How to become a WordPress ambassador w/ Maciej Palmowski

[00:00:00] Maciek: some people are afraid when it comes to version control system. This is a command line tool. So it’s scary and it’s only for developers now. That’s not true. We can use get crack and it’s really easy. We can use tower and there are probably some other tools also even using a gift and their web version.
[00:00:20] This, this is also a really friendly approach
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[00:01:25] Hey, do you like WordPress content in media? Like this? Do you like WordPress news and getting the hot takes community journalism and op-eds from your peers and colleagues in the WordPress space. Consider supporting the WP minute and the Matt report. By buying me a coffee [email protected] slash Matt report.
[00:01:45] You can join the membership, which also has a private discord you can chat with like-minded injured individuals and get your hands in the WordPress news every single week in our discord server. Going to buy me a coffee.com/matt report that’s buy me a coffee.com/matt report There’s no better feeling than when you launch something that just clicks with people. I guess at the end of the day, folks that build businesses or create content are simply seeking acceptance. We want to see our ideas flourish, to be adopted by the masses and to leave an impact. When launched WP hours with his wife. Agneshka it was instill is a publication that served the Polish community.
[00:02:22] But it clicked. People clicked literally onto the website and their stories. So the co-founding duo decided it was time to go global. Combined, they published over 200 articles about WordPress and the community on the blog with no signs of stopping. Oh, and if you’re wondering how to get a job like WordPress ambassador.
[00:02:41] At buddy get, you’re going to learn a lot about that today, along with continuous integration and continuous development. If you’re a small agency or a freelancer, it’s time to start getting serious about how you manage code. And that’s what today’s lesson is largely about. Okay Onto today’s episode
[00:02:58] Matt: one question I didn’t throw at you. How did you become a WordPress ambassador?
[00:03:02] I see a lot of folks these days on my Twitter stream saying I would love to just work for a brand and talk about WordPress and talk about their products, any insights into how to land an awesome job like yours.
[00:03:13] Maciek: To be honest, it’s walls a bit of coincidence because. I was working at WP M Def as at their second line of support.
[00:03:22] So I was mostly a developer and at some point Rafael, the CTO of Bobby, just reach out to me and asked, Hey, would you like to become our ambassador? Because on one hand, the day learned that WordPress is really getting bigger and bigger, and it would be a great idea to I have someone promoting their, their tool in worker space.
[00:03:44] And on the other hand, we had the, we had the chance to meet earlier on because one of the organizers of a word can Poland it will be the last word component. So it was 2019 and there were one of the sponsors right then. So we had the chance to talk to meet. And I was using body for many, many years.
[00:04:03] I was always asking questions asking for some new features. So, so, so they remembered that there, that there is one month. Of the dirt and he knows WordPress, and he probably likes our tool because he worked at a few companies and every time he asked us about something, because every company I switched during the first few years, it was one of my first decision.
[00:04:28] Maybe let’s try to adopt the body because it will speed up. Rework. So in the end, I, I have a chance to work here. And this is what I would say. This is a really a dream job.
[00:04:40] Matt: Yeah. We’re both biased because we both work for companies that represent WordPress in some either direct or indirect fashion.
[00:04:46] And I have for many years now but this is a, this is a role that I think. Whether it’s an ambassador hat or a title or some other title that, that you might get. I think this is a smart move for a lot of other WordPress companies to really invest in is you need to bridge that gap as we’ll talk about in a moment, you need to be able to bridge that gap between that technology and that sort of average consumer of that technology, because it can’t just be developer speak and it can’t just be the marketing speak some at some point, these brands need to cross over in the.
[00:05:17] And shake hands and agree that somebody can speak both sides of it. Exactly. And, and this is just an amazing time in WordPress. This space was so much acquisitions and, and big money coming into the space and bigger brands adopting. I think folks like you and I are going to be much more valuable.
[00:05:32] Maybe we should ask for raises as you and I
[00:05:36] Maciek: wait w with all our taxes rising in Poland, this, this is for sure what the, what I will do at the beginning of the next year
[00:05:44] Matt: you were in here first. Okay. So let’s talk about CIC D I know the definition, I’ll let you define it. And more specifically why it’s important for.
[00:05:55] Let’s say the smaller agency, who’s starting to grow their business and take on bigger projects. Why should they invest in these areas?
