Matt: Hey Dustin, welcome to the program.
Dustin: Hello.
Hello.
Matt: Ten years ago, episode 23, you appeared on the Matt Report.
Boy, we look young.
I don't have one gray hair, in mine.
And you are wearing the same jacket today.
Folks can't see you, but you're wearing the same jacket.
Dustin: I'm wearing the same jacket and I look very young as well.
That is pre kid.
So that was a long time ago.
Matt: But you have like 30 pounds of muscle on you now.
What happened?
Dustin: Well, well, that's a little bit of work.
Yes.
Matt: Crossfit?
Alright!
I knew it!
I knew it.
How's that going?
How's the balance of life, kids, podcasting, automatic?
Dustin: Yeah, it is, it's a balance for sure.
And this week is really testing me because we started back with soccer.
My son's in soccer.
He's in first grade.
So I have a first year old son and first grade son, and my
daughter is in fourth grade.
And so soccer started back up this week.
He's like in a full year program that they took the month of October
or month of November off, I guess.
And then basketball started.
So I am a first grade boys.
Basketball coach for the local rec league and then my daughter's
in gymnastics and dance.
And so we've got all of these things happening this week with a
culmination of a Christmas party on Friday going to a, going to Topgolf.
I don't know if there's Topgolf near you, but we've got That happens.
So there's light at the end of the tunnel.
We're going top golfing and the kids are staying with friends.
And so we have like a one night away from them.
So, but getting to your question, doing all the things like, man, it is hard.
And I, I feel like earlier on, like I was very dedicated to WordPress podcasts.
Like I host the, your website engineer podcast.
And that was like.
I'm not going to miss ever.
Like I would go on vacation and I would schedule things.
And man, it has been really hard to keep consistent.
So I rely on my calendar a lot.
last night, last night I was actually even recording, like I came down to my computer
and I was like, what can I get done today?
And like putting blocks on the calendar and rearranging it.
And I, I mean, I got done with the workout about.
13 minutes before we started talking and I showered and I shaved and I'm just
like I'm here like you try to fit those blocks of time in and get your priorities
in and I mean it is it is hard, but I do all my work for work from home.
I work out at home and then I have a lot of kid running to and from places
and I mean, it's It's an everyday thing.
Matt: I'm sure life at automatic kind of affords you that flexibility.
I mean, I think Matt and companies sort of really tout the fact that, automatic has
been like this remote workforce forever.
Right.
So they kind of like lead the charge in that.
And, there's a lot of flexibility there.
We could chat about that in a minute, but I'm looking at the title of our last
episode that we did on the matter report.
It was the rise of WordPress media.
This is stuff you and I were talking about over a decade ago again back in
April 23 or excuse me, April 23rd, 2013.
You and I were talking about the stuff that you and I were both doing,
like putting out WordPress content.
Really, educating, informing, hopefully entertaining some folks.
Has there been a drastic difference, that you've seen over the last decade of this
business of creating WordPress media?
Like what has changed in your life?
Dustin: Yeah.
what's changed in my life is I don't have the time to do it as much and
I, I find, and I'm, I'm seeing, like, I used to be like, I'm not going to
re, I'm going to re, I am going to subscribe to all the things and listen
to everybody else's opinion and thing.
You don't have time to do that, right?
You have time to keep your kind of your head, head down.
And I see like on Twitter, I see like, Oh, you're following some of the big blogs.
Like I do a lot of news for my podcast.
And so there's always a segment about news.
And so I'm all the time like looking for like, who's doing webinars on things
or what companies are in the space.
And, you know, you can tell that the bigger WordPress companies are.
Producing that more media or they're, you know, they're continuing to
just be out there in the space.
And I think that's, what's really cool about just WordPress in general.
Like anybody can be their own voice.
I don't know how many people have like started a podcast or like
just done it because why not?
Like it's a good way to give back.
That's, that's my main reason why I continue to do my podcast is because I
don't have the time or the energy to like.
Contribute back to core or you know, write blog posts for
WordPress news or things like that.
