When it comes to blending creativity with code, few journeys are as intriguing as that of Andrew Robbins, the mind behind the WordPress plugin, ShopWP. Hailing from the frosty beauty of Minnesota, Andrew’s story is one of evolution—from an art school student with a penchant for graphic design to a seasoned web developer who now crafts solutions that empower e-commerce sites. In this interview, Andrew shares the ups, downs, and unexpected turns that led him to where he is today. But don’t just take my word for it—grab your favorite drink and join us as we dive into Andrew's world.

Hey Andrew, could you share a bit about yourself and your background? Also, what led you towards WordPress development?

Hey y'all! My name is Andrew Robbins and I'm the creator of the WordPress plugin ShopWP . I've been a professional Web Developer for over 10 years now. I work primarily in PHP and JavaScript, but love tinkering with all aspects of the web.

I currently live in Austin, TX with my beautiful wife and son (and soon to be second boy). We have two cats (Kirby and August).

I grew up and spent most of my life in the cold (but beautiful) winters of Minnesota (USA) where my immediate family still live.

During college, I attended an art school in Minneapolis, MN where I studied Graphic Design. After graduation, I landed an internship as an "HTML Email Developer"—which ironically—developed my love for programming.

Can you share a bit about your journey as a web developer prior to creating WPShop? What type of custom plugins, themes, or client projects were you working on?

I've been using WordPress for so long at this point that it's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't use it.

Before WordPress, I was primarily coding very simple websites in HTML. I still remember learning on https://www.htmlgoodies.com in 2004. However during that time, I was more interested in making digital art in Photoshop. This was back when "photo manipulations" were really popular.

When I first discovered WordPress I remember being pretty intimidated. There was a fairly steep learning curve at the time. Back then (2008 or so), there were no managed WordPress hosts. If you wanted to use WordPress you needed to upload the .zip via FTP, configure the database yourself, etc.

Yet, what made me fall in love with WordPress was that same exact open-source, developer-first nature. I didn't need to ask permission to create a powerful website. If I put my mind to it—I could do it myself. There was something empowering about that.

The origins of WPShop seem to stem from a simple client project idea that gradually evolved. Can you elaborate on that initial idea and what prompted you to turn it into a dedicated product?

Around 2016 I was working at a local co-working space in Minneapolis as a WordPress contractor—basically making websites for people. One of my clients had a simple Shopify store at the time for selling his t-shirts. He had a big problem though: his WordPress blog was fully developed and had years of SEO built-up. Because of this, he didn't want to move his entire web presence onto Shopify. He simply wanted to sell his Shopify products on WordPress.

As I did some research, I discovered that Shopify had discontinued their official WordPress plugin—so I decided to make one myself!

After finishing the project my client encouraged me to pursue the plugin as a product and I haven't looked back since.

Many of the challenges I've faced over the years are related to never running a business before. Marketing a product, obtaining users, increasing revenue, reducing churn, etc. I struggled (and still struggle) with many of these things today.

I think overtime you simply learn what works for your business, and if you're smart, you stick to what works.

There were technical decisions I made early on that set me back for months. Without going into details, a failure on my end to think through the consequences of a specific technical approach forced me to rewrite a lot of the plugin code 6 months into launching the plugin. This was annoying, but definitely necessary to keep the plugin useful for people.

I currently work exclusively on ShopWP full-time, and I plan to keep growing the plugin the best I can in the years to come.

How did you validate the concept and potential demand for WPShop early on? What methods or processes did you use to validate the idea?

Early on I validated the demand of the plugin by promoting a landing page before the plugin was ready. This allowed me to accumulate an email list of all the people who wanted to try it when it was ready. I think this was one of my better business decisions, however it wouldn't last as I would make many mistakes moving forward!

I also created a free version of ShopWP. Back then it was called "WP Shopify" (I changed the name to ShopWP in 2019). This provided a huge boost in users which really helped me validate the plugin over the course of 3-5 years.

The free version has since been retired.

During the initial seven years when you were working on WPShop as a side project before taking it up full-time, were you employed in a full-time day job or working as a freelancer?

