Surviving the WordPress Plugin Grind Growth, Marketing and Overcoming Burnout

Mark Westguard:
You’re listening to WP behind the Builds part of the Open Makers channel, an Open Channels FM production. I’m Mark Westguard and in this series we go behind the scenes of WordPress plugin businesses to explore the journey from concept to creation as well as the ongoing work involved in maintaining and running these businesses.

Mark Westguard:
Today I’ve got a very special guest, Devin Walker, developer of, amongst Many, many things, WP rollback and giveWP welcome, Devin.

Devin Walker:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Mark Westguard:
You’re on a sabbatical, I hear, so.

Devin Walker:
Yes, if that’s what you can call it. I’ve never been on one, but it feels pretty good. I wouldn’t say I’m just like chilling back on a beach anywhere and not touching a computer, which I think a pure form of a sabbatical is what I hear.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, I hear people just switch off their technology, which I would love to be able to do, but I don’t think I could do that.

Devin Walker:
No, I’d have to get in a van and drive into the middle of Arizona where there’s no reception and stay there for that to actually happen.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, I. Well, thank you for joining us on your sabbatical. I appreciate it. The closest I got to a sabbatical was at WorkCamp US this year. I was out with Nathan Wrigley and we found a place called. I think it was called Lost Lake or something. And there literally was no cell phone signal there at all. So I was scratching wondering if I had a support ticket, you know.

Devin Walker:
That’s great.

Mark Westguard:
You’ve got an impressive career history, from independent contractor through to successful plugin developer being acquired along the way. Do you want to give us some history and you know, into your, your. Your career history, which starts way back with Amazon. Was it in 2008?

Devin Walker:
Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. You’re going way back.

Mark Westguard:
I’m going way back, man.

Devin Walker:
Well, I appreciate you calling it impressive. You know, I. That’s very flattering to me, but yeah. So Amazon, man, that was the most corporate job you could ever experience where it’s like the name implies, right? You imagine fluorescent lights, a cube cubicle farm, and silence beside keyboards. And so that was my life after college. I interned there during college. Anyways, got in there in the IT department and, and they were doing all Microsoft technologies and they’re like, hey, do you want to build us an intranet? And eventually stumbled on PHP and open source after doing some Flash stuff. And then WordPress came shortly after that. I was looking at Drupal and Mambo and playing around with those and WordPress was just the best out of all of them. I remember logging into the admin and seeing it and being like, wow, like this is home. And then so after about a month from there I was like, I can’t stand this cube farm stuff. I was there for almost two years and I just basically put in my notice, moved downtown San Diego and started applying. My job was just applying for ad agencies, creative agencies. And so I found one in a surprising amount of time. My parents were like, what is this kid doing? But then two weeks later I was like, hey, you know, I got this job at this creative agency and I was maybe like the third hire. And they were doing all WordPress themes and custom plugins for really interesting hospitality and restaurant businesses in the area. And this was pre custom post type. So we had to really think about how to do things right. We didn’t do a lot of things right, but anyways that got me into like plugin development and after two years there I got tired of working with clients so I decided to go off. And that’s when the freelancer part of me kicked in. I was still doing a lot of client sites on the side, going to meetups, going to word camps. Met Matt Cromwell from there. I think you know him quite well, right?

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, I know Matt.

Devin Walker:
And then we eventually decided to team up. You know, I’m going pretty quick on here. And then we were building a ton of non profit sites and from there we were like, well, gravity forms sort of works. But they’re coming back at us saying like we need to manage our donors, it needs to do this and that. And then WooCommerce kind of work for it. And they were saying, you know, what’s this cart system? So we got rid of the cart and they’re like we want the checkout on every page. So we created this extension called Quick Checkout that which actually did quite well back in the day. And long story short, that’s where GIVE was born. And we built a company out of that. We had a third partner as well and the rest is kind of history. I, I don’t want to go through it all. I Want to open it up for you here, but that’s kind of like back in the day there.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been building a business since 2017, and I came in very, very late. I know how difficult and stressful it can be. I mean, GiveWP, I’m sure, went through that same stress as well. It’s. It’s not an easy journey for any. Any business to. To. To start. But you were very successful with that. You managed to sell that to Liquid Web, I believe, at the. At the time. How did that come about, the transition from having the plugin and then deciding that you wanted to sell to Liquid Web?

