00:00:00 Jason Tucker: Hey, that’s what Sé does, right? Hey,this is episode number 3 99 of WPwatercooler free plugins, but nice price brought to you by serverpress.com makers. DesktopServer they make local WordPress development, easy. Check them out over at serverpress.com. I’m Jason Tucker. You can find me at Jason Tucker on the Twitter. 00:00:30 Steve Zehngut: I’m Steve Zehngut. I’m the founder of Zeek interactive and I run the OC WordPress meetup. She’s not Sé Reed.
00:00:42 Jason Tucker: she’s not here.
00:00:44 Jason Cosper: And it’s your boy, Jason Cosper, back at it again on the most influential WordPress podcast, let’s do it.
00:00:52 Jason Tucker: You can go and follow this influential WordPress podcast by going to apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and Spotify. And lastly, you can go over discord, go to DPR, queer.com/at discord. And that’s where you can find Scott hanging out with himself over in discord because no one else is in discord. What’s going on?
00:01:13 Steve Zehngut: I think we are the most influential WordPress podcast on. Fridays from 11 to 1130.
00:01:20 Jason Tucker: Yeah.
00:01:21 Jason Cosper: don’t have, you don’t have to qualify. Why were the most influential WordPress podcast?
00:01:25 Scott Kingsley Clark: Las.
00:01:27 Jason Cosper: Perfect prove us
00:01:28 Jason Tucker: Vegas.
00:01:29 Steve Zehngut: Oh, wow.
00:01:31 Jason Tucker: Hey, Matt, I’m prepared. I’m prepared. So, yeah. So we’re talking about free plugins and how you can support free plugins, how plugins that are free can, um, you know, fund their efforts and how you can just make sure that they, they stick around, you know, a wise woman once said in the previous episode of the show that. But, uh, you know, just the idea of how do you help PA for this stuff? You know, this is one of those things, and Scott was talking about this on the previous show where like, you know what, let’s have Scott come back on and talk with, say, and do all that. Say he’s not here. So it’s the three of us knuckleheads. I’d have to, uh, talk about this
00:02:13 Steve Zehngut: Welcome back Scott.
00:02:15 Scott Kingsley Clark: Thanks for having me back. Maybe afraid that you asked me back so soon. Um, but also extremely displeased that I was not on episode 400. Like that’s like an even number and I’m on 3, 9, 9. I was like, so close. Like, am I on sale?
00:02:31 Steve Zehngut: It’s the Eve. Now this is the Eve episode.
00:02:34 Jason Cosper: Yeah.
00:02:35 Jason Tucker: episode. Exactly. So Scott, for folks that haven’t watched the previous episode, can you tell us a little bit about like what you’re doing and what your, what your product is and then how are you funding it?
00:02:49 Scott Kingsley Clark: Sure
00:02:50 Jason Tucker: to start off with that?
00:02:51 Scott Kingsley Clark: might as well. It sounds like a great place to start. Um, so I am the lead developer of the pods framework. I’m also a product manager at payment, uh, pay memberships pro. Um, one of those is free and the other one is free. Um, they both have different models. Pods framework itself is entirely funded by donations since sponsors and people like that. Um, the paid memberships pro is freely available on wordpress.org. You can find all of their code on, get hub, even the paid ad ons and stuff, but they sell. So you get access to support and maybe some, an easier way to update your plugins and everything else and, and, and better materials to look at on the site, better support materials and all that and support tickets and all that. So you get a lot more things built into that support side. So those are just two of the models I’ve seen in, in pods has been struggling along with many other free plugins on. No premium or freemium solution, um, for itself. And I think that’s a challenge because there’s plugins like ACF, you’ve got a free version and you have the pro version. So that’s got a premium freemium kind of solution. Then you have a plugin like types, which used to be free. And now it’s completely premium, which as part of toolset, uh, you’ve got plugins like meta box, which are free, but then you can buy all these ads. All the different types of things out there. And I’m speaking about just my space, like con content types and fields plugins, but everywhere, you’ll see plugins like that, where they’ve got these different models and each one has its own struggles for figuring out how they want to make their money and how to keep going. But the continuous challenge for everyone is. How do you get your free plugin on the.org and keep it up to date with what’s going on with WordPress itself and your ideas for features and maintain all the support that comes in. So if someone asks you all these different questions throughout the week, how do you keep up with those? And what if you have got plenty, more plugins that are out there for free? So you’ve got all this stuff and you’re like, I’m just doing this for free on the side. So that’s a challenge and I’d love to talk more about like ideas and how. Address this for, for at least the people who have no premium or freemium.
