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We talk with people interested in WordPress publishing. You'll hear interview with publishers who happen to be using WordPress, and also people in the WordPress space.
Hey, everyone. This is Steve of Publish Press. And in this episode of the Publish Press podcast, I'm talking with Jamie Marsland. You probably know Jamie best from YouTube. He runs a very successful and popular YouTube channel focused on WordPress, teaching people how to use the WordPress core and trying to explain WordPress in easy terms.
Steve Burge:But that really scratches the surface of what he does. He is a very prolific writer, guitarist, app creator. He has generated, he says, over 40 different apps mainly using AI this year. And he's just a very interesting and creative guy who always tries to put himself at the the forefront of what's happening in technology nowadays. We have a long conversation about AI, its impact on WordPress, and its impact in creativity in general.
Steve Burge:Think you're gonna love this conversation. And afterwards, head over to YouTube and subscribe to hear more of Jamie's work. Hey, Jamie. Welcome to the Publish Press podcast.
Jamie Marsland:Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for having me. How are you?
Steve Burge:Great. You you're calling in from your famous shed in your back garden, your YouTube studio?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Shed is a a bit of a demeaning word for it. It's actually it's a garden garden office. I I live in I think it's nineteen thirties house in a town called Cheltenham in The UK, and this is a substantial, I'd say, garage out the back that has been converted into a little sanctuary and then turned into a kind of YouTube studio stroke work office.
Steve Burge:So people will probably know you from your YouTube channel. And at the beginning of almost every video, there's a a little introductory scene where you come down through the garden and come towards your home office, I guess. You call it your home studio, and that's where you are now.
Jamie Marsland:That's where I am now. Yeah. That's literally my 10 meter yard walk out to my home office. I used to I used to work in London, which was a three hour commute, probably six hour commute there and back. So this is a much better lifestyle.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah.
Steve Burge:Wait. Six hours every day?
Jamie Marsland:Not every day. We we bought a business in the middle of London. So for a while, I was commuting, I guess, three days a week. I can't really remember. It was a it was a long, long time ago, but you just forget.
Jamie Marsland:And I was younger then, so you've got the energy to do it, but I definitely couldn't I couldn't do it now. But, yeah, a lot of time spent on trains and in tubes.
Steve Burge:Because you were in the old fashioned publishing business for a while. Right?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Yeah. One of the one of the businesses I ran for a while a while was a was a publishing company called Pavilion Publishing. Well, we bought we acquired a company called Pavilion Publishing as part of the group. And they they were all school publishing.
Jamie Marsland:So they had paper, and they had books, and they had events as well as I was kinda bought into the business to move the whole business online. But yeah. So and we had salespeople selling selling display ads and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I'm kind of steeped in steeped in publishing on both sides, actually. And before that, I was I was working for a company that provided services to publishing companies.
Jamie Marsland:So I've kinda worked both sides of the spectrum. So I'm I'm deeply in love with publishing.
Steve Burge:Well, even now, you're an almost incredibly proficient publisher. You blog, what, two, three, four times a week at least. You you're one of the one of the most proficient bloggers I've seen in the WordPress space, and I'm curious how you what your process is. You write constantly, and I see you pushing it out to LinkedIn, to the the premium version of x. What's your approach to writing at the moment?
Jamie Marsland:Well, it's kind of AI has kind of unlocked that for me. So I was if you look back, like, probably I don't know how long it's been, but a year, year and a half, I wasn't writing that much. But AI has been like it's it's like I've got a full time editor sitting next to me now, which is amazing. So my process is I walk a lot, first thing to say, and that's where a lot of the ideas come, just walking around the hills and around town. And then I I kind of I'd I'm I've read a lot of books on writing, so I've I've always wanted to write a book.
Jamie Marsland:I actually I am writing a book, which I'm not gonna talk about today. But I've always wanted to write a book. So I've I've read I've read. Go on. Sorry, Steve.
Steve Burge:Is is something completely unrelated to WordPress?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Completely unrelated. I mean, far as you I've told a few people about it, but top secret. Yeah. So I've always wanted to so I've read loads of books on how to write over my life as a lot of people do without actually writing.
Jamie Marsland:But, actually, AI has kind of unlocked the writing genie means. Now I can't stop writing because my my process simply is I have lots and lots of ideas, and then I just do, which is what a lot of the writing books tell you to do, just hammer down the first draft as quickly as possible, very rough, without thinking about, you know, don't worry about the language. Don't worry about the phrasing. Just get the ideas down as quickly as possible. And then I'm are you then I move to my typically, I move to my AI friendly editor, and we start coworking it and shaping it and kind of putting it in a in a way that I want.
Jamie Marsland:And then that's kind of the process. But the editor the the AI editor has completely unlocked this writing muscle for me. It's it's been it's been wonderful for me because I I've got all these ideas, and now I can get them down and shape them and get something out that I'm happy with. So it's been a a real revelation, actually. And I can't stop writing.
Steve Burge:There there's a guy, Steven Pressfield, who Okay. He's written a ton of books, including about how to write. And I heard an interview with him the other day, and he said basically his aim on his first draft is almost to be like know you those Jackson Pollock paintings, which are just painting? Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Burge:He basically my first draft is basically like a Jackson Pollock painting. I'm throwing the paintbrush, just try and get something down. And so then you can shape it. I guess he would use old fashioned editorial processes to shape it from there. But you will then take those first notes and actually drop them into ChatGPT, or what what's the next step after you have the first draft done?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I'll I'll I'll I'll take the draft, and then I'll drop certain I won't do the whole thing. I'll drop certain things into it and say, you know, how can I make this read a bit better or take this little bit? So it is I imagine. I've never worked with a proper editor.
