The WP Minute+

Hey everyone.

Welcome.

This is WP Product Talk, and
this is our first time being live

streaming where you actually get to.

See our faces.

This is weird.

This is different, but,
uh, but here we are.

We're like it or not.

So I hope some folks are watching along.

Uh, ooh.

We got some folks out in the
street who are happy about that.

We did do a vote,

didn't we?

We did.

And I was completely overruled.

And now here we are.

So Katie comes on board and
is shaking things up right.

But everyone agreed.

So here we are and I'm excited about it.

I l I like this, uh, this format.

And uh, it definitely makes, uh,
visual facial cues add a lot to

conversation a lot anyway, so yeah.

Plus I'm probably gonna download
it and make an audio version too.

So, cool.

When this is WB product Talk and
this is a place where we talk

about, uh, what it's like to.

A WordPress product shop.

Uh, we talk about hiring,
we talk about firing.

We talk about building,
we talk about sun setting.

Uh, we talk about any and all
things related to pains and joys

of earning a WordPress product.

Um, and we've been doing this for,
I think this is episode 14 now.

Um, and, uh, we got
more in store for sure.

So I wanna go around, introduce everyone.

Katie as co-host.

Katie, can you introduce yourself to the

world?

Hi, I'm Katie Keith, co-founder
and a c e o at Bantu Plugins.

We've, um, been selling plug-ins since
2016, having switched from previously

designing WordPress websites for clients.

We mostly specialize in WooCommerce
and we've got 20 premium plug-ins now.

So we have lots of different plugins
for different needs, and I really love

talking to people about different elements
of the business side of selling plug.

Excellent.

And I'm Matt Crowell,
uh, founder of Give wp.

Last year and now almost two years
ago, we were sold to LiquidWeb,

so I'm now doing marketing and
customer success at, uh, stellar wp.

I've been building plugins and running
shops for since 2014 and, uh, excited

to, uh, talk about more of these things.

And today we.

Special guest, Erin Edwards
is here from W P M U Dev.

Erin, can you introduce yourself?

Yeah,

I'm Erin.

I've been the c t O at W P M U Dev
for, uh, I'm not sure how many years,

but I've been with them for 12 or so.

And, uh, we've grown a lot from
being a whole lot of plug-in shops

to moving into a lot more services.

And also I have a few side
projects that I've built infinite

uploads for cloud storage.

And imagine AI just
bringing AI image generation

into WordPress.

Nice.

Excellent.

Um, sorry, I'm playing around
with all the fun tools.

This thing has No, that would appear.

Yeah.

Uh, I was just trying to see if I
could like Andrew's response here,

but, um, it's not letting me do that.

Cool.

All right.

Uh, today we are talking about,
uh, how to sify your work press.

Product, and this is a subject that Erin
recommended and suggested reached out

to us about, and Katie and I both have
not actually physically done this, uh,

but we have considered it and it is a
really interesting subject and one that

I think is actually trending upward
in the WordPress space in general.

So I'm excited to talk about it.

The way we always kick it off first is go
around the horn and talk about why we feel

like this is an important or relevant.

Subject, I kind of tipped my hand.

I feel like it's, uh, it's an up and
coming, uh, and continuing to grow aspect

of, uh, WordPress products personally.

And I also see it as definitely
having some advantages when you want

to be able to serve types of content
or do types of functionality that.

Shouldn't be limited to a
WordPress website specifically.

Uh, and I think it's a really cool model
for certain types of products for sure.

It makes a lot of sense, and I think
it also is, has great opportunity

in terms of, uh, how it can scale.

I do see it as a good option for,
for scaling products a little

bit more quickly sometimes.

Uh, that's some of my takes on it.

Katie, what's.

Yeah, the scalability thing is, so
from a business perspective, everyone's

always looking to the next step and
the next step toward scalability.

Really, a lot of people who provide
client services are looking for the

next step, which they often see as
providing any kind of product that they

can build once and sell multiple times.

So certainly when we were a WordPress
agency, Our kind of holy grail was

to move upwards to selling plug-ins
or themes, although we didn't

end up doing the theme thing, and
then now we are a pluggin company.

We are like, yeah, it's
great selling plug-ins.

It's so much more scalable than client
work was for us, but what's the next step?

Oh, sass.

That's even more scalable.

And there's various different reasons in.

Business model.

So I think as well as having benefits
for the customer for certain types

of products, I think from a business
perspective it's very interesting.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Aaron, you got a lot of
thoughts on this one.

