Episodes
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Vova Feldman is a self-confessed serial entrepreneur and full-stack developer with a passion for helping software product makers earn a living from their passion projects.
In 2011, while doing enterprise sales, Vova learned the importance of tailoring a price to a buyer and why psychology can powerfully impact the sales process. Years later, Vova experimented with prices and packaging for a micro-SaaS he developed. At Freemius, he’s been actively involved in creating and experimenting with the company’s pricing page to optimize results.
The final episode of plugin.fm season 2 distills a decade of pricing mastery into an insightful hour-long conversation.
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Thanks to Vova for joining us and providing such valuable advice about software pricing pages and the psychology behind them.
Season 2 is a wrap and we’d like to thank all of our guests for the valuable insights and experiences they provided! Look out for news on season 3 shortly 😉
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Jason Cohen is the founder of the renowned WordPress hosting company WP Engine. His background in building and scaling successful businesses means he’s not only a serial entrepreneur but also an investor and startup mentor. His journey as a founder includes various undertakings — including co-founding Smart Bear Software — which makes him an expert in growing businesses and organizations.
This episode is a deep dive into the art of scaling. It explores various topics: the mindset required as a founder, challenges, exhilarating moments, and the struggles along the way. Jason shares invaluable insights and lessons learned through his entrepreneurial journey, shedding light on what it takes to navigate the complexities of scaling a business.
Prepare for a conversation that is enlightening, inspiring, and packed with actionable advice for anyone looking to skyrocket their business.
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Thanks to Jason for joining us and providing such valuable advice about the art of scaling a business. Join us next week with Freemius founder and CEO Vova Feldman to learn about mastering the art of mastering software pricing pages.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Episodes manquant?
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Joost de Valk shaped the landscape of WordPress SEO with his company Yoast. What started as a small bootstrapped product grew into a 40-person enterprise with over 12 million websites using the flagship product Yoast SEO. Incredibly, this was just the beginning of Joost’s journey. In 2021, Joost and his wife Marieke van de Rakt exited Yoast, which set him on a new, exciting path into the world of investing with Emilia Capital.
In this episode, Joost shares his unique experience and perspective of the software creator ecosystem as seen from both sides of the fence. We explore his investment criteria, outcome expectations, and the intricate dance between profit and growth.
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Thanks to Joost for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with Jason Cohen, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of the renowned WP Engine, as we explore how to build and scale successful businesses.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Amir Helzer is the founder of OnTheGoSystems, the company behind WPML, a leading multilingual plugin used by over a million websites. Originally, WPML was a freemium plugin, but due to unfortunate — even somewhat controversial — circumstances, Amir and his team decided to make the product paid only. This business model shift would end up transforming his company for the better.
In this episode, we dive into the challenges and dynamics of taking a product from freemium to premium successfully, from community buy-in and market positioning to pricing models and retaining users. Whether you're a seasoned developer or a budding entrepreneur, this episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the ever-changing landscape of software monetization.
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Thanks to Amir for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with Yoast founder Joost de Valk for his insights about the power of raising funds in bootstrapping ecosystems.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Justin Ferriman is the founder and former CEO of LearnDash, a platform that he grew from a simple blog to one of the leading solutions in the LMS space through a mixture of aggressive marketing and clever ‘guerilla’ tactics that helped him take on bigger competitors. He’s a non-technical founder who approaches business with a competitive streak that’s seen him go from underdog to top dog in the eLearning industry.
At the height of LearnDash’s success, Justin sold the company at 32% YoY growth with a whopping 76% profit margin. He’s since settled into the role of elite business coach at his company BrightGrowth, where he nurtures and guides the star entrepreneurs of the future.
Thanks to a combination of savvy business instincts, constant content creation, and confident competitiveness, Justin has realized great success. In this episode, we examine the specific strategies and tactics he used to take on bigger competitors with more resources to emerge as the victor.
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Thanks to Justin for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with Amir Helzer, the founder of OnTheGoSystems. His company is responsible for WPML, the leading multilingual plugin used by more than a million websites.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Arvid Kahl co-founded FeedBack Panda, which he bootstrapped and later sold for a life-changing amount to SureSwift Capital. He is also a published author and writes extensively about entrepreneurship and bootstrapping.
But he’s much more than a software creator and value-driven entrepreneur: Arvid is passionate about sharing the journey. His openness, honesty, and transparency during product development and beyond have rightfully positioned him as a passionate advocate of the ‘build in public’ movement.
In this episode of plugin.fm, Arvid shares his insights about how software product founders can tread the fine line between transparency and business strategy. More than this, we explore the profound impact that building in public can have on software product makers' lives and careers.