[00:06:02] Maciek: Yeah. So, CIC, D H first of all, it has nothing to do the CD part with compact disc. So don’t worry. And I also heard that it sounds a bit like COVID and that’s true.
[00:06:14] It’s it sounds a bit like this. And I think this is the biggest problem of Of our company of our world because this definition is everyone who hears this aggravation just don’t know what are we talking about? Because some folks just won’t do. I think they want to use this word just to feel more important or better or something like this.
[00:06:37] To tell it more easy. It just automation it’s just deployment automation. That’s all because the CACD means it’s continuous integration and continuous deployment. So, it’s everything about testing and deploying in, in an automated manner
[00:06:54] Matt: and to, and to illustrate, sorry to cut you off, but to illustrate like the typical.
[00:06:59] The typical sort of a WordPress boutique agency, myself included. So I started an agency. I started with me and just my dad and I’m the technical one. My dad’s helping him like run the business. We start growing an agency. We start selling more projects. Now I have. Relinquish my, my development skills with air quotes.
[00:07:16] This is like 20 years ago and hire other developers and designers. Suddenly we have this small team of people and just sharing a single FTP account is no longer the answer to scaling in the same way of building websites and more complex websites. As we started taking on bigger projects over time, investing in a tool like this, whether it’s buddy get or.
[00:07:38] Is a smart move for anyone who’s starting to grow a larger team and get on bigger projects. Cause it’s just going to keep everything organized to a degree. Exactly.
[00:07:46] Maciek: Okay. I work at body and this is my favorite tool, but it doesn’t matter which one we will use. The whole CICT is not the tool it’s a methodology or some would call it.
[00:07:59] It’s a philosophy of how we work. It’s just about about the fact that we should test everything on one end and on the other end, on the other hand the way how we deploy stuff to the server is in an automated manner. The only thing that can be done manually is just the is just approving the.
[00:08:19] Should we release this version. The rest should be automated in some way. And this is something perfect for also first of all agencies, because everyone also thinks that CIC D is just for those enterprise with like zillions of people and stuff like this. And that’s not true. CIC, it will be also perfect for smaller companies because we don’t have to invest for example, in in QA, because we can write some tests because there are so many methods and so many tools, thanks to which we can test our, either our code, either how our page behaves.
[00:08:57] We can even Some part of accessibility testing only for dental or for 40% if I remember, but still it’s more than, than, than a quarter of possibilities and we can test it everything. Each time we deploy our code and this can make not only our product better. It can be Teper because we won’t waste so much time doing the boring stuff, because let’s be honest testing at this point.
[00:09:31] It will was
[00:09:32] Matt: for everybody. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Yeah.
[00:09:35] Maciek: Probably saw it’s, it’s one of the most horrible things I could do. It’s boring. It’s repetitive. I just hate it. I just hate it. And every time I can create a short script that can do something for. I’m trying to do this, and this is exactly the same what most big open source project do, because could you imagine developing WordPress without having any tests and believing that moving something in Wandon of WordPress won’t break something in the other.
[00:10:08] So, especially that, yeah. Let me put
[00:10:11] Matt: my business hat back on my agency hat back on. And I remember back in the day when my developers would, bring this to me and they’d say, Hey, we have to implement, of course the ICD, this methodology we have to do testing. We have to do all of this stuff. And the only thing that ran through my head was, oh my God, how much time and money is this going to cost me?
[00:10:30] And how much is this going to slow down? The the timeline to launch a project or, get this iteration out to the customer who, only has a certain condensed budget is this thing is this of the mindset of look, it’s going to be a little painful now, but in the future, it’ll be much easier if that’s how I’ve.
[00:10:49] Digest that over the years, a lot of pain now, but a lot less stress in the future.
[00:10:56] Maciek: Yes, that’s it? Because this was a problem. I also had that one company I worked at that every time with other developers, we try to, Hey, maybe let’s try and add some tests. We will. We’ll benefit from it in the future, because right now, probably it will take us some time, but there are also like a few methods of writing tasks because we can either try to have like 100% coverage, which I think doesn’t have a sense in any situation.
[00:11:29] Or we just could try to focus on those critical parts of our website of our application. So if we know that. Some part of our website is critical. Let’s say we know that our contact form is like the most important thing on our side. We should just write that small as using, for example, Cyprus testing.
