Yesterday I posted something on Twitter thinking I was helping out.  I referred a product to someone who asked for a recommendation.  Mind you, the product I referred has gotten only amazing reviews and has been used by people that I know who swear by it.  The response that I got was:

“I’m not willing to pay a monthly fee and not own my stuff, though. May work for some but I’m picky.”

Yesterday, I also wrote an article talking about the WordPress community and my feelings toward it.  The reviews were mixed but most positive and a lot of people feeling the same way.  But I got comments like:

“At least for me was an empty article.”  and a bunch of other snarky comments.

About an hour ago, I was researching some marketing stuff and was getting excited about this content curation plugin I found.  Immediately my mind is thinking how I can use it to market and do all sorts of amazing things.  I was talking to a friend out loud about it who walked by, and without hesitation, I hear a voice from a coworker.  “Don’t tell him how to pollute the internet.”

This hurts me.  

I feel like there’s a ton of people out there who just don’t get it and feel so comfortable in their box that they just don’t want to expand on anything else.

We learn by reading, by doing, by practicing.  But everyone (including myself) tend to have pre-judgmental opinions on things they either don’t understand or don’t care to look into.

I think everyone goes through these types of stages.  When I was a kid all I wanted to eat was chicken and everything else was gross.  Just until recently with my business, I though funnels were just a waste of time, I just didn’t get it.  Now I see how they are absolutely not!

So when I hear things like, don’t pollute the internet, or I’m picky, to me it’s like the people who just haven’t taken the red pill yet.

In your entrepreneurial journey, you will need to find tools, strategies, partners, ideas, experiments, and so much more that I can’t think of right now, but each one will effect you and what you want to do and where you want to be.

You’re in business to make money.  We all need to start to think outside the box.  If something makes your life easier, regardless of what it is, you should at least consider it.

If something is working great for you, awesome, why change it (but you can still experiment).  We’re in the tech age and things are changing all the time.  What’s cool now may be outdated later.  A tool that’s awesome now can be replaced by something that makes your like 100 times easier.

We can’t be so enclosed in our box that we don’t see how many other things that are out there that can be benefiting and be helping our journey.  Sometimes you need to invest, sometimes you need to stop doing things, sometimes tools need to be replaced, and sometimes you need to not be around negativity…

The thing that excited me most about these types of thinkers is it give me a great opportunity to share!  Share the things I learned, the things I had to figure out, and the tools that work!  Everything that I went through in my journey may not work for you, but we learn from failing!  If other people failed, you can learn from their mistakes and so on!

Let’s ride this journey and keep an open mind on the amazing tools that people continue to build to literally, make our lives easier.

Stay Awesome and God Bless.  Enjoy your weekend!

This post was originally from my email list, did you like it? Sign up on the bottom right…

OK, before I get a ton of hate mail/comments from every WordPress lover out there, let’s get something straight.  I use WordPress ALL THE TIME.  I have no issues with it, in fact, I love using it.  It makes life super easy, it makes building much faster than having to start from scratch, and I really enjoy it.

With that said, wtf is with all this WordPress community BS?  I just finished reading an article by James Dalman, and while it’s truly a sad article and I have nothing respect for the man, he also linked a bunch of other posts with users addressing the WordPress community and not being happy with it.  This has nothing to do with him, but more the “WordPress Community” as a whole and the fact that a lot of people see it as some holy grail.

I think I’m at a point where I’m just fed up with FANS of WordPress vs. actual doers.  Let me make this clear, WordPress is nothing but a tool you use to make websites, that’s it.  The community aspect is just a massive facade of people who just like WordPress, which means absolutely nothing in the real world.

WordPress powers a lot of the internet

74,652,825 sites out there are using WordPress.  Around 50% of this figure (close to 37 million) is hosted on the free WordPress.com. In the realm of self-hosted sites, WordPress accounts for 18.9% of all websites. (Reference)

These stats were from an article on 2014.  So it most likely has grown since then.  However, there are a few things that stand out from this statement.

