In this conversation, Matt Medeiros, a prominent figure in the WordPress and podcasting communities, shares his journey and insights into content creation, the evolution of podcasting, and the importance of human connection in media. He discusses the challenges of monetization, the role of platforms like YouTube, and the significance of owning one’s content in an increasingly centralized digital landscape. The conversation also touches on the skills required for effective interviewing and the future trends in podcasting and WordPress.
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Transcript is AI-Generated and may include minor inaccuracies.
Brian (00:02)
Matt Medeiros is here, Matt, the pod father of WordPress. How are you doing today?
Matt (00:07)
you it’s always a great day when I’m in a virtual room with you.
Brian (00:13)
Yeah, that’s what my wife says. Maybe, I feel it feels dumb to ask you to give a bio, but I guess if you could give a quick bio, Matt Medeiros, how do you describe yourself these days?
Matt (00:26)
Yeah, I am sort of a tech forward content creator, largely in the WordPress space, starting to broaden my horizons with a few other projects I’m working on. But my day job is at Gravity Forms, helping them create content as well for their suite of products. And I’ve been in the WordPress space for what feels like an eternity, but nearly 20 years, so.
It’s been fun.
Brian (00:53)
Yeah, and I still DM you when I my gravity forms, when I do something exciting with gravity forms, it’s like, hey look, that’s my.
Matt (00:59)
My brother’s a Gravity Forms customer and I had to help him over Thanksgiving break with stuff. That was fun.
Brian (01:06)
no.
Well, I think the real reason I wanted to talk to you is because you, you’re kind of like, maybe a lot of people’s first entry into podcasting in WordPress, particularly. mean, I think there’s a few classic WordPress podcasts over the year, but you know, Matt Report and WP Minute are probably up there, I would say, in the pantheon of, you know, people who transitioned from like, I kind of am doing some WordPress stuff to that.
community insider baseball WordPress. Do think that’s a fair assessment?
Matt (01:37)
Yeah, yeah, the lineage sort of goes like I started the Mat Report to get noticed in the WordPress space as a non-developer, as somebody who didn’t have, you know, the engineer acumen or the connections in the community. And I was just like, I see other people doing this. How can I meet these people to get the same opportunities? And that’s what got me into podcasting and now kind of do it a little bit more formally.
to educate WordPress professionals over at the WP Minute, but yeah, that was the sort of stair-step approach.
Brian (02:07)
And I feel like we’re going backwards in like, I’ve been doing YouTube, like tutorials, like very deep dive, developery tutorials. And then I kind of hit a point where I was like, I kind of just want to talk to people more. You were having me on WP minute more often. And I just used to have a podcast with Aruba who’s a community member and I just missed like that part of it. But, it feels like I’ve seen you go the opposite where WP minutes publishing a lot more, I don’t know, walking through the new release, walking through.
a fun plugin or something like that. And I feel like maybe I’m going the wrong way because I don’t think the views on interviews are nearly as good as the views you get on that kind of content. What do you think?
Matt (02:41)
You
Yeah, mean, from, yeah, like, I have a different approach to, the WP Minute was largely born to make it a real thing, right? So the MaR Report was what a lot of us do in podcasting. I should also say I worked in the podcast industry, capital P-I, podcast industry for.
Nearly three years and I helped get a lot of folks off the ground with their podcast and like critically think about how they’re gonna approach it and Largely, it’s like you’re either just a hobbyist and you don’t care what’s gonna happen with this thing. You just love doing it. That’s cool That’s a great way and then there’s also like if you’re gonna if you’re trying to make something out of this you have to critically think of it as as a media business and I know that phrase has been Overused a lot in the last five to ten years
But I look at the WP Minute as omni-channel publishing, right? So I do blog, newsletter, blog largely written by Eric Karkevac, so I literally pay somebody to write content for me. The newsletter, the podcast, and the YouTube channel. And they all have a sort of different approach to that content, right? YouTube being for the average to beginner WordPress user. You know, if you open up a newspaper, if those things still exist, you have…
Brian (04:00)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (04:04)
the sections that you’re gonna go to, the interests, the topics, and that’s how I’m looking at the WP minute. So I’ll make that sort of tutorial content, five, 10, 20 minutes of a certain topic, and then hopefully take that beginner user, that end user, and kind of scoop them up into the podcast and say, well, if you care about WordPress a little bit more, and you’re interested in listening to 30, 45 minutes of like,
what’s happening in the community or like you and I talking about critically breaking down WordPress 6.7, then come over here, like we’ve got some insider stuff. Or if you just wanna be on the newsletter and just get in the know of like some of the cool things that are happening, hop on the newsletter. If you’re a freelancer, read the blog posts. So it’s a multi-stream approach to how I create this content. I don’t think it’s wrong to go.
in the direction that you think you’re headed in. At the end of the day, as like a content creator, and I think you know this already, is you wanna do things that you’re most comfortable with, that you do enjoy doing. And then you can tack on the stuff that you don’t really like later on, right, and find a system for that. For me, was blogging and thinking about the freelancer persona.
Brian (05:11)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (05:17)
Although I did run an agency for a decade and I’m still talking to WordPress people every single day through gravity forms That wasn’t a thing that I wanted to critically wrap my head around and write anymore one because I felt like yeah Like nobody needs my opinion on that anymore. I’ve kind of established that two I’m not in the space anymore like every day like Eric is and three It’s like I need to create other content and do other things for this business. So that’s what that’s how and why I brought Eric in and
you know, that’s a long way of getting to like the inside, you know, model of the WP minute and why I transitioned away from sort of like that Matt report thing.
Brian (05:54)
Yeah, and I’ve been struggling with, I have like my personal website where I’ll blog and I’ll do newsletters and it’s not like roundup newsletters. It’s very much like it’s really just a blog that I email to you and it’s very like it’s if something interesting happens and I feel like I can write about it, I will write about it and two months might go by and I’m just not paying attention to it. It’s not a calculated move. Whereas I was like kind of ready to not have anything.
with my name on it so clearly because it felt like, here’s me and here’s all these different places where I’m putting all this stuff, but it’s all just my face. And I was getting kind of sick of that. And I just wanted a place to separate and start saying like, okay, this will be actual WordPress specific content. And when Aruba and I started View Source, which was our podcast, like 2022 to 2023, we had a clear idea in our mind where
Matt (06:34)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (06:50)
We knew we wouldn’t get like a huge audience because we were very technical and we were very like specific, but we knew we would hit people in places. So we got a lot of feedback from people in WordPress companies or like larger agencies. So it was more like a drive to meet and build a rapport with that specific group. And then now I’m like, okay, now I’ve actually have a ton of friends at all these great places, contributors, things like that, that would actually be willing to jump on the mic with me.
And now I can like leverage that and hopefully bring that to like a broader, a group of people and they can see like, Hey, these are, these are all the people that are like actually pushing WordPress and, and, like influencing and they don’t, they don’t all work at one place. They work at different hosting companies. They work at a lot of agencies and that sort of thing, but it’s still hard to, find a way to talk about the thing that you want to talk about most in WordPress. And then the thing that
everybody really wants, is like, me practical advice and teach me how to do this thing. And that it’s a weird balance that I’m struggling.
Matt (07:52)
Yeah, I mean, the unsung hero of podcasting, I I call it podcasting, and we can, you know, I also follow podcasting as closely as I follow WordPress, right? RSS and open publishing are two things that I am very interested in, and podcasting and WordPress itself sort of established those two markets for me. But the unsung hero of podcasting or content creation in general is that relationship building, and it’s,
It is impossible to like get ROI on that. Like I need to start a podcast and measure the success of this and either subscriptions, product sales, money coming in. Those are all, you know, different things. And really what you get out of it that would 10x that and it has and it’s why I haven’t stopped doing what I’m doing. Right. When you look at the landscape of WordPress content creators or YouTubers and you look at those that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
That’s awesome and something that I aspire to get with my channel. But I’ve also largely approached it like you where it’s like I want to create the content that inspires me first and foremost because number one, it’s not my day job. If it was my day job, it would probably be slightly different. I’d have a slightly different strategy to taking the stuff probably more commercially for lack of a better phrase. I’d approach it more commercially.
Brian (09:02)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt (09:11)
But this is like, like it, I love it, I’m gonna write about this content regardless. And can I turn this into a sustainable business? But that relationship building, you’re building a resume in front of everybody and you’re building that trust factor which is so important in podcasting, especially in the age of what we’re seeing with AI and content creation. Human experiences, man, that’s the thing that.
that’s the only thread we’re gonna have for a long time, you know, moving in the AI world. And it’s something that Eric and I talk about often when we’re writing content, you know, on the YouTube side, tutorials is fine because the human factor is me teaching you how to do this basic thing in WordPress. So, I mean, that’s like sort of par for the course when you’re doing the video stuff. But when we’re talking about like writing content or even like doing podcast stuff, it has to be about, the thread has to be about
Brian (09:37)
Yeah.
Matt (10:01)
this human experience in there. In other words, I won’t hire somebody like I get, you know, and I’m sure you do too, just the nature of WordPress. You get people nodding, can I write for your blog or whatever? And it’s like, yeah, but I don’t need generic content anymore. Like I need you, your human experience and really break this down for me. And sadly, I haven’t found many people other than Eric who aren’t running their own, you know, publishing stuff sites.
to really want to write like that or expose themselves or be open like that. It’s a challenging thing, but it’s something that you try to strive to do when you’re creating this kind of content.
