Our (My) August Plans
Posted on August 3rd, 2008 in General | Leave A Comment
So, in the last post I mentioned that I am buzzing with excitement to announce a project that I am going to be working on over the month of August. While I am not going to be giving out too many details in this post about the actual product, I will talk a little about my plan of action over the next month.
Since starting WPGeeks.com at the end of 2007 the website has gone through many changes. It has been a blog, a consultancy business, a coming soon page etc etc. I have been very indecisive about what I actually want WordPress Geeks to be and hence the reason why the site has changed so many times.
Over the past few weeks, I decided to do some brainstorming. I needed to find a clear focus for the site and build a business around that focus. I came to the conclusion that I am a developer a heart. I have a passion for development and really enjoy sitting in front of the computer churning out code. How geek like, I know 
While I can design, customize and optimize websites it’s not my passion, it’s a chore.
So during my brainstorming session, I figured that WordPress Geeks must be a product company. Turning this business into a product business is taking a huge risk. The reason for this is because I can fail much easier than if I run the website as a consultancy business. You see, when I was doing consulting work I had a client base and had a means to make money. I always had a steady flow of new client leads and could pick and choose who I wanted to work with. With a product business, I dont have that luxury.
Starting this product business means I have to work extremely hard this next month to develop a product. Hey, you cant have a product business without a product! So I decided to set myself a goal. The goal is this:
“By September 1st, 2008 I will have at least 1 product launched on WPGeeks.com.”
This is a huge deal for me. Even more so because I am sharing it with you and the rest of the world. However, I feel it is important to share this goal and future goals on the blog for numerous reasons:
- WordPress Geeks is a personal business. I want you to know what is happening behind the scenes. I am hoping that in sharing the details of the business with you, I form a trustworthy relationship with you and the other visitors to the site and that we can work together to develop world class WordPress products. This business is not about me, its about creating great products that you (and others) want, can use and can benefit from.
- Putting my goals out there serves as a motivator for me to achieve them. Public failure is embarrasing and that in itself serves as a huge motivator for me to get this product launched!
- Educational value. I plan to post frequent progress updates and talk about my successes and failures, what I do right and what I do wrong etc. Hopefully through my documentation you will be able to learn something about starting and running your own web company.
So, I thought I would quickly go through a couple details of my plans for the August project:
- Development will start on the 4th of August and a working version (perhaps beta) will be launched on September 1st.
- I will be working on the project every weekday. I may (if need be) spend one or two weekends working on it as well.
- I will be posting updates to the blog a few times a week with progress updates on the project.
- The first product will be a WordPress plugin and will have a free and paid version of the product.
- I will be able to work a maxium of 8 hours every week day on the project due to my other weekly commitments.
- I will be offering integration services until the product business is profiting to help me fund this business and live
I think thats enough information for now. I dont want to overwhelm you with a ton of information and I am not yet ready to annouce what the project I will be building during August is. The plan will be to start releasing screenshots and even get a few beta testers towards the middle of the month, but more on this later.
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