Devin Walker:
Well, like you said, the first couple of years were a grind. Right. Like when we launched the plugin, we launched at WordCamp San Diego 2015, and people really enjoyed it, but they’re like, where’s recurring donations? We need this. It’s like, so we’re like, oh, crap. Like, so we spent six months developing that, and then the business really kind of started showing some legs. 2017, 18, we called it like cockroaching because we barely had enough money to pay ourselves and the few people we had on board. And we were taking money that we made from client business and funneling it into the product business. But then 18, like 2H18, 19, and of course 2020, like, it just took off really, really well. We were doing everything to focus on it. That’s the number one thing. We weren’t as focused as we should been in those early years. Doing other little plugins here and there, cut all that out, focused on Give. And then 2020, like, the world shut down. Like churches, any religious organization, they all. Many went online, they found us, and our business, like, doubled that year. And 21, the business kept going. It wasn’t doubling year over year still, but it was really going well. And then during that time, there’s like, Liquidity was really. People could, like these big firms were going on buying sprees within the WordPress marketplace. That’s right, marketplace. And we’re like, this is. It seems like the wave is cresting here, if you know what I mean. Like, we’ve been grinding at this for seven years now. Our team’s really great. We can’t provide them sort of the next level. Like, or like, we did have a 401k but really good health benefits. Like a ceiling that was way up there. They can keep going up in an organization. And so we had all sorts of conversations, but none made more sense than Liquid Web. They made sure Everything was taken care of from our team, from the brand, like it wasn’t just going to get folded into something else in a year or two. And the people were great. Chris Lemma really helped out a lot with that. And they had already had successful acquisitions prior with the events calendar, which is a very large plugin as well, strict content pro, and we were just joining a great family. So that’s what it totally made sense. I’ll checked all the boxes, made sense for us partners and we decided to go on board and no regrets. Four and a half years later, almost.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. That’s awesome. What a story. You’ve got a new product, which is what I want to talk about today. I wanted to touch on GiveWP and I could talk to you about that for hours. I’m sure most plugin developers want to talk to you about that, but you’ve got a newer product, but it’s actually a product that’s been around since 2014 called WP Rollback. Can you tell us a little bit about what WP Rollback does, first of all?

Devin Walker:
Absolutely. So essentially what the original version worked with WordPress.org plugins only, where if you updated a plugin, let’s say Elementor, the free version, which is on WordPress.org and your site, maybe there’s a CSS issue, something changed on your homepage or wherever that didn’t look right and it was due to most likely change on the style sheets that didn’t conflict, that conflicted or JavaScript error. You could easily click Rollback next to the plugin like it adds a little meta line next to deactivate, activate click Rollback, takes you to a screen where you see all the previous versions that we Pull from the WordPress.org Rest API and then select that previous version. Most likely it’s one of the fewer versions, the previous three or so, and then roll back to that previous version. Check your site and most likely if your intuition is right, the problem would be fixed. And it’s helped out a lot of people over the years.

Mark Westguard:
And it’s just for. Is it just for plugins? So just rolling back plugins to a previous version?

Devin Walker:
No, it’s for themes too.

Mark Westguard:
Okay, cool.

Devin Walker:
You can absolutely do that for themes. I’d say it’s more popular for plugins because there’s only one theme per site. There’s many plugins widely used for themes as well too though.

Mark Westguard:
And you’ve recently introduced a premium version of that plugin. What are the differences between the free and the premium version?