Brian (10:38)
Yeah, there was a Tom McFarland is a member in the WP at Slack, but he’s also, think if you’re somebody who has been in WordPress long time, you probably followed his blog for a long time. And he’s been writing about this idea of like tutorial content, a lot of tutorial content on the web has become less relevant because, you know, I’ll go to chat GPT these days and say, Hey, how do I solve this problem I’m trying to solve? And it does a great job. And it.
tailors its response exactly to me. Like it gives me exactly not like here’s how somebody else fixed it in their unique situation. It’s like, here’s how you can fix it in your unique situation. It’s like perfectly suited to you. But like you said, then I still want to follow these people’s blog because I want their personality. want that connection with them and I want to know exactly what they would do.
I wanna know why they’re thinking what they’re thinking. I wanna draw off their personal experience. And so I feel like there’s this push to be, use your name and your brand and push a personal brand and all that stuff. And then there’s build something that you can scale and maybe grow and bring other people into it. And you’ve kinda gone both ways. So how did you choose, I’m gonna be Matt Medeiros or I’m gonna be the WP Minute. How do you make those distinctions when you’re…
Matt (11:53)
Yeah, yeah, I mean the biggest challenge, when you take the approach that we take, you and I, like if you put, you know, like ethics and morals and just like, I do this content because I want to cover it regardless and it makes me feel good, but also can I monetize this? Like can I make money?
Brian (11:54)
putting stuff out there.
Matt (12:15)
That’s an approach that is very slow. It’s very slow, right? At the end of the day, it’s like, and what the challenge becomes, and I know because I’ve lived this for so long, and I’m thinking about it right now, end of the year, it’s like, okay, the WP minute made some really good money this year, more than it has in the last four years. But.
Like is it still like where you want to be with it? No. And you try to like you’re constantly pushing these goals. And the problem is when you take our approach, when you love the content and you love it and you say you do it for the passion of it, is you don’t have like you don’t set these clear goals. You’re not clear enough and you haven’t defined a product. And I can I can see that when I consult other people like no, this is this is what you should be doing. This is how much money you should be asking for.
Brian (12:48)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (12:59)
This is the product you should be pitching. But when it comes to my own stuff, I’m just like, yeah, sign up to my newsletter. Right. And then then at the end of the year, I’m like, why haven’t I made any money? Right. And I think where folks like you and I sort of get lost. And this is why I reposition from that report to the WP minute. But it’s still a slow rolling train for me is I don’t have that end user product. In other words, I don’t have that course. I don’t have that digital product. I don’t.
Brian (13:22)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (13:24)
I have a consultancy thing that I often will recommend to somebody if they’re asking me million questions, but I don’t put that first and foremost. My product, essentially, my biggest product is sponsorship and selling sponsorship to other businesses in and around the WordPress space. And what I need to do is make time to sell that or write and position content that offers that. And that’s the hardest thing, man. It’s the hardest thing in this content game.
Brian (13:45)
Yeah.
Matt (13:49)
You know, so if you’re somebody listening to this going, I’m gonna do this content thing, try to have some kind of product that you can sell and measure against. And if it’s an email newsletter sign up, then maybe there’s something in the automation of the newsletter that you’re selling and that stretch goal towards, right? Because it’s gonna make life for you a lot easier. That transition from Matt reports to WP Minute was one, get my name out of this thing.
I don’t want it in there anymore, right? And I want it to be about more than just me, because the essence of Matterport was, was just in my name. So that was like step one, it’s just been like four or five years later since. And I’m still slowly like trying to position a product in front of people, because that’s when things really start to make sense. I have an audience, they’re buying from me. I have a membership, it’s largely just,
Brian (14:16)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (14:40)
position as support for the show. And that’s a thing. But again, like I still am not doing a great job at forming and packaging that stuff up for the audience. That’s the biggest challenge. When all you really care about is doing good content. Because that’s what I struggle with. Yeah.
Brian (14:55)
Yeah, I have the same issue. have the, I have the, the course like in progress, you know, working at it, you know, it’s, it’s there. I know that it’s the thing, but it’s hard to sometimes prioritize it because number one, you always have that fear of like, if I put this out there and nobody wants it and I wasted all this time even just preparing it, but also just, it feels like, if I don’t have a large enough audience and I’m already selling to you, I’m already coming at you, you know,
Matt (15:08)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (15:24)
saying, Hey, follow me because I’m selling this thing. You know, it feels hard to do that. But at the end of the day, like there has to be something, there has to be some way to financially, you know, offset the amount of time that I put outside of work to dedicate to this. And my goal is to, think, do a similar thing, which is I, I launched a new podcast. has a separate brand and name, and I want to slowly move.
all of my content to that and get it get the YouTube channel to be that and get the newsletter to be that as well. I don’t know how successful that’ll be but you know YouTube is like a great YouTube the benefit of YouTube is its discover ability like it puts you out there in front of everybody else and
Matt (16:11)
Right. Right.
Brian (16:13)
A newsletter doesn’t really do that. You have to earn the newsletter subscription. No one’s putting your newsletter in front of people. No one’s putting your podcast in front of people. It’s really YouTube has to be like the place to go get people. I mean, there’s social media, but that’s such a narrow bubble of like WordPress people. It’s not the real wider audience. It’s not even the people who would probably buy, you know, a block development course from me. Those people probably aren’t on social, these insider social networks and stuff like that. They’re on YouTube mostly. And so figuring out like,
Matt (16:37)
Sure. Yeah.
Brian (16:43)
Can I move all of that? And then can I at the same, can I have this audience that’s where I’m saying, hey, I’m gonna teach you a bunch of stuff about how to use WordPress. But also if you sign up for my newsletter, you’re gonna get a thousand words on the legal battle and my opinions on where core should go in the next three years and philosophy about WordPress. It feels like two separate audiences and I’ve focused on that inside baseball. how do you, so I mean, I guess you kind of explained it.
you filter people through, but you have to, guess, have that newsletter. It has to be something more than my long philosophical rants about WordPress that’s only interesting to 100 people.
Matt (17:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think there are people that are really good and whom I’m envious of who will have a month of recording, right, where they will record or maybe a month, not a month, but a week or two weeks. They do all their recordings for the whole year, you know, and then it’s just like they take those clips, they send them to a VA.
They chop them up. have AI write blog posts. They prime everything in their site, in their newsletter, their automation. At the end of the day, they have a thousand dollar course. They turn the wheel on and for the next, you know, 120 days, the machine works for them. Right. And then they at the end of that run, they stamp repeat the manufacturing line again. That’s just not me. That’s just not me. I really care about like.
the content and the connection. Plus I have a full time job and a family just like you. And those things are really challenging to like front load all it sounds smart. But for me, like front loading all that time just doesn’t work. And I like to be more in the moment with that with that content. In fact, for another podcast project that I’m launching in twenty twenty five, I’m reaching out to some new folks and.
This one guy, yeah, I don’t know, it’s just like I’m starting the fresh relationships all over again and these folks I don’t know and I’m just knocking on the door like hey, I’ve been covering WordPress for 15 years, I’m launching this new project, would you like to be a part of it? And this one guy kind of just like turned me down, he’s like I don’t wanna be, based on my experience, I don’t wanna be part of a new podcast project and I don’t want something that’s not gonna release for a month from now because like the whole tech scene changes, I’m like okay, buddy.
I’m not going to try to push it on you. Like, trust me, I know I’m a veteran. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve been there. I just like my 20th broadcast project that I’ve launched. I get it. You know, but I look at it as I’m going to, you know, give you my 10 minutes on YouTube, give you 45 minutes on a podcast, and I’m going to give you these days like a few hundred unique words or perspective in my newsletter and
Brian (18:58)
Hmm.
Matt (19:22)
That’s how I approach it, right? And hopefully, and engage with folks in social media. And hopefully, you will like, the audience will like one of those things, if not all of those things that I’m producing for you. So I try to think of it as like, here’s some unique experiences across this omni-channel publication. And that’s how I wrap my head around it. But I was just doing a.
2025 outlook for podcasting for another publication called Pod News, which is very similar to the WP Minute. A lot of the stuff I stole from James at Pod News because he’s been doing independent podcast journalism far longer than I’ve done WordPress journalism. And I think the big thing in like in content in general, not just podcasting, is folks have a gazillion choices of things to tune into, whether that’s, you know, a competitor to your podcast or
a Netflix show. So I think what we’ve what what we will see and have seen we just maybe haven’t compartmentalized it yet is the audience numbers are going down and it’s our job and not because they’re not tuned into you it’s just that they’re tuned into so much and it’s our job to identify well maybe five years ago we had 10,000 downloads a month now we’re at
Brian (20:33)
Yeah.