1. A significant amount of WordPress users has no idea what they’re doing.  How do I know this? Because almost 37 million users (probably a lot more) use WordPress.com to maintain their site.  An easy, DIY solution to work on WordPress.  I know a lot of developers, and I don’t know anyone who works on WordPress through the .com site.
2. WordPress self-hosted sites cover 18.9% of all sites on the web.  That means there’s still 81.1% of websites THAT DON’T USE WORDPRESS!  Why?  Maybe because there are better solutions out there? Maybe some people just don’t see the value in it? Maybe because WordPress is not the end all be all for websites? There can be a ton of reasons, but the fact is, it’s only about 1/5 of all sites.  Not a small number, but if I had a pizza pie with 5 slices, and only ate 1, there’s still plenty of pie left to feed my appetite.

Of this incredibly large number, how many do you think are actually involved in the WordPress community?  I’m betting it’s an extremely tiny fraction.

What the hell is the WordPress Community Anyway?

Let’s define community.

Where the hell does WordPress, fit into this?  I understand that you can have communities WITHIN WordPress. For instance, a WordPress Marketing Community, or a WordPress Development Community, but what exactly is a WordPress Community.

That’s like having a hammer community of people who just like hammers.  WordPress is a tool.  You can do lots of things with WordPress and the things that you do with it, will define your community.

If you’re standing around just saying “Oh, I’m part of the WordPress community,” what are you actually saying?  You like WordPress, so what? WordPress is not an attitude, it’s definitely not a goal, and if you relate to a community who just has an interest in WordPress, then you’re a fan.

So when we reference the WordPress community, are we talking about just a bunch of fans of WordPress? If so, then, of course, there’s going to be conflict!  Designers don’t have much in common with developers. Developers don’t have much in common with marketers.  Marketers don’t have much in common with managers, and the list goes on.

How do you define yourself as a WordPress community?  I work a lot with Beaver Builder, and I’d say I’m in that community because our common interest is to build websites easier.  I was heavily involved in Genesis, that’s a community filled with Developers, I pulled back because I don’t develop as much, so I’m out of that community.

I use WordPress, but what do I have in common with someone else who uses WordPress but doesn’t have my similar interests, goals, or attitude? NOTHING!

WordPress is to Websites like Hammers are to Homes

It’s a tool; it’s a platform. There are a ton of other solutions out there, and even better solutions to handle specific situations then WordPress.  Sure with a lot of hard work and elbow grease you can do whatever you want with WordPress, but that doesn’t make it the best solution.

There are plenty of other tools out there where the foundation IS WordPress, and they’re perfect for what they are, but when you step away from it, you’re also a lot more free to build and create without the confines of what WordPress gives.

Some solutions run within the WordPress environment like invoice plugins, CRM’s, etc., but at the same time, there are a lot more solutions that run outside of WordPress that are much more free to build how they want. It’s no secret that WordPress has had a slight problem with onboarding and usability, but when you step out of the realms of it, you can create and build from a blank template.  That’s developer freedom!

Depending on your service or what you’re trying to do, the benefits or a blank template can out weigh starting with WordPress.

Users and Builders

As you saw in the previous statistic of WordPress sites, there are a WHOLE lot of users on the platform.  Even my neighbor signed up for a WordPress site not having any idea of how it worked. She was a perfect example of a user.

WordPress is super easy to sign up for, just go to the site, and create an account and you’re done.  People use WordPress, and become part of the “community” but have nothing in common with anyone else other than the fact that they use WordPress.  These are the users.  They technically have their own beginners community because they’re learning how to use the platform.

Then there are builders.  Now if you’re a builder, you really need to think about this and ask yourself this question: What Am I In Business For?

Because when you answer that, I will guarantee you that the whole WordPress Community aspect will just fly out the window.  Unless you’re working for WordPress, what the hell does the WordPress Community have anything to do with your business, aside probably trying to market to them you’re services.

In which case, you’re probably appealing to the marketers, or the developers, or the designers, or beginners!  You’re appealing to someone specific, or a sub-community that just uses WordPress.

