544
===

Dustin: [00:00:00] On today's episode, I'm excited to share with you a conversation with my good friend, Matt, not the Matt, but a Matt from the WordPress community. And we'll get to that right here in just a couple seconds, right here on Your Website Engineer podcast, episode number five hundred in forty four. Hello and welcome to another episode of Your Website Engineer podcast.

My name is Dustin Hartzler, and I'm excited to be here with you today because I am going to share a story with a friend of mine from the WordPress space. And we've known each other, and we I've actually been on his podcast. He's been on my podcast years and years ago, and it was great to catch up and just see what drives him to stay motivated and to stay connected to the WordPress space and why he's creating WordPress media, and we even talked a little bit about how you can monetize things within the WordPress space, and I think it's gonna be a great conversation. If you're interested in being on the show and highlighting either a product or a plugin or just what you're doing in the WordPress space, reach out to me at dustin at your website engineer dot com or use the contact form on your website engineer dot com [00:01:00] and let me know.

I And I wanna feature somebody every month that's doing cool and interesting things within WordPress. Whether you are creating your own custom blocks or you use the block editor or you're using the new full site editing feature or you just can build a website for a client in a week or whatever the case may be. Please email me, reach out, and I want to want to interview you just kind of a casual conversation just like I'm gonna have here with Matt, and I just wanted to just thank you so much for tuning in, and enjoy.

Alright. Okay. We are here today a little bit different style show.

It's been, I don't know, probably a handful of years since I've talked to somebody on the Your Website and Your Podcast. And it's been ten years since I've talked to this fine gentleman that I've got here on squad cast today. From the WP Minute podcast, I got Matt Maderos. Good morning, Matt.

Matt: Dustin, it's a pleasure to see you and hear you after all these years.

Dustin: I know.

We spoke briefly at WordCamp US. It was one of those things that I saw you continuing, like, you were [00:02:00] posting things in tweeting. I was like, I need to find Matt. I don't I mean, it's probably been ten years since we saw each other in person too at at a WordPress event, and so it was good to catch up. Are you up to these days?

Matt: So full time job, Gravity Forms, Um, I've been with them now for, uh, just under a year. So about nine to ten months. Been a fantastic journey so far.

Um, been obviously in WordPress for quite some time, but really focusing on, uh, the gig at Gravity Forms, helping them with their podcast, the breakdown podcast, breakdown dot, uh, or excuse me, crafty forms dot com slash breakdown is the URL for that. And then focusing on the WP Minute, which is your favorite five minutes of WordPress every week. You can find that at the w p minute dot com, uh, which is, you know, my new sort of little creative endeavor with this WordPress stuff. Uh, no longer really do the MAT report, but, uh, the WP Minute is where you can find me most days.

Dustin: Yeah. So it sounds like you've been involved in WordPress a while. How'd you get your start? Like, what led you to [00:03:00] WordPress?

Matt: So the the lineage goes back to when I ran a digital It still runs today.

I started with my father. He still runs it today. Um, we were in, uh, the automotive industry. Uh, we had a General Motors, franchise, Chevy, Cadillac, GMC, all those, uh, fine General Motors products before they went bankrupt. This goes way back.

And, um, as it was sort of the tail end of that business, we started a digital agency. And it was, you know, back then, we go back twenty years ago. You know, you were doing things like creating a Facebook page, creating websites, creating business cards. Like, you were doing literally everything, um, back then because every customer wanted everything. And we started to focus on WordPress because I was in a day job where, um, I worked at an ISP, and we were acquiring another ISP, Internet service provider.

And they had a web development and web design arm of the business. And I started to learn WordPress. We were a Drupal shop. I started to learn WordPress. Then I was like, hey.

We should really focus on the [00:04:00] WordPress this WordPress industry thing. I don't even know what it is. But people are using WordPress, and, uh, we should focus on this. And, Um, that's when I started to get involved with WordPress meetups, really deeply understanding WordPress. And the first few folks that I met, Which was local to me at the Providence meetup was, uh, Jake Goldman, uh, of ten up dot com, Jay Tripp, uh, j j j, who now works At, um, uh, Awesome Motive and Jesse Friedman who now works at WP Cloud, uh, at Automattic.

