Pawan Agrawal, WordPress Plugin Guru – Interview

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Blog,Young Entrepreneurs

Pawan Agrawal, WordPress Plugin Guru – Interview

Todays Young Entrepreneur interview is with Pawan Agrawal of MaxBlogPress.com

Pawan Agrawal is a Young Entrepreneur who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. He has developed a number of Plugins for WordPress – one of the most impressive being the: MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad

OK, Pawan, thank you for agreeing to this interview. First off – can we have a little background information – Where you
live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you?

I’m 24 yrs old and I live in Kathmandu, Nepal.

I always get motivated and inspired by the success stories of others.
Whenever I hear or read about the people who have achieved something
great I always get excited about it and be more motivated to achieve
such kind of results.

1: What gave you the idea to create http://www.MaxBlogPress.com (Was
it your first Web Design Business?)

I have been using wordpress since it was in version 1. I am kinda
control freak so I used to modify lots of things in the wordpress,
play with different plugins/themes etc… I have built several
websites with many things modified for my personal need. More I modify
it to my need, more I realized the power of wordpress.

Since, I’m a programmer myself it’s quite natural for me to do all
those stuffs. Most of the wordpress plugins available today are quite
complex for a normal non-techy users. Also, there are not many plugins
to add functions in wordpress for monitizing it or bring more traffic.

That’s when I come up with the idea to create MaxBlogPress. I have
been using wordpress since a long time. I understand web marketing and
programming very well. So I thought why don’t I combine both of my
skills to give all the bloggers an easy solution for making their blog
more effective in terms of attracting traffic and money.

2: What advice would you give someone who wants to make money as a
designer or programmer?

What most designer/programmer misses is the real understanding of
their market. They usually create some very good softwares but nobody
needs it or even if they need it they don’t want to pay for the stuff
done by the software.

Another thing I suggest is to position the software in such a way that
the user actually want to buy it. I have seen many good softwares but
they are usually presented in a very poor way. They don’t demonstrate
the software very well so even if the user actually need it, they
don’t find any information that can convience them to buy.

Both things can be fixed by understanding the need of their market
very well. If you do the research properly then you can create the
software which the users actually need and willing to pay for it.

3: You live in Nepal – is this the country of your birth? Was there
any particular difficulties for you establishing a business in Nepal
and trading with customers all around the world?

Yes, it is the country where I was born.

The difficulty I faced was doing transactions in dollars. There’s no
easy way here to pay in dollar. Another problem which I still face is
that not all programs/affiliate networks etc… accept all the
country. And often I find my country is not listed in the supported
country list.

4: I first came across you because of
MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad – when did you develop this
Plugin? What gave you the idea for this Plugin? Were you certain you
had a “winner” when you first developed it?

Before releasing the “MaxBlogPress Stripe Ads” I had already developed
a popup plugin called “MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup”. I had seen
many users were using this plugin for showing alerts or disclaimers
etc… That was indeed a very clever use of it but I was thinking if I
can provide something else which can be used for such things.

One day while browsing the web I noticed firefox showed a message in a
stripe while blocking a popup. I had seen that many times but that
time it was an aha moment. That’s from where I got the idea for it and
developed it for the wordpress users.

I was thinking it will be liked by many of my subscribers but I was
not thinking it will be so popular. I now even see people are using it
for many different purposes which I didn’t think of at first.

5: If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were
just getting started. What business related advice would you give
yourself?

I would give two bits of advice to myself.

i) Recognize my strength and build everything on my strength

We often neglect our true strength because it all seems natural and
easy to us. But that same thing are much harder to do for others.

If I start my business again then I’ll ask myself what unique strength
I have, what I can easily do much better than others and what I am
really passionate about.

If you think deeply about all these things then you can have very
strong advantage over others. You can easily move forward in business
using your strength and it will be harder for others to compete with
you in same field.

ii) Develop unique things using my strength

Instead of following the crowd and talking about others, I’ll build
unique things using my strength. I call it as “be the news” instead of
“relaying the news”.

6: Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your
blood? Or is it something that can be learned?

I think entrepreneurialism means having a great desire for achieving
something huge and having the willingness to work hard for making that
happen. If you have a desire to achieve something great and want to be
way ahead in your life then entrepreneurialism is in your blood.

Everything else can be learnt.

7: Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

The people I look up to are Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime and Russell
Brunson. Rich Schefren has dramatically change the way I look at
business.

Mike Filsaime and Russell Brunson inspires me the way they have built
their business from nothing to multi millions. They both come up with
many new good ideas and make them the reality.

8: What is the best advice you have ever been given?

From online business perspective, it’s “build your own product” and
build subscribers list.

10: What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up
their first business?

It will be same advice which I’ve answered in the question no. 5.

On top of that I’ll suggest them to jump in the business fast and see
how things work. Often, if you have never setup a business then you’ll
realize that what you have imagined the things go like will be
completely different in the reality. I’ll suggest them not to stop
themselves by thinking and planning if their ideas will work or not.
Just jump in and test the stuffs. After sometime in business you’ll
have good understanding of what works and what don’t. That’s when you
can plan some solid stuffs to make a long term plan.

11: If the Internet had not exist – what do you think you would be
doing?

I would have established a software company locally and would have
sold softwares all over the country.

12: What are your plans for the future?

I’ll be expanding maxblogpress.com more by adding more wordpress
plugins. For now my future plan is to develop lots of
plugins/softwares which will utilize the true power of wordpress.