00:05:12 Steve Zehngut: Well, I think, I think what you just described, I mean, you, you really just described all of your time that goes into keeping this plugin up to date, right? Uh, not just the challenges with most recent versions of WordPress. Just just keeping the plugin maintained and current, right. Um, all the code that goes into that, um, the support time is, is definitely, uh, you know, uh, a big time suck. Um, you know, there there’s a lot of your time or, or a, a team’s time that goes into these, these things, and time is valuable. Um, so it, it, I think there’s always this perception, uh, uh, How do I say this? I mean, essentially you’re selling air, right? You’re selling something that’s intangible, it’s it doesn’t, it doesn’t exist. It’s not something I can, I can kind of touch and feel. So it doesn’t have a lot of value, but the value is really the, all, all the time. Uh, and, and, and frankly, Uh, knowledge that went into, into the plugin because that’s the other intangible that’s here. It’s not just the time you’re putting, putting into this. It’s all the time that you’ve invested in the years, you’ve been in the WordPress space to be able to do this. Right. So it’s the skill that you have that has a value to it. Right? And, and, and it’s, it’s tough when the ecosystem that you’re working in and the, and the community that you’re working in. Expects that everything is going to be for free. Right? The expectation is there that it is free. So it doesn’t really have a value. There wasn’t a question there. I was just making a big, long, drawn out statement.
00:06:47 Jason Tucker: no, you’re you’re right in that because, you know, there’s like,
00:06:51 Steve Zehngut: each,
00:06:52 Jason Tucker: How do I put this? It’s like each project that I work on, I find that there’s different collections of plugins that you’re going to end up having to use. Some of them will be free. Some of them you’ll find that there’s that one little feature that you need. That’s going to be the. That you’re going to, and then hopefully you’ll end up using the pro part of it. You know, the paid version of it to its fullest extent with, with Scott’s plugin. There’s not really a pro version, more along the lines of like there’s additional things that Scott has built that he’s now selling. And then also having this extra piece to it, where if you just want to donate, because you’ve used this plugin in the past or currently, then you should probably donate just to show that you know, that you’re supporting them.
00:07:37 Steve Zehngut: And by the way we say this all the time on this show, you should absolutely donate to a plugin that you’re using regularly. Right. That’s just, that’s just a no brainer. And. I know there’s not a lot of people that do that, but if you’re using something that somebody puts some time into, you should give them. some money for their time. You know how, you know, whatever you think is right, but you should, you should be donating. But really what you’re banking on Scott is that somebody finds the V the plugin valuable. Now. Right and uses enough, it kind of banking on the fact that they’re going to have some sort of challenge, uh, where it’s easier to pay for support and ask you, uh, how to fix it rather than trying to go through it themselves.
00:08:16 Scott Kingsley Clark: You’ve got that, that challenge as a donor, as a person trying to get donations is, is like, first of all, you have to make sure they understand the value, uh, them download it for free. Like you were saying, uh, there’s no intrinsic value. Like I’m not paying you for anything. So I don’t really, um, value that. But at the same time I’m using your plugin for. Own things that are important to me. It’s not working. So I’m going to hold you against the coals. If it’s not working and you better fix it. And like, it should be fixed right now because my site’s making money and oh, by the way, I’m not donating to you. So there’s those situations. And then you’ve got the other situations where you have people who. Are trying to figure out, okay, so I’m going to donate to you, but what am I going to get out of the donation? Uh, as a business, I don’t mind paying for things, but I just can’t donate things. I, I need to make, I need to know, are we gonna get better support from it? Are you going to get like new features? Like they need something that is. One thing leads to the next. So I give you a donation. I get something in return. I need to invoice. I need these sorts of things. And that style of the business operation is, is really tricky to work around too, because then like you can say, well, I can set up an invoice for you and just say, you’re getting a sponsorship and I’m getting like five hours of my time or something. But then like, then you can’t that doesn’t scale. And that, that means a year on the hook for when that actually happens and they need those five hours or whatever. And then you have all the people who, uh, this is one of the most common things we’ve seen from pods. Donations is they’ve come from premium solutions and they’ve paid the money. And now they’re coming to you as pods because they think it would be more useful for them and their, their use cases. And they already saw the value in ACF. So. I’m saving money with pods, I’ll donate 50 bucks. Sure. Or whatever, like, cause they, then they see, oh yeah, that’s worth it. To me. I’m saving money. I will at least put a little bit in once they’ve already started.