Jamie Marsland:I imagine it's working, like, with a proper editor, but quite a fine sort of detail. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of that's kind of my general process, and that'll be different how I talk to chat GBT will be different on the kind of like, I even though I write mostly about WordPress and kind of the mark the kind of where we're at in terms of this point in time, it will change depending on whether it's more of a personal piece than a more sort of dry this is actually, I it was an interesting thing yesterday. Was I was which I haven't done before, I was writing a fairly boring post not boring post, but I was I we've got there's this really cool block, which I'm doing a video on, which is called the stretchy text block, which the AI special projects team have developed. And so I just dropped it into Cursor and said, can you just tell me how this how this block is actually working under the hood?
Jamie Marsland:And it came out, and it and it gave me some great information, and I can use that then to spin out much more quickly a a YouTube video. So there's all sorts of ways you can use it in terms of creating content.
Steve Burge:So when you say speak to ChatGPT, are you actually one of those people that will physically use it for taking voice notes and and brainstorming that way, or is everything just everything typed?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I'm a typing guy. One of the best things I ever did was I really like this girl at school. She she was a girlfriend. And she went on a what was it?
Jamie Marsland:Pitman's write a typing course. So and I I thought it was the right thing to do would be to go on the same course. So I can now touch type, which touch typing has been one of the the best skills I've ever learned. So I'd I'm generally I go to the typewriter because I can type quite quickly.
Steve Burge:So you you get everything down in ChatGPT. From there, does it go to your WordPress blog? When it's finished, is that the foot is that, like, the the canonical the the is that the main place where you publish?
Jamie Marsland:That is the main that's my source of truth. But I do I've actually developed an app to make it easier for me to do this more quickly. I've always wanted, like, a completely friction free way of publishing to WordPress without having to lock I mean, it sounds like a small thing, but I'm I'm a big believer in the less friction you have in any publishing process or creative process. You probably do more of it. For example, I have, like I always have guitars lying around the house because I'll play more of them.
Jamie Marsland:You know? And so I have this theory that you reduce friction, you'll probably be more creative. And so I wanted I wanted a really easy way that I could publish to WordPress and write and write actually without without having to log in to WordPress, and so I built a little app. VibeCoded is little app called, Poodle Writer, which is available for free, forever free at poodlewriter.com. And it's just basically, it's just a writing tool.
Jamie Marsland:So if you're a writer, you can just go into poodlewriter.com and you start writing. And then there's a little setting where you can connect it to your WordPress website. We don't see any of your content. It's all handled you know, the app doesn't see any of that. It just publishes it straight to WordPress.
Jamie Marsland:And it's got a little it's basically a little lightweight markdown editor. But you just you don't have to log in. You just go to you just go to an address in the browser, and you'll see it, you can start writing. And it's it's super quick because all the storage is saved locally. It's just vibe coded, and it's it's a so, again, it just makes it very easy for me to write without any kind of distractions.
Steve Burge:And so you've vibe coded all of this Yeah. Using, like, Lovable, Replit, of those tools?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I can't remember. Okay. I can't have done so many now. I think that was probably that might have been Lovable or Bolt.
Jamie Marsland:Those are Bolt. Those are kind of the two ones I discovered first. I'm still quite loyal to them. I haven't used Replit before. So it's either Lovable or Bolt, but I I built I'm kind of a bit obsessed by building apps.
Jamie Marsland:I built so many of these things, but I kinda lose track where I built them. Yeah.
Steve Burge:So so from there, then you will you'll send it to your WordPress site. It starts at portalwriter.com, goes to WordPress, goes to LinkedIn, goes to, x and other places too?
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. It doesn't do that automatically. So I I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll typically take, the content from Poodle Writer, and I've I I am I've been experimenting with, premium articles on x just as a test in the last year. Because X, if you're a premium member, you can write full full length articles. And they've done they've I I did some stats the other day, and I've done 38, I think, articles, and they've had about 80,000 views, which has been kind of and they've they've been quite diverse.
Jamie Marsland:I'm kinda WordPress focused, but it just gives me a space to share stuff. So they've had they've had a lot of they've had a lot of traction, actually, and people have been commenting them. Some of those are quite personal as well. And then I'll do the same thing on LinkedIn articles as well. I just published some on those on LinkedIn articles generally with a little introduction saying what the article is about.
Jamie Marsland:And, again, those have done those have done really well on LinkedIn. So it's it's been quite I was never really a blogger much before, but in the last year and a half, I've really kind of I've really unintentionally it's just kind of it's just kind of happened for me, and now I can't stop.
Steve Burge:It just really if it's one of those things sometimes where you find the the right tool and it just really it hits the right spot inside you and really inspires some creativity. So you've gone from really blogging to being a really proficient blogger, thanks to AI. And it sounds like the same is true with coding as well, right? You were telling me before we got on that you've been coding, like, twenty, twenty five, 30 different apps with these tools. Like, almost addicted to spinning them up.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Well, I have probably like you, I've been in the product game for a long time, so you have lots of ideas. So I built I've got a really cool app, which I I'm I'm not gonna turn this on because it'll probably distort the microphone. I've built another app for WordPress called Poodle Photos, poodlephotos.com, which, again, is free. I've always I've always wanted a way to add photos to my website Yes.
Jamie Marsland:As simply as possible. Like, I know there's apps that do it, and they're pretty cool, but they kind of they give you full on WordPress. All I wanted was I go to the app, I click a button, give it a title, and click publish, and the next second, it appears as a post on my website. So now I've got a little photo journal on my website, and these this is using a block theme. It just grabs the image and sets it as the featured image.
Jamie Marsland:And then on my website, I basically have got a custom template which just says just show the featured image with a little title underneath. Now I have a lovely photo journal. So it's kind of really encouraged me to take more photos, which, again, I wasn't really doing before. But, like, because I've got this now friction free way of literally, I can click take a photo, click a button, and about two seconds later, it's on my website in a nice gallery. It's encouraging me to do more of that thing because it's just getting rid of the barriers to the creative process.
