Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Walmsley, Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. This is episode number 206 in titled FOMO versus no FOMO. It was published on Thursday, the 19th of November, 2020, my name's Nathan Wrigley. And just a couple of quick things before we begin. Black Friday is just around the corner and love it or hate it.
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Hopefully the new format is something that you will approve of go and check her. Listen, I'd very much appreciate any feedback that you've got. The WP Bill's podcast is brought to you today by AB split test. Do you want to set up your AB split test in record time? Like in a couple of minutes, use your existing pages and test anything against anything else.
Buttons, images, headers, rows, anything. And the best part is it works with Beaver builder, mentor and the WordPress block editor. You can check it out and get a free [email protected]. Okay. What have we got for you today? It's David Walmsley and I having a chat it's called FOMO versus no FOMO and FOMO.
I hope, it stands for fear of missing out. And it's all about the ways that you can market things. Scarcity. How can you deploy this with your WordPress website, clients to get more clients? How can they deploy it to get people, to buy their stuff? We're in that time of the year black Friday when FOMO is raging.
And so David and I have a nice chat and. Hopefully you'll find something of use in the podcast episode. I hope that you enjoy it. Hello, today's debate is FOMO versus no FOMO. And this one's going to be our penultimate debate. It's the painful drawn-out episode before the edge of your seat. Nailbiting end of season finale.
Yeah, and was terrible, is also probably the most ironic of all the titles. Cause literally no world will have a fear of missing out on this, based on the title alone. It's entirely true. I was going to draw that comparison if you hadn't so well done. so we've got to set up the debate here, what we're talking about.
So there's a lot of things that were thrown into this one. There's. The angle, first of, as a marketing tools should be using this when building client sites, trying to invoke FOMO or encouraging clients to do that. And then we've got the other personal side the bit haven't we, which we've talked about before, whether a FOMO kind of affects our buy-in of WordPress related software, which certainly does.
Yeah. the, the strange thing about this one, sorry to interrupt your preface there. is that I think no matter whether you agree with it or not, there are certain situations in where it's effective. So I suppose any marketer would tell you what if it works and it's legal, then it should be allowed, but we'll explore whether it's moral, maybe as much as whether it's legal.
Yeah, because when you were telling me about a documentary that you've watched a popular Netflix one, and that kind of taps into this whole thing, this concern generally about our culture and how it's changing because of FOMO or related things. Yeah. So you're gonna I'm going to go pro on I, on this one, I'm gonna, I'm going to argue the case for using FOMO.
Yes. Yes. And I think you've got a really strong, fairly straightforward case, in terms of its, its legacy or its sustainability. I don't know if that's such a strong case, but in terms of whether it works or not, I think it's a bit of a slam dunk. I can't, I cannot argue with much of what you're about to say, but hopefully we'll be able to chip away at some aspects of it.
So yeah. Interesting debate. So for those of you that don't know, we're going to take FOMO to be not just in terms of sales, but really any kind of fear response that you've got when marketing comes your way, whether that's fear of missing out, but it could also encompass things like scarcity. and other things like that.
So it's not just fear of missing out on a particular product at a particular time. It might be based upon how many units of it are available, or it might be the time of year, all the time of day or whatever it might be any way in which you can get people to respond positively by introducing some aspect of fear into the equation.
Yeah, I'll just start off. Shall I read it with it? I think it just seemed FOMO is a sort of, kind of modern term and it's a, and I think it's a reaction to the kind of fast paced, short attention span. Consumption of the information that we've now got on the net. And I think, it's something that we, in terms of selling it to clients.
I feel that I always need to say you've got a place in a sense of urgency because people are now on multiple devices. They've got very limited attention. You've got to do something to grab them. You can't. In terms of their copy. A lot of them would just do the usual stuff, wherever a family run business, we'd been running funded, blahdy blast stuff that nobody reads any longer.
So I've always felt there's a need to introduce many of the aspects, scarcity and urgency, all of those kinds of things that make up FOMO into websites in order to just level things out, just to get a chance to be seen. Yeah, it's interesting because if you were to rewind the clock to when both you and I were children, basically the range of things that you could put chess were largely limited by geography.