00:10:10 Jason Tucker: Well, I remember way early on in word press, you had these plugin companies that were making plugins and then selling a lifetime license. And Steve, you remember us having these conversations with various folks regarding these lifetime licenses? That’s kind of like a nail in the coffin. It’s like you got one and done and that’s it. And you’re never going to get any money from this person ever again.
00:10:36 Steve Zehngut: I still have several of them.
00:10:38 Jason Tucker: yeah. That you just, you’re never going to have to pay cause you, you, you paid it once and that’s it. And, um, or it.
00:10:45 Scott Kingsley Clark: a real license on those, if they like at some point and they’re like, well, we can’t support you after this next major, major, major version or something. But I think that lifetime. Is extremely tricky. We get people coming to pods, pro stuff like my pods pro add ons and they’re like, Hey, can I get a lifetime license for this page builder toolkit? Add on you have, I’m like, you want a lifetime license for something I have to like, maintain with integration for page builders. That’s pretty insane ask. Cause like that’s
00:11:14 Steve Zehngut: that comment,
00:11:15 Scott Kingsley Clark: under my control.
00:11:16 Steve Zehngut: but yeah, keep that comment up for them in that that’s that’s interesting. So what Joe’s saying is, is he’s suggesting that if you set up the roadmap of where you’re going, uh, so that people can see the progress and what’s next to come. I think what he’s suggesting is that people might be more motivated to pay or donate money, uh, at that. I’m wondering if you take that a step further and say, listen, almost like a Kickstarter model, right? Where you say, listen, these are the things we want to do. Right? It’s going to take X amount of hours, which costs this much money. Right. I, I need to raise this, this many funds.
00:11:50 Jason Tucker: Yeah, like a tiered system.
00:11:51 Jason Cosper: funny. You mentioned that Steve, um, Daniel Buck Heber about five years ago, uh, to add some more rest support into WP CLI uh, had a Kickstarter. He raised just under $40,000. I want to say it was $38,000. Um, which, oh, no, I’m sorry. 32, 8 22. Um, and, um, He said for every a hundred dollars contributed past, uh, $17,500. I’ll contribute one hour of time towards the rest API project in 2016. So, I mean, he, he set it up, but the problem is. Basically, um, with this is okay. Um, just kind of like the lifetime license, it’s like a one-time thing you’re getting to pay for, um, development for this specific thing. And after that, okay, well, I, I guess I started another Kickstarter project. Those are pain in the ass to run.
00:12:57 Scott Kingsley Clark: That’s why I like the friends of pods. We get the recurring donations using give WP, which is awesome by the way, awesome team. that’s helpful because if we can get people on the, on the hook to like, say, yeah, I can donate like five bucks a month. Sure. Whatever, uh, they add up over time. They don’t pay everything we want to do, but, um, if we can get people to do recurring donations, that’s usually a lot better than one time donations that keeps them engaged. And, um, it’s really great to see. We’ve had a hundred about 140 people that are recurring right now. Um, we still get one, one time donations. We get annual donations and monthly donations. But the recurring thing is where the magic starts to happen, because then you can actually plan, you can plan around recurring. You can’t really plan around one time unless, you know, some magic elves that that can make cookies and no stats. Um,
00:13:49 Jason Cosper: let’s, let’s move on. I mean, not necessarily move on permanently, but just, just temporarily to, uh, what Jason’s doing with WP WPwatercooler you have sponsors that help you cover the cost to make this podcast. And I mean, you can plan. Um, the F the features, the things that you want to do with the shows on the network, uh, based around the sponsorships you get, if you can’t cover the costs, you know, you can’t expand out, not a second or third show, you know, you can’t, you can’t do those other things. Cause you’re like, okay, well, I don’t have the money to cover the tools that I need to be able to do this.