But I do have time to share Here's some updates.
Here's some things that are going on Here's some of the things that you need
to learn about when it comes to WordPress and here's the changes and whatnot So I
think there's there's a lot more media that's out there And I think that's just
kind of part of the times too, right?
the youtube is really big like now in comparison to it was 10 years ago like
I don't even watch TV anymore, Harley.
It's like, Oh, I subscribed to these YouTube people that are building
this or doing that or whatnot.
And so, so yeah, so I think that just in the general landscape of just
how life is in 2023, like there's going to be more media content.
Matt: you're coming up.
If you don't realize this, Dustin, you're coming up on a 13 year
anniversary for website engineer.
Your first episode was December 3rd, 2010.
So
Dustin: Yeah.
So
Matt: you have anything planned for 13 years?
Dustin: no, absolutely not.
It's like, I think I'm going to publish a Matt report
podcast or something like that.
That's my, my big claim to fame.
No, I, I kind of like, I don't, I don't think I've ever really
done like big milestone things.
Maybe at a hundred I did, I think I'm getting close to, let's see, I'd
published last week, uh, number five 43.
And so like the, after that, it's kind of like WordPress releases, right?
Like there's no big fanfare for 6.
0 or 5.
0, like.
Yep, this is another episode.
We're just going to keep chugging along.
And so no, don't have anything planned.
I'm approaching my, so December 3rd is my anniversary for your website engineer
and December 2nd, which is the day before is my 10 year anniversary at automatic.
So I got some, some big milestones coming up.
Matt: Nice.
And there is something at for 10 years at automatic, right?
Dustin: It is a sabbatical number two.
Matt: Sabbatical number two.
And now that just, that happens at 10 years or it just
happens to fall on you or,
Dustin: you are eligible.
So at automatic, you can get a sabbatical after you've been there with the
company five years, and then the day you come back from your sabbatical.
So you can take it anytime after you reach five years.
And so as soon as that happens, as soon as you get back from your
first sabbatical, that's when the timer starts for your second one.
So I didn't take the first one in December.
We were just closing on this house and it was brand new and it was winter.
And my.
Kids were little and like, I'm like, I don't really want to enjoy a
sabbatical in the middle of the winter.
And so I pushed mine off until May and we took some vacations.
I worked on the house, built a deck and stuff like that.
And then when I, and so then August 1st is 2024 is when I'm eligible again.
So I've got a.
I don't know.
What is that?
Nine months counting down
Matt: Yeah, that's cool, man.
that's awesome.
Talk to me.
Here's one thing that I really envy about you except for the fact that maybe you
can do about 50 more pull ups than me.
your consistency with your website engineer 500 plus episodes.
I have never been able to stay in the lane of one project, right?
One brand as a creator.
I just, you.
Matt report was the longest running thing, right?
So it was 10 years or so.
I stopped publishing Matt report episodes back in September last year.
So over a year ago.
and I focused primarily now here at the WP minute, the WP minute
plus podcast, focusing on WordPress news, short form and long form.
This is long form.
How have you stayed in the state in the lane?
with your website engineer, how do you just keep that core focus?
Dustin: Yeah, I don't know.
Like it is early on.
I, like I mentioned, it was kind of like the drive of like, okay, I'm
going to be that number one show.
That's most consistent.
I'm always out there.
Things, you know, I'm just going to continue to bring content.
And then there was a stretch where I was doing some different things at automatic
and I wasn't on a WordPress specific team.
So I was kind of out of the WordPress space for a little bit.
And so that's kind of where I had some stalling, maybe 20, 2021 and 2022.
Just there, there wasn't things that I'm seeing.
Like I work in support and now like when you're in support, you
see a lot of stuff that probably shouldn't happen on WordPress sites.
And so that kind of gives you some, some fuel for, for continuing with it.
So I think it's just kind of like that.
I don't know when I started, I always thought, Oh, this will be really cool.
Someday when I can say I have 500 episodes of like.
Something and, and, and like you, I'm not really good at finishing.
