How to Choose What Digital Product to Build

[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: This is WP Product Talk, the place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners. And now enjoy the show. Hey,

everyone. Welcome, welcome. This is a new season of WP Product Talk. We've been away for quite a while. Um, but we're back. Um, I'm excited to be here. And, uh, today we're going to be talking about how to, uh, choose your next product that you want to build. But, uh, it's a fun and special episode because it's the beginning of a bunch of stuff and, uh, it's hosts only, um, with even the, I guess we've, what we've called the spirit of Zack.

Um, he's hovering here somewhere. The spirit of Zack is here somewhere, but, uh, I'm Matt Cromwell.

[00:01:15] Katie Keith: As

[00:01:15] Amber Hinds: he

[00:01:15] Matt Cromwell: flies

[00:01:16] Katie Keith: over the ocean. Yeah. Over the Bermuda Triangle, I believe.

[00:01:20] Matt Cromwell: So. The, this, yeah, the, the, the living spirit. Hopefully we get him back, is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. He was on a vacation in Bermuda and he even joined us for like some prep, uh, while he was there, which was kind of cool to see.

Um, but, um, short introductions. I'm Matt Cromwell from, uh, StellarWP and a co founder of GiveWP.

[00:01:44] Amber Hinds: And I'm Amber Hinds. I'm the CEO of Equalize Digital, which is the maker of GiveWP. The Accessibility Checker Plugin.

[00:01:51] Katie Keith: And I'm Katie Keith, founder and CEO at Barn2 Plugins. And so this season and the next one are really interesting because we're doing something new, which is that we are going to go through the whole life cycle of planning and launching and marketing and growing a WordPress product.

So we're taking a structured approach to the next two seasons of which this is the first in which we go step by step through the different things that everybody has to do when they're going to launch a new WordPress product. And today we are talking about something you can't really miss, which is where to get the idea for your products.

[00:02:31] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Yeah, I like that we are giving it a whole big structure that you'll be able to actually really Get details about every step of building and launching products. Um, but you still get all the big benefits of what WP Product Talk is all about. It's, uh, product owners talking about their products and what makes them successful, what makes them fail.

Um, and we're going to have some really amazing guests. You all have been applying for to be guests on the show, and it's been amazing to see all the applications come in. And we've got a really great, may I say, stellar lineup. So, pun intended, I guess. But, um, Yeah, Amber.

[00:03:13] Amber Hinds: Yeah, well, I was just going to say, we've got some awesome people watching us.

So feel free to say hello in the chat. Of course, give us a thumbs up on YouTube. We always appreciate that. But we would love to incorporate your thoughts in this conversation as we are talking about ideas for building a product. And maybe that's a good place to start storytime that we. like to do and share where we all came up with our product ideas.

Um, I, I don't know if I'm just standard and boring, but I feel like where I've gotten our plugin ideas, uh, not just for Accessibility Checker, but some of the free plugins that we put on WordPress. org or our Conference Schedule plugin, which we actually sold to the Stellar team, um, was Clients. So we had a marketing agency and we were doing client work and there were just not plugins available that solved the problem.

Uh, and so we wanted to come up with something and then we're like, oh, hey, maybe other people would pay for this or would want this solution. And so maybe we should make it into a broader product. Um, but I don't know, is that, is that how both of you got your ideas initially for the products? A

[00:04:38] Matt Cromwell: little bit.

Um, actually I think we're all a little bit similar. Katie, didn't you all also do some agency work?

[00:04:46] Katie Keith: Yeah, I think that's the really good starting point. So, I've come up with other ideas from other sources later, but, um, some of our first products were from agency work. Because once you're in there, and I know a lot of people that watch WP Product Talk are doing client work and to make a switch to products in the future.

So agency work is a great way to get those insights because you can spot the gaps. You're immersed in WordPress from a website builder's perspective. And so that gives you unique insights that maybe nobody else has come across. And I believe the market's not saturated yet. If you're close enough to find those gaps and agency work is a way to do that.

[00:05:31] Amber Hinds: Yeah,

[00:05:31] Matt Cromwell: absolutely.

[00:05:32] Amber Hinds: I, you know what I think would be sort of interesting for us to go into on this a little bit is when you build plugins, many of us have built plugins for clients that were just for use on one website, but there is definitely a difference between how you approach building a plugin in that scenario versus building a plugin that you're going to distribute.

Um, and, and, you know, we're talking about, oh, you can get ideas from doing agency work or client work, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be set up, um, to build something to distribute. And so I'm wondering, like, if someone is an agency owner, and they have an idea, what would they need to think about to determine if this is actually the right product to build, and what would they need to have in place to set it up in a way that, um, would be different from what they just do to deliver it to one client.