Why is this so important,
or why is it so significant?

Yeah,

I do.

Just kinda back our history
at W Wpm U Dev we used to.

A few more than a hundred
plug-ins and various themes

and different things like that.

And the problem was our customers
treated US App Store, you pay and then

download everything and then cancel.

And uh, I know that a lot of plug-in
businesses have done a lot better with

that, with annual licensing and things
like that, but still it's kind of

mindset that your customers have and.

For me, I'm more of a developer,
so I'm kind of approach it

from the technical side.

So that's kind of my focus will
be today as we're discussing this.

But the first thing from my experience
is that WordPress plugins are compared

to a lot of products are really hard to
support, maintain, and I think one of the

biggest things is just because WordPress
is such a open ecosystem that you.

Numerous hosting providers, all
with different configurations.

You have any number of theme and
plugin combinations that can be

installed on customer websites
and all those things often cause

compatibility issues for your plugins.

That becomes a huge amount of work to
try to make sure you're compatible with

everyone and all those kind of things.

Like for example, at W P M U Dev,
we have a QA team and actually

part of their job is literal.

Whenever there's a major release of our
product to test it with Yost and all

these jet pack and all these popular
products that many of our customers

also have installed to make sure
that we're not breaking with them,

it just becomes a really big hassle.

Also, the update system for
WordPress, that's another thing.

When you have software or code that needs
to change frequently, it's very common.

your for WordPress website for
customers to not update the plugin or

for there to be a huge delay before
they update to the newer version.

Things will break very often, and
then you get support tickets and it's

like, you haven't updated it yet.

We pushed a fixture that months ago.

Oh.

So that, that becomes a big hassle too.

And then the other point that I was,
that I've noticed is the hassle of

maintaining like a free and pro.

So a lot of WordPress plugins, their
model is to have a free version on

the repo, and then you have a pro
premium version that usually has

to be downloaded from the site.

And so that means two separate
code bases to maintain that.

That causes a lot of hassle for
developer and also even just the

process of switching from free to pro
when a user upgrades or purchases your

product.

Yeah, let's parse a little bit of this cuz
there's a lot of different kind of details

in, in what you're highlighting there.

Uh, like for example, there are lots of
different types of fast connector plugins.

Mm-hmm.

, like one of the most, or two of the most
frequently used ones currently would

be like a payment gateway, for example,
is definitely a SaaS essentially.

Uh, and also, Um, any plugin that
connects with an email provider

like MailChimp or, or Constant
Contact or active campaign mm-hmm.

these, the service is happening offsite
and it's having to be connected on

the WordPress site specifically, and
a lot of the work is offloaded off

of the site and it's really just like
a, a word, a connector in some ways.

Right.

But even that connector.

, it can't be static and stagnant.

A connector has to be updated too fairly
regularly, so you don't totally lose

or you don't totally abandon that.

Uh, need to keep a plug-in updated, right?

Yeah.

Depending on the use case, there's
gonna be, uh, some amount of code

that's gonna be on the WordPress
site and some amount of code that

you can have on your own servers.

So in my opinion, the more you can
move to your servers, then the less.

, you have to worry about
those maintenance burdens.

Mm-hmm.

, you know, it depends on the use case,

obviously.

Yeah.

So let's, um, for example, if you're
able to do that, then that means you're,

you're in one way or another, putting a
lot of functionality into the WordPress

website that originates somewhere else.

Is that what you're suggesting?

If you can add features and whatnot
on the SAS itself, and then those

are just embedded onto the WordPress
website, is that like a good example?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm gonna jump into specific examples.

Obvious, obviously, which I
think we'll do that shortly, but

yeah.

Yeah, I just wanna make sure like we,
we get some of the details covered

so everybody's on the same page.

Yeah, for sure.

And, and another thing to consider too is
often features, there's a lot of features

that could be implemented much better
on like the server side because maybe p

h p you need certain PHP extensions or
certain specialized software installed on.

The user server.

That just doesn't work that way.

Great.

Examples of that are like whether
it's processing images or video or

all kinds of different things like
that, or services that you need to

provide from the cloud as a feature.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Katie, other thoughts on why this is
a important subject for product owners?

what, uh, Aaron describe
sounds amazing to me.

Just getting rid of the compatibility
issues because it's all on the

server and embedded and so on.

Um, because obviously running a plug-in
company with lots of plug-ins, we

constantly are having those dependencies.

We've got, we use ghost inspect
for testing and we've got

endless suites of automated.

