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13 Best Fun WordPress Plugins You’re Missing Out On

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13 Best Fun WordPress Plugins You're Missing Out On

Are you looking to find the best fun WordPress plugins for your website?

Since there are thousands of plugins available on the market, it can be difficult to pick the ones that will actually add a fun and interactive element to your site while boosting conversions.

To make this easier for you, we tested some of the most popular plugins on the internet and examined factors such as ease of use, features, customization, and pricing.

In this article, we will share our list of the best fun WordPress plugins that you may be missing out on.

Best Fun WordPress Plugins You're Missing Out On

If you are in a hurry, then you can take a look at our top picks to quickly choose the best fun WordPress plugin for you:

How Do We Test And Review Fun WordPress Plugins?

We installed and tested every plugin from this list on our websites to find their features, pros, and, cons, and provide you with the best recommendations.

While we were doing that, we paid special attention to the following criteria to pick the best fun WordPress plugins:

  • Popular plugins: We tested the most popular and best WordPress plugins on the market to see if they can add a fun element to your site. We analyzed those plugins based on ease of use, features, pricing, and customization options.
  • Different use cases: There are various ways to make your site enjoyable for users. That is why we reviewed plugins for all kinds of use cases like spin the wheels, giveaways, quizzes, interactive elements, ranking systems, and more.
  • Plugins tested by us: We included plugins that we have used on our own websites to boost engagement and add fun elements.

Why Trust WPBeginner?

At WPBeginner, we are a dedicated team of people with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, design, and online marketing.

Our WordPress experts extensively review each plugin or tool that is featured here and thoroughly test them on real websites. To learn more, you can see our complete editorial process.

Having said that, here is our list of the best fun WordPress plugins that you are missing out on.

1. OptinMonster (Spin to Win Optins)

OptinMonster websiteOptinMonster website

OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization tool on the market that lets you create amazing spin-to-win optins. They can add a gamification effect to your website and make it more interactive and fun for your visitors.

Once you have added the wheel, users can enter their email addresses and spin the wheel to win different prizes, such as discount codes and coupons. This can convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.

Spin the wheel popup previewSpin the wheel popup preview

The software has a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates that make it super easy to build spin-the-wheel campaigns. You can also add dynamic content, countdown timers, CTA, images, and email fields to capture leads.

For detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to add spin to win optins in WordPress and WooCommerce.

Add blocks to your campaignAdd blocks to your campaign

Pros

  • You can also create optin forms, popups, floating bars, slide-ins, and banners with OptinMonster.
  • The tool can integrate with popular email marketing services and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.
  • It comes with triggers and display rules like exit intent technology. Upon testing the plugin, we realized that this could help build FOMO (fear of missing out) by showing limited-time offers or exclusive content before a visitor leaves the page.
  • The software also offers A/B testing, analytics, and geolocation targeting.

Cons

Why we recommend OptinMonster: It is the best spin a wheel coupon plugin that makes it super easy to add gamification elements to your website. Plus, OptinMonster comes with premade templates and a drag-and-drop builder and also lets you create popups and banners, making it a super fun option.

For more information, you can see our OptinMonster review.

2. RafflePress (Giveaways and Contests)

RafflePressRafflePress

RafflePress is the best WordPress giveaway plugin on the market. It allows you to host all kinds of contests and giveaways to add a fun element to your site while generating leads.

It comes with a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates. Plus, it allows you to add multiple methods for giveaway entry, including subscribing to your email list, following you on social media, and visiting specific pages.

Adding a prize to an online giveawayAdding a prize to an online giveaway

We have actually used the plugin on WPBeginner to run a viral giveaway and found it super easy to use.

For more information, you can see our tutorial on how to run a giveaway/contest in WordPress with RafflePress.

Pros

  • RafflePress offers complete fraud protection from spam entries.
  • It can integrate with email marketing services, form plugins, and CRMs. This can help you add different entry methods for the contest.
  • It comes with a built-in integration with SeedProd. This means that you can add your giveaways on attractive landing pages.
  • Some of its other features include success tracking, retargeting, social logins, email verification, and a prize gallery.

Cons

  • The plugin has a free plan, but you will need the pro version to unlock more templates and entry methods.

Why we recommend RafflePress: It is a super fun plugin that adds a gamification effect to your website and helps you build your email list or social media followers at the same time. You can bring back more customers and attract new ones by offering freebies or discounts to giveaway winners.

For more details, you may also like to see our RafflePress review.

3. Uncanny Automator (Fun Automated Workflows)

Uncanny Automator websiteUncanny Automator website

Uncanny Automator is the best automation plugin on the market that acts like Zapier for WordPress. You can use it to create fun, automated workflows for your website.

For example, you might use the plugin to connect your blog with Twitter. Now, every time you publish a new post, it will automatically be tweeted on your handle. This can help boost followers and attract new users.

Similarly, you can send birthday emails with special offers, share user-generated content, or send cart abandonment reminders. To learn more, you can see our tutorial on how to create automated workflows in WordPress with Uncanny Automator.

Pros

  • It is a great Zapier alternative that can integrate with 150+ tools, including form builders, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, BuddyPress, and WooCommerce.
  • The plugin is easy to use and comes with unlimited recipes and triggers.
  • It also has advanced features like delays, scheduling, and user creation.
  • During our testing, we discovered that you can connect multiple WordPress sites with it.

