Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder’s perspective on marketing and sales is truly unique… and also, clearly effective. As a solo developer and business owner, he’s managing more than 1,300 WordPress websites on his own. Keep reading to see how he manages it all and how he started his business from the ground up…
1. Revenue isn’t the only goal
“Transitioning from projects to a service made sense for me and what I wanted to pursue. The revenue aspect, going from a per-project basis to a revenue, maybe had some influence, but at the end of the day, they’re both really hard. They have pros and cons to both of them. Some people do great with projects, and they enjoy them. I think it would be foolish just to pursue a revenue-based business because you think you could make more money, and now they have their own challenges.”
2. As a business owner, you should attract customers in everything you do
Austin doesn’t do sales. The question is, how does a business owner that doesn’t do sales get clients then?
In Austin’s opinion, even the idea of getting customers sounds wrong. Your work should be attracting customers to you, not the other way around.
He explains: “I get back to the community whenever possible. I’ve spoken at a number of WordCamps, my local WordCamp, and I’m regularly hosting the local WordPress meetups here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You could call it sales or marketing, but no, it’s just helping other people. And when people see what you can do, they end up working with you. It’s just kind of a natural thing that happens.”
3. The future of WordPress maintenance is automation.
Austin admits everything he does, as a website developer, should be automated eventually. It’s just a matter of time before it turns into an automated tool, and the same goes for WordPress. “I spend a large portion of my time building tools that automate what I do on a day-to-day basis because I just envision in the future that WordPress maintenance is solved through a completely automated tool. And it would eliminate the need not only for my position but also for the ecosystem. It would be a huge net positive for everyone.”
4. Don’t burn bridges when you’re transitioning into your own business.
Looking back at this beginning as a business owner, Austin admits he had a rough start with sporadic revenue. But it was a good time to take risks. He learned from his experience that you should explore as much as possible and not worry about getting too focused right at the beginning. “One thing I did do to put myself in a good position is I did not burn bridges when I transitioned from one thing to the next. In fact, when I decided to go out on my own, I had like a six-month backlog of my own work waiting for me.”
6. Getting a customer is different than attracting a customer
“One way people find Anchor Hosting services is word of mouth as the primary source. The secondary source is people that read my blog. So I figured out that the end customer is not really my target. Sure, they’re the ones that are paying the bill, but actually providing value for the person that refers them to hosting service is who I’m going after.
So it’s going after the agency; it’s going after the web developer because, at the end of the day, no one really cares where the website’s hosted. They just go with whoever was referred to them by the person who built them the website.
So my blog on anchor.host is very technical, and it’s me just sharing my journey, and the ones that are going to find it most interesting to read are web designers, web developers, agency folks. And those are the ones that I want to attract.”
Want to hear more from Austin? Catch his full episode on the Reverse Engineered Podcast here!
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