learned trying to convert customers and monetize

Brian Krogsgard

October 17, 2013

Business

Groove is a support software that markets itself for SaaS and eCommerce services. It looks pretty nice, kind of like a Help Scout Plus, maybe. I read a post on their blog about 7 lessons they learned to reach $30,000…