This episode’s guest is Eric Daams, the co-founder of Studio 164a (creators of the WP Charitable WordPress plugin), who talks about the niche industry of WordPress plugin development. After studying history and Spanish in university, Eric discovered he had a  profound interest in coding and eventually used this passion to create WP Charitable, WordPress’ top-rated donation plug-in. We start off our interview by asking our guest to discuss why he believes WordPress has continued to grow over the past decade and if he sees another platform overtaking it in the near future. Afterwards, Eric delves into his personal story and shares how difficult it was initially to develop a clientele base for his plugin. The show then concludes with our guest outlining the current health of WP Charitable as well as the marketing strategies he is currently implementing in order to further grow the plugin further. 

What we talk about

• The advantages of WordPress and its future viability


• Developing a dedicated client base


• Moving from freelancing to starting your own company


• Marketing strategies suited to digital service providers

Links from this episode

https://www.wpcharitable.com/ (WP Charitable’s website)

https://au.linkedin.com/in/ericdaams (Eric on LinkedIn)

https://twitter.com/ericnicolaas (Eric on Twitter)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00 ] Eric: [00:00:00 ] You know, and so you kind of come away feeling like you're a bit of a cheapskate, even though you say just donating, you're like you're actually giving your own money. And, um, but you still kind of coming away with this sort of unsatisfied, 

[00:00:13 ] Intro: [00:00:13 ] Welcome to the future tribe podcast, where we're all about taking your future to the next level, whether it is interviewing guests or unpacking strategies, you know, we will be talking about getting things done and backing you a fellow optimistic, go getter. And now as always, here's your host, the formidable fortunate and highly favored Germaine Muller. 

[00:00:37 ] Germaine: [00:00:37 ] Hello, future tribe. Welcome to this episode of the podcast.

[00:00:41 ] And on this episode, we've got Eric Daams from WP Charitable. How are you, Eric? 

[00:00:47 ] Eric: [00:00:47 ] I'm good. Thanks Germ,aine. 

[00:00:48 ] Germaine: [00:00:48 ] Tell us a bit about WP Charitable and what you do. 

[00:00:53 ] Eric: [00:00:53 ] Yeah. So WP Charitable, uh, well, charitable is a donation plugin. Yeah for WordPress [00:01:00 ] and it helps nonprofits and organizations, or even individuals accept donations on their website and they can do that themselves.

[00:01:10 ] They can just install the plugin and start collecting donations. And so on WP charitable.com. We offer support and sort of maintenance. And we also sell a series of atoms that people can, can purchase to add additional fee. So the core plugin is free. Charitable itself is free, and then we have. Additional plugins that do extra things that depending on where you are in the world or what your needs are as an organization, you may, you may need those.

[00:01:38 ] Germaine: [00:01:38 ] Yeah. What, what leads you to begin the business and how many, how many of you are, does it take to sort of run the plugin? 

[00:01:49 ] Eric: [00:01:49 ] So. I it's going back a while. So, so my, my business partner and I stand in he's in his, in Bendigo I'm up here in Darwin [00:02:00 ] and we started developing a few products for the invited marketplaces.

[00:02:05 ] So like theme, forest, and code Canyon, but the two main ones that we focused on and. One of our, well, our most successful one that we had on there ever was a WordPress theme, which was a crowd funding scene. And it was built around a plugin providing pride floating features, basically, which was actually used quite heavily by nonprofits as well.

[00:02:28 ] Because, you know, it's a similar kind of concept essentially, and it basically provided that basic donation facility. And that, that did that did well. That was our most successful products on there, but the plugin that we built it around eventually. Was sold off to a different company than it originally created it.

[00:02:47 ] And that company actually had a competing product, which they obviously prioritize. And this other one that we'd based our whole theme around gut based sort of cost aside and retired. [00:03:00 ] So we, we maintain support for that for, for quite a while, but that was kind of the point at which we. We saw the need for a good donation kind of tool for WordPress, particularly when we sort of really started looking, which was around mid 2014, there, there really wasn't that many good options.

