Episode 67: Business updates, marketing tips, and cashflow

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Today’s episode focuses on updates from Brad and Pippin, as well as mailbag questions.

Brad’s Update

Brad is testing a new product called Mergebot. It’s coming along well. It hit some snags, but no major issues. They started working on scaling and they’re getting really close to finishing the internal testing. Brad explained database sharding and how that works in the WordPress world. They’re testing the 1.2 release of WP Offload SP and doing a site redesign.

Pippin’s Update

Pippin: Pippin has been working on RCP updates, including rebuilding RCP into a standalone product. They released an add-on called RCP Grout Accounts to benefits schools and small teams. These groups can purchase a group membership for convenience and savings. They’re also approaching the beta version of Affiliate WP 1.9 and putting out software licensing for EDD version 3.5.

Brad and Pippin answer some mailbag questions.

Some of the topics covered include:

Marketing tips for plug-in offers.

Tips on how to write for your audience.

Information on sales trends and the ebb and flow that Brad and Pippin notice.

How to deal with slow periods when sales are declining.

Links and Resources

Brad’s article about Mergebot

Ash’s article on why CDM isn’t a silver bullet for performance

Gilbert’s article on scaling a cron

Pippin’s article on rebuilding the dying product

EDD Software Licensing Add-On on Twitter

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Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Apply Filters, the podcast all about WordPress development. Now here’s your hosts, Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard.

PIPPIN: Welcome back to Apply Filters, Episode 67. Today, Brad and I are going to go over some updates on things that we’ve been working on, and then we’re going to jump into some mailbag questions from listeners that you guys have been kind enough to send us.

First, however, if you’re interested in sponsoring this show, you can do so at ApplyFilters.fm/sponsorship. It helps us to cover the production costs and to bring you this. It’s greatly appreciated, and we can give you a little shout out for your team, your product, or your service.

Brad, what have you guys been up to in the last couple of weeks?

BRAD: We’ve been testing our new product, Mergebot.

PIPPIN: Is testing coming along well?

BRAD: Yeah, we’ve hit some snags, but no kind of major brick walls, I like to say. We hit quite a few brick walls throughout the year while we were developing it, which really kind of slowed things down. Yeah, the bugs have been relatively minor in comparison to those, and so we’re just working through them. We started working on scaling, thinking about scaling and how that’s all going to work. Yeah, it’s coming along and we’re getting really close to finishing up our internal testing.

PIPPIN: Can you elaborate a little bit on how you’re testing the scaling? I’m assuming in this case you’re talking about when you have a site that has a massive database.

BRAD: Yeah. If you have a massive database, that doesn’t really matter because we don’t store your whole database. We only store the changes that are made. As you make changes locally, we store those in our cloud app.

PIPPIN: Okay, so the scaling in this case, the number of changes that have to be done?

BRAD: The number of changes that have to be done and the number of users that are uploading those changes to our app, so the more people we bring on and are using it simultaneously.

PIPPIN: Oh, right. I forgot that you guys have the hosted side of this.

BRAD: Yeah. Yeah, so these queries are going to go up to our cloud app. That’s actually kind of the problem is the difficulty with s