Getting to know Ryan Carson & Carsonified
For the last couple of months (since about September / October last year), I’ve been truly inspired with the activities of the guys and girls over at Carsonified. At one stage I felt so inspired, I considered applying for a job and moving over to the UK (which is a lot to ask, considering we have sunshine every day of the year, which beats the UK’s weather hands down) if I got the job. That aside, I think the company has been built on awesome foundations and I can only see them going from strength to strength, as well as seeing small new companies - influenced by Carsonified’s “way of life” - pop up all over the world.
So a while ago, I decided that I really needed to get a mini interview done again and Ryan Carson seemed like to perfect candidate, considering my fascination with his company. Fact is, wouldn’t you want to get into the mind of a boss that buys you cool new schwag when you join the team, let’s you work 4 days a week and “orders” everyone to take a week off to create HugMyMac? Well, I certainly wanted a glimpse on the ideas and thoughts involved in creating Carsonified, so I figured I’d shoot a few questions off to Ryan…
Hey Ryan. It’s great to welcome one of the unsung heroes of modern day web business (in my mind) to adii.co.za. You’re the co-founder of Carsonified (along with your wife, Gill) and I’m sure everyone would like to know more about the Ryan Carson behind Carsonified. Please share a bit of your history, education, previous business experience and the journey that led you to start Carsonified…
I’m originally from Colorado Springs, a small town nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I finished my Computer Science degree in 2000 and then decided it was time for a life-changing adventure. I wanted to experience life from a new point of view so I packed my bags and got a job in the United Kingdom.
I started off as a Coldfusion developer. I had never written a single line, but I figured if I could code in C++ then I would probably be OK!
And then the dot com bombshell hit and the company I was working for went down in flames. I had only lived in the UK for six months and I decided I wasn’t ready to go home yet. That led to a number of jobs in London at various web design firms, lastly with Fingal Design
During my time in London I made a ton of friends who were passionate about web design but were really discouraged about the rough times the industry was experience. So in response, my good friend Ryan Shelton and I started By Designers for Designers or BD4D. The idea was to get web designers and developers together to show their work and meetup - an escape from al the time we were spending at our laptops. I guess it really struck a cord with people because it quickly grew and before we knew it, we had done 50+ events in 16 cities in 7 different countries. It was a blast.
I met people like Eric Meyer, Joshua Davis, Jemma Gura, Matt Owens, Mike, 2advanced, Design is Kinky, Peter Reid & Cuban Council.
A really wonderful magazine called Create Online decided to write a feature on Ryan and I and that’s how I met Gill, my wonderful wife. She was the editor of the magazine and once we met, it was hard to keep us apart.
I decided to quite my job as Lead PHP Developer in London and marry Gill. It was the perfect opportunity to move to Bath and start Carsonified.
Describe Carsonified and its operations in your own words. What is it that Carsonified really does?
Everyone at Carsonified is passionate about the web. We want to encourage, inspire and unite the web community. We do this in two ways:
- Building web applications (DropSend and Amigo)
- Running events (Future of Web Design, Future of Web Apps, Future of Mobile, Fuel, Carson Workshops)
- Curating Vitamin, our online magazine for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs
- Having fun
(Hug My Mac, FOWA Road Trip and Web App Charts)
We just moved into our new office and we’re up to 10 wonderful team members. We’re loving it.
Not many people would recommend going into business with one’s wife, yet it seems that Carsonified is a perfect contradiction of this… Is it easy to run a business along with your wife? Do you feel that it presents some unique challenges? Do you think that it has benefited Carsonified more?
I *love* running Carsonified with Gill. It allows us to be connected in a way that most couples will never experience. Every day we get the opportunity to work as a team, hatch new ideas, support each other and have fun. It also means that we don’t have to have the ‘How was your day’ talk at the end of each day. We already know!
Of course there are days when we get on each others nerves but I guess we’re lucky to be able to work together all day and not get annoyed.
We’re going to have a baby on April 18th, so that will change things quite a bit. Initially Gill will be spending less time in the office, but as soon as she can, she wants to get back to Carsonified. I’m really going to miss having her at the office during the time she’s at home though - she’s smart and she adds a huge amount to the business.
Carsonified’s 4-day work week and extensive staff perks (Macbooks, iPhone’s & Aeron chairs to name a few) is well known around the web. Do you think that these play an integral part in recruiting and retaining top talent amongst your staff? And do these perks result in increased productivity from Carsonified staff?
I think those things really help to recruit amazing people but all that stuff wouldn’t matter if we didn’t treat our team with respect and trust. We hire really smart, fun and interesting people and then we try to get out of their way. I give them the support they need and then trust them to do a great job.
We don’t treat our team like teenagers who need to be constantly monitored (nagging them about what time they arrive or leave the office, what sites they browse, how long they spend on lunch, etc) because they’re responsible adults who are passionate about what they do. If they were dishonest or untrustworthy, then what time they get into work would be the least of our worries!
Why did you decide to go into organizing conferences / workshops? Do you have a passion for education? Or collaboration / knowledge sharing?
I think I have a deep-seated desire to connect and encourage people. Events are a wonderful way to do this as it gets people away from their typical settings and allows them to connect with other people.
Everyone spends so much time on computers that it’s amazing to get out and physically meet people and get inspired by amazing speakers.
Do you have anything new in the pipeline? Any new avenues that Carsonified will be exploring in the next few months?
We’ve just launched Fuel, our new conference in London on June 13th. We’re going to share some amazing tips on how to take your business/product/service from good to amazing. Here’s a quick summary:
“Fuel gives you the opportunity to get inside the mind of some of the most remarkable companies online. Find out how they use new web tools to interact with existing customers and bring in new ones by the droves, build strong and loyal communities, use the latest in online marketing (heck, even invent their own!), and use brand new technology to push every boundary of web business.”
It should be a lot of fun!
We’re also completely re-building our events backend system. It’s called Event Stream and it’s going to kick ass!
Thanks for interviewing me - it’s an honor.
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Want Automated? Get E-Junkie!
Web 2 has generally been associated with ease-of-use, usability and the democratization of great tools to the masses. Along with that, most things online are completely available on-demand - irrespective of what time of day you want access to it. Considering all of that you probably won’t get a tool that fits this description better than E-Junkie.
Before I tell you more about the product, I need to say that this is not a paid review (even though they recently joined adii.co.za as an advertiser) - considering that I’ve been using E-Junkie ever since starting Premium News in November last year. So after using E-Junkie for more than 4 months, I think I’m in a good space to tell you about my experiences…
E-Junkie is essentially an automatic file delivery system that slots in with a variety of merchant services (I’ve used it with both PayPal & 2Checkout) and what it essentially does is distribute purchased files to the buyer, once payment is verified. This makes the whole purchasing process 100% automated and instant; which in turns provides merchants with a competitive advantage (considering the alternative is e-mailing the digital files to the buyer).
Along with this, the platform provides users with a great reporting function, as well as an easy-to-implement affiliate program. Overall, I’ve been very impressed with E-Junkie and at $5/ months for 20 different products, this service is a steal. The service is probably best suited to digital file merchants (web templates, photos, images & e-books), but I’m sure you’ll see some more “creative” applications of the service in the near future.
If you’re in the game to make some money online, leverage a system like this in your favour and create a quick competitive advantage. Check out E-Junkie now!
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WordPress, Open Source, Making Money & Giving Back
This is most probably going to end up being quite a long post, so “brace” yourselves… And since this might turn into somewhat of an Adii-simply-speaking-his-mind-and-clearing-his-head post, I think it’s appropriate to lay down a few basics / foundations…
First off, I wouldn’t be calling myself a WordPress Rockstar, had WP not been open source and I thus didn’t have access to this great platform. Personally I thus have much to owe open source & WordPress, since it has put me on the map (even if it’s only in a small way). And thus secondly, I do support open source operations and freemium business model.
That said, many of the points that I could (or would want to) raise again in this post, I’ve already spoken about in my post, asking the community to take a stand and support the premium themes business model. So yes, this post is definitely about premium WordPress themes, the business model(s) involved and the differing opinions on how we need to proceed / progress (read: to keep everybody happy).
About two weeks ago, I wrote a lengthy article, that I titled “Premium Themes: The New Bastard Child?”, but never published it, because I realized that I might offend certain parties people and that I might not have been completely objective. Yet now, two weeks later, I still feel the same way I did back then - which is frustrating, as I would rather continue the work I’ve done than defend myself and my business model in this regard. So this post is thus backtracking on that decision to keep quiet, keep my head down and just continue with work (like all the other premium theme designers - which don’t need to be named - are doing).
So why speak out now?
Ptah Dunbar (a relatively new face in the community) recently had the privilege of engaging Matt Mullenwag in a conversation about the premium themes business model. And it is Ptah’s blog post (here) that has sparked my reaction - in particular Matt’s current opinion about the business model…
The thing is, that I agree with Matt 100% when he says that to certain extents premium themes don’t contribute to the (greater) community, as upcoming theme designers are never exposed to some of the nifty stuff that we’re doing with premium themes (featured areas, video panels, tabbers etc etc). And yes, this contradicts the open source nature of WordPress as a platform - but by doing away with this model completely, aren’t we contradicting the right of theme designers (or plugin authors for that matter) to earn a living from their work? To say that premium themes aren’t contributing to the community seems like a bit of a harsh thing to say (in my opinion)…
Let’s play a little comparison game…
Premium theme designers create one top-notch theme for WordPress, which they then decide to sell as a commodity at a nominal price of say $100. Compare this with the A-list designer that charges one big client, $8000 - $12000 for the same theme (same features). Who is contributing more to the community? The premium theme designers or the A-list designer?
In a sense, premium themes has done exactly what open source is all about: it has democratized top quality designs and features, in the sense that (through the themes) these features has become accessible to a much larger audience; not only the elite group of people that can pay $8000+ for a WordPress theme…
I’m not only defending my business
This is not only about defending my business, my profits and my future as a (self-proclaimed) WordPress Rockstar; instead I can recognize that the current premium themes model is not optimal… Yet I’d like to emphasise the word optimal, as that is a far-cry from feeling that premium theme designers are being run out of town like the heathens that we’re being made out to be.
Realistically whilst all of this “discussion” has been going on, premium theme sales has soared across the board, as more people started using WordPress as their CMS of choice. We need to ask ourselves who is really participating in these conversations - the people that are actually buying the themes, or the holier-than-thou types that don’t have the necessary skills to make use of this opportunity (that is harsh I know, but that is how I’m feeling)? And in my mind, the answer is pretty simple…
So considering that WordPress keeps growing and your Average Joe’s are continuing to buy premium themes - one needs to assume that the community is growing? Right? That seems to make sense to me, even though I obviously don’t have stats to back that up.
This is where I’m at:
I spent more than a year of my life evangelizing WordPress (I’ve written more than a 100 posts related to WordPress in the past 9 months alone) and I’ve built up a credible reputation for myself. It is from this credible reputation that I started selling premium themes last year and throughout the last 4 months (since I started the business), I’ve spent a lot of time engaging the (so-called) community in conversation about the business model.
I’ve never said that I’m lovestruck on this model, or that I’m akin to change - and I’ve vehemently asked for the community’s input (the same community that I’m supposed to contribute to)… Is it unfair to say that, that would be the community’s contribution to this matter? I don’t think so…
The funny thing is - and I eluded to this above - that the community hasn’t said too much about the matter (even Matt Mullenwag has failed to become involved in the discussion - bar from a few comments here and there), which to me suggests that premium themes are doing more good than bad. So even though I foresee a few changes in this space, I’m very optimistic about WordPress and premium themes going forward - as both will continue to grow (partly through cross-pollination).
And I guess the way forward would be to ask premium themes users (read: buyers) what they really think about the model… As it is clear that the community is not buying / using premium themes themselves - so why should the “community’s” opinions be generalized and taken as general consensus?
(I do believe that this post will evoke various different responses and I know many of you will have gotten slightly hot under the collar. I expected as much and I encourage a heated debate - if needed. The only thing I ask is that comments continue to be constructive, without targeting / offending individuals. I look forward to what you have to say!)
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Development: Fast. Agile. Efficient.
In the spirit and nature of this topic, this will be a quick and to-the-point post… I just read a post on Weekend Apps, which is basically a kind of Code-a-thon, where designers and developers bash out a new web app over the course of a weekend. Great thing about this event though, is that there’s support staff (lawyers, business development experts, marketers etc.) on site to help you set up your new web startup once you finished developing it in that weekend. Insane!
Considering how long it takes us to release a new Premium News theme (partly due to the fact that I’m tied up at a full-time job), I feel like an amateur when thinking of the apps that are developed (sure they’ll be released in Alpha phase and will thus be far from a completed product) in the course of a weekend. Sheesh… This (along with some other decisions that I’m implementing) might just see us releasing more themes, more often in the near future…
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StumbleUpon: Marketing For Niche Bloggers?
Guru’s, irrespective of their field, are generally accepted to be, uh, well… guru’s… So if Skellie writes something about StumbleUpon, most bloggers around the blogosphere will sit up, take note and try emulate her formula. Her most recent post on Problogger is all about the “success formula” for bloggers to achieve maximum exposure on StumbleUpon and I must admit, I would not be blogging about it if I didn’t believe 99% of what she has written…
When I published my Top 53 Blog Designs in 2007 post, in December last year, I experienced the same kind of Stumble-effect that has been covered widely across the blogosphere in recent months. In a month, were most should’ve been away on holiday, my traffic spiked and 90% of that reason was the traffic I was getting from Stumblers of the Top 53 post.
So sure, StumbleUpon is not Digg - but how many of us really has either the luck or the readerbase to get us to the frontpage of Digg? Considering StumbleUpon’s growth in the last year, it has become a very viable, sustainable source of semi-targeted traffic - in fact, most of my hits (about 5% of my uniques) are coming from StumbleUpon…
I reckon that Skellie is 100% correct in saying that StumbleUpon has a much more niche-focus than Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us - but is this a bad thing? Don’t we want those fanatical niche followers, instead of the Average Joe reading your blog to pass the time?
Generally, I’m not a big fan of success formula’s of this kind, but as I’ve said - Skellie’s tips / tricks for maximizing your value from StumbleUpon is very logical and well-thought out. Along with that, I can endorse the credibility of SU traffic from personal experience and in that sense, you’d probably be missing out on a lot of traffic if you don’t read at least some of the posts on your blog with the aim of having them Stumbled…
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