Jamie Marsland:So if I have an idea, I and and these apps can just be for me if I if I want to. That's the nice thing about it. Poodle Writer has actually got about 40 loyal people every day using it because I can I can see the stats? But I've not really publicized it or I don't really wanna promote it, but it's there if people wanna test it out. But that's the nice thing about this this world we're living in.
Jamie Marsland:You can just buy a you can just build an app for you if you want to. Just a personal little app that does exactly what you want, and you don't have to support users. You don't have to take feature requests. It's just wonderful.
Steve Burge:Yeah. It's very frictionless. And I guess if you do have the dev side to your brain, you're you're you're scratching that itch by actually building these things. And then if you have the creative side as well, you're able to scratch that itch by actually using the app, whether it's a writing app or a photos app. It sounds like you have a ton of creativity inside you.
Steve Burge:You've got the the writing. It may end up in a book. You've got the photography. You're a musician as well. Right?
Jamie Marsland:I I am I am a musician. Yeah. Longtime musician. I'm in a band now, and we play we play gigs around. I've actually created another app,
Steve Burge:which That's gonna be my next question.
Jamie Marsland:Which, I've always I keep on starting these sentences with I've always wanted. I've always wanted this simple do do you play guitar? Steve, are you a guitarist? Do play any music?
Steve Burge:No. No. I wish I was more musical. I'm not.
Jamie Marsland:Okay. So I think a lot of guitarists, they called noodling. You just basically play a little you you come up with, a little wrist or a little tune. And and so I I thought I've always wanted a way to kinda capture those easily, and so I created another app, which I which is called Poodle Noodle, which is just a great name, where you can just take a little video and upload it to WordPress. Again, a bit like Poodle Photos, but just with video very, very simply.
Jamie Marsland:And, again, it because it's so easy, it just encourages you to do more of it. And I I kinda just wanted to make that one because I thought the name was so great anyway.
Steve Burge:It does sound like like a cup ramen or something like that.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. So, yeah, it's I have a lot of ideas, and and AI has kind of helped to kind of get them out, I guess, in many ways.
Steve Burge:You've always considered yourself a a very creative person. There might be a whole bunch of different avenues for it, whether it's music or writing or or coding. But what have changed with AI is it sounds like you feel it's really unlocked
Jamie Marsland:Yeah.
Steve Burge:Or removed a lot of barriers to for you to be creative.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. No. It has. I mean, it's been it's been incredible. I mean, one one of the things that's hap I mean, because I've, I guess what part of this unlocking is being creating YouTube videos, which I've been doing about three or four years, really, and that's enabled me to have that creative space professionally for the first time properly.
Jamie Marsland:Like, before I've been running businesses or, you know, running my own business, and there's definitely there's definitely creative opportunities when you do that stuff as you as you know. But when you sort of lean into creating YouTube videos, you really lean into the creative process. And that when I first started doing that properly, that completely unlocked this stuff that's in me anyway, but I could do it professionally for the first time and make money out of it for the first time. And that's kind of really accelerated the process in many ways, whereas it's become it's kinda I guess it's like turning on it's like going to the gym and just flex and get getting fit. The creative muscle, in my experience, the more you exercise it, the more it kind of turns on in a way, the more you kind of can do it, the more ideas you have to the point where you're waking up at 04:00 in the morning excited about doing a video around a scroll to video play bot lock and which isn't entirely I'm a freaky.
Jamie Marsland:That's kinda where you end up.
Steve Burge:Oh, so the the first big unlock for your creativity wasn't AI, but a couple years before was when you stopped being an an old fashioned business guy and moved into the YouTube area and had the opportunity to wake up every morning and be creative to imagine something new.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Exactly. That was the that was the first. And that's kind of I think there's times in your life when you realize what you should have been doing for a long time. You can't always do that stuff, but kind of where you just feel like in the flow, and, that feels exactly the right place for your brain to be at.
Jamie Marsland:And that that was a that was a good realization for me to be there. Because I I love I absolutely love the YouTube process. I'm completely passionate about everything about it and video content. So and it doesn't feel like work often to me. The process of going through videos and trying to make trying to take a a concept that might not be the most interesting concept in the world and spinning out, making it as interesting as you possibly can.
Jamie Marsland:I think that's such an interesting such an interesting creative challenge and process. I loved I absolutely love that stuff.
Steve Burge:You you're a teacher before. Right? And I think that's part of the the teaching mindset. I was a teacher too before getting into WordPress product development, and I have this memory of geeking out over a Lego, of all the geeky things, a Lego instruction manual. And I was talking to someone about how beautifully it explained these difficult concepts of how to put together a big complicated LEGO construction.
Steve Burge:And I was showing someone that step by step, they have these beautiful illustrations. You put this piece on this piece. And I was saying, hey. It's multilingual. You don't need to have any text instructions.
Steve Burge:It it looks beautiful. Like and it takes a very complicated, very complicated concept and explains it in very simple terms. And someone looked at me like, you're really kicking me out over this, but there's a certain joy, right, in taking a complicated topic and explaining it simply.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I mean, I wasn't a we I I wasn't a formal teacher. I'd I I trained WordPress as part of for ten years. So in my in my PoohplePress days, I trained about 5,000 people in WordPress. And, actually, when I was at uni, I was a tennis coach.
Jamie Marsland:So and I absolutely love tennis coaching. So but I agree. I mean, there's something beautiful about taking a con a complex concept and breaking it down so it's easy for people to to understand. I think it's called the Feynman. Richard Feynman had a technique where you teach it teach something like you're teaching a child and then go back and explain the concept explore the concepts and then go into more detail.
