SPECIAL EPISODE: The Matt2 Report!  Everybody, this is a special episode. We're doing things different today. I've been chatting with this guy over here, Matt Midaros, the one and only. And uh he and I, you know, we've been talking about some spicy subjects and we said we should talk to the people about these things. Um and then it went back and forth like whose show are we going to do this on? >> No, you said you said let's let's go down to the people. And I said, "Matt, I'm already I'm already here with the people. You are up there. You wanted to come down. I'm already here. >> That's that's that's where I've been the whole time. What are you talking about?" But we were like, "Whose show are we going to do it on your show and my show?" I was like, "Why aren't we just doing it on both of our shows?" Simo cast. And that's what we're doing. Simocast. Does anybody use that word anymore? I'm dating myself. >> Duplo cast. I don't know. While you say that, let me just make sure it's actually streaming on my channel. It is. Okay. >> Yeah. Okay. Good. It's working. >> So, hi everybody on the WP Minute. This is uh the Matt Squared Report. >> Oh, so you're aging yourself with that, Matt, because I haven't uh really promoted myself as the Matt Report, though. I do uh solo shows audio only on the Matt Report podcast um as a um as a soapbox podcast for myself. As if I needed another one. But >> I do throw some uh ideas out there that are aren't just WordPress, but tend to be >> That's fun. I don't listen. I'm sorry. >> That's my That's okay. >> But I'm But I would love to get some of that. >> That's what matters. >> Yeah. I would love to get some of that soapbox energy here today. That'd be great. So, we're on the WP minute right now. We're also on WP product talk. This is like two audiences all wrapped up in one. It's actually really probably mostly the same audience just in one spot this time. >> And the cool thing with with YouTube, what we can do after is tag each other's channels on that specific video so people can subscribe and get us in stereo. >> I have always wanted to do that, so that's a good excuse. >> Mhm. >> Cool. Cool. Well, we got several things we wanted to talk about. Um, some fun ones, some spicy ones. Um, I want to start with the >> Have you seen the Word Camp 2026 website yet? >> I heard I saw some some noise about it. >> We don't have to start with that useless banter. We can move on to something more valuable. >> There's always noise about something. Um, but I actually really want to get into the whole thing, your most recent rant about um what's uh what's going on with uh YouTube viewership. um and sponsorship and advertising and all of that because it is a good subject for us because as you know we're at product talk trying to get to 10,000 subscribers and um I am learning that you absolutely can just like buy subscribers 100%. Like it's not hard and it's not expensive at all. >> Um it's cheap actually. It's super cheap. >> Um and I'll talk more about that. with no value usually are super cheap. >> Yeah. Yeah. But like >> what's your take on that? Well, I mean folks here probably have already seen your take on it, but give us a nutshell. What's your take? You're you're upset about this. >> Oh, yes, my friend. I mean, the one thing that I do defend in this space is um anything that impacts WordPress media, the the the sustainability, the survivability of somebody truly trying to make a go at WordPress media, not WordPress, not YouTuber WordPress, not newsletter WordPress, like media, like you're you're taking this with a real serious professional approach, which I feel like we do at the WP Minute. I have a team that I pay. There's costs. We're trying to do this the right way. >> And if I go back to my days, which we'll talk about later as well, uh, in podcasting, in the audio industry, capital P, capital A, being in that space and to which I still analyze extreme extremely closely. I mean, I have a podcast newsletter and all this other stuff. So authenticity, true audience, true impact of of media and content, you know, at the end of the day when the boss goes, "Did that actually work for us?" Like when we sponsored that podcast or or channel, did that actually work for us? Because news flash things are super competitive these days. And as my business uh runs on on sponsorship dollars is is my model. Folks are always saying, "Hey, Matt, we'll resign with you again, but we need to see something." Right? So, I work extremely hard with my sponsors, with my audience to build value. And the thing that just irritates me the most is when you look at stats of a YouTube channel just flatline for a year, six months, and then suddenly it's 90,000 subscribers, and all you have to do is look at their YouTube channel and go, "Wait a minute. Your last video had 50 views. This one has 300,000." >> Yeah. about a topic nobody cares about that much. What's going on here? And the one-two combo is on the back side of that. Like if you want to buy ad if you want to buy subscribers or buy traffic or do ad placement, that's fine. Uh where I was going with the being in the podcast industry proper is there's a whole gray market built around this, right? When when celebrities are launching podcasts, they have sales teams for their for their advertising dollars. Yeah. And there's whole gray markets. It's been reported on by Pod News that you can go buy downloads from people playing little video games and celebrities do this and it just inflates numbers, but they're not true listeners. And the onetwo combo is when a brand comes into the WordPress space and sells sponsorship dollars. the stuff that I don't know about you, Matt, but I try to I fight really hard to get and earn and keep. They sell sponsorship dollars against fake numbers. And suddenly out of nowhere, they go, "Well, we're the biggest podcast in in WordPress." >> Where have you been for the last 15 years? >> Yeah. >> Right. Uh and and that's what gets me the most because our sponsors come to us, how much more views, how like how much more you can do. There's only so much we can do. >> Yeah. And I mean buying ad buying ads is not working. You're just spending the money to inflate the numbers and then flipping it to the sponsor. So that is the biggest thing. And >> morally, and I'll give the mic back to you in a second. Morally, I just like why do I want to inflate my numbers when the reason why I do a podcast or a YouTube channel or a newsletter is so I can talk to people? like I want to talk to people to really find out what's happening. >> And um >> sure, the promo side of it, whatever. But if you're going to button that up against or butt that up against uh selling ad dollars against that, that's where I I'm