Matt (20:43)
5,000 downloads per month. But are these folks more engaged? If yes, how do we get them into something that keeps them engaged or you have that one-on-one human connection? And you know, for me, it’s the WP Minute Slack, right? So of those 5,000 and there’s a hundred and something in the WP Minute Slack, like now I’m starting to filter down. So I think it’s important to try. It’s a lot of work. It could be a lot of overhead, but it’s understanding like,
can I keep those people engaged? And that’s either just like to keep them retained and listening to your stuff or selling them something, you know, and I think a lot of work is going to have to be had to just keep people engaged, to keep tuning into your content and sharing that content, not even selling stuff to them. Like you’re to have to keep them engaged so that they stick around. That would be a big challenge. I don’t think a lot of people are ready for that because it’s a lot of overhead, but it’s just the way that I, you know, critically think about it.
Brian (21:41)
And in my mind, thought an interview format podcast seemed easier than, you know, I was doing tutorials, but they were, they were clocking in like 40 minutes plus or something like that. Right. And that’s, a long, that’s a long deep dive of a tutorial that, is good, but is probably not as maybe not even as useful as something that’s like 10 or 15 minutes. so then I started doing the interview stuff and I’ve put,
maybe six or seven interviews in the can so far. And I’ve learned along the process that number one, it’s still a pretty good amount of work because you really do have to curate the experience before and after recording. can’t just hit record and send that out, you know? And the other thing is that interviewing is like a completely separate skill than teaching or live streaming or anything like that. Like to interview somebody, like one of my biggest issues has been
how to pivot a conversation when I’m ready to be done talking about topic A and I want to get them on topic B. Do you know what I mean? And do you, so like there’s either, you know, they answer the question and then I feel like I need to come back with a little bit of a response first. And then I’m like, and that reminds, you know, trying to do like a fancy pivot or something like that. These like little soft skills of like interviewing of, of just a different format. How do you handle, like, how would you handle those types of situations? Like, how do you even handle.
Matt (22:38)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah.
Yeah.
Brian (23:02)
Shifting topics guiding a conversation is just a muscle that you built up over time.
Matt (23:07)
Yeah, mean, it’s yes. So the answer is yes. I’ve been in sales all my life. So that’s a thing. And so it’s just like naturally like getting to the next thing or doing a presentation, especially if you own an agency, grew up in the car dealership, like selling cars, like it’s the hardest conversations to have, especially 20 years ago when I was in the space, especially when you’re trying to sell Chevrolet’s 25 years ago. Like it’s not an easy thing.
Brian (23:28)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (23:30)
So like, you know, keeping that conversation moving is has always been something that you had to work on. But the biggest challenge, of course, is when people aren’t giving you enough and you’re trying to fill 30 minutes. That’s the particular challenge, you know, and really stretching out that conversation. Yeah, you know, I I don’t prepare. Any questions, 95 percent of the time.
I’m always having somebody on the show or talking about a topic that I already know. Like I’m not, you know, I’m not. And if it’s something I don’t know, I’m just largely curious. So it’s just like the questions are already forming and they’re coming because like I’m doing this series on content management systems. So if I’m talking to somebody from Kraft CMS, I don’t know anything about it.
So I’m just like, well, explain it to me. Like I have WordPress to to up against it, but I don’t know anything about it. So I’m super curious. The biggest challenge is like when the guest isn’t giving you enough and how do you keep stretching for that? So actively and I just kind of went through something like this earlier this morning is like actively saying, OK, I can feel like the questions aren’t the answers aren’t coming or they’re just they end too abruptly. And what am I seeing this person?
like really reacting to. So is it a question about design? Is it a question about development? Is it a question about like community? Just as an example. And where are they really, you know, give me the best from this and then I’ll start leaning in that direction. But also for the folks who give long winded answers like I do is understanding like I’m up against the clock. I know what I want to give my audience member, my listener in 30 minutes. And okay, let’s just move to the next thing.
To answer your question is yes, you have to fight yourself to condense those questions, because this is what I struggle with, condense the question. If not in the interview, in post, edit, and then fight yourself from extending that. Like, you you hear me say something and then you’re like, yeah, and then you want to embellish on that a little bit more. You just got to move on to the next thing.
Brian (25:15)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s interesting because like my background is writing. So I can always edit later. So I’m used to like let it all out. And then I’m a big editor. Like I write three times as much as I publish and then I’m an over-preparer. So I’ll make this list of all these things I want to talk about. And in your mind, you’re thinking, well, I’m going to be more prepared because I’ll have more ideas to talk about. But I think, I think like what you described at beginning was like just being present, being more present in the conversation.
and more curious in the conversation and letting your own curiosity kind of guide things. Whereas a lot of times I have so many topics. don’t need, I don’t need to cover all these topics. In fact, I, if I actually just drill deep on whatever the first half of the conversation was and then called it right there, I think I would have had some better interviews and then I could have had the person back on for that second topic. So I, yeah, I think, I think you’re describing like being present maybe, which is not my strength.
Matt (26:25)
Yeah, not to put too much pressure on you, but I’ve been a guest multiple times on podcasts where the host is just like, they’re struggling to find the questions to ask or reshape the questions or there’s a pause and they’re like, what do I want to talk about next? And in the back of my mind, I’m like, you don’t know? You don’t know what we’re going to talk about? And I’ve had guests on my show tell me,
Brian (26:50)
huh.
Matt (26:55)
Wow, like did you have all those? And then this is not to like toot my own horn, but I’ve had guests at the end of the thing go, like, did you have all those questions written out? I’m like, no, I just, I know what I want to talk to you about. And, you know, I’ve been not experienced in the hosting the podcast host side so much, but in the industry. And I know what I want to ask you. Like I’m not coming into this sort of blind. So I’ve seen it on, you know, both both sides.
Brian (27:22)
Yeah, mean, your interviews usually have what feels like a narrative to them. they start somewhere and they go somewhere. It’s not just here. Like I’ve been on some podcasts where they’re like, I’m gonna ask you these 10 questions exactly like this. I mean, I guess that it’s like, I could have just filled it out for you and you could have read it at that point. But honestly, like chat GPT could have answered these for you. Yeah, that is.
Matt (27:34)
Right.
Here’s my AI voice. license it to you.
Brian (27:48)
It’s definitely just a skill and you know, I’m a developer probably first and a writer verse. So those aren’t social. Like I was never a salesperson unless you count, you know, being a waiter at a restaurant. So it’s definitely like a different muscle where you’re like, no, it’s actually just an authentic conversation, which is the differentiator. It’s not an extraction of information. It’s just the authentic connection between the three people you’ve guessed and the audience who
has that social relationship with you.
Matt (28:19)
This is you reacting to my answer and not shifting to the next question.
Brian (28:24)
Yeah. I mean, I could shift to the next question, but it’s like a, it’s a wormhole. My, my next, or like my next thing that I was really grappling with was podcasting, you know, just in general podcasting and WordPress and just the, the thing that seems to keep happening, which is things seem easy in WordPress and then you go to do them and then they seem a lot harder than you think.
Matt (28:28)
you
Brian (28:48)
and you constantly come up against this idea of how important are values like owning your content and controlling the experience and using open source software. It’s like how much do I wanna give up these things for what might be a comfort situation.
Matt (28:55)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, the that’s a particular challenge for the podcast industry at large. It’s it’s you know, right now I’ll try to keep this as as brief as possible, but you have podcast open RSS podcasting, right? That’s what we all know and love and how the industry gets started. Podcast RSS fees were created. Apple was and Steve Jobs specifically was like we could take this kind of content and put it on the iPod along with music and you know.
At the time it was like New York Times and like all these other sort of big media outlets. But then all these sort of indie creators sort of spawned from that. And, know, the the industry magically, you know, got started. Podcast hosting companies started to exist and crop up. And that was a whole thing. And of course, blogging was was massive back then. That was that was also a thing. And podcasting was looked at that sort of like hot new technology that people couldn’t really figure out.
and wanted to be a part of it, but it was really techie and largely still is. And for the same reasons why we struggle with WordPress of like, what is it? CMS, blogging tool, website design thing, an app framework. What is this thing? We still had that same struggle with podcasting because of RSS. And why is that? Is because it’s techie and it doesn’t get adopted by big outlets, except for Apple.
and Spotify and YouTube, I’ll talk about in a second, but it’s just not, it’s not the sexy product that they can easily monetize. It’s like one of those things that like, have to support this RSS thing, but we can’t do anything with it. So now we have to sell people on other content services in our space. And that’s the challenge right now with podcasting. Spotify tried to do the big push into like owning all these big creators like Joe Rogan and Caller Daddy and…
Brian (30:47)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (30:49)
sports guy I’m forgetting off the top of my head, but they bid big content acquisitions. And the only way you could access this was inside Spotify. That lasted like two years until they realized, we can’t make enough money doing this. And it’s way better to keep this open publishing and just sell ads on it than it is to have people try to sell them on a 14 dollar a month Spotify account. And then as soon as that happened, YouTube stepped in and said, well, it looks like Spotify is not doing it and Apple’s not doing anything.
except having a directory, then then we’ll step in and we’ll ingest RSS feeds into into YouTube. So now the whole market is going the whole podcast industry, air quotes is going, video is the next thing that’s going to save podcasting. A video isn’t going to help your boring podcast. You’re just now making video and burning more resources and money to do that kind of thing. And YouTube, by the way, Google hates RSS. They killed RSS off because they don’t want it.
Brian (31:33)
Yeah.