[00:11:53] If everything is working after each deployment, we don’t have to cover everything. This is the only critical part we will need. Of course, the more tests, the better. And as you said, This is the problem that some agency owners or business department have that this is one more thing that the developers have to create.
[00:12:16] So it will take much more time. And that is true. That is that’s really true because this will take some extra time, but on the other things,
[00:12:26] Matt: Sorry, go ahead. I just want to just ask the interject in this one question, cause I’m actually just really curious of, as, as I hear you talk about it and framed in a different way than I’ve heard over years, but a business owner again says, Hey, that con that sales lead form very important to our business.
[00:12:43] That’s where all of our sales contacts come in or our checkout page. Very. Business owner puts his hat on and says, Hey, isn’t this why we’re here in WordPress? We have gravity forms. We have WooCommerce, or these well-developed plugins. Isn’t this code tested before it’s shipped. How does something like this solve against that?
[00:13:00] When we might be saying, boy, we just paid 200 bucks for gravity forms, license, what do we need to test this for?
[00:13:06] Maciek: Because there are, there are few reasons. First of all, Gravity forms. Developers are humans and they also sometimes make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. This developer in the middle name.
[00:13:20] Yes. This guy at get lab once just like destroyed their whole database and then they learned. They don’t have backups. So yes, every wild makes
[00:13:31] Matt: sound for six hours the other day. Yeah.
[00:13:34] Maciek: And to be honest, after like removing the whole database, being down only for six hours. Great. Really, they, they get a tremendous job with with restoring everything can and stop.
[00:13:45] But yes, they are humans. Second of all, our website runs on. Which can also break. There are so many moving parts. Also, there are other blockchains that could conflict with our plugin. So it’s always better just to add this one extra test for our critical parts, because okay. That deployment will take, like, let’s say five minutes longer, but I think it’s much better rather than losing like $200.
[00:14:17] Just like that before releasing the hotfix. So, so yeah, this is, this is something that, okay. It will take some time, but in the end, especially when we w when we plan to have a longer collaboration with, with this client, this will be something that all those tests will really help us in, in, in many things.
[00:14:39] For example, if at some point we will want to. Like refactor some parts of the code then refactoring without having tests. It’s maybe not impossible, but this is a very dangerous task because then we want to know anything about those loose ends. And so yeah, this, this artist situations, when, when, when this are something really, really.
[00:15:01] Matt: Before we get to talking about you, co-founding, WPLS a couple of other questions here on the CIC D stuff. Is there a particular, so in podcasting, right? So I help [email protected], getting them set up with podcasting. And it’s not just, Hey, here’s how you use Castillo’s. They come to me and they say, oh my God, how do I start?
[00:15:23] How do I get a podcast off the ground? How do I create content? How do I interview people? There’s all of these other questions that come into creating an account at cast. Those that we have to submit. Things like testing and training and education and stuff like that. How do you all solve that at your day job?
[00:15:39] How do you help people sort of on onboard to this new methodology, if it’s new to them and make them successful so that they’re not missing the things that really make it a valuable, a valuable solution?
[00:15:51] Maciek: There are very few things that, that we can do. First of all Foundation of using CICT is using any version control system.
[00:16:00] So this is the first thing we have to educate people on is using get just like this. If someone isn’t using any version control system then this is something. Th this person has, has to learn. That’s why we, for example, had this webinar together with get crack and because they have a really great tool for forget.
[00:16:22] And yeah, because this is also a thing that some people are afraid when it comes to version control system. This is a command line tool. So it’s scary and it’s only for developers now. That’s not true. We can use get crack and it’s really easy. We can use tower and there are probably some other tools also even using a gift and their web version.
[00:16:45] This, this is also a really friendly approach. I, so many people who wrote books using good using markdown and using pull requests for, for comments from, from other. And this is a really interesting method to do this, and it’s, it’s, it’s totally possible. And like I said, this is the foundation of CIC D without it, we, we just won’t know what changed and thanks to version control system.
[00:17:10] We can, we can see those things on the other hand, because. That’s beyond the CACD. It’s kind of boring like that because CAC just connects the cool parts because we have this like cool server. We have this, our cool website and deploying one from the other, like this is the boring part. So, so I also try, especially on my Twitter sometimes to show some cool ways what we can do which I see, for example I think that the last week I posted how to, how to connect our pipeline.