This honestly is like the only thing that I am good at staying consistent about
because my wife and I have, or my wife has a, she's a full time small business
owner and we've got two or three sites.
And so like a lot of my WordPress stuff comes from there.
That's where I get my itch to like build stuff and create and, you
know, do an e learning platform or a subscription thing or do that.
And so I get to do all of that with her, but we are very bad at like.
Finishing.
We're really good at coming up with ideas and getting it like
a 90 percent of the way done.
And then be like, nah, we got to move on to this next thing.
Or like, I'm very reactive in the fact that it's like, oh, I should have
prepared for this podcast, you know, yesterday, but it was like, oh, I've
got three minutes until I sign on.
Let me come up with some questions that I want to add,
you know, or anything like that.
So it's, it's just one of those things that it's.
I don't know, it's, it's hard, but I kind of have that drive of like, I just want
to continue to create content, and this is my only thing that is successful, I guess,
in a way, and easy for me to continue to give back to the WordPress community.
Matt: you the type of creator that backs everything up?
Dustin: Backup as in,
Matt: Like,
Dustin: saves everything.
Matt: save everything.
You've got disks, you've got terabytes of NAS storage, all that
Dustin: No, not really.
I create, I keep the mp3 file and then the mp3 files obviously uploaded to
Lipsyn or, you know, whatever host.
And that's all I really create.
I've been in the process of like moving my life into notion.
So another thing that I'm really terrible at is like, Oh, I need
this tool to do this thing.
So there was like a stretch of like 50 episodes that I.
Oh, I'm going to use day one to create my show notes.
And then before that it was notes and then it was ever note.
And it's been like all these things.
So I've got all of that stuff everywhere.
And so like, I'm just trying to consolidate and like
with notion is really cool.
You can, you can create like schedules and a calendar and I'm going to publish
this here and it's got the, it's got the template and everything built in.
So I have like my whole show notes and I just fill it out.
And, but I have, like I said, I have 543 episodes and I have like
back to five 18 in notion so far.
So I still have 500 more.
To go and like in the process, like I always feel like it's a
good thing to get updated with like the latest in wordpress too.
So like I'm so for example, like I'll take 5 17.
I'll open that up in the editor.
If there's a reusable block I'm using now, like I'll swap that out.
I'll fix formatting like for a long time.
I was using I was using markdown in my show notes and so like The
markdown needs jetpack to work right.
And so like now I'm backing those out and fixing those so they don't need jetpack.
And, you know, just like trying to like, I don't know where your question was or
what your question was all the way back.
But, but just like continuing to, you know, pre produce this content and like,
Oh, how do I keep everything backed up?
I don't really like there's there's tons of like data that's out there
and it's like am I really going to use this Thing that I created 12 years ago.
Well every all the interfaces are different now I think that's one of the
thing that's that's hard in wordpress.
Like i've got a lot of good video content that I created Before like
the new dashboard, right before mp5, I think is what it was called,
like the old school, like 3.
0 dashboard.
And it's like, well, this is not really usable at all because like,
nobody's going to watch this.
They're like, this guy recorded it in the stone age.
Like it's
Matt: yeah.
Dustin: it's not even legit now,
Matt: Is this 480p?
Like, where, where was, how old is this guy?
yeah, I, I often, I often joke, you, Probably a mutual friend of ours,
probably is WP Tuts, from, from YouTube.
And, he, he was just posting the other day on Twitter, or yesterday, in
fact, that, he's like, Oh, I'm back.
I got, I'm backing up all of my, my catalog of videos.
It's taken me all day, all this stuff.
And I'm like, here's the easy mode.
Don't back anything up, Paul.
Like.
Just don't, I don't, you know, but he's, you know, obviously
everybody has different.
And it's just, I'm always curious to, to peer into the mindset of other
creators, because I think there are those who back everything up script.
Absolutely.
Everything storyboard, everything are super organized.
they have their content calendar out.
Like two or three quarters, you know, and it's, and I, I super,
yeah, I super appreciate that.
but one life with kids, I have three young kids and two, I have a full time
job, just like you, I work at gravity forms, you work at automatic, and this
is just like the side hustle, you know?