Jamie Marsland:If you can't explain something, understand it better so you can teach it. I think that's such a I think teaching people something is such a great way of finding out the pain points as well. I'm a big believer that it'd be great if developers of products were forced were forced to go and teach their plug ins to end users because there's nothing like even trying to write a course for a you know, trying to write a course for something teaches you the pain points of your products. I think there's nothing quite like teaching to to highlight those.
Steve Burge:Are you still teaching now, or is it all has all your work?
Jamie Marsland:No. I mean yeah. So I've I've ran a course actually at WordCamp US, so how to build a portfolio portfolio site in a day. And I think we had about 70 people in the room. And And interestingly, about half of them said they'd never used WordPress before, which was which was really fascinating.
Jamie Marsland:And it's something where I'm talking to the folks at, with Campeja about trying to introduce a bit more of. Could be something exciting about that we're thinking about. It's bit early days, but I think it's a big opportunity to try and get beginners into those events by running maybe a day of training free training or training for a series of courses to take beginners through that process would be wonderful.
Steve Burge:But
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I'm still doing bits and pieces. And I I trained it as part of for Automatic. We we went to a a conference called OFF in Barcelona, which is a big creative conference for designers, and I did a course there as well, which is again fantastic, full of young creative designers in a room who kind of didn't know what WordPress what was possible with WordPress. They were all using, like, Wix and Framer and Webflow, and they were like, oh, this is amazing.
Jamie Marsland:We're we're gonna start to explore this. So, yeah, I'm still doing bits and pieces, and I wanna do much more of it still.
Steve Burge:Well, WordCamp, the big WordCamps have always been a little bit of a an industry conference rather than aimed at at beginners. For about ten years, we did the training before DrupalCons, and the Drupal team would have a little bit more of a focus on saying, hey. We're gonna get like 30% of people at this conference who are completely new to Drupal who have never touched it. And every year, they would have a training session the day before the conference so people could get up to speed before they went to the main sessions.
Jamie Marsland:That's really interesting. Were those successful? Did they work?
Steve Burge:Yeah. They were packed every time. There was probably a slightly different audience, quite a quite corporate audience at Drupal, so they didn't mind spending a few $100 on a training session. But Yes. It sounds like you hit on a successful niche for what camps, the web Yeah.
Steve Burge:Portfolio project.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I think part of the thinking is I mean, this is early days in terms of thinking, but we one option is to run the training on the same day as contributor day.
Steve Burge:Yes. Yeah.
Jamie Marsland:A mixture of because the I don't know if you've heard about Campus Connect, but that's going great guns in terms of the go guys going to universities and train cohorts in universities how to use WordPress. So there's some talk that maybe we could ally a Campus Connect with a with a flagship, because it's gonna be in Mumbai. Maybe ally one of those with Mumbai and get folks coming into the into the, you know, the flagship event. But I think there would also be a mixture of kind of those maybe students, university students, young creators, but maybe also people that are in businesses that not don't necessarily that have WordPress sites but don't necessarily have to have to use them. That's kind of what I've seen before as well.
Jamie Marsland:But I think it's a huge opportunity to get to kinda get fresh fresh eyes into into WordPress. So, yeah, I'm quite I'm excited about that as a initiative.
Steve Burge:Well, you probably you probably think of the YouTube work as some form of teaching. Right? It's Yeah. Explaining WordPress concepts in, five minutes, six minutes. Have you you looked at your stats, I'm sure you have, closely enough to figure out which videos really take off at the moment?
Steve Burge:Are there are there videos you've dropped in the last couple of years which have just really accelerated the growth of your channel that have been super popular?
Jamie Marsland:Well, my my kind of mission on the channel has been as much as possible to stick to core. I guess that's kind of what I I guess that's what separates me from other WordPress channels. And that's really born of my kind of training business and training 5,000 people and going to rooms with, you know, 20 people. And a lot of those people are coming on these courses because they've had sites built for them using all sorts of I mean, the the number of ways you can build a simple WordPress site is just astonishing, and the amount of over engineering I've seen over the past fifteen years is astonishing. And so as part of my mission has been on the YouTube channel to try and make things as simple as possible for people to build with, but also to reduce technical debt as much as possible for those folks, you know, two, three years down the line, which is why I try and stick to core as much as possible because I've seen, you know, so many sites built with, like, ACF, which just you know?
Jamie Marsland:And all they want to change is a testimonial on the front page, but they can't do it anymore because it's completely over engineered because the developer never asked them, do you want to change this site in a year's time? That question never get never got asked in so many people's sites. That was a long ramble. But, essentially, my my WordPress my WordPress channel is really around I'm kinda passionate about trying to help beginners out, I guess, and also put them in the best possible spot so their their sites are sustainable, those that have pain down the track.
Steve Burge:Well, you are do you mind explaining what what you are now exactly in terms of working with Automattic? You are the, like, the chief YouTube officer.
Jamie Marsland:That's a good that's a good title. I'm not quite right.
Steve Burge:C y t o.
Jamie Marsland:I'm not not like that better than my title. Let's do let's go with that. Now my my my official role is head of WordPress YouTube. And I started off this is a bit of a long story, which I'll I'll shorten. But I started off working purely on the .org YouTube channel, and we grew that from about think I when I joined, it was about 35,000 subscribers, and I think we're currently about a 113,000 subscribers.
Jamie Marsland:So that's growing nicely. I'm now focusing since, what happened at the start of the year in terms of automatic personnel having a refocus towards the commercial side of the business, which let's not talk about now. More focus now on the .com channel, I guess. So that's that's currently we have about 30,000 subscribers, and the plan is to grow that quite aggressively. So I'm kind of still feeding both of those.
Jamie Marsland:One of the challenges on .org is, historically, it's been a community driven channel, which is great because you have lots of community involvement. But YouTube kind of the nature of YouTube is that it kind of doesn't reward, but what people are looking for on YouTube is a consistent voice and personality, essentially. So it's one of the challenges of the .org channel is how you embrace the community aspect of YouTube, but still kind of have consistency of quality and kind of overall story arc, I guess.