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Thanks to Arvid for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with non-technical founder Justin Ferriman as he discusses how underdog entrepreneurs can overpower bigger software companies.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Chris Badgett is the co-founder and CEO of LifterLMS, a popular LMS (learning management system) plugin for creating, launching, and scaling courses. So far, LifterLMS has helped achieve 8 million+ enrollments and 12 million+ completed courses and lessons. It stands to reason that Chris is rightfully regarded as one of the leading voices in open-source eLearning and educational technology.
Chris is a passionate advocate for democratizing online education, and as a non-technical founder, he offers a unique business perspective on eLearning. He frequently shares this knowledge and expertise on LMScast, his podcast for innovators in the eLearning community.
Before developing LifterLMS, Chris’s company built custom course and membership platforms for clients. Even to this day, some of those platforms gross over 1 million dollars per year, year on year.
In this episode, we pick his brain and explore the transformative potential of educational marketing through course creation, focusing specifically on the possibilities for software product makers.
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Thanks to Chris for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with co-founder, bootstrapper, writer, and podcaster Arvid Kahl to learn about the positive impact that building in public can have on software product makers’ lives and careers.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Kim Coleman and Jason Coleman are two entrepreneurs who have shared the journey of building a software company. However, their mission has been much more than a professional partnership. They’re a married couple with two kids who’ve built a successful company and several software products together: it’s safe to say they bring a unique perspective to the world of bootstrapping.
In 2006, they launched Stranger Studios, a web design and software development studio. In 2011 they launched their now flagship product Paid Memberships Pro. The big success followed in 2015 when they started building the team.
For most folks, logging off or commuting home at the end of the day is enough to separate your work life and your personal life. But for Kim and Jason, the lines are not as clear cut. In this episode, they discuss navigating personal and professional challenges, that range from compromising (or not) on hard decisions to facilitating a healthy work environment that encourages team morale, all while maintaining a harmonious marriage.
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Thanks to Kim and Jason for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with co-founder, bootstrapper, writer, and podcaster Arvid Kahl to learn about the positive impact that building in public can have on software product makers' lives and careers.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Matt Mullenweg is best known as the visionary co-founder of WordPress and Automattic. He’s rightfully secured his place as one of the most prominent figures in the tech world and — more specifically — a pioneer of remote working,
Despite having no physical headquarters, Automattic currently has around 2000 employees working from 90+ countries and was recently valued at US$7.5 billion, making it one of the largest globally distributed companies in the world. WordPress is the biggest CMS in the world (and a movement of sorts), powering over 43% of the internet. Matt’s influence on tech has been far-reaching and revolutionary, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that his initiatives have changed the game.
While Automattic is Matt’s main focus, he also advises and invests in startups through his company Audrey Capital, and hosts Distributed, a podcast about the future of work and the foremost companies and leaders driving it.
In the first episode of plugin.fm season 2, we pick Matt’s brain about the challenges of building a remote-first company and the wins that arise from succeeding. Matt shares his insights and advice on navigating the pitfalls of a flexible workplace and building a successful remote-first company — ranging from accountability and compensation to hiring and productivity.
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Thanks to Matt for joining us and providing such valuable advice about building successful distributed companies. Join us next week with Stranger Studios owners Kim and Justin Coleman as they discuss the challenges of bootstrapping a software company with your spouse.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Rand Fishkin is a digital marketing heavyweight and an instantly recognizable name in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) and educational marketing. Rand wears many hats (or crowns) including tech entrepreneur, creator, author, and co-founder of two successful startups.
He is arguably best known for co-founding Moz (a $45 million/year business) and serving as CEO until stepping down in 2014. He went on to co-found SparkToro in 2018 and — in the same year — authored and released Lost and Founder, his painfully honest, personal memoir chronicling the trials and tribulations of his startup journey.
In this episode, Rand shares lessons learned from his journey and discusses topical matters for entrepreneurs in 2024:
How he went from starting a blog to building a productWhat is educational marketing, and how you can invest in itIf B2B companies should even be on TikTokHow long you should invest in SEOThe traits technical founders should look for when hiring a marketer----
Thanks to Rand for joining us and providing such valuable advice about search engine optimization and educational marketing. Join us next week with one of the most prominent figures in the tech world and a bonafide pioneer of remote working, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg. He shares his insights/advice on how founders can navigate the pitfalls of global distribution to build a winning distributed company.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Jamie Marsland is a WordPress plugin creator, educator, and YouTube star whose tutorial videos have accelerated his goal of building a brand and growing an audience.