just like, I can't have this because you're taking food away from me. And that's that's how I feel. >> Yeah. No, I get it. I there was a couple different comments on Twitter. I know I think you had this conversation in a couple spots, but on Twitter, uh Kevin Giri really highly agreed with you overall. He was like, "Why would I spend money for those things when, you know, I'm just trying to talk to my audience essentially and his audience grows organically just fine." So, he's fine with the numbers he gets. He gets good numbers, better numbers than I do, you know. >> Yes. >> Um >> whereas Seahawk responded and they were like, "Well, they didn't love the way that you said it's bots." Um, and they were like, "It's not bots. Um, we just paid we just paid the advertising money and it's there and it's a mechanism that anybody can use and um, that's what we did and it's fine." Like, um, is there actually, you know, it if if it was problematic, let's say it this way, devil's advocate. If it was problematic, why does YouTube enable it? um I guess because they want the advertising dollars and they want their um creators to feel like they're getting value out of the advertising dollars that you're spending. Um I can dig into a little bit of that because I've done my own experiments here, but like it is a mechanism that's totally legit. It's not it's not not a legit thing. Um >> Right. >> Right. Right. So >> yeah, I mean >> you got to narrow that a little bit. I guess the issue is is one is it are you know and these are the things that you don't have access to is one is it just YouTube's mechanism that they're using is it just AdSense or the AdSense network that they're using or are they doing it in some other way um in that thread which you know we don't necessarily have to link up or whatever but um I have >> the email screenshot from him responds to me saying like I have a very aggressive marketing team or something like that. So, it's just like, oh, so, so what other ways are you doing it? Because again, I saw this in in the audio industry where people are placing like a pixel in an ad and then it it delivers the the podcast episode like wherever they go around the web, so it just gets these like inflated numbers. Like there's a a million different ways. I talked to a company uh that would guarantee this not too long ago when we were launching a new podcast for uh Gravity Forms or for Rocket Genius. >> They were they guaranteed uh Spotify and and Apple subscribers. It was basically a$125 uh per download. And he was just like I had the sales call with him and he said, "I can guarantee as many as you want. It's just how much do you want? How much do you want to spend?" I'm just I mean how do you guarantee that I'm going to get these subscribers? Um it's it's just a very gray market and look at the end of the day it's a house of cards in my opinion and eventually whatever you're charging it's a short-term gain right for these folks who are who are doing sponsorship dollars and going look how much we have and then when the when that sponsor comes and they go what kind of meaningful return do we get on this and it's nothing >> because it's really the same size audience as maybe you and me and somewhere some delta between you, me, and Kevin um in the WordPress space. >> Yeah, potentially. I mean, it does make me think personally that like if I'm going to sponsor or if I'm going to be a sponsor of a show, um what I want is links in the description, maybe a even ask for a link in the very first comment of the video, and that it's a link that I know that I can attribute to actual traffic in one form or another. Uh because to me that would equate to like somebody who actually was watching on a device where they could click and come to my website. And if I could see like, okay, there's 10,000 views here, um but I only got three clicks, that doesn't make any sense. Something's wrong, you know? Uh but if I got 10,000 views and I got a,000 clicks, all of a sudden I feel like that is valuable. Um, now that said, Matt, >> do you think you can drive 10,000 views for one of your sponsors and get a thousand clicks on the YouTube comment? Because I don't think I can do that even like I don't I don't think I can do that. Like, >> no. Like, I don't I don't think anyone in the WordPress space is going to be able to do that with with the content and with, you know, what the what the coverage is. I mean, you could you can >> you could certainly get 10,000 views on a on a YouTube video, right? Like, >> you know, there's that that's a proven thing. I have that at the WP Minute. I'm sure you have it on your channel as well. Good SEO, good topic, good video, you know, whatever. um you know but to to drive you know we can get we don't have to go too deep on this but the the larger sentiment for 2026 from what I'm hearing from sponsors is a lot of people want that that ROI on on their ad spend basically they want more clicks and I don't blame them for that but also like news flash content and traffic is down for everyone >> right so it you know their their issue is an everyone 's issue. Um, and what what these folks want is just more clicks to the more clicks to the to the site because, you know, it's just level many layers of problems here, but they just want those clicks. And what what I try to target and I'm sure you do as well and maybe anybody who does sponsorship wants this as well is you want that brand sentiment, that brand awareness from a trusted voice because your widget that you're selling. You know, people aren't going to want to hear it from the brand, right? They don't want some spokesperson or ambassador from the brand. They want like the true story or, you know, the the human side of it and they want it from somebody else. Like that's the buy. That's why YouTube is so big and podcasting is so big. People want to hear this stuff from somebody else. They want it behind the scenes. They want it cracked open. And that's why you should work with what the WP or Cromwell or the repository or whatever because you're going to get that kind of uh approach to content and you know it's eb eb and flow and we'll we'll see a return on it eventually. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's still a big subject worth cracking still. I I will say I appreciate the experimentation that we're h that's happening in terms of like using advertising money um for YouTube purposes in different ways. I I I also sympathize with your point that it's like well, you know, you can't just like say that you can't just get a whole bunch of sponsorship money um for videos and then inflate the numbers so much just with advertising that it just it feels not totally genuine. Um but I just >> and I will acknowledge I acknowledge that that's how a lot of the industry works. >> Oh, like I I I totally acknowledge that's how big media works. Again, I lived it in the podcast world. I saw studios do this, etc., etc. And again, I have nothing no problem with Matt Cromwell going, I want to boost this video. I want to get this in front of more people. >> The real issue is it's just like we're the biggest podcast in WordPress and I'm charging sponsorship dollars against that. >> Um, there's nothing I can do about it, but morally I will stand up to it because it's it affects us, right, or my my team. there's only there's only so many sponsorship dollars to go around in the WordPress space. Um, and folks are going to get choosier and choosier. Um, but in many ways, I'll be I'm not like a hyper capitalist, but in some ways, this is actually the way the market is actually beneficial because what that's going to do, it's going to make us all think harder about how we can drive more value for our sponsors. >> Correct. >> Right. Like we're going to have to get more creative. We're going to have to be able to show that value more. Um, >> correct. >> Yeah. >> Correct. Yep. >> That's I mean that's and I think that that's worth doing in the in the WordPress space specifically. I think it's a it's a big deal and and I don't think anybody necessarily has cracked the ability to actually drive really good sponsor value. Um, the conversations I hear with the sponsors because I've worked for the sponsors, I've worked, you know, against the sponsors. I've I talked to a lot of people who sponsor a lot of things and I've never heard any of them say, "I know that every single one of my dollars is is well spent when I go and spend it over here on X or whatever." >> Yeah. I mean, attribution in marketing, I mean, my god, like, how how long has have people been trying to push that boulder up a hill? Yeah. >> Um, you know, and it's just not how how it works. It's it's unfort you know the real issue is the economics of of WordPress and uh or the WordPress economy is um we don't have like auto industry pharmaceutical industry uh sport industry dollars here right like you know consumer electronics uh like all like these are industries where where other industries are built on top of I mean my god the ads that go into politics and sports and autos and farm is ridiculous and it supports a whole ad industry. You know, it supports a whole section of like Hollywood and celebrities. Um, in our space, we don't have that. So, and the budgets aren't there for for most of these companies. And let's face it, the hosting companies are the ones with the largest budgets aside from like the 12 biggest plugins companies in the world. >> Yeah. >> Um, there's not a lot of movement uh for us, right? And um so the the dollars are just trying to be accounted for more, but you know, if we were in a different space um you know, potentially people are saying we're supporting like the half the dollars go to supporting you for just doing the work, right? And the other half goes to can you please get us something out of this? Like that's >> that's how I I I break it down, right? >> Yeah. Um anyway we can >> that's that's the okay I want to bring a little bit of detail just from my experimentation as uh folks on product talk know uh we are on this path to get 10,000 subscribers we're going to get there on Monday because I did one ad and I feel gross about that. Um like >> I love it and we're going to get there by my calculations Monday. >> Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Um and the so but there's a huge difference in the experience um because as we were growing the YouTube channel and now be clear like product talk is across Spotify and Apple and people watch it in different places or listen um and things like that and our website gets traffic like I have lots of data across the whole spectrum of things. Uh, but when it came to the YouTube stuff, it was always interesting to me um that I was getting, you know, a subscriber a week and I knew that because YouTube would give you a notification. You just got a new subscriber. You just got a new subscriber. And it was like, oh, cool. Nice little gamification. I love it. Um, we turned on an ad for subscribers, a subscriber oriented ad, and all of a sudden I got a thousand subscribers in a couple days. Uh, and I did not get one notification about a single one of them. Um, that's that to me it's like really obviously clear uh the difference. Uh, same thing when it came to comments. We don't get a ton of comments on our videos. U, but I noticed the other day that we had a bunch of kind of like spam comments on some of the videos. I went through and deleted them all. I never got notifications about those comments. Why? Because they're not real accounts. Uh, by is my my best guess. Um, so And how does that make you feel if like whatever you started the experiment, let's call it 7,000 subscribers and then by Monday you get 3,000 like you you've achieved the number, right? The 10,000 goal. >> But yeah, >> exact are these Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean that's why right now I'm in the m in the in the middle of pivoting what I believe to be the value of the channel. I want to try to grow the channel in a way that feels more meaningful. So, I'm looking at different metrics now. I do think watch time continues to be probably the most important metric. And I would love for channels to talk more and more about watch time overall because I don't think viewers is necessarily as reliable. Um, and I definitely don't think subscribers is as reliable anymore. I do think likes can be reliable uh because it's not one of the ones that you could just buy. Um, and that's one of the ways you can see if it, you know, the quality of a channel based on like views compared to likes and and comments. I think comments continue to be generally valuable unless they're like these really bot driven comments that I had to clean up the other day. Um, but I think watch time to me is a really important metric that I don't see enough people talking about. I don't know, Matt, what's your take on that? Yeah, this is the the big debate in podcasting as well is uh should should the industry do away with the download and the industry doesn't do away with the download because the download is a thing that's automatic and the thing that if it did go away this house of cards that has been built on downloads uh would collapse and there'd be a lot of people going oh so you you actually don't have that listenership. >> Yeah. Um, so I totally agree with you about like the the view time. To me, I look at, you know, engagement and um, you know, I I think for the where I'm broadcasting