🫨 Wake-Up WP Founders  ## Metadata - Author: [[Justin Ferriman]] - Full Title: 🫨 Wake-Up WP Founders - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #WordPress - #ProductStrategy - #OpenSource Author: Justin Ferriman Source: Personal blog (republished from X thread) Reference: https://justinferriman.com/wake-up-wp-founders date created: 2025-08-23 00:00 --- # Title: Wake-Up WP Founders — An Open Letter to WP Product Owners ## Table of Contents: - [🔎 Introduction](#-introduction) - [🌪️ The Changing Landscape of WP Products](#️-the-changing-landscape-of-wp-products) - [🧭 Adapting to the Market Shift](#-adapting-to-the-market-shift) - [📈 Strategies for Success](#-strategies-for-success) - [🚀 Taking Action](#-taking-action) - [🏁 Conclusion](#-conclusion) - [📚 References](#-references) ### References: - Justin Ferriman, Wake-Up WP Founders — An Open Letter to WP Product Owners: https://justinferriman.com/wake-up-wp-founders ## 📝 Summary: Justin Ferriman argues that selling WordPress products has become significantly harder post-COVID due to intensified competition from both larger WP companies and SaaS alternatives. He asserts that past tactics no longer work and urges founders to evolve by investing in brand, sales processes, support, customer research, and professional presentation. He proposes a two-pronged approach: inward data collection (talk to active users, analyze feedback, optimize inbound sales and support for renewals) and outward motion (content marketing, competitive positioning, and polished branding). He emphasizes customer connection, pain-point-driven messaging, and consistent, sustained action over quick fixes. ## 📖 Main Content: Justin opens with a reflection that long-form content performs well on X but quickly loses visibility there, so he republished the message on his blog. He then delivers a candid call to WP product owners: the market has shifted; if you haven’t, you’re falling behind. He discourages blaming external actors (Automattic, Awesome Motive, Liquid Web, waning hype) and instead advocates honest introspection and execution. Core guidance: - Inward focus: systematically gather and act on user insights, neutralize emotional bias in reviews, shore up inbound sales with proper training, and optimize support to maximize renewals and reduce churn. - Outward focus: diversify content channels, meet competitors where they are, broaden beyond purely “helpful content,” and directly position against competitors in and beyond WordPress. - Professionalism: level up demos, branding, copy, and social proof; speak clearly to customer pain points and unique value; show your face and get close to customers. - Action: identify your biggest opportunity, go deep, seek help if needed, and commit to sustained change. Personal reflection: - The advice aligns with modern PLG and SaaS best practices—customer conversations, sales enablement, and lifecycle retention. The insistence on “professional, well-polished” experiences maps to rising expectations as WordPress competes with opinionated SaaS. The most valuable push is to operationalize customer closeness, not just “do marketing.” ### 🗒️ Notes - Context and framing - Long content performed well on X, but platform ephemerality necessitates republishing. - Selling WP products is harder than 3–5 years ago; competition intensified post-COVID. - Root cause analysis - Not the fault of Automattic, market cooling, or dominant companies alone. - Simpler cause: the market evolved; many teams did not. - Inward data collection - Talk to active users; document pain points and desired outcomes. - Analyze reviews dispassionately to identify themes. - Audit inbound sales: gaps, conversion friction, training; support ≠ sales. - Measure support’s impact on renewals; design churn-reduction strategies. - Outward strategy - Expand content channels; mirror and surpass competitors’ presence. - Create varied content; include competitive positioning in and beyond WP. - Execute polished, professional brand and UX across site and product. - Professional presentation checkpoints - Demo: don’t dump users into a bare WP admin with a skeleton theme. - Site: avoid generic templates; invest in distinctive brand and messaging. - Copy: lead with customer pain points; sharpen unique selling proposition. - Humanize: show faces, narratives, and proximity to the customer journey. - Execution mindset - This is hard, multi-quarter work; prioritize the biggest opportunity and go deep. - Seek coaching or outside help if needed; consistency compounds results. - Start now to see outsized benefits in a year. ## 📖 References: - Justin Ferriman’s original blog post: https://justinferriman.com/wake-up-wp-founders ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1) Original idea: “What worked before will no longer work today… It’s not [big companies’] fault… The market