How WooCommerce Has Impacted 7 Developers

Alex Stanford – WP Dev Academy

Hello, my name is Alex Standiford. I’m a WordPress Engineer on the Managed WooCommerce team at GoDaddy, and I create WordPress development courses at WP Dev Academy. Woo has empowered me really. It’s the one thing that regardless of where I’m at in my career, has been a fundamental component into what has propelled my career. First, it came from finding better paying jobs, customizing WooCommerce as a freelancer, which then eventually gave me the experience needed to get hired to work on AffiliateWP, which integrates deeply with WooCommerce.

After that, I ended up working for the GoDaddy team, working on the managed WooCommerce product, which where, you guessed it, we’re integrating with WooCommerce. It just seems like every time my career shifts in a positive direction, WooCommerce is always a part of that equation.

David Vogelpohl – WP Engine

Hi everyone, my name is David Vogelpohl, and I’m the VP of Growth at WP Engine. The biggest impact Woo has had on me has been through all the people I’ve met and lifetime friendships I’ve established with people in the global WooCommerce community. It’s such a huge part of Woo’s impact for me. During my agency days, we allowed my team to build beautiful, high-quality and custom eCommerce experiences faster, and at a lower price versus other eCommerce platforms. This helped us close more clients, and provide jobs and income for myself and our WordPress developers, designers, and marketers employed by our agency around the world. Now that I’m at WP Engine, Woo has had an impact on me in the way that it provides a path for WP Engine’s customers to enjoy all the same benefits I personally enjoyed with Woo over the years. I love that my job includes helping people find more success with WordPress, and Woo is a huge part of that.

And then finally, Woo is having a big impact on my personal shopping behavior in 2022, as I’ve committed to buy from an S&B WooCommerce store at least once a month, as part of my Woo Year’s resolution to support S&B businesses on the web in 2022. In any case, those are the ways Woo has impacted me, and I can’t wait to see the impact Woo will have in the future. In the meantime, I’d encourage others to join me in my Woo Year’s resolution to support S&B businesses on the web by buying Woo in 2022.

Josh Kohlbach – Rymera Web

Congrats on your 200th episode, Bob, good day, everyone. I’m Josh from Rymera Web Co, we’re the makers of Wholesale Suite and Advanced Coupons. And, WooCommerce has impacted me in countless ways, actually. Like many folks, I started out building websites with WordPress, and quickly fell in love with deploying WooCommerce stores and helping local companies get online and selling their goods online. This led to focus in on that group, store owners, as somebody to serve. And, ever since I was a kid learning to program in Microsoft Basic, I knew I wanted to run a software company one day.

So, after many years and a little bit of a winding journey, WooCommerce was the thing that actually let me do that. I now have an amazing team, loads of great friends in the broader WooCommerce and WordPress industry. And, I now know store owners from literally hundreds of countries all over the world, which is something I never would’ve been exposed to if it wasn’t for Woo. So, congrats again on your 200th episode, Bob. What you do for the community is inspiring, and I can’t wait to catch up in-person next time when I’m in the States.

Thanks to our Pod Friends Iconic’s Orderable and Jetpack’s CRM

Katie Keith – Barn2 Plugins

Hi, I’m Katie Keith, Co-Founder at Barn2 Plugins. WooCommerce has impacted me by allowing me to build a flexible business that meets my lifestyle goals. I run my plugin company from home and work the hours I choose. I’ve built a fantastic team who get on great, and can also work when they choose from wherever they want to live. I can choose what projects to work on based on what interests me, and I don’t have to answer to anyone else. And, the best thing is that I didn’t have to compromise in order to achieve all this, because I earn more than I possibly could make in a traditional job.

Recently, I’ve taken advantage of the fact that I can work from anywhere by moving from my home in the UK to sunny Majorca for a year. Moving my work was incredibly easy because all I need is a computer. All of this has been made possible by the fact that WooCommerce is an inclusive community, with low years to entry. If you know how to code a plugin, then you can release a product for WooCommerce. Of course, you need to know how to market it and make it a success, but WooCommerce does bring opportunities that aren’t as easily accessible in other industries. It has had a huge impact on my life.

Marcus Burnette – GoDaddy Pro

Hey, everyone, my name is Marcus Burnette and I’m part of the GoDaddy Pro Events and Community Team and, one of the co-hosts of Do the Woo. Woo has impacted me in a number of different ways over the years. I started my WordPress career designing and developing websites for clients of a small local marketing agency. This was at the advent of online-only stores like Amazon and eBay. It was also around the same time that large retailers were adapting to keep up. WooCommerce allowed us to bring the world of online shopping to our clients in a way that was affordable and easy to manage.

With dozens, if not hundreds, of WordPress and WooCommerce stores under my belt, I moved away from direct client work to supporting freelancers and agencies using WooCommerce, and joined the SkyVerge team. I knew what agencies needed, and wanted to help more than just the one I was at succeed. With SkyVerge, I truly found an appreciation for the extensibility and ecosystem provided by WooCommerce, empowering us to offer and support more than 60 premium WooCommerce plugins. Many of them are among the top sellers in the WooCommerce marketplace.

Recently, I stepped into a new role with GoDaddy Pro, another part of the GoDaddy umbrella alongside the SkyVerge team. As a WooCommerce specialist within GoDaddy Pro, I’m fortunate to be able to continue sharing strategies for success for our freelancers, agencies, and entrepreneurs, using our products alongside the WooCommerce platform.

Mary Baum – WordPress Core

Before WooCommerce, selling online even with WordPress but especially without, was not for designers. The non-code solutions I tried before I turned 50, which is when I found WordPress, were unreliable, confusing, expensive, and butt ugly, without a lot of trouble. Once WooCommerce came along, of course there was a learning curve, but it worked, and it taught me a lot of PHP templating I needed to know anyway. I’ll always appreciate WooCommerce and the whole Woo and WordPress community. Hi, I’m Mary Baum of St. Louis, Missouri and the WordPress core team.

Ronald Gijsel – Do the Woo

Hey, my name is Ronald. I’m one of the co-hosts here on Do the Woo. And that’s probably my highlight. It’s a culmination of lots of knowledge and meeting people at various WordCamps and meeting Bob, and then co-hosting three different types of podcasts, together with many other co-host as well. I think that’s the highlight. But, the path that led to that started back in 2015, where I realized what WooCommerce could do. It had huge potential to add a simple plugin to WordPress, and then being able to sell within minutes. And that’s such a powerful thing. And ever since then, I’ve helped many, many different businesses succeed and sell online. The pandemic has been a big boost, but also working with different companies to help spread the WooCommerce message and enable people to sell online.

I’m also looking forward to what the future will bring. I think we are at a crossroad where eCommerce is just the norm now for anybody in everything they do. I think we’ll see a lot more on services, not just products being sold online. And, everything else around web three. So, being part of the Do the Woo ecosystem makes sure that I’m right at the center of it. I hear and see lots of new ideas, and that’s very exciting for me.