this is on is the WP Minute tutorial channel. It's the biggest channel that I have and um, that's all like tutorial stuff and it's all like SEO driven stuff. So, I like to see, you know, for me anyway, I like the longtail of like, is this video continuing to get a few thousand views, you know, every couple of months or whatever, like whatever it is. And and to me, like that's what I I look for as well, because that means that people are searching for it and finding the solution, you know, and often times the bellweather for success for me is the comment that comes in that goes, "Okay, you saved me a bunch of time. I've been researching this and you have the answer." You know that that to me is is my my satisfaction with the YouTube channel. >> Yeah. >> You know, I guess I mean I've said this a million times for people who have watched me like I have never set out with any kind of promotional or growth strategy ever in 15 to 18 years. It's simply publish the content that I want to talk about. That is my only strategy. And yeah, there are people who are who >> tell me that that's foolish. And I' I've talked to YouTube strategists before and they're like, "Well, you got to do this with the thumbnail and this with and I I just I and I don't have time. I just want to put out the content." >> Yeah. But you also do content for Gravity Forms, right? And they want to grow their stuff, right? >> Right. I'm not the one who runs the the YouTube channel. Somebody else does, but I do attribute to it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is something that I'm continuing to try to dig into because I do think a lot of product shops out there want to understand how to leverage YouTube the best and like I am definitely going to say, yeah, you can buy subscribers if you want, but I don't think you're going to get the value out of the channel um that way. Like wh why do you want to put your product um uh content on YouTube in the first place? It's probably to get folks engaged with your brand and to make them consider installing. So, let's focus more on the clicks in one form or another. Um, yeah, that I mean that's my take right now. We actually had a couple other subjects we wanted to talk about. We only set apart 30 minutes for this thing and now we got >> 30 minutes, Matt. I I need more time than 30. >> We got We got more time. We got more time. I think we got more time. Um, hold on. Did I squeeze you in between too many things? Hold on. >> Oh, Jesus. I mean, this is, you know. >> Oh, no. Fine. >> I have to return to your throne. I got I got stuff to do. I got people to talk to. Um, next one we want to talk about is that you and I both have been experimenting with some you know I I've at this stage I hate the term vibe coding. I do think that that means something that is a word but is not what people are doing as even I'm not a full stack developer but I know how to code and I think what I'm doing is developing a plugin. That's what I'm doing. Um I don't know Matt what's your take on that? Yeah. I mean, I would uh the vibe coding thing is, you know, a nice tongue-in-cheek phrase. It meant something two years ago, a year and a half ago. Yeah. Um and I think it I think it's changing. Um this is a like a real deep conversation. It's like how fast is AI iterating and you and I are old enough to to remember the days of like when you uh coded WordPress websites and sold them to clients. You were doing everything by hand. Then Theme Forest came along and they had all these prepackaged themes and you could buy a complete site for $79. Came with all the plugins. you're like, "Oh, now I could just like replicate this." And then site origin, page lines, thesis, then beaver builder and elementor, and like we saw this rocket ship ride of like >> there was like a a composer mixed in there somewhere. >> Yep. Yep. Uh visual composer, right? Like all of these things. >> No, conductor. That was it. Conductor. >> Conductor. Yes, that was me. >> Uh hi, Zack Catz. Um and the So, we've we've seen this. We've seen I mean go back to front page with with with Windows this constant evolution of of folks of of of software and how to make it easier for humans right like we're in this next evolution cycle where yeah I know it pisses a lot of people off that it's just like a person who doesn't engineer and doesn't develop can go to cloud code and develop a complete WordPress plugin um without like writing the lines of code but like you I understand it. I understand the requirements of like a scalable solution, a secure solution, user interface and all this stuff. And news flash, there are so many I was thinking about this before we got on the call today. There are so many WordPress plug-in developers who can develop uh a plug-in but don't know how to market it, sell it, >> support it, scale it. And what do we hear from them? I don't know. I'm just a developer. I'm not a marketing guy. And then a year later, it's like, uh, the whole thing's shutting down because I can't support. Well, we don't get I don't get mad at you. In fact, I I try to help you. And it's like, here's how you can market. Here's how you can think about positioning your product. So, I mean, we know how to do the product marketing and the business side of it. Is it not right that we can also take the claude code and and develop these things? I'm not saying it's the the end all beall of the current state, but but getting something out the door, >> I don't think it's a bad thing. And um you know that's just that's just where we're headed. >> Yeah. >> Tell us a little bit about this thing. Pod loom. >> Are you throwing it up on the are you throwing it up on the screen? >> I can do that. I can do that too. >> Well, because it it adds to the story here, right? It does. And I and I won't uh >> I won't spend too much time. >> I want to make sure I spell correctly. It feels like one of those domains where spelling it wrong could get me in trouble. podloomplugin.com. >> Yeah. >> Um, so, uh, I'm a, uh, obviously a podcaster for quite a long time. Um, I use Transistor, um, transistor.fm as my podcast podcast host of choice. And uh often times, well, not often times, all the time at the WP Minute where we're drafting like the upcoming episodes and um our workflow was okay, we draft the episode in Transistor and then we go to WordPress and we create the page and the post and and draft and and such. Um and I was like, you know, I can really speed this up because Transistor has a great uh API um robust API. they support a lot of things uh from from the actual SAS software through the API. So I was like let me just build a connection to pull in the embed uh of the episode for every post and more importantly um because you can schedule