How Jeffro will make money

[davecoveney]

Been thinking a little, lately, about how Jeffro can make a decent living out of WordPress.

In the long term, he can and will - he understands WP and its community, which means his writing will always form a central point. But advertising driven business models are hard work - you need sales people, really, who can persuade people to place adverts. CPC and CPM campaigns are OKish, but often have poor returns because they're not wildly specific.

However, if Jeffro can keep on making this a key place to come to for the WP community then it makes it a strategic place to advertise. Here's what would I believe could draw high value traffic:

Sector specific content (perhaps even section the site) - eg, Enterprise, Multisites, media and so on. In particular Enterprise tends to be high value, even if the traffic is low, because in large companies few people have the time or even desire to go searching deeply for information so they'll favour one place, and then the advertising revenue will follow. I don't believe there's anything wrong with permission led aggregation, or extract based editorial that feeds folk to other sites.

By sectioning off content and by encouraging input from others, the site could become quite amazing. It will need help, and maybe we could do that - we have a framework that we haven't released (but may consider it this year) that could be used to help develop a pretty sophisticated site.

Jeffro doesn't need to write that much - he needs to have an editor's mindset more than anything.

I think.

Any thoughts?

I get my inspiration, incidentally, from seeing where some of our media clients make their money.

[Jeffro]

Actually, once the site has reached a particular point, you no longer really need a sales team. From what I've experienced, the site has begun to sell itself. Essentially, as I write more content, especially affiliated reviews, the advertising spots have been selling themselves. I've also received more inquiries to talk specifics regarding advertising.

Making WPTavern.com a key place to go within the bigger WordPress community is a tough job. When I see that word Enterprise, I yawn. I thought I could easily cover all of the other projects under the Automattic umbrella which is why I created those categories but what that does is ruin the focus of what the site is all about. In the past few months, I've tried to maintain discipline on covering all things WordPress first, then if I have time, write about the other projects which has worked so far on reapplying focus on WordPress.

The guest posts that have been published in the past on the site were always popular. Getting guest posts is hard unless I'm willing to pay which I'm not. WPTavern is also not at the point where people get a mad rush of traffic if linked to from this site.

I like writing. I think the best thing that can happen right now is if everyone on the forum somehow placed a link on their site to the forum or the WPTavern.com website. Just as a way of saying that's how they stay up to date or that's where they go for the latest WordPress discussions.

I'm thinking some sort of linking campaign is in store. I'll have to revisit that topic of getting images made for the site that people could place on their own site, like a badge.

[davecoveney]

[long post deleted]

Short version is - I picked up on your 'When I see that word Enterprise, I yawn" phrase, yet the more people yawn about Enterprise, the better it is for me. There's money, great people and great work to be found in the field. It's no harder or easier than normal web stuff, you'll get less acclaim, but at the same time you get more money.

Money isn't everything, but it's a lot easier to have fun when you're secure :o)

Anyway, onto the subject at hand - I'd be happy to contribute the occasional guest post, but it might be on very boring subjects like how to set up a productive development environment. I've given up on trying to change the world, or whinging about Automattics occasional capriciousness - life's too short.

[Mohsin]

The simpler way would be to promote affiliate products. If you choose to review and promote the right kind of stuff, the trust this community has in you will result in good commissions.

The harder way, of course, is to create your own WordPress related products. Even if you're not a programmer or a designer, you can outsource the development of products and then market /sell them on the WP Tavern platform.

You'd be surprised if I revealed some big names who conduct their business this way. ;)

[mastermute]

I have to agree with Dave, 'The Enterprise' is where the big money is. If you have a concept to target the Enterprise market you will probably have a more secure audience. I know it's not as flashy as the regular web but looking at Sharepoint and other products for Enterprises there must be a niche for WP. I've dabbled [very little] with Sharepoint, and it's a HOG! WP would suit 80% of what Sharepoint does with 20% of the effort. Adding the remaining 20%, that is the challenge!

[amitlin14]

Actually, once the site has reached a particular point, you no longer really need a sales team. From what I've experienced, the site has begun to sell itself. Essentially, as I write more content, especially affiliated reviews, the advertising spots have been selling themselves. I've also received more inquiries to talk specifics regarding advertising.

Making WPTavern.com a key place to go within the bigger WordPress community is a tough job. When I see that word Enterprise, I yawn. I thought I could easily cover all of the other projects under the Automattic umbrella which is why I created those categories but what that does is ruin the focus of what the site is all about. In the past few months, I've tried to maintain discipline on covering all things WordPress first, then if I have time, write about the other projects which has worked so far on reapplying focus on WordPress.

The guest posts that have been published in the past on the site were always popular. Getting guest posts is hard unless I'm willing to pay which I'm not. WPTavern is also not at the point where people get a mad rush of traffic if linked to from this site.

I like writing. I think the best thing that can happen right now is if everyone on the forum somehow placed a link on their site to the forum or the WPTavern.com website. Just as a way of saying that's how they stay up to date or that's where they go for the latest WordPress discussions.

I'm thinking some sort of linking campaign is in store. I'll have to revisit that topic of getting images made for the site that people could place on their own site, like a badge.

In my opinion, that a very bad way of thinking-"Actually, once the site has reached a particular point, you no longer really need a sales team. From what I've experienced, the site has begun to sell itself.", letting the site sell it self is a very bad way of thinking, if you want to get the site to a point where its another source of income, you need to advertise it yourself, no site is powerfull enough to advertise itself, look at google for example, you see google chrome ads EVERYWHERE, and its the most powerfull site in the word! and the +1 button is one of the best campaigns ive seen in my life, the point is, if you want to get it done, DO IT YOURSELF!

the fact that you love writing is a very good plus for that, because content-traffic, and traffic-ads, but writing isnt enought for that matter, if you really want to get this site to be a better helpdesk then the actuall wp hd, you need to advertise it, not just post content, you need to get links to this site, for example, i found this site from searching "worpdress forums" and guess what i found, besides the helpdesk i found a blog of someone that has a link for your site, so yeah.. thats good, but it would have been much better for you and for me if the actuall forum was in the search results, and by the way, you dont need sales team to get income from websites...

bottom line - I think you need to change your way of thinking if you want to get this site to be another source of income, and in the near future.

[Pat in Michigan]

My only fear is that this market; Wordpress, Host and design is saturated.

[Jeffro]

This thread is really not relevant anymore. The site is not mine anymore but I'm being paid as a contractor to maintain it. It's the best scenario and something I've wanted for a long time.