Steve Burge:YouTube has certain algorithms that reward getting on the treadmill and every two or three days dropping an awesome video that gets a lot of comments. And if your community channel suddenly has 80 videos from a WordCamp from 80 random people and just dump some on mass, that may be wonderful content, but it's not gonna be rewarded by the algorithm.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. Well, it's more around the way the way I'd recommend people think about YouTube if you are gonna do YouTube. It's like rather than the algorithm, think about the viewer. And if you're I mean, if you just think about your own personal behavior, I I use I watch more YouTube now than anything else. That's I love YouTube, like, more than Netflix and anything.
Jamie Marsland:You think about your own behavior. When you when you go to YouTube and you subscribe to a channel or you watch a video from a channel, you'll you'll there is a chance you'll you'll you'll likely go back to that channel. But if that channel's content is completely different to what you enjoyed, then you're probably not gonna watch that video that time. And then then the algorithm goes, okay. Well, maybe they're not interested in that.
Jamie Marsland:So they won't serve that video up to to me or to the next person that's potentially watching that video. So that consistency of editorial tone and voice is super important for the end user, really, because that's that's what people kind of look for when they subscribe to a YouTube channel. They want that consistency of quality and voice, and that's one of the challenges of .org that from that community aspect. So it's you know, there's been lots of discussions around what to do about that, maybe have a curated a more curated main channel and then a separately hive off the community ad channel and call that WordPress community. So those those discussions are still kind of fluid.
Steve Burge:Yeah. I can imagine suddenly if you get 80 notifications of, 80 new videos dropped from the wordpress.org channel, and it's the 80 videos that were filmed, let's say, WordCamp US, It's it's wonderful. It's very useful, but it doesn't quite fit what's optimized for YouTube, I guess.
Jamie Marsland:No. And, also, some of those will be different languages as well. So, again, that's problematic in terms of just who the viewer is for those for those videos and their expectations of what they're seeing.
Steve Burge:So you've grown your channel by being a consistent brand. You go to go to Jamie's channel. You get you get Jamie every time. I think 100% of the videos have you presenting them.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. All my daughters have been on a few, but I I generally introduce them if they are. Yeah. They're always yeah.
Steve Burge:And they go at a consistent pace. And so every time you get a notification from from Pluto Press, it's gonna be almost exactly what you expect and what you've enjoyed before. Exactly. Yeah. Do you have any recommendations for people who are launching a a YouTube channel for their product?
Steve Burge:I've noticed quite a few brands have moved away from just putting up strict product demos to trying to get more of the influencer approach. Yeah. Is that something you'd recommend for product people?
Jamie Marsland:It depends on the product, actually, because I I watched a I've been buying I'm gonna have a musical thing now. I've been buying these lately. This is a this is an analog synth. Right? And I've been I've gone down I'm a guitarist, so I have no idea what this does.
Jamie Marsland:But I bought bought one, and it's really complex. If you go onto YouTube, there's lots of videos with men with beards and long hair that talk about envelopes, it gets it gets really scientific. But I saw a product video this morning from a I hacked this product company, and it was just a beautifully shot, and it was just a little tiny synth. And it was just a beautiful demo. And because of the way it was shot, I actually bought the thing, and it was quite pricey.
Jamie Marsland:So I'm I'm regretting it. But I think it depends it depends a bit on it depends a bit on the product whether you can shoot that sort of product video so it's so compelling, people people want to buy. In my experience, that's quite hard in WordPress. I I'd started a channel, YouTube channel, a long, long time ago, and I would talk about my own products. And people generally they they generally didn't like that so much because they I was just you know, it was clearly, I was just selling my own stuff.
Jamie Marsland:I wasn't really trying to give value or help to people on YouTube, which is why most people are on YouTube. I was just trying to flop my own products. As soon as I had the mind shift to say, actually, let's create some content that's gonna help people and make it interesting and entertaining, I started getting nice comments and engagement, and people started sharing it. So yeah. It's
Steve Burge:whole point of your channel is to be helpful, and actually selling a product is probably not even on the list of bullet points anymore. Everything you do is around selling WordPress, I guess, now.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. And sometimes that'll be like you know? So I cover plug people's plug ins sometimes. Like, I've a few videos lately about there's a really cool plug in, which these are free, called the Vue Transitions plug in, which Felix released a few weeks ago. Got a ton ton of reaction.
Steve Burge:Kinda makes the admin area faster?
Jamie Marsland:Makes the admin area faster, but makes the front front end beautifully elegant as well. It's just like basically, it predicts the next page in WordPress and serves it, loads it in the background. And so when you click on a link, it kind of it's app like in its in its kind of movement and effect. So it kinda turns your website into an app, and it's literally, you know, two clicks to install it. So I did a little video around that.
Jamie Marsland:But, again, we're I'm kind of selling WordPress all the time. I mean, that was a free plug in anyway. But I do think there's you know, if you ask if you are my coming back to your question, if you are a product company, I just reflect on the plug ins I've bought over the past sort of five years. And I generally I've kind of been going back on it, and and I generally know the people that make those plug ins now, whether it's Mark, Wesgaard, w two for forms, or it's So I think what I'm trying to say is that having building trust around your brand through video content this is what I'm trying to say. Building trust around your brand through video content is just incredibly powerful.
Jamie Marsland:I think Elementor have done an amazing, job with Miriam. I just think now when I think of Elementor, I think of Miriam, and that's like trust, thought leadership. You know? I think it's completely transformed their brand in my brain at least, and I'm sure it's doing that, for other people. So it doesn't I see a lot of brands that will produce a video and think, well, what's the conversion on that video?