So it's just like, I'm getting this stuff out there.
If I ever need to download it again.
I'll go to my web host and I'll, and I'll download it, or the podcast
host and I'll download it or I'll go to YouTube and download the VOD.
And you know, what am I going to do with this video later?
No, one's going to want
Dustin: right.
And in a terrible game to play terrible.
And I'm in the midst of this, like we were talking before we
started that I've got new machines and like hard drives are full.
And like the Synology that I have that backs everything up, that's not
super readily accessible right now.
And so like my wife does some photo editing as part of her side gigs.
And like, she's always like, I need more space to do this thing.
So then I've got to back things up.
And then I always feel uncomfortable.
Like, Oh, I've backed this up to a Synology.
That's got.
It's rated so it's on there twice, but I don't feel comfortable deleting it
from another machine because we might lose, you know, like there's all these
things and it's just like the, like you said, if you don't save things,
it just is easier on your brain and you don't have to worry about it.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
talk to me about staying in the lane of just audio.
is it really a, a, a time and resource thing?
Or, I mean, you have some videos up on your YouTube channel.
as of this recording, there was one three months ago.
Why full site editing is the real deal?
is it just a time and resource thing?
You know, going into YouTube, creating other content?
what's up?
Dustin: Yeah, so I, I have this aspiration for like actually
making money from YouTube someday.
Will that happen?
Who knows?
But, and, and I started, I was going to do like short form videos.
I've done longer webinars that you're that one that you just referenced was
like a webinar recording that I did.
So it's a little longer form content.
And, and honestly, I used to do that when I was full time.
It was like, I'm going to prepare once a month.
The first whatever day, I think it was always the first Friday at
noon, I was going to do a webinar and just kind of teach something
and just having like that consistent schedule, I find is really helpful.
one of the things that makes it difficult is like my schedule
always changes based on like I have to put my availability and so.
So you referenced earlier that automatic is super flexible and it
is, but it's not, spontaneous is one way that we like to say in support.
Like it's super flexible and you can pick your hours, but you have to pick
them two or three weeks in advance.
And so one of the hard parts is like, I'll have an idea and it's
like, Oh, I really want to do this podcast or I want to do this thing.
And it's like, well, let me look at my schedule.
The next time I have a two hour block of time when there's no kids around.
So it's quiet and, and it's not bedtime.
I'm like, That's in two weeks.
And so like two weeks go by and it's like, oh, well, I'm not really
interested in that right now.
And I always found that.
Audio was always just so easy for me to do a lot of times probably of the
500 episodes There's probably like 300 of them that I never edited like well
I would go in and I would edit like my show has four or five sections like
if I messed up a like a segment of the show like I would just Start the whole
thing over again, and so I would just like out and now I've been editing these
last, I don't know, 15 episodes, 20 episodes, quite a while with the script.
And now like I can just highlight the, all the texts and I'm actually
starting to work with the script and doing some audio things.
So it's also like, you can see my background here is like boring.
I'm like, I don't have anything to show behind me.
Like I don't have a setup that looks good for video.
Plus a lot of video content is like even just.
Even like a talking head, right?
You, you talk a little bit and then you show something on the screen and then you
talk some more like just that setting all the stuff up to get a good camera angle.
It just it feels like it's a lot of work.
Matt: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is a lot of work.
and by the way, for the listener, I, I'll be appearing on, or you'll
hear me on Dustin's, podcast as well.
Maybe I can talk to you on your channel about, how much money you
can or cannot make with YouTube.
because, I do have, AdSense enabled on the channel and we can chat about that.
yeah, it's, it's, it's certainly a lot of work.
The, the landscape of going back to what we originally talked about,
again, a decade ago, WordPress media.
You know, hats off again to folks like you who have, been consistent,
persistent, with creating this content because there's a lot of folks out
there, especially in the YouTube landscape where they look at WordPress.
In fact, I was just before we hopped on, I emailed you said, Hey, I'm
gonna be a couple of minutes late.