posts in transistor let me pull in the scheduled ones. That way we can have the episodes there and draft them all out and then pull in the through the API pull in the the show notes that we post in transistor pull them right into the editor. Um, so it started with that and I was just like, let's let's support transistor um and embedding that and adding some cool features that you're you you know you're not going to get uh because uh transistor is not just covering WordPress. And then on the podcasting RSS side, like if you're not a transistor user, um, or you are a transistor user, you don't want to use the API and you want to just use an RSS feed, um, you can, uh, put your RSS feed in from your podcast and it will just pull it in uh, through your RSS feed. And if you're using things like podcasting 2.0, it's a whole other discussion. I support those tags there like chapters, transcripts, um donation or funding tag, uh and so on. Is the site broken? >> It might be. >> I can't see how it could be. It's HTML, which was going to be which was going to be part of my was going to be part of my AI uh journey. Let me let me do it. Share. >> It might be me. It might be me. Like I said, I'm a bad speller. >> There it is. I got up on screen. I got to share. There we go. Perfect. Absolutely. >> So, in in perfect vibe code fashion, right? Um I knew you and I were going to be talking about a lot of this stuff today. Um just trying to I'm looking at our screen share and trying to see how this fits best. I'm just sharing the tab. Um yesterday I uh vibecoded this site. I got to stop saying that phrase, but you uh and I and I just HTML, right? like I don't have I don't even have time for WordPress on this site. >> Yeah. >> Um let me have Claude Code build the site. I provided a handful of screenshots. Um I let it pick the copy um based on and maybe we can get into this if we have time, but like as I'm I'm coding with cloud code, I'm act I'm actively developing support docs and uh and blog posts. Like every time I launch a feature, I would also prompt it to write a support doc for it and write a marketing blog post for it. So I have this silo of content. So I just said, "Hey, look at this. Look at the marketing blog post you've written. Look at the support docs you've written. Now build the website for me or content and um it put the whole, you know, obviously put the whole site together. It's just HTML. Drag and drop that bad boy right onto Cloudflare pages and boom, sites, you know, live and quick and easy, right? And great as a landing page. I'm not saying this is a replacement for WordPress, >> but great as a landing page. >> Yeah, but you do have pricing. And how are you doing pricing? What what are you using for uh >> so here's the experiment, Matt, since we're very early on. Um and this is goes to my greater theory of what the hell is software worth these days when folks like like me can can develop it. Um the the current experiment because this is all uh an experiment but I use the plugin in production uh is you can have the plug-in for free. Go nuts. Set it up. There's no limit. There's no like I'm not blocking any features. There's no like, oh, get a pro version and this pro version has more features. It is what it is. Um, but if you're somebody who's running a podcast and you're just like, I I know I got to use WordPress because it's great for my content site and my marketing and all that stuff, but I don't know how to set this stuff up. We just have a onetime fee. We set it up for you. And uh my bet for a product like this is not to build like this uh pipeline of features and I'm constantly like balancing a license with a pro and a free and doing that whole thing anymore. It's just if you like the plugin and you need help setting it up because I know in the podcast world that's a big thing. Like a lot of these people are super non-technical. So that's the bet, right? My bet for this is maybe you don't want to set it up. We'll do it for you. Uh, in the future I'll add some more services to this on the back end, but for now it's just like if you just like it and you want it set up, you're scratching your head with WordPress, we'll launch it for you. >> I love it. Uh, all the product folks who are listening in are being like, "But how are you planning to support this thing?" >> Right. Uh, support, you mean code or the or the product or like >> technical support? >> Yeah, the technical support. Um, again, limited in scope, right? I'm not foolish. Like, I'm not building a plugin that's doing, you know, massive data tables in in your WordPress database. There's no like uh e-commerce transactions here. There's there's not a lot of >> critical stuff happening other than like can it pull the stuff in from an RSS feed or an API from from Transistor. So, the bet is hopefully low on the uh emergency scale like oh my god, something's broken. So your plan is don't have any support tickets come in. >> Don't have any support tickets come in, right? >> And not be, you know, out of my mind with with vibe coding building something that I literally am too afraid to get in front. Like I wouldn't build a e like I wouldn't build a e-commerce tool or something that was going to take payment because I'm just like that's way out of my league. >> Yeah. Um, but as we try to like get this off the runway, maybe if it's actually kind of working, uh, maybe there's enough funds there to go back to to somebody to, you know, a real developer to like check the stuff out and make sure that our support will be as low as possible. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> all right. So, brass tax on um, product talk today, we are using the I always forget the name. Simple podcast plugin. Seriously simple podcast plugin. >> Seriously, there it is. Seriously simple podcast plugin and it has a player in it. Can I just like swap out your player with their player? Can I use your player instead of their player? >> Uh, you won't be able to swap. I haven't built any kind of like migration. Uh, like you know, you'd still have to go through and change all of the um >> Oh, you're you're creating the pages based on the RSS. >> No, you'd have to put the block in. You'd have to put the pod loom block on those posts, right? Oh, I see. >> So, yeah. So, if you have like all these pages for your episodes, like 200 pages, and they all have the SSP block in it, um you'd have to go and replace that. I haven't built any kind of like migration tool for that, um or anything. Um but you could effectively use your RSS feed um to uh pull right into uh pull right into the Pod Loom uh podcast player. >> Interesting. Uh this is why it's important to have your own uh podcast host with an independent RSS feed from your