[00:06:21] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that's even part of the thing with a lot of client work. And also, I'll say, even from the background of how we landed on GiveWP, um, is, um, that you have, like, repeat client work and, uh, similar types of clients who have similar types of needs. So you keep having to solve the same problem over and over and over again.

Um, and you find that Oh, well, actually, if I build something for this client, um, even if I do it with a lot of unbillable hours, maybe outside of the, the normal scope of this project, then I can use that for, uh, solving the same problem for a future client. Um, and that's, I mean, that's honestly exactly where GiveWP came from.

Uh, Devin and I both were trying to solve the online donation problem for a lot of different non profit clients over two years. A period of time. Um, and uh, every single time folks were like, I'd really need to do online donations. And I was like, that makes sense. But man, that's super hard. Um, . So, um, you know, I think that's part of it is, is seeing that there is, there's always this danger that you're catering to one specific client's needs.

Uh, and sometimes their needs are unique. Um, or to niche, um, or to, uh, specific. Um, but, um, once you start finding that, uh, one solve works for one client and for several other clients as well, I think that all of a sudden you have something that might make a lot of sense.

[00:07:52] Katie Keith: Yeah, I think that worked out really well for you guys at Give because you were focusing on a specific niche.

So a lot of your clients or even all of them were non profits and therefore you were able to validate the idea for your product internally from your agency work. Um, whereas when I was doing client work, I didn't have that luxury because our clients had different requirements. We weren't specializing other than in WordPress, which is pretty wide.

Yeah. So what we did was, um, with our, um, second, I think, plugin was that a client hired us to build a table of blog posts because he had a massive blog. He wanted it to be more easily searchable and filterable and all that. And the client agreed for us to to release it as a free plugin. So we released PostTable with search and sort, um, uh, on wordpress.

org and just to see what would happen. And that has led to literally millions of dollars, multiple millions of dollars of sales just from that, because we started getting feature requests for the free plugin. So first of all, people wanted to list things like custom post types and custom fields in a table.

So we released PostTable Pro, and that's done really well. And from PostTable Pro, people started asking for more specialist features for certain types of content. So our biggest selling plugin of all time is WooCommerce Product Table, WooCommerce Product Table. Which looks like the post table, but it's for WooCommerce products.

It's like a quick order form with add to cart buttons and that kind of thing. And then our next biggest plugin, which is our current bestseller is our document library plugin, which again, it's just a table of posts, but this time they're document posts with download buttons and previews and things like that.

So just from releasing a client plugin on WordPress. org, not having established the market demand or anything like that, it's led to. All of these are the products that have been successful.

[00:09:53] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. We have folks here in the comments, um, who have similar experiences. Mark Westgaard is the author of WSForm and he says he has agency to plugin experience.

He had an agency and his plugin came from frustrations with other plugins in the space. Um, you know, we know that he's talking about other form plugins in this case. He's being nice. He's not trying to call out his competitors here, but, um, he was serving his clients and they had struggles with some other forms and, uh, he was like, let me build a really awesome form solution that will serve all my clients needs.

Um, thanks for being here, Mark. I'm glad you're here. Um,

[00:10:34] Amber Hinds: You know, you know, it is interesting about that, that I think, I saw a tweet and I wish I had the exact, uh, wording of it from our friend Jason Cohen over at WP Engine and he had written about sometimes there are benefits to creating products that are already in what might feel like a crowded market.

So for example, forms, you know, that's a, that's a really, what we might say, crowded market. And sometimes people are like, oh, there are no plugins. in this exact thing. And so I'm going to go build it because I'll be the only one, which is a really great approach. Like for us with accessibility plugins, there weren't really any competitors at all when we launched our plugin.

Um, but the downside on that is not as many people maybe know that they need that. And that's why there haven't been other solutions. Whereas a form plugin, you might say, Oh, I can't start a form plugin because There's already 10 or 20 or whatever foreign plugins out there, but if you can have a unique take on a plugin that is in a quote, crowded market, you already have a ready audience that are willing, you know, it could be challenging in some ways, but in other ways, you might have a bigger potential market that you could go into.

And so that, I think that's an interesting thing. Maybe our audience should think about don't necessarily say, Oh, just because there's already 10 plugins that do this, it doesn't mean you can't provide value and you can't have a successful product in that niche.

[00:12:07] Katie Keith: Yeah,

[00:12:08] Amber Hinds: absolutely.

[00:12:09] Katie Keith: And actually, Mark was a previous guest on WP Product Talk.