Devin Walker:
Yeah, so for the last, I don’t know, maybe five years, I’ve had an idea like how do we solve the issue of Premium plugin downloads? Because Premium, they come from all different people in different locations and there’s no Central repository like WordPress.org to pull them from. And so the way that I got around it is when you install the free version of WP Rollback or the Pro version, and you just have it activated and you’re updating Premium plugins, what it’s going to do is store an archive within your WP uploads directory of that current version you have before it’s replaced by the one you’re updating to. And what that will do over time is create your own archive of your Premium assets, whether it’s a plugin or theme. And then when you need one of those Premium versions or past versions, I should say you can go like just the same workflow before, except for you’re clicking on whatever Gravity forms and then you’re selecting that previous version. So it’s more proactive though than reactive. And that’s something I found is a lot of people find us the Pro version specifically in a reactive state. Right. Something broke. They don’t have us already installed. Well, okay, but I have another plan to get around that. I’m not sure if I’m going to do it yet, but yeah. So this is like the MVP of it, essentially.

Mark Westguard:
Cool.

Mark Westguard:
How different has it been? I mean, given that you did GIVEWP before you’re in at a good time, how different has it been building that Pro version of WP rollback compared to what you did with GiveWP? I mean, you’re in a much later part of a WordPress. I had the same issue with WS form I came into a very saturated space. I guess your space is not so saturated. It’s quite a unique idea. But have you found it different to promote and push the pro version?

Devin Walker:
Well, the free version has 300,000 active installs so that’s like a huge marketing thing for it that I haven’t had to do too much. I was lucky. I got the WP rollback domain a while back. I don’t. Nobody ever sat on it or squatted on it and then I built a decent site around it. It seems to be have been gotten picked up in search engines regular relatively well and so people are finding it. But from searching keywords like plug and broke. My site needs rollback or something. I don’t know. We’re finding it but in that reactive state. So yeah like the marketing has been pretty good. I’ve been starting to do more YouTube videos around it and I plan to do more around that but it’s not the thing I’m going to hang my next 10 years on. It’s been a fun thing. Building it has been really fun as well. We can get more into like the dev side, the design side of it as well.

Mark Westguard:
I guess you’re a developer at heart, right? That’s where your roots are from. So still doing the coding?

Devin Walker:
Definitely. And that’s been really refreshing because give grew up to a team of like 25 I think when we were acquired and I largely got out of the day to day development design and at Stellar Liquid Web it was the same thing. Like I was getting in a bit into the trenches or whatever you want to say. But not, not like this one where it was just me doing everything from support marketing, development, design. And it’s been really refreshing to get back into that solopreneur type of put that hat on again.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, yeah. I found that with my agency I was initially it was just me doing development and then you start building up a team and you start drifting away from the development and you end up doing HR and sales and I had to have a sit down dinner with my wife and say look, this is not where my passion is. I love doing the coding so.

Devin Walker:
Oh, you’re so good too. I remember first senior plugin and seeing how rapidly you develop it too. And this is years ago.

Mark Westguard:
I don’t, I don’t sleep very much Devin, as people can’t see because we’re not on camera. So that’s good. Well that’s cool. I mean I’ve gone through burnout, I’ve gone through stress of Building these businesses. How, how do you deal with that? I mean, how. What advice would you give to plug in developers in terms of like dealing with the stress of building a plugin? Because if, you know, if you’re building a plugin seriously and you want to build it as a serious business, in my opinion, you’ve kind of got to build it like a bricks and mortar business. Right. You can’t just build a McDonald’s and not put the signs on it and not let people know about it. There’s a lot that goes into building a business and making people aware of it. What are your, what are your secret, what’s your secret sauce to getting through that as a, as a sole developer?