Jamie Marsland:And it's like, I don't think it's about that issue. My advice would be it's about building brand and trust. I think trust is especially with AI, building brand and trust with in the AI world is gonna be probably the most important asset any business can grow over the next three years. So my recommendation would be go put everything into that. Don't worry too much about creating a video and having a link and people converting.
Jamie Marsland:I don't think that's what where YouTube works, at least not in my experience.
Steve Burge:Every time I go on YouTube now, there's I seem to run across some form of AI video, and it's still very much in the uncanny valley. You it it sounds as though even though you're a big AI fan and use it for all sorts of different use cases, it hasn't really touched on your YouTube videos yet. We haven't seen, like, an AI version of Jamie or
Jamie Marsland:Well
Steve Burge:any AI generated content?
Jamie Marsland:I can't. I'm I'm ready for it. I think I think that's gonna be I've I've definitely we've we've been experimenting with some of this stuff at automatic, and but we're we're finding it's not quite it's not where we want it to be in terms of it is still uncanny. But and, personally, I I think we're gonna get there, but we're not there in terms of video generation. I've been experimenting with Google v o three and and Flow and stuff like that, but we're still not at the point where you can just prompt a thing and it's gonna create you a nice looking video.
Jamie Marsland:But, honestly, when that happens, the whole will change. I think that's gonna be the biggest change in AI probably that we've seen when video gen really gets serious and proper, and anyone anyone can prompt anything. I think the whole world changes overnight. I don't think we're ready for that yet. It's gonna be a massive it's gonna be a massive shift.
Jamie Marsland:But, yeah, I haven't I haven't haven't really used it on my own channel to much degree yet.
Steve Burge:It may change when we get the consistency. Whenever I dabble with these tools, I try and say we've got, like, the published press penguins as one of our that our company mascot dabbled around trying to make like a little animated version of the penguins. And there's no no consistency in the output, which is never gonna work for branding. But, lately, there's been some inclinations coming out of Google and other platforms that they may be getting closer to solving this.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. They'll solve it. We're just not quite I agree. They I mean, Google v o three is pretty good that you can which I've been playing with a bit. I've got, some mascots in my brand, which I haven't really used very much.
Jamie Marsland:But I've experimented uploading that to Google v o three, and you kinda get you can you can then upload close ups of them and get more consistency. But it's still arduous. It's still taking too long, and it still takes too long to to render, and it takes too long to re prompt. But that's gonna that's gonna get there, and that's gonna be that's gonna be incredibly, I think, very, very, very exciting because I'm gonna be making films. I can't wait for that day.
Jamie Marsland:You know? I've got a lot of films I wanna make, and I can't do it anyway.
Steve Burge:AI has helped with the the guitar. It's helped with the photos. It's helped with the writing and with the blogging, with the coding, and now Films. The films too.
Jamie Marsland:This is the one, I think. That's gonna be so exciting.
Steve Burge:So AI has been, like, digging deeply into into your work in lots of areas. You've been writing about AI impacting WordPress as well that would add an inflection point for WordPress that it needs to adapt and needs to adapt fast. How are you feeling about AI in, what, September 2025, not right now? You've just come back from WordCamp US, which Yeah. I didn't make it this year, but I hear there was a ton of talk about AI.
Steve Burge:How are you feeling after coming back from that?
Jamie Marsland:Well, yeah, I think there's I I posed I posed the question a few weeks ago on I wrote a blog post around it. But I think AI in WordPress is an interesting point in that. There's a lot to talk about here. But I think the stuff happening in WordPress and AI is really cool, and James LePage leading on that is amazing. And some really great stuff is happening.
Jamie Marsland:So we've got things like the features API that's going into WordPress, hopefully, 6.9, which basically means that you can avail your plugin. Your plugin can avail itself of what features it wants to make available to AI, and the the AI will be able to talk to those features very easily and then do stuff with them. So that's gonna be incredibly cool. And so there's there's loads of cool stuff happening internally with within WordPress. And then there's there's tools like the wordpress.com AI builder, which is early days, but the Bedrock is really cool.
Jamie Marsland:And we Automatic announced
Steve Burge:a
Jamie Marsland:thing called AI Telex a few weeks ago, which lets you which is still in very experimental phase, but lets you basically write Gutenberg blocks just by prompting. I built a really cool block with it today. But, again, it's very experimental. So there's so there's some really cool activity and initiatives happening within WordPress, but the the bigger there's lots of bigger questions, which I think we don't have time to talk about today, which are things like if you look at the growth of some of these other tools like Lovable and Bolt, Lovable now is valued at, I think, 1,800,000,000.0. It's turning over a 100,000,000 a year.
Jamie Marsland:It's had enormous growth. Their view on the world is that only 1% of people can code. It's probably too high, but they're after the 99% of people can't code. And I think there is this movement where, like, if you just look at my personal behavior, I built, like, 40 apps maybe over the last three months, three websites, what I'd call traditional websites. So I think there is this this general movement where people are gonna build think there's this this thing is happening, which is like the the web is being appified to a certain degree.
Jamie Marsland:And those might be traditional websites like WordPress, but they those might be apps like the AppSign builder, which are they are websites, but they're they're kind of app sites in a way. And I think that is a that's a big question for WordPress, whether it does want to go after that that space, which is high growth. And it could just stay in its lane, but my article was saying, is WordPress just PHP, MySQL? Is it just this thing that we've always lent on? Or, actually, if we broke free of those things and we said, actually, WordPress is the mission to democratize publishing and building on the web, does it free us up to actually start to compete with Lovell and Bold and these other tools so people could, at some point in the future, build very app like experiences with it.
