Passion Plus Profit Can and Must Co-exist
How long can you continue to support your work without financial profit? For those of you who have never had to pay your utility bill yourself or feed whole families with a salary, or worry about health insurance for a spouse, you will undoubtedly say, “Forever, because it’s about passion and community.” For those of you with that mindset, I hope your parents live forever and keep enabling you to live in their basement while they work to pay for your passions.
via Why We Need a Premium WordPress Plugin Market :: Cory Miller | Adventures in Entrepreneurship.
This is a really great read from the Cory Miller (the guy behind iThemes). He articulates perfectly just about everything I’ve been thinking in regards to businesses based around WordPress.
Designing and developing for the WordPress platform is a passionate trade. Anyone who is deeply involved with it will agree. But many will argue that passion and community cannot coexist with profit and sustainability. I flatly disagree with this idea and as Cory so eloquently points out, “passion + profit can and must co-exist.”
I completely agree, and guys like you and Obox and especially WooThemes have proven that. I mean look at the WooNav going into WP3 core, that is a company who has made money on their passion and still helped build a better open source, community product for everyone to enjoy. And not always but in most cases the longest lasting and best supported themes and plugins are those who are paid because they can afford to keep offering a better product.
Anyway, just my 2 cents, do with it what you will
Thanks for your comments Rex.
Absolutely. I know I’m not alone in saying I’m absolutely psyched about the Woo Nav coming to the WP 3.0 core. It’s really beautiful functionality, and I’m thrilled that everyone will benefit from it thanks to the awesome team at Woo.