During this period I worked primarily as a WordPress contractor for various clients. I would have help develop custom WordPress themes and generally build websites for them. My client list varied from individual small business owners to local agencies in Minneapolis.

I also worked as a JavaScript contractor for various side-projects to help pay the bills.

If I finished my client work early I would then work on ShopWP as much as I could in my free time. This transitionary period of jumping between client work and ShopWP was pretty difficult. I highly recommend only doing this if you're single without a wife and kids. It's going to take much of your time and energy.

What was the reason behind rebranding and name change from WP Shopify to the current ShopWP? How does the new name help in terms of branding and marketing?

The main reason for the rebrand was actually a legal intellectual property issue. Shopify's legal team reached out to me and basically told me that I needed to remove the word "Shopify" from my business. In hindsight, I can't believe I overlooked the ramifications of this! You live and you learn :)

Under the brand ShopWP, do you offer any consulting services or is revenue solely from plugin sales and paid extensions?

At the moment, I don't provide any extra consulting services. The business revenue comes solely from new and recurring plugin sales. With that said, I do generally go above and beyond for my customers in providing tech support. I'm happy to write custom CSS for customers looking to customize ShopWP, for example.

When did you hire your first employee or contractor to assist with WPShop's development and growth? What did that process of building the team look like?

At the moment it's just me! I'm hoping to make my first hire in 2025. You can usually find me working out of Radio Coffee in Austin, TX. by myself :)

You've achieved a strong 4.1/5 rating on WordPress.org. How vital are positive reviews and fostering an active community helped in WPShop's success?

I think it's pretty important. As I mentioned earlier, I was able to acquire a lot of new users with the free version of ShopWP and having a strong review rating was important to keeping those new uses coming.

With that said, as the plugin has grown I've also noticed that I don't necessarily need to depend on the WordPress.org plugin repository to attract new users. This is one of the reasons I decided to retire the free version recently.

Early on, I think it can be super helpful. As you grow I think the benefits reduce further and further.

What key marketing channels or strategies have been most effective for driving awareness and adoption of the paid WPShop product?

This has been something I've struggled with for awhile. I'm still learning which channels work and which ones don't.

Early on, the free plugin repository on wordpress.org was vital. It really helped me acquire new users without much effort on my behalf.

Lately however, I've noticed a lot of traffic coming from my YouTube videos. I'm planning to push more on this channel into 2025. I think making video content for a WordPress plugin really helps build awareness while at the same time helping current users with any issues they're having.

I tried running ads last year but this failed miserably. I think it was partly due to the fact that a large set of my users are technically aware and use ad-blockers. Or, they simply don't click on the ads.

The decision to discontinue the free version seems like a pivotal transition. What factors motivated that change, and how are you approaching monetization solely through premium tiers?

It definitely was a pivotal transition. The main factor that motivated me to make this change was a desire to work on the plugin full-time. I have a wife and small son, so I need a certain amount of income to make this a viable path. I figured I could convert a non-trivial amount of the free users to be customers—which would make this path possible.

In the end it did work and I'm glad I made the switch. I'm able to work on the plugin full-time now and I can ultimately make ShopWP a better plugin for people.

In your experience, what are the unique advantages or challenges of operating a business in the WordPress plugin model compared to SaaS?

Great question! The main advantage you have in the WordPress space is the free plugin and theme repository that WordPress provides. Unlike a traditional SaaS where you need to acquire users organically, the free plugin repository gives you an immediate boost in users to help validate ideas and features. It's great for providing product market fit.

With that said, there are restrictions that can get in the way that traditional SaaS products simply don't have. For example, asking users to provide their email address is pretty shunned upon in wordpress.org plugins. However this is crucial data that is extremely valuable in determining who can potentially convert to a paying customer.

Ultimately there are pros and cons to each I think.

Having worked on WPShop so far, what have been your biggest learnings or growth experiences as an entrepreneur?

Here are some things I struggled with:

Sacrifice

I started pursuing ShopWP the moment I met my wife Sophia. I was an independent WordPress contractor for a few years before we met. When Shopify discontinued their official WordPress plugin I knew I had to make a swift change and jump in to fill the void.