It’s way too general

To say your part of the WordPress community is just way too broad.  There are so many pieces, and so many different variables of WordPress to be defined simply as a WordPress community.

If you think about it, are you even a part of the WordPress Community?  If so, which part?  And if the “WordPress Community” actually upset you in some way, again, WHICH PART?

Calling out the WordPress community is like me being a New Yorker calling out America.  Or a NY city boy, calling out NY State over something that happened in Buffalo. It just doesn’t make sense.

So I probably pissed a bunch of people off, but you know what, this has to be said.  This community talk is such petty BS.   Are you in business? Are you a freelancer? Then do what works for you. That’s it.

Getting involved with like-minded individuals is a great way to build yourself.  Getting involved with your audience is a great way to grow a business and really solve some problems.  But if the only thing you have in common is a hammer, then you probably need to start searching a little deeper with what you’re actually doing.

To some up this entire article, too many people but this whole community thing on a pedestal when it’s really just a small piece or more so completely irrelevant to the big picture.

Update: I only posted this a few hours ago, and the responses are super mixed. But that’s to be expected.  It’s like this, if you don’t get the point in what I’m trying to say with this article, then you’re either too caught up yourself, or you just haven’t gotten there yet.

If you checked out Facebook, or WPTavern, or any WordPress source really, you probably have seen the new GoDaddy Managed WP Hosting.

Today, they released their onboarding process for new users who sign up for a managed WordPress hosting account.  It includes a nice wizard and kicking off a site build with Beaver Builder Lite.  If you want to get all the details of the process, it’s really cool, check it out here.

I’ll wait while you briefly look over that article…

AND we’re back!

So here’s my catch22 situation and my quick opinion.

First I have to say, as much as I’m not a fan of their hosting, I freakin’ love this.  It opens up the door of WordPress AND BeaverBuilder to thousands of people finally making the process of creating a WordPress site, actually easy!

This is what people of the WordPress community have been griping about for so long when sites like Weebly, Webs, Squarespace, etc., kept coming out.  I think that something like this actually puts WordPress a little more on par from the usability standpoint and getting NEW users to actually hop on the platform with ease.

BIG QUESTION OF THE DAY: WTF Was It GoDaddy that had to lead this revolution!  I mean really!  The most talked about, probably hated hosting platform, is leading the way with WordPress?

Let me make this very clear.  I have no problem with GoDaddy at all.  In fact, lately, I think the stuff they’ve been doing has been pretty damn brilliant.  But with such a large community and so much competition to WordPress constantly coming out, you’d think something like this would have happened sooner… or even by Automattic themselves!  I’m just ranting… What do you think?

What About The Other Side!
By other side, I mean us!  It’s great that things are getting easier and easier for USERS, but there’s this entire segment of the web industry that’s taking the hit with all this stuff.  It’s the Web Developers, Web Designers, the people that know how to use the tools to create amazing websites!

My fear is we’re making this so easy for users to just hop on, create a website, smile and show their friends “Look what I just did, HA, and that guy wanted to charge me 3 grand!”  THIS IS BAD!  We’re giving the illusion that building a website is super easy, and holy freakin’ crap, it sure seems like it’s getting there.

But now we’re opening the doors for people who have no idea what they’re doing, to start pushing out websites.  Then they may end up freelancing, and we’re all screwed!  I say that because in a world where a lot of us need to learn how to code, and create, and help build the backbone of these products, we’re essentially telling large audience, “Hey, you don’t need to do all that stuff, look, we already did it, just drag this there and your done.”

Only now when something breaks, it’s going to be support that’s taking a huge hit.  More support, more support, and even more support because most people don’t really get HOW to make a website, but we’re putting all these tools in their hands to create them.

On top of that, now our competition is slowly becoming anyone and everyone, so forget competing on price, because there’s NO WAY I’m going to build a website for $299, or $7 bucks a month or whatever the price may be.

Does this concern anyone?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

(This post was originally an email sent out to my list.  Want more awesome content via emails, sign up for my newsletter to the right.)

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