Probably just like you, the exploration for the secret ingredient to running a successful business is a tricky one.

Speaking for myself, I can tell you that I’m constantly trying to learn and dissect what some of the most successful brands are in my space.

• How did she do it?
• What does the website look like?
• Productized service or digital product?
• Smash that like button on a secret formula to generating $5m in Facebook ad sales

All of this with our blinders on. Sometimes, the real secret, is just staying in the game. Jason joined us eight years ago, right when he and his wife Kim were making the transition to full-time product sales, leaving custom client work behind.

Now, Paid Memberships Pro has over 100,000 active installs according the WordPress.org directory and his business is getting a lot more focused on…doing what works.

Has he considered convergent PMP into a hosted solution? What about outside acquisition? You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out!

This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by how to market your plug-in dot com a framework for the sleep deprive developer. If you ask yourself, how do I get more downloads for my plugin? What about more sales? Should I do this lifetime license thing? You need to pick up the book, how to market your plugin over app. How to market your plugin.com.

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This book will help you market while you’re building your plugin. Instead of treating your marketing as a last resort. I can’t tell you how many times. How many interviews I’ve had, where the developer has just fallen upon luck and chance that they have a business in front of them. People are downloading their plugin. People are buying their plugin, but they hit a certain point of plateau where they need to scale. They need to get the word out there and this book will help you do it. Check it [email protected]. Thanks for supporting the show.

This episode is also brought to you by media, ron.com media ron.com Ronald Ereka he’s back. He creates WordPress plugins. In fact, one of his plugins I was searching for the other day. Totally forgot that he made it called highlight and share. He creates a highlight and share plug, and you can highlight sections of texts and share them with your network right on your WordPress website.

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I’m going to click into the event, tracking for gravity forms. Of course you’ll need gravity forms, but you can download event tracking for free, right from either his website, media, ron.com or search for it on wordpress.org. It’s got 30,000 plus active installs. Well at the time of this recording, it was, it was updated a week ago. But if you’re looking to connect Google analytics, Google tag managers, to your gravity forms. Well to do a vent trackings, this plugin will do the trick. Check out media, ron.com for more of his plugins, reach out the Ronald you reca. If you have any other questions about building a WordPress plugin for yourself.

Thanks for supporting the show.

Probably just like you, the exploration for the secret ingredient to running a successful business is a tricky one. Speaking for myself. I can tell you that I’m constantly trying to learn and dissect what some of the most successful brands are doing in my space. How did she do it? What does the website look like?

Product I service or digital product. Smash that like button on a secret formula to generate $5 million in Facebook ad sales.

And all of this with our blinders on. Sometimes the real secret is just staying in the game. Today’s guest first joined us eight years ago. Right? When he and his wife were making the transition to full-time product sales, leaving custom client work behind. Now paid memberships pro has over 100,000 active installs, according to the wordpress.org directory and his business is getting a lot more focused on doing what works.

Has Jason considered converting, paid memberships pro into a hosted solution. What about outside acquisition? You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out. You’re listening to the Maryport.

A podcast for the resilient digital business builders. Subscribe to the newsletter at maryport.com/subscribe or follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts better yet. Share this episode on your social media. We’d love more listeners around here. Okay. Let’s get into today’s episode.

With Jason.

hey, Jason, welcome to the program.

Hey, it’s great to be here. I’m a big fan, a big listener, and it’s good to just get to chat with you again. Um, I’m going to do this every couple of weeks.

Like there’s a thunderstorm today and I’m going to, you know, the thunder storm is gonna cancel this one too, and I’ll have to reschedule for next week.

so I last had you on eight years ago, when you were one of the founding. Interviewees of the Maryport podcast, a lot has changed. And a lot hasn’t changed. Uh, for paid memberships pro and your business. Uh, and for WordPress. Chris lemma re recently wrote a post about, uh, the future success of WordPress, which we’ll get into in a little bit and sort of how he sees hosts playing a role in the adoption of WordPress, uh, streamlining WordPress onboarding, even specific flavors of let’s say membership sites, e-commerce sites, that kind of thing.

But go back in your time machine and let me know, where were you mentally? Eight years ago with the business. And when we first interviewed.

Yeah. Um, so that, that would have been 2013, which would have been a couple of years after paid memberships pro launched. And at that point PM pro was really a loss leader for our consulting business.

So it was mostly just Kim and I, and we had a couple of contractors, um, you know, who helped out with random things. But we, you know, we had a membership plugin for WordPress and we parlayed that into, you know, 10 to $30,000, you know, gigs installing WordPress from membership sites and things like that. Um, and we were, we were doing that transition of like, Hey, how do we transition from a consultant company to a products company?

We were just starting that around 2013 and, and also like figuring out our first hire. I remember how hard, like the first hire was, um, And now it’s kind of like, you know, we’re hiring all the time. It’s like, it has to be a process where we’re constantly, like we have relatively low turnover of employees and we’ve been like, grateful for that.

But even that, like just growing and, you know, people go occasionally that, you know, we have to, as a process now, like hiring people as a process, it was like a huge deal. The biggest thing of the year, you know, in 2013. And now it’s just another process. Yeah.

Probably one of the most, uh, popular, free membership plugins that are out there.

I know there’s a lot of plugins out there that sort of skate by semi membership. You know, they’re doing like log-in and access control, but certainly not to the degree of integration, ad-ons support general reach that you have memberships a hot space. Uh, when we...