At my in at my agency were Jeff Galinski, who works on Jetpack, and, uh, John DeRozes, who works for Bluehost as a full time core contributor. So we started a WordPress agency, and what I quickly learned was I started meeting Jake. I started meeting JTripp, and I'm like, I am not an engineer. Like, I'm not a developer. I I can't build websites, but they were getting all of the business because they were WordPress developers, and they were inside the community.

That was pretty much the core key factor, um, [00:05:00] to them finding these big clients, AOL, Verizon. Like, back then, they were building all these big projects. And I was like, I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineer. How can I how can I get in to the the fire hose of WordPress knowledge and community?

And I thought I was gonna start a blog, um, and just start, like, talking to people and writing about it, and I was a huge fan and still am a fan of Andrew Warner from Mixergy, Um, Mixergy podcast. And I was like, yeah. Maybe I'll be the Mixergy of WordPress. And that's how it started. My first interview was Jesse Friedman, and then literally after Jesse Friedman just knocking on the doors of folks that I found on Twitter and online like yourself, said, hey.

You wanna do this podcast thing with me? We just talk about, like, what you're building with WordPress. And that became the, uh, momentum into one, getting into the podcast and publishing space, two, getting into the WordPress community, But three, also leveraging, like, a podcast for a business. So I started to leverage that for the agency. People would refer [00:06:00] me.

I'd meet other bigger agencies, and they'd be like, hey, Matt. Like, this is a small project we have. Small project being, like, five to ten thousand dollars. Like, do you wanna do this? Yes.

I do. Like, I don't have any big business like that in my little local community. I'll take it. Um, and it was through the connections and the collaborations through the podcast. And then I would turn that into, like, a is gonna kinda get into business a little bit, but then I would use that as, like, a sales advantage.

People were like, oh, we've never heard of your agency before. Do you know how to do WordPress? And then I would turn to my body of work on, back then, iTunes. I'd be like, look. I'm on iTunes.

If you don't, You can literally listen to me talk about how I build WordPress websites. If you don't like that, then we're probably not a good fit. But here's my body of work. Is the agency you're looking at, do they have, you know, a podcast talking about WordPress? They oh, no.

They don't. Well, I do because I love WordPress so much, and we know how to use it. And that would parlay into, like, okay. We're closing deals now because of the, uh, the podcast. So that's the the quickest way I've ever explained my my come up in in WordPress.

Dustin: Yeah.

[00:07:00] Yeah. For sure. And so you're you're not doing the agency lifestyle anymore. Was that something that it was I don't know. What what led to that?

I know that there's a lot of people that really struggle with pricing or they struggle with getting customers. They get struggle, like, you know, you love WordPress so much and it's like, oh, I can do this. Like, this is a fun thing for me to do. But, like, what what kinda led to that? Like, okay.

This agency thing isn't for me.

Matt: Children.

Dustin: Okay.

Matt: The, um, look, every agency owner probably knows the feeling of, you know, you're just one project away from bankruptcy. Um,

Dustin: you're just one project away from bankrolling

Matt: yeah, we're bankrolling. Right? One of one of the two.

But It's certainly like you know, we're recording this now November thirtieth. This is generally, like, the holiday season for agencies. Man, it's like, buckle up because this is the time where everyone goes on vacation. No one's really making the big decisions. They're preparing for q one twenty, you know, q one whatever next year.

Um, and it's a cool sort [00:08:00] of moment because, like, you're ramping up to all of this stuff and, hey, a lot of business is gonna come in the door in q one. It's gonna be super exciting and A lot of revenue, um, but agency fluctuates a lot. I mean, unless you're ten up size or mega size, like, as a five, six person shop, It's very difficult to, um, you know, like, keep the stuff afloat. I also ran the business with my father, which has its own challenges. Right.

