We’re back this week with another full length episode of Divi Nation, the official Divi podcast. This time our guest is none other than Pippin Williamson of Pippin’s Plugins.
Pippin and his team are the creators of many popular WordPress plugins. Three in particular stand out: Affiliate WP, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro.
Pippin has demonstrated a proven knack for identifying good plugin ideas and then building the necessary team around himself to successfully pull off the creation and maintenance of each one. Making him an ideal person for any WordPress entrepreneur to learn from.
Divi Nation 18: Do Less Sooner & Other Great Advice from Pippin Williamson
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In this episode I was fortunate enough to pick the brain of one of the most successful WordPress plugin developers on the planet. During our interview Pippin tells his WordPress story; from curious college kid looking to make rent, to a plugin developer with tens of thousands of active plugin installs. We also talk about the importance of great customer support, delegation, and Pippin’s number one tip for long term success.
I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did. And if you’d like to make sure you can easily watch or listen to future episodes of Divi Nation (as well as our entire archive), please take a moment and use one of the subscription options we’ve provided below.
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Your Turn: Weigh In On This Episode
One of the reasons I’ve really enjoyed having some of the bigger names in WordPress on the show lately is because they’ve already navigated a lot of the most difficult challenges many newer WordPress designers, developers, and entrepreneurs are only now beginning to run into. By hearing their stories we know it’s possible to make it through. And by hearing how they did it, we gain insight into what might work for us.
But that doesn’t mean everything said is crystal clear the first time around.
This is your chance to ask follow-up questions. Or, to share your own thoughts and anecdotes in the comments below. You’ll also want to be sure to check the subscribe to conversation via email option so that you can continue to participate in the conversation.
I want to work for Pippin, He gets what it is about being a front line support person. Thank You, thank you, thank you for your comment about giving us a break.
I also love his comments about hire what your need for as long as you need them, that might only be for an hour. YES!!!!
This was my first time tuning in, really enjoyed the episode. I love hearing how people have gotten started and what does/doesn’t work for them. Personal story podcasts are my favorite, it doesn’t always have to be all about the code. There’s a human being that’s actually writing it! Mind blowing, I know. 😉
Thanks Steph!
This was interesting. For me not real inspirational, but for someone looking to write plugins, it might be useful.
Thanks for the post.
The part when Pippin says he should have outsourced earlier makes total sense in hindsight, but is a big decision to make when you don’t know how successful your business is going to be.
I’m so that busy fool guy, working 24/7 on everything associated with my business and need to make a decision to outsource soon, so appreciate the interview…as ever, thanks guys I need the push 😉
Pippin is a great example of this cross-road. We’ve had other guests with a similar version of the same story in terms of hiring on new people or out-sourcing certain tasks. Every time I’ve tried to push for an answer to the question, “How do you overcome that fear of not knowing if it’s the right time?” And typically the answer is something along the lines of, “I didn’t. I waited too long. When it finally was the time I was burnt out and I now look back on my hesitance in this area as a mistake.” Which, to me, means that if you feel like it’s time–it’s probably time. Maybe past time.
I think what most struggle with is not outsourcing but how to work out what to outsource. They think they have to hire for a day or a week and always have work for that person long term. In actual fact there is an army of us out here who are happy to do hour here and an hour there and over time we find that person starts to send us more and more work.
So my advice is find a job and source a reliable person for even an hour and see how it goes. It will more than likely be fine – if it is not never hire them again.
I bought the Restrict Pro plugin recently. Am a real newbie with it – needed it for a client and struggled through every stage, but I must say that the help I received from Pippin’s plugins was quite brilliant – so highly recommend these guys!
Great Video, I’m Going To Subscribe to your youtube channel. Looking foreward for your next tutorial 🙂
Awesome, thanks Hondajazz. Looking forward to seeing you in the comments again 🙂
I learn at least one insightful golden nugget on each DIVI Nation broadcast… thanks, Nathan!
m.
So glad to hear it Michael!
Using restrict content pro, and every issue i have had (all my own fault) was fixed rapidly by mr Williamson.