So if you go on the website, you can find his show in which we specifically discussed how he found success in the crowded market of form plugins. So that's a good one to go back to.

[00:12:24] Matt Cromwell: We, we got another, uh, Another comment, Blake Whittle is here in the comments too. I am running an agency and plugin product at the moment.

I saw storage costs at hosts were too high and so I acquired infinite uploads. Um, that's, that's a really interesting, um, uh, area to focus on as well that, uh, maybe clients were, uh, needing to do a lot of storage stuff and, um, and they were too costly. They were like, I wish there was a better way to do this.

Um, and so he solved that by acquiring a plugin. Uh, I think that's a pretty cool method as well. So, and Mark is a supportive of Amber's take on Mark's comment. I agree with Amber. There is plenty of scope to improve on current plugins. Absolutely. That episode with Mark, man, that feels like it was ages ago now, but Mark was a great guest, um, and, uh, talked about, um, competing in a crowded space.

It was really good. Um, yeah, absolutely. I think the, for Give at the time, we, there were a couple other donation options, but we really felt like they were all kind of like, um, just. We were doing just the bare minimum to, uh, and we were like, we want to do like the maximum, we want to be like the WooCommerce of donation platforms.

Um, and so we came out really big and really strong, and I think that can happen sometimes too. At the moment, there's this big glut of like AI powered, uh, plugins right now, where everybody's trying to do AI in WordPress. And I see them constantly just, you know, trying to do the bare minimum in many ways.

Um, but, um, uh, some folks like James LePage and others, uh, uh, and, uh, of course, uh, Arnie, Arnie Palmer, he's been in the AI space for a long time. Um, they, uh, they're really trying to do a full throated, really big featured AI in WordPress. Um, and I think that that definitely makes a big difference as well, is even if there are Existing things there, uh, your take might just be like, well, let me just go big or go home, you know what I mean?

Um, I think that's another way to think about, um, about the space. But I, I actually would really love to hear a little bit more from both of you about like, um, Your physical ideas, like how do you actually come up with product ideas? Katie's actually mentioned this like two or three times on the show. Uh, but I think, uh, like the way that you all, uh, think through different, um, WooCommerce extensions that you could do.

And actually I'm also really interested because you are right now, um, thinking about what products to build out for Shopify in particular. So, uh, I'd love to hear a little bit from you on how you all come up with ideas.

[00:14:55] Katie Keith: Yeah. So for us, it's a bit different as well, because we're a multiple product company.

So it's not just finding one product and putting all our resources into that. We're always looking for new ideas. Uh, so our first ever product was not from agency work. It was, um, called WooCommerce Password Protected Categories. It's now called WooCommerce Protected Categories, which is Slightly less of a mouthful.

And we got the idea for that from the WooCommerce Ideas Forum. So we looked, I'm literally quoting my WordCamp Asia talk that I'm doing in a few weeks, by the way. Anyway, I feel I'm literally reading from a memorized script. Um, so, um, we looked for the idea that had the biggest number of votes and was the easiest to develop.

And, um, And as you were saying earlier about, uh, you need to know that people actively want something like with form plugins. It really solves the need and people are searching for it. The fact that something's on an ideas forum suggests that there is real demand. So, and it actually started selling within a few days because nothing on the market existed at that time.

And so we released this fairly simple plugin. It was our first ever plugin. and started getting sales. And then, since then, most of our plugins have just come from our other plugins. Uh, like, um, when we know that customers need related functionality. So, for example, we released our WooCommerce QuickView Pro plugin because people with product tables wanted QuickView buttons in their product tables.

And we thought, yeah, we could add a QuickView feature to that plugin for them. But actually that could be a standalone thing. Quick view buttons are relevant away from product tables. They can just go on the shop page, for example. So we released that as a separate plugin, which integrates with product table and things like that.

So once you're out there, whether it's agency work or products, then the ideas come to you. But you also Matt mentioned Shopify and I'm not out there in Shopify and that's been a really interesting challenge because I have all this WooCommerce knowledge and some of that has really helped me but I'm kind of scared because I am not building Shopify sites for clients and I don't have So I started for Shopify by looking at the functionality of my WordPress plugins in the Shopify app store and looking for gaps and differences.

And sometimes my WooCommerce knowledge really helped with that, which was really helpful. Really refreshing to see. So, um, like there was one thing where I noticed that the search intent just didn't make sense. Um, so I was searching for, um, volume based pricing or quantity based pricing and bulk pricing.