00:14:34 Jason Tucker: Yeah. You know what we’re using here with stream yard, that costs money, the podcasting hosting itself, that costs money.
00:14:40 Steve Zehngut: Paying The talent. you know?
00:14:42 Jason Tucker: talent. Yeah. You know, um, the, the makeup artists and all that
00:14:46 Scott Kingsley Clark: I’m not getting paid. Wait, wait a second.
00:14:48 Jason Tucker: we have the key grip and the best boy and all those other people, they don’t really know what they do, but, but, but those folks, we pay them. You know, there’s a lot of that stuff that has to be paid same with plugins, you know, all the plugins that need to be paid. And if we talk about something and Steve jokes and says, oh, we’ll just get Jason to go buy some plugin and screw around with it. And Jason goes and buy some plugin and go screws around with it. Cause I’m, I’m dumb. And that’s what I do. But it’s one of those things where it’s like, you know, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna learn about this stuff. This is the best way to, to kind of player, you know, play around with it and figure out how it works. Um, yeah. That stuff costs money and, you know, podcasting itself, you know, it’s not like I’m, um, it’s all like I’m paying or I’m making money off of any of the sponsorships. Um, all that. Stuff’s going straight back into it in some form or another have software or services. That are involved. We had some folks in the comments here talking about, you know, small recurring fees are definitely the best. And then talking about how there’s, you know, other podcasting networks like Twitter, where they’re, they’re paying like two bucks a month for, you know, for supporting them. I think the thing is, is those, those types of support systems are great when you have a huge. Two bucks and a huge following. You’re doing great. Two bucks with five people, you bought a coffee. So, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a tricky one, you know, like Scott, like what’s the what’s the typical amount of people are, are, you know, donating when they don’t.
00:16:17 Scott Kingsley Clark: Well, I’ll tell you right now, I’m looking at the stats right
00:16:19 Jason Tucker: Yeah. So those are the types of things that I’m interested in, because if you, if you don’t have a whole bunch of people, I mean, you, you’re saying a hundred plus is what you have, um, that are, that are, um, supporting you. Um, hopefully they’re, they’re paying a good chunk of change, so you’re able to kind of make that happen. So what is that average?
00:16:37 Scott Kingsley Clark: average about six. Per person on average that’s for, um, how it’s averaged out to my monthly to, so there’s annual donors. There’s monthly donors, someone say average those two. Then I average the cot, uh, the number of donors we have it. Yeah. It’s about $6 per donor.
00:16:57 Jason Tucker: Right. Which over time is, you know, per person they’re paying, they’re paying a, a decent amount per person. Um, it just, you know, it requires them to be, you know, Um, in aggregate to, to get to that point where it makes it so that you’re able to either hire other people to help you out, or you’re just paying yourself for the time that you’re spending on it.
00:17:21 Steve Zehngut: You know, I’m going to ask this question and it’s not meant to teeny anything of, I actually don’t know the answer, but are, um, free plugins like yours that are available on the repo. Uh, is there a possible acquisition at some point?
00:17:34 Scott Kingsley Clark: Well, there’s another challenge, like, okay. So how do you acquire a free plugin that operates on donations? Um, how do you. Like acquire a plugin. That’s a small, plug-in like, that’s not always an option for everyone. Um, I think that, but that’s, that’s obviously a route someone could take if they’re like, okay, I’m just done with this. I need someone to take it over. Usually that’s usually done, like, someone will adopt it, like, Hey,
00:17:57 Steve Zehngut: Yeah, I,
00:17:57 Scott Kingsley Clark: up?
00:17:59 Jason Tucker: So
00:17:59 Steve Zehngut: I understand. Hang on one second. I understand the adoption process. Cause we’ve talked about that on the show before, and I get that. I’m really talking about, you know, if a company wanted to come in and say, we want pods as part of our suite of tools.
