Before we dive into this week’s issue, may I ask a quick favor? 🙏

I’m actually building a standalone site for The WP Edge… and one of the things I’d like is some additional reviews of this newsletter by you – the readers.

I actually get a fairly steady stream of testimonials from folks in relation to my services, but considering the number of people who receive and read this newsletter every week, I admit I’m a little short. 😇

So, do you find this newsletter to be a useful addition for you each week? Do you get anything out of it? If so…

Do you mind leaving a quick testimonial about it on this page?

It’s the same success story page I use for services, but you can just choose the “Newsletter” option as the one you’re commenting on. Thanks in advance!

In this week’s issue, I’d like to talk about the cutthroat nature of some competition in the WordPress plugin space… and some of the things I see and hear. And you should know.

Let’s do this…

The CutThroat World Of WordPress Plugins

In the world of WordPress, most developers are pretty giving. They have a “glass half full” mentality and like to have good relationships with others. They share. They help.

But, not everybody likes to play this way. Sometimes, you get some pretty competitive things that are done. Tactics meant to push down a competitor… and try to be on top of the food chain.

In my work, I sometimes have private conversations with people in the business. With developers of some of the plugins we all use on WordPress. And that means I sometimes hear about things that happen in this space that the general public wouldn’t know.

Sometimes it spills out into the public. Last week, with the public launch of FluentCart, Surecart immediately came out with a comparison page for instance. Surprisingly fast, actually, so you could tell they were trying to get a headstart on the SEO. Like one would expect, that comparison page was heavily biased in the direction of SureCart (and still is). But, one little item stood out:

In trying to compare legal compliance between the two, SureCart was trying to shed doubt on things due to the fact that the FluentCart developers are based in Bangladesh. And he said SureCart was based in the US. As if it was better.

The funny thing is, there’s not a lot of difference between the companies. FluentCart, Inc. is also US-registered in Delaware… just like SureCart, Inc. Not only that, but the co-founder of SureCart and, per my understanding, pretty much the entire development team is actually based in India. Even on the SureCart TOS page, they list an Indian address as their operational address. So, what’s the difference? Other than the fact that the other co-founder happens to live in California?

Using one’s country of origin as if it is a negative point seems a little icky. And only being done as heavy-handed competition.

And when people began to notice that and talk about it publicly, that comparison page was silently edited. 🤪

Legal stuff is often one of those things (like security) that people don’t fully understand. So, it is easy to scare consumers on those points. It is easy to make people paranoid. And therefore, it is also easy to use that paranoia for marketing purposes.

Awesome Motive is another known for being a cutthroat competitor. The number of controversial tactics this company does to dominate the WordPress space is often too many to count. Syed is a very competitive guy. For instance, trying to poach developers away from competitor companies. Or having plugins auto-install their other plugins to drive up the download count and market penetration. Or doing partnerships with web hosts to alter the plugin page to position their plugins as “Top Recommendations”.

Now, I get it. Some look at business as a war of dominance. And the WordPress world has a lot of capitalists. I am also quite the capitalist and I believe in healthy competition.

But, I will say… the entire ethos of WordPress is based on sharing and being open. It is a GPL world where things should be free-flowing. Competition is healthy and it drives innovation, but the space is ill-served when you have under-handed things going on to try to push a competitor down, lock consumers into something, or mis-lead.

As a user and consumer of these plugins – and as a person who may find yourself in a position where you are evaluating which to buy – you need to be aware that these things do happen.

You can’t take everything at face value – especially comparison pages. 😜 Many times, there’s deals in place (like commissions and partnerships). Or ulterior motives (like WP Beginner always surprisingly ranking Awesome Motive plugins as best while acting as if it is a legitimate comparison rather than a big ad placement).

It is sometimes a cutthroat world. And these development companies are all trying to get YOU to buy from THEM and not their competition. And a lot of things occur to try to make that happen – often under the surface.

