It seems that a growing trend among marketplaces is to leverage a combination of the following pieces of strategy: Volume – Get as many authors in as possible. Brand Names – Get significant existing theme shops to commit to selling their products. Affiliate Program – Open up an affiliate program that works. Rewards, Bonuses – Create rewards based on sales figures and community engagement. Tier Pricing – Price competitively and tier the pricing and author cut based on sales, performance. Remix a couple times and you’ve got a decent shot at making a marketplace not fall completely flat on it’s […]

Ok ok ok. So much needless drama (and headline) – I’ll admit it. But I’m having a bit of fun here, so cut me some slack! But last night Chris Lema and Jake Goldman had a few keen words to say about WordPress and Business (and “amateur” hour). Hosted by Matt of Matt Report, I was initially invited to join in but was unable to because I had to eat dinner, which I thought was much more important at that very moment. Check it out after the jump – some great thoughts overall and I’m glad Matt was able to schedule […]

Ghost continues their development and they are hitting on all cylinders, for serious. In their latest update (for backers only) they shared the fact that they’ve seen over 27,000 core submissions: That’s all for now. We’re powering away on core development. There have been over 27,000 code additions to the core repository in the last month. That’s some code for ya. I’m excited to continue to see the development and happy to be a backer of the project via Kickstarter.

Just in case you were more of a visual person then this comparison chart might be helpful that overviews some of the more popular platforms. I’m an extremely visual person like whoa. Take a look:

I’ve already shared my thoughts twice (here and here) on the new iOS 7 that’s coming out publicly sometime in September of this (as reported by multiple sources) and you’re probably sick of all the noise around it already, but I personally I’m quite excited because it’s a dramatic departure from what has been done historically and it’s a clear sign of leadership fro Jony Ive. And, I think that WordPress can be inspired by the great design that Apple creates, their clear execution, and their obvious leadership within the marketplace at large. I gain a lot of inspiration everytime […]

MagPress, the plugin that will allow you to turn your hard developed content into a real legit publication, has opened it’s doors and is here for you to start using! So that eBook that you’ve been dying to write is just a few less clicks away than you had originally thought. This gives you much of what you need from content editing to layout creation! Publish your ebooks in PDF, ePub or even .Mobi versions. It’s a premium plugin but for the cost ($49) could easily be recouped by the functionality that the plugin brings (and the value created). But […]

WideArea is a super-simple and very lightweight JavaScript and CSS library that simply creates a writing space for you. Sure, it’s not WordPress and it doesn’t do really much of anything beyond creating a space to type (not even a native export) – but there’s something beautiful in it’s simplicity, right?

Time for another freebie that I hope will help with all the awesomeness that you’re rocking out this week! Perhaps you need a device mockup tool that’ll add some more *zing* to that already-great website of yours? Check out PixelSign’s HTML5 device mockup solution:

ZURB, the very famous design firm (although they claim that they are much, much more than just a design firm) announced late last week that they are getting into the marketplace world by introducing templates that you can purchase. My mistake, this is not associated with ZURB, the well-respected design agency. I got my lines crossed! Of course, how could any new online marketplace be any good without a WordPress category? Of course not! Here’s their note to the world announcing their launch:

It’s hard to keep up with all the new blogging platforms that are cropping up every single week – my inbox is full of new examples and new apps that many of you suggest that we cover. I’ll admit that many of the submissions are not entirely good – it’s not that they aren’t worth a post but it’s that they don’t seem to push the envelope further down the blogging timeline in terms of usability, design, and feature sets. Or, sometimes, it’s just not as much of a philosophical shift as one would hope to find as “blogging” these days […]