Cons

  • The plugin has a free plan, but it comes with limited triggers and actions.

Why we recommend Uncanny Automator: It is a super fun plugin that you can experiment with to build different workflows and save time on your website. For instance, you could integrate it with a gamification plugin to reward users for specific actions.

For more details, you may also like to see our Uncanny Automator review.

4. TrustPulse (Build FOMO and Social Proof)

Is TrustPulse the best social proof plugin for WordPress?Is TrustPulse the best social proof plugin for WordPress?

TrustPulse is the best WordPress social proof plugin that lets you build FOMO on your website to boost conversions.

It lets you display a live sale notification in your eCommerce store to real-time visitors, which can motivate them to make a purchase as well.

Other than recent purchases, it can also display bubble notifications for form submissions or free trial sign-ups to encourage users to join your email list.

For more information, you can see our tutorial on how to use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions.

Pros

  • The plugin allows real-time event tracking on your website.
  • When reviewing the plugin, we noticed that it allows you to customize your notifications to match your brand identity. You can adjust colors, fonts, and animations, and even add custom messages.
  • TrustPulse also offers smart targeting, A/B testing, analytics, and exit intent notifications.

Cons

  • The plugin does not have a free plan.
  • Its analytics feature is basic compared to other tools.

Why we recommend TrustPulse: It is one of the best fun WordPress plugins that can boost sales for your small business by showing social proof to users. This can cause FOMO among visitors, which can lead to more conversions for your online store.

See our TrustPulse review for more information.

5. Chrismasify (Christmas Effects)

ChrismasifyChrismasify

Chrismasify is a free WordPress plugin that you can use during the Christmas season to add fun elements to your WordPress blog.

You can add jingle music, snowflakes, and a flying Santa on your website to create holiday spirit. This can motivate visitors to explore your site and even make a purchase if you have an online store.

For more ideas, you can see our tutorial on ways to spread the holiday spirit with your WordPress site.

Pros

  • The plugin is completely free and has a user-friendly interface.
  • It lets you control the speed of the snowflakes and adds Christmas decorations to images as well.
  • We liked that you can also change the heading’s font on your website to add holiday cheer.
  • The plugin lets you configure the activation and deactivation dates for the Christmas effects.

Cons

  • Chrismasify is just used for adding interactive elements. It cannot help you build an email list or boost conversions.
  • The plugin does not have great customer support.

Why we recommend Christmasify: If you are planning a holiday sale, then you can use Christmasify to add some fun elements to your online store. This can spread the holiday spirit on your site and encourage users to make a purchase.

6. Thrive Quiz Builder (Engaging Quizzes)

Thrive Quiz BuilderThrive Quiz Builder

Thrive Quiz Builder is the best WordPress quiz plugin on the market that lets you create all kinds of fun and interactive quizzes without using any code.

It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and premade templates that you can use to add right/wrong, number, percentage, or personality quizzes.

For example, if you have a travel business, then you could add a quiz that suggests the next destination users should visit based on their hobbies. This can boost engagement and lead to more business for you.

The plugin also offers gamified elements like progress bars, customizable results pages, and social sharing options to further boost user engagement.

For more information, see our beginner’s guide on how to easily create a quiz in WordPress.

Pros

  • We particularly appreciated the branching questions feature. If you use this option, then the next question displayed to the users in a quiz will depend on their previous answer.
  • Thrive Quiz Builder comes with different question formats like multiple choice, true or false, open-ended, personality, and matching questions.
  • Based on quiz results, you can automatically tag users with specific categories or segments within your email marketing platform.
  • It is a part of Thrive Themes and can integrate with other plugins like Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, and Thrive Optimize.

Cons

  • Thrive Quiz Builder has no free plan.
  • It has a lot of features, which can be confusing for beginners.

Why we recommend Thrive Quiz Builder: Quizzes are a great way to boost engagement and attract more visitors. You can use this plugin to build amazing quizzes that suit your niche.

For details, see our Thrive Quiz Builder review.

Football PoolFootball Pool

Football Pool is another fun WordPress plugin that adds a sports pool to your website. Here, users can predict the outcomes of matches and earn extra points.

You can select different leagues and tournaments that you want to add to your sports pool and add multiple prediction types like winner, score, or first goalscorer.

Football Pool also allows you to add registration forms so that users can log in to participate in the pool. Additionally, it displays a leaderboard showing the top participants based on points and users can view their own points on their profiles.

Pros

  • The plugin is completely free.
  • It comes with automatic points calculation, bonus questions, social media sharing, and email notifications.
  • When we reviewed the tool, we found out that you can set deadlines for users to submit their predictions.

Cons

  • It offers limited customization options.
  • The plugin does not have great customer support.

Why we recommend Football Pool: If you have a WordPress blog related to sports, then this plugin can be a great way to add some fun elements to your site. It can encourage more users to log in regularly to submit their predictions and earn points, ultimately increasing traffic on your blog.

8. WPForms (Polls and Surveys)

WPForms SiteWPForms Site

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market that you can use to add fun polls and surveys to your website.

It comes with a drag-and-drop builder, 1700+ premade templates, and complete spam protection, enabling you to build any kind of secure form you like.