And all I was coming up with was like bulk discounts. And things like that. And I was like, hang on, that doesn't match the search intent that I know about from WooCommerce. If someone wants bulk pricing, they want a quantity discount, not bulk editing. So I'm hoping that I'm right on some of this and that my WooCommerce instincts apply to Shopify, but there's a gamble and it's scary working in a new space.

[00:18:15] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I

[00:18:16] Matt Cromwell: actually really like this, uh, this tweet you have here. Um, I keep calling it a tweet, whatever, post. Um, for one, for two reasons. One, I love that you're doing the Shopify diary thing. That's been really excellent. Um, but two, just this, this, this, uh, way that you're thinking about the, the product here.

Um, Katie says in her ex post, uh, Uh, Shopify 21, obviously product market fit is essential for success. I'm taking a risk with our first app. I got the idea from noticing a gap in Shopify for something that I know there's demand for in WooCommerce, but I don't know if Shopify merchants actually want it.

Are you running with that idea or did that end up being not the thing?

[00:18:57] Katie Keith: Um, Yeah, it's not definitely a gap. It's more like a wording gap. So that functionality exists, but they call it something else. So I thought, well, if I release an app with those features and I call it what I think real people do call it, maybe that'll get installs because it's all about the app score and the keywords.

So the competition isn't using the language that I think real people use. So that's why it's a scary gamble. And, uh, I wouldn't. necessarily recommend doing what I'm doing. Really, we should start building stores for clients in Shopify, but that's not our business model anymore.

[00:19:35] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. So you're going to enter a crowded marketplace by giving it a unique name, basically.

[00:19:42] Katie Keith: Yeah. And just wording it differently. And, um, It's like the SEO

[00:19:46] Amber Hinds: angle of product creation, right? But yeah, it's, it's interesting. Uh, so we, We do, like, it seems like you've been doing a lot of market research and that kind of stuff and looking at competitor solutions. And that's really, I think, been a lot of what we do.

You know, if I get an idea, an idea is one thing, but how do you validate it and say, okay, yes, we should actually spend time building it. Um, so for the plugins that we've developed, we've spent a lot of time looking at competitor solutions, uh, including sometimes paying for them. Um, Uh, sometimes if there's like a plugin or a Sass that has a demo that's handy and I'll use the five minute email addresses.

So like, they can't tell that I went and tried out their demo or got like a 14 day free trial. Right. But I think doing a lot of research and just like looking at what's out there, what's functionality, what do I think is good about those? What do I think I could improve upon? Like what is not good about these solutions and where could we differentiate?

Um, has been a big part of our process to actually deciding if, um, a product needs to be built. But for us, yeah, it's been very, some of our initial plugins that we released were all just driven by client requests and then maybe one or two clients asked for it. So then you're like, Hey, maybe I should just build this in a way that it's repeatable and can be used by multiple people and isn't just, you know, functionality in there.

That's one client's functionality plugin. Maybe it should be a standalone plugin. Um, but, but these days we're very targeted and niche with everything that we talk about building. Uh, we have a few, uh, Add ons or WordPress plugins, some of which are on WordPress. org, some of which are just on our GitHub, and they're usually all around accessibility.

And, and usually it does still come out of, um, like a lot of the little fixer things that we have, uh, have come out of a client, like, Hey, we need to remediate this, but we feel like it might have potential to be used outside of that one website. And so we'll build it in a way that is more scalable and more, And I'm sure you've all kind of thought out, I guess?

[00:22:09] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:10] Amber Hinds: Absolutely.

[00:22:10] Matt Cromwell: I think another aspect of finding a good product is really, really trying to understand, um, the market in general, um, for certain types of, of, uh, features and functionalities. Um, at the moment, honestly, Lastly, I think there's a bit of a gap for things related to contact management, like CRM related items.

We see some cropping up. Groundhog has been on the scene for a little while. Fluent CRM has been on the scene for a little while. They're both growing and maturing. Um, and, uh, actually on the Give side and the TEC side, uh, and the LearnDash side, we all get Kind of recommend those, um, as good compatible products, um, for, for our products.

Um, but, um, I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but Elementor is building something right now, um, and they're, uh, looking, uh, at, uh, at doing something with email and marketing, and I'd be really curious to hear from Miriam. She's been a guest with us a few times. Um, and, um, uh, I'd love to hear from them how, uh, They, uh, decided to build out that, uh, functionality.

I'm assuming it's based on their existing customer base. That the Elementor customers, um, are like, Hey, I have this great website that I built now, now I need to be able to email and segment my, my emails to my customers or to my users or, uh, Um, to my, um, product, uh, folks, um, in different ways. And, um, they just see a lot of need there.