Hi Jason! I’m weighing in on another aspect of this podcast. First let me say I was super impressed with Pippin’s giftedness in developing tools so valuable to the community. In addition it is refreshing to see an entrepreneur whose attitude toward “taking care” of his team is rich with the wisdom that usually takes many more years to attain. He is an inspiration.
Hey Kathleen, thanks for tuning in. I really enjoyed Pippin’s stance on the importance of taking care of his team too. Personal maintenance–whether its for your self or a whole team–is something that is incredibly easy to overlook or undervalue. Sounds like he’s learned an extremely valuable lesson early on.
Thanks for the great info…awesome community in WordPress and DIVI. Question For Pippin: what is an appropriate donation to a WP plugin developer? Want to support and utilize resources to fellow developers…
Hey Jenni,
In my own experience and in talking extensively to other plugin developers I can say this: There is no amount too small or too infrequent. The number of people that actually donate to plugin developers is unbelievably small.
When I use a plugin which ends up being critical to a site i’m building, or my business as a whole, I donate what I would consider fair market value for that piece of software. Anything between $5 for a small utility (like pagenavi) up to $50 or $100 if I couldn’t have done the job without the plugin (and assuming i’m getting paid for the project).
If you are doing client work you can add plugin donations into a project budget just like any other piece of software. My clients usually think it’s a nice touch and thank me for helping them do the right thing.
I really like the idea of working in plugin donations to a client budget.
I was psyched to see Pippin give a talk on this last week at Pressnomics. I’m glad he’s getting the message out there.
Hey Jason! Notice anything about our comments?
We have several of Pippin’s plugins, and we (and our customer’s) love them. With the level of success that Pippin has achieved in his career, I would have expected him to be much older. Props to Pippin and his immense success at such a young age! He’s truly an inspiration to all of us in the WordPress space.
Thanks for tuning in WP Propeller. Glad you found some inspiration in Pippin’s story 🙂
If someone holds up some awesome pictures one after the other and said nothing else, what is the value. However, if that same person held up an image then explained, it this because of this and I used this with these camera settings. Then you’ve learned something.
This was interesting. For me not real inspirational, but for someone looking to write plugins, it might be useful.
I’ve noticed that you’ve had guest show some great sites developed using DIVI. I think that is more relevant. What would been better is if they explained just how they did it, a how to if you will.
I’m a photographer not a CCS/HTML coder. So my opinion may be that important. But I do know this.
Thanks for listening Bill and offering up your feedback. Pippin’s story and experiences may not be what everyone needs to hear right now and it sounds like that is the case for you. If you’re looking for more tutorials/how-to’s then I am excited to say that we’re putting a bigger focus on those as we move forward.
In the meantime, I encourage you to check out all of our Divi Nation Shorts and Divi Quick Tips.
Here is a link to our Divi Quick Tips playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF17V-5878mWVOcXf16DqIwStUtMS53ef
If you ever want me to cover something specifically all you have to do is drop a request in the comments or email me directly at [email protected].
Thanks again for tuning in!
You’re doing good job and Elegant Themes is awesome. One thing I see a lot of people having problems with (on forums) is handling of images. Full-width header or image is full-width but far from full screen. What is best size image etc…
I’ve figured most of it out. but I bet there are some great tips that I don’t know.
I disagree. I found this episode extremely inspirational. Yes, Pippin isn’t creating websites for clients like many of us in the Divi community are. But he’s creating the tools that many of us are using. And there’s a lot of people in this community that are beginning to create Divi Child Themes, Divi plugins, and other tools. So I think it’s very relevant.
WP Propeller you missed my point. I wasn’t saying that Pippin wasn’t successful. I wasn’t saying anything bad about the plugins he’s developed. I was just making a remark that for me, it wasted 40 mins of my time. But would be different for others, more advanced than me.
Can you reply with one or two things that you learned about how to code a plugin?
My only view was, people come to elegant themes to get themes to build websites. In my opinion nobody does that better than ET.