I was having a meeting with another sort of like YouTube brand in the space
and, There's a lot of folks out there on the YouTube world that are just
like, Hey, get this hot affiliate deal.
It's a WordPress plugin.
Here it is.
Like I'm going to talk about that.
And then next week, another hot affiliate deal came through.
So I'm going to talk about that.
And, you know, listen, I, I, you know, I don't knock, I can't knock the hustle.
As long as you're like, Hustling for the right reasons.
Like you're trying to build like this, whatever, passive income business.
It's okay.
Like I have some degree of, forgiveness in, in, in that realm, you know, but
if you're just like, I don't even care and I don't care what happens to
these WordPress users after they use this cheap plugin or terrible theme,
like that's where it really bugs me, but it's also, I realized that.
This passion for WordPress, like the folks that maybe you and I talked to,
I would say is like the 1 percent of WordPress who actually like really care.
Maybe not your content, but my content is probably like 1 percent of WordPress.
It doesn't make any money, right?
Like I'm talking to a limited audience, not on my YouTube channel, but on
my podcast for sure, because it's analyzing the WordPress industry, the
community, the business side of things.
The YouTube channel is like You know the sports section of the newspaper
people come like, oh, this is cool Show me how to do this wordpress thing,
but the podcast in the newsletter.
That's me analyzing the industry and in my opinion Is a maximum of 10 000
english speaking people in the world who care about what's happening?
At automatic with WordPress core with the economics of WordPress.
That's my cap.
I don't have a question here
Dustin: yeah,
Matt: all that, but like, what, what do you see those pockets
Dustin: yeah, I think that's kind of like I always saw that kind of as a limitation
of like, I know that there's really no like ceiling as an entrepreneur Like you
could make a bunch of money doing you know things but again like to get a free
audience to listen again We are in this weird space where it's like, okay, we do
have It's people that are interested in WordPress and they're kind of geeky enough
to want to listen to WordPress podcasts.
And, you know, so that's not even like even a lot of store owners or whatnot.
So it's, it's hard to really know whether, whether you're talking to, and I've
always had the, the challenge of like.
Is my podcast made for beginners?
Is it made for like people who are store owners?
Is it for developers who want to learn more stuff?
Like, where is that?
And I always found that that was kind of a, it was, it was a hard thing.
And it was like, ah, man, if I would have chose a different thing,
like remodeling my house, like.
There's a ton more people who, even if they don't ever have the desire
to remodel a house or like build this thing, like they might watch the
channel because it would be interesting.
And, and so, yeah, so it's always like, Oh man, like, did we pick the right thing?
Like, again, we're doing it because it's a passion thing.
Like we enjoy talking about WordPress.
We enjoy like seeing the improvements that especially, you know, like all the
things that have changed in the last.
15 years, like it's been really cool to watch and see and kind of
like, Oh, I'm kind of an influencer.
Like it's kind of one of those influencer things where it's like, Oh, you go
to work camp, people know who you are and you know, you'll talk and you'll
stop in, but you're at the grocery store and nobody knows who you are.
And that's exactly, exactly the way that I like it.
Matt: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I, you know, I have a joke.
Joke about that.
I was doing a lot of mentoring in a local, business accelerator pre covid,
when they had a lot of in person stuff.
And, you know, my podcast was the wordpress podcast.
You know, a lot of those folks that would bring me in to talk
about wordpress was, you know, because they knew I did a podcast.
They didn't listen to the wordpress podcast because they weren't Like users,
but they were like, Oh, I know you do this thing about WordPress consistently come
in and talk to the group about building a WordPress site for their, you know, for
their business that they're just starting.
And, And so then eventually I started like, Hey, I'm talking to all.
And my family has run businesses in the local community for.
50 plus years.
So I have a strong sense of like community and entrepreneurship
and tying those two together.
so then I was like, Hey, I'm talking to all these local businesses.
I'm going to start this local business podcast.
Now, again, this is pre COVID.
and then I started it literally two episodes in, I walked into a coffee
shop and somebody was like, Hey, you're that guy that does that podcast.