Devin Walker:
Yeah, I mean for this one, I have a bit of luxury where I can kind of pick it up and put it down. When I was through the development process of it. Right. Like I really wanted to do a mono repo structure for this one where I could, I wouldn’t have to have the same function between the free version and the pro version, there’s like a shared core that’s packaged into the, the two of them. And I went back and forth on how to get that right. Like I was packaging the free version and the pro version. I totally refactored that. That was a huge refactor that I have had to do and I learned a lot during that process. But it was, wasn’t like that stressful for me because I was at a different place in my life. But go back to the early days of Give WP and I was really fortunate not to, to have partners and not to be solo. And that’s when I caution a lot of folks out there is like you. I really think partnering up is quite beneficial. For me it was going to meetups really talking with people, working with them and creating this cohesiveness because then, you know, if everybody’s aligned and on the same goals and you know each other quite well, people, life happens. And life happened to me, life happened to Matt, life happened to other partner Jason. And we all kind of picked up the slack, for lack of a better word, when that happened. And it was really nice for me to hear like, don’t worry Devin, like go take the time you need and, and come back when you need it and when you’re, when you’re ready. And without that, like the business would really suffer and I would suffer mentally. And, and that was, that’s the bit of advice I recommend is like partner up. It’s really hard on your own. And for this product it’s relatively low support thankfully because there’s not too many moving pieces. It’s usually people not understanding that you need to have the free version installed first which again I’m trying to figure out a proper way to work around that and I’ve got some ideas but this one’s not a problem. But I’m just using like a cadence form because I’m using cadence from the stellar days. Like I still got all the licenses. I know we build a ton of sites on that and, and that goes into a Google group that then emails me and I have an auto reply on for that. I was setting up free scout as well on just like a subdomain support wprollback.com and I, I was like, I really wanted to try it but the, the setup was a little too complicated and for what it was and I was like, ah, I’ll just kind of put this aside for now.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. If your email works, use that. Yeah.

Devin Walker:
And if it just gets overwhelming, I need a ticketing system and I’m bringing somebody else. It’s good for like more than one person but for me, just for me right now it’s fine to work with email.

Mark Westguard:
Right now I use Zendesk. Zendesk on mine I use the lowest level that they’ve got and it’s just a way of me having all support tickets in one place. That’s useful because I’m useless at email so.

Devin Walker:
Nice.

Mark Westguard:
Makes it a lot easier. Yeah. In terms of I don’t want give you invested a lot in marketing, even in the, in the amp set. Are you doing any marketing around WP rollback or are you just focusing on those 300,000 installs and using that as a good way to promote it through the free version?

Devin Walker:
No, I’m doing some marketing myself but also sponsoring some podcasts as well.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah.

Devin Walker:
Getting like the six month or yearly package and so you listen to some podcasts in the WordPress space, you’ll. You’ll most likely hear a 30, 15 to 30 second advert about that. And yeah, that’s starting next month.

Mark Westguard:
Oh nice. Okay. Yeah, it’s, it’s always, for me it’s always a. I guess I’m not as risk averse as I used to be when I was younger. Nowadays I want every penny to count. It’s. Yeah, my next big thing is going to be Black Friday so that’s something I do quite a big push on. It’s, it’s a good time of the year for, for sales. I, I mean like you, it’s Really? I remember you saying this on a different podcast. Just like measuring ROI on that kind of stuff can be difficult. I mean, even like Word Camps. Right. Measuring ROI on Word Camps. But when I look back, I feel if I hadn’t done those Word camps and I hadn’t done this promotion I did with Black Friday, it wouldn’t be where it is today. Absolutely. It’s not just going, you know, grow itself.

Devin Walker:
Exactly. I’ll probably do something with rollback for sure. You know, I think 40, 50% off. I, I really look reluctant to do 50, but 40 is more than acceptable for me, so that’ll probably happen. And then I thought about like, I’ve never been a fan of lifetime licenses either.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, me either.

Devin Walker:
I haven’t done that as. As well. Uh, you know, just thank God I never did it. We never did it for Give WP. Cause like the valuation of the business would have been way lower because I.

Mark Westguard:
Know it’s, it’s definitely worth thinking about. Right. When you’re starting a plugin business is because there’s lifetime customers, they’re one time customers and there’s no recurring value. Uh, and I mean, yeah, I mean.