And so decided to jump into that space. Um, honestly, at Stellar, we, we think a lot about it as well as a, as potential. Um, it, it is a big, complicated, uh, tool. Um, uh, but, um, but I think there's a lot of, uh, I mean, it's one of those things where almost everybody needs some sort of CRM nowadays. If you have a website that has visitors that submit their email in any way at all on your website, you probably want some sort of CRM functionality.

[00:24:14] Amber Hinds: You know what I think is interesting? Because that seems like yes. There is a gap there, but it also, if you're an individual developer or a very small team, thinking about building an entire CRM that could work for any kind of business is a massive undertaking. So one of the ways that I would think about this where I know, hey, there's also a hole and it's a riff on this idea, it, but maybe makes it a little more bite sized is don't build a CRM for everyone.

So think about what is, so for example, House cleaners. I, right, I have housekeepers who come to my house, they probably have a very specific need for like the kind of fields that they would need, the kind of emails that they might want to send, like, Reminders, hey, it's your every other week cleaning is coming up, like, or whatever that might be, like, they might have a very specific need that is maybe more compartmentalized than if you're thinking about, okay, the CRM also needs to be used by marketing agencies or, you know, whatever it might be, restaurants.

Uh, so I think that's one way to maybe think about a product idea and make it tighter is really narrowing down on one specific audience. And then building something that works very well for that audience, um, rather than trying to be the big thing out the gate or something for everyone out the gate, like, find your one audience.

And hone in and perfect that and then you could grow and expand and be like, okay, well, now we're going to do window washers. I don't know, right? Like whatever the extension from that is.

[00:25:57] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I actually have another really good example of that that just came up recently. Um, let's see if I can try to make this work.

Maybe like this. This one is good, yeah. There we go. Um, this just came in, uh, yesterday, I think. So, David Michael here is saying on Twitter, again, on X, uh, working this year on a modern e commerce plugin for WordPress aimed at people selling digital products, subscriptions, licenses, services, etc. And he goes into exactly why he wants to do this.

I've always been a fan of EDD, of course EDD is one of the go tos for exactly that functionality, and EDD has been around for forever. Um, so he says, I've always been a fan, uh, but it has a lot of backwards compatibility code and bloat now, with a clunky checkout process that isn't really designed for modern websites.

So I think he's, he's honing in on, we have these tools, but they're not particularly modern. Uh, we have better things now, like Stripe Checkout, which save reinventing the wheel and provide better security. WooCommerce also suffers from poor admin experience and bad database design. Uh, none are really fun.

I think this is a factor why people opt for LemonSqueezy, which is a hosted solution. Um, and he says, because I have the luxury of starting from scratch, I can design with performance, security, and scalability in mind. So that's what he's saying right there is what's missing from these other products.

GiveWP, Matt Cromwell, Katie Keith, Equalize Digital, StellarWP, GiveWP, Zack Katz, GravityKit, GiveWP, Matt Cromwell, Katie Keith, Equalize Digital, StellarWP, GiveWP, Zack Katz, GravityKit, As it's kind of dying. He, he says WordPress is dying. I don't agree with that. He says it's not

[00:27:54] Amber Hinds: relevant anymore. Okay. Boo.

Thumb down. I know . Um,

[00:27:58] Matt Cromwell: but if anything, it will be a fun project to undertake and I'm already 50% done. Um, I, I, I, I think this is amazing. I love the optimism I that he's 50% done like a project like this. I would think like as soon as you feel like you're 90% done, you probably have at least six to nine months more of work to do

Um, but still, oh man, the last. Yeah,

[00:28:20] Amber Hinds: what like 10 percent of building any product and getting it ready to actually release and then, hey, you got to write all the documentation for it and all the screenshots that you need to include in that, which stopped you from doing it at the very beginning because you needed all that.

Oh, it takes so long.

[00:28:39] Matt Cromwell: Exactly.

[00:28:41] Amber Hinds: Can we talk for just a second about that? Like, should you not build a WordPress product right now? I know, Katie, you're exploring into Shopify and we've talked about this. We had a really good episode where we had some great guests from around the community talking about, um, um, You know, sort of the drama and that kind of stuff, which I don't think we need to rehash.

But I don't honestly feel like WordPress market is going to go away anytime soon. I don't think it's a problem to release a new plugin right now. Because the thing is, is website owners They change CMS platforms so slowly. I just, I can't imagine that there's going to be a major shift in the volume of WordPress sites, um, in the next.