Jamie Marsland:So that's a huge that would be a huge strategic shift. But the risk is if we don't do that as a WordPress, tools like Lovable and Bold and these are all these other tools that are growing, well, actually, you can build websites in those, not just apps. So the risk is those will actually start to impinge on the WordPress market share. And so if we just stay in our lane, the risk for me is you know, I don't think it'll be devastating quickly, but over time, I think those will start to erode kind of the work workplace markets today if we if we do just stay in our lane. And there is a whole generation of people that are being educated on how to build just using, like, most just using prompts, which I think is a huge shift as well now.
Jamie Marsland:Like my children now, they're building just by prompting, and that is their that that is gonna be their expectation. That's what they're learning. So, yeah, there's there's lots of big questions around WordPress. I think we're doing some really cool stuff, but the the higher the kind of the the wider stuff is, like, really interesting.
Steve Burge:Yeah. My daughter is she's just turned 16, and she came back with a school project to build a social app for her school. And it would have, like, a marketplace. It would have an events calendar. It would have a commenting area.
Steve Burge:And so I suggested WordPress. She's like Yeah. Why don't I try one of these vibe coding apps? And I was like, well, that's that's a lot to do. You have to think about the authentication.
Steve Burge:You have to think about X, Y, and Z. And lo and behold, she came back three days later. She built the whole thing in a Vibe Coding app, and it was good. It was fast. It was quick.
Steve Burge:It had all the pieces I probably hadn't quite expected that a Vibe coding app would provide.
Jamie Marsland:And that's yeah. I mean, that's that's an extraordinary story, isn't it? And I think that's that's the big question for me now is, like, does WordPress is there room in that market for an open source community driven by coding tool? I think it'd be great if WordPress or there is an opportunity if WordPress wanted to to go into that space, but that it would be a huge strategic shift for us to do that.
Steve Burge:Part of the part of the issue might be the fragmentation of the the different plugins that I I can imagine perhaps, say, one one very large plugin company that may have all the pieces, a form builder, a photo gallery from from a to zed, a to z, all the different pieces, they could provide a an AI tool that would allow you to type in a prompt and spit out an events calendar site, a school website. There are people, there are companies out there trying to build something like that. I guess with a, maybe a bit of a wall guardian approach. They say, hey. You can vibe code a website with these 45 hand selected plugins.
Steve Burge:The the fragmented nature of WordPress might make that a little more difficult.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I think if you're gonna do it, you'd have to I mean, I think it's very implausible that WordPress can do it, but you'd have to actively disrupt your own market and eat your own market and say we're not gonna we're not gonna take the same approach. I mean, it's much easier for a lovable and a BOLT to do this stuff because they have no legacy. They can literally just you know, they can start from where we are today. But WordPress has massive distribution, massive brand, massive ecosystem.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. The question is, is what we're doing in WordPress gonna be enough to still have the level of growth of the growth that potentially is the the market opportunity. Like, the growth you're seeing in Bolt and Lovable is absolutely enormous at the moment. Do we want a piece of that, or are we happy staying where we're where we're at?
Steve Burge:It sounds like you guys over at Automatic are taking this threat differently from others in the past. Automatic has just formed an AI team that is in person focused entirely on AI. I mean, sounds as if internally at Automatic, they're doing some major disruptions to the way things have been done in the past in order to try and catch up on AI.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I think I think I think there's there's obviously lots of different one of the beautiful things about Automatic is there's lots of space to have different opinions and different voices so that where you fit on that where you fit on AI is never gonna you know? And I've seen this with developers as well, whether you think that AI is never gonna achieve anything or it's a massive existential threat. I think there's different where you sit on that spectrum, there's lots of different voices on that. But I think Matt Mullenwink definitely understands that we are in a I mean, for me, it's it's probably the most exciting time to be in, I'll say, publishing services or website building or app building that we've had ever in our lifetime, probably since the Gutenberg press came out.
Jamie Marsland:I mean, it's a uniquely honored place to be. It's gonna be massively disruptive and scary. But crikey, this next five, ten years is gonna it's probably gonna form the next two hundred years in terms of what this thing looks like.
Steve Burge:Well, the
Jamie Marsland:there is a positive industrial red bit like the industrial revolution did, you know, kind of set the scene for the next two hundred years. I think we're we're in that moment, and it's a it's a incredible moment to be involved in.
Steve Burge:There is very much a positive spin that you can put on this that with with the Gutenberg press you had, the only way to make a book was a bunch of monks sat in a dark room endlessly copying out a new version of an existing book. I'm into history. I got a whole bunch of history books behind me. Remember hearing one story. One guy basically collected all the stories of the monks complaining because have to say they'd make a copy of the Bible.
Steve Burge:They'd be like, I've to sit here and copy endlessly. My hand is killing me, and I need to go to the bathroom. This is terrible. This author is terrible. He's really boring.
Steve Burge:Before the Gutenberg press, literally, was the only way to make a new book. And now after the Gutenberg press, books just exploded. Hundreds and thousands of books. Copies were 10 a penny. And you're sat here now telling me that you've knocked up 40 apps so far this year.
Steve Burge:That it could be that if we're using the Gutenberg analogy, it may not be a winner takes all scenario. We may be looking at a era where just the sheer amount of software that's created is going insane.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I think that's right. I think it's a bit like it's a bit like video content and TikTok. TikTok enabled this I mean, I'm not saying it was for the best, by the way. TikTok enabled this mass acceleration of people creating, unlike YouTube did, a mass creation of video content that we never had before.
Jamie Marsland:So the market just exploded. And I think we're gonna say we're gonna see the same thing with apps and websites. So I don't think it's a question of there's only this many apps and this many websites, we need a piece of it. This stuff is gonna grow like like weed over the next five years.
Steve Burge:The
Jamie Marsland:It might be.