00:18:15 Scott Kingsley Clark: Well, I would say, well, depends on exactly. They’re intense. I’ve thought about this over the last 11, 12 years, 13 years, whatever it’s been now 13, I think. Um, and I was like, you know, each time I thought about it, I was like, I want what’s best for pods. I don’t want someone to acquire it to destroy it. I don’t want someone to acquire it to then say it’s a premium product now, or I don’t want someone to acquire it and say, we’re not going to update it. Here for our branding and for SEO and all the buzz that we get from it. Like, I want someone who’s in it like me. I want someone who has the passion, the drive, the ambition, the ideas, all the stuff. Like if someone could just hand me money, I could do all the things I want to do with it, but I know they need to make money. So there’s some give and take there, I think to address, like how do you actually turn pods into a, uh, something that can make up for the acquisition cost? That’s the challenge with a lot of the plugins that have been acquired. Like, you’ll see someone get acquired and then either, maybe it’ll just go away because they can’t actually make back the money or they never intended to support that product. And it was just going to always be shut down.
00:19:23 Steve Zehngut: Every time we talk about an acquisition on this show. It’s always the same reaction from, from the four of us. So I was like, oh God, I hope, I hope I’m still going to be able to use it a year from now.
00:19:32 Scott Kingsley Clark: Yeah. Like ACF, when it got acquired, the people were like, no, we got.
00:19:36 Jason Tucker: Right. Yeah. And then half the internet has that one avatar plugin installed on their lap, on their website. And then it turned into a full, like a membership suite is not what happened without, so it’s like you end up having those sorts of things where money train changes the. The, uh, the direction in which you’re going to be taking those hundred thousand plus people that are, you know, currently using or a hundred thousand plus sites that are currently have pods installed and what’s going to happen then sort of thing. So that ‘
00:20:07 Steve Zehngut: cause. I mean, you know, everything we’ve talked about so far, I mean, there is a business model there either whether somebody acquired you or you wanted to kind of change it now. I mean, there is, uh, there is a business model where you can switch to premium, you’ve got this user base, you know, you switched to premium. Now you, there’s going to be a certain percentage of people that, that buy the premium plugin. But you know, like you said, that’s not in the best interest of the.
00:20:31 Scott Kingsley Clark: Yeah, that’s what I kind of at the start of the year. Of this year, I launched pods pro by SKC dev that’s my own business, my own add-ons that are premium that are really focused on extending the extended universe for pods. And, um, and not really focusing on pods core itself, like adding features to it’s more about these things that really aren’t supposed to be in court. We’re not taking things out of core. We’re just adding things onto it to make it even better with integrations and all that stuff that actually takes time.
00:21:00 Steve Zehngut: Yeah.
00:21:00 Jason Tucker: And now.
00:21:02 Jason Cosper: That that actually also again, to go back to WP CLI and Daniel Bach hover around the time that he wants those Kickstarter. I remember for a minute, he was selling a premium WP CLI command. That he had, uh, released for a brief period of time. I’ll have to like go through, uh, my bookmarks and dig that one up. I think he just eventually ended up releasing them for free. Uh, but it was something that, uh, companies, I was at WP engine at the time that this happened. And, uh, I think. Uh, I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I, there was at least discussion of, oh, some of these are really useful. We should pay for this. Um, so, you know, there are definite things and, but that wasn’t, uh, cause WP CLI is officially a WordPress project. He can’t say like, okay, this is so he had to brand it and sell it as these extended commands by Daniel Bach,
00:22:08 Steve Zehngut: You can’t, you can’t bind WP CLI pro.
00:22:11 Jason Cosper: Right.
00:22:12 Scott Kingsley Clark: well, that that’s the situation I had with, uh, pods, because we have sponsors and donors. I don’t want to lose, like, there’s no way I could launch a premium. And then cut all that off because like, I don’t, I don’t have the money pots. I didn’t have any money saved up. Like it’s what we use is what we get and that situation. So that’s kind of the situation I had. I had to figure out how do I do it separately and keep pods itself centered and community and donations and stuff.
00:22:35 Jason Tucker: And that’s why the lifetime people had the same problem. You build a, you build the plugin and you sell it with a lifetime license. And you’re like, oh, so all these people want lifetime licenses. We don’t have any money to be able to spend on development now.