[00:29:34] Katie Keith: So, yeah, I don't think WordPress is anywhere, but it's not a rising tide like it used to be. It used to all grow without us even needing to do much and now it's stable and I don't think it's. using it. It's still the market leading CMS by a long way and all of that. But I Do factor in deciding what product to build is your business model and I would Say that a SaaS business can lead to more sustainable revenue.

If you think of an idea that model where you can build money, you host it. So people lose the functionality if they stop paying all that kind of thing that you don't get with a pure plugin. And one other benefit of SaaS is that it can be platforms. In fact, I was talking about this also on X with, um, the guy from the split test plugin, who.

we had on the show in December. He is currently looking at sassifying his A B testing plugin, partly so it can be used across multiple platforms, as well as to fix some other pain points. I'd say that that's worth thinking about and then it can be like, say, OmniSend or Weglot or somebody like that, who are huge in the WordPress market and that's their main market and audience.

But those products and you can use them on platforms such as Shopify as well. So that's a factor. Oh, yeah. I mean,

[00:31:12] Amber Hinds: for us, it's been really interesting that we have had one of our biggest feature requests for Accessibility Checker is, Hey, can you make this work in Drupal, right? So, I mean, I will say like, we've thought about that a lot.

And then, so then we have conversations like, okay, should we build a Drupal plugin? That's just like the counter balance, right? Or should there be a, a SAS component that is totally agnostic and could work in Drupal or could work in WordPress or whatever, right? So I think there is a lot to balance there.

Um, but I do. I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying about restricting features and things like that beyond just plugin updates, because there are increasingly WordPress plugins that do this. MemberPress is a good example of that, whether or not you like it. If you stop paying for your license, the admin of the plugin stops functioning.

Uh, the, uh, we actually encountered this surprisingly with, uh, Gravity PDF, one of the two, there's two different PDFs, and I don't remember which one it was, but it was incidental in that we had originally set it up for a client with our key, and then we were like, yeah, we're not going to pay for this anymore, so we made the client go buy their own key, and when we swapped the keys in the database, all their PDFs were gone, because apparently they're stored on, like, it's, it's API ing up to the, um, They, up to their server, they're not actually stored on the website server and they're, um, using the key, the license key to connect them with the account.

Now, they were able to fix it and move them over and all that kind of stuff, but it was a surprise to me, right? But I'm assuming that the reason that was done was for the same reason, which is that if you stop paying and your key is no longer active, the functionality is gone. So, um, I think, you know, like, building a SaaS can seem daunting to people.

There are ways to kind of SaaS ify a WordPress plugin, um, and still get some of the benefits that you might have from a SaaS as far as stickiness with customers in ways that we probably didn't see even like four or five years ago.

[00:33:28] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Interesting. Um, this has been great. I love Rehashing some of our storytime stuff.

Um, like we, we actually mentioned these types of things on the show a lot, but in the context of like really trying to find a new product, um, a lot of folks are constantly just being like, how can I discover my next product? How can I think through my next product? Um, and in general, um, I think, uh, On the show, we always end up, um, with our best advice section and we always say it's like an elevator pitch, but I think it'd be nice to kind of extend it a little bit this time.

Um, I think giving, um, some extended advice, um, extended best advice, um, on, uh, on how to, how to pick a product would be really good.

[00:34:15] Amber Hinds: I also wonder a tiny bit, do you guys know of a need that you know you aren't going to build, so you'd be. Happy to share it and be like, if somebody built this, I think they'd make lots of money, but I'm not going to do it.

Have you, have you guys ever thought of products like that?

[00:34:31] Katie Keith: Oh, I have a whole document, uh, where is it? Mostly WooCommerce stuff.

[00:34:37] Matt Cromwell: I'm actually like, It's like, I'm, I'm, I'm experimenting a lot with AI at the moment, like everybody is, um, and, and with AI building out an online documentation plugin. There are several, um, in the WordPress space right now that do online docs, and I've been just.

Not totally satisfied with all of them. And I'm really passionate about online docs. And so I was like, what if I can make something really lean, um, that is, that suits all of my needs, um, out of the box? Um, that'd be really great. And actually it's coming along pretty well. Um, but I don't know, that's one that like, I feel like there's definitely a need for it, but I don't know if there's really a market for it.

Like, I don't think any of these existing online docs play Products are like selling like crazy, you know, I don't know that you can make a whole, uh, business from a product like that. Um, it'd be a nice addition to an existing suite maybe, but, um, yeah.

[00:35:34] Amber Hinds: So the whole that I think is not covered very well in WordPress plugins is, uh, support plugins.

