Pippin Williamson is the founder and CEO of Sandhill Development which is well known for its three premium plugins, Easy Digital Downloads, Affiliate WP and Restrict Content Pro. In this episode, Cath talks with Pippin Williamson about how he got started, how he grew his business, how he has dealt with lulls in motivation… And what’s up with this brewery that he owns!

Pippin Williamson is the man behind the fantastic plugins Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads and Affiliate WP as well as teaching others in his plugin development courses at pippinsplugins.com and co-hosting the Apply Filters podcast with Brad Touesnard – and he’s only 25!

Beaver Builder is a page builder solution developed by the three guys (Robby McCullough, Billy Young and Justin Busa). The boys discovered the internet as a career early on in life and came together five years ago to form their first company FastLine Media, from which followed Beaver Builder. This is a fun interview with the 3 guys, discussing the ups and downs of creating a successful business.

Pippin runs one of the most successful WordPress plugin businesses and is one of the most earnest, effective and transparent business owners in our WordPress community. If you run (or aspire to run) a WordPress plugin or theme business I highly recommend you read each one of his year in review posts–they’re full of excellent insight.

The WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem is incredibly competitive. With 50,000+ plugins and themes to date and more added every day, it can be hard to stand out. To be competitive you need to stay at the top of your game with your how WordPress is evolving, how to grow sales and how to run your business.

WooCommerce, iThemes Exchange and some other of the most successful WordPress companies have managed to build significant businesses with the add-ons monetization model. It’s very tempting just to follow them based on their success.

Today we’d like to share one specific example that can help many WordPress agencies (and freelancers) to increase their monthly bottom line with in-house developed plugins & themes. This is the success story of Ryan Theis, a partner of ours. Ryan shares how they did it at their agency – BNG Design, an Inc 5,000 Web Design & Marketing agency from Fargo.

A while ago, we managed to launch a page builder plugin named Forge. It is a freemium plugin– people can use it for free, and then upgrade with some paid extensions. And the actual challenge of creating Forge was not the plugin itself, but rather promoting it. Here’s what we did.

Is everyone getting out of the theme business? In November, 2013 we heard that the theme business at WooThemes was only generating 20% of their revenue. Then, in February, they announced they were stopping the theme subscription club.

2008 doesn’t seem like very long ago. And yet, so much has changed in the last five or six years – particularly when it comes to WordPress themes. Particularly when it comes to selling WordPress themes.

Pricing is tough – I know I say that a lot. When you’re pricing WordPress extensions or addons (dependent products), it’s even harder. What I want to do is highlight a challenge that comes from selling dependent products.

The WordPress economy is changing, and many businesses are feeling it. The market is maturing, and customers are behaving differently. It’s happening slowly, but I think everyone realizes things are changing. Often this change has been discussed in terms of hosts and agencies, but let’s talk about products.

When I write “premium WordPress plugins” I’m simply talking about a plugin you charge for. And when I say you’d be wrong, I’m saying that I don’t always believe monetizing the plugin itself is the right course of action. Here are five reasons you shouldn’t release a premium WordPress plugin, and instead give it to the community for free.

Here’s what I know. These prices are all way too low. I set aside a budget of $2000 a year for plugins that help me make money. The last several years I’ve not spent it. Know why? Because the market keeps pushing these prices down. And the message is wrong, because eventually some folks are just going to look at doing something else.

Can authors still make money selling WordPress themes? In today’s episode, Jonathan Atkinson an Envato Exclusive Author, joins Devin and I to discuss the current state of affairs in the WordPress theme marketplace. Atkinson shares some deep insights into Envato’s recent corporate restructuring, impact of multipurpose themes, and progressive competition in the space.

Everyone loves a good “how to make seven figures in software sales” story, but not every business owner desires to claim that headline. If there’s one trend, it’s that we don’t need world domination as a driving force to grow our business.

In this podcast, Troy talks to the developers of Beaver Builder- Robby McCullough, Billy Young and Justin Busa. This is a fun interview with the three guys, discussing the ups and downs of creating a successful business that came about simply from a need to “scratch their own itch”!

In this article we’ll go through some top tips from the developers behind three of the top WordPress plugins out there: NextGEN Gallery, Easy Digital Downloads and WordPress SEO by Yoast.

We initially offered lifetime support and updates. All was well for a couple of years, but eventually questions about sustainability started: if you purchased a WordPress theme once for $60, is it a fair deal to both parties to offer unlimited support requests and significant updates for years to come? As popular themes started receiving huge updates years after their original release, questions about sustainability started arising.

Many developers in the WordPress community aren’t aware of the power of SEO in WordPress.org directory, but if you think about it, most of the traffic to your plugin’s or theme’s listing is coming from search. So instead of spending days, weeks, months on polishing features (although those are obviously important, too)… you can potentially spend less than a day optimizing your readme.txt file and get a very significant boost in traffic to your listing, which will directly increase your acquisition rate.

What’s the hardest part of any business? Distribution. Getting your product out there in from of prospective customers in order to generate sales is hard! So, we thought we’d help you out. Here’s a list of sites for PR to jumpstart your WordPress business.