You can easily add an interactive poll that can boost engagement and also help you gather feedback from your audience on different topics.

For more information, see our tutorial on how to create an interactive poll in WordPress.

Pros

  • If you have a fitness blog, then you can add a fitness tracker or BMI calculator to your site.
  • You can also connect your forms with any popular gateways like PayPal or Stripe.
  • Upon testing, we discovered that the plugin lets you add progress bars, star ratings, and file upload fields to your forms.

Cons

  • WPForms has a free plan, but some of the features are only available with the paid plugin.

Why we recommend WPForms: If you want to add polls and surveys to make your site more enjoyable for users, then WPForms is the best choice for you.

You can see our WPForms review for more information.

9. Smash Balloon (Embed Social Media Feeds)

SmashBalloonSmashBalloon

Smash Balloon offers a suite of different plugins that allow you to embed social media feeds into your website, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.

These feeds can show a more fun side of your business to your website visitors, which can boost user engagement.

Adding a social wall feed is a good idea because it can motivate visitors to check your social media profiles, leading to more followers.

Smash Balloon comes with an intuitive feed editor, premade layouts, and multiple customization options for your feeds. If you have a YouTube channel, then you can even embed your YouTube live streams to increase site traffic.

Pros

  • All the Smash Balloon plugins are completely mobile responsive.
  • Smash Balloon lets you embed Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram feeds without using any code.
  • The plugins enable you to filter your feeds to display specific content and control what appears on your website.

Cons

  • All the Smash Balloon plugins have free plans with limited features. To access advanced options, you will need the premium versions.

Why we recommend Smash Balloon: You can use any of the Smash Balloon plugins to showcase your social media feeds and display social proof on your website.

For more information, you can see our Smash Balloon review.

Thrive Comments pluginThrive Comments plugin

Thrive Comments is the best WordPress comments plugin that can gamify your comments section to boost engagement.

It comes with a built-in voting and badge feature that allows you to award points and badges to users based on different criteria. For instance, you can give a silver badge to users if they have 5 comments on your site and a gold one if they have 10.

Additionally, you can use the plugin to add a like/dislike functionality. This will discourage users from leaving spam comments.

For details, see our beginner’s guide on how to add a simple user ranking system for WordPress comments.

Pros

  • It has a dedicated moderation area, provides analytics, and shows custom messages to users upon leaving their first comment. This can improve the user experience.
  • The plugin allows users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.
  • When we were testing it, we found out that Thrive Comments also enables users to leave comments using their Facebook or Google accounts.
  • The plugin lets you feature interesting comments at the top of the section.
  • It is a part of Thrive Themes and can integrate with other plugins from the suite.

Cons

  • Thrive Comments does not offer a free plan.
  • Its analytics and reporting feature is basic compared to some other tools.

Why we recommend Thrive Comments: If you want to use a fun WordPress plugin to add gamification to your comments section, then this is the perfect solution for you.

Thrive Comments allows you to award badges, add like/dislike icons, feature interesting comments at the top, and even allow users to subscribe to different comments.

11. myCred (Create a Points System)

myCredmyCred

myCred is a WordPress points management plugin that can add a fun loyalty program or gamified system to your website.

You can use different hooks provided by the plugin to award points to users. For example, you can award points upon user registration, leaving a comment, submitting a guest post, making a purchase, and more. Then, you can reward your active users with coupons and discounts.

This can create brand loyalty among customers and increase conversions if you have a WooCommerce store.

To learn more, you can see our tutorial on how to add a points system in WordPress.

Pros

  • It lets you add multiple point types and award points automatically when the user performs the required action.
  • The plugin allows users to check their points balance and history.
  • You can award discount coupons, freebies, and exclusive offers to users upon achieving certain points. We particularly liked the badge feature that you can use to award badges and appreciate users when they reach different levels.
  • myCred lets you create a leaderboard to display the top point achievers.

Cons

  • Its free plan has limited features.
  • Using a lot of the addons offered by the plugin can sometimes hurt your site speed.
  • Setting up the plugin can be complex because it has a lot of features.

Why we recommend myCred: If you want to add a points system to your WordPress website, then this is the best fun plugin for you. It will help build loyalty and ultimately generate leads.

12. Chartify (WordPress Charts)

ChartifyChartify

Chartify is another fun WordPress plugin. It helps you build all kinds of charts for your website, including bar charts, pie charts, column charts, donut charts, histograms, and so much more.

The plugin is completely free and allows you to modify the visual effects for your charts like color, font, labels, and titles.

Plus, it shows a live preview so you can see all the changes you made in real time.

Pros

  • It allows you to enter data directly within the plugin.
  • Chartify lets you import CSV files and connect with Google Sheets.
  • You can easily integrate any chart using the block in the Gutenberg block editor.

Cons

  • Adding a lot of charts can increase your page load time.
  • It does not come with any advanced features to build charts.

Why we recommend Chartify: If you want to add a fun element to your blog posts, then you can use Chartify. It will help you build all kinds of visually appealing charts that can make your articles a more interesting read for users.

13. Confetti (Confetti Effect)

ConfettiConfetti

Confetti is a super fun WordPress plugin that adds a confetti effect to your website using a block.

It has a free plan, is easy to use, and allows you to customize the color and size of the confetti as well.