You know, he he's very you know, he's like, I wanna take over the world, and he's just like, no. I just wanna make little websites for people. Um, and I also ran the dealership stuff with my father. So, like, I've been working with my family for, like, twenty five, thirty years, and it's just like, uh, now that I have kids, like, I can't take the stress of, You know, running a business, having kids, and then doing this with my dad every single day, uh, it was pretty challenging. So, Um, but the business is still running.

Right? So the agency is still there. I still help out with any kinda, like, major critical stuff, hosting. Uh, customer comes in the door and they have, like, really big technical question, and they you know, he might knock on my door and be [00:09:00] like, hey. What what do you think about this?

Should I take it? Should I not? Um, so I still support him, you know, where I can. Um, but that was the big that was the biggest drawback. And, you know, just like everyone else and, you know, maybe we'll talk about this, but try doing the product thing too.

That's not easy. Um, we did WordPress themes. We did a WordPress plug in. Um, had, like, some mild success and, uh, but it was never like, finding the focus to exit from agency to product is super hard. Um, and, again, especially when you're running it with, you know, maybe a family member.

But that was a big that was a big changing factor. It was like, that's when I need to get a full time job, um, for some sanity, um, and for some foundation. And and then I had found my my three and a half years at at Pagely, uh, as a, uh, account executive after that.

Dustin: Yeah. Doesn't everybody who's run an agency before even, like, you're an an entrepreneur and you just do this yourself, like, you're like, oh, man. If I could do a plug in or a theme and that's the only thing I work on, like, oh, that would just that would be so much [00:10:00] easier. Right?

Matt: Yeah.

The I mean, I I listen. Don't get me wrong. Like, sometimes, uh, when I left my last job, uh, at a podcast hosting company earlier, uh, end of twenty twenty two going into twenty twenty three. I heavily considered getting back into just doing consulting because it takes you you know, when you first get into it, there's a rush. Right?

And you're like, this is, you know, this is great. This is terrible. There's all these ups and downs. And what you find yourself doing is saying yes to a lot of work that is literally just paying the bills, but it's not, like, satisfying work, And it's not work that is, like, super profitable. And I think people have, uh, I don't know, like, uh, a knee jerk reaction to When you say profitable immediately, like, you're you're, like, pulling the rug out of somebody.

It's like, no. Like, you should be as profitable as possible in your services business be to make up for the downtimes, because there will be downtimes. You will lose clients. A client will say yes to you [00:11:00] verbally, and then they'll never sign the contract. You need to appreciate the work you do, value it as much as possible, and profit as much as possible for the health of yourself and the business.

Um, and I started to think, like, after all the bumps and bruises and and the and the scars that I have from running an agency, like, I really thought heavily, like, I'll go back into this services business because it is fun. And when you know some things, like, you can build a certain lifestyle that could be really profitable, but, Um, the Rocket Genius offer was too good to to say no to.

Dustin: For sure.

I think too, like, you're also working on somebody else's goals. Pulls. Right? Like, you you are really, like, helping them, like, launch something that could be, like, extremely profitable. Right?

How many times do you does an agency, like, they build this website and then for, like, a maybe a public figure or or, you know, somebody who has a bunch of followers already and they sell a twenty nine dollar a month subscription thing. And now all of a sudden, like, they're generating [00:12:00] forty five thousand dollars a month, and you're just like, I just charged you five grand for a website. Like,

Matt: It's funny. It you know, it's funny you bring that up, Dustin, and this is probably right around the same time that I interviewed you on the Matt report ten plus years ago is I had, um, Lewis Howes as a client.

So I don't know if anybody knows who I I don't even honestly, don't even know if he's still, like, doing stuff, but I think he was a former like, he he was in the NFL for, like, two seconds. Uh, but he was, like, a a a big sort of Internet entrepreneur at the time, and it was the same thing. Like, he was doing webinars. He was doing all this stuff. He was, you know, he was that typical, like, I don't know.

I hate to say it. Like, million dollar million dollar a year Internet entrepreneur at the time. You know, I think maybe he was on Oprah. I I don't know. Maybe he's done some things.

