Category: Business

Last update on

Direct Approach vs. Philosophy Culture

When I was in high school, I joined a forum for philosophers. I was an observer, just monitoring the active users discussing different points of view on the same general principle, or cosmic factor. Later on, I started reading different books on personal skills, psychology and communication. The Esoteric Book The most amazing thing I found was a book. Actually two books - same title, same table of contents. One written by a US writer, the other - from an Indian philosopher. The difference between both books was unbelievable. The US one was completely "how to" with homework assignments after each… Continue Reading
Last update on

Content Marketing For Business Benefit

One of the things we did at DevriX in 2014 is focusing more on content marketing. Back in 2011-2013, we kept maintaining a 10-page website with no content since we believed that there are way too many sites out there sharing WordPress tutorials or business tips. Wrong. Ever since we started our tutorials section, we kept growing our visitors base, together with our list of followers and people sharing our resources. Admittedly, there's a lot of work that we need to improve and increase our quality, but we're working in that direction and the numbers are quite positive. Publish For Profits Jennifer… Continue Reading
Last update on

14 Common Misconceptions About Email – Gmail’s Toolkit

"Slack is Killing email", "5 reasons Slack will change the workplace", "Slack, the office messaging app that may finally sink e-mail". For some odd reason, the media is eager to bury down the idea of email, and put an end to its usage for the entire world. Whether it's Slack, HipChat, Skype, social network, or some project management tool, media outlets are impatient to sink email as an official method of communication. In the meantime, marketers are celebrating their success with the best ROI results for email: According to GetResponse, email's ROI is $41 per dollar spend: Email remains unbeaten, with ROI… Continue Reading
Last update on

The Problem With Investors And Scaling – Uber Examples

Note: I started the post a few months ago, so there may be some slightly outdated facts. I'm a great proponent of bootstrapped companies, and I've always admired successful businesses that managed to grow without taking on seed funding or various types of investment. We're in our fifth year as a team at DevriX and while we're always hesitant to get a hold of more resources and speed up our growth or launch some of our products, we're still relying on a self-growth model instead. Uber [caption id="attachment_11728" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Photo by diginomica.com[/caption] Uber is a great service - an alternative… Continue Reading
Last update on

How to Determine the Cost of a University Website?

Pricing is never easy. Estimating work is one of the most tedious activities for me when discussing a new project proposal - let alone a migration or something based on an existing code base. This was the reason for me to write Why Are Estimates Challenging For Custom Development Work? and engage in similar discussions every now and then. The main problem is that there’s often a disconnect between a customer’s expectations or budget and the cost of building a solution. Most of the actual development goes into building various layers that don’t expose UI, integrating caching engines, dealing with… Continue Reading
Last update on

What Are The Main Security Considerations for WordPress-Based Enterprises?

Security is incredibly important for all the right reasons. However, a small blog or a 5-page business website is less prone to becoming a target as compared to a popular enterprise where competitors, top black hats, and other 3rd parties may have an incentive to receive some proprietary information which may be very, very expensive. WordPress Security is also one of the 15 main obstacles that enterprises report in WordPress. I've discussed the list in a separate post based on our sales meetings and calls with various enterprises and what helped us sign several deals with multi-billion dollar brands. Massive… Continue Reading
Last update on

The Definitive Sales and Business Development Process For an Outsourced WordPress Company

We’ve sold several 6-figure projects over the past few years remotely. I have never met some of our customers, and others we’ve met later on (8–12 months after we’ve already started the business relationship). Selling expensive software remotely is a challenging endeavor. It requires a good amount of reputability in the industry, a terrific track record of successful projects, a portfolio of respectable companies, good reviews and testimonials, great folks running the project, and ongoing marketing activities. And yes, we’ve lost a number of projects simply because we are not a local agency with an office next street, but that… Continue Reading
Last update on

Quora AmA Recap – Enterprise WordPress Development Business

I've been spending plenty of time on Quora over the past months. In fact, it probably is my primarily place online - excluding work-related activities with my team, clients, and partners. It's a brilliant platform for various reasons: I educate myself on areas where I lack enough expertise. I validate my theories through the answers of others. I receive instant feedback on my comments and answers through views, upvotes, and the overall ranking system. Some of my answers have been republished on Forbes, Inc, HuffPost, Apple News. I also follow a number of CEOs and directors from companies that I respect and… Continue Reading
Last update on

Why Are Estimates Challenging For Custom Development Work?

I've been browsing and replying on Quora over the holidays and one of the questions made me think deeper about the estimation challenges when quoting custom development work: At DevWP I've already blogged about why I avoid estimates and the reason we do provide retainer services for our ongoing accounts. I'm no stranger to budget constraints and upfront expectations, but unlike the products business, services may vary drastically. [caption id="attachment_12201" align="aligncenter" width="1241"] dilbert.com showcases estimates in a nutshell[/caption] In the Quora example, the customer needed a drawing solution for his website. However, there are plenty of variables, such as: What features… Continue Reading
Last update on

WordPress Salary Requirements Revealed and Company Pricing Breakdown

A known problem in the WordPress industry are the $500 projects and hundreds of thousands of clients looking for free and warez plugins and themes, unwilling to pay a few pennies for a premium solution, and completely baffled by any estimate that is equal to the actual salary of a developer. They often proceed with DIY solutions or site builders, and don't understand the cost of building a professional solution that is scaled for growth, stability, compatibility, speed and security. And some customers simply don't need a professional solution - they're just starting and haven't faced the challenges of a… Continue Reading