Matt (31:40)
And they don’t even develop their own podcast app anymore. They want everything in YouTube music. So they’re not going to be the savior of podcasting. And that is the particular challenge of owning this content in the face of A.I. It is the thing that is podcast for me anyway. The essence of it, audio specifically, is building your own silo of content. The human factor. It’s your content. And then you can do so much with it after. I’m not saying I’m against video because I do video.
But the idea of me like owning video isn’t in my frame of reference because it’s just too expensive and too time consuming. know, podcast, audio driven podcast is the best form in my eyes of content that you can own. When you look at Google search took all of our content from us, right? They wanted metadata, they wanted tags, wanted all this stuff, they scoop all that content up and then AI came in and said, okay, now we’re gonna steal from you.
Brian (32:25)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (32:30)
And who’s losing here? We are. So owning and defending RSS and your content is a hill I am willing to die on. There’s a lot of people in the podcasting space, a of smart people who look at it and they’re just like, it’s a foolish game. You shouldn’t even want to do that. You should want to expand beyond podcast RSS as the home base for this stuff because it’s gonna open up more opportunity, more innovation.
Brian (32:31)
Yeah.
Matt (32:56)
But I also see that as no, no, because it’s only going to be driven by some mega corp. And that’s not a good thing. Like I will die on the hill of defending RSS and podcasting because, you know, the corporations can’t control it. You know, and even YouTube, you look at like ingesting RSS, they have rules that you can’t have like baked in ads with it. OK, great. Like you were already trying to, you know, take away from me. So anyway.
That’s a long rant, but I think it’s very important.
Brian (33:23)
Yeah, it’s a, it’s been interesting to see like RSS really open protocols, RSS, email and just websites still have this place. Like they, can’t really get taken away. You know, I think, it’s also been interesting to watch. Like I use my wife as like a way to see the other side and she would, I would say like Instagram’s her, her internet is Instagram, right? Or mostly Instagram. And then.
She follows all these people and now everyone she, she follows, they all have a podcast and they’re all learning. She’s constantly telling me about how they’re constantly posting. They’re learning that Instagram controls their business and Instagram can shut them down and Instagram can connect them from their audience. So they’re all launching podcasts. They’re all trying to get you, get the people that they built up on Instagram outside, because there’s this other way they can build a connection with them. And so.
It’s just kind of interesting to see like this is the year maybe where people are saying like it’s the podcast election. It’s the podcast, you know, the podcasts are the mainstream media now and stuff like that. And I don’t know, maybe the decentralization of it, the fact that these big companies came, tried to, you know, build it into something that it couldn’t be like kind of a kind of one, one that game, like the decentralization really helped because it made it too hard for any one person to kind of
Matt (34:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes, 100 percent. And every year having having like, you know, pod have having started a podcast, I don’t know, 12 or 15 years ago, but then working in the business, you know, five or getting in the business like professionally five or six years ago. Every year ends with podcasting being the best technology every year starts with somebody predicting the death of podcasting. It is fascinating.
Brian (34:45)
Own it.
Matt (35:08)
how close podcasting always gets to like, you have to do this, you have to be on this thing. It is the next thing. Like this year with elections, like, you got to do it. But then come into January and Q1 2025, we’re going to see all these places say like, podcasting is dead again. It happens on repeat for the last decade because of RSS, because of its open nature. It’s like somebody starts pushing it up the hill and that’s YouTube right now.
Brian (35:28)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (35:36)
And then it’ll it then what they’ll do is like this is too hard. We’re not making enough from this. And creators wake up to the fact that this is another rug pull out of Facebook pages 2014 2010 whatever it was. And then they go yeah yeah this is not this is just another walled garden. Yes yes it is. You know the challenge is for the the I don’t want to get too technical but like podcast hosting companies and apps.
They have to work together to improve their relationships. Third party apps, third party podcast hosting companies that are not owned by Spotify, Amazon, and the big publishing places like the radio station, I’m forgetting off the top of my head, which owns a ton of celebrity podcasts. Forget those guys, the indie podcast apps and hosting companies have to work together. That’s the hard part.
Hopefully we get there.
Brian (36:28)
Yeah, and it seems to be a mirror of what WordPress is trying to solve with written content. It seems like, it feels like it’s missed the boat in the same way that podcasting is sort of, still does have YouTube as this one giant tech monster kind of handling distribution and stealing everybody’s attention. YouTube is the kind of last maybe evil side of podcasting, even as I love using YouTube because it helps me out.
But WordPress is kind of the same place where publishing words on the internet was supposed to be there. Social media has really stolen all of that. And I’m kind of maybe optimistic that even if we don’t see a return to blogging particularly, I do think we are seeing a return to, hey, I need my own, I need my domain, I need my URL, I need my place on the internet, I need to stake my own claim and not only exist inside of a walled garden, I can use the walled garden.
but I have to find ways to break through the wall and get all of my people out to somewhere else. And that is owning your own domain. And there’s nothing really other than owning your domain and getting email addresses probably.
Matt (37:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, if not for the fact of like you don’t even have to be on the, know, own my own content freedom of speech train. You just have to understand that these platforms, the plat, who’s your support line on these platforms? Right. So like you said, on your wife’s example with with Instagram owning that business or the reference to that. What happens when there’s a mistake and you are shut off and then what you have nobody to call?
Right. You’re YouTube. You lose access to your YouTube account. You like OK, you’re going to maybe eventually get access to it, but there’s no guarantee and there’s no guarantee on that time frame. So, yes, you should be setting up your own shop. I don’t know how many years have to go by for people to understand that. Everyone learned that lesson as a small business during covid. Like you need to have an order form. You need to have a contact form. You need to be able to sell a gift card to literally keep your business afloat when people can’t walk into your business.
Brian (38:24)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (38:29)
The lessons keep coming and folks need to learn that. It’s just not sexy and it’s not easy. But most things that are sustainable are not.
Brian (38:39)
What are you looking forward to most for the next year in podcasting, WordPress, anything? What are you excited about?
Matt (38:46)
It’s a fantastic transition right there, Brian. Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s largely what we just said. Like in the prediction that I put out, there’s this whole concept in podcasting. One of the biggest things, and there’s an open source movement for podcasting called Podcasting 2.0. It’s a band of guys who are helping innovate on the RSS feed and pushing the boundaries of RSS feed to do a bunch of things.
Brian (38:48)
See, I just walked right into it.
Matt (39:15)
Primarily there’s this thing for monetization. It’s called value for value, but value for value is a bigger concept. They just happen to name the field in the RSS feed not to get super technical, which hooks up to streaming what’s known as Satoshi’s Bitcoin. That’s being really challenged with a lot of constraints on the US government largely in the financial system. And there was this one sort of PayPal for Bitcoin with air quotes again called Albie.
They’re getting heavily regulated in the U.S. So they decided to literally pull out. And that was making life really easy. Like if you wanted to be a part of this new technology where people could send you streaming sets, you could sign up for an Albee wallet, get your little ID, slap your ID in there. And as folks use podcasting 2.0 apps, they could listen and just send you money as they listen. So if they were listening to the show right now, like, that’s a great.
that’s a great joke from Brian or that’s a great piece of advice from Matt, they could send you a bunch of sats that equal into dollars, right? But that’s being heavily regulated. So that whole space is now critically thinking how do we get traditional payment gateways into these apps like a Stripe, like a PayPal? It means it’s gonna be slower, more lethargic, there’ll be more revenue cut taken out of it.
but it is solving a quicker way to pay creators in the podcasting app itself, right? So I’m looking forward to that enhancing and getting a little bit more user friendly for 2025. But I think value for value, the concept of that is if I’m creating valuable content, then you as a listener or as an audience member can return value back to me in whatever form you want.
It could be money, could be spreading the word of the show, it could be helping folks transcribe their shows and making art for them or whatever. And I sort of leverage that with the WP Minute. So you can join the Slack channel for as little as five bucks, but if you like the work that we do, maybe you give me 25 bucks. And that’s really what most people sort of lean to as they see the form and they’re like, okay, I’m gonna give them 25 bucks. Some people give five bucks and that’s awesome, and they just want to give to give.
Brian (41:13)
Hmm.
Matt (41:22)
But there’s folks who give a little bit more and they’re in and they’re active. So value for value and folks understanding that value of your content, I hope, is what we’re going to see more of in 2025. Especially if you’re looking for sponsorship dollars. Like you have been saying all this time, podcasting is a lot of work, a lot more work than you thought. Producing, publishing, promoting. And there are advertisers out there or sponsors who come to, especially in the WordPress space,
who want to leverage your audience. And I’m hoping a lot of us see the value in the work that we’re doing and up the game a little bit more. Like don’t give away those valuable sponsorships spots for next to nothing. Raise those rates just like you would in an agency so that you can sustain the work that you’re doing. If you’re looking for sponsorships, right? If your business model is sponsorships. So long way of getting to 2025, I see podcasting getting a new
lease on life for the content creators who are dedicated to this stuff to get paid, hopefully in new ways and see the value of their content increase.
Brian (42:24)
Yeah, I’m a big fan of people getting paid for their creativity. So I feel like we could do a whole conversation just on sponsorship, because I’m actually very curious about that. Where do people go to hear more from Matt Maderos? Where do people go to follow you?