00:22:48 Scott Kingsley Clark: Yeah, it’s good for a little
00:22:49 Jason Tucker: to support these people. It’s great to drive traffic, but now you have to deal with the traffic. So, I don’t know. I think you’ve, I think you’ve, you know, obviously you’ve tried, um, all the things that we’re thinking about here, it’s like, w we’ve tried, you’ve tried selling additional stuff, so you have the additional add-ons that you’re selling, but then you’re also heavier than this, this additional piece to it, which is if you want to donate, you can donate as well. Um, what about sponsorships? Just like having a, a company who has some money that maybe is using the product and just have them be the one that sponsors it.
00:23:24 Scott Kingsley Clark: Yeah, sponsorships is really hard. Uh, it’s frigging hard like you. How do you find sponsors? You just, someone tell me, uh, where do you find money that people want to spend, uh, support open source, free plugins that are trying to do good in the world? Like how what’s the secret? Like, especially a little as September, so it’s like everyone’s budgets is out, so they, they’re not looking at budgets until. Later on in the actual end of year. And, and so how do you look tap into all these sponsors? And I think that goes into something I really, really wanted to talk about today, which is about not just pods, I’m talking like wordpress.org wide. How do we connect all of the free plugins, anyone who wants to get money to help fund their work in making WordPress even better? How do we get these people connected? Two sponsors and how do we connect them? The people who are sponsors to those people and, and how, how do we make it? So like, not just, you don’t have to have 500 bucks to throw at something. How do we make it so that Steve and me and Jason and whoever else want to say, I got 10 bucks a month here, throw it in my plugins. I have. Like a Patrion kind of situation where you’re, you have a number of set number budget, and you can throw it at different people as, as you wish. And it just builds monthly. If we could find a solution for wordpress.org to support everyone in a way that’s very free and open, that’s honest, and it makes it easy for those donors and sponsors to connect. That is the. Like best case scenario for wordpress.org.org. Long-term otherwise we’re looking at free plugins having the same issues going forward with blocks, Gutenberg compatibility. As it were, press releases, go out. It’s going to just drain our resources.
00:25:12 Jason Tucker: I have a good example. um, I, I use this product called set a setup that’s made by a company called MacPaw and Mac. Paul makes them, they make a bunch of different, you know, different, different applications for the Mac, but set up is their version of their own app store. So essentially you submit your, your. Your product to the, their app store and then for a one-time fee or sorry, for a monthly fee, you get access to all of those different places, all of those different applications, having something like that, essentially, a, a marketplace out of, um, like we took jet pack and actually had a bunch of different plugins that somebody else made and not had them acquire them, but rather just let them be, and then pay them out every once in a while. That might be your way of, of doing what you’re talking.
00:26:00 Scott Kingsley Clark: I think that’s also tricky because, well, first of all, it has to be, it has to be very, very much tied to wordpress.org. If it’s not tied to WordPress itself as an open source project and tied to wordpress.org in somewhat official way, like maybe not their money handling, but at least them integrating with the service to allow that. Uh, I think that it’s not gonna, it’s not going to work anything less than wordpress.org integration or on like official capacity thing there. I think it just, it won’t, it won’t really adopt and it won’t even make it easy for anyone.
00:26:34 Jason Tucker: Right.
00:26:35 Steve Zehngut: so let, so let’s go big. Okay. Let’s say Microsoft wants to sponsor pods. Okay. Now, now pods becomes Microsoft ponds for WordPress. Okay. That’s the new title. Is that even what’s that.
00:26:47 Jason Tucker: teams for windows.
00:26:49 Steve Zehngut: So is Microsoft pods, is that even allowed in the, um, in the WordPress plugin repository anymore?
00:26:58 Scott Kingsley Clark: Yeah. Well, I mean, well, it depends on what Microsoft would
00:27:00 Steve Zehngut: with a sponsor with a sponsor name like that, I mean, is there anything that goes against the, um, the terms in terms and conditions of the, uh,
00:27:08 Scott Kingsley Clark: There’s terms in like the UI, like you can’t like say, oh, here pay $5 and unlock a feature inside the plugin you can pay to, uh, you can link off to a site that you can, they can go buy the pro version or an add on or something like that. But like, you can’t have those kinds of upsells. And, and I think the same thing applies to the branded. It’s it’s different because branding is not, you upselling the brand like, oh, buy all our Microsoft products, click here. That’s fine. They’re fine with that. They just don’t want it anywhere else. Except for your setting screens. You’re on pods,
00:27:39 Steve Zehngut: What you’re saying is, is if, if now Microsoft is sponsoring ponds and you put the Microsoft logo in the corner on every pod screen. That’s okay.