That is to say, what, the town in which I grew up, the range of shops that were within walking distance or a short drive, that was the constraints on what I could buy. if I, if my parents needed a sofa, it very likely came out of a shop. Within a few miles of where we lived and if I wanted to buy some music, it would be limited by what the shop had available or what they could order for me.
W my expectations of things was really limited. Now there's just no limit. There's little surely, no limit whatsoever. I could buy absolutely anything. At any point, just by browsing on Amazon, the limits of what I could buy really totally governed by the geography. And now there is no such limitation.
especially with giant. International corporations like Amazon, the I could buy anything at any point, literally, almost any item that's available on the planet I could have on my doorstep by this time tomorrow, just about. and so that means that the competition and the marketing that needs to be done to push your products through is much more difficult.
you've really got a cut through, almost a trillion other products to get my attention span. And because of that, you need other tactics. And this just feels like a really perfect tactic for those people who are trying to push something. It's interesting how it works on the web though. How do you, is there anything that you offer any product that's related to, WordPress website building, which encapsulates an aspect of FOMO?
not really, but it's really just that I think with clients, I guess one of the last sites I've built, they've introduced an element of that because they're going to do the, of their product the first. 10 bills are going to go at a one-off lower price. so they've, I didn't, it wasn't something I suggested.
It's just something that they thought of themselves, but I think, it's the kind of attention span. That's the kind of thing they needed to do, but I didn't see any of their competitors. Doing didn't have an element of that anywhere. And maybe they did it because I was suggesting when you did a landing page, there were certain elements, certain psychological triggers that you wanted to get people to respond to.
So maybe they came up with the idea based on I'd said. Yeah. So I guess in some way, why I'm arguing for FOMO is that I feel there's an. And necessity. If you'd like to bring forward all those kind of psychological, they are tricks, it is just understanding your audience where it isn't it, how people are.
And yeah. Do you have any insight because I know that you've got a background in psychology and whilst you're not PhD in psychology, you've got more of an understanding of it than I have. Do you know, is this something that. Most of us are susceptible to, is this some kind of aspect of human nature, our biology, that we can largely be fooled by.
and if so, have markets has been doing this forever or is this something entirely new? The reason I say that is because it feels like some of these tricks have been deployed throughout my life. we'd have Christmas sales. Or January sales and so on in the shops. and there was definitely an element of, this stuff is going to run out.
There's going to be scarce too. The price is going to drop for a very small amount of time, get in there fast. Otherwise it'll disappear. So there was an element of that, but it didn't feel as if it was as rump top and as hyper tuned as it is now. Now honestly, and I don't know, because, I did it, I did psychology as an academic subject, but I think most of the stuff that's usable, that's used in marketing, it's more pop psychology and you learn more from those kinds of things.
honestly, I don't know. I can't think of like academic studies with any of the things related to this, so I know no more than you. It does feel like it more successful than ever possibly on the internet because of the way that messages can be spread so readily and quickly in. Facebook posts or Facebook groups and so on.
And you have these little anchor claves, so we have a plethora of WordPress related Facebook groups. And so the message can spread like wildfire, if a really good deal comes along within a matter of days, just about everybody that you want to access, who's a WordPress fan or might have need of the plugin, for example, that you're selling, they can all be alerted to this.
this limited time offer, whatever it might be. and so that, it just feels like the tools that we've got now enable this to happen much more effectively. So maybe it's been going on for ages, but it feels like it's much more prevalent now than it ever was. Yeah. And what we've always unlike you alluded to the fact that there's always been like the January sales or we've got black Friday and cyber Monday.
Haven't we, which I think is global now because of the internet. we never really had that in the UK before. And, but I think these are like social accepted. It's a game. If you didn't take part in that, it's very difficult not to take part in that. There's an expectation on all suppliers to take part in it because people save up for these things, the notes come in, and I think it's seen as a game, there's one thing about FOMO that's used, I think a lot or when it's done well, it's got a sense of exclusivity as well about it.
you will often find this, there might be a special deal, but that deal has been negotiated with somebody who runs a lifetime deals, Facebook group, or it's just for AppSumo people or whatever. There's a sense of like only you are going to get this deal right now. Yeah. Yeah. I do know what you mean.