Matt (42:26)
Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, so the site that if you want to learn everything that I do is crafted by Matt.com. If you are just interested in the WordPress news stuff, the WP minute.com and my day job at gravity forms.com.
Brian (42:50)
Thanks for coming, man.
Matt (42:52)
Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian (00:02)
Matt Medeiros is here, Matt, the pod father of WordPress. How are you doing today?
Matt (00:07)
you it’s always a great day when I’m in a virtual room with you.
Brian (00:13)
Yeah, that’s what my wife says. Maybe, I feel it feels dumb to ask you to give a bio, but I guess if you could give a quick bio, Matt Medeiros, how do you describe yourself these days?
Matt (00:26)
Yeah, I am sort of a tech forward content creator, largely in the WordPress space, starting to broaden my horizons with a few other projects I’m working on. But my day job is at Gravity Forms, helping them create content as well for their suite of products. And I’ve been in the WordPress space for what feels like an eternity, but nearly 20 years, so.
It’s been fun.
Brian (00:53)
Yeah, and I still DM you when I my gravity forms, when I do something exciting with gravity forms, it’s like, hey look, that’s my.
Matt (00:59)
My brother’s a Gravity Forms customer and I had to help him over Thanksgiving break with stuff. That was fun.
Brian (01:06)
no.
Well, I think the real reason I wanted to talk to you is because you, you’re kind of like, maybe a lot of people’s first entry into podcasting in WordPress, particularly. mean, I think there’s a few classic WordPress podcasts over the year, but you know, Matt Report and WP Minute are probably up there, I would say, in the pantheon of, you know, people who transitioned from like, I kind of am doing some WordPress stuff to that.
community insider baseball WordPress. Do think that’s a fair assessment?
Matt (01:37)
Yeah, yeah, the lineage sort of goes like I started the Mat Report to get noticed in the WordPress space as a non-developer, as somebody who didn’t have, you know, the engineer acumen or the connections in the community. And I was just like, I see other people doing this. How can I meet these people to get the same opportunities? And that’s what got me into podcasting and now kind of do it a little bit more formally.
to educate WordPress professionals over at the WP Minute, but yeah, that was the sort of stair-step approach.
Brian (02:07)
And I feel like we’re going backwards in like, I’ve been doing YouTube, like tutorials, like very deep dive, developery tutorials. And then I kind of hit a point where I was like, I kind of just want to talk to people more. You were having me on WP minute more often. And I just used to have a podcast with Aruba who’s a community member and I just missed like that part of it. But, it feels like I’ve seen you go the opposite where WP minutes publishing a lot more, I don’t know, walking through the new release, walking through.
a fun plugin or something like that. And I feel like maybe I’m going the wrong way because I don’t think the views on interviews are nearly as good as the views you get on that kind of content. What do you think?
Matt (02:41)
You
Yeah, mean, from, yeah, like, I have a different approach to, the WP Minute was largely born to make it a real thing, right? So the MaR Report was what a lot of us do in podcasting. I should also say I worked in the podcast industry, capital P-I, podcast industry for.
Nearly three years and I helped get a lot of folks off the ground with their podcast and like critically think about how they’re gonna approach it and Largely, it’s like you’re either just a hobbyist and you don’t care what’s gonna happen with this thing. You just love doing it. That’s cool That’s a great way and then there’s also like if you’re gonna if you’re trying to make something out of this you have to critically think of it as as a media business and I know that phrase has been Overused a lot in the last five to ten years
But I look at the WP Minute as omni-channel publishing, right? So I do blog, newsletter, blog largely written by Eric Karkevac, so I literally pay somebody to write content for me. The newsletter, the podcast, and the YouTube channel. And they all have a sort of different approach to that content, right? YouTube being for the average to beginner WordPress user. You know, if you open up a newspaper, if those things still exist, you have…
Brian (04:00)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (04:04)
the sections that you’re gonna go to, the interests, the topics, and that’s how I’m looking at the WP minute. So I’ll make that sort of tutorial content, five, 10, 20 minutes of a certain topic, and then hopefully take that beginner user, that end user, and kind of scoop them up into the podcast and say, well, if you care about WordPress a little bit more, and you’re interested in listening to 30, 45 minutes of like,
what’s happening in the community or like you and I talking about critically breaking down WordPress 6.7, then come over here, like we’ve got some insider stuff. Or if you just wanna be on the newsletter and just get in the know of like some of the cool things that are happening, hop on the newsletter. If you’re a freelancer, read the blog posts. So it’s a multi-stream approach to how I create this content. I don’t think it’s wrong to go.
in the direction that you think you’re headed in. At the end of the day, as like a content creator, and I think you know this already, is you wanna do things that you’re most comfortable with, that you do enjoy doing. And then you can tack on the stuff that you don’t really like later on, right, and find a system for that. For me, was blogging and thinking about the freelancer persona.
Brian (05:11)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (05:17)
Although I did run an agency for a decade and I’m still talking to WordPress people every single day through gravity forms That wasn’t a thing that I wanted to critically wrap my head around and write anymore one because I felt like yeah Like nobody needs my opinion on that anymore. I’ve kind of established that two I’m not in the space anymore like every day like Eric is and three It’s like I need to create other content and do other things for this business. So that’s what that’s how and why I brought Eric in and
you know, that’s a long way of getting to like the inside, you know, model of the WP minute and why I transitioned away from sort of like that Matt report thing.
Brian (05:54)
Yeah, and I’ve been struggling with, I have like my personal website where I’ll blog and I’ll do newsletters and it’s not like roundup newsletters. It’s very much like it’s really just a blog that I email to you and it’s very like it’s if something interesting happens and I feel like I can write about it, I will write about it and two months might go by and I’m just not paying attention to it. It’s not a calculated move. Whereas I was like kind of ready to not have anything.
with my name on it so clearly because it felt like, here’s me and here’s all these different places where I’m putting all this stuff, but it’s all just my face. And I was getting kind of sick of that. And I just wanted a place to separate and start saying like, okay, this will be actual WordPress specific content. And when Aruba and I started View Source, which was our podcast, like 2022 to 2023, we had a clear idea in our mind where
Matt (06:34)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (06:50)
We knew we wouldn’t get like a huge audience because we were very technical and we were very like specific, but we knew we would hit people in places. So we got a lot of feedback from people in WordPress companies or like larger agencies. So it was more like a drive to meet and build a rapport with that specific group. And then now I’m like, okay, now I’ve actually have a ton of friends at all these great places, contributors, things like that, that would actually be willing to jump on the mic with me.
And now I can like leverage that and hopefully bring that to like a broader, a group of people and they can see like, Hey, these are, these are all the people that are like actually pushing WordPress and, and, like influencing and they don’t, they don’t all work at one place. They work at different hosting companies. They work at a lot of agencies and that sort of thing, but it’s still hard to, find a way to talk about the thing that you want to talk about most in WordPress. And then the thing that
everybody really wants, is like, me practical advice and teach me how to do this thing. And that it’s a weird balance that I’m struggling.
Matt (07:52)
Yeah, I mean, the unsung hero of podcasting, I I call it podcasting, and we can, you know, I also follow podcasting as closely as I follow WordPress, right? RSS and open publishing are two things that I am very interested in, and podcasting and WordPress itself sort of established those two markets for me. But the unsung hero of podcasting or content creation in general is that relationship building, and it’s,
It is impossible to like get ROI on that. Like I need to start a podcast and measure the success of this and either subscriptions, product sales, money coming in. Those are all, you know, different things. And really what you get out of it that would 10x that and it has and it’s why I haven’t stopped doing what I’m doing. Right. When you look at the landscape of WordPress content creators or YouTubers and you look at those that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
That’s awesome and something that I aspire to get with my channel. But I’ve also largely approached it like you where it’s like I want to create the content that inspires me first and foremost because number one, it’s not my day job. If it was my day job, it would probably be slightly different. I’d have a slightly different strategy to taking the stuff probably more commercially for lack of a better phrase. I’d approach it more commercially.
Brian (09:02)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt (09:11)
But this is like, like it, I love it, I’m gonna write about this content regardless. And can I turn this into a sustainable business? But that relationship building, you’re building a resume in front of everybody and you’re building that trust factor which is so important in podcasting, especially in the age of what we’re seeing with AI and content creation. Human experiences, man, that’s the thing that.
that’s the only thread we’re gonna have for a long time, you know, moving in the AI world. And it’s something that Eric and I talk about often when we’re writing content, you know, on the YouTube side, tutorials is fine because the human factor is me teaching you how to do this basic thing in WordPress. So, I mean, that’s like sort of par for the course when you’re doing the video stuff. But when we’re talking about like writing content or even like doing podcast stuff, it has to be about, the thread has to be about
Brian (09:37)
Yeah.
Matt (10:01)
this human experience in there. In other words, I won’t hire somebody like I get, you know, and I’m sure you do too, just the nature of WordPress. You get people nodding, can I write for your blog or whatever? And it’s like, yeah, but I don’t need generic content anymore. Like I need you, your human experience and really break this down for me. And sadly, I haven’t found many people other than Eric who aren’t running their own, you know, publishing stuff sites.
to really want to write like that or expose themselves or be open like that. It’s a challenging thing, but it’s something that you try to strive to do when you’re creating this kind of content.
