Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz about business tracks and their place at WordCamp.
Last week while listening to the DradCast, Chris Lema’s opening remark was a “call to arms” for WordPress freelancers.
Start taking the business end seriously, so clients and industries take us seriously.
While listening to Chris, I thought to myself “Hey, I’ve got a business track right here.” The goal of the Matt Report has always been to educate entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. In our case, WordPress entrepreneurs.
MattReport.com is a WordPress business track
Let’s go back to Chris again.
I think he realizes that some freelancers aren’t thinking about operating a scalable business. Heck, even some of the freelancers I interview specifically avoid it because that’s not the direction they want to take.
And that’s OK.
But for those that do — where do you begin? I have interviewed a wide range of people making a living using WordPress and below is a very small sample of categorizing these lessons. I think this is the foundation of a great WordPress business track that you can all for free. Right. Here.
Operating a freelance business
- Curtis McHale – Learn how to find the right clients
- Tom McFarlin – How to make a living as a WordPress developer
- Amber Weinberg – Partnering with other agencies
Supporting customers and clients
- Andrea Rennick – Managing support requests and documentation
- Mika Epstein – Customer support in big business
Building a scalable business
- Jose Cabaler – Selling the $100k+ project
- John Saddington – What it means to build a startup
- Cory Miller – How to build a million dollar WordPress business
Launching a SaaS product
- Brian Casel – Discover a niche market
- Andy Stratton – Supporting a SaaS product
Selling WordPress plugins
- Pippin Williamson – Building a WordPress marketplace
- Jason Coleman – How to monetize the freemium model
Marketing your WordPress business
- John Morgan – Building your brand
- C.C. Chapman – How to target the big client
The future of WordPress business
A new conference in town called PressNomics covers this at a larger scale. Another new “meetup” that came across my radar is WordSesh.
Both are breaking for the “norm” of a WordCamp. PressNomics is all about the business, WordSesh is an online live streaming 24hour marathon.
I’m super excited to be in WordPress during this growth period. We’re forging new roads — which will you take?
So far I’ve interviewed 30 WordPress entrepreneurs of which I’ve published 20. (The rest will be published soon, I promise.)
Developers, designers, marketers, bloggers, authors, and business owners. If you have a story lesson to share, let’s connect.
Leave a Reply