Concierge Client Update

Private Video Vaults

As many of you know, I often record private videos for you. To show how to do something… or sometimes just because it is quicker than typing out a big wall of text. 😇

Problem is, those video links are available one time. And while I can go into my account and see them, there’s no way for YOU to do that. And I’ve had a few clients bring up to me wanting to access videos I had previously recorded for them. And our only option was for me to go look for it or to search Basecamp for where it was mentioned.

So, I’m changing platforms. In the new setup, videos will be stored into a private folder for each client. And, if your’s has been set up, you will now see a “Private Video Vault” button on your site profile inside your account. That will take you right into the new vault where any videos I’ve recorded and archived for you will be found.

Also, the new system (powered by Jumpshare, for those who are curious) automatically transcribes, summarizes and titles videos. So, no more of those “Cleanshot” video titles that describe nothing about what the video is about.

If the link to the Vault is missing for you, it is because it doesn’t exist yet.

Any previously recorded videos from the “clients.blogmarketingacademy.com” will continue to work for now, but will eventually stop. And they are not being brought over, since that’s a completely difference service. If you need anything archived, please either download it or let me know which and I can archive it for you.

I will also be likely setting up links to your Vault as a link inside Basecamp projects, for easy access. It is a manual process for me to do, so feel free to remind me. 😇

Lastly, keep in mind that all videos are downloadable, so you can always keep local copies and be totally independent of the weird changes I may make around here. 🤪

WordPress News & Updates

TutorLMS 3.9. TutorLMS 3.9 was released with some new features for course sites, including built-in note taking for students, certificate support for course bundles, easy ability to reset course progress, and more. Check out the announcement

FluentCart Moving Quickly. After the official launch of FluentCart, they don’t rest. Last week, version 1.2.3 was released. New integrations include LifterLMS and LearnDash. Numerous small tweaks and enhancements as well.

Fluent Support 1.10 Brings FluentCart Support. Obviously, one of the joys of “Fluent” products is how well they work together. So, Fluent Support has now been updated to bring us official integration with FluentCart. This means you can quickly see people’s purchase history on their support ticket, embed the support desk into FluentCart, etc. Check out the full announcement.

Kadence Gets A Marquee Block. Kadence Blocks gets an update which includes a new block for marquee effects. If you’re not familiar, this means you can have scrolling text, icons and images. Personally, this is not a feature I would usually use much seeing as I’m not a big fan of marquee, but if you want to have a ticker on your site, this will do it for you. Check out the details here.

Hidden Gems. Finding “hidden gems” in the public WordPress plugin repo is pretty difficult. These are the plugins that are really quite good, yet have low download counts so a lot of people tend to look over them. Nick Hamze created a little plugin called Hidden Gems to help find them. The plugin is designed to help find high-rated plugins with low download counts.

Automattic Files Counter-Claims Against WP Engine. Automattic has filed their counter-claims against WP Engine and Silver Lake – which you can view in this 162 page PDF if you’re brave. 😜 This is Automattic’s case for why this entire thing began in the first place. As always, it includes some of the “inside scoop” on things, including in this case that Automattic was actually approached to purchase WP Engine at once point, but declined. You can read more on The Repository, where Rae is doing a great job covering this ongoing story.

ConversionBridge Teases New Feature. Derek Ashauer, the developer of Conversion Bridge, teased on his X profile an upcoming brand new Google Analytics dashboard right inside of WordPress. This is going to be a great addition to the plugin… and yet another reason to avoid MonsterInsights. 😜 Of course, I’m not a fan of Google Analytics for many reasons, but there’s no doubt it is super popular because it is “free”. So, making it where you can understand the data without going cross-eyed – and do it inside of WordPress itself – will be a welcome enhancement.

Grow Traffic On Autopilot? A new tool has been launched called Republish AI that purports to use “AI agents” to research keywords, write content and optimize for SEO – all on automatic. Looks interesting, but not gonna lie… also seems spammy as hell. Tools like this attract lazy idiots and clutter the web with horse hockey.