Little did I know at the time how much stress this would place on the relationship as we became more serious together.

It's not such a simple decision to leave stability for a risk taking endeavor. Especially when you're considering marriage and having kids. My wife and I still talk about those days.

Creating a business is fantastic. It provides a tremendous opportunity for your life. However, it requires a lot of time and sacrifice which oftentimes can take away from your existing obligations. It's very hard to do both, and I think it's impossible to do both well.

In the early days I could see the future in my mind. It was right there if I could just focus and create this thing I was after. I obsessed about it all the time and pursued it ruthlessly.

Looking back, I'd tell my younger self to try balancing things out better. Don't feel like you're under the gun so much and keep your focus firmly on what really matters. That doesn't mean avoiding entrepreneurship, but it could mean talking it through with your partner first!

Remember, if you're building a business it's a marathon -- not a sprint.

Know your weakness

I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses of some sort. My weakness? Putting myself out in public and being seen. The lack of control.

I've literally spent the last 7 years doing nothing but writing code and customer support for ShopWP. Zero marketing.

While I think this was important, I know I lost out on a lot of opportunities to scale more quickly which could have reduced the amount of sacrifice I talked about earlier.

Since I'm more comfortable staying heads down and writing code, it has taken me significantly more time to turn the plugin into something more than a side project.

It's ok to outsource the things you're not good at or simply hate doing. Which brings me to the next thing.

Imposter syndrome

Weight lifting is a hobby of mine. There's a phenomenon in strength training where you begin questioning your life's decisions before a heavy set of squats. Hell no! I don't want to do this. I can't do this. What am I even thinking? This is a terrible idea. I say this to myself almost every week.

But then you do it anyway. Despite all the negative self-talk, if you can manage to will yourself to do the thing you really don't want to do, you feel a sense of accomplishment afterwards because you know it was the right thing to do. And you knew deep down you could at least give it your best shot. Avoiding would just empower the negative self-talk.

I went through a similar experience while building ShopWP.

Part of the reason it has taken me so long to "go to market" is because I never thought the product was good enough. I always needed to build another feature or fix one more bug. Yet, when these things were finished, more and more would just appear like fruit flies.

I know now these were just excuses to avoid doing the things I was uncomfortable with. It's so easy to rationalize them away; especially as a developer!

Here were some things I remember telling myself throughout the years:

• "The best marketing is a good product" (Marketing isn't so simplistic)
• "Marketing will fail if people aren't happy with the product" (they were happy)
• "The product has too many bugs" (The bugs were marginal)

The thing I've learned is to be very careful about my inner talk. I watch it closely. We all have the capacity to convince ourselves of the strangest lies.

WordPress is hard to get right

When developing a commercial WordPress plugin, people will expect the product to work in their specific environment.

It doesn't matter which version of PHP they're on, or if they're still using WordPress 4.x. It doesn't matter if they're using WP Engine or GoDaddy.

Of course it's up to you what you want to support. But I suggest being very clear about the requirements on your public materials to set the expectations accordingly.

Here's a funny story.

ShopWP has a "syncing" feature. It uses background processing and cron jobs to sync Shopify products into WordPress. This turns out to be a very hard task to get right. I spent hours and hours of my time debugging this single feature over the years. Probably hundreds of hours if I'm being brutally honest.

I remember carrying my two monitors into my coworking space at the time for long debug sessions at night when no one was there. It was brutal. And kinda fun.

I eventually learned that the majority of issues came from differences in PHP server configs. Shared hosting environments can be very restrictive and cause issues with things like that.

After a few months of doing this I found this brilliant PHP library to lean on maintained by Delicious Brains called [wp-background-processing]. This turned out to be an absolute lifesaver and fixed most of the issues.

Why didn't I just google "WordPress background processing library" first?

If you had to start over from scratch, are there any aspects of building and launching WPShop that you would approach differently?

Great question! I would talk more with my users. I think early on I dove in with instinct alone. Thankfully my instincts turned out to be right, but it was a risky decision.