Steve Burge:So what what what we saw with, say, TikTok and YouTube in the past and what you're saying with AI now is basically what happened with you, that it these tools unlocked the creative part of people's brain that they may not have been using before.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. But at the same time, there's never been an easier time to create horrible content. So, you know, there's definitely there's definitely gonna be some, I actually wrote an article yesterday about the fact that which I think is quite an interesting sort of thought, which is ever since ChatGPT properly came out, that marked a moment in time that from that moment on, we'll never know whether a piece of content was written with AI or not written with AI, which is like that's a really profound thought for me. That's like well, that's a line in the sand. From this moment on, humanity we can't prove that humanity wrote it.
Jamie Marsland:We we'll always be suspect that AI, our alien friend, was involved in the process somewhere, and we can't. We can't go back. So that's an interesting that's an interesting moment in time as well.
Steve Burge:Yeah. Things are changing so fast that 2024, 2025 with AI, you've got, say, '2 I'm trying pinpoint date of the Internet explosion. Probably, you could say, like, thousand and four maybe with Facebook and social networks taking Then you have Gutenberg in the 1400s. This is one of those eras that will be will be stamped for centuries to come.
Jamie Marsland:It will. Yeah.
Steve Burge:I agree. It's
Jamie Marsland:thrilling, but scary.
Steve Burge:So final question for you that we ask everyone, and I'll try and expand this for you. If we have publishers on if we have, say, magazine people on the podcast, then Yeah. I will ask them if there's a great magazine or a publisher that they've been reading who they really enjoy lately. Is there a writer, publisher, content creator, someone whose work that you're really enjoying right now who you'd love to recommend?
Jamie Marsland:Well, I've got a I've actually become a bit old school lately, Steve. I've actually been excuse the politics on this, but this is the Spectator magazine. I and I've been reading, trying to buy as much as possible newspapers lately as well and just leave them around the house for my kids to read. I've gone back to paper. My recommendation is go back to paper.
Jamie Marsland:But the spectator is interesting because it's kind of if people don't know, it's kind of slightly right of center, but it does have it does allow different voices in there as well. But the writing is really good. I mean, they've got some really great writers in there. My personal favorite writers are people like Matthew Paris. Who writes in the times.
Jamie Marsland:Just think he's a beautiful writer. But I think the Square Taste is interesting because they're they are financially making money. They're growing their business. I think they've got they're growing online as well. They've got they've they've also got a YouTube channel.
Jamie Marsland:So, yeah, is that is that enough?
Steve Burge:Yeah. There's a there's a guy we had on the podcast recently, Jacob Donnelly, who he runs a big media event in The US and covers publishing news. And lately, he's been talking a lot about the value of publishers actually putting out a physical copy. It's like a real like, signal quality that in in an era of AI generated slop that someone has has thought this content valuable enough to format and print and mail out that it's a a a status symbol almost for your content.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. And they they are just they're just tangibly beautiful things to just they're beautiful things to hold and read and distraction free. So I've been trying to buy more sounds odd because I'm in WordPress. Trying to buy more paper to read around the house because it's very shareable as well. And they're beautiful things to look at.
Jamie Marsland:I mean, the type setting's beautiful in them. I mean, you know
Steve Burge:Well beautiful. Oh, yeah. That is nice. I I guess it's it comes back to the the idea of just having more content. Right?
Steve Burge:You have you have the books. You have the magazines. You have the the the TikToks, and it just we're we're in an era now where if if people are creative, there's so many avenues, and WordPress is one. AI is one. Almost every year, we're adding a new avenue to unpick people's creativity.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. I think what's interesting as well, especially about the like, when I've seen this done well on YouTube, the depth that people can go to on YouTube in terms of video content is like like, if you compare mainstream news now, like, watch the BBC in The UK and you like, News at Ten, and then you watch a YouTube video on the same subject. That's just incomparable. YouTube goes YouTube can go into so much more depth and nuance, and it could be like a two hour video on this thing that BBC has covered in five minutes. So that's a really interesting inflection point as well, the fact that more people are turning.
Jamie Marsland:I mean, on on one hand, people like some of my chill some of my children haven't got that many, but some of them will watch, like, TikTok where you get you get very short form. But, also, some of them will watch, like, three hour video on politics. So there, you know, there is this kind of rise of the opposites happening as well at the moment where you've got this terrific short form video, but you've got this incredible depth available as well. So I'm quite hopeful with some of that stuff as well because people are some of that long form stuff is getting a huge amount of videos and traction and all sorts of niche areas. People are prepared to put the time in.
Jamie Marsland:So I'm not completely despondent that we're even though our attention spans are rubbish, there is still a cohort of people that do wanna watch in-depth stuff and really go into the detail on it.
Steve Burge:That that's the trick for middle aged people like us, I guess, is to hold those two, the pros and cons, the Yeah. Pessimism and the optimism in our hands at the same time and try and balance them out and hopefully feel good and do some creative work.
Jamie Marsland:Yeah. And, obviously, we'll as we get older, we'll get more and more grumpy, but that's just there's something to fight against, I think.
Steve Burge:Hey. Creativity is probably the best solution for that. Right?
Jamie Marsland:Well, exactly. Yeah. That helps.
Steve Burge:So, Jamie, where can people find your work on YouTube?
Jamie Marsland:Oh, okay. Yeah. So if you go to YouTube, two options. You just type Jamie WordPress into YouTube, and you'll find me. But I'm I'm my official address is at Jamie w p.
Jamie Marsland:And then on Twitter, I'm at Poodle Press. And then connect with me on LinkedIn. That'll be fun. I'm I'm more active on LinkedIn these days as well. That's been it's not quite as horrible as it used to be in the old days, it seems.
Jamie Marsland:There's more authentic stuff going on and rather people don't not just making stuff up about their CV. So I'm quite enjoying LinkedIn at the moment. So those are kind of the three main places where you could find me.
Steve Burge:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jimmy.
Jamie Marsland:Thanks, Steve. Great to see you again. Thanks, everyone.