
WP Engine: How A Startup Reached $1M In Sales In Less Than A Year - tswicegood
http://mixergy.com/jason-cohen-wpengine-interview-2/
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jacques_chester
I'm currently working on a startup in an only tangentially related field.

One line item of my capital plan is to relocate a small blog network I run
(<http://ozblogistan.com.au>) to WPEngine. There's enough traffic that I'd
need the $249/mth plan.

That's how badly I want _not_ to be a WP administrator. And how much better I
think full time professionals could do it.

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tedunangst
Can you explain why you wouldn't go with wordpress.com? As someone who's not
running WP, I'm curious how you differentiated the services.

~~~
jacques_chester
My users want custom plugins and themes. Wordpress.com doesn't offer that for
less than $500/mth, last I checked. WPEngine _will_ , within reason.

I don't charge for my services, though the various bloggers have made
donations out of niceness.

It just sort of ... grew.

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pchristensen
This article from his blog a while ago is also useful:
<http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html>

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redguava
I stopped watching very early on. It really bugs me in interviews when the
host does too much talking.

I hope it balanced out as the video goes on, but if you have a guest on that
has valuable information... let them speak.

~~~
AndrewWarner
I don't want to do too much talking.

Do you have any specific examples of where I did that?

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mgallivan
I think the two points that seemed different than your previous interviews:

1\. The story about your wife's WP hosting was a bit long. It seemed like you
were trying to sell the purpose of Mr. Cohen's service but the story was a bit
long-winded.

2\. I liked that you summarized the video at the start of the interview - but
you should do the summary before your interviewee is on-screen. As soon as his
face hits the screen I want to hear him talk...

Other than that, I enjoyed it!

~~~
AndrewWarner
Good point about my story of Olivia's experience. I think I was excited
because it happened recently, and I might have been trying to win him over --
which is odd because I don't need to do that.

Glad you said that about the summary. I've been thinking about the comments
and assuming the summary is what everyone was talking about.

~~~
mgallivan
I wouldn't worry too much about the length of the story - it's probably just
an outlier that comes with your style of interviewing.

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tobyjsullivan
I just spent about $2000 worth of my time watching this video and it was
totally worth it! P.S. If you don't get that reference, you didn't watch the
whole video. ;)

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whalesalad
Holy cow. $1M for SUCH a simple concept. Offering reliable WP hosting is about
as easy as changing batteries in a smoke detector. Not bitter about this,
rather, nicely done capitalizing on such a simple thing.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
And they are rather pricey: $29/mo. for 1 domain and up to 25000 visits... I
would expect personalized design in addition to hosting for that kind of
money.

Of course, all the power to them if they make their customers happy.

~~~
larholm
25,000 might sound like a lot of visits, but I have been beyond that in mere
hours with a single slashdotting.

Well, that was in 2004 when /. was big. Today, I would fear the Reddit
frontpage.

The next step up? Going from $29/mo. to $99/mo.

I might just not be their target customer.

~~~
smartbear
If you spike, we don't care and we don't charge you extra. We only care if
you're consistently _significantly_ over the limit month over month.