[00:17:47] So every time that our deployment is successful, it will lounge. I have the tiger on my, on Spotify, on my phone. And it works. Yes. It’s useless in a way it’s warm.
[00:18:00] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t want that going off on like a board meeting and we launched a new website and like I had the tire comes on, like hired this
[00:18:07] Maciek: guy, I say, okay, this is a really great sign.
[00:18:10] It’s working. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s really terrific. And I also discuss with, with one of our, of our writers at the body he created an action to start a game server. I just don’t remember in which game does by like in a press of a button and just like that, it just automated everything, created some balls that lounge everything on amazing.
[00:18:34] It was working. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s not only about moving files from one place to another. We can just do so many interesting things. It’s just up to us. And because there are so many tools that have some open API APIs, CLS or anything. So it’s so easy to connect everything with everything. So, so it’s really great.
[00:19:00] I. Even, like I said, I, now I have this, I have tiger, but I could, for example, using IFT T connect to. Our pipeline with like changing color of lights at my house, because why not? Again,
[00:19:17] Matt: but again, of course, open API is automation. All of this stuff is fantastic. It’s fantastic because. It allows you to have like this creative sense to unlock things that even the companies who are creating don’t even haven’t even realized yet.
[00:19:33] Right? Like you were able to do things like notify your team about deployments that happen in different channels and different methodologies. Yeah. It’s, it’s fantastic. When you start to unlock all of this stuff, that creative mindset that you have that interest to explore and to develop and investigate I’m sure is what led you to releasing WP owls, right?
[00:19:56] Like you’ve loved WordPress. You wanted to explore more of it. I assume I don’t want to put words in your mouth and I’ll let you explain it. But you know, here you are. I think 50, at least at the time of this recording, 55 issues published on WP owls.co walk me down that path. When did this start and who did you start it with and why are you still doing it?
[00:20:20] Maciek: So, yeah, this is, this is a funny story because the Polish version has. More than 150 issues already. So it’s much older. And it started with with the fact that I didn’t listen to my wife carefully because at some point she asked me, Hey, maybe we will run a WordPress newsletter or something like this.
[00:20:43] I’m using Facebook, just, just for our Polish community. And I wasn’t listening. I just said, yeah. Great idea. Yeah. Let’s do it. And yeah. And now we are those more than 100 episodes of the Polish issues of the Polish version, more than 50 of the English one. So yes, yes we are. We are still doing it. And when we started, especially because the Polish community.
[00:21:12] Even if it’s quite big, we all knew each other. So it was rather simple when we just posted that, Hey, we are starting the published version of WP hours. Many people are like at start started to follow in gas. And at some point we realized that Facebook wasn’t the perfect choice. So we created our own website.
[00:21:33] And when we have hit the 100 episodes, we decided, okay, it’s time to go global. It’s time to go global let’s let’s lounge, the double owls English version. And we fought that. Okay. We will have a bigger community, so it will be much, much easier to promote because we saw how it works with with our Polish community.
[00:21:57] And we were a bit mistaken with some of the assumptions because for example, the most important marketing channel when it comes to the Polish version is. Estelle it’s Facebook and for the English version, Facebook just doesn’t work. I could almost remove it. And I think that no one would even even care about it.
[00:22:21] Twitter is the most popular mediums here, which is great because I learned that I really loved with her opposed to Facebook, which I, which I really hate with all my heart.
[00:22:34] Matt: Well, do you think it’s, do you think the. For the Polish version is more successful because it’s just where you started or are Polish people more, especially in the WordPress space, more tied to Facebook as it communications?
[00:22:48] Yes.
[00:22:48] Maciek: I figured that because in Poland looks like the Twitter is slowly mostly used either by politics or by a journal. So everyone is arguing with everyone and that’s all when it comes to using our polished weeder. So yes, I, I really fully understand why people don’t want to to use it.
[00:23:12] And they like, especially Facebook groups because those are closed communities. But with CA when it comes to the English version The whole WordPress Twitter community is very open is it’s really great. And I really loved it. I really love it. I really like hanging out there. So just, just, just like this enter, I think that I, I’m not sure when, when will, it will be published, but tomorrow, so it will be 19th.