Additionally, upon review, we discovered that it offers different kinds of confetti effects, including fireworks, school pride, falling, realistic cannon, and more.

Pros

  • The plugin can integrate with WooCommerce, WPForms, MemberPress, LearnDash, Formidable Forms, and more.
  • You can configure the plugin to show the confetti effect when you scroll to a specific point on a page.
  • It also provides a preview of all the effects before you add them to your site.

Cons

  • The plugin is basic and does not offer any advanced features.
  • You can only integrate the plugin with other tools once you upgrade to the pro version.

Why we recommend Confetti: If you are announcing a winner for a competition or just want to add a visually appealing effect to your blog, then Confetti can be a great choice.

Which Is the Best Fun WordPress Plugin?

In our expert opinion, OptinMonster is the best fun WordPress plugin because it lets you add a spin-the-wheel popup on your page. This makes your website more engaging and can also help you collect leads.

However, if you want to host a competition or giveaway, then RafflePress should be your go-to option. On the other hand, if you want to use FOMO to boost conversions, then you can choose TrustPulse instead.

Similarly, if you want to add personality quizzes or polls, then we recommend Thrive Quiz Builder and WPForms.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fun WordPress Plugins

Here is a list of some questions that are frequently asked by our readers:

What is the most popular WordPress plugin?

WPForms is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, with over 6 million active installations.

It is the best form builder on the market that comes with a drag and drop builder, 1700+ premade templates, and complete spam protection. You can use it to create any kind of form you like, including contact forms, registration forms, login forms, online order forms, and more.

Will these fun WordPress plugins slow down my website?

Using a poorly-coded plugin can slow down your website. However, we have thoroughly tested all the plugins on our list to make sure that they are updated regularly and optimized for speed.

Still, you must keep in mind that using a lot of plugins at the same time can slow down your website. We recommend choosing only 3 to 4 fun plugins to boost engagement.

Is it okay to use multiple plugins on my website?

You can add a few well-chosen plugins to make your site more enjoyable. However, you must keep in mind that too many plugins can clutter your site and overwhelm visitors.

That is why we recommend choosing plugins that complement each other and do not have overlapping functionalities.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how many WordPress plugins you should install and how many are too many.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.



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5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!

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5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!

In today’s digitalized world, starting a business doesn’t always mean you have to have a good chunk of money and years of experience in the field. Yeah, it’s good if you have them, but even without them, you can start a business and make money. Not just a few hundred dollars; some businesses can even make you a millionaire if you invest your time and available resources into them. 

You need to have the right approach and the proper set of skills to make that happen. And you can learn such skills for free on the internet. So, all you need is the willingness to put in the work and effort it needs. 

In this post, you’ll see 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. You don’t need anyone to help you with these businesses when you’re starting out; you can do it all alone, and you can manage these businesses from the comfort of your home. 

Even if you don’t know a single thing about these businesses, you can learn them for free on YouTube, Udemy, and the Interent. There’s more than enough free resources out there about these topics to take you from 0-10 real quick. 

So, sit down and grab your popcorns, because this article might be the only thing you need to launch your first online business, today itself!

Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable and easy-to-start businesses out there. In affiliate marketing, you need to promote someone else’s product in order to make money. The person who promotes the product in exchange for some commission is called an affiliate

When you sign up to be an affiliate of any program, you’ll get a unique link to promote the products called an affiliate link. You need to use your affiliate link to send customers to the seller’s page. That link tracks the amount of sales you generate to determine the money you make. 

You don’t need to create, package, or ship the products yourself. The seller who is selling the product will do these all. All you need to do is, refer customers to the seller. And when the customer referred by you through your affiliate link makes a purchase, you get a small percentage of the sale amount as a reward. That’s it. That’s what affiliate marketing is! 

Through affiliate marketing, you can promote both physical and digital products. 

You don’t always have to sell products to earn affiliate commission. Sometimes, you get commission to make people download something. That can be an app, software, or browser extension. Sometimes, you get commissions to make people sign up for particular websites or services. Sometimes, you get commission to generate leads for businesses and agencies, etc. All these things need to be done through your affiliate link in order for you to make a commission.

how affiliate marketing works

How to Get Started?

1. Choose your Niche

You need to choose a niche to start affiliate marketing. You can’t promote everything from workout gear to making money online courses yourself! So, choosing a niche is very important to succeed in affiliate marketing. Some popular niches for affiliate marketing are: health & fitness, finance, home & kitchen, technology, relationships, etc. 

2. Find the Product

After choosing a niche, you need to find a product to promote. If you decide to get into the health and fitness niche, then you can promote workout plans, weight loss supplements, keto meal plans, hair loss products, and so much more. So, decide what you want to promote and find a good product for it. 

3. Build a Platform

Now, you’ve decided your niche, and your product is ready to promote, so all you need is a platform to promote it. You can promote affiliate products either through a blog or through social media. You can write articles on your blog or grow your social media accounts to share your affiliate links. 

Here are some popular affiliate marketing platforms you can join. 

The affiliate marketing industry is worth nearly $17 billion. So, you can start your affiliate marketing journey today to get a small chunk of that seventeen billion dollars for yourself!

2. Selling Digital Products

Selling digital products is another great way to make a hefty amount of money online. Digital products are a great way to share your knowledge and creativity with the world while making some money. 