In like 20 themes and with lots of
popular plugins and there's always

errors or something you have to fix.

So taking away that, it
sounds very attractive to

me.

. Absolutely.

In many ways it's one of those things
where, uh, we've just kind of times

drawing and go, well, it's WordPress.

This is how everything works.

This is how things are, and that what I
hear Air and Payne is have to be that way.

You don't have to always deal
with these types of, of burdens.

It's like, who doesn't deal
with licensing trouble?

Everybody deals with licensing issues.

You don't have to.

I, but even like with the like SAS
connector types, Aaron, we're still

gonna be some sort of authentication.

Often.

It'll be a simple.

plug in on, on the WordPress site,
and they're gonna have to authenticate

their connection to your server
in one form or another, right?

Yes.

But that can be done
in very seamless ways.

They can register and do everything
right from within the plugin interface.

Yeah.

Just interacting with your A p I.

Yeah.

Some other.

like benefits that you might not consider
with sasying is just different things to

do with conversions and the upgrade flow.

So we already talked about like free
pro version, like I've, we have.

A number of like free and introversions
for W P M U Dev still, but that

becomes a big hassle when users
have to upgrade from free to pro.

And then you wanna make sure if
they activate pro, it doesn't

cause errors and that the free
ones somehow gets deactivated.

And then, um, a lot of plug-ins that
have perversion, then you have to like

the license key and then paste that in
and, and this whole process, that's just.

It causes a lot of friction for
users, I think, compared to a

simple form rate in your WordPress.

Where you just log in or connect in.

Yeah.

And then it's just connected
and that's how it works.

Yeah.

So I think there's

benefits, but it's never
simple with a plugin.

Like I love that.

With sas you have control,
uh, for example, three trials.

Yeah.

You've got to code it and things.

But it's much easier because if they don't
continue by definition, they've lost that

access or they go down to your free plan.

Uh, I'm sure we'll have a episode
on this another time, but there

isn't a perfect licensing solution
available for selling WordPress

products as I most people will know.

And having things like free trials can
be very, You are using, for example,

easy digital downloads or commerce or
something, and I've got to really think

about how to revoke that functionality
in a way that's consistent with G

P L and all of that kind of thing.

With sas, I think it would probably be
easier, although you know better than me.

.
Yeah, for sure.

Especially if out of the free
pro pro versions of plugins you

have, you're actually adding
like extra code in that plugin.

And then you also have to think about
like piracy and things like that.

People can null the plugins
and release your pro versions.

And because all that code is in there and
it's open source when it's a SaaS or a

lot of your services are provided by a.

, the SaaS side does not
have to be open source.

That's kind of a thing loophole
with G P L and the WordPress repo.

Uh, so you can have a lot of that
business logic, things like that,

that can be remain secret and remain
in a way that competitors can't

necessarily steal it or hack it.

Yeah.

Because it's provided

by you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Palmer is watching and uh,
has a couple of interesting comments.

Uh, he says he uses a hybrid version
plugin, uses SAS for main functions,

but still has to be installed.

And of course now he has
a Chrome extension too.

That's interesting.

Uh, as for a dedicated sas not plan
to go there quite yet, do think

going like full on dedicated sass is
kind of jumping into the deep end.

Can be, but there's also lots of micro
sass too that do really cool stuff.

He has a follow up here as well.

I think is interesting.

Yo, for Shopify is a SaaS.

Absolutely, that's true.

And some of the functions of yos for
WordPress itself are served from a SaaS.

Like in many ways we always
think of Yost in particular as

just like the SEO plugin itself.

But some of the functionality is
actually ified and they grew into that.

Wasn't like that always.

I'm, there's, uh, specifically some of
the, I think some of the tone features.

Ways that they can, you can
validate the SEO on page.

Things like that, I think
are all last things.

Those are some interesting,
uh, examples actually.

Yeah.

Thanks Andrew.

Keep it coming, man.

Mm-hmm.

. We actually, I think Andrew's on our short
list to get on the show, right Katie?

. Yeah.

Weren't you gonna invite him

for next week?

? Yeah.

Yeah.

If he's fresh from, uh, word Camp Asia,
then Andrew, you're on notice, man.

. Uh, cool.

Next subject is what we
like to call story time.

We wanna talk a little bit about our own
experiences with Sasying products or.

In Katie's case, and in my case,
our experience of SaaSified products

and as product owners, every time I
interact with a new product in one

way or another, I am hyper critical.

Uh, and I'm like, oh, this
is not the best experience.

