Building a premium WordPress product is something I’m quite familiar with. But up until now, I’ve been a one hit wonder. Will my six weeks sabbatical to focus on Sitewide Sales lay the groundwork for a second successful (and profitable) product?
Feather Icons with WordPress
I’m working on a project right now and wanted to try a new icon set. In the past, I’ve exclusively used Dashicons for basic icons and Font Awesome for more robust icon needs.
Our team member Andrew shared a link to Feather Icons because we’re thinking about using it for Paid Memberships Pro (if the licenses allow it).
So here’s a basic gist to enqueue a local copy of feather.min.js code and a hook for wp_footer to call the method that replaces and inserts the icons.
Sitewide Sales Sabbatical Prep: New Development and Feature Improvement Ideas
I wrote up my Marketing-focused project ideas for my 6 week “sabbatical” to focus on Sitewide Sales. If you didn’t read that or the first post on why I’m doing this, check them out.
Here’s a mega list of development ideas I could focus on during the sabbatical. Some may be outside my personal development skillset (primarily frontend development and design with PHP, HTML, CSS).
I don’t think features is what Sitewide Sales needs right now. But features are fun to code and fun to think about.
Sitewide Sales Sabbatical Prep: Website Improvements and New Marketing Ideas
In my previous post, I talk about starting a 6 week “sabbatical” from Paid Memberships Pro to focus all my energy on our product, Sitewide Sales.
So how will I spend all that time?
Aside from a crazy long list of development ideas, I know one of the biggest things Sitewide Sales needs is a consistent marketing plan.
The biggest work I can do in these 6 weeks is improve our positioning and value prop, then develop a marketing plan to carry out by my current team or through contractors after the 6 weeks elapse.
Here’s a huge dump of the current ideas I have for my sabbatical related to Website Improvements and New Marketing Ideas.
Prepping for a 6 Week Deep Dive on the Sitewide Sales Product
In June, I start a 6 week “sabbatical” from Paid Memberships Pro to focus all my energy on our product, Sitewide Sales, a flash sales plugin for WordPress ecommerce & membership sites.
My next two weeks will be spent in the ideas stage—considering improvements and changes to:
- Improve the sales site to use the “Pain-Agitate-Solution” framework.
- Create loads of solution-agnostic and tool-specific content to grow domain authority and thought leadership.
- Start new marketing initiatives like outreach, social media, partnerships, presentations, market research, guest blogging, and YouTuber sponsorships.
- Develop new features and improve existing functionality in the plugin.
…and because I can’t help myself, a few moon-shot ideas that would be big shake ups to current the product and marketing channels.
In true build in public fashion, I’m going to document as much as I can about the project. This is ground-up WordPress premium product work: optimizing a sales site, new marketing, new development, and big decisions to make.
On Mementos and Family Heirlooms
This weekend, a book and a movie I watched featured an heirloom watch passed down through generations. A thought struck me: there are no mementos or heirlooms in modern life.
The most common types of things people pass down through generations are furniture, art, and jewelry. You can’t pass down an Apple Watch Series 7. Nor will my Ikea furniture hold up for generations to come.
Do I need to be considering the “heirloom-worthy” value of purchases these three categories?