WordPress website. >> Wait, wait. I thought I was doing the smart thing by having my RSS feed be my own thing. Go into that. Um, you know, like if you're an absolute purist where you're like, I gotta own this RSS feed, then sure it is. However, the podcast hosting companies number one aren't very expensive, right? So, Transistor is like 179 bucks for the year or something like that. And just like a managed WordPress host is going to care about the health of your WordPress website, podcast hosting companies are going to do the same with your RSS feed and make sure that it's got all the features in that RSS feed >> and uh that it's able to be distributed to any other um uh you know directory that that supports you know RSS. So there's a level of like support and management there. And if you ever want to like, I don't know, change your website or migrate the website, you are not going to disrupt your your podcast feed. >> Yeah. Um, co-host Zack Hats is in the comments and he agrees with me. So, I'm I'm going to go with that for now. >> Zach hasn't seen the the support tickets like I have yet. >> Yeah. Also, uh, looks like you're gonna have some competition because Devin Walker is also in the comments and he says, "Coming soon to Jetack, uh, podcasting." Boom. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, they they did they do have podcasts and they did invest in the in the company that I I work for back in the day. So, >> yeah, >> it only makes sense. >> Yeah, for sure. Yeah. >> And I'd have to like bloat my website just to run a podcast and we don't want that. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> I'm kidding, Devin. I'm kidding. >> Not actually kidding. But, you know, um let's talk about um my little thing that I've been experimenting with. Synced pattern popups is something that I built with cursor. Now, I will say I, you know, people give me a hard time because I'm a Windows user. I love being a Windows user. I'm never going to be a Mac fan, um Apple fan, whatever you guys call yourselves today. Um >> I'm I'm dual. I have a Windows laptop. >> Nice. Yeah. And um and I'm so far not a Claude code person. I'm a I'm a cursor guy. I like cursor. >> Where you've gone wrong. >> What? >> Cloud code is just amazing. But yeah, go ahead. I'm interested. >> I I'm I think I'm missing out. Honestly, I I keep seeing a lot of people doing amazing things with it. And I'm like, I think I could do that with cursor, but I don't know for sure. Um but anyway, I built all of this with um with uh with cursor, and I love it. and I was able to um build in all kinds of good guard rails and things like that. I actually want to bring up right now. I'm a little bit nervous that I can't bring anything up um because I couldn't bring up Matt's site earlier. Oh, no. There he goes. This loaded. No problem. So, let me try again. Share my screen. This one. Boom. So, it's uh obviously a WordPress uh plugin. And this is the um the listing. And I I'm not making a business out of pop-ups. This isn't going to be my meat and potatoes, folks. Um I don't know if that was clear to everybody, but I'm not coming out as a pop-up maker right now. Uh but what I am doing is that uh you know, Devon and I, we built Give way back in the day. And a lot of folks think back to those times as like that was the if you build it, they will come times. Um if you ship a plugin on.org, you'll get active installs and you'll grow and you can make a business out of it. And now a day you talk to plug-in owners and they're like, "It is not like that. It does not work that way." Well, I mean, um, I'll tell you that back when we launched G originally, I had lots of plug-in authors tell me exactly that same thing. They were like, at that time, this was 2014, 2015, they were like, "You can't just build a plugin and it works and and make a business out of it." Nobody thought that back then either. That and that's what folks today don't think about a lot. Um, I do think it's gotten harder. You it the the the space is just crowded. There's 65,000 plus plugins on the repo now. Um, and there are tons of them that are monetized to death. Um, we are nickel and dimming our WordPress audience to death with charging them with every single little tiny piece of functionality. Um, and I do think it can be problematic overall, but I was like, you know what? I need to know what it's like um to launch a free plugin again and see what goes on. I don't have a website for it. It so I'm I'm not even having any data. My only data I have is active installs. And after Well, I launched it when did I launch it? Last week. Yeah. So, it's been like almost two weeks now. And look at this. A magic fewer than 10 active installs. Um and um and that's what everybody's experiencing. I actually I talk a lot with um Lesie Sim. Uh she has a free plugin um >> called Event Koi Light. Am I going to guess it right? Almost right. >> Um >> and uh it's a great little events calendar plugin and she is also at fewer than 10 active installs right now. I talked with her about it a little bit. Um, if you look at the advanced view here, you'll see that lifetime downloads, 714 lifetime downloads so far. Uh, not a ton, but right here, every single one of these peaks coincides with when she shipped a release. And it's clear as day that she's got at least between 20 and 30 active installs right now. So, I do think that folks who are in this nebulous like uh land of fewer than 10 active installs, you just got to wait a little bit longer. Um there's definitely something weird going on about how they calculate those things. >> Yeah. >> Um but other than that, I also um really wanted to just get hands-on um with some of the guerilla marketing things because marketing is just different nowaday. Sorry, let me go back to the right thing. Um, >> I I thought a URL was a bare minimum in the submission process of of a plugin. And then also talk to us about the submission process for a free plugin, how that was compared to when you did it years ago. But I thought you had to have a a URL to point back to. >> I just pointed it to my personal website, macro. That and that's where this goes right now. This goes to >> No, actually it goes to my WordPress uh profile. That's funny. >> I need to work on that. >> Yeah. >> Um I I just did maccrowell.com. um for the for the URL. >> And the process was like a lot of folks have been saying, there was like 350 plugins in the queue when I submitted it and I got um one piece of feedback and it they were totally right. There was some stray special characters that were left over in a couple files. Oh, and there was a weird log that cursor had put in there when I was doing debugging. add like a a file getit contents um for debugging purposes