Uh, they could be doing this instead.

Uh, but uh, yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about that.

Uh, Katie, do you wanna jump into it?

Yep.

Sounds good.

So I think I'm going to talk about,
I suppose a challenge, a dilemma

for me as a plug-in business
owner in going down the SAS route.

So we've identified actually on our
strategic growth plan for last year,

2022, that we aspired to move in that
direction and develop some kind of

SaaS product, and we have a formula.

which we built with CIS as our marketing
company for evaluating new product ideas.

And so we look at various factors to
say, is it a good idea, uh, different

ideas for new, uh, WordPress plugins.

And one of those factors
from the beginning of last

year is, Can you satisfy it?

Is it that sort of product?

Which brings me to a dilemma I
think we have with the satisfying of

products, which is that you should
only do it where it's actually

relevant for that type of product.

So there is some product.

That it just makes sense to have the whole
thing in the WordPress admin and for us

as a W Commerce, largely specialist W
Commerce company, all the ideas we have,

it just wouldn't make sense generally to
take it out of WordPress and have a SaaS.

That would all be about us trying to
improve our business model in the ways

we've just discussed, rather than any.

To the customer in terms
of the functionality.

So all the ideas that we have assessed
in the last year for new products have

had a zero on the satisfying scale,
but we know how to do what we do and

how to build successful products.

So we've continued with those
new ideas, despite failing

that on every idea we've had.

So one day it might come to us, but I.

I don't wanna do it
just for the sake of it.

That's what's making me hesitate.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

On our end, we actually, were
right on the, and I've talked

about this on the show in the past.

We actually were right on the verge
of going full on sass a while back.

We were going to jump in and do.

A big donation platform, uh, that we
were really excited about, and there

were a lot of pros and cons to it.

Uh, the product itself, we were, we
had a lot of high confidence in it.

And, uh, the, a approach was, would be
that, uh, you build stuff on the platform.

and then you could embed them in different
places regardless of WordPress or not.

The advantage there of course, was like,
yeah, WordPress owns 40% of the internet,

but that means there's 60% out there
still that can't use gift WP at all.

So let's open up our market and
try to reach some more folks.

And I think that's definitely a good,
valid, uh, reason to head out there.

A lot of the complexity was.

Was also things like, uh, crane and
owning all of that data selves rather

than a distributed plugin means that,
uh, they have to have responsibility

themselves for all the donation data
that they're storing on their websites.

You start running donations
off on your platform and now

there's a big liability in there.

And also like play truthfully
or press.org is a great funnel.

When you are a freemium product,
you have a huge plugin base, a

huge audience, so you get to.

Market to with a free product.

And if you go full on SaaS, then
um, that's actually taken away

and you really have to earn every
single customer that you get.

So these hybrid examples, like Andrew's
mentioning and the ones that, uh,

Andrew and Aaron are mentioning as well.

I think are really interesting.

I, there's a few other small
products I've come across recently.

There's one that I really like called
Mighty Share, which is one of those,

it generates your featured images or
your social share images for your blog

post automatically based on a logo and
colors and the text of the article.

And they actually are a SaaS connector.

They actually are generating that
image on their server for you.

And then, uh, and then you're serving
that up with a URL that they generate.

And, uh, they actually reached out to
me as they were building it out to say,

what do you think of this as a SaaS?

Or do you think that I should try to
do it all on the WordPress website?

And a lot of the things that,
that Aaron brought up of like the

difficulty of doing that kind of image
generation on the WordPress server.

some of the reasons why they decided
to go SaaS or SaaS connector.

So it's a fully a hundred
percent WordPress product, but,

um, but all the benefits of the
features are happening offsite.

Yeah.

Some of it, I still think there's a
lot of, uh, lot of room for talking

about pros and cons on both sides,
but I want to hear a little bit more

from Aaron in terms of story time.

One thing that I.

Post here for everyone.

Uh, let me see the best
way I could do this.

Uh, I'm going a little
bit on the fly here.

I wanna highlight this so I can do it.

I can do it.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Uh, share screen.

That's where it is.

I'm gonna show the tweet.

Let's see.

Ah, does that work?

Nice.

So Aaron has, and I'll put it in
the comments here as well, but

um, Aaron has a great diet here on
exactly how the classifying some

of the WP M U dev products and some
other products of his as well has

really helped increase their revenue.

So Aaron, Story time.

Tell us all about how
we increase our revenue

Sure.

Let me give just some examples first.