[00:23:43] It will be the first whole year of WP hours. We will be celebrating our first, our first barge night. And and I must say the going global was, was, was a great decision. It was a great decision. Okay. It is some ex it needs some extra work because every time we have to translate everything to English, because still thinking in our native languages much easier.
[00:24:11] Yeah. But but like I said, it, it was worth it. We could lounge our our guests editors let’s call it program. And w w and this is really the part of which I am so proud. This is working so great. And and yeah, we are. W we are hoping that it will, it will only get the better,
[00:24:31] Matt: oh, congratulations.
[00:24:32] On a year. I just celebrated nine years, a couple of days ago for, for this particular show. Once you pass a year, there’s no turning back. They say you cannot stop at this point. Yeah, that’s
[00:24:44] Maciek: true. That’s true because. Th we already see how much work we have put into something. And it would be a shame just to stop at that point.
[00:24:53] Matt: Did, how do the goals change at all? Like what was the original goal for the Polish. Was it for you to just maybe get exposure to lead into maybe hiring you or something like that? And how do the goals change if at all shifting to a global presence?
[00:25:07] Maciek: We have only one goal and it was more of a contribution towards WordPress.
[00:25:13] That’s all. We fought for a short while about monetizing it, but we. Once we decided that we don’t want it. We don’t want it. We, we want a WP hours and the Polish version to be our hubby rather than our our job B like, how is this nicely called? And This was the only thing that we want to achieve.
[00:25:34] We wanted to give back something from, from us. And we know how many things are happening in the, in the worker space. So putting everything in one place I think it’s a, it’s, it’s a nice contribution that that, that we are doing with the English version that all living that we that we wanted is just to, just to continue.
[00:25:56] Doing this contribution about in the, in, in the larger scale. And even if we did not fault and we are, we don’t want to monetize it. I, I would lie if I would set that it didn’t help me with my, with my job because it’s so much easier to connect with people because If I would be just much upon Muskie from, from body, less people would know.
[00:26:22] And when I’m contacting them like, hi, I’m I work at at body, but you also may know me from WP ALS and many people already know me. So which ma it’s so easier to connect with. If you saw our guest editors list, like there are, so I would call them workers, rock stars. We had, we had yells, we had Mar YAG.
[00:26:47] We had so many interesting, interesting people from, from the workless world. And without WP ALS, I don’t think I would even have had the courage to talk with with some of them, because why? Because. I am. I’m just, I wouldn’t be just a workers ambassador and this makes me, and this makes it a bit easier, but I still remember the moment I wrote wrote an email asking Demariac from, from yells to be our guests to Dieter.
[00:27:18] For sure. I had the small slip deprivation because I would never do it being like, because this is Marielle from yellows. This is yeah. I am here and she’s right. So the interesting thing and the surprise in the morning.
[00:27:34] Matt: Yeah. The, the interesting thing, and I sort of alluded to this earlier.
[00:27:38] How this is an interesting time for like content creators, especially in, especially in the WordPress play space, in any space in every space. I should say. It’s just very apparent in WordPress because content creators can get jobs for brands to, again, bridge those gaps between marketing and product or especially marketing and technical.
[00:27:56] The other interesting thing, I think, which is going to carry through. Forever at this point, I think is folks like you and I, and some folks listening who are content creators who have a body of work that is valuable, but more importantly, an employee. Somebody who hires you to work for them, sees that as valuable and allows you to continue to do it.
[00:28:19] Let me frame this from some experiences that I had when I got out of the day job, running my agency and looked for a full-time job back when I was having kids five, five or so years ago at this point, that body of work like you were saying, allowed me to, talk to other companies to get jobs.
[00:28:39] I’d say 80% of them back then were, were like, yeah, this is awesome. Like continue to do the Matt report. You can work for us and keep doing it because it’s a benefit to us really at the end of the day. And I get to retain that ownership. And it’s not looked at. Oh, you’re doing like a side hustle while you’re working for us.
[00:28:57] Like, no, that’s not gonna apply. And I did have some of those conversations with very notable WordPress companies, I should say, which I won’t say on air, but a few of them were like, no, no, you, if you work for us, you’d have to stop doing the mat reporting. And I was like, oh, okay, this, this conversation’s done pretty quick because that’s just not going to happen.