Talking more with my users would allow me to validate which direction I take the plugin. It would help me to really narrow in on the problem I'm trying to solve for people.

Ultimately this is what ShopWP has really taught me. People just want their problems solved. If you solve it, they will send you money and advocate for you. It's really that simple.

What advice would you give to someone looking to transition an open-source side project into a full-time premium plugin business like you've done?

Build an MVP as quickly as possible

I think creating an MVP or "Minimum viable product" first is important. You need to fail early and fail often. Have a read through The Lean Startup by Eric Ries for more on this. I think it's a solid strategy—but hard to implement sometimes.

The idea here is that you don't want to get ensnared by the sunk cost fallacy, where past investments compel you to forge ahead. "I've spent two years building this thing! I can't stop now. I must keep going!"

Verify that there is a market for your product before investing massive time and energy on refinements, features, and mental focus. You can do this by building a really small—but very focused—plugin to start. See if people use it and ask for feedback often. After a few months of this you'll quickly know if you're on the right path or not.

Implement a recurring revenue model

Once you have a viable product that solves real problems, have your customers pay using either monthly or annual subscriptions. Thankfully this is a common pricing model for WordPress plugins already, so users will have an easy time accepting it.

This is important because the revenue will compound on itself each year as your product grows. Overtime, this could turn into a full-time business.

Of course I say this like it's easy—it's not!

Pricing has turned out to be extremely hard to get right. As soon as I thought I had the "correct" price, it realized I was wrong.

To be honest, I'm still not sure I'm pricing ShopWP correctly to this day. Although, I think I'm closer now than I was before. Progress!

I played around with an optional monthly price (in addition to annual pricing). While I did notice that people would purchase a monthly plan, I also noticed that they would churn more often than the annual subscribers. My theory behind this is that they were not as committed to using the product as their annual counter-parts.

Also, by raising your price you attract a different type of customer. This is important to remember. I suggest experimenting and seeing what works right for your users.

Customer support is really important

I go out of my way to help ShopWP customers. I have a private Slack channel for priority support. I login to people's WordPress sites to help debug things. I write custom CSS to help with layouts.

All of these things will build trust with your users. I suggest treating your customers like they're the most important people in the world and they will reward you. Also, people love working with the creator of products.

Don't be afraid of customer support. Embrace it. Use their feedback to build out a docs site to help reduce future problems. Here's mine as an example: https://docs.wpshop.io/

I think many WordPress plugins could use better customer support. It's a good opportunity for your plugin to stand out from the crowd.

Build plugins that extend other platforms

I think there is a massive opportunity all over the place for new and useful WordPress plugins.

Building extensions for existing platforms like Woocommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, etc is an easy way to find product market fit.

Instead of a single massive plugin maybe consider developing a series of smaller, specialized ones. This might work better for people who get bored easily.

I also think there is a huge opportunity to build Gutenberg block plugins. Since Gutenberg changes the game so drastically, you could even improve on existing ideas and apply them to the Gutenberg context.

Your refunds contain gold

Start a new page in your notes system to document all refunds. The simple answer you're after is "Why?".

People will usually be very honest with you about why they left. You'll want to document every reason in a centralized place somewhere to review later.

Sometimes your product is missing a specific feature. Other times they simply couldn't make it work in a reasonable amount of time. All of this information is gold. It tells you exactly what your customers are looking for.

So similar to documenting bugs in your code, documenting the reasons your customers give for requesting refunds can help you understand their needs better.

Of course you don't have to wait until a refund to do this. Reaching out to existing users right now and asking them a handful of questions can be extremely valuable--especially during the MVP phase.

Andrew's story is a refreshing reminder that success in the tech world doesn't always follow a straight line. It's about experimenting, learning, and adapting—qualities that Andrew embodies in his work with ShopWP. If you've enjoyed this conversation, why not check out some of our other interviews with WordPress developers and entrepreneurs? Each one has a unique story, full of lessons and inspiration, just waiting to be discovered. Don't stop here—explore the rest of the Plugmatter WordPress Entrepreneurs Interview Series and uncover more journeys that could spark your own creativity and drive.