Um, but he was he was a client, and we built him a website, and it was the same thing. I wasn't I was charging him, like, same thing, five grand. And I I was watching him generate hundreds of [00:13:00] thousands of dollars, like, selling ebooks, doing webinars, and then he he was, like, the worst, you know, no offense. Like, he was the worst client to work with because he didn't understand tech. And I was just, like, you know, going back to what I said before, like, you're just saying yes to anything to grow your business.

Was just like, hey, man. Yeah. And this is exposure thing's gonna be great. I never got exposure from it. You know, I got I made five thousand bucks, and it was, like, a pretty, know, it wasn't a bad situation, but it was just wasn't the outcome you had hoped.

Um, and, yeah, it can it can kinda really mess with you, like, mentally running, you know, running an agency. And then he hooked me up with, like, somebody who was, like, a professional soccer player who's launching his own brand of clothing, and that was a disaster because that guy knew Nothing about technology. And the same thing, you you go into it like, oh, look. This guy's a professional soccer player. Like, this is gonna be great for the biz, and he was the worst client ever.

Right? So, like, you might as well have just sold to a restaurant down the street, made more money, and been done with the project, you know, way before.

Dustin: yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

So we've heard a little bit about your backstory about some of these different ventures you've been in and but you still [00:14:00] continue to stay in the media space. You've changed podcast a little bit, YouTube here, there, um, few different channels, few different things. Why is that?

Matt: Yeah.

So creatively, it's first and foremost, it's just like a creative thing. Um, this idea of, like, content creation. Um, it's why Gravity Forms hired me to run their, uh, podcast and help the marketing team create content. But for me, I live in, like, two worlds, uh, you know, much like you. Like, I really love WordPress, and I really love podcasting.

More specifically, I love the idea of These are two vehicles, two tools that humans can use to publish words or or audio. Right? Um, I don't count video because YouTube is YouTube. It's like, I can't distribute that for free. People can't just tune into it unless they have a YouTube account.

Um, but I love the the the the idea behind WordPress, the democratization of publishing. Um, this is a piece of software that touches millions of people [00:15:00] that, you know, for better or worse, it's built in the public, like, ninety eight percent of it. Right? It's built in the public. You can join a Slack channel.

And if anyone has never done this before, like, jump into wordpress dot org Slack, and you can actually watch the people talk about the issues, build it, find solutions. The best time to do this is during a release. So I recently watched the WordPress six point four release, and you're watching this thing lift off like a rocket ship, Uh, as you would watch, like, a NASA or SpaceX launch. People are talking about the issues. They're solving it on, you know, real time.

They're they're checking everything before this thing launches, and then they celebrate the launch. You know? And that's, like, the fun part of it. There's a lot of, you know, difficult areas of open source, but it's problem more than it is a software problem. Um, and I think it's important that a a piece of software that touches so many people is the heartbeat of a lot of people's businesses and and and hobbies and publications, um, that it is open [00:16:00] source and and and largely controlled by, uh, code that people commit and and volunteer time.

So WordPress is important to me. That's why I continue to do it. The WP Minute is where I'm at now with, you know, creating that content and keeping a sort of, you know, I I don't wanna say watchful eye, a critical eye on how all of this is, you know, coming together, whether it's, you know, automatic or Matt Mullenweg or WooCommerce or Awesomeotive or the freelancer who's building, You know, she's building some small plug ins that's helping, you know, people put websites together. Um, you know, covering that space and And having an opinion on that is is important to me, because I hope it trickles down, uh, to the end user who should care about WordPress. And that's where that's my strength and my weakness, Dustin, is I I I want the average WordPress user to care about a big thing happening with WordPress because I know how critical it is to that website.

Um, you know, and and that's my sort of, [00:17:00] You know, my my North Star is, like, can I get people to listen to five minutes of this important WordPress thing? Because it impacts their life whether they know it or

Dustin: Right.