[00:29:13] But what I’m getting at is I think content creators have this advantage from here on out. Like you can continue to create. Have it as a valuable asset to yourself, to the company you’re working for. If both parties can agree that this is a, an okay relationship. I think the future is pretty bright for content creators to continue to love, like do this hobby thing, like as you put it and work for a company, but find mutual mutual benefit.
[00:29:40] That was a long way of getting to that is no real question. But do you have any thoughts around the future of like content creators and how you can leverage that as an additive?
[00:29:48] Maciek: Yeah, I think that, that, that, you’re absolutely right with this because I think that many, because when, when I started my, my job in with workers, I remember that every time when we were creating sites, that there were like three types of of let’s call it workers.
[00:30:04] We had graphic designers, we had developers and we had the marketing team and there was. There were so many gaps between all of those teams. And now when I w when I look at some work titles of different people, I see that are more and more jobs that are connecting those gaps. We have now, all those the developer relations jobs, oldest, embassy leaders, advocates, and so on, I would still like to be called, I dunno, I worked with you in the corner or something.
[00:30:36] Matt: Because why your pay rate keeps going up every time, the longer this conversation goes on, you and I are going to be getting paid a lot more money.
[00:30:42] Maciek: Yeah. So, but, but, but this is Suffolk, this that I think that many companies started to realize that it’s not so easy that, that the job we are doing became more and more complicated in so many on so many levels.
[00:30:58] Not only when it comes to the technical stuff. But here, here also, we have all those headlights, not headless, so many approaches of doing our, our workers is right. But on the other hand, there are so many approaches when it comes to communication to writing content and. So for sure there will be more and more jobs that will be doing that, that will specialize in one small thing and it will benefit for forever.
[00:31:30] Because really having specialists on things that may sound stupid for someone it’s sometime maybe a big win. I don’t remember who, but someone in our corporate space is is, is promoting himself as an expert about, about pages. And, and this is a great approach because the about page is something really useful.
[00:31:55] Yeah, and it can get, it can build that relation between the reader of the website and to do, to become a future client or something like this. So, so yeah. Maybe a few years ago, hiring someone who calls himself an about page specialists may sound, let’s call it weird, but now why not? Right. It may have sense.
[00:32:21] Matt: Yeah. A hundred percent. I want to turn our sights on. Talking about creating content in the WordPress space, maybe WordPress, journalism, news, podcasting, and all the, all of this fun stuff you say that you, you want to keep it as a hobby. You don’t want to turn it into a jobby, which I I’d imagine.
[00:32:37] As soon as you first, as soon as you take your first payment, and let’s say an advertiser suddenly, now you’re sort of thrust into this area of like, okay, now I have to turn this into a business. I know this really well because I take sponsorship money. There is a need, I think. And again, there’s not going to be a direct question here.
[00:32:52] I’m just going to frame it and then happy to get your thoughts. I think there is a need for like great for great WordPress content, not just tutorials, not just interviews but content lead with opinion, journalism research, et cetera, et cetera put out there into the world because there are.
[00:33:11] Sponsors out there. There are businesses out there that would like to support it. There’s also businesses and brands out there that want to get their product or service out in front of other readers, listeners, viewers, if you’re doing stuff on YouTube, there’s plenty of, of market share out there. I don’t think our particular space has matured enough.
[00:33:34] And I mean that for both parties on one hand, I think the product owners that are out there are simply just looking for, for numbers, right? They want, they want clicks. They want page views. They want downloads, they want views. They want all of this stuff. Rightfully so. And there’s less concern of great quality content.
[00:33:53] And then. There’s the other side of the product owner, who’s like, Hey, I got this great product. How do I get it out there? I want the world to know about it, but the taverns not talking about it, I guess my work here is done. I think they just give up. Right. And there’s no formal outreach.
[00:34:10] There’s no real true effort to reach out to folks like you and I to. To really do that. And if it is, it’s just like this, please talk about my products. So you can promote me thing, which also sucks. Right. And then we flip that sphere around to the content creators, like uni where, ah, yeah, some of us, we, we get burned out from doing these projects because.