and you don't do that in WordPress. File getit contents is bad. Um >> yeah, >> so um they were right and I cleaned that up and I submitted it again and within the next day they approved it. So, even though it took a long time to get to um I it took like I don't know it wasn't forever like maybe 10 days um till I got my first response and then once I submitted the fix it was another day. So, I was up and running in about two weeks. Um so, >> did did you run it against the the plug-in checker? >> Oh, yes. >> Yeah, that's what I also loved about uh doing everything in cursor. I had plug-in check in there and I had um PHPCS, I had WPCS in there and I added a whole bunch of rules and cursor to say every single time you make changes, you got to go against these things and make sure that things are working. Um I I def it's it that's why I also it's this isn't vibe coding because I took a lot of time and intentionality to set up my environment in a way that I felt like I was going to get a good quality result out of what I was doing. um I still had to deal with the fact that sometimes I would tell it to do things and it would change something that happened earlier and that drove me nuts. Um and so I started creating more rules about um those types of things. Um and honestly I think all of my cursor rules are in my GitHub repo if anybody's interested. Um >> yeah, >> but um >> but so you you said you said you're not trying to monetize it or you will be trying to monetize it because I feel like you're headed down the path of like that typical like I saw you do in integration. Obviously, you're you're tweeting about it and and socializing about it. So, is there a monetization play? Is it supplement to Cromwell Media? >> Not right now. It's all it's all about um premium marketing experimentation. I think if if this took off and got 10,000 active installs, then I'd start thinking about like how I might monetize it. >> I know a guy who can buy you 10,000 active installs by Monday. Fortunately, I don't think WordPress.org operates like YouTube yet. Um, but but you know what? There's a couple if you go what I love also um there's a couple folks who have been talking about how um the repo works and if you go to browse new, you'll see all the newest plugins and you can cruise through here and see how everybody is like fewer than active in 10 active installs. These are all the newest plugins right now and they all say fewer than 10. But if you keep going through here, you'll get to one. Actually, let me look it up. Um, Hostinger recently launched an email plugin. Um, there it is right there. Um, and it's got 800,000 active installs. Amazing. A hosting company with a free plugin with 800. I'm not like, color me shocked. Um, and they launched this in August, right? Um, I mean that is that is >> download don't even look like they add up to 800,000. >> Yeah. No, that's the other thing. There is no way that there's that the that these downloads represent 800,000 active installs. Yeah. So there no way. Not even possible. So if if all those 800,000 are on hosting your websites, which is for sure what's going on, um it looks like they have a conversion rate of users of like, you know, what is that? um.5% so far of that 800,000 is getting um actually using using the plugin, you know. >> Um so if if you're looking for ways to increase your active installs, get buddy buddy with a host and have them ship your plugin every single fake website that they have. >> This is uh distribution is the moat, right? This is the thing in WordPress, right? When people say like, "Oh my god, WordPress is going to go away. It's going to get, you know, dethrown. All this other stuff." I mean, sure, any anything is possible, but WordPress has just a insane distribution channel. Um, you know, just like Awesome or, you know, any other plug-in company that has an in with a hosting company. Like, distribution is key uh in this stuff. I'm curious, are you uh I know you're always experimenting. You're you're looking at this as an experiment. I threw some LinkedIn jabs this morning. I mean, I think we do pretty good together, you know, you and I, in this internet banter. I'm I'm following you on LinkedIn. throwing you little jabs about viewing source and stuff like that. Um, where does AI sit for you in in this experiment on the marketing side? Are you using it to think new ideas for you pitches? Uh, how how do you leverage AI in this for the marketing? >> I generally like you can ask AI for ideas and like directional things. I don't think real marketing insight happens in AI right now. And I would say thank God for that. Um but um it is amazing with content and the same thing with the way I treat cursor in terms of really setting up my environment for with really strict guard rails. I do the same thing with all my content. Um I have projects in chat GBT and I'm experimenting more with gems with Gemini. Um where you set up uh project files and you do a really heavy custom instructions. I have a tone guide that's like a Cromwell tone guide. And then I have another anti-guide which is don't sound like AI. Uh which is all these rules that I pull from all kinds of places that make you know AI sound like AI and they say don't do any of these things. >> Throw a transcript of the Matt report in there and say never sound like this. >> Yeah, exactly. Um and I I I run it through those things. It works great. But I always do a a process where I I never say, "Write me an article about blah blah blah or write me a PR piece for this thing or write me a tweet or whatever." None of that. I always say, "I need to do this thing and I need your help and I want you to tell me the approach you would take." Like I always come into it backwards. What kind of approach would you take first when you if you're going to do something like this? >> It'll tell me a strategy and then I'll say, "Not bad. do it like this instead and show me an outline. And then it'll it'll change it up. It'll give me an outline. I said, "Outline's not bad. I want it like this instead. Really focus on the transitions. Um, conclude with a strong CTA." And then it'll give me the updated outline. And then I like the outline. And I say, "Give me a draft." And the draft is way better than what I would have drafted if I had written it by myself. Even though it maybe took me like a half an hour. Like this doesn't take me five minutes. It takes me like a half an hour. Um, and I love it. It's a great draft. And then I still rewrite the whole damn thing. Like, >> yeah. >> But it to me I get to I get to shipable something shippable, meaningful, articulate, persuasive >> way faster than I ever did ever before. >> Yeah. Yeah. You know, the the perfect I haven't hit the perfect