Yeah. Absolutely. So how about can you share anything, any details? How does somebody and then this is kind of a a tangent, but I'm curious myself as somebody who's trying to get more YouTube content and views and make make it roll in money from, uh, from YouTube. But but how is that in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four time period?

Is it, like, have you seen what have you seen in that landscape? Because I I know that I have twelve hundred subscribers or something. I made exactly zero dollars from YouTube in the number of years that I've had a YouTube account. And so so what's that like? What's what's that landscape like?

Is it is it somewhere where you can actually make money, or do you have to have the millions of people and lots of long form content? Like, what are you seeing?

Matt: So I zoom out.

Um, if you look [00:18:00] at the WP Minute business as as a whole, right, like content creation as a whole, I'm not one to rely on just Google AdSense, uh, which is what how YouTube pays you through AdSense. Uh, ad networks and drop in, like, what they call dynamic ads or dynamic content, and you can do that. But We talked about this on on our podcast or my podcast, um, moments ago or depending on when you're listening to this, maybe a week or so ago. Um, the The podcast, uh, CPM's, uh, cost per, uh, thousand downloads is very low. Right?

So, you know, in our space, you and I would probably make, like, a Starbucks coffee on our podcast. Right? Because there's not a lot of listeners for the WordPress side of things. So what I do is I have this mindset of I approach my content like a business. So the WP Minute to me, I approach it like a [00:19:00] business.

It's not a big business. That's for sure. Um, but I approach it like a business. So what that means is I do a lot of direct ad sales, which a lot of people are not comfortable with. They don't know how to.

Um, you know, it's a very sticky situation for them. And by that, I mean, as I go to sponsors and I say, hey. You can sponsor the WP Minute for, let's say, whatever, ten thousand dollars a year, And you would get, you know, this package with with all these sponsorships. So we zoom out. We look at it as a whole.

WP Minute direct sales, WP Minute membership. Um, I have some do it yourself ads, which we can talk about, and then we have YouTube, uh, revenue coming in. As a whole, the WP Minute does about, On a good year, about sixty thousand dollars in spa in total sponsorship. Right? Which is a fantastic side job, uh, or side supplement to, you know, the the work that I do at Gravity Forms.

YouTube is just a fraction of that. Right? So YouTube is has gotten tighter, uh, in terms of the payout, uh, a year ago [00:20:00] or two years ago well, three years ago at this point because COVID. I mean, it was probably triple what I was making as a passive, uh, as a passive income. At my highest, uh, with YouTube, it was probably bringing in, like, seven, eight hundred bucks a month.

Um, and at the time, that was maybe, like, ten to twelve thousand subscribers. I'm at fifteen thousand subscribers now, and it's bringing in, like, on a good month, three fifty, four hundred maybe, um, which is Which is nice. I'm not, you know, I'm not complaining, but, uh, the trend has certainly gone down, uh, with with YouTube AdSense. And that's why it's important, Like I said before is to build your dot com, and you have to approach us as a business and say, look. The algorithms and the platforms aren't gonna pay me.

I'm gonna have to see value in my work, knock on somebody's door and say, here's my body of work. I value my audience. This is why this audience is important to you. Here's my here's here's my direct sales sponsorship. Right?

Um, and sell [00:21:00] those sponsors.

Dustin: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think there's so many neat ways that you can do that these days. Um, we I think we shared a little bit or we've talked about like, oh, you can use any of those, like, big name people that are out there like that, you know, your box food delivery or your Spotify or, you know, the mattresses, you know, all the things that doesn't make sense. But, like, if you can truly provide an advertiser very specific to your market.

Right? I think that's gonna convert more. It's gonna be better for everyone. Right? And I'm on some list that, like, they have a newsletter sponsor for the month.

You know? Those are gonna send out four newsletters. They get ad placement in there. You know, you get those right in the middle of a YouTube video, and those feel a lot more natural than, like, the the AdWords click bait click, ads that come up. And so I think it's just is is what you're saying is, like, you can't just rely on one thing.