He filled roles ranging from Managing Director to Chief Technical Officer before founding Pootlepress in 2010. Pootlepress offers various WordPress courses, one-day private website-building tutorials with Jamie himself, a blog, high-value freebies, and both free and paid plugins.
In this episode, we examine Jamie’s journey of growing a successful YouTube channel from zero to over 11k subscribers in less than three years. Jamie uploads high-quality tutorial-style videos every week that cover pressing WordPress topics ranging from AI to the block editor. To seal the deal, every YouTube tutorial is accessible free of charge. Jamie's strong online presence has secured him a seat at the WordPress expert table and helped to establish Pootlepress as one of the main players in the Gutenberg era.
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Thanks to Jamie for joining us and providing such valuable insights into growing an audience and building a brand on YouTube. Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for season 2, where we reveal more actionable insights from product makers and brand builders to help entrepreneurs prosper.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Hadas Golzaker, Senior Brand Manager at Elementor. She boasts more than a decade of experience in the world of branding, with expertise in UI, UX, and web design.
In 2021, Elementor underwent a major rebranding with help and direction from an external agency. Hadas played a key role in this makeover by telling the story of the company to direct and shape its identity. Elementor’s unique visual assets — which range from pink with complementary pastels to playful images and illustrations — have made it an instantly recognizable brand in the digital space.
In this episode, we take a look at why products need branding, and why product makers — including technical founders, entrepreneurs, or bootstrappers — shouldn’t overlook or underestimate its power in shaping a company’s future. To this end, Hadas shares her experiences and observations with us — from the early stages of a product idea, through to market fit, launch, and growth.
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Thanks to Hadas for joining us and providing such valuable insights into why product makers have to keep branding in mind. Join us next week with Jamie Marsland to chat about growing an audience and building a brand with YouTube.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Software product builder Devin Walker and marketing and entrepreneurship expert Matt Cromwell are co-founders of GiveWP, a platform that helps non-profits and individuals collect donations from their websites. They're also an example of when tech-oriented and marketing-savvy partnerships lead to hugely successful startups.
Struggling with the challenges of growing GiveWP by himself, Devin realized it was time to bring a partner on board. By combining Matt's marketing and business acumen with Devin's tech know-how, the company has raised over $250,000,000 in donations since 2015. Matt and Devin recently passed GiveWP into the safe hands of hosting company Liquid Web, where they both serve as general managers of multiple product brands.
Entrepreneurs are often faced with the dilemma of whether forging a partnership is the best move for their business. In this episode, Matt and Devin discuss how effective partnerships between technical founders and marketers can fast-track the process of growing successful startups.
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Thanks to Devin and Matt for joining us and providing such valuable insights into partnerships. Join us next week with Hadas Golzaker to chat about why product makers have to keep branding in mind.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Matt Medeiros is a well-known figure in the WordPress world and has distinguished himself as a news podcaster, evangelist, and plugin creator. He co-founded his agency Slocum Studio with his father in 2010 and went on to establish himself as a WordPress authority through The Matt Report, a podcast where he interviews consultants, bootstrappers, and business owners.
Since stepping into WordPress, Matt has filled many roles. He continues to create plugins for Slocum Studios, and was an account executive for Pagely and recently stepped out of his role as Director of Podcaster Success and General Manager at Castos. Matt's also a regular podcast host on Southcoast.fm, and covers weekly WordPress news on The WP Minute podcast. In February, Matt joined Rocketgenius - the company behind Gravity Forms - as a WordPress Community Evangelist
In this episode, Matt discusses how other entrepreneurs can leverage his podcasting practices and strategies to drive brand building and create a persona.
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Thanks to Matt for joining us and providing such valuable insights into brand building. Join us next week with Devin Walker and Matt Cromwell to chat about the power of partnerships to build successful startups.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Miriam Schwab is the Head of WordPress Relations at Elementor and co-founder and former CEO of Strattic. She has an impressive — and extensive — track record and boasts nearly twenty years of experience in the WordPress ecosystem.
In 2006, Miriam founded illuminea and served as CEO for 13 years. She also steered the company through an acquisition that saw it growing into one of Israel's leading WordPress development agencies. On top of heading up a company, she's been the lead organizer for WordCamp Israel five times and has shared her knowledge and experiences at multiple WordCamps.
In 2018, she co-founded Strattic, an end-to-end static and headless hosting and deployment platform for WordPress websites, which was acquired by Elementor in June 2022. The process further solidified Miriam's experience of joining forces. In this episode, we explore Miriam's in-depth understanding of strategic alliances and working with competitors to drive business success for entrepreneurs.