00:27:46 Scott Kingsley Clark: That’s okay. Yeah. So I, I technically could seek out a huge sponsor and say, yeah, I’ll put your name and face on everything. Um, but then you also have to think, do I like the sponsor? Do I want them to be like the face of everything?
00:27:59 Jason Tucker: Steve loves firing people.
00:28:01 Steve Zehngut: Let me, let me, let me get, let me get Jeff Bezos on the line. I’ll get you It’ll become Amazon pods for, for WordPress.
00:28:07 Jason Tucker: Prime
00:28:11 Steve Zehngut: Um,
00:28:11 Jason Tucker: it. You do it in a
00:28:12 Steve Zehngut: but,
00:28:12 Jason Tucker: You set up in a seasonal thing or something.
00:28:14 Steve Zehngut: yeah, but you’re, but you’re right. I mean, I mean, once you have that sponsor logo in the corner of pods, you you’re going to lose some of your audience.
00:28:22 Scott Kingsley Clark: True.
00:28:24 Jason Cosper: Any, any acquisition? I mean, let’s, let’s revisit what we were talking about just a few minutes ago. Um, you know, any of these Yos get snatched up by GoDaddy. There are people who hate go to. Like passionately and rightfully so, given some of the stuff that happened, you know, 10 years ago, uh, you know, 15 years ago, uh, around, uh, just how, uh, sexist and nasty the, the former head of the company was and all of this stuff. And they’ve made huge improvements in things, but there are people who were like fool me once. Okay. For me. Nah,
00:29:04 Steve Zehngut: won’t get,
00:29:06 Jason Cosper: yeah, exactly. So, um, they, they just, they just won’t have it. So now, and like Scott said, um, you know, somebody, uh, you know, acquired, um, ACF or ACF was required, uh, there. Yeah. Thank you. Um, and. Now, like there are people who, um, I mean, I like delicious sprains, but I’m sure that there’s somebody out there who’s like, screw these guys. I don’t want anything to do with them.
00:29:38 Steve Zehngut: But, but, but, but delicious.
00:29:40 Jason Cosper: I mean, it’s
00:29:42 Steve Zehngut: Yeah, but delicious brains is pretty you, they don’t really brand their stuff throughout all of their products. I have several of their products and you don’t, you don’t really know who they’re, who the owner is of those products.
00:29:53 Jason Cosper: right.
00:29:53 Steve Zehngut: It’s pretty, it’s pretty silent.
00:29:56 Jason Cosper: Yeah. I mean, I, I personally host my sites on, uh, there, uh, spin-up WP and, uh, I mean, there’s very little delicious brains branding in there. It’s
00:30:09 Steve Zehngut: Um, I’m not arguing with you. I already, if, if somebody doesn’t like delicious brains and they find that the plugin was tied back to them, it’s owned by them, then that can happen. Um, I just think delicious brains is pretty smart about, you know, branding or lack thereof.
00:30:24 Jason Cosper: I’m sorry, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, um, it wasn’t GoDaddy that acquired Yost. It was EIG, which is like even more ODS.
00:30:39 Jason Tucker: Oh boy. So we’re gonna do the outro before we, uh, before, before we get sued. No, just kidding. I do wanna let you know that next week is our 400th episode and it’s our ninth year of doing this thing Crazy. Crazy. So we
00:30:58 Jason Cosper: Episode 400 on the ninth birthday.
00:31:01 Jason Tucker: Yeah, it all happened that
00:31:03 Jason Cosper: that better.
00:31:04 Jason Tucker: Yeah. It’s a trip. Crazy. All right. Well, here’s our outro. See, y’all later. All right, folks, go over to wr core.com/subscribe, where you can subscribe to all this content on YouTube, on Spotify, on Stitcher, Google podcasts, apple podcasts. And while you’re there, make sure you subscribe to dev branch. Cause we put out all of our content over there each month over on dead branch as well. Talk to you all later.
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