Digital products are products that are created and sold online. They don’t exist in the real world, except for printables. Printables are graphics that are created digitally but needs to be printed out in the real world to be used. 

From ebooks to online courses and printables to music, there’s a wide variety of products that you can create and sell. 

Here are some digital products that you can create and sell easily. 

If you’re wondering which digital product sells the best and which one you should sell, consider this analysis done among 96,000 creators by influencers.club. According to the analysis, online courses were the most sold digital products, with 35.7% of the entire digital products sold, followed by ebooks (7.3%) and cookbooks (3.8%)

Here are a few more: 

Check out 16 Best Digital Products to Sell in 2024

How to Get Started?

1. Choose Your Niche

The first step to building a profitable digital product business is to choose a niche that you’re interested in and have a demand in the market. You can select a niche based on your expertise, passion or to profit from an untapped market opportunity. Make sure that there are enough people willing to pay for your products so that you can make a good amount of money selling them.

2. Create Your Product

After choosing a niche to get into, you need to create a solid product to sell. In order to get constant sales, your product needs to be highly valuable. Either it needs to solve your customer’s problem or it needs to add significant value to their life. Make sure that your product is up-to-date, functional, and user-friendly. 

3. Set up a Platform to Sell

Now that you have decided your niche and your product is ready to sell, all you need is a platform to host and sell your products. You can either sell digital products through your own website or through platforms like Etsy, Gumroad, Teachable, etc.

You can sell ebooks, printables, planners, digital arts, wallpapers, templates, etc. through Etsy and Gumroad. And to sell online courses, you can use platforms like Teachable or Udemy. 

You can use graphic design tools like Canva and Adobe Illustrator to create printables, stickers, templates, wallpapers, etc. And you can write your ebook on Google Docs or Notepad and save it as a pdf to sell it. 

4. Price Your Products

After your product is ready and you’ve decided a platform to sell, you need to set a price to sell your products.

Pricing is a really crucial part. You can’t price it too high or too low. If you price it too high, very few people are likely to buy it, and if you price it too low, you won’t make enough profit.

So, while pricing your product, evaluate the product yourself and do your market research to analyze your competitors pricing to determine your own product’s pricing. 

You can promote your digital products by creating video/image content, writing blog posts, email marketing, paid ads, SEO, and through social media marketing. 

Digital products can be a great way to make money online passively without needing much work and attention. So, this might be something you would love to get into! The best part is, there is no limit on how much money you can make. Ana from TheSheApproach has made over $55,000 selling ebooks alone through her small blog.

3. Print on Demand

Print on Demand, or POD, is gaining immense popularity in recent times due to its business model. Print on demand business has less to no startup cost, which makes it easier for anyone to get into it.

In Print on Demand business, you create designs to print on mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, caps, pants, etc. After your design is ready, you find a print-on-demand supplier to print and sell your products. 

Unlike other type of businesses, in POD, the products are not produced first and listed for sale later. Instead, the products are promoted first and only produced or printed when a customer places an order. 

In POD, your job is to create designs and market your products. Your POD supplier will do everything else, from printing, packaging, and delivering the product. They will even handle the returns if they have to. 

How to Get Started?

1. Choose a Niche

First of all, choose a niche you want to start your business in. Choose a niche that has huge demand in the market and something you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in sports, you can create designs related to sports, print them, and sell them. 

2. Create Your Designs

After you’ve chosen your niche, you need to create designs to print on products. Good designs attract more eyeballs and generate more sales compared to plain, low-quality designs. So, put your maximum effort into creating good designs. Your designs might be the only differentiator between success and failure of your POD business. 

3. Choose a Print on Demand Supplier

After your design is ready, you need to find a good and trustworthy POD supplier to print and supply your products. Choose a supplier that uses high-quality materials to create products, has less fees, low shipping time, good customer support, and large area coverage. These things are crucial for your business’s success. 

Here are some popular print-on-demand suppliers: 

4. Set up Your Store

Now that your product is ready to sell, you need to find a platform to sell it. You can sell your POD products on Etsy, WooCommerce, or eBay, or setup a Shopify store to sell them. Your store must be clean and colorful to convert more visitors into customers. 

5. Price Your Products

After your store is setup, you need to price your product. Make sure to check your competitors prices before pricing your own products. You can’t sell your products for significantly more than what your competitor is selling for. If you do so, you won’t get as many sales as you would have with a lower price point. 

You can market your Print on Demand products mainly through social media and paid ads. You can start and grow a social media account to promote your POD products for free. 

The print-on-demand market is worth more than $7.24B in 2024 and is projected to reach $43.4B by 2030 with a growth rate of staggering 26.8%. So, this might be the chance to dip your toes into the world of ecommerce with print on demand.

4. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is one of the hottest and most popular online business right now. It has made thousands of teenagers and 20-year-olds millionaires, and its craze is not going down anytime soon. 

Dropshipping is a business model where you find a product, advertise it, and generate sales, but someone else produces, packages, and ships them for you.

You buy products for less price from retailers or even manufacturers and sell them for a higher price through your own store. For example, if I find a cool watch on Alibaba.com that I can buy for $7 a piece, then I will create my own store to advertise that product and sell it for $20, $30, or even more. That is how you make money with dropshipping. 