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Thanks to Miriam for joining us and providing such valuable insights into partnerships. Join us next week with Matt Medeiros to chat about how solopreneurs can leverage podcasting for brand building and business growth.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Vito Peleg's journey has been pretty remarkable. From his roots as a touring musician, he transitioned to a freelance developer and soon stepped into the shoes of agency owner and CEO/founder. Much of his success can be attributed to his experience in product market research, marketing, design, and making them work together seamlessly to launch products (and launch them big).
Vito's flagship projects include Atarim — a collaboration platform that provides a seamless workflow experience between agencies/businesses and their clients — and Bertha.ai, the world's first AI-based writing assistant for WordPress.
In 2019, Vito and his team launched WP Feedback and earned $100k in revenue in the first thirty days. From there, they rode the waves of growth and reconfigured WP Feedback into Atarim. In this episode, we investigate Vito's strategy for success by unpacking how to build a solid foundation from which to launch a product — from establishing product-market fit to figuring out marketing and growth tactics.
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Thanks to Vito for joining us and providing such valuable insights into product launches. Join us next week with Miriam Schwab to chat about partnerships and the power of collaboration for success.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Solopreneur Patrick Posner's success proves that diversification is an effective tactic to gain more customers and generate more sales. Hailing from Berlin, Germany, he's built an impressively successful one-man business by diversifying his product portfolio to accelerate both audience and business growth.
His current catalog comprises six offerings, including static website generation, content protection, QR code creation, age verification, and document library security. Patrick is also the brains behind Simply Static — his flagship product — which is credited as the most popular static site generator for WordPress, boasting 40,000 active installs and over 500,000 downloads.
It comes as no surprise that he's an authority on static WordPress, and he regularly publishes tutorials about WooCommerce, WordPress, and his own plugins. In this episode, Patrick shares actionable tips and tactics to help ambitious solopreneurs juggle multiple products to expand their portfolios.
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Thanks to Patrick for joining us and providing such valuable insights into how solopreneurs can juggle multiple products to grow their portfolios. Join us next week with Vito Peleg to chat about building a solid foundation from which to launch a product successfully.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Beka Rice is the former Head of Product at SkyVerge and has been the Senior Director of Product Management at GoDaddy since 2020. She stepped into her new role after GoDaddy acquired SkyVerge and harnessed her experience to lead product initiatives in WooCommerce.
The topic of this episode: As the WP market matures, we are witnessing sub-ecosystems form and evolve around mega-popular plugins like WooCommerce and Elementor. These market leaders have millions of active installs, offering lucrative opportunities for makers to build add-on businesses that extend these solutions. But many overlook the fact that extending these juggernauts generates double dependency, which comes with benefits, but also more risks.
Beka shares her story and learnings building SkyVerge, a mega-successful eCommerce business on top of WooCommerce and Shopify, and discusses the pros and cons of creating a WooCommerce extensions business.
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Thanks to Beka for joining us and providing such valuable insights into product development and eCommerce. Join us next week with super-experienced developer and six-product-solopreneur Patrick Posner to find out how to grow your portfolio as a one-man show.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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James Laws is a non-technical co-founder of Ninja Forms, which has proven itself as one of the most successful WordPress form plugins on the market. In addition to this, he founded his company Saturday Drive as a single office business in 2014, and — in less than a decade — grew it into a multi-million dollar operation with 20+ team members distributed across the globe.
But James’s expertise stretches well beyond being a successful entrepreneur in the WordPress ecosystem. Over the past several years, his passion for teaching, public speaking, and workplace dynamics led him to create a weekly podcast, blog, and newsletter where he provides leadership advice to promote culture-building.
In this episode, we’ll dive into the practices James has used to -funder of for businesses and their employees. But more specifically, we’re going to look at how technical founders and entrepreneurs with remote companies can create company culture that ensures their employees are empowered to perform at the very best of their abilities.
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Thanks to James for joining us and providing such valuable insights into remote culture building. Join us next week with Matt Medeiros to learn how entrepreneurs and SMBs can leverage podcasting for brand building and business growth.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one eCommerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
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Rob Hope is an experienced web designer and developer whose celebration of design minimalism, One Page Love, ultimately helped him transition from freelance gigs to working on his side projects full-time. Since then, he’s launched a podcast, created a super-successful eBook, and used Love Curated to compile tons of inspiring references and resources for designers and creatives.
As a South African solopreneur, he’s no stranger to making the most of limited resources. In this episode, he shares clever growth hacking tips and marketing tips that’ll stretch your budget further and help you launch and distribute products successfully. Specifically, we dive into the ideation and execution of his Hot Tips Twitter Drip Feed — which ultimately saw his eBook launch to big success — and how experimenting and (sometimes) failing in public can lead to bigger and better things.
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