stride on the I mean, it's short of like the Pod Loom website that I threw together yesterday. Like I just said, you just write it. I just want to get this launch before Matt and I get on a on a phone call. Um I often find myself like building out like the context of rules um and all this stuff generally in the marketing stuff in claude code and then I I just find myself always just like I read through it. I'm just like I just got to write it myself like like it it I never like even use chunks of it. Um it's funny like I Yeah. Yeah. So, like I like I I love it for that ideating and I I do want to find a way where it's just like how about you just talk to me while I'm writing. Yeah. And maybe like maybe a product like that exists. And I don't even mean like I don't want to like have it like copy paste analyze and all. I literally want it to be talking to me while I'm while I'm writing this stuff so that I can I can just have like that coach on the side um to like spitball with. Uh so I haven't found that perfect thing. I I did often like last year um so I have a the podcast setup.com which is a podcast newsletter and I did this whole video on using um the value of of transcripts for a podcast right so podcast to me like when you're building out this body of work it's not just about the audio it's not just about you publishing that episode it's about that transcript and like all the stuff that transpired during that that conversation And you can pull so much data out of it. So I built this tool with AI to analyze uh the years worth of the show called Pod News Weekly Review by James Kridlin and Sam Seth. They're sort of like the leading news guys for for podcasting. And I built this analysis of like all the brands they mentioned, all the names they mentioned, all the technology and and built this whole report. And to fasttrack it, I took that whole transcript of me talking about it and I said, "Now write this as a blog post." So it's like a 10 or 12 minute video. I said, "Now write this as a blog post." And I thought it did a pretty good job. And I sent it to James from Pod News Weekly Review and he was just like, "Hey," he's like, "I'm definitely going to feature your video because it's awesome and what you built was awesome, >> but the but the blog post sounds way too AI for me." >> Yeah. >> I'm like, "But that was 12 minutes of me." Yeah, >> it was 12 minutes of me talking. >> I just happened to say like I ain't got time for the rest of this stuff. >> Turn this into a blog post and even that was just and and it felt kind of weird. I don't know where I was going with that, but it just kind felt weird because like no, it's actually 12 minutes of my words um just hyped compressed down to like 500 500 words in a blog post. But >> yeah, >> it is what it is. >> We had a couple actually really good comments here in the in the thread here. Um, it's actually a good conversation going on. Hold on one second. Let me see. >> Better than this conversation. >> Oh, no. It just ads. Um, oh, this is a good one. Uh, nurture kit says it's AI assisted development. Matt, forget the vibe moniker. That's a good one. >> Jason Resnick about to watch the Patriots win another Super Bowl. >> Oh, I didn't know who that was. Jason Resnick, how you doing, man? Haven't seen him in a long time. Um, yeah, AI assisted uh development. Uh, that's a much better term. I like it. Uh, Zach again, um, co-host says, "I don't think Cromwell can restrain himself from eventually monetizing. It's >> the problem with Matt." >> It's probably true. It's probably true. Um, but, uh, we'll see. And, uh, they're all giving me a hard time about choosing Cursor. Um, we got Oh, we got Brian Cords in the in the thing here. He's being surprisingly um, uh, polite. Um, Claude Code feels way better than Cursor. Fine, whatever, Brian. But I haven't touched cursor in a few months now. U I I love it. Uh Jason also says you can use cloud code in cursor which I kind of have a little bit noticed that but have also ignored it. But um good stuff. I appreciate the conversation. >> Yeah. Yeah. The the glad code stuff just real quick like uh you know I'm on the I'm not on the $200 plan. I'm on the hundred 100 bucks a month and it seems I I do hit limits sometimes but it's not often. um until I guess I really really push it. But I I can feel the difference as the day goes on >> and it almost feel like how human is that right? like the I when I start the day with my coding companion, you know, they are ready to go and they are knocking tasks out of the park and literally by 3:00 I'm just getting like I'll ask it to do something and then it's like wait wait wait wait wait consuming tokens and cloud code you know has the amount of time passed and sometimes like I'll tab over I'm doing something else I'll go back it'll be like 23 minutes and I'm like all I asked you to do was to like write like update the read file. What's happening right now? >> U so like >> I I it's crazy to like it's almost like a human in that way by the time it's like 3:00 you're like I just want to get home like I don't want to be coding anymore. Matt, >> absolutely. It's amazing. I I I love doing um another one why I like cursor. I love putting it into plan mode and saying draw up a plan where you're going to build out this feature and I need it to be x y and z. It draws up a whole markdown file that says uh that breaks things up into different phases. Um and I will often tell it I want to build this out one phase at a time. So after you do phase one, stop and I'll troubleshoot it. Um and we won't continue to phase two until I'm satisfied. I really like doing it that way. Um and it has really um got tons better results in the end when I do that. Um, Brian in the comments, I don't know if I could do that with cursor. No, with claude code. I guess I can. I'm sure I can. You could like, >> yeah, >> I I I love doing it that way for sure. >> Um, >> cool, man. Well, this has been great. I feel like we could, >> you know, shoot the proverbial continually for a long time and people would still be entertained. Um, >> that's right. Not thousands of people, but dozens. All dozens of the people in the comments have been entertained this whole time until I spend 50 bucks. I'm going to spend 50 bucks. >> Yes, but there there are channels of bots are going to be entertained. >> Yes, there are channels you can go to which uh will get you thousands of views. >> I love it. >> Well, Matt, thanks so much for this multiccast U product talk and the WP Minute. Folks, do the WP Minute a favor and hit the subscribe button. do product talk a favor and uh hit the like button. Um and uh we'll see you all next time., SPECIAL EPISODE: The Matt2 Report!, YouTube, 01kfrjpas6vdj0s2n6b0d137rm.