Right? And I think that's kind of always our ground that we've been on when we're with WordPress. Like, we can [00:22:00] kinda rely on WordPress because there's hundreds of thousands of people, like, working on it, and that can be our home base. But you can't just, like, put your stake in the ground of, like, I'm gonna do everything on Facebook and then, you know, like, those algorithms change

Matt: Yeah. I mean, perfect example. You know, YouTube is finally getting into, the podcast game.

And it's a scary situation because, uh, the Google had Google Podcast. They've since killed that. It's gonna be gone Next year, you you probably already know this. Probably Libsyn is probably telling you this already. And you have to have a YouTube account now to distribute your podcast because all podcasts will go to YouTube Music instead of a Google Podcast.

So as Android ships devices out into the future, there won't be a podcast, uh, app anymore. It'll be just YouTube music, listen to podcasts there just like Spotify does. Right? Um, and What they're doing is they'll ingest an RSS feed into your YouTube channel now, but if you have ads on it, Whatever. They say this is you can't have dynamic [00:23:00] ads in your, yeah, in your podcast anymore.

Right? So how they find that? I don't know. AI, you know, they track it somehow, whatever. Just like they find music, I guess.

Um, but it's just like, man, like, just another squeeze at creators, you know, and it's just but we should have learned our lesson years ago when Facebook pulled the rug under Facebook pages. Right? Everyone Learn that trick. Everyone's like, Facebook pages. You gotta build a website.

You gotta build a Facebook page, and then they were you could reach all your fans on Facebook pages. And then they said, oh, guess what? Uh, we're gonna shrink that audience, and now you're gonna have to pay to get access to that audience. And if you post to your page, you get five percent reach. If you pay us, you get ninety.

Dustin: Right. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, oh, man. Yeah.

So I think it's always being flexible with the times. Right? If you, you know, like, you're obviously a little bit more driven with your all your media content of, like, finding those sponsorships and whatnot. I'm kinda doing it for the love of the game. Like, I love WordPress and, like, enjoy talking to people and seeing, like, how they're monetizing WordPress or how they're using different products or or whatnot.

So I do [00:24:00] have a couple, like, that are questions that are a little bit closer to, uh, WordPress, um, that I wanna run by you real quick here. I wanna know, are you on team block editor or team some other page builder? And you can name the page builder if you're on that other

Matt: Yeah. No. No. No. So, um, I I do love so I don't use Page builders.

Um, WP Minute is powered by, um, the cadence theme, um, which is still primarily me using blocks. Um, they're not it's they're not using a page builder. But I've covered twenty twenty four, uh, extensively on my YouTube channel. And, uh, I think it's the most important theme that WordPress core has shipped with default theme that WordPress core has shipped with maybe all the way back from, like, Kubrick. Right?

Where, like, the whole world use that theme. Um, this theme has, uh, it has an opinionated design, You know? So at first glance, you look at it and you go, uh, this is not for me. This [00:25:00] is pretty heavy on the design side. But it has a lot of patterns, and the the full site editing experience has gotten to a point where it's it's unfair for me to say it's gotten to a point where Tolerable.

It's a little bit more beyond tolerable. Um, but once you start getting into, like, template parts with headers and footers, it's painful. But Patterns, templates is very good, uh, at at this point. So I've really been enjoying, uh, in this actual side project that I mentioned, Um, before on wordpress dot com is just using the twenty twenty four theme. I'm in there.

I'm customizing templates, so I'm a huge fan of of the direction. It's not there yet Compared to a cadence, I don't think it ever will be. It shouldn't be, in fact, and certainly not on the levels of, like, an Elementor or, uh, bricks builder or beaver builder or something like that. So thumbs up for me on on the page building experience.

Dustin: I've been all in. I did some wordpress dot com support earlier this year, And I didn't really know much [00:26:00] about these new themes, and then people would come and support and, like, how do I do this in the theme?

And you're like, oh, man. Let me, I guess, figure this out on the fly because I'm chatting with you today. Um, and so but anyways, like, I think that it it can get there. It's not quite there yet, but I continue to push it, especially, like, the using blocks and using the things and

Matt: God bless you if you have to answer how to customize a footer twenty twenty four with template parts.