AIOSEO + AI Power. Continuing on the AI bandwagon, AIOSEO has launched a new AI Assistant with the plugin that will “write” content based on a prompt. This is part of the new release of AIOSEO 4.8.8. They also built in a new LLMs.txt generator to help optimize your site for AI models. It’s funny, though… a tool to help AI find your site, which contains content written by AI. Talk about scratching your butt and then sniffing your finger. 😜

WP Forms Gets A Camera Field. I am not a user of WP Forms (because I tend not to use Awesome Motive plugins), but it is hard to deny how this plugin pushes forms forward sometimes. Case in point, they just launched a new Camera field which will allow you to use your site’s forms for people to access their webcam for photos or videos. Think about registration forms where people can upload a selfie for their profile, or a testimonial form where people can easily record and upload a video testimonial. To be honest, I hope this drives other forms plugins to do the same (looking at your, Fluent Forms 😉 ) Kudos to WP Forms on this one. 🙏

The Hidden Side Of SaaS

Now, along the lines of the article above, I would also like to remind you of the hidden side of SaaS products. Because both Awesome Motive and Brainstorm Force have developed WordPress plugins that are actually bridges to SaaS (software as a service).

In fact, this is positioned as a strength for SureCart. SureCart is marketed to WordPress users, however it is a hosted application platform. The SureCart plugin is just a bridge, essentially, to make their platform work within the WordPress environment. They actually do a pretty good job of making it all seem very integrated.

In the case of Awesome Motive, we can look at OptinMonster. It started out as a WordPress plugin, but is now a SaaS with a bridge plugin.

Now, to be clear, this has it’s advantages. It can sometimes make for a more reliable application to not be tied directly to the sometimes “noisy” world of WordPress sites. So, there’s nothing BAD going on here. But, it is an architectural design choice you need to know about… because it also has a negative side.

If we once again look at that comparison page for SureCart vs FluentCart, look at how they talk about “data ownership”.

For Surecart, “you own your data, accessible via API”… while FluentCart is Unchecked and says the data is stored on your server. Like…. bruh. 🤪 This is perhaps one of the dumbest points on that entire page (and there’s a lot of them, to be honest).

(Funny, they’ve also edited this point to show the green check for FluentCart, too. I guess they pay attention to feedback. 😜 )

One of the primary benefits of FluentCart is that you OWN the platform! If it is on your server, you own it in the literal sense. On the flip side, when Surecart hosts your data and the only way to access it is via API, you do NOT have unfettered access to the data. They can say it is your’s, but if they stop providing that API access, you’ll quickly find out who actually owns it.

That’s the hidden side of SaaS. The data resides on THEIR servers, not your’s. And even when they say you own it, reality is… they do. Who is hosting it makes all the difference here.

I’ll be blunt… some of these companies do view data lock-in as a FEATURE for them when they decide to go the SaaS route. While it has it’s development advantages, they’re not ignorant of the fact that this gives them far more control. Of you and your data. And they know full well that this means you are more likely to need to continue to pay for their service because of the degree of difficulty going elsewhere.

They’re not stupid about it.

When you are more locked-in, it means they likely have a longer-term customer. It increases their MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and increases the company valuation for a potential exit down the road.

This is the hidden side of SaaS hidden in plain sight.

You either care…. or you don’t. Personally, I do. And this is why I am such an advocate for digital sovereignty and why I would never recommend to you a plugin that operates as a bridge to a SaaS product. Even if there are some good ones, I’ll always be clear about that because I take actual data ownership seriously.

When these Saas products say you own your data, it is lip service. Often, the data export options are limited. After all, they don’t want it to be TOO easy to switch to another service. 😜 And again, if their API goes away for some reason, you’re screwed.

In the world of crypto, there’s the old saying… “not your keys, not your coin”. It means you don’t actually OWN your Bitcoin unless you have your own wallet and you hold the keys. If it is a hosted wallet, it can be more secure in some ways, but could have disadvantages. There have been instances where the exchange went offline or there was a major hack…. and people lost access to their crypto.

The same goes here. If you don’t have the data stored on your own site, then it isn’t your’s.

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.