Brian (10:38)
Yeah, there was a Tom McFarland is a member in the WP at Slack, but he’s also, think if you’re somebody who has been in WordPress long time, you probably followed his blog for a long time. And he’s been writing about this idea of like tutorial content, a lot of tutorial content on the web has become less relevant because, you know, I’ll go to chat GPT these days and say, Hey, how do I solve this problem I’m trying to solve? And it does a great job. And it.
tailors its response exactly to me. Like it gives me exactly not like here’s how somebody else fixed it in their unique situation. It’s like, here’s how you can fix it in your unique situation. It’s like perfectly suited to you. But like you said, then I still want to follow these people’s blog because I want their personality. want that connection with them and I want to know exactly what they would do.
I wanna know why they’re thinking what they’re thinking. I wanna draw off their personal experience. And so I feel like there’s this push to be, use your name and your brand and push a personal brand and all that stuff. And then there’s build something that you can scale and maybe grow and bring other people into it. And you’ve kinda gone both ways. So how did you choose, I’m gonna be Matt Medeiros or I’m gonna be the WP Minute. How do you make those distinctions when you’re…
Matt (11:53)
Yeah, yeah, I mean the biggest challenge, when you take the approach that we take, you and I, like if you put, you know, like ethics and morals and just like, I do this content because I want to cover it regardless and it makes me feel good, but also can I monetize this? Like can I make money?
Brian (11:54)
putting stuff out there.
Matt (12:15)
That’s an approach that is very slow. It’s very slow, right? At the end of the day, it’s like, and what the challenge becomes, and I know because I’ve lived this for so long, and I’m thinking about it right now, end of the year, it’s like, okay, the WP minute made some really good money this year, more than it has in the last four years. But.
Like is it still like where you want to be with it? No. And you try to like you’re constantly pushing these goals. And the problem is when you take our approach, when you love the content and you love it and you say you do it for the passion of it, is you don’t have like you don’t set these clear goals. You’re not clear enough and you haven’t defined a product. And I can I can see that when I consult other people like no, this is this is what you should be doing. This is how much money you should be asking for.
Brian (12:48)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (12:59)
This is the product you should be pitching. But when it comes to my own stuff, I’m just like, yeah, sign up to my newsletter. Right. And then then at the end of the year, I’m like, why haven’t I made any money? Right. And I think where folks like you and I sort of get lost. And this is why I reposition from that report to the WP minute. But it’s still a slow rolling train for me is I don’t have that end user product. In other words, I don’t have that course. I don’t have that digital product. I don’t.
Brian (13:22)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (13:24)
I have a consultancy thing that I often will recommend to somebody if they’re asking me million questions, but I don’t put that first and foremost. My product, essentially, my biggest product is sponsorship and selling sponsorship to other businesses in and around the WordPress space. And what I need to do is make time to sell that or write and position content that offers that. And that’s the hardest thing, man. It’s the hardest thing in this content game.
Brian (13:45)
Yeah.
Matt (13:49)
You know, so if you’re somebody listening to this going, I’m gonna do this content thing, try to have some kind of product that you can sell and measure against. And if it’s an email newsletter sign up, then maybe there’s something in the automation of the newsletter that you’re selling and that stretch goal towards, right? Because it’s gonna make life for you a lot easier. That transition from Matt reports to WP Minute was one, get my name out of this thing.
I don’t want it in there anymore, right? And I want it to be about more than just me, because the essence of Matterport was, was just in my name. So that was like step one, it’s just been like four or five years later since. And I’m still slowly like trying to position a product in front of people, because that’s when things really start to make sense. I have an audience, they’re buying from me. I have a membership, it’s largely just,
Brian (14:16)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (14:40)
position as support for the show. And that’s a thing. But again, like I still am not doing a great job at forming and packaging that stuff up for the audience. That’s the biggest challenge. When all you really care about is doing good content. Because that’s what I struggle with. Yeah.
Brian (14:55)
Yeah, I have the same issue. have the, I have the, the course like in progress, you know, working at it, you know, it’s, it’s there. I know that it’s the thing, but it’s hard to sometimes prioritize it because number one, you always have that fear of like, if I put this out there and nobody wants it and I wasted all this time even just preparing it, but also just, it feels like, if I don’t have a large enough audience and I’m already selling to you, I’m already coming at you, you know,
Matt (15:08)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (15:24)
saying, Hey, follow me because I’m selling this thing. You know, it feels hard to do that. But at the end of the day, like there has to be something, there has to be some way to financially, you know, offset the amount of time that I put outside of work to dedicate to this. And my goal is to, think, do a similar thing, which is I, I launched a new podcast. has a separate brand and name, and I want to slowly move.
all of my content to that and get it get the YouTube channel to be that and get the newsletter to be that as well. I don’t know how successful that’ll be but you know YouTube is like a great YouTube the benefit of YouTube is its discover ability like it puts you out there in front of everybody else and
Matt (16:11)
Right. Right.
Brian (16:13)
A newsletter doesn’t really do that. You have to earn the newsletter subscription. No one’s putting your newsletter in front of people. No one’s putting your podcast in front of people. It’s really YouTube has to be like the place to go get people. I mean, there’s social media, but that’s such a narrow bubble of like WordPress people. It’s not the real wider audience. It’s not even the people who would probably buy, you know, a block development course from me. Those people probably aren’t on social, these insider social networks and stuff like that. They’re on YouTube mostly. And so figuring out like,
Matt (16:37)
Sure. Yeah.
Brian (16:43)
Can I move all of that? And then can I at the same, can I have this audience that’s where I’m saying, hey, I’m gonna teach you a bunch of stuff about how to use WordPress. But also if you sign up for my newsletter, you’re gonna get a thousand words on the legal battle and my opinions on where core should go in the next three years and philosophy about WordPress. It feels like two separate audiences and I’ve focused on that inside baseball. how do you, so I mean, I guess you kind of explained it.
you filter people through, but you have to, guess, have that newsletter. It has to be something more than my long philosophical rants about WordPress that’s only interesting to 100 people.
Matt (17:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think there are people that are really good and whom I’m envious of who will have a month of recording, right, where they will record or maybe a month, not a month, but a week or two weeks. They do all their recordings for the whole year, you know, and then it’s just like they take those clips, they send them to a VA.
They chop them up. have AI write blog posts. They prime everything in their site, in their newsletter, their automation. At the end of the day, they have a thousand dollar course. They turn the wheel on and for the next, you know, 120 days, the machine works for them. Right. And then they at the end of that run, they stamp repeat the manufacturing line again. That’s just not me. That’s just not me. I really care about like.
the content and the connection. Plus I have a full time job and a family just like you. And those things are really challenging to like front load all it sounds smart. But for me, like front loading all that time just doesn’t work. And I like to be more in the moment with that with that content. In fact, for another podcast project that I’m launching in twenty twenty five, I’m reaching out to some new folks and.
This one guy, yeah, I don’t know, it’s just like I’m starting the fresh relationships all over again and these folks I don’t know and I’m just knocking on the door like hey, I’ve been covering WordPress for 15 years, I’m launching this new project, would you like to be a part of it? And this one guy kind of just like turned me down, he’s like I don’t wanna be, based on my experience, I don’t wanna be part of a new podcast project and I don’t want something that’s not gonna release for a month from now because like the whole tech scene changes, I’m like okay, buddy.
I’m not going to try to push it on you. Like, trust me, I know I’m a veteran. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve been there. I just like my 20th broadcast project that I’ve launched. I get it. You know, but I look at it as I’m going to, you know, give you my 10 minutes on YouTube, give you 45 minutes on a podcast, and I’m going to give you these days like a few hundred unique words or perspective in my newsletter and
Brian (18:58)
Hmm.
Matt (19:22)
That’s how I approach it, right? And hopefully, and engage with folks in social media. And hopefully, you will like, the audience will like one of those things, if not all of those things that I’m producing for you. So I try to think of it as like, here’s some unique experiences across this omni-channel publication. And that’s how I wrap my head around it. But I was just doing a.
2025 outlook for podcasting for another publication called Pod News, which is very similar to the WP Minute. A lot of the stuff I stole from James at Pod News because he’s been doing independent podcast journalism far longer than I’ve done WordPress journalism. And I think the big thing in like in content in general, not just podcasting, is folks have a gazillion choices of things to tune into, whether that’s, you know, a competitor to your podcast or
a Netflix show. So I think what we’ve what what we will see and have seen we just maybe haven’t compartmentalized it yet is the audience numbers are going down and it’s our job and not because they’re not tuned into you it’s just that they’re tuned into so much and it’s our job to identify well maybe five years ago we had 10,000 downloads a month now we’re at
Brian (20:33)
Yeah.
Matt (20:43)
5,000 downloads per month. But are these folks more engaged? If yes, how do we get them into something that keeps them engaged or you have that one-on-one human connection? And you know, for me, it’s the WP Minute Slack, right? So of those 5,000 and there’s a hundred and something in the WP Minute Slack, like now I’m starting to filter down. So I think it’s important to try. It’s a lot of work. It could be a lot of overhead, but it’s understanding like,
can I keep those people engaged? And that’s either just like to keep them retained and listening to your stuff or selling them something, you know, and I think a lot of work is going to have to be had to just keep people engaged, to keep tuning into your content and sharing that content, not even selling stuff to them. Like you’re to have to keep them engaged so that they stick around. That would be a big challenge. I don’t think a lot of people are ready for that because it’s a lot of overhead, but it’s just the way that I, you know, critically think about it.