In dropshipping, you don’t have to worry about producing product, packaging, shipping, or keeping a product inventory because whenever an order comes in, you forward that order and customer’s details to your supplier, and then your supplier will produce, package, and deliver the product to your customer. There are several tools and softwares to automate this entire process. Here you’re basically a middleman reselling the products. 

How to Get Started?

1. Find a Product

To start a dropshipping business, first you need to find a product that solves a specific problem of your customers. Sometimes the product can be a fashionable or decorative item like a watch. The product has to have a high potential to sell. In the world of dropshipping, a product that solves a problem and has a high potential to sell is called a winning product.

2. Find a Supplier

After finding a good product to sell, you need to find a supplier who can supply you the same product for a cheaper price. A supplier can be the making or breaking point of your business because your job is to promote the product and bring customers. Everything except that is done by your supplier, so if you find a good supplier, you won’t have or have very few problems in your business, and vice versa.

So, before choosing your supplier, check their product quality, delivery time, packaging style, and customer service. A good supplier must have high-quality products, low delivery time, good packaging quality, and good customer support. 

AliExpress is the go-to platform to find suppliers and products at a cheaper price, for dropshipping.

3. Build Your Store

After you’ve found a good product and a reliable supplier, you need to build a store to market your products. You can create your store on platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, GetResponse, and Wix or sell them directly on Amazon or eBay. The design of your store must be clean, simple, and colorful to get more sales. 

4. Market Your Store

After your store is setup and ready to sell, you need to advertise it, to bring customers to it. To advertise your store, you can use social media, paid ads, content marketing, SEO, and more.

Most dropshippers advertise their store through either Facebook or TikTok ads and through content marketing by creating viral pieces of content for TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts. 

That’s it! That’s how you can start your own dropshipping business and profit from the $250B dropshipping industry.

5. Dropservicing

Now you know what dropshipping is, but have you ever heard about dropservicing? Huh? Dropshipping deals with selling physical products, but dropservicing is all about selling services. 

Dropservicing, also known as service arbitrage, is a business model where you sell services to clients. But instead of doing the work yourself, you outsource the work to a third-party service provider, either a freelancer or an agency. In dropservicing, you’re basically a middleman, just like in dropshipping, who acts as a service seller in front of clients to make money without doing any work yourself. 

Whatever remains after paying your service provider from the amount your client paid is your profit. For example, if you find a client who is ready to pay you $1000 to edit a video for him. Then you find a freelancer or a video editing agency who can edit the same video for $400, then you can keep the remaining $600 with yourself. The more you charge your client and the less you pay your service provider, the more money you make. Didn’t understand? Read it again, you’ll get it! 

How to Get Started?

1. Choose a Niche

To start a dropservicing business, you must be good at some kind of skill or a particular niche. That can be web designing, video editing, graphic designing, content writing, etc. Even though you’re not the one doing the work, you need to have proper knowledge and skill in the field to convince your client that you’re capable enough and a perfect fit for the work. 

2. Find Your Service Provider

After you’ve decided your niche, you need a service provider to do the required tasks for you. While choosing a service provider, you need to make sure that they are good at what they do; otherwise, you’ll end up with a low-quality output that may not satisfy your clients and may not fulfill their requirements. You can find service providers on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, etc., or on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

3. Setup a Platform

After you’ve decided your niche and found the service providers, you need to market your services in order to get clients. To do so, either you can create your own website, create a profile on freelancing platforms, or promote your services through social media. 

While setting up a platform, you need to add your portfolio, past works, pricing, client testimonials, and contact information. Don’t worry if you don’t have any of these! You can add your service provider’s portfolio and client testimonials as yours while setting up your platform. 

4. Set Your Prices

Before you launch your dropservicing business, you need to set a price for your services. While setting up pricing your services, find out how much your service provider is charging for the service you’re going to sell, and set your prices accordingly. For example, if your service provider charges $400 to edit a video, you can set your video editing price at $600, $700, or more. 

You can promote your dropservicing business through content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, cold outreach, paid advertising, and freelance platforms. 

Cold outreach is a process where you reach out to or contact someone via email who doesn’t have any connection with your business. The email is meant to aware them about your product or service and provide them with an offer.

Best Platforms to Start Your Business

If you’re thinking of starting a blog to get into affiliate marketing, then I would highly suggest you create your blog on either Wix or WordPress. These two are the best blog builders out there. 

And if you’d like to create your own website to promote your digital products, dropshipping/dropservicing business, and print-on-demand products, then I would suggest you use GetResponse’s simple drag-and-drop website builder. It’s very easy to use and completely free to create and manage a website for lifetime. Getresponse also has its own email marketing tool, so, if you want, you can even start email marketing with it for completely free!

Get your business online with free website builder (en)

Tips to succeed:

1. Stay Consistent: You won’t see results overnight, so you need to be consistent to get results and make money. 

2. Learn, Learn, Learn: Whatever business you get into, learn about it as much as you can. Learning will help you gather more knowledge about the topic, which ultimately helps you to get better results and earn more. 

3. Be Patient: Many people give up too early because they are really, really impatient. Remember, great things take time, and if it were so easy and fast, then everyone would have done it. 