So I was like, I'm like, you, you use WordPress?
And they were like, no, you do.
Oh, it was called South Coast FM.
You do South Coast FM.
I'm like, how, how did that even happen?
How did that happen in like two seconds?
It took me like 20 years in WordPress to be like recognized.
And, and like, but, but it's weird.
Like when you, I.
God, as a creator, always look at the other side of the fence and say, if
I just did something else, I might be a little bit more successful,
Dustin: Yeah.
Matt: right?
You know, like if I didn't cover WordPress, right, maybe I
would have a different audience.
And sometimes it really pulls at you as a, as a creator, right?
And as a business person at the end of the
Dustin: I watch a lot of like YouTube of.
Like house projects or like some builders and creators and I've started, I don't
know, maybe in 2021 maybe is when I kind of really got into like, okay, I'm going
to start watching a lot of YouTube and it's just been incredible to see that I've
done nothing that's outside of, you know, I've barely done any WordPress or YouTube
stuff and I've watched these creators go from, you know, they went from 500,
000 to 800, 000 to a million subscribers and they're just like the one guy that
I follow is, His name is Jason and he does bourbon moth is his brand name,
but he does like woodworking projects and basically he'll he has somebody that
just edits everything that he does and then he just watches it and then does a
voiceover like so his editor puts it all and he just sits there and he watches and
he's like, Oh, this is when I did this and this and just he's got a dry sense of
humor and just really kind of a funny guy.
And now it's like, Oh, I'm getting sponsored by this thing.
And he has a, a, yeah.
A non woodworking podcast that basically him and another creator just talk
about like what they've been doing.
It's so interesting to hear like, oh yeah, I got this deal from so and so.
And it's like, you know, when you have that many subscribers and that
many things, it's like, man, you know, if I had went down the other
path, like, could I have had a, a Home Depot sponsor that helped me
turn my fireplace into, you know, something amazing or, you know, build
out all these things that I wanted to.
And it's like, Oh man, you know, is that the thing?
I don't know.
Matt: so we probably talked about this a decade ago, but is is
there a business model right now?
Do you sell sponsorship on the podcast or you're not allowed to because of the
YouTube because of the automatic day job?
Dustin: I've had a few people reach out and say they were
interested in sponsoring.
I don't think.
I don't know if it would be a conflict or not.
I've always kind of like just pursued, like, can you give me a free account?
Let me see what they're like.
I don't want to just say like, Oh, this spot, this is brought to you by
factor foods or, you know, whatever.
Like, I think it should be WordPress related and it should
be something that I actually use.
And so I haven't taken it, but I had.
I had a goal in 2023, which didn't happen because the year's almost over, but
like, I wanted to at least as a hobby project, like I don't really pay for
anything like the, the hosting is, you know, like hosting costs for, for, for
my website is all through automatic.
Cause I use a product I use pressable for that.
And then, my hosts, like that's a few pennies or whatever for the podcast.
So, so I don't really have like a lot of expenses.
Every plugin I use is like one of our products or whatnot.
But like, I have a goal, like I would really like to be able to like
upgrade my personal Apple devices with just income from my podcast.
So like, that was kind of where my goal was like, if I could go to YouTube
and get enough, like I have enough subscribers to start getting ads,
but I don't have enough watch time.
So that's like where my, where my problem is right now.
And.
So I think like there is some, there is some drive to like try to make money.
But on the other hand, my wife has successful things going on.
And if I can optimize her sites to do things, to make more money, like
it's all kind of the same, right?
Matt: Yeah, so that's not the leading metric by the way pressable
fantastic sponsor of the WP minute, thank you Pressable.
yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough.
You know, you look at the, you look at what's available out there.
I spent two and a half years in the podcast industry working at a
podcast host after I left, Pagely, which was another WordPress host.
I got sold to GoDaddy and As somebody who helped folks start their podcast,
a lot of people come in jaded to this industry and they go, Hey, I saw, you
know, Mike Maron, Joe Rogan, you know, Whitney Cummings, like your favorite,
whatever, like comedian podcast that have been literally beating the
streets and going to comedy clubs for decades before starting a podcast,
already famous in their own circles.