[00:03:20 ] Like there was a lot of options. We've had to take donations with PayPal, but then if you were wanting to use any other payment gateway or in your part of the world where you actually can't take PayPal, which. You know, not, not that many places in the world, but there's some pretty significant regions of the world where that is the case.

[00:03:39 ] You, you know, that there wasn't actually that many options and plus the. In terms of what was available, sort of outside of the WordPress world and in sort of more like hosted platforms for nonprofits, there was like a lot the platforms basically, which offered a whole lot of it, additional features and stuff that you really just [00:04:00 ] couldn't do with WordPress, not that easily.

[00:04:02 ] And so that was, that was our focus from the start is kind of actually. Create something that, that kind of provided a bit of an alternative there with a very different Cox cost structure, both for us and for the nonprofit, which actually makes it much cheaper for them in the long run 

[00:04:19 ] Germaine: [00:04:19 ] once, once and utilized, 

[00:04:20 ] Eric: [00:04:20 ] I guess.

[00:04:21 ] Yeah. I mean, it doesn't even take that long. It really, it comes down to how many days you accept, you know, if you, if you, maybe if you get, if you're collecting less than. You know, a thousand dollars of donations or 2000 nodes of donations a year, then maybe a hosted platform 

[00:04:37 ] Germaine: [00:04:37 ] is good. 

[00:04:37 ] Eric: [00:04:37 ] But once you, once you start getting much more than that, and if you're on a platform which like most of them charges you on each step donation, like a small transaction fee, then, then that really quickly adds up.

[00:04:51 ] Germaine: [00:04:51 ] Yeah. Yeah. So put us, put us on a timeline. You mentioned 2014, but when did you originally develop the [00:05:00 ] theme or were you always sort of developing for code Canyon and ThemeForest and for listeners who are not, not, not aware of ThemeForest and card Canyon, I've heard Kenyan space be a place where you can buy.

[00:05:11 ] Plugins and theme forest is a place 

[00:05:13 ] Eric: [00:05:13 ] for templates for 

[00:05:14 ] Germaine: [00:05:14 ] WordPress. So you guys are very heavily invested in WordPress. I am a huge fan at Fugett theory, we use WordPress 99% of the time, unless someone has a specific request for, for a platform. But yeah, it is on a, on a timeline. So when, when was the crowdfunding theme first developed by you guys?

[00:05:34 ] Eric: [00:05:34 ] That's a good question. Probably about. Probably that 20 2012, 2013. And wait and wait. So we'd had a few other products before that. I think we probably launched our first one may be around sorta early 2010.

[00:05:52 ] Germaine: [00:05:52 ] Like at that point of launching products, we always like out of school, always 

[00:05:58 ] Eric: [00:05:58 ] into sort 

[00:05:59 ] Germaine: [00:05:59 ] of the [00:06:00 ] development side of things, or 

[00:06:01 ] Eric: [00:06:01 ] I know in fact, out of a uni, I studied. History and Spanish. And then my brothers ran a travel Woodside, a tribal community. And I, I started working for them as sort of like a community manager or whatever.

[00:06:19 ] And through doing that, then I sort of, I set up a couple of blogs and discovered that I was actually really interested in writing code. So I was teaching myself and, and, but they didn't really need somebody else. That was. At my level as, as a developer, I suppose. So. And, and so then I sort of slowly worked my way into working freelance, um, yeah.

[00:06:44 ] As a developer. So I would take on at this point. Uh, so there's probably a mid twenties. 

[00:06:51 ] Germaine: [00:06:51 ] How old are you now? 

[00:06:52 ] Eric: [00:06:52 ] 25, 26. I don't think I asked you, maybe I am now 35. I guess 17 years ago. [00:07:00 ] Yeah. So this was about 10 years ago. Now. It must've been before. I must have been younger than that. Actually, it must've been more like 24.

[00:07:05 ] So basically I started, I started freelancing as a developer, took on whatever I