Episode 120 – Shannon Shaffer

Introducing Shannon Shaffer

Shannon is a mom, travel enthusiast, book lover, and doer of WordPress stuff. A self-proclaimed geek, Shannon owns Purple Finch studios, a small digital agency located in Pennsylvania.

Show Notes

Website | Purple Finch Studios

Instagram | ShannonTShaffer

Twitter | @shannontshaffer

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 120.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Shannon Shaffer. Shannon is a mom, travel enthusiast, book lover, and doer of WordPress stuff. A self-proclaimed geek, Shannon owns purple Finch studios, a small digital agency located in Pennsylvania. Welcome, Shannon.

Shannon: Hi Tara and Liam. Thanks for having me.

Tara: We’re really glad to have you here. Shannon. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself?

Shannon: Sure. I’m Shannon Shaffer and I live in a town in Wyoming called Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. I’ve lived all of my 44 years here in Pennsylvania, so I’m kind of a home buddy. I love my state. I am a reformed blogger as I like to call it. About 13 years ago, I started a blog that changed my life. I was in corporate finance for a long time and decided one day to start writing on the internet.

All these years later, I’ve been in the WordPress space and it literally has taken me from being, like I like to call it, corporate soldier going into work from nine to five every day to being someone who lives the best lifestyle that I can imagine, being able to work from anywhere, and have a fantastic team that’s distributed throughout the world. I have really no complaints.

Tara: That’s great. What a great story. What is the blog that you started? What started this path I guess?

Shannon: I was working in corporate finance, and I went online and I read this blog and I’m like, “I can do this.” And so I started writing about saving money. I had a degree in finance. I started on blogger. Then I think it was around late 2006, maybe early 2007 I found WordPress and I just started writing my little blog and found Twitter, and somehow found about 100 million website views a year. So it grew…

Tara: 100 million?

Shannon: Yes. It grew from just me to a team, to a network of blogs, which I then in 2014 sold to a media company.

Tara: Wow. Amazing. You built something with that many views without having a background in blogging and online digital marketing.

Shannon: And at that time, if you really think about it, nobody really had a background in digital marketing. When I started there was no Twitter. Facebook was just for colleges. Basically, people ask what I do, and Am I a designer, am I a developer and I just say, “No, I’m a doer of WordPress stuff.” So it’s kind of a title that’s funny because I don’t have a technical background. But in the process of blogging and growing my team and growing my websites, you learn these things. I just learned as I went, learned how to code. You don’t want me to code anything because I’m the worst developer on the planet. But one thing that I did learn was how to convert people on a website.

Tara: Wow. I think Liam and I are still both a little bit stuck on the 100 million views number. Is that on one website or is that on all the websites?