Making money and then people go, Oh, all it is is plugging in a
microphone and talking and then get, you know, and getting sponsorships.
It doesn't work that way.
And even harder in the audio landscape, than it is in the YouTube landscape,
although the YouTube income has dropped significantly because of YouTube, right?
They're really starting to tighten that belt around.
income, which is just this complete reset to owning your dot com, right?
Owning a WordPress website, driving traffic to that, building an email
list while you can, before that gets squeezed, because that'll be the next
thing that big tech companies go after.
and.
It's important to, like, build your brand, roll up your sleeves, get to work, and the
decrease in, in Google, organic traffic also hitting creators a lot this year,
and it's like, hey, did, you know, did, did, did the algorithm in the traffic?
Did we, were we supposed to get this to begin with?
Was this like a steroid injection to creators?
And guess what?
It's hard.
Just like it's running a traditional brick and mortar business is hard.
So is this.
And you're going to have to drive people, create amazing content.
And now you get a fraction of that traffic that you used to get pre AI and pre
COVID and you know, all of this stuff.
So it's it's an interesting, an interesting world.
What do you think held?
You know, I don't want to say held you back because you kind of answered it.
You, you're not really looking for that money, but are you going to put a
plan in place that makes 2, 500 to 5, 000 bucks next year with your content
to pay for a new Apple laptop or
Dustin: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that Like, I don't know what that
number is, like, you think when you back it out for a year, like, oh, if
I make 2, 500, 2, 400, right, that's easy math, that's 200 bucks a month,
like, okay, like, I could probably do that with a sponsorship here or there,
you know, like, some small little, some wins there, so, the hard part is, like,
with, with working at automatic, like, I can't really charge for anything that's
WordPress related, like, that's part of the conflict of interest, and so, yeah.
I don't know.
So it just kind of makes that a little bit of a sticky situation.
So, but yeah, if I can continue to like pump out some, some content and get the
views or, you know, whatever, like I do want to have it play in a place to like
be more consistent for next year and just kind of like, I think what's hard for me.
Is like, since I do the news part of the show, like I can't
batch record very easily because, cause you know, like it's okay.
There's no news because I just recorded 10 seconds ago.
Like that doesn't really make sense.
But, yeah, I think it's just kind of like sitting down and
just really kind of focusing.
It just, I don't know.
Next year, I think is a big quote unquote, I'm going to say big year.
I turned 40 next year.
And so it's kind of like, I'm trying to like line all these things up to like,
okay, it's going to be a sweet year.
Like,
Matt: That's why you don't have gray hair yet.
I was, you know, so jealous of your,
Dustin: Yeah.
So, so yeah, so I, I think that money's not the driving factor, but like, it
is kind of nice to say like, oh, hey, there's money set aside over here in
my quote unquote business that I can use to upgrade, or I can pay for the
subscription, or I could do this or that.
And so like, it's not, okay, this is going to Financially contribute
to the household, but two or 300 a month is certainly nice.
Like I have, I have affiliate relationships with like convert kit
and you know, some of those things that we still use, but I don't know, like
it's really hard as like, I don't have as a happiness engineer at automatic.
Like I don't get my own personal referral code to use wordpress.
com for stuff
Matt: Oh, the money you would
Dustin: because yeah, so, because we, we now offer this on wordpress.
com we offer like the.
It's called built by or built and it's 499 for like a business site with five
page site and this is what a lot of my friends need when they need a website and
it's like, well, this is all you need.
Just go over here and do it.
And they're done like in four or five days.
But like, I don't get any kickback from that, even though like, I don't know.
So I don't know.
So your whole story point, like it would, it'd be great to outline
a plan and it's one of those things that I'm always behind.
And then it's like, oh, well in January, now I'm going to create the
plan for the year, but now it's almost February, you know, like, so I just
need to sit down and like today is actually a, probably a good day because
it is a, it's a flex day from work.
