In this podcast, I’ll be talking to Brent about WooCommerce, subscriptions and recurring income. He is the developer behind the subscriptions extension for WooCommerce and I wanted to pick his brain on the industry of eCommerce subscription sites, which have really grown over the years.

I first had Brent on the BobWP eCommerce Show when it was the Do the Woo podcast, way back in  April of 2016. I started our chat today by asking Brent if much has changed in the subscription space since then.

Then we touched on recurring income, something a lot of people dream about. I wanted to see if he had insights into anything that that doesn’t work with recurring income or subscriptions. Also, I wanted his thoughts on how to choose between going the monthly or yearly route.

That led us into community and his thoughts on if you should build your community first or not (and if that depends on your product or service).

Brent shared some of the use cases he has seen where people used subscriptions uniquely and what he has seen as some very different and, possibly, even odd, ways to use subscriptions.

Lastly, I gave him the opportunity to share his most recent service called Robot Ninja. If you want peace of mind with your WooCommerce site, so you don’t have to stress about whether the cart or checkout is working, you will need to listen to this and check out his new service.

You can find Brent:

Prospress.com

RobotNinja.com

Subscriptions Extension on WooCommerce

Twitter @thenbrent

In this week’s podcast, BobWP and Brad Williams talk about WooCommerce 3.4 and GDPR, Gutenberg blocks for WooCommerce product pages, digital currency and online stores, Stripe Radar and Square Buys Weebly.

In episode 5 we kick off the next iteration of Do the Woo with my new co-host Brad Williams. Every two weeks, the two of us with be talking about some WooCommerce-specific news and the broader areas of eCommerce that affect WooCommerce store owners.

This week, we started out by catching up on the looming GDPR and what WooCommerce 3.4 has coming to help store owners comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. As we talked, we agreed that this is not only good for the EU, but for online data protection worldwide. Brad shared that WordPress is also releasing some GDPR integrations in the upcoming 4.9.6.

We chatted a bit about the Gutenberg blocks and what we might anticipate with WooCommerce products. Although it is going to bring some added options for the average store owner regarding design, as with builders that already exist, there is a fine line between taking advantage of the blocks and abusing them. Store owners will be wise to remember how important that product page still is and how a cluttered or bad design could be a killer when it comes to site conversions.

Brad shared an article about Coinbase Commerce, a new service that enables merchants to accept cryptocurrencies. This led to the question of when we might see more online stores accepting Bitcoin type currencies and where that might lead into the future.

Brad also shared some insights on a new service from the payment gateway Stripe. Stripe Radar was built to prevent and reduce credit card fraud. It flags potential chargebacks based on a series of criteria.

In episode 7 of the Do the Woo Podcast, BobWP and Brad talk about:

• iThemes Multi-Channel Sales add-on for Sales Accelerator
• New WooCommerce app for Android in Beta
• Amazon’s Scout

In episode 7, Brad takes the official name of BradWP and we explore some of the latest WooCommerce and eCommerce news.

Brad shares that Chris Lema, VP of Products at Liquid Web (our sponsor) will be doing an AMA on the Facebook Group Advanced WordPress. On this, the the largest WordPress group on Facebook, Chris will answer questions about the WooCommerce managed hosting at Liquid Web. This is your chance to get that answer you have been searching for, live on Oct. 1, 2018, 11 am PDT. Get all the details here plus a link to join the group.

We start out our Woo coverage with a look at the new add-on, Multi-Channel Sales for Sales Accelerator from iThemes. This will not only be a game-changer for your WooCommerce site, but open up your products to more customers and sales. Currently it work with Amazon and eBay. Without any hassle you are going to be able to sell your WooCommerce products easily on both of those sites. Brad and I dive a bit into the basics, but would suggest that you check the iThemes Sales Accelerator as it opens up a new opportunity for WooCommerce store owners.

This new app is pretty cool and Brad and I find it interesting that it came out for Android before iOS. If you are running Jetpack, the app will track your store, manage orders and give you real-time alerts when you get a new order—or even a product review. You can read the article on WPTavern or check it out over on WooCommerce.