Some WP and U Dev, uh, most of
our plug-ins are hybrid approach,

so basically we took whatever
services would be better served.

on like a API side and move those there.

Most of them have a free option.

For example, smush would probably be like
one of our most famous ones, very hugely

popular plugin, and it compresses images.

But a software for doing that
effectively doesn't really exist

on on host hosting providers.

They can't really do it within.

The plugin at least without a lot of
compatibility issues and things like that.

So we built the API for that.

That smushes, you know,
millions of images a month.

It's crazy how much traffic it gets, but
that's all handled the api and that way

when we want to improve it, we, there's
a new technology, there's a new kind of

way of compressing images, even better.

Then we just roll that out
and no one even has to know,

don't need to update anything.

It just happens on our.

Amen.

I don't wanna stop your story time, but
I wanna pause No there, super quick.

Uh, cuz that is a little bit
of a big concern for folks who

wanna satisfy their product.

I can't imagine the cost
involved with smush alone.

Uh, there's gotta be a lot
of server resources to do all

of that compression for sure.

Right?

For sure.

Yeah.

, yeah, we have a, yeah,
definitely a investment there

on the infrastructure side.

in that case at least, it's not
really an alternative, but it

provides one of our biggest products.

So yeah, so it works out great for us.

And also we have another SAS feature to
that that's pro only, and that is the cdn.

So after it compresses your images, then
they get served from our CDN instead,

and then we have ways of generating extra
revenue on top of that for bandwidth.

So if they need extra
bandwidth or whatever, then.

Pay for that.

So it provides all these other
ways to monetize your product on

top of just a plug-in license.

Yeah.

And another one of our plug-in
snapshot, which is our backup plug-in,

and that eases a full cloud service
now to do incremental backups cuz

we've found that just doing something
so resource heavy like that within

WordPress just wasn't possible.

Especially when you're
trying to do incremental.

And so we have a whole server
side API that handles all.

Fetching like different files that
are updated and compressing them

and making incremental thing and
storing it in our cloud storage

and different things like that.

And that also allows us to have
plans that may be based on how

much cloud storage they need, how
for backups and things like that.

Um, versus if what that was
all handled in the plugin.

Nice and smart Crawl is similar to Yost,
as Andrew mentioned, to where we have.

Little API is to handle certain parts of
the plugin, for example, a web crawler.

So that's not something that
WordPress can do efficiently.

So we have a web crawler service
that that Smart crawl talks to, and

that goes and it crawls through your
site to identify SEO issues with

various pages and things like that.

Hmm.

And, uh, defender is our security plugin.

We have a lot of features that are p
powered by Cloud, and I think most of

the major security plug-ins do the same,
whether it's like downloading the latest

signatures for, like, detecting malware
and vulnerabilities and things like that.

Or in our case, we have a really
robust audit logging feature in

Defender, creates an audit log of every
activity that's done in WordPress.

yes, you could store that in the
local database, but if your site

gets hacked, then what's the point?

The audit log is useless.

So from the start, we actually built that

as a

SaaS service.

So there's a whole cloud service
that we run where every time one.

, something happens on your WordPress
site, that event gets shipped off to

our API and it's stored in in a way
that it can't be deleted or modified

even if your sites get hacked.

And also allowing people to, to
view all that history from one

central location on our, in our hub.

Nice.

Yeah.

I want you to, I think they're really

good examples of the types
of products that should be.

So for example, backups
inherently, you don't want the

processing to happen in P H P.

And also the storage of
them, by definition, you want

them away from your site.

And all of those examples I think
are really good illustrations

of when it is the right time to
use the status for your product.

Yeah.

For sure.

Some can be optional, like
they're just design choices.

Like for example, our
hummingbird optimization plugin.

So most, most of the optimization
plugins when they minify your CSS

and JavaScript, they try to do that
within P H P, within the plugin itself.

and there's no way to do that very well.

So instead we just built a simple
little service where it sends the the

CSS or JavaScript file to our service,
and then we run it through the actual

unify JS and CSS men tools like that
that are used, like the standards

for compressing those kind of files.

And so we can use just do that really
quickly and return it to the client or.

as another way of monetizing for, as a
pro feature is we can save that on our cdn

and then it gets served from that instead.

So it, it definitely opens the door
and it doesn't have to be either or,

like all SAS or all server side, you
can have little micro services that

are better served from your own APIs.

So I wanna dig in a little
bit with your examples on.

specifically that tweet, uh, like you say,
here's how to take most WordPress plugins

and turn them into a SaaS business.

