Effective Hiring Tips (For Startups And Growing Teams)

There are fast-paced startups where execution is mission-critical. Then, there are the startups relying on an ongoing and regular business model - think of manufacturing or an ongoing type of activity that could easily take 60–80 hours a week. The ideal team for an ongoing operations startup might look different from the passionate, equity-focused model. While shared vision remains crucial, qualities like resilience, operational excellence, and a commitment to long-term growth become paramount. Attracting and retaining talent for this type of startup requires a different approach. In other instances, freelancing may be a great model for a lean startup. The beginning… Continue Reading

How to Find Leads for a WordPress Development Company?

In order to grow as a professional WordPress developer, you have to work with businesses that believe in expert development and value long-term results. More often than not, business owners are fooled by the media and marketing collateral online explaining how easy development is, solutions sold for $20 - $100, or site builders that would supposedly “revolutionize your business online”. Here are some tips that would steadily grow your value and bring some business to you. 1. Perfect Your Skills When I switched to full-time freelancing, I already had a 5-year technical college degree, 4 years of full-time development experience,… Continue Reading

Why You Have to Target Non-US Markets For Higher Profits

Currently, the United States is the world's largest national economy. Its GDP for 2016 is $18,56 trillion, hosts the majority of the biggest companies in the universe (that we know of), and is notoriously known as the "land of unlimited possibilities." [caption id="attachment_12254" align="aligncenter" width="730"] GDP for the US over the years - source[/caption] It's only natural to target the US market when selling services, or products, and aim for a higher percentage of visitors, users, and customers living in the States. It's the goal of many entrepreneurs and a target for their marketing teams. A study quoted by Reference.com… Continue Reading

Focus, Niche Down, and Skyrocket Your Business

Selling to businesses locally or internationally usually entails selling services or products. Products are a bit easier since you can provide a trial version of your product and broadcast it everywhere. Products are also well-defined, you can easily outline the scope of your product and draft several case studies tackling specific problems. Services are different. If you offer a wide range of services for different audiences, you need to niche down.  What Does It Mean to Niche Down? To put it simply, niching down means to pick a specialty and a specific target market for your business. For a new… Continue Reading

How Remote Teams Work Together

Working remotely is about mutual trust. It’s the same as assessing the security of your home, the reliability of your office job, or the viability of your relationship. It's about creating an ecosystem where both parties can operate securely, reliably, and respectfully. Employers and employees must mutually invest in this ecosystem, recognizing that their actions or inactions can significantly impact each other. If you don’t care, you’ll lose. If you stress over it too much, something seems fishy and you may get burned again. I am a proponent of remote working in theory. And I’ve managed to build a team… Continue Reading

Persistence Is The Way Forward

During WordCamp San Francisco a few years ago, I had the chance to do pair programming with Rodrigo Primo on #15459. He's an incredible and passionate WordPress developer, and he approached me before the Contributor Day to do some hacking on performance for hierarchical post types after I sent my patch with some ideas related to that change. The Unit Test Challenge When we reached the unit tests, none of us knew how to build that specific bit. The function was printing some code without returning an array of data to assert. And we couldn't find a Core example of unit tests doing that validation. I suggested… Continue Reading

Responsibility and Trust in Business

Few minutes ago I found out that Kickstarter was hacked, and user information was exposed. It's not the first time a popular site gets hacked (and it won't be the last, for sure), the interesting part however is why did that happen and what would be the right path for a service like this to handle the data protection layer for its users. That's how I see the three layers of trust/responsibility relationship in that combo: There are other interpretations and possible role assignments, but let's stick with that for a bit. Users/Customers Let's apply that Kickstarter example to another… Continue Reading

Business Decisions Impacting Your Customers Could Be Fatal

As a WordPress agency owner running my business and being responsible for dozens of people, my main goal is stability. Stability in Business John Lennon once said: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" Since life is fragile itself and things change every single minute, the least we could do is stabilize as many variables as possible and take care of the potential problematic areas. That said, stability in business is determined by various factors, such as: Having a steady recurring revenue model - memberships, selling WordPress products, or a backlog of clients for services Working with a reliable team - employees, contractors, trustworthy… Continue Reading

Choose Your Leaders – Time and Knowledge

The world is built and based on several simple rules and everything else relies on them. One of the main concepts is the leadership - each group has a leader (or few) responsible for managing everything important for a community. The Big Picture On a larger scale this could be the president, the God, the corporation's CEO etc. Leadership unites masses in a way that the effort is channeled in the same direction, leading to better results and team work. Open Source On a technology level, there are leaders who have been significantly helpful for a given product, language, platform,… Continue Reading

Beginner’s Guide to Starting as a Freelance Content Writer

Blogging has been around since the late 90s and there are millions of bloggers earning a good living thanks to their writing efforts. Business owners, marketers, college students and everyone else is actively publishing online. With social media prevailing, a good percentage of the population is now actively producing content online. But what is the difference between a successful writer and a hobbyist? Generating Revenue Through Content Writing There are various ways to generate revenue through content writing. Being a full-time writer or a journalist is the obvious choice. But engaging content writers can build the right audience for each… Continue Reading