So there's awesome support, which has some stuff I don't love about it. A lot of accessibility problems too. But I feel like that's the only one that I've really seen that does a good job as far as replacing like a Zendesk or a HelpScout within the WordPress. And I do think there is probably a market for that, especially as we see like HelpScout and Zendesk really raising their prices a lot.

I think there'd be a lot of people who'd be interested in being able to run all of their support through their WordPress website. So that would be my idea that I'd share. Anyone who wants to build that, I'm not going to build it, but if you build it, I bet you can make money off that.

[00:36:23] Matt Cromwell: A lot of folks end up going to FreeScout.

I don't know if you've seen FreeScout, but it's basically like an open source. Yeah. It's an open source free version of HelpScout essentially. Um, that's where most folks go.

[00:36:36] Katie Keith: I know some people that love it and other people say, um, I know one person that said their support team mutinied. switched to it, and the analogy was that it was like switching from Apple to Microsoft, more clunky and something like that, and they went back to HelpScout despite the cost, no other

[00:36:57] Amber Hinds: people that love it.

Oh man, we're on a really, really old Zendesk plan where we pay like 5 per agent. A month? So it's like way cheaper. We don't quite have all the functionality, but I was like, I am never upgrading or cancelling this because it will, I don't know, way increase our cost. Did you find your dot, Katie? Do you have some plugin ideas you could put out there for people?

[00:37:26] Katie Keith: Really specific and it's to do with listing WooCommerce orders in the front end, um, presumably on a private page or something. Our PostTable Pro plugin, the one I mentioned, any custom post type in a table can list WooCommerce orders because that's a custom post type, but it's not designed for that. It doesn't support all of the fields that WooCommerce uses to store or doesn't let you fill in.

People want, and we received from PostTable Pro users that are not happy with the way it displays orders, and I'm not ever planning to build an extension or a new plugin or anything to do that because I've got lots of other ideas. If anybody wants If you wanted to do that, then I think they're manned.

Um, I suppose a use case might be like um, if employees or something wanted to access a hidden page on your website without actually seeing the WordPress admin where they can view orders or something like that. Uh, so surprisingly people want to view orders on the front end. Hmm,

[00:38:34] Amber Hinds: that is an interesting idea.

And thinking about how many WooCommerce websites there are out there. That there probably could be a good market for that.

[00:38:41] Katie Keith: What's the wonderful thing? WordPress and WooCommerce are so huge that all these ridiculous, like, um, if you look at what barn, two years are often really, really specific single feature things and they can sell well because it's such a huge market.

So as it sound

[00:39:01] Matt Cromwell: mm-hmm.

[00:39:03] Amber Hinds: So you wanted us to do our best advice for coming up with product ideas? Yeah.

[00:39:08] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. All right, I'll, let's do that. Let's do a little bit extended though.

[00:39:11] Amber Hinds: A little bit of a sentence. Okay. So not just three sentences.

[00:39:14] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:39:15] Amber Hinds: So I would say my best advice on, um, coming up with ideas is kind of what I said before, which is definitely do research.

Don't be afraid to pay for competitor solutions, even if it's just for a month or a single site license or something. If you're serious about an idea. you should really do research and see what is out there to try and figure out how you can improve upon it or differentiate yourself from it. Because if there's any existing solutions, that's kind of what you're up against, right?

Whether you're going to differentiate on the SEO side and just be like, I'm going to be more findable, or you're going to differentiate in we saw someone writing about on X or in The UI or whatever that might be. Um, I think you really have to think about how can I differentiate there? And then, um, like I said earlier, I don't be afraid, don't think you have to find something where there is literally no solution, because I think that might be a little harder.

I'm sure there are, we just, but I, no matter what, there's probably going to be a solution and you are probably going to have competitors. So, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as long as, again, you can figure out how to differentiate.

[00:40:34] Matt Cromwell: I like it. Nice. Katie, what about you? Best advice? Extended best advice?

[00:40:41] Katie Keith: So, I'm going to say earlier about looking at what So, if you want to build WordPress products, if you have some major or WordPress already, or at least, um Related things like web design or your current experience and insights are it might be client work. It might be your own WordPress site. Uh, maybe you have other, you're doing a course on WordPress or something, whatever WordPress space look for ideas.

And you might be surprised, um, looking at pain points, pain points other people have seen to do research by looking at forms like that. But you need to get as possible to the WordPress market in all those gaps and then hopefully validate them as well.

[00:41:37] Matt Cromwell: I like it. I like it. Um, me personally, honestly, I have, um, been thinking about, um, the way that a couple folks are innovating at the moment.