4. Provide Value: If you want to make money, then you need to provide something that is equally valuable to your customers. So, make sure your main motive is to provide value along with making money. 

So, these were the 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. Let me quickly recap them for you. 1. Affiliate marketing 2. Selling digital products 3. Print on Demand (POD) 4. Dropshipping 5. Dropservicing. Make sure to give them a try if you’re thinking of starting an online business. And tell me in the comments, which one of these businesses would you start if you have to?

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The WordPress Saga: Does Matt Mullenweg Want a Fork or Not?

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The WordPress Saga: Does Matt Mullenweg Want a Fork or Not?

A CEO is no longer expected to talk candidly about open source. Maybe business leaders have never expected open source to be anything but serve their business interests. Not every CEO takes advantage of open source to the degree we have seen in recent months. But no one is free of blame. Open source means different things to different people, and everyone uses it for their own purposes.

The colloquial use of open source gives companies like Meta the opportunity to use open source as they wish. Even high-ranking people in the open source community discount the problem. They say it’s OK. Open source is still moving forward. The kids don’t care — all they want to do is build models.

There is no playbook or good versus evil here. Many thoughtful people want to find a way to solve the mess we’ve seen surface in the WordPress saga of the past few weeks.

To recap, for those who haven’t been sufficiently online the past few days: Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, the popular open source content management system, has been accusing WP Engine, a WordPress hosting provider, of violating WordPress’ trademarks and using its servers without compensation. The two organizations’ lawyers have exchanged cease-and-desist letters (more on those later). At the stroke of midnight UTC on Tuesday, WordPress blocked WP Engine’s access to its servers.

As this episode unravels, a fresh flow of ideas about open source has emerged. At least one CEO has established an important approach to solving issues like those we see with WordPress and WP Engine.

In a thoughtful post on his personal blog, Dries Buytaer, creator of Drupal, described the issue today as a makers-takers problem, where “creators of open source software (“Makers”) see their work being used by others, often service providers, who profit from it without contributing back in a meaningful or fair way (“Takers”).”

CEOs are on both sides of the perspective he details. He knows the people involved and has a solution that makes sense for the Drupal community. He calls it a “contributor credit” program.

Buytaer comes from the same world as Mullenweg. Drupal and WordPress are open source content management systems.

Still, open source is a tool for CEOs to use for profits, sometimes illusions, and leverage against commercial competitors. We’ve seen this with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who calls Llama, the company’s large language model, open source, which it is not.

And now we face someone who has long enjoyed a gleaming image in the open source community but now faces many questions about his intent.

Mullenweg: WP Engine Should Fork WordPress

Earlier in the week, we interviewed Mullenweg, who said WP Engine should fork WordPress.

“I think a fork would be amazing,” he told TNS. “They should fork WordPress, because what they offer is not actually WordPress. They call it WordPress, but they really screw it up.”

Mullenweg now wants to own a chunk of WP Engine, and he’s using his bully pulpit to pound away until he gets what he wants. He’s called WP Engine “a cancer.” He openly rails about the WP Engine executive team and Silver Lake, the private equity firm that has invested in it, using tactics we’ve become far too accustomed to from all sorts, who we don’t have to name here.

It’s a victim tactic. Mullenweg and Automattic, his holding company, talk like they are the victims of an evil plan, rooted in trademark violations. Following the victim’s logic, Mullenweg has to attack. He and his team have to block WP Engine from the WordPress servers.

Now comes the news from The Verge that WordPress demanded 8% of WP Engine revenues each month in exchange for being considered a contributor to the WordPress open source project. That would also mean WP Engine could not fork WordPress, but it would allow WP Engine to use the trademark.

The Verge:

“[C]hoosing to contribute 8 percent to WP Engine employees would give WordPress.org and Automattic ‘full audit rights’ and “access to employee records and time-tracking” at the company. The agreement also comes with a ban on ‘forking or modifying’ Automattic’s software, including plug-ins and extensions like WooCommerce.”

This raises questions about Mullenweg’s hearty support for a WP Engine fork. For perspective, WP Engine competes with Automattic. Just be clear on that one.

Mullenweg has made it confusing for almost everyone involved. There are huge supporters who want WordPress to survive, and there are end users who don’t have any clue about open source or even that their sites run on WordPress servers.

WP Engine, on the other hand, has its own issues. It does not give much in return for using WordPress. The company, under CEO Heather Brunner and founder Jason Cohen, uses the WordPress name. They call it fair use.

Further, WP Engine uses the work invested by the WordPress community into the service without the engineering overhead required if it had to maintain its own fork, which would cost millions and take quite some time to develop — a year, two, three?

What drama. If you are hearing about this for the first time, Mullenweg, who created the web content management system WordPress, has been relentless with his attacks on WP Engine for what he claims are trademark violations. It came to a head at WordCamp in Portland earlier in September when Mullenweg called WP Engine “a cancer” on the community.

On Sept. 23, attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine on behalf of Mullenweg’s holding company Automattic and WooCommerce. Among its demands: that WP Engine stop all unauthorized use of WordPress’s trademarks and “provide an accounting of all profits from the service offerings that have made unauthorized use of our Client’s intellectual property.”

The letter suggested that “even a mere 8% royalty on WP Engine’s $400+ million in annual revenue equates to more than $32 million in annual lost licensing revenue for our Client.”