I don't know how you could even explain that to a normal person.

Dustin: Uh, man, even just, like, click on these certain buttons like, oh, click on the one that's like three horizontal lines that that aren't lined up.

It kinda look like a stair step, you know, like, going down the steps or going up the steps or over here on the right, click on this it's a square, but it's a line down the middle, and you have to type all this out. It's, yeah, pretty crazy to to a lot of time, there's a lot of, like, animated images sent through chat. Like, here's how to do

Matt: Business should be booming for anyone who's educating people on WordPress right now.

Dustin: Yes. Yes.

Yes. Um, what are [00:27:00] you building with WordPress today? You said you mentioned a little bit you've got the twenty twenty a theme. Like, is there some sort of project that you're working on that just is kind of like scratching that itch of, like, either I'm learning something or just give you that tinkering ability?

Matt: Yeah.

So, of course, the WP Minute, like, I'm always, like, knee deep in in covering WordPress news and understanding, like, what's happening. Um, Gravity Forms always, like, testing Gravity Forms with full site editing with blocks. Like, how do we integrate Gravity Forms into this new page building experience? How do we make the the the plug in compatible with it? All this fun stuff.

Um, but, again, more specifically, I have this Again, Dustin, I'm I'm plagued with side side side hustles. Um, I have a a website called the podcast setup dot com where I just feature people who people's podcast setups. Right? Like, you have a cool podcast app, take some pictures, talk about it, post it on the podcast setup dot com. And it was running on Ghost, which is another open source CMS, uh, for a year or so because I wanted to see, like, what it's like to be outside of the [00:28:00] WordPress world.

Ghost is a nice platform, but now that I have, uh, strong ties to Gravity Forms and the stuff you can do with inputting data and creating content with Gravity Forms and WordPress. I I'm like, I gotta get back to WordPress, but I wanted to be in the dot com experience. So I wanted to get I wanted to drench myself in WordPress and figure out, like, automatics experience of WordPress, site building on dot com, and that's where I'm at. So the podcast setup is something where I'm I'm really going all in on the page building experience in dot com so I can fully understand that. And it's important to me because as you know, Dustin, the Twittersphere goes, Hey.

They're only doing this thing because they want better stuff at dot com, and they want all this stuff in dot com, and that's why they're building. Man, I've been in dot com, And there's some rough edges there that that are like, whoo. This thing is like, you all think the world's getting taken over by this? Not yet, but I wanna learn it and understand it so I can [00:29:00] see both sides of the fence.

Dustin: Yeah.

There's some somebody that's worked in support, there's some weird things that they're very specific to, like, the business plan or the ecommerce plan. Like, menus are rearranged whether you're on one or the other, so you have to, like, see what's platform they're on before you give them directions and not. But I think that's a that's a great experiment though to, like you're gonna you know that most hosts are always gonna be the same. Right? Your WordPress experience is gonna be the same.

You know, the site might be slow. It might be fast whether you're on shared hosting or not. But, like, seeing that other experience wasn't did there used to be a few different rain cat

Matt: Rainmaker. Rainmaker.

Dustin: Yeah. Like, wasn't that kind of similar to wordpress dot com where it was like a an overlay and it had your own experience?

Matt: That was a that was a theory that a lot of people shared, but one that I specifically was pretty strong on years ago is, like, that was the future of WordPress. Um, was, like, all of these hosts will have their own flavors of WordPress, and you won't even know it's WordPress.

Now I was trying to predict that again probably, like, ten eight, ten years [00:30:00] ago. It hasn't come true, but I think maybe with the new admin interface coming and if that's more of a block experience, that will unlock the ability to craft a different experience for the admin side of things to where it's tailored more to that end user. So Rainmaker is was probably, like, Eight years too early, um, you know, in the sense.

Dustin: Yeah. Absolutely. And my last question for you today, uh, it's been a pleasure catching up and just hearing just your experience with WordPress and what it's been like over these last few years is if you're building a site and you're gonna grab a plug in. It can't be Gravity Forms because you work you work for that.

