donnacha of WordSkill

VaultPress can charge a premium because they are Automattic, although I suspect they may be making a mistake in not offering some form of bulk or usage-based pricing – the majority of self-hosted WordPress installations out there are not big, regularly updated blogs in the sense that we usually expect but, rather, much smaller micro-niche sites, usually part of a big network of similar sites. Such sites would not justify a $15 a month but there are a LOT of them, much richer market overall if you get the pricing right.

ManageWP, with its updating features, is arguably better than VaultPress if you are willing to pay for the “Professional Package” (which is the first to include backup features) but their decision to abandon the pricing they suggested during the beta period, and to instead target the same high-end market as VaultPress, that alienated a lot of beta testers and killed most of the buzz that should have accompanied their launch – I originally believed that ManageWP would be the blockbuster hit of 2012 and fundamentally change the WordPress landscape, I even gave a talk along those lines at WordUp Edinburgh, unaware of their imminent change in strategy.

ManageWP is still an excellent service if your individual sites are large enough to justify their per-site pricing, but they messed up on pricing overall and failed to capitalize on being the first service of that type. While I am sure that they are making plenty of money, you still don’t see that much buzz about ManageWP on Twitter or in blog comments. That leaves them vulnerable from above to VaultPress introducing similar features and, of course, even more vulnerable from below to someone creating something similar enough but getting the pricing right and capturing the vast swathes of micro site networks.

Whoever is the first to get real scale will ultimately win the whole ball game because lots of users earns you the cooperation you need to get commercial plugin and theme authors to join your updating system and, of course, that opens the door to the future possibility of becoming a trusted platform for the sale of plugins and themes, a hugely lucrative opportunity that is, surprising, still wide open.

So, services such as BackupPress could have a very bright future but they need to stay realistic about how they actually stack up against VaultPress in terms of overall impression and to remember three things:

1. The most important thing is to remain as competitive as possible in terms of both pricing and features, worry about cashing in AFTER you have your first million users.

2. Don’t make the mistake of hiring expensive marketing idiots who will persuade you to increase your prices so that they can have an advertising budget to play with. Offer such good value that your users will be your evangelists, that is the only marketing that really works.

3. Never forget that the potential market is absolutely massive and, once you have scale, the range of further opportunities will be mind-blowing. Don’t settle for merely being profitable, go for the real prize and build a business that really makes a difference. As Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, once said “Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger”.

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