I've got to work on this weekend because 24 hour support and whatnot.
So it's like, maybe I should just sit down and just kind
of plan the year a little bit.
Yeah.
Matt: Now, couldn't you, I just signed up for.
actually a wordpress.
com account for a side project that I have.
And couldn't you put ads, through jetpack or, oh, your site's on pressable, right?
So you wouldn't be able to maybe get into that ad network, but wordpress.
com has a bunch of tools for creators where you could
monetize and that would be ads.
Just like you were getting YouTube ads.
You're not really competing against WordPress because you're using the
Dustin: right,
Matt: that could be a thing that you
Dustin: I think you can do that with jetpack.
And again, it's one of those things that like jetpack has 32 features that I don't
even know about, like, because I just don't have time to like play with it.
And, and it's, it's always like, I always say on my podcast too, like this is a
do as I say, not as I do show, like, you know, keep your plugins updated,
keep your stuff like ready to go.
And it's just like, as a small business owner, like there's a lot of
times it's like, I know that people have had issues with this latest
version of, you know, WooCommerce, like we had to have a hotfix release.
Like I'm not up to date until I know that this is ready.
And so there is some good stuff from coming behind the scenes and seeing those
types of notifications, but man, it's just hard to keep like all the things
updated and running and looking good.
And I just did, I went through this account, like, We, let's see, my
wife has an e learning business where we sell like virtual CE for, for
pharmacists for continuing education.
And again, it's a niche of a niche of a niche.
So it's like people that are pharmacists that, that are interested in functional
medicine and they want to have, like, they want to pay for CE to set in a thing.
All right.
It was really good before COVID happened.
And then COVID like kind of locked everything down.
We, it was an online thing before and we were selling like
a hundred tickets per event.
And now it's like, now we can sell like 25.
Tickets to an event.
It's just like what happened here.
But anyways, getting to the long story, but the like I was using
sensei for a while and then I'm like, Oh, this, learn dash looks better.
So let me go use learn dash because I knew behind the scenes
sensei wasn't getting any updates.
There was no team working on it.
But now like sensei is a viable product and there's lots of development and a
lot of cool stuff that they're doing.
So now it's like now I want to move back to sensei and now I've got 800 people
that have accounts that Some have stuff in LearnDash, some have in Sensei, some
have, like, marked things as watched in LearnDash, and now I've gotta, like,
open up two windows, and, like, log in as them, and, like, mark them as watched.
I mean, it was, it was a full two weeks, like, working one to two hours a
day, like, to go through this process, to keep everything updated, and so,
like, my life is easier in the future.
But, like, sometimes it's just, like, that really big pain point of, like,
oh, man, this is gonna stink, like I have 500 podcast episodes and I
want to add these two blocks to them.
Like it's going to take a while to do, but in the end, like, I think it's worth it.
Matt: and your wife's just looking at you like Dustin.
Why are you touching my website again?
Just leave it alone
Dustin: She's like, I was just so excited.
I'm like, I only have 500 left.
I've done like 300.
She's like, okay.
Like, I don't think it really, all my, all my other work got piled up and piled up.
And so, but I'm like, I, this was one thing too, that it was like.
It has been this way for like a year, but there's people like, Oh, I'm looking
for my course and I can't find it.
Well, they're looking in the LearnDash area, but it's in Sensei.
And it's just like, okay, this will solve like a lot of our customer support issues.
It will solve a lot of things to be in one system.
But man, it was a real pain.
Matt: awesome stuff Dustin.
It's been a pleasure catching up after 10 years.
Hey, let's do it again in another 10 years We're actually in a couple
minutes, but let's do it again over here in 10 minutes, man.
Thanks.
Thanks for hanging out today Your website engineer anywhere
else folks can go to say thanks
Dustin: And that's the main place.
If you want some outdated YouTube content, that's over at youtube.
com slash your website engineer.
But
Matt: Oh, 2024 big goals.
We're going to see a hundred thousand subs by the end of 2024.
Dustin: do it.
Matt: All right, Dustin.
Thanks for hanging out