And I know that's a lot of people's answers because, like, almost every site needs some sort of form, you know, or a builder. What are you grabbing? What kind of plug in is like on all your sites?

Matt: Yeah. So let's see. One that's gonna be on all my sites.

One let me talk about one that I think is Fantastic. Um, that I think a lot of people should have on their sites is the block visibility plug in by [00:31:00] Nick Diego. Um, that plug in obviously integrates heavily with the block experience, and it's block visibility per block. So I can click on a block and say, only show this block between December first to December thirtieth. Um, make it disappear at literally this time, uh, this hour.

I can make it disappear. I can make a block appear If they're visiting from a mobile phone, um, whether it's Android or or iOS, uh, and I actually use that, uh, with The WP Minute. So if somebody is looking at it in a mobile view, I show them the podcast subscribe links, At the at the top of the post because if I'm and it's only on my podcast pages. So I use block visibility to say, If this is a podcast post and they're on a mobile device, show these subscribe links, and I try to, you know, up my podcast subscriber game that way. Right?

So in block visibility, that's just scratching the surface. Like, block visibility [00:32:00] does a whole bunch of other, like, conditional logic, and it's a really, really well thought out and designed, uh, plug in by Nick Diego.

Dustin: Awesome awesome. And that just kinda pulled up one more question in my mind. Like, when when you are, um, you're building out your content, like, you you mentioned that your podcast, you know, you'll have your show notes and you you rearrange it and whatnot. Are you using a pattern for that reusable block, whatever they're called these days?

Like, are you already copy and paste it from somewhere else? Like, what's that workflow look like? Getting your content into WordPress?

Matt: Yeah.

So the content into WordPress is, uh, I I I'll write my if it's a blog post, I'm writing my notes in, uh, I'm writing the blog post in an app called Bear, b e a r. And I it's literally just in I'm a Mac user, so it's the Bear app. Um, it's a nice writing experience, and then I just copy and paste it into into WordPress. But then I actually use another plug in, which has gone more commercial these days. I've been grandfathered into [00:33:00] a lower price, um, but they're much more much more for, like, a commercial publisher these days called newsletter glue.

And that allows me to send my post as an email, but then have, like, the same conditional logic where it says, this goes out in the e these parts go out in the email. These parts stay in the blog post. It's a fantastic plug in. It's just how they switch kind of, like, business models, so it's a lot more expensive these days. I think it might be, like, four hundred bucks a month now.

Um,

Dustin: Oh.

Matt: um, you know, so it's a lot more expensive. Uh, I should probably look at that right now while we're talking, but, um, I'm grandfathered into the original pricing. Oh, no. It's it's cheaper than that. It's it's eighty bucks a month.

So, you know, still on the higher end. Um, but if you're a content publisher and you're making money with your business in a newsletter, it's, you know, it's money well spent.

Dustin: Gotcha. So that will help you that creates your show notes and creates an email newsletter kind of at the same

Matt: Yeah. So it'll send out through so I still use Mailchimp, [00:34:00] sadly, and it sends sends out the newsletter through Mailchimp, um, but it for like, everything I'm formatting in my post, I'm saying this stays in the blog post, and this goes out to the Mailchimp list. And it and it helps me manage all of that stuff.

And it can, like, summarize, you know, news, uh, can summarize, uh, your content for you and all that fun

Dustin: Gotcha.

Wow. Something

Matt: Something new.

Dustin: every day. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Newsletter glue. Alright. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I'm I'm fairly certain that I've talked to you on my podcast as well. It's been ten years, so we'll make it a let's see.

What would that be? Twenty thirty three. We'll do this again. Um, but as Matt referenced, dude, don't forget that we did back to back shows, and there will be links in each other show to listen to the other one and make sure that you subscribe to all his things and make his YouTube ad revenue go up and maybe mine someday make a dollar or

Matt: Subscribe to Dustin's YouTube channel.

Dustin: yes.

Exactly. Well, thanks so much,