[00:34:31] Whatever it’s, it’s just not enough people paying attention to it. There’s not enough money in it. The WordPress world is largely out of our control to, to a degree. So there’s things moving that we just can’t control. Can’t use the word WordPress or in, in any of our commercial endeavors there’s stuff like that.
[00:34:48] Fairly chaotic world. How do you see bridging the gap between, product companies that want to support great and unique content and want to get their product out there and the content creators like you and I, and others that are listening to this to like, keep things going and get valued at a particular.
[00:35:07] Level that they should be valued at a big, huge topic. I just threw at you. But your thoughts on any of this?
[00:35:13] Maciek: Yeah, that’s right. It’s, it’s huge. Maybe I will start with a little background because for, for few years I had the chance to work at one of the biggest Polish technical portals and. There were, there were a lot of advertisement or, and I had the chance to contact with so many media agencies, advisors, and so on.
[00:35:36] And this was the point when I realized I really hate advertisement in like any way. And when I am still thinking when it comes to WP ALS how to. Get some money, but not for me because I’m, I I’m earning enough at, at, at my day job, but to get some money just that I can found something something else for, for example, I could pay money for, for writers and like still trying to find the way, how to, how to make an advice advertisement that won’t lose.
[00:36:14] Like it’s, it’s an ad it’s it’s, it’s, it’s something really difficult. It’s, it’s something really difficult because like I said, I had banners, I had, I hate sponsored tags because in many cases you can feel that someone paid for it and it’s it’s, it’s not real. It’s not real. It’s it’s it’s it’s, it’s just fake.
[00:36:37] So
[00:36:37] Matt: yes, this is, but don’t you think in the WordPress world? Don’t you think specifically in the WordPress world, we have an advantage as creators to either write or say ads that we really care about. Like if you’re using, your particular buddy, get a software or if let’s say gravity forms, sponsor the show, like I could really talk well about, gravity forms.
[00:37:00] Cause I know that. Don’t you think we’re in a particular advantage to the make advertising?
[00:37:05] Maciek: Yes. That is true. That there are many products that that I could advertise with. We’d like. Can you heart or anything? I would, I won’t have to worry about that. I am, let’s say lying to the people because yes, I could say those words, but this is, this is one problem about me because I always were at minimalist developer.
[00:37:27] I use as few plugins as possible. So I could say great words about advanced Gusto fields. I could say great words about the body. About timber, but it’s an open source project that wouldn’t advertise in any way and maybe about Yoast because I always use them too. So there are not many products that I could advertise in a way.
[00:37:53] And on the other hand, I know that there are so many services that are probably great, that are that are really far towards the users. And if I could find a way to. To figure out how to create those advertisements in a way that. Th that’s will look more real more for, to, to, to my top, to my readers.
[00:38:18] And it will be a great moment for me when I, when I, when I figured it out, I’m still trying to, to do, to find a way how to, because like I said for, for me, it would be great if I could sponsor some other people to, to, to write some great tax to to develop their. Stuff like this,
[00:38:37] Matt: because there are so many, it sounds like advertisement and sponsorship is, is still on the table.
[00:38:42] Like you’re still exploring it. It might be something that you do with th
[00:38:45] Maciek: this bout. Yes, it, it, it is it’s but like I said, it’s, it’s not for me. I would just like want to have the possibility to, to pass the money, to, to, to people that. That needed more because like I said, I’m, I’m really happy with, with how many money I earn each month still.
[00:39:05] If they want to tell them to give me a raise, I’m still open. So
[00:39:09] Matt: they definitely will after this call Machek thanks for hanging out today and talking about all of this wonderful stuff. Listen, if you’re a small agency boutique agency, you have a few developers on your team starting to take on bigger projects.
[00:39:21] You’re starting to punch above your weight. Sign those 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred thousand dollars deals. It’s time to get serious. Find my check. Well much I can tell us where can they find you to connect on the CIC D software that we talked about? And then where can we find you? If we want to write a post on WPLS
[00:39:37] Maciek: I’ve instilled, the best way would be to connect with me through fruit for Twitter.
[00:39:42] You can find me my nickname is . I hope that maybe you will, you will provide them. My link to my Twitter and accounting in a written way. And I think this is this. This is the best way to connect with me because it’s, it’s universal for all my worlds.
[00:40:01] Matt: Fantastic stuff. Everyone else listening to this, my report.com report.com/subscribe.
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