This is an interesting article on a new design effort over on Amazon. I ran across it while searching for something on Amazon and noticed enough differences to check into more. The

In episode 8 of the Do the Woo Podcast, BobWP and Brad talk about:

1. Liquid Web’s new pricing structure and marketplace hosting
2. Gutenberg’s proposed release days before Black Friday and the holidays
3. Voice search and whether it will take over organic search for eCommerce sites

We begin with the continuing release of some new WooCommerce-related products over on Liquid Web. They now offer a Marketplace Starter Plan for those who want to build an Etsy-like site around running a marketplace. Neither Brad nor I have seen a lot of this on WooCommerce, but this new offering could bring it into place as it utilizes the Dokan extension for WordPress, a complete multivendor eCommerce solution. This could open the gates for some sites via Woo. We dive into this deeper and touch on the new pricing structure at Liquid Web for their WooCommerce managed hosting.

The WordPress community is abuzz as the talk of Gutenberg intensifies for all of us in the trenches. The release, slated for Nov. 19th, will have a two-prong effect. For site owners in the US, it’s the update is e thinking about as you hear up for your busiest time of year. The other is the close proximity to Black Friday and how critical that day is to online sales numbers. Brad and I give some thoughts on this and why this is rubbing many people the wrong way.

Recently I had Rand Fishkin, a co-founder of SEOMoz, on my other podcast. In that show I asked him how voice search will affect organic search. His perspective was very interesting and he pointed out the voice search is not going to cannibalize organic search. Brad and I talk about this and how Rand’s thought make total sense.

In episode 9 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad and BobWP give their thoughts on:

• The release of WooCommerce 3.5
• Post-WooSesh, a virtual online conference for WooCommerce store builders
• The New Woo and the additional analytics coming to the dashboard
• An article that observed 27% of online store customers do not use tabs

The latest version of WooCommerce came out only an hour after we recorded this show. We had talked about it in an earlier episode, but are making a quick revisit. The new wording on emails sent out to customers is moving in the right direction. And in 2019, they are looking at even doing more. In addition, the new, various endpoints are something that devs have been looking forward to. You can read more about the release on the WooCommerce blog.

Brad was able to get some data from Brian Richards, the co-organizer of WooSesh. The conference was a virtual one for the first time and from the data he shared, coupled with the feedback we heard, it was a great success. For those who attended, videos will be coming out soon on Brian’s site and we will wait and see if there are opportunities for others to access them as well.

I was only able to listen to a couple of the sessions, because of my busy schedule. But I was impressed not only with the delivery of the session, but the active conversations going on in chat. I am guessing that we can expect to see this one again.

In the keynote of WooSesh, we were introduced to the New Woo. This includes a developing project and a new plugin called WC-Admin. It’s based on Gutenberg and a much improved way for store owners to get data and records. WPTavern has a helpful article on it, or you can go to GitHub and download it to test. Of course, it’s not ready for a live site, so it’s best to play around with on a demo site.

As

In episode 10 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad, BobWP and special guest Cory Miller have a conversation about:

• iThemes and the celebration of their 11-year anniversary
• What is happening with headless eCommmerce
• Brand awareness and the growth of the direct-to-consumer trend
• BigCommerce’s entering the WordPress eCommerce space
• How store pickup is giving online opportunities to retailers beyond Amazon

We start out the show with Cory Miller, founder of iThemes which is celebrating its 11th year in the WordPress space. Cory talks about what running a successful business has meant to him. It’s a huge accomplishment and something that Cory and his team should be very proud of.

Since I was not able to get either of their eCommerce predictions, nor share my own on the upcoming show where I snag several of them from eCommerce experts attending WordCampUS in December, we give our own predictions today. We agreed that we are starting to see headless eCommerce in action in the WordPress space and expect to see more. We share several thoughts and end with the prediction that this will not replace solutions like WooCommerce, but instead just give people more options when using WordPress.

Then we discuss an article that talked about how other retailers have found an antidote to Amazon: buy online, pick up in-store. We talked about other big retailers finding success with this and also how this model will bring options to smaller and local retailers that want to benefit cash from an online presence.

Lastly, we talk a bit about the latest plugin release from BigCommerce and what this means to the WordPress eCommerce industry. Their tight integration with WordPress is a first for an eCommerce platform, and we agree that this is going to play fairly big when it comes to options for running an online store with WordPress.

Brad – Robot Ninja

Robot Ninja is a wonderful service brought to you by

In episode 11 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad, BobWP and special guest Jonathan Martin have a conversation about:

• WooCommerce blocks is now a featured plugin with 6 new blocks
• ACF vs. Gutenberg blocks for WooCommerce
• Wc-admin 0.5.9 release
• The new Woo mobile app

Our guest Jonathan Martin, founder of Coolblueweb talks about his agency and how it started.