On Sept. 25, in lieu of action by WP Engine, Mullenweg blocked WP Engine’s access to the WordPress servers. He then gave a reprieve on Sept. 27 after users contacted him. Mullenweg said users thought they were paying WordPress, not WP Engine.

“They thought they were paying me, to be honest, that’s why they were pissed off,” Mullenweg said. “And so I was like, ‘Oops, OK, we’ll turn it back on.’“

WordPress blocked WP Engine’s access to its servers Tuesday at UTC 00:00.

The odd thing: no sign of trouble so far from WP Engine users; a WP Engine spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by TNS about whether the company had heard from customers having problems. WP Engine must have set up the mirrors and all to WordPress.org. How that affects performance and the rest is still not understood.

Sources of Conflict

In our interview, Mullenweg said users now hopefully understand that they are paying WP Engine, which does not pay WordPress for auto updates and everything else WordPress provides. Users, he argued, should be mad at WP Engine, not him and his team, who run the servers. Again, Mullenweg expresses that he and his team are the victims.

WP Engine is simply not responding, Mullenweg said, except through a cease-and-desist letter its attorneys sent Automattic on Sept. 23 after his repeated attacks.

The letter sent on WP Engine’s behalf reads in part, “Mr. Mullenweg’s covert demand that WP Engine hand over tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic, while publicly masquerading as an altruistic protector of the WordPress community, is disgraceful.  WP Engine will not accede to these unconscionable demands, which not only harm WP Engine and its employees but also threaten the entire WordPress community.”

WP Engine did not answer The New Stack’s question about forking WordPress, but a company spokesperson did have choice words about Automattic’s licensing demands.

“We, like the rest of the WordPress community, use the WordPress mark to describe our business. Automattic’s suggestion that WP Engine needs a license to do that is simply wrong, and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To moot its claimed concerns, we have eliminated the few examples Automattic gave in its Sept. 23 letter to us.”

For example, WP Engine has made some minor changes, namely changing WordPress to WordPress1 and WooCommerce1 on the site’s front page.

What About the Community?

Overall, users had almost no warning that their sites would be disrupted. This is an odd way to treat users, especially when they are such huge fans of your platform.

Here’s where open source becomes a problem for users. Most people do not know how they get the updates to their CMS. But once their site stopped working, they became entangled in a battle between Mullenweg and WP Engine.

Meanwhile, most users are just trying to keep their sites working.

 

Post by @alexelnaugh

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Amidst the controversy, Mullenweg acknowledged he could have done better in reaching out to the community.

“To be fair, I have not been the best at public relations or publishing things,” he told TNS. “That’s why we try to be very clear at UTC 00, Oct. 1 … at this exact time, their network, WP Engine servers will no longer be able to access our networks.”

But a fork? The cost to set up the servers, the network, the load balancers, on and on, would cost millions and could take years. At its peak, WordPress serves 30,000 requests per second and 40% of the entire Web, according to Mullenweg.

Users have an option, he said. They can move to a different hosting provider. He mentioned Bluehost and his own company, WordPress.com, as two options.

Open Source Faces a Hurricane

There has been confusion about open source AI and server-side public licenses. Now, we’ve got the WordPress debacle. Oh, and there’s talk about Oracle owning the JavaScript trademark. The fun never ends.

But people are working on the problem, particularly the single point of failure issue that has become more apparent since WP Engine’s servers were cut off.

Here’s a thread worth reading from Reddit, about how to solve the problem of a single point of truth. The problem is a severe one, but maybe a fork is not the answer. Instead, perhaps it’s a way to solve matters that can easily happen if sites aren’t updated:

The vulnerability should be apparent: if WordPress.org goes down for any reason, millions of sites stop updating. A coordinated attack (zero-day implementation coupled with a DDoS attack that prevents updates from going out from zero-day) could be a disaster the world over. And, if the Foundation ever decided to get out of the update business, or ran into financial difficulty, or Matt decides to retire to Aruba and quit WordPress entirely — whatever the case may be — there’s no Plan B.

So, the community needs a plan B — and maybe that’s most important. Stop the bickering. Instead, look for ways to modernize the WordPress infrastructure so users don’t get entangled in corporate wars that use open source as a proxy to fight battles that leave casualties scattered across the web.

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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark

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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark

“WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the practices of nearly all businesses in this space,” the lawsuit said.

Mullenweg told Ars that “we had numerous meetings with WPE over the past 20 months, including a previous term sheet that was delivered in July. The term sheet was meant to be simple, and if they had agreed to negotiate it we could have, but they refused to even take a call with me, so we called their bluff.” Automattic also published a timeline of meetings and calls between the two companies going back to 2023.

Mullenweg also said, “Automattic had the commercial rights to the WordPress trademark and could sub-license, hence why the payment should go to Automattic for commercial use of the trademark. Also the term sheet covered the WooCommerce trademark, which they also abuse, and is 100 percent owned by Automattic.”

Automattic alleged “widespread unlicensed use”

Exhibit A in the lawsuit includes a letter to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner from a trademark lawyer representing Automattic and a subsidiary, WooCommerce, which makes a plugin for WordPress.

“As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights,” the letter said.

The letter alleged that “your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client.” It also alleged that “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks… to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic.”

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