Flash sales, countdowns, lack of disclosure, questionable recommendations… what’s going on with the WordPress that many of us have grown to love over the years?
It was going so well
WordPress was once a wonderful open-source project supported by many developers and businesses around the world that monetize the platform for their own benefit and that of its users.
This is the way it was for many years and it has helped WordPress become the powerhouse that it is today.
Greed is taking over
So why are we getting greedy and moving away from what has worked so well for practically everyone involved for so long?
Every day now I come across a tweet, a message in Slack, a blog post or even an email newsletter that discusses a marketing strategy that doesn’t sit well with people.
Unfortunately, these strategies are being adopted and adapted by many WordPress companies, often blindly and without any understanding of what they’re actually doing.
According to the WordPress weather report by Ellipsis, WordPress’ growth has hit a speed bump lately. So is everyone just trying to get a bigger piece of the pie while they can?
– Full disclosure –
For some context to what you’ll read here, I am looking at all this from two different perspectives.
The first is that of a blogger and product reviewer here at WP Mayor, which is something I’ve done since 2014 along with our team.
The second is that of a product owner who is responsible for two WordPress plugins; Spotlight Instagram Feeds and WP RSS Aggregator.
Most importantly – to make sure we’re clear from the very beginning – we are no angels and we haven’t always done things perfectly over the past decade. We all make mistakes.
The difference is that we are actively working on making sure we do our work with our ethics and morals at the forefront of every decision. We’re still a business at the end of the day, but we’re not here to deceive or manipulate anyone.
You may still find content and recommendations on this website that don’t fully align with what I say here. If you do, know that we’re working hard to get to it all.
The problem with marketing in WordPress
This has been one of the most popular and controversial topics of discussion for a while.
In the past decade, WordPress has moved away from manual renewals, renewal discounts, and other strategies that simply aren’t sustainable.
That’s the good part.
Now we’ve moved into a stage of, let’s call them – questionable strategies.
#1 Never-ending sales
Fake sales are the one tactic I dislike the most.
Unfortunately,
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This article was written by Mark Zahra and originally published on WP Mayor.