is changing, and you’re not.” - Paraphrase: The playbooks that once generated growth are no longer effective. Blaming major players or shifting enthusiasm won’t help. The fundamental issue is that the environment evolved while your approach stayed the same. 2) Original idea: “Hack-y isn’t cute anymore… You’ll lose to teams with a polished, professional image and experience.” - Paraphrase: The era when scrappy presentation was a virtue has passed. Teams that invest in refined branding, demos, and messaging will outperform those who rely on minimal, makeshift experiences. ## 📰 Newsletter: This week in WordPress: leveling up for a tougher market - Learn web dev: If you’re brushing up on fundamentals, revisit modern PHP practices (strict typing, attributes), async patterns in JS (Promises, async/await), semantic HTML, CSS container queries, and Git workflows with trunk-based development. Great primers: MDN’s “Asynchronous JavaScript” and “CSS Container Queries,” plus the PHP manual’s type declarations. - Market reality check: Justin Ferriman’s latest, “Wake-Up WP Founders,” is a must-read on why selling WP products is harder now—and how to adapt with customer research, inbound sales rigor, and professional branding. Read “Wake-Up WP Founders — An Open Letter to WP Product Owners” on Justin’s site. - Community highlights: Kudos to contributor teams pushing performance improvements and accessibility fixes across the ecosystem. If you’re curious about onboarding, check out the Make WordPress Contributor Handbook to get started. - New plugins to watch: Keep an eye on experimentation-friendly A/B testing plugins, block pattern libraries with strong design systems, and support tooling that ties tickets to renewals—each aligns with Justin’s retention-first mindset. - Pro tip: Don’t drop users into a blank WP admin for demos. Craft an opinionated demo with real content and task-based onboarding to show outcomes, not options. If you read one thing this week, make it Justin’s call-to-action on building a professional, customer-obsessed product motion. It’s the roadmap many of us needed. ## ✅ Action Items: Prompt to align articles with your Developer Advocate and OSPO aspirations Use this prompt with each article you review: “Analyze how this article advances open-source advocacy, contributor engagement, and education within the WordPress ecosystem. Map recommendations to: - Advocacy: How does it promote sustainable funding, transparent governance, or community health? Identify opportunities for policy, metrics, and OSPO-aligned frameworks. - Contributor engagement: What tactics can onboard and retain new contributors (documentation improvements, mentorship, recognition, contributor experience)? Propose programs I can champion at GoDaddy and in WordPress community spaces. - Education: Translate insights into curricula, workshops, and learning paths for PHP/JS/HTML/CSS/Git/GitHub. Define outcomes, prerequisites, and hands-on labs. - OSPO trajectory: Explain how the article’s guidance informs an enterprise-grade open-source strategy (compliance, inner/outer source, upstream-first, DEIB, maintainership models). - Transparency and inclusivity: Highlight ways to embed inclusive language, accessible learning materials, and equitable recognition into initiatives. - Execution plan: Provide a 30/60/90-day roadmap with metrics (adoption, engagement, contributor retention, funding milestones), risks, an - Summary: Selling WordPress products has become more challenging in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. The market has become more crowded and competitive, and many WP product owners are struggling to grow their businesses. The key to staying on top is to adapt to the changing market and invest in areas like branding, marketing, support, and customer success. It's important to collect inward and outward data to identify areas for improvement and explore new marketing avenues. Taking a professional and well-polished approach, rather than relying on a grassroots feel, can help WP product owners stand out and attract customers. This may require investing time and effort, but it is the path to profitability and success. - URL: https://justinferriman.com/wake-up-wp-founders  Earlier this week, I published the [longest X thread](https://twitter.com/JustinFerriman/status/1707402136261443678) that I’ve ever published. I did this for two reasons: 1. I had a lot to say. 2. I wanted to test long content to see how much it’s shared. The conclusion is that long content does quite well on that platform. The post itself was reposted, saved, and commented more than my shorter ones. But the way X works, content dies a quick death. As such, I feel it’s a good idea to republish it here on my personal blog: #### An Open Letter to WP Product Owners Let's face it... Selling WP products today is a helluva lot harder than it was just 3 to 5 years ago. In fact, one could argue that ever since COVID, the entire space has become more crowded, more competitive, and more challenging than ever before. Your product does great things, yet no one is noticing. You're not growing. Worse, your sales are starting to stagnate. 