Uh, how much do you stand behind that?

I think a lot

of them can be . Definitely.

There's an argument for,
are you doing this just for.

Sales marketing purposes, cuz obviously
it depends on the ethos and me,

I'm trying to make a profit, right?

. Mm-hmm.

provide and at the same time provide the
best service that I can to my customers.

But some other people on the
other side, they say, oh, it's

all, it's the open source ethos.

You want all the data to centralize and
to own that data and have it on our own

servers, even if that means it's gonna be
more work or not work as well or whatever.

So there's definitely trade
offs to consider there.

I.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, talk a little bit about how you
feel like this move specifically for W

B M U Dev actually increased revenue.

Yeah, I think it made a
big part and especially as.

We've kind of focused our business
on our ideal customer, which would

be like WordPress agencies or
people that just have a few client

sites, synchro or larger agencies.

And all our products have kind of
neutralized on that one central purpose.

And because of that, like we built
our hub and hosting where all

that can be managed centrally.

And so the whole SaaS side of
our plugins is very important.

Like we've maintained
them as separate plugins.

and with free versions in the repo, cuz
that's a huge funnel, as you said before.

Mm-hmm.

getting new signups and things
like that, but they all funnel

in using like SAS connectors into
our overall like hub package.

So you can manage your seo, your backups,
your, your optimization, everything for

all your sites from one central location.

So definitely has been super important
to, even though we're taking a hybrid

approach with the way the plug-ins.

like most of them don't
necessarily have to connect.

It's just ties in really well with
our business model and the the

customer that we're trying to target.

Nice.

I don't know how I just did that.

. I'm

waiting for the QR code now.

Yeah, you can click on it.

Platform's got some interesting
features, I gotta say.

Yeah.

Nice.

No, that's excellent.

I could say personally, forever
ago, I actually did like a.

Uh, image compression plugin, uh,
throw down article forever ago.

This was like even before
give and all that stuff.

I don't know, like 2011
or 12 or something.

Uh, and at that time, smush definitely
was one of, 'em, was probably

one of the biggest ones even.

Um, but it was only a plugin,
no SAS connector at that time.

Um, and truthfully, like it was really
heavy on the server and it was really

challenging to use it at that time.

So, Definitely see how, uh, how making it
more of a sa and offloading a lot of those

resources and things would improve it
and make it a far better product overall.

Um, that makes a lot of sense to me.

For sure.

Make it more reliable, be able to
do a lot more, uh, image compression

and bulk to one at a time on, on a $5
shared host or something like that.

Yeah,

and it, it can also allow.

To, to do products that aren't possible
in a plugin, like for example, infinite

uploads, which is the kinda side
project business that I started a few

years back, and that's a cloud storage
plugin for WordPress media and video.

And the whole point of that is to offload.

all your WordPress uploads to the cloud
cuz you want it to not take up space on

your local host and you wanna be able
to scale to any amounts of, of files,

whether it's images or video or whatever.

Can't even provide that
as a plugin in itself.

So as far as like business models,
you have two ways of doing that.

You have the offload media, which
you're probably familiar with,

and that's by delicious brains.

WP Engine, I guess owns it.

Yeah.

But they take the approach that is just
connecting to your own S3 cloud account.

But so they have like three and a premium
separate versions of the plugin and

when they need to make updates, they
have to push 'em like the normal way.

And, and in my case, I thought I
saw an opportunity where you can

make a much simpler to where I
could wrap the whole cloud storage

and especially the CDN part and.

Caching and clearing and configuration
and custom domains and SSL and wrap

those all into a much simpler product
that I could sell as one flat price

instead of having just a connector
plugin into some other cloud provider.

Mm-hmm.

. So it provides like whole new kind
of business opportunities, ways of

monetizing and building products.

Nice.

On the business side of things.

Another thing you said in your
tweet is that, uh, SaaS recurring

revenue is better than WordPress
plugin licensing recurring revenue.

Someone who built a WordPress
business around the annual RU renewal.

I'm like, there's a case for that.

Is it always better?

Not necessarily.

Monthly recurring revenue is,
uh, every single month is a,

is an opportunity for churn.

I think that's definitely
a concern for sure.

And, um, but you can also do annual
for SAS to, you could do annual Yep.

Pretty.

Yep.

Do it.

And they can't keep using it

after they cancel.

Yeah.

That's the big, that's the big difference
is once the cancel stops working.

for sure.

And also you can easily
provide tiered plans.

