Tag: Business

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9 Misconceptions By Clients Looking For a Web Platform

The sales process for web development businesses may be confusing. There are endless misconceptions we've seen during sales calls and presales meetings, some more common than others. What Makes Web Development Confusing? Unlike buying a physical product or a service that brings an obvious impact on a physical item (like your home or a car), gauging work quality or time frames is nearly impossible. I've discussed the challenges of estimates several times and this is the leading reason why 95% of our business now is formed by WordPress retainers. Fixed-fee estimates are hardly successful. Tons of unknowns are revealed in… Continue Reading
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Quora: 1 Year and 1 Million Answer Views

Update: April 2020, Note: The original story was authored in January 2018. At the moment, I've accumulated 2.7 million Quora views! Most people who follow me online know that I've been spending a lot of time on Quora lately. I've been writing answers, participating in discussions, sharing existing Quora answers with my team and interacting with team members met through the platform. Which is probably why my local team prepared that spectacular clock for my birthday, conveniently including Quora to my daily schedule: How I Got Started With Quora I stumbled upon Quora back in 2013 or 2014 while browsing… Continue Reading
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The Business-IT Industry Relationship

The WordPress platform allows for a number of users to build business ideas over a number of options. Browsing online or offline (at a WordCamp or a regular WordPress meetup event) we could get in touch with WP developers, designers, writers, system administrators, support engineers and other technical. On the other hand, small teams are managed by WP managers and team leaders, CTOs and CEOs of WordPress-driven companies, financial managers aware of different aspects correlated with the eCommerce activity status as well. So, by all means, we have a coherent and cooperative relation between managing and executive personnel, that is… Continue Reading
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The Cost of a Project

I just got back from the supermarket. While leaving with my groceries, I overheard the following conversation: Come on, you even teach while sitting - that's such a lack of motivation!I do what I got paid to do.So, if you were earning X extra every month, you would be more excited?Sure. The Human Motivation There are various psychological research studies out there on human motivation, the bounders one would like to reach, the progressive lust for more and so forth, but it was an honest and valid response. Normally I would argue because it's a lousy job in a way… Continue Reading
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Supporting Open Source Projects

I remember (back in time) when I was still using Slackware Linux. It is a Linux distribution maintained by Patrick Volkerding - the only person behind a project with thousands or tens of thousands of users (maybe more, who knows?). Occasionally the news section of the distro had a new post published that looked like: "I'm taking two weeks off with my family for the holidays, and I will be unable to reply to support inquiries while I'm away". It probably looks odd, and the Linux distribution was pretty stable once configured, but compared to the commercial operating systems it is… Continue Reading
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Regular Blogging and Misconceptions

After a short discussion on Twitter related to my Daily Blogging is disappointing post, Chris Lema said that I was wrong: @mattmedeiros @sarahpressler @no_fear_inc Yes he is. But he's also wrong. :) I'd explain, but I'll do it tomorrow. In a new daily post. :) — Chris Lema (@chrislema) January 13, 2014 and then he followed up with another post - Five reasons I recommend daily blogging (even if you disagree), with another subtitle labeled "This is a post about regular writing". Now, since I respect Chris Lema a lot and being able to chat with him helped me and my business,… Continue Reading
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The Right People Behind a Business

I've had a few conversations over the last month with people who have contacted me for work lately and we've had a meeting or two (or currently work together). I rarely check my leads and referrals when they contact me through my blog or Twitter, which is a bad habit and I'm catching up now, and my research led to some interesting results. One of them met a former client of mine in London One of them googled "WordPress Developer Bulgaria" Another lead through Post Status - thanks Brian! One more liked a comment in a technical blog and reached… Continue Reading
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The “Work For Myself” Myth

There is a common myth that working as a freelancer, consultant or a company owner means "working for myself". In my opinion that's often a wrong perspective for people who are tired of working the wrong jobs for the wrong managers, trying to find an escape from this by running their own business and finding the holy grail. Let's revise several work scenarios in the WordPress development world. Junior developer - managed by the other devs in the team, fully dependent on everyone else Senior developer - with a team leader or a software architect laying out the foundations of the project,… Continue Reading
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New Book: Making Money Online with WordPress

My latest book is finally ready - "Making Money Online with WordPress". This is your guide to building your remote online business with WordPress, which will reveal various opportunities for everyone to bootstrap an online business based on the WordPress platform. In 28 pages I have shared my experience with the WordPress platform, working with numerous non-technical clients on their first business initiatives. We have created different types of web projects - online stores, SaaS solutions, digital marketing portals, CRMs and so forth, and it's always challenging to prepare a stable and reliable system for an established agency working offline for… Continue Reading
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The Salary Factor

Last week Eric Mann posted his 2014 Salary Survey Results covering some rough figures about our industry and the average salaries paid for different levels of experience. I like aggregated data in general, and it would be nice if more people take on that sort of studies in 2015, extending their horizons across the entire world, including web development companies in Asia, Africa, South America as well. Because "distributed" is a popular lifestyle in the WordPress Community, and it's an important factor that we should never forget about. Before I start, Brian Krogsgard posted about the cost of a WordPress website - which is a post… Continue Reading