😑 ##### Here's the blunt truth. What worked before will no longer work today. You know this, because you can see your company's metrics. * It's not Matt or Automattic's fault. * It's not because people aren't as “hot” on WP as they were during the pandemic. * It's not because of bigger companies like Automattic, AwesomeMotive, and LiquidWeb investing into the WP space, eating up the market share. The answer is actually more simple than that... The market is changing, and you're not. Be honest with yourself — Have you really tried to up your game? When was the last time you did a brand refresh? Or worked on your Inbound Sales Plan (you have one, right?) Adventured into new marketing channels? Leveled up your support experience (things like live chat... actual live chat, weekend hours, etc.)? Or made any kind of investment back INTO your customers with success tools, community building, or the like? You haven't. ##### Admitting that you haven’t changed is how you start progressing. WordPress is a cutthroat space. The competition has more money than ever before — and not just WP solutions, but the SaaS competitors who are snapping away WP users as well. Your purpose, as a founder, is to stay on top of the market. If possible, to LEAD the market. So let's chat... how do you do that? It's an exercise of INWARD and OUTWARD data collection. **INWARD... things like:** * Connecting with your most active users and discussing their pain points and wishes for your product. * Listening to feedback on all the review channels, documenting themes devoid of the emotion. * Looking at your inbound sales processes and finding the gaps that need to be filled. Optimizations that need to occur. TRAINING FOR YOUR SALES TEAM (support reps ARE NOT sales). * Analyzing effectiveness of support in maximizing renewals. Also, strategies for decreasing churn. This is just scraping the top. Each one of these can branch off into several other subsections for optimizing. New plans, new policies, new ways of measuring... **OUTWARD... things like:** Exploring new content marketing avenues to expand reach. Where are your competitors, and why are you not doing the EXACT same as they are? Creating a variety of content, not just “helpful content”. Going directly after your competition IN AND OUT of WordPress. Networking with people in the space with similar interests. Helping others make money, so they return the favor for you. Stop sitting behind your computer and put yourself out there. Paid Ads... it's time. Do it. ##### Hack-y isn’t cute anymore. There was a time when WordPress products had a “grassroots” feel to them. Not anymore. I mean, you can go that route, but you'll lose to others who show up and put out a PROFESSIONAL, well-polished image and experience. What do I mean? Does your demo site just toss someone into the WordPress admin dashboard and have a bare-bones skeleton theme? That's simply not good enough. Is your website just some cookie cutter template or Blocks Pattern with no real thought around branding? That's not good enough either. Does your headline speak to the customer's pain points? Or is it still saying something dumb like, “XYZ for WordPress”? Yeah... needs fixing. Does your website sales copy point back to your unique selling proposition? On every page? Do you have an about page with your face? Are you getting personal? Are you getting CLOSE TO THE CUSTOMER in their journey to build real connection? ##### This shit is hard. But the hard stuff makes you profitable. I get it. This is hard stuff. These things can't be solved in a week or two. I wish this was easy, too. Look at your business and determine where your biggest opportunity area lies. Start there. Go DEEP. Really understand the challenge and work towards resolving. If you need help, get it. I coach WordPress product owners on this stuff because, well, I've done this stuff. It doesn't have to be me though, there are other people in (and out) of WordPress who can provide direction as well. The point is: start doing something different if you want to get different results. Light the fire 🔥 and don't stop... in a year from now, you'll thank yourself. -Justin **PS:** If you wanna chat about the pain points in your business, [book some time](https://calendly.com/justinferriman/60min) with me. It's free. [#WordPress](https://justinferriman.com/tag:WordPress) #### 👋 Did you like this? Get an article like this emailed to you once a month. [RSS feed](https://justinferriman.com/feed), 🫨 Wake-Up WP Founders, Justin Ferriman, 01hbxefr7d0ythnhcxwvtcr5yy.