With a normal plugin, you might
not be able to do that so easily.

You don't want to have five
different versions of your

plugin with different features.

So with a SaaS, you can say, okay, if
you need extra storage, you can pay

a little extra to get more storage.

If you want to enable this
new pro feature that we just

created, that's a whole new plan.

Upgrade.

Mm-hmm.

. So you have all these new ways of
monetizing and un unlocking revenue that

you can't do with a traditional just

app store.

Yeah.

Or even downgrading, allowing them
to downgrade to a more affordable

tier, uh, is better than losing
them as a customer completely.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Um, Katie, do you have thoughts on the
business model side of the SaaS thing?

Uh, not particularly, but I do have
a question for you, Matt, which is

whether, um, there's anything you
can talk about experiences within

Stellar of switching to a SaaS model.

Cuz I know that, um, particularly
providing a hosted version of a

product is something that Stellar
have been doing with several of

their brands, and that's SAS as well.

Isn.

Yep.

Uh, biggest example is Learn LearnDash.

We launched LearnDash Cloud.

Um, there's a bit of
precedence for this too.

Elementor launched other Elementor
hosted version a while back as well.

Uh, and, uh, the LearnDash version
and Elementor websites, both

our monthly recurring revenue.

Uh, and the idea is essentially
that you're trying to provide them

with the whole website and feature
set all wrapped up into one.

With Elementor, you're building a whole
entire website with, uh, learn Dash.

You're really building a learning portal.

Uh, and it might be for a short
time, it might be for a long time.

Uh, but the big op opportunity here
is that you get to control that

whole experience for the customer.

Uh, learn Dash can be configured
in a million different ways, and

our experience is we kind of all
the best ways to configure it.

So we might as well give that to you right
out of the box if you really want that.

So hosting costs involved, which is
actually a lot easier when you're Yeah.

Hosting company.

So that's convenient as we kind
of, there, there's still costs,

of course, but the costs are kind
of done a little bit differently.

But, uh, it, it definitely
is a, an interesting idea.

I think for, for the most part it was
done, um, to serve a customer need.

They, there were plenty of customers
who were like, oh, I'd love to use

Learn Dash, but I don't know anything
about building WordPress websites and.

Hosting, what does that mean and
how do I point a domain at a host?

And all of that is just a
hassle when I really just wanna

spin up a course site today.

Uh, that's the customer need.

And, uh, learn Dash Cloud
really tackled that one, like.

Cleanly and clearly, and I don't have
the exact numbers right in front of me.

Uh, the worry with things like this
is that are you going to eat into

your existing customer bases, like
all the plugin, are they gonna say,

oh, much rather do this, and then
they drop their plugin licenses

and go over to the hosted one?

And at the end of the day, that's
not what's happening at all.

They're really two
different customer segments.

Some of 'em really.

They're doing the WordPress plugin
themselves, and the others really

prefer being able to spin it up and run.

So that's a little bit of where
I, I'm like, I think there's

different use cases and different
purposes, different pros and cons.

It depends on the customer, depends
on the need, all that kind of thing.

That's a really good question.

Thanks for asking.

I hadn't even.

Thought of that

.
Almost like that's the ultimate session
for satisfying a WordPress product because

it's from the user's perspective, it's
taken WordPress out of the equation

because it's the whole website.

So the other examples we've talked
about involve using a satisfied product

to enhance your WordPress website, but
ultimately you still have set up word.

And hosting and during the admin,
but with these two examples, they're

the Elementor and the Learn Dash.

That's your whole website, and it
doesn't matter what the platform is.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, and I, I know that's brought
up controversy too, like in the

community, like when Elementor is
doing that, That you're satisfying

the entire WordPress experience or
taking WordPress away, even though

you're using it as part of your SaaS.

So that's something to consider too.

Something that you brought up
earlier, Matt, that I thought

was kind of interesting is what
if, give an example, imagine ai.

So I built that, that's my most recent
product to, uh, For focusing on like

AI image, anything with AI images.

And I kind of decided I wanna maybe leave
the WordPress ecosystem, even though

that's where all my connections are.

So I kind of thought as
a SaaS first product.

So first it's a SaaS open to anyone.

You don't need WordPress.

But then you have the Imagine
AI plugin which connects to it.

Uh, so you don't necessarily half
by being able to target all the.

And everyone, it doesn't mean
you necessarily lose that

awesome funnel that is like a, a
connector plugin on wordpress.org.