Brian (21:41)
And in my mind, thought an interview format podcast seemed easier than, you know, I was doing tutorials, but they were, they were clocking in like 40 minutes plus or something like that. Right. And that’s, a long, that’s a long deep dive of a tutorial that, is good, but is probably not as maybe not even as useful as something that’s like 10 or 15 minutes. so then I started doing the interview stuff and I’ve put,
maybe six or seven interviews in the can so far. And I’ve learned along the process that number one, it’s still a pretty good amount of work because you really do have to curate the experience before and after recording. can’t just hit record and send that out, you know? And the other thing is that interviewing is like a completely separate skill than teaching or live streaming or anything like that. Like to interview somebody, like one of my biggest issues has been
how to pivot a conversation when I’m ready to be done talking about topic A and I want to get them on topic B. Do you know what I mean? And do you, so like there’s either, you know, they answer the question and then I feel like I need to come back with a little bit of a response first. And then I’m like, and that reminds, you know, trying to do like a fancy pivot or something like that. These like little soft skills of like interviewing of, of just a different format. How do you handle, like, how would you handle those types of situations? Like, how do you even handle.
Matt (22:38)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah.
Yeah.
Brian (23:02)
Shifting topics guiding a conversation is just a muscle that you built up over time.
Matt (23:07)
Yeah, mean, it’s yes. So the answer is yes. I’ve been in sales all my life. So that’s a thing. And so it’s just like naturally like getting to the next thing or doing a presentation, especially if you own an agency, grew up in the car dealership, like selling cars, like it’s the hardest conversations to have, especially 20 years ago when I was in the space, especially when you’re trying to sell Chevrolet’s 25 years ago. Like it’s not an easy thing.
Brian (23:28)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (23:30)
So like, you know, keeping that conversation moving is has always been something that you had to work on. But the biggest challenge, of course, is when people aren’t giving you enough and you’re trying to fill 30 minutes. That’s the particular challenge, you know, and really stretching out that conversation. Yeah, you know, I I don’t prepare. Any questions, 95 percent of the time.
I’m always having somebody on the show or talking about a topic that I already know. Like I’m not, you know, I’m not. And if it’s something I don’t know, I’m just largely curious. So it’s just like the questions are already forming and they’re coming because like I’m doing this series on content management systems. So if I’m talking to somebody from Kraft CMS, I don’t know anything about it.
So I’m just like, well, explain it to me. Like I have WordPress to to up against it, but I don’t know anything about it. So I’m super curious. The biggest challenge is like when the guest isn’t giving you enough and how do you keep stretching for that? So actively and I just kind of went through something like this earlier this morning is like actively saying, OK, I can feel like the questions aren’t the answers aren’t coming or they’re just they end too abruptly. And what am I seeing this person?
like really reacting to. So is it a question about design? Is it a question about development? Is it a question about like community? Just as an example. And where are they really, you know, give me the best from this and then I’ll start leaning in that direction. But also for the folks who give long winded answers like I do is understanding like I’m up against the clock. I know what I want to give my audience member, my listener in 30 minutes. And okay, let’s just move to the next thing.
To answer your question is yes, you have to fight yourself to condense those questions, because this is what I struggle with, condense the question. If not in the interview, in post, edit, and then fight yourself from extending that. Like, you you hear me say something and then you’re like, yeah, and then you want to embellish on that a little bit more. You just got to move on to the next thing.
Brian (25:15)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s interesting because like my background is writing. So I can always edit later. So I’m used to like let it all out. And then I’m a big editor. Like I write three times as much as I publish and then I’m an over-preparer. So I’ll make this list of all these things I want to talk about. And in your mind, you’re thinking, well, I’m going to be more prepared because I’ll have more ideas to talk about. But I think, I think like what you described at beginning was like just being present, being more present in the conversation.
and more curious in the conversation and letting your own curiosity kind of guide things. Whereas a lot of times I have so many topics. don’t need, I don’t need to cover all these topics. In fact, I, if I actually just drill deep on whatever the first half of the conversation was and then called it right there, I think I would have had some better interviews and then I could have had the person back on for that second topic. So I, yeah, I think, I think you’re describing like being present maybe, which is not my strength.
Matt (26:25)
Yeah, not to put too much pressure on you, but I’ve been a guest multiple times on podcasts where the host is just like, they’re struggling to find the questions to ask or reshape the questions or there’s a pause and they’re like, what do I want to talk about next? And in the back of my mind, I’m like, you don’t know? You don’t know what we’re going to talk about? And I’ve had guests on my show tell me,
Brian (26:50)
huh.
Matt (26:55)
Wow, like did you have all those? And then this is not to like toot my own horn, but I’ve had guests at the end of the thing go, like, did you have all those questions written out? I’m like, no, I just, I know what I want to talk to you about. And, you know, I’ve been not experienced in the hosting the podcast host side so much, but in the industry. And I know what I want to ask you. Like I’m not coming into this sort of blind. So I’ve seen it on, you know, both both sides.
Brian (27:22)
Yeah, mean, your interviews usually have what feels like a narrative to them. they start somewhere and they go somewhere. It’s not just here. Like I’ve been on some podcasts where they’re like, I’m gonna ask you these 10 questions exactly like this. I mean, I guess that it’s like, I could have just filled it out for you and you could have read it at that point. But honestly, like chat GPT could have answered these for you. Yeah, that is.
Matt (27:34)
Right.
Here’s my AI voice. license it to you.
Brian (27:48)
It’s definitely just a skill and you know, I’m a developer probably first and a writer verse. So those aren’t social. Like I was never a salesperson unless you count, you know, being a waiter at a restaurant. So it’s definitely like a different muscle where you’re like, no, it’s actually just an authentic conversation, which is the differentiator. It’s not an extraction of information. It’s just the authentic connection between the three people you’ve guessed and the audience who
has that social relationship with you.
Matt (28:19)
This is you reacting to my answer and not shifting to the next question.
Brian (28:24)
Yeah. I mean, I could shift to the next question, but it’s like a, it’s a wormhole. My, my next, or like my next thing that I was really grappling with was podcasting, you know, just in general podcasting and WordPress and just the, the thing that seems to keep happening, which is things seem easy in WordPress and then you go to do them and then they seem a lot harder than you think.
Matt (28:28)
you
Brian (28:48)
and you constantly come up against this idea of how important are values like owning your content and controlling the experience and using open source software. It’s like how much do I wanna give up these things for what might be a comfort situation.
Matt (28:55)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, the that’s a particular challenge for the podcast industry at large. It’s it’s you know, right now I’ll try to keep this as as brief as possible, but you have podcast open RSS podcasting, right? That’s what we all know and love and how the industry gets started. Podcast RSS fees were created. Apple was and Steve Jobs specifically was like we could take this kind of content and put it on the iPod along with music and you know.
At the time it was like New York Times and like all these other sort of big media outlets. But then all these sort of indie creators sort of spawned from that. And, know, the the industry magically, you know, got started. Podcast hosting companies started to exist and crop up. And that was a whole thing. And of course, blogging was was massive back then. That was that was also a thing. And podcasting was looked at that sort of like hot new technology that people couldn’t really figure out.
and wanted to be a part of it, but it was really techie and largely still is. And for the same reasons why we struggle with WordPress of like, what is it? CMS, blogging tool, website design thing, an app framework. What is this thing? We still had that same struggle with podcasting because of RSS. And why is that? Is because it’s techie and it doesn’t get adopted by big outlets, except for Apple.
and Spotify and YouTube, I’ll talk about in a second, but it’s just not, it’s not the sexy product that they can easily monetize. It’s like one of those things that like, have to support this RSS thing, but we can’t do anything with it. So now we have to sell people on other content services in our space. And that’s the challenge right now with podcasting. Spotify tried to do the big push into like owning all these big creators like Joe Rogan and Caller Daddy and…
Brian (30:47)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (30:49)
sports guy I’m forgetting off the top of my head, but they bid big content acquisitions. And the only way you could access this was inside Spotify. That lasted like two years until they realized, we can’t make enough money doing this. And it’s way better to keep this open publishing and just sell ads on it than it is to have people try to sell them on a 14 dollar a month Spotify account. And then as soon as that happened, YouTube stepped in and said, well, it looks like Spotify is not doing it and Apple’s not doing anything.
except having a directory, then then we’ll step in and we’ll ingest RSS feeds into into YouTube. So now the whole market is going the whole podcast industry, air quotes is going, video is the next thing that’s going to save podcasting. A video isn’t going to help your boring podcast. You’re just now making video and burning more resources and money to do that kind of thing. And YouTube, by the way, Google hates RSS. They killed RSS off because they don’t want it.
Brian (31:33)
Yeah.
Matt (31:40)
And they don’t even develop their own podcast app anymore. They want everything in YouTube music. So they’re not going to be the savior of podcasting. And that is the particular challenge of owning this content in the face of A.I. It is the thing that is podcast for me anyway. The essence of it, audio specifically, is building your own silo of content. The human factor. It’s your content. And then you can do so much with it after. I’m not saying I’m against video because I do video.