Uh, I don't know if anybody, uh, lots of people actually follow Jamie Marsland. Um, and he's been experimenting a lot recently with AI. Uh, for kind of like prototyping these little tools. He has this thing he's calling Poodle Writer and Poodle Book. Uh, he basically took AI and created these really quick and easy apps, uh, that are proof of concepts.

And, uh, Poodle Writer, like, lets you, um, create a post, uh, in the browser. That's stored locally in your browser, um, storage, and, uh, then you can just click on, um, Publish to a WordPress site, and you put in your, um, uh, app, uh, secret key there, um, and, uh, and it, oh, and it creates the post on your WordPress site.

It's a fun little idea, doesn't take a whole ton of time, uh, from, for, for him, and, um, and it's a way to kind of validate whether or not this has, Um, and any interest at all. So if he sees a whole bunch of folks all of a sudden using PoohWriter all the time and asking him for feature requests and things, he can start building that out and maybe turn that into something.

Um, and what I like about it too, is he, he's doing multiples of these different, uh, several different smaller prototype apps. Um, he might not call them prototypes. I'm, I'm thinking of them as prototypes. Um, and it actually goes really well with This one concept I heard from Chris Lemma actually a long time ago.

I think he called it the 3 3 3 principle or something like that. It's basically the idea that, uh, you have an idea, um, go and build it in three hours and, uh, and see what it is. Um, and then. Kind of reflect on that and say like, well, how could I do it better? Like, what did I do wrong? Um, and then try to build it again, but do it in three days.

Um, and then do the same thing, reflect on like, how good is it? How bad is it? What did I miss? What could I do better? And then do it in three weeks. Um, and, and it grows from there. And I really love that idea a lot. And it. It feels like, um, you could do a whole bunch of three hour prototypes, um, and then put those out there, like Jamie's doing, um, and then just see if anybody's interested.

If anybody's like, this is super cool, I would love it if it did X, Y, and Z, um, and if you get a bunch of feedback from one prototype and none from another prototype, um, that Then you kind of know the winner. Um, bottom line, my best advice there in all of that, I do think prototyping in general is a really great way to go about it.

Um, but for so many people nowadays, um, you're going to ship a bunch of losers. You really are. Like a lot of folks are shipping things regularly that, that just aren't going to have success, you know? Um, and if you really. ship something and then end up spending a lot of time and effort on it and then it just is not sustainable in the long run.

That could be really disappointing and then you're just like, ah, I'm just going to be a woodworker instead because this internet thing's not working out for me. Um, but instead, like, kind of like spread your bets out over a whole bunch of small bets. Um, I think that's a much more, um, like, I don't know if safe is the right way to do it.

But maybe like smarter way to have a whole to be able to find an idea that's actually going to have traction in the end. So

[00:45:02] Amber Hinds: well, I think, you know, that's the concept of a minimum viable product, right? A lot of us get a picture in our head about what the product is going to be at the end. And we think we have to build and release that.

But you don't have to build and release whatever you want your product to look like five years from now. You need to build and release the smallest thing that you can build in the shortest amount of time that will still satisfy a need.

[00:45:33] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. I mean, and that, absolutely. Like, I think, I think about that a lot when I think back to GiveWP.

Like, if Give wasn't successful right out of the gate, like, I really don't know if Devin and I would have kept working. Like, I, we, we just, we had put so much, um, of our hopes and dreams in this product. We just were like, this is the thing that's, that's gonna, um, put us on the, uh, in the market really well.

And, And if it didn't, if it wasn't successful, I don't know what we would have done. We didn't really have a plan B, you know? Um, and so I, I always think back and I was like, I wish I would've had like a plan B, plan C, plan D at that time. Um, you know, it's a lot, uh, it feels a lot safer, um, when you're like, I had all kinds of ideas I would have done instead, uh, instead of like, gosh, I'm so glad that worked out because I don't know where I would be today.

Uh, so.

[00:46:29] Amber Hinds: Well, I think we are about at time, so I'm going to close this out. I want us to tease just a little bit, uh, what's coming up next week. Katie and I will be back and we have Marika Van Der Ek from Amelia Capital joining us. So please tune in. We are going to talk about how to fund your next product.

And then the week after that, we're going to do some creating products, branding, and logo. So we're going to talk design.

[00:47:01] Katie Keith: And then we're going to talk about how to actually develop a product from alpha to And the week after that, we're going to choose this and pricing model a little bit today. dive much more deeply into them.

[00:47:17] Matt Cromwell: Love it. I'm super excited. Um, thanks everybody for being here and uh, we'll see you all next week.

Have a good one.

[00:47:26] Amber Hinds: Bye.