Devin Walker:
If I’m buying the. They don’t exist to me. If I’m the buyer of the company, they. They’re just dragging weight on that. And if you never plan on selling it, then do it. That’s fine.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What’s next for you after WP rollback? Or can you not say right now? Is it top secret? Have you got any things up your sleeves you can talk about?

Devin Walker:
It’s, it’s. It’s really close to being able to say, but not quite. I. I wrote a long blog post about closing the Give WP chapter the Stellar Web. And what I mentioned in that is I’m not leaving WordPress. WordPress is my career and I want to continue doing this and give back, whether that’s building something new myself or joining up somewhere else. That’s. That’s one of those two roads, so. Absolutely.

Mark Westguard:
So we can do another show about it in the future.

Devin Walker:
Yeah, but what’s next Immediately, like, I’m, I’m really focused on organizing the San Diego WordPress meetup that’s been dormant for a couple years now. So I got approval from the WordCamp committee on that. I got the. We have 20 RSVPs for October. I did a tweet about hey, we want to give away some premium licenses for like WordPress trivia thing at the end got an overwhelming response from a Lot of great companies. And so I just, I’m actually after this, I’m going to schedule the November one. It’s going to be focused on Black Friday.

Mark Westguard:
Okay, interesting.

Devin Walker:
More so from like the customer endpoint because, like a lot of the people that are coming are relatively new to WordPress. We do like a little survey, so I’ve been reading through those and so it’d be like how to maximize, like what you’re looking to shop for. And, and I just really love that. And it’s kind of like beyond code. It’s a way for me to give back as well.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s. That’s really cool. I would love to talk to you about that San Diego event. Maybe I can give you a license for that. That’d be great.

Devin Walker:
Yeah, I really like that.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. Okay, so here’s an on the spot question for you. If you could give one piece of advice to other WordPress plugin developers, what that be?

Devin Walker:
Don’t do it.

Mark Westguard:
Come on.

Devin Walker:
I get that question a lot for some podcasts and it’s one word, it’s focus. It’s the biggest thing that made a difference for us early in, in the Give WP days. We were doing quick checkout Maps Builder plus all like WP business reviews. Like, there’s all these little things we were doing that took away from our focus on give and one of. And get a mentor too. Our mentor was like, what the heck is this that you’re doing and why are you doing it? Your golden goose is sitting over there starving and like just cut all that stuff out. We did that. And when we did that, like, it wasn’t immediate where the business started to really thrive from it, but it, it made a huge difference over time.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. Put the other ideas on the shelf.

Devin Walker:
Yeah, I see people spreading the peanut butter too thin all the time in the WordPress space. They get impatient, they want to do something else, then this product suffers. You can, no matter how large your team is, you, you only have so.

Mark Westguard:
Much output and there’s nothing worse than thin peanut butter. I mean, you’ve got to lay it on thick.

Devin Walker:
Exactly.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah. I did the same thing years ago. I used to have an event management business in London. And the core business was very simple. Somebody paid us. We gave them a badge to say that they’re a respectable business. And we promoted them online. We used the money to promote them online on Google AdWords and stuff. And we branched out into having a magazine. We had an event business, we had a hospitality business, we had an experience business. It just, it was way too much because there’s just too many ideas flowing. And the problem was we hit the green button on those and it affected the core business. So with WS form, I have focused on that pretty much 100%.

Devin Walker:
Um, I noticed and it makes a huge difference.

Mark Westguard:
Yeah, yeah, it’s, and I’m going to carry on doing that. I, I, I’ve never been happier, honestly, waking up and, and doing this business. So it’s been, it’s been a great experience. So. Well, thank you for talking to us about WP Rollback. It’s been cool. How can our listeners learn more about you and WP Rollback?

Devin Walker:
Yeah, you can go to wprollback.com learn all about that product. And then if you want to learn about me, devin.org you can go to my website. I’m trying to blog more regularly. Or check me out on Twitter, innerwebs.

Mark Westguard:
Sounds good. Thank you, Devin. It’s been great talking to you and I look forward to talking to you again about your next endeavor.

Devin Walker:
I look forward to that. Thanks for having me.