We talk about the newest WooCommerce block, how that it is now a featured plugin on WordPress, it having first come out as a grid with categories being the only filter. Now you can filter using these blocks: best- selling products, top-rated products, newest products and on-sale products. Two additional blocks, feature products and products by attribute will be added by the end of January.

Jonthan and Brad, as agency owners, talk more in depth about creating blocks for WooCommerce, either as Gutenberg blocks or ACF (advanced customer field) blocks.

Since none of us have dabbled in this yet, we shared how those who are interested can learn about the latest updates.

We dive into the new mobile app and share some of what we are seeing. The new app, both for iOS and Android, has some key features around tracking, managing orders and real-time order alerts.

Jonathan – VerifyWP

I asked our guest, Jonathan, what is new with him and his recently launched new site, which is currently in beta.

In episode 12 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad, BobWP and special guest Chris Badgett have a conversation about:

• LifterLMS and WooCommerce.
• WooCommerce opens the door to bitcoin SV.
• WooCommerce dev chats starts up again.
• Winners and losers in 2018 eCommerce

Chris talks about Learn Management Systems, his journey in creating LifterLMS and the newest integration with WooCommerce. We also go deeper into the space of LMS and look at its significant growth over the years.

Brad touches more on Bitcoin and an article that announces a plugin that allows WooCommerce store owners to sell only using Bitcoin SV. We also reflect on how much we have seen ourselves with online stores offering this as a payment option and discuss the question: is it a good idea to only accept Bitcoin?

Just a bit of news: the dev chat for WooCommerce returned Jan. 31st and you can catch future chats over on the WooCommerce Community Slack.

This article talks about the winners in the space, and you can probably guess who they are. Also those who are fading away. We talk about a few of the numbers the article shares and what we found surprising, or not.

Bob – Upcoming Podcast

Tune into our BobWP eCommerce Show on February 19th when I chat with Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and Todd Wilkens, lead of eC

In episode 13 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad and BobWP invite special guest Patrick Rauland to talk about his new product, the board game, Fry Thief.

We also chat a bit about my other podcast with Matt Mullenweg and Todd Wilkens on WordPress and WooCommerce, plus some other news of stuff going on in the eCommerce world.

Patrick Rauland has been in the WooCommerce space for several years, and was WooCommerce Product manager in the past. He currently is a WooCommerce consultant, but also is creating his first product, a board game called Fry Thief.

He recently just completed a Kickstarter funding round for the game that was very successful, and he touches on some of what he has learned through the product development stage so far.

If you are thinking of creating and selling your first product, you will want to tune in.

We also touch a bit on my other podcast and the show I had with Matt Mullenweg and Todd Wilkens. Brad was particularly interested in the comment Matt made:

Something very fundamental happened when Automattic acquired WooCommerce. Previously we had mirrored our mission as Automattic to the same one as Core WordPress, which is to democratize publishing. When WooCommerce joined the family, we added two important words: to democratize publishing and commerce. So, it was a fundamental shift in the mission of the company.

Brad also shared the community on reddit for WooCommerce if anyone is interested in that, as well as the upcoming Pressnomics conference, number 6. As far as the latter goes, if you are running a WordPress business, this is one conference you won’t want to miss. Also, a good chunk of the Woo community is represented there as well.

Patrick is in the works with the next

In episode 14 of the Do the Woo Podcast, Brad and BobWP invite special guest Daniel Espinoza to talk about his work and experience with WooCommerce and subscriptions.

Daniel Espinoza as been in the WooCommerce space since its release. Having working at WooCommerce and then going out on his own, he has discovered his niche is providing clients support for their WooCommerce subscription sites through his agency Grow Development.

Daniel also has a solid background in products as he runs the site Shop Plugins, which has some awesome WooCommerce plugins. I should know. I’ve written posts on every one of them here.

Brad and I were able to dive in with Daniel on his choice to focus on subscriptions with WooCommerce, as well as his experience in the product space.

He also shared some words of wisdom as Brad asked him if the WordPress plugin space has reached the saturation point. From his own experience, Daniel talks about what he would do if he was considering this as a plugin developer.

As we continued talking about subscriptions, Daniel gave us some great examples of what is working and why subscription sites have exponentially grown over the last few years.

The release of 2.5.0 of the Subscriptions extension went out in early February, and we had the chance to ask Daniel his favorite new feature. We also talked about a couple of the other added options that came with this update. You can read more about it over on the Prospress blog.

Not a major update, but a mention of the product blocks will now be in WooCommerce core vs. the blog plugin.

Post Mentioned: The Future of eCommerce at Shoptalk