But the idea of me like owning video isn’t in my frame of reference because it’s just too expensive and too time consuming. know, podcast, audio driven podcast is the best form in my eyes of content that you can own. When you look at Google search took all of our content from us, right? They wanted metadata, they wanted tags, wanted all this stuff, they scoop all that content up and then AI came in and said, okay, now we’re gonna steal from you.
Brian (32:25)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (32:30)
And who’s losing here? We are. So owning and defending RSS and your content is a hill I am willing to die on. There’s a lot of people in the podcasting space, a of smart people who look at it and they’re just like, it’s a foolish game. You shouldn’t even want to do that. You should want to expand beyond podcast RSS as the home base for this stuff because it’s gonna open up more opportunity, more innovation.
Brian (32:31)
Yeah.
Matt (32:56)
But I also see that as no, no, because it’s only going to be driven by some mega corp. And that’s not a good thing. Like I will die on the hill of defending RSS and podcasting because, you know, the corporations can’t control it. You know, and even YouTube, you look at like ingesting RSS, they have rules that you can’t have like baked in ads with it. OK, great. Like you were already trying to, you know, take away from me. So anyway.
That’s a long rant, but I think it’s very important.
Brian (33:23)
Yeah, it’s a, it’s been interesting to see like RSS really open protocols, RSS, email and just websites still have this place. Like they, can’t really get taken away. You know, I think, it’s also been interesting to watch. Like I use my wife as like a way to see the other side and she would, I would say like Instagram’s her, her internet is Instagram, right? Or mostly Instagram. And then.
She follows all these people and now everyone she, she follows, they all have a podcast and they’re all learning. She’s constantly telling me about how they’re constantly posting. They’re learning that Instagram controls their business and Instagram can shut them down and Instagram can connect them from their audience. So they’re all launching podcasts. They’re all trying to get you, get the people that they built up on Instagram outside, because there’s this other way they can build a connection with them. And so.
It’s just kind of interesting to see like this is the year maybe where people are saying like it’s the podcast election. It’s the podcast, you know, the podcasts are the mainstream media now and stuff like that. And I don’t know, maybe the decentralization of it, the fact that these big companies came, tried to, you know, build it into something that it couldn’t be like kind of a kind of one, one that game, like the decentralization really helped because it made it too hard for any one person to kind of
Matt (34:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes, 100 percent. And every year having having like, you know, pod have having started a podcast, I don’t know, 12 or 15 years ago, but then working in the business, you know, five or getting in the business like professionally five or six years ago. Every year ends with podcasting being the best technology every year starts with somebody predicting the death of podcasting. It is fascinating.
Brian (34:45)
Own it.
Matt (35:08)
how close podcasting always gets to like, you have to do this, you have to be on this thing. It is the next thing. Like this year with elections, like, you got to do it. But then come into January and Q1 2025, we’re going to see all these places say like, podcasting is dead again. It happens on repeat for the last decade because of RSS, because of its open nature. It’s like somebody starts pushing it up the hill and that’s YouTube right now.
Brian (35:28)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (35:36)
And then it’ll it then what they’ll do is like this is too hard. We’re not making enough from this. And creators wake up to the fact that this is another rug pull out of Facebook pages 2014 2010 whatever it was. And then they go yeah yeah this is not this is just another walled garden. Yes yes it is. You know the challenge is for the the I don’t want to get too technical but like podcast hosting companies and apps.
They have to work together to improve their relationships. Third party apps, third party podcast hosting companies that are not owned by Spotify, Amazon, and the big publishing places like the radio station, I’m forgetting off the top of my head, which owns a ton of celebrity podcasts. Forget those guys, the indie podcast apps and hosting companies have to work together. That’s the hard part.
Hopefully we get there.
Brian (36:28)
Yeah, and it seems to be a mirror of what WordPress is trying to solve with written content. It seems like, it feels like it’s missed the boat in the same way that podcasting is sort of, still does have YouTube as this one giant tech monster kind of handling distribution and stealing everybody’s attention. YouTube is the kind of last maybe evil side of podcasting, even as I love using YouTube because it helps me out.
But WordPress is kind of the same place where publishing words on the internet was supposed to be there. Social media has really stolen all of that. And I’m kind of maybe optimistic that even if we don’t see a return to blogging particularly, I do think we are seeing a return to, hey, I need my own, I need my domain, I need my URL, I need my place on the internet, I need to stake my own claim and not only exist inside of a walled garden, I can use the walled garden.
but I have to find ways to break through the wall and get all of my people out to somewhere else. And that is owning your own domain. And there’s nothing really other than owning your domain and getting email addresses probably.
Matt (37:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, if not for the fact of like you don’t even have to be on the, know, own my own content freedom of speech train. You just have to understand that these platforms, the plat, who’s your support line on these platforms? Right. So like you said, on your wife’s example with with Instagram owning that business or the reference to that. What happens when there’s a mistake and you are shut off and then what you have nobody to call?
Right. You’re YouTube. You lose access to your YouTube account. You like OK, you’re going to maybe eventually get access to it, but there’s no guarantee and there’s no guarantee on that time frame. So, yes, you should be setting up your own shop. I don’t know how many years have to go by for people to understand that. Everyone learned that lesson as a small business during covid. Like you need to have an order form. You need to have a contact form. You need to be able to sell a gift card to literally keep your business afloat when people can’t walk into your business.
Brian (38:24)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (38:29)
The lessons keep coming and folks need to learn that. It’s just not sexy and it’s not easy. But most things that are sustainable are not.
Brian (38:39)
What are you looking forward to most for the next year in podcasting, WordPress, anything? What are you excited about?
Matt (38:46)
It’s a fantastic transition right there, Brian. Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s largely what we just said. Like in the prediction that I put out, there’s this whole concept in podcasting. One of the biggest things, and there’s an open source movement for podcasting called Podcasting 2.0. It’s a band of guys who are helping innovate on the RSS feed and pushing the boundaries of RSS feed to do a bunch of things.
Brian (38:48)
See, I just walked right into it.
Matt (39:15)
Primarily there’s this thing for monetization. It’s called value for value, but value for value is a bigger concept. They just happen to name the field in the RSS feed not to get super technical, which hooks up to streaming what’s known as Satoshi’s Bitcoin. That’s being really challenged with a lot of constraints on the US government largely in the financial system. And there was this one sort of PayPal for Bitcoin with air quotes again called Albie.
They’re getting heavily regulated in the U.S. So they decided to literally pull out. And that was making life really easy. Like if you wanted to be a part of this new technology where people could send you streaming sets, you could sign up for an Albee wallet, get your little ID, slap your ID in there. And as folks use podcasting 2.0 apps, they could listen and just send you money as they listen. So if they were listening to the show right now, like, that’s a great.
that’s a great joke from Brian or that’s a great piece of advice from Matt, they could send you a bunch of sats that equal into dollars, right? But that’s being heavily regulated. So that whole space is now critically thinking how do we get traditional payment gateways into these apps like a Stripe, like a PayPal? It means it’s gonna be slower, more lethargic, there’ll be more revenue cut taken out of it.
but it is solving a quicker way to pay creators in the podcasting app itself, right? So I’m looking forward to that enhancing and getting a little bit more user friendly for 2025. But I think value for value, the concept of that is if I’m creating valuable content, then you as a listener or as an audience member can return value back to me in whatever form you want.
It could be money, could be spreading the word of the show, it could be helping folks transcribe their shows and making art for them or whatever. And I sort of leverage that with the WP Minute. So you can join the Slack channel for as little as five bucks, but if you like the work that we do, maybe you give me 25 bucks. And that’s really what most people sort of lean to as they see the form and they’re like, okay, I’m gonna give them 25 bucks. Some people give five bucks and that’s awesome, and they just want to give to give.
Brian (41:13)
Hmm.
Matt (41:22)
But there’s folks who give a little bit more and they’re in and they’re active. So value for value and folks understanding that value of your content, I hope, is what we’re going to see more of in 2025. Especially if you’re looking for sponsorship dollars. Like you have been saying all this time, podcasting is a lot of work, a lot more work than you thought. Producing, publishing, promoting. And there are advertisers out there or sponsors who come to, especially in the WordPress space,
who want to leverage your audience. And I’m hoping a lot of us see the value in the work that we’re doing and up the game a little bit more. Like don’t give away those valuable sponsorships spots for next to nothing. Raise those rates just like you would in an agency so that you can sustain the work that you’re doing. If you’re looking for sponsorships, right? If your business model is sponsorships. So long way of getting to 2025, I see podcasting getting a new
lease on life for the content creators who are dedicated to this stuff to get paid, hopefully in new ways and see the value of their content increase.
Brian (42:24)
Yeah, I’m a big fan of people getting paid for their creativity. So I feel like we could do a whole conversation just on sponsorship, because I’m actually very curious about that. Where do people go to hear more from Matt Maderos? Where do people go to follow you?
Matt (42:26)
Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, so the site that if you want to learn everything that I do is crafted by Matt.com. If you are just interested in the WordPress news stuff, the WP minute.com and my day job at gravity forms.com.
Brian (42:50)
Thanks for coming, man.
Matt (42:52)
Thanks for having me, Brian.