It, that the messaging seems to be so persuasive. And I know that at various times, you and I have fallen foul of this to the point where yeah. I've partied with money, which, for me, and I'm sure is the case with you, money is not a commodity that I treat likely, I purchase things in the real world based largely upon need.
I need a particular thing. I don't know, I might need a lawn mower. I might need a new carpet or whatever it might be. And I need those things. So I do dishes mostly go out and research and look into things, but somehow the whole lifetime deal. FOMO trigger seems to short circuit, that whole process and work very effectively managing to get me to part with money for something that I'm not entirely sure I even need often.
And that's the bit that I fail to understand about myself. I don't quite understand how. Over the years with things like AppSumo. And now increasingly these Facebook groups that are offering similar lifetime deals and so on, I ended up parting with money for things that I think I might need at best and often at worst, just think, that'd be good to have.
And it just, in most cases sits around. Doing nothing. And so what I'm trying to say here in a sort of rambling way is that I am really guilty of this and it absolutely works on me. It totally manages to somehow pull the leavers in my head that needs to be pulled to get me to part with money for a non rational cause.
Yeah. And you've made that, we've talked for so many years now and you've made me realize that I am like you in the fact that sometimes it works on me and I'm looking for these kinds of deals and they get caught up in the format. Sometimes they're just completely reject. And then all of those kind of, that kind of marketing is not going to work on me because I know I've bought stuff or I'm not in the market.
Oh, I think we go through waves. So I think both of you and I do treat it a little bit like a game. w we know the deal. It's really interesting about this stuff as well, is that the. So you go into a Facebook group or you go onto AppSumo or something like that, where there's, this kind of tactic is widely used.
And, and it manages to encourage so much commentary. So there might be a lifetime deal and it might run to hundreds of people commenting upon it. Whereas if that same product we're not on a lifetime deal, you can guarantee you that it would have. Almost zero interaction. The mere fact that it's on a lifetime deal and there's a chance that this could be of great value.
And there's a chance that you could use. It seems to propel it, 10 X is the interest in it. So even if they don't sell things, they've done a great job at marketing themselves. If nothing less. Yeah, absolutely. it's, it is plenty. Yeah. Lots of negativity in a way, but things that maybe not good about as human beings, the keeping up with the Joneses type thing, so if you see other people are doing it, you really need to be in with that as well.
And people take great pride in having bought stuff and telling other people in groups, what they do own. particularly the enjoy the moment, when it's out of the deal and you own it. And it costs other people a lot more money, that's some of the joy of buying some of this stuff.
Maybe not. It's a positive thing. I think where FOMO can be quite positive. Is when it budges somebody to buy something, which might have been good for them, but they might not have done. I've got an example that I put here that I thought of with, we talked about the magic email about how we use that to try and get clients, to talk to us, whether they seem to be kicking the tires or they've disappeared.
And in. Many cases. That's the case with me. There's a lot of people that you think they really did need to get on with that website. It would probably earn them some money. It would probably help them with their businesses, but they just leave it. So some sort of sense of creating some urgency with that is probably in their interests.
And also, I think there's a couple of purchases. We were talking about this recently about that we've bought from AppSumo that we may not have bought, but we're pleased we did, for better uptime was one of mine. And, not AppSumo in this case. Hexo so I'm going to mention those two products that did lifetime deals, which I was slightly cynical about because I could do without the, my business didn't need them, but I was so pleased.
I got them. Yeah, it's interesting. So it pushes you towards making sure purchases, not necessarily based upon common sense. And in some cases it turns out well, but I'm sure that many of us can point to examples where we've been sucked in by the fear of missing out on something. And it's just backfired.
some of the counter am I all right to brace some counter arguments at this point, or we you've got more that you wish to say first. No. Okay. I'll try and counter you. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. So many of these have been raised by you, but, so just from straying into territory here, which I don't really have the, the credentials to stray into, but I'm going to anyway, the fear of missing out.
Could potentially be seen as a bit of a, a mental health issue. And what I mean by that is, you ask you are pulling, like I said, pulling triggers earlier that can cause feelings of anxiety and things like that, it's playing into well, greed is possibly too strong a word, but it might be the opposite greed.
You may be that you wish to avail yourself of a deal, which, just stops you wasting money. But I think sometimes it creates a bit of greediness in us. the idea that while I could buy the $200 tier for 30,000, I don't know. Iterations of whatever it might be, or I could go for the $400 deal and get 80,000 instead, stand out.
