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

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

Envato Or Why Race To the Bottom Is Dangerous?

I have a few friends who are pretty good with WordPress development, have a few decent plugins out there and love the community. They started small and began with playing with some themes and plugins, and then learned development by building their own solutions in the evening and over the weekend. For some of them that adventure happened some 6-7 years ago. They still love WordPress, and they also like the community. They maintain their free plugins and such. But they have to do other 9-to-5 jobs in order to make a living. They've tried to sell their services and products, but within… Continue Reading