THE PENDING DRAFT

Scott Bolinger on the WordPress Theme Business

June 2, 2015

Scott Bolinger on the challenges running a WordPress Theme Business, how it changed over time and about the differences between selling Themes, Plugins or a SaaS Product.

Keep in mind SaaS is not free money, it comes with lots of unique challenges. My experience with Reactor has been that SaaS is a more difficult business model in the short-term, but the revenue potential is higher long-term.

A very good read for anyone thinking about entering one of those markets.

The WordPress Theme Business, Then and Now

Zeldman.com turns 20 years old

June 1, 2015

I started this site with animated gifs and splash pages while living in a cheap rent stabilized apartment. PageSpinner was my jam. I was in love with HTML and certain that the whole world was about to learn it, ushering in a new era of DIY media, free expression, peace and democracy and human rights worldwide. That part didn’t work out so well, although the kids prefer YouTube to TV, so that’s something.

(Jeffrey Zeldman)

Congrats to Jeffrey Zeldman on his website’s 20 year anniversary! An impressive number and one of the most inspiring personalities in the web design community.

zeldman.com – My website is 20 years old today

Isaac Asimov – On Creativity

May 27, 2015

If you read one thing today, make it this text by Isaac Asimov on Creativity. It’s a short essay about his thoughts on what we humans need to come up with creative ideas.

This quote i liked particularly because it resembles something i thought about a lot lately.

Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.

To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.

What would it be like if we all would have a basic income that is not coupled to any work at all? And the “work” we would still do was unpaid for? Would we really fail as a society because no one would want to work anymore, as some might think? Would no one ever clean a toilet again? Or would we be able to come up with much better and more creative ideas and solve problems in ways we would never even possibly imagine otherwise? I’m pretty certain the latter is more likely to be true.

But thats for another post. The text by Asimov has so many quotable parts, so better go ahead and read it in full.

Isaac Asimov – On Creativity

Scott Bollinger on 2015 WordPress Business Statistics

May 23, 2015

It’s a common trend among open source businesses to share their statistics in some form of a transparency report. Scott Bollinger collected some of those statistics from various WordPress businesses who shared their numbers this year and compared them.

It’s mostly for statistical data for presentations, and to analyze what business models people are using. I also have some knowledge that isn’t public information (from my own businesses, and people I know) that gives me a little extra insight.

But he also adds that you probably shouldn’t compare yourself too much as none of them were overnight successes. Plus, it’s mostly the successful companies sharing numbers.

Personal note to all my fellow business owners: don’t compare yourself and feel bad because you aren’t making what some of these businesses are. There is a lot of back story to these that you don’t know about, none of these people were overnight successes. If that’s you, read this post by Matt Medeiros.

A very insightful post and i find it pretty incredible what some of them achieved.

2015 WordPress Business Revenue Statistics