Yeah, that sounds better. I'll go for that. Just in case I'll use it. And you're clearly thinking to yourself I've never done anything like this in my life. I probably won't even use one of them, but something kicks in some part of ourselves that we maybe don't want to recognize. something, like I said, maybe called greed or what have you.
And, maybe it's getting us into situations that we don't need to be. And we're buying things, spending hundreds of dollars possibly on things that we really are not going to make use of. We're not going to need, we'll regret it down the line. And so there's those kinds of arguments, a side of ourselves that we don't.
Probably want to paint too large, but we feel this sort of greedy desire to consume things that we think for us. A good deal. get it while it lasts. Yeah. No. And I think if you do a, as I did a Google search on FOMO, the, most of the articles I saw that weren't talking about how to use it in marketing.
We're talking about. exactly what you said, the mental health issues, particularly about our youth in kind of modern, with modern technology and social networks and about how that was affecting people. This, you mentioned to me earlier, maybe you want to talk about that, how you can see impacts on.
You know your children to a certain degree. Yeah. So the, I think it's just first thing to say is that we're just living in a GPU and I are living in a generation where we've grown up with technology and there's been a slow, but inexorable rise of technology dominating people's lives, but we've been insulated from that.
From much of it, because our ability to be cynical about certain things as evolved in a slowly, we've had it slowly creep up on us computers. We're not really a wide commodity. When we were kids, they slowly morphed into being sitting on everybody's desktop. And then they slowly morphed into being in everybody's pocket.
And that's feels like where we are now, but I think the children growing up these days, there wasn't that evolution there. Now, in many cases, they turn, let's say, I don't know, 11, 12, 13, 14, whatever the age may be. And then suddenly this device is in their pocket, Kate, which is, a complete short circuit of.
All the things that we've taught them over time, you've got to do all your homework and stuff and you've got to get on with life and you've got to make friends and all of a sudden all of the attention because of the platforms and the incredibly clever algorithms that they've got. sock the children in.
And so the marketing channels circumvent things that you would normally have done, like in my case, marketing came through magazines and it came through the television and things like that. And there was an opportunity for my parents to step in and say, you haven't got money for that.
They were watching the same commercial at the same time. You can't afford that. And so on. And, and anyway, it's not the kind of thing that we think is suitable for you. Whereas now all of these things are being done. You've got. you've got clever Instagram, marketers who are being bought by large trainer manufacturers to wear their products and to make it seem cool.
and I just, I feel that we're at this point where we need to educate our children about this stuff, but I'm not sure that. That we're in possession of the technology to do that. the documentary that you alluded to earlier is now you may disagree with this after seeing it, you may think Wrigley, that was just awful.
nobody should watch that or take any notes of it, but it's called the social dilemma and it paints a rather. Dystopian picture of what we're doing to ourselves and what we're allowing to create in our brains. And you know what, when I say that I'm meaning like forging neural pathways of addiction to the devices that we've gotten, we're allowing platforms, let's say for example, like Facebook to get into our.
Stream of consciousness in a way that television adverts never did. once the television was off, the television has no way of confronting you with an advert. Whereas Facebook really does. They've got the notification panel on your iOS device or Android. And in this way, they can keep you coming back.
And the whole fear of missing out, it doesn't necessarily just relate to products. In many cases, it might relate to like social interactions. So for example, it might be that, my three kid and my three friends, I should say, and I'm describing an interaction that might occur to children here. My three kids, sorry, my three friends, they're all going out now.
My problem now is I've got some homework to do. And I have the information that my best mates are going out and having a really nice time. what do you do? And it's very difficult. These situations we didn't face, but anyway, so FOMO encapsulates more than just commerce. Yeah. And I think maybe it just affect us as well.
we see, we know each other because of a Facebook group, and were fed certain information to us. Most of the deals that I hear about that attract me, come. Out of a Facebook group, often from you, Nathan, for the things that I buy, but I'm quite pleased with the things that I've bought, but, but I noticed this happening and, there is that sense of exclusivity.
I think, I'm in a question, a sub-question in, this is whether this kind of new wave of FOMO marketing is good for WordPress generally. and, the products that are made for WordPress and I have a few doubts about that. I'm supposed to be all green. The pro FOMO because we get some fabulous deals here, through it, which I've availed myself of many WordPress products and which I probably wouldn't have bought, but I'm pleased I have such a cheap rate, but I do worry do you, it almost feels to me now that the process of launching almost any product online is to launch with a lifetime deal.
That almost feels to me like batch that's the playbook. That you get your MVP, you get some feedback once it's ready to go do an initial lifetime deal. To get in some, probably much needed capital and then go from there. how many products can you think of in the last six months they've launched with a lifetime deal and I'm hoping the answer is quite a lot.
I can think of absolutely loads of things that have been on lifetime deal. So it, I feel it is the way that it's going. It's just a way of, it's almost like raising seed capital. if you've got something you just want to prove that it's worth continuing with. Do it on a lifetime deal and hope for the best, the problem with the whole lifetime deal.
FOMO thing is that there now also seems to be an underbelly of people who have tried out a product, sold it on a lifetime deal, realized that either it was never going to succeed or there wasn't enough interest in it. And then they just abandoned it. And so that endeavor to keep the whole thing going, has been lost right at the outset.
And we've all heard stories about, companies that have really abused their lifetime deal buyers because they've promised that such and such will happen in, on this roadmap and so on and so forth. And it's just not material. And so from that point of view, I think that's really detrimental. To the WordPress space, if we're going to buy things and then they just evaporate.
what's it called? There's even a word for it. Isn't it a vaporware or something like that. You have paperwork and that just tells you Tom, that's going on. So again, we've totally potentially flipped, but I think. I think if you can buy things and you feel good about it, and it works out on the rare occasion that maybe it works out really well for you buying some kind of lifetime FOMO deal.
That's great. But it doesn't seem to be the norm. The norm. Yeah. I feel is either that you buy it and never use it or that you buy it and it wasn't what you expected or that you buy it and it completely fails. And you never hear from them again. Or they go out of business or something and. I'm sure that if you're a product maker, this is your kind of worst nightmare in a way, you've built it.
You're hoping to have some sort of sustainable income until quite recently, that sustainable income model felt fairly secure as a monthly or an annual subscription. And now the masses are clamoring for you to release a lifetime deal all times and Saying that they're going to withhold, I'm not going to buy anything unless it's on a lifetime deal.
This kind of thing is emerging and you can't have a product on lifetime deal forever. Yeah. again, it's become a sort of model whether accidental or it's just led by the buying public, thrive themes is an example that I know of permanent. Oh, I do. Sorry. Yes. So I've caught them. they're constantly on a life.
they have been for three, maybe four years, but it has gone up the price on that. But you do think, I wonder if that was a deliberate marketing plan. So there was always a sense of FOMO with it. and then they're not the only people to do this. I know I. Watch TV view on them. And somebody was talking about this model being quite common, particularly in that type of process.
they're using F FOMO all the time. It's a permanent on thing. Aren't they are increasing the prices as they go along. But generally it's the idea that if you get in now you get this lifetime deal, which is going to be better than later. Yeah, I get what you mean. I suppose the sort of underlying current with all that, the underlying problem with that model is, and I should say that thrive carts is actually from my point of view, from where I'm standing.
I think it's a cracking product. but you're right. They've had this model where it's lifetime. I don't know that they've ever been dishonest about that. In other words, it always felt it always is. It feels to me like lifetime is a limited thing. In other words, we're doing lifetime pricing.
Get it while you can. It'll run out soon. That feels like the mantra, but I don't think in the case of Thrivecart they ever said that they just said, it's, maybe they did, maybe I'm wrong about that, for a limited time. So maybe they are playing that game a little bit, but certainly it hasn't moved off lifetime pricing for many years, but the price has gone up.
So they've managed to iterate the software. It has definitely got better. They've added loads of features, but they're obviously seeing this as a. It was a successful business model, subscription seemed to be taking over the universe. now maybe not. And I can think of so many things on my Mac that I've bought as a one off fee, like for example, logic, which is an audio program I use, I bought it from Apple one-time price, but there was no hint of.
Fear of missing out or any of that's just the price that you pay, but Thrivecart seem to have deployed this in a sort of FOMO way and been very successful with it and managed to get good reviews and bump the price up. But I'm not sure that will work forever because you see a growing trend of people and I am going to call out thrive cart for this because you, you hear mocking comments in some Facebook groups about.
The pricing of thrive cards because people just mocking the fact that, it's always on lifetime. It's not that's just totally weird that they would say that, calling them out on the fact that this lifetime pricing never ends well from where they're sitting. It's probably right.
Successful. Why not continue with something that's successful, but from the outside, in the end up, not sure if it doesn't erode trust in your company. Yeah, I think that is the difficult. Yeah, I think, on your side of things where FOMO doesn't work, we've talked about products a lot and do you think services can be sold with FOMO in the same way without.
Let go saying, road interest. Yeah. I'm really struggling to think of any kind of way that I could sell what I do. so basically build a website, maintain a website, iterate on a website. add new features to the website and so on. I'm really struggling to think of a way that I would feel comfortable doing that as a lifetime pricing, just simply because I don't have the reach now, if I had a reach into thousands of people, I had a big audience, then it might make sense because the impact of the amount of money I could raise very quickly might be worth doing.
if I could suddenly raise. I don't know, I'm making numbers up 250,000 pounds out of selling a lifetime deal, to some service that I had. Fair enough. But I just have nothing like that. No reach like that. It's just local clients. So to me, I can't imagine any way of putting FOMO, the only situation where I could put phone by when.
I feel successfully is just like on a quote. When I quote for a particular job, I say, look, this price, this pricing is valid until, and I might say a month. And really all I'm doing there is saying, come back to us. With this exact project and we'll all know that price as opposed to, yeah. I'm not really trying to create any sort of sense of, but it's literally, don't come back to us in a, in six weeks time with seven more things that you want to do and try and get it for the same price.
yeah, I'm struggling to see how we could apply it. in the building websites business, but certainly in the WordPress ecosystem it's used all the time. Isn't it, services, lifetime pricing on, I dunno, I've even heard of it on hosting for goodness sake. That just seems like almost suicide, but I've heard of it, but plugins, lifetime deals all the time.
loads of things that it could be useful, but just not in the area where I sit. maybe when we think of FOMO, we think of this kind of obvious marketing, but maybe all of the aspects of it, we do employ in our services, maybe also with digital products and not actually entirely free, but if you promise to support them, they do take up.
The service time as well. So I think maybe we do naturally invoke some FOMO where we can. So if I'm just mentioning the magic email, that's a sense of trying to get somebody to respond a bit of urgency. And you might just say, look, I can start on your website now and maybe a bit lower because I've got the busy, but I've got to be busy later or something.
You might just take any opportunity to. To show that you're not so easily available, but they might get the deal now. Oh yeah. people, we put our prices up, so you're starting out in your web business and go, I'll do the websites now because I'm actually still building up my portfolio.
So I'll give you a bit less on that. But my prices would normally be higher as is in line with other people or whatever you would say. It may not be exactly the truth, but you'd probably try and manipulate people. Yeah. So they valued you more. Have you ever done. I think you maybe don't want to answer this question.
Have you ever done like fake discounting? That is to say, you've put out a price, let's say that you want to build somebody's website. And really the price that you want to get from them is $900 or something. And you've just said, it'll be $1,200, but if you get it in the next week, I'll just knock some dollars off and we'll take it down to 900 instead of you ever deployed any of that shady stuff.
I tried something once it was a complete fail, actually, no work came out of it. I told you I did some cold calling stuff with a special deal, particularly people who were connected to my colleague, that I would do these kind of quick sites. And then I knew that wouldn't spend a lot of money, but absolutely fail.
Nobody took me up at all, but it looks so NAF. So yeah, the point that. In this day and age, when we're confronted with FOMO all the time that most people I think are becoming highly alert to it. And the BS Amata is highly tuned to figure out well, hang on a minute. If you're giving me a website for $900, that's the price now.
It's not 1200 and it never was because you could have afforded it at that point. So I must admit I'm very skeptical of this kind of stuff. if something is on offer, something substantial on offer, I realized that, maybe the commodities can be lowered in price for a finite amount of time.