You can have best of both worlds , so
you get people come in and finding

out your service from that.

But you also can start targeting
a much broader community than

just the WordPress ecosystem.

Yep.

And you could go the other direction

too.

You can start with your plugin and
expand it, like as you're talking about,

maybe give WP doing or things like that.

Yeah.

Even Yost, uh, for, they
did the Shopify integration.

They actually, they created Yost
dot js, which was like a way

to be able to use Yost on any
website that supported JavaScript.

And um, that was an
interesting experiment.

I haven't really seen personally
much use of it or anybody really.

claiming that it's awesome or whatnot.

I'd be curious to hear if they're
getting usage out of that, but I, and I

believe that's what was poured into their
Shopify feature as well, more or less.

I might be just making things up.

They can correct me if I'm wrong, but
that's, that's one way to go about it too.

We have hit, oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna

throw out one more example.

If you're familiar.

Ari.

Yep.

They

started out as, was it like WP Feedback?

I forgot what it's called, the WordPress
plugin, and now they've gotten full SaaS.

Yeah, I mean targeting
anyone, any web developer, any

website, anything like that.

Yep.

There's a good example that
I think has been successful.

WordPress.

That's a good one.

Yep.

We're gonna wrap up with our last
segment, which we go around and we

share what our best advice is for
any new plug-in shop owners who might

be considering classifying their
products in one form or another.

Uh, Aaron, do you want to kick us off?

Sure.

Uh, just in summary, I'd say there's
a lot of pros to classifying.

There are some trade offs that we
mentioned, especially when it comes to

the technical side and having to develop
APIs and services and maintain those.

And there's cost involved
there, of course.

Uh, but overall, think that the good, um,
thing to pursue for a lot of different

plugins to see if they can that or add
some SaaS features to their product.

Absolutely Katie.

Yeah, I'd say consider that as part
of your thinking about what source

of plugin shop you're going to set up
and where you're going to specialize

us is not the only way to build a
profitable, sustainable business.

As Matt touched on earlier, it's
not like we are saying, I'll put

your plugins on Co Canyon, where
you can't get renewals or anything.

You can get sustainable ongoing revenue,
which allows you to keep supporting

and maintaining a normal plugin.

But I think there are business.

Aaron, are you still there?

I'm here, yeah.

Okay.

Katie.

Freeze for you too.

Yeah.

Ah.

We hit a technical snag.

Bummer, . He can finish her words right?

? I bet.

I bet you that she'll be back any second.

Now, I'll say from my end, uh,
that, uh, the best advice I have

is to really dig into the cost.

Uh, there's actually, when we were looking
into doing a full fledged sass, we found

tons of resources online on estimating
your server costs based on what type

of features and functionality that you.

Be doing.

There's like Excel spreadsheets and
all kinds of stuff that can help

you estimate those things, do all of
your due diligence, and really dig

into what the costs will be and use
that to figure out your pricing for

sure, and but also really consider.

How are you going to attract customers if
it's primarily just a WordPress connector?

I really think it's a lot harder to
use the WordPress funnel as attracting

new audiences because the plugin itself
isn't gonna do anything without the SaaS.

But if it's a plugin that does
something and has SaaS features as well,

then there there's potential there.

, or if you're just gonna do the SaaS
with a WordPress connector, like how

are you going to market that SaaS?

Because in my mind, costs and
acquisitions, new customer

accounts are kind of some of the
biggest ions to take into mine.

Or jumping into a
business model like this.

That's right.

My,

yeah.

Yeah.

And just speaking on that, Server side,
it doesn't have to cost that much.

In most cases, $5 droplet on digital Ocean
can handle a surprising amount of traffic

, depending on what you're trying to do.

So that doesn't necessarily
have to be like a huge blocker

or a huge thing to overcome.

Yep.

And it looks like we might be getting
Katie back in just a second cuz we

are gonna wrap up and I wanted to make
sure to talk about next week as well.

I know it still looks like
it's struggling a little bit.

Let me see if I can add what happens.

I was worried about
that . It's not quite there.

Think I got that might be just my video.

Oh, okay.

Great.

Uh, let's see if that works.

Just trying to get the video.

Okay with me without video then

.
Cool.

Cool.

We're wrapping it up.

Thanks everybody for being
here and for listening in.

Aaron, thanks so much
for being here as well.

Yeah, this was great.

We'll be pushing it out on the socials
and we do have a new YouTube channel

for Product Talk, so find us on
YouTube at Up Product Talk and hit

that subscribe button if you can.