S4 E7: Shawn Hesketh of WP101

Shawn Hesketh is the creator of WP101, an online library and learning resource, for WordPress.

When you don’t want to spend the time training your clients, or answering the pesky support e-mails, you use a service like WP101. Shawn and his team tirelessly script, record, edit, produce, and publish top-notch training materials for the newcomer to the WordPress world.

Sounds like easy money to me.

Interview with Shawn Hesketh of WP101

[ss_player]

Open up your favorite screen recorder, dust off you headset, press record and the money flows in — right?

Not so fast.

If you’re looking to earn a living teaching WordPress, even supporting it, today’s episode is an absolute gold mine — or mine field, depending on your perspective — for the eager entrepreneur.

Shawn brings a boat load of business acumen, and a down to Earth approach to making a living in this space. The inside baseball of it all is pretty darned interesting, too. Like, what happened when Shawn expanded to a Spanish version of the product? Tripled his audience? Quadrupled his revenue? You’ll have to tune-in to find out. 🙂

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to thank Shawn on Twitter — and our sponsors (they made this possible!) — Pagely & Valet!


Comments

5 responses to “S4 E7: Shawn Hesketh of WP101”

  1. I stopped using Video User Manuals years ago because they dropped their French versions early on. They also had a Spanish version as well. I completely understand his decision. It would be a much smaller market than just English and maybe not worth the effort.

    Keep concentrating on things like the popular plugins. You mentioned Gravity Forms which has odd support and is difficult for clients to find info for themselves without having to login, scour forums, etc. I see why people are moving to Ninja Forms and the others because of this. The client really needs something easy and all in one place thanks for offering that on wp101.

    I have created well over 400 custom screencasts for clients over the years, They really do appreciate the support and I’ve made many times over the cost of the website having a support and retainer contracts. They are more than happy to pay for that security blanket.

    1. Thanks for commenting, Todd! Are you using WP 101 now or another solution for the tutorials/screencasts?

    2. Hey Todd,

      Yes we did stop our non-english versions of the videos because the sales figures did not justify the amount of work involved.

      It was a hard decision to make and I wish we could have made it work, but sometimes you need to double down and focus on your core business.

      The effort we used to put into these translations we now put into video tutorials for some of the popular plugins like Gravity Forms, Beaver Builder, Yoast SEO and WooCommerce for example.

      I hope that clarifies our position.

      Oh and great episode Matt – great to hear from Shawn and what he’s up to.

  2. Hi Matt,

    Just wanted to let you know, the ad for Valet is using the wrong link. You said valetmetrics dot come but it’s valet dot io. Hope this helps!

    1. Thanks, Briana! Same company, wrong product 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *