Interview With Syed Balkhi of WP Beginner

Syed: I started working on the web at age 12 when I first moved to United States. I started by making wallpapers and moved into the industry of domaining and paid forum posting. At one point, I owned over 400 domain names. While reselling domains was easy, the profit margin was not very high. Therefore, I moved onto developing some of those domains into websites. My first niche was proxies, and I ran a network of over 50 proxies. I sold the network and then moved to the web directory industry. At this time, I also started Uzzz Productions. I created over thirty directories both free and paid. This is the time when I started blogging and running affiliate marketing campaigns. I sold my directory business in late 2007. I founded Balkhis.com (My Personal blog) in 2008 and kept running my affiliate campaigns. This is the time Uzzz became more than just me and I got co-workers who help me. This brings me to the present where I am running WPBeginner, Balkhis, Uzzz (and more to come later this year). To read more about me visit: balkhis.com/about

Syed: First, I feel that you should not mix your personal life and business for the sake of branding. Second, it would not be fair to the WPBeginner’s Editors if I just put my name or face on the site. There are other people that are behind WPBeginner. If you go to my personal blog: Balkhis, you will see my face on it. You will also see my personal twitter profile (@syedbalkhi). Same logic goes behind the twitter and other social media profiles as well. There are other people who manage the @wpbeginner twitter account.

While I might be the person speaking at WordCamps wearing WPBeginner’s shirt, there are other people behind the site as well. When you launch anything big, you have to take these things in consideration. If Matt put his face all over WordPress, it would not be fair to the other people who worked on the platform. I hope you see the logic behind my decision.

Syed: I do not feel comfortable sharing the revenue that the site makes from a specific source. All I can say is that the business is profitable and satisfying. We love helping new users with WordPress. Our goal is not focused on the short-term revenue, but it is to make long term clients for Uzzz Productions. This site has allowed me to meet a lot of new people from various business backgrounds. To answer your last question, I am not the person who is doing the installation because I am busy with other projects, social media, and consultation. As a matter of fact, I am probably the last person who does these setups.

Syed: WordPress is open-source, user friendly, easy to upgrade, tons of themes, a lot of useful plugins, pretty good in terms of security, support for cross blog communication and search engines, versatility, and flexibility. (I don’t think I can explain it better than the page we have on WPBeginner).

Syed: The ideas are usually suggested by our users either from one of the social media networks, or through our website’s Make a Suggestion form. Some of these ideas are taken from conferences that I or another editor attends.

Syed: Majority of my time is spent on running Uzzz Productions. I am the main consultant who talks about SEO, and WordPress. I am also the person who does social media marketing for clients. A lot of my time is spent networking. As I mentioned above, that our goal with WPBeginner was not to make short-term revenue, but it is to make long-term clients. WPBeginner has increased the number of clients and gave Uzzz Productions the exposure that it needed.

Syed: WPBeginner’s following is growing and we are loving the exposure it is getting in social media. Our goal is to continue providing quality content because everyone loves a good resourceful article. Users share quality resource with their friends on twitter, facebook, and other networks which in turn get us the exposure and traffic we want.

Syed: To make it short and simple, NO.

Syed: First of all, I have a problem with how the word Premium is used. We need to avoid associating Premium with commercial themes. Premium means “Quality”. There are tons of free themes that are Premium, and there are many commercial themes that are not Premium. To answer your question what do I think about commercial theme marketplace? I think the market is getting more and more saturated every day. If you are a new designer, you should forget about making any big profit for a good year or two. There are big names like Thesis, StudioPress, Headway, and others who are dominating the market. You can go to Envato’s theme marketplace to get more exposure, but be prepared to give up 70% of the sale. I think there are some great themes out there, and there are some that are not so good. I do not want to bash any specific company in this interview, but my advice to people is to not judge the book by it’s cover. While something might look good, it might not be as good in terms of functionality. Over the next year, I think themes that are compatible with the GPL license have a bright future unless you have a marketer like Chris Borgan promoting it (Hint: Thesis).

Syed: Adventurous. Every day I have to struggle through some issue or a problem. I try not to work more than eight hours in one day, but it never works out. Often, I see myself in front of the screen at 3 a.m in the morning. I play basketball, and break dance when I have extra time. Don’t forget that I am a full-time student at University of Florida (Go Gators).

Syed: Now I will be bashed, but PC all the way. I have been using PCs since age 7, and I am used to of it. Although I have multiple operating systems on different machines, I prefer Linux over other OS.

Syed: Specialize and make connections. You cannot do everything alone. Find partners, or specialize. Find a niche and try to capitalize it. Second but equally important, you should make connections. Attend every conference that you can because it is the connections that matter in every business industry. If you really have the talent, your connections will take you very far.