But if you can build a website today for $900, probably you can build it tomorrow for $900 as well. Yeah, I guess most of this is about how well it's done as well. Going back to that kind of ecosystem thing. I'm in two minds about this one, because part of me thinks this may be a good, because there's a lot of people out there.
particularly for where I am indie, excuse me, in the East who, I wanted to break through, got new developers, lots of new skills coming out there. They want to break into say, build into the next WordPress. Big, SEO plugin or, forms plugin, but it's already a crowded market. It's their only way in isn't it into the ecosystem.
If they're doing pretty much something that's already in a saturated market is to offer kind of some special deals, but also, yeah. But the plus side of that is, they might turn out to be just the best people that do in these. And also it there's a lot of new people coming into the WordPress ecosystem who won't pay the big money that existed in established, owners of these plugins want to charge.
So yeah, no, yeah. You're good. I think you're totally right. And the reason I'm saying that is because I have been the recipient. Of a deal that I probably never would have bought. In other words, their marketing property never would have reached me unless it had been a lifetime deal. And as a result, people were talking about it in the Facebook groups that I frequent and I needed something similar.
All of those things aligned and it worked out and in some cases I've been really happy. And so I don't feel like I've been FOMO mode. If that's a word, successfully in those cases, I just feel it was a good deal. Whereas in other cases, I feel like, I dunno, this just feels so fake.
This just feels so weird. There's just something fishy about this. So yeah, when it works to my benefit, I'm happy. Totally happy for fun to have been deployed, but when it doesn't work to my benefit or it's a product that I don't need, I just think, Oh no FOMO go away. There is, I think the bad side of it is I wonder in the WordPress ecosystem itself, whether it's just leading people to go after, to do.
Pretty much the same thing as an established plugin is already doing, rather than try and invent some subsection, some kind of I'm sure there are lots of gaps. I've found them myself. I can't think of one to mine, but things that are missing in WordPress that really wish was around and no one's producing that.
So then maybe just, using this FOMO stuff to go after the forms or the SEO or whatever it is as direct competition. So I wonder if it just leads to a bit of that as well. I wonder if we were cause clearly neither of us are plugin developers. I wonder how much heartache this causes. those people who've got products and they know that it's a value and they know that out there are rivals who are more established than them who are charging, I don't know, 20, $30 a month or whatever it might be.
And it just seems so galling to have to go through the life time pricing model or the FOMO model in some way, just to get recognition. But I guess that's the game we play, Just that's how it is, but it must be all this hard work and you've got to then service these people for life. And many of them probably won't value it because they've just paid once and they are now on the same tier as everybody.
Else's really difficult. If there are any developers who face this frustration, it'd be quite interesting to. To hear about your annoyances and grievances or good experiences, I suppose in the comments. Yeah. Interesting. I, so caught with this, in that I wish the whole FOMO thing would go away because I can feel.
That I have been partied with money that I shouldn't have partnered with. I've been burned by this and without a doubt, but I think it's almost a bit like balancing some scales. The amount of times that I've been burnt, I feel on balance is about equal to the amount of times that I've had a real success.
I could name you five or six things that I use constantly that appear to have. Got through the lifetime deal, FOMO phase and are now on a rock solid subscription basis. And I'm benefiting massively from that. And I feel really good about that, but I'm still a bit annoyed at myself for letting my guard down for the ones that went wrong.
Yeah, I would say the same for me. And I think overall, and even if the products themselves haven't gone on to be a huge success, I think the value I've had out of them for what I've paid, I'm quite happy, although cynical like you about the model and the playing on people's emotions and perhaps not the.
Best side of who I am. it's worked out quite well. Yeah. Yeah. The, the sort of possible way to end this is to say that, WP Builds are about to launch a lifetime deal. and you get, you got access to all of our back catalog of, Podcast episodes for the grand sum of zero pounds.
There's no FOMO in podcasting. Just listen or don't listen. I think it sounds like we're done now. Yeah, that sounds like the perfect place to end it. The answer is we don't know if it works for, buy it if it doesn't then B write it. Nice one. That was a good chat. Thanks, David. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Thank you. Bye. there you go. I hope that you enjoyed that episode. Always a pleasure chatting to David Walmsley about these things. And it's such an interesting subject fear of missing out who knew that there was so much to say on the subject. If you enjoyed it, please comment. If you didn't enjoy it, please comment.
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