Jan Koch – The Man, WordPress and The WP Summit

Jan Koch knows WordPress. It was great talking with Jan, (pronounced “Yawn” and this interview is anything but boring so you definitely won’t be yawning at any point, lol) all the way from a little town in northern Germany. As Jan says, “a global connection”. This interview was a lot of fun and Jan talked about so many cool things having to do with WordPress, the WP Summit and he offers a lot of great advice for entrepreneurs. We kick off the interview laughing after Jan hears about a story of mine and my lack of speaking German.

Jan is a 25 year old guy from Germany who grew an online side business that ended up generating enough income to replace his day job. He now works as a web designer and WordPress developer full time and enjoys blogging about it. As web designer, he works for creative entrepreneurs and bloggers, helping them to take their website to the next level and increase the profitability of their businesses.

The conversation jumps into learning about Jan’s background and his story covering his transition from working for a company to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He talks about his journey from starting his blog, to now having many clients all around the world building WordPress websites. Jan has been working with the WordPress CMS since 2012. When he saw how successful some of the people were that he was following, he thought he could do the same thing.

After finding what worked and more importantly, what didn’t work, Jan found a formula that worked for him in the world of blogging. While he quickly grew his traffic to 400 visitors a day in four months. While this was good, it was hard for Jan to sustain the amount of work it was taking. The more he worked with WordPress, the more he became comfortable with the WordPress API and the next logical step for Jan was to proceed as a WordPress consultant.

I am the type of guy who likes to fail fast and fail forward. -Jan Koch

 

Jan Koch on WordPress Security

Hacks don’t work like they did before. There is not a hacker sitting in front of a computer and targeting one site in particular. Hackers use automated scripts and tools these days. If they find a site that is vulnerable, then users have a problem. Hackers can make tens of thousands of dollars for one spend campaign. Given that WordPress powers approximately 23% of all websites on the net, this is a huge target for hackers.

The WordPress core itself is rock solid. The themes and plugins are where the problems are usually found. There are so many people creating themes and plugins without a consistent filtering system in place prior to developers publishing their software. Users install these plugins and/or themes on their site without knowing how well the code was written and so this can be detrimental to the users site.

In order to minimize your vulnerability with regard to hackers, make sure that you install themes or plugins from the WordPress repository only if possible. Make sure that the software comes from a reliable source. Make sure that there is an active development in place. This means that you should be able to easily get in touch with the development team to answer any quesitons. Also, make sure that the software is upated on a regular basis.

That’s why I love WordPress, because it gives you tons of opportunities when you put the work in. – Jan Koch

Jan Koch – The WP Summit

If you are a online entrepreneur that is using WordPress you don’t want to miss the WP Summit. Jan created this 10-day WP summit by interviewing 28 world-leading WordPress experts and online entrepreneurs who will share how you can build an impactful WordPress site and everything that goes along with it! Jan invited these experts from around the world to talk about WordPress without all the technical jargon normally associated with online marketing with WordPress. He wants this to be very easy for WordPress users to understand.

The structure of the WP Summit is a overivew through the different phases of building a successful WordPress website. Day one starts with the absolute fundamentals and Dan Norris, founder of WP Curve, talks about how to use content marketing right from the start. Rachel McCollin, Author, WP Expert, WordCamp Birmingham Organizer, talks about the basic fundamentals and how to avoid rookie mistakes.

Day two is all about themes and designs. It’s about bootstrapping your own design, what kind of theme to choose and how to work with a WordPress developer and designer. The whole point of the WP Summit is to provide WordPress website users with a guide to launching a successful WordPress website in the best possible manner. Learning from the experts themselves so that users can get up and running quickly and effeciently.

Jan Koch has broken down the WP Summit into categories ranging from learning how to create a powerful strategy for your website and build a rock-solid WordPress site to avoid the most common mistakes in using WordPress right from the start. Some of the topics of discussion will be how to choose the right theme, list building, SEO, content building and much more.

Here are some of the topics that will be discussed and who will be discussing them:

• Stephen Esketzis, Sales Funnel and Facebook Ads Specialist, talks about marrying inbound marketing and WordPress together
• Tim Paige, Conversion Educator at LeadPages, discusses building highly converting sales funnels with WordPress
• Tony Perez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sucuri, talks about WordPress security for the not-so-technical
• Rand Fishkin, Founder at Moz, will chat about SEO and how to get your WordPress site found easier on the Internet

There are many more topics covered over the course of the WP Summit that will help you build the ultimate marketing platform using WordPress.

If you want to learn more about or connect with Jan Koch, check out his links below:

Jan Koch Website
The WP Summit Website
Jan Koch on Facebook
Send Jan a Tweet – @iamjankoch
Connect with Jan Koch on LinkedIn
Join Jan Koch on Google Plus
Join Jan Koch on YouTube

Here is a link that Jan recommended about WordPress Security that will check your site for malware for free called Sucuri Site Check.

Here are the highlights of my awesome conversation with Jan Koch if you are in a hurry:

• Who is Jan Koch? (3:07 Mark)
• What kind of guy is Jan Koch? (5:28 Mark)
• What is the myth about security/hacking that many users believe? (8:18 mark)
• What niche is booming in WordPress right now? (14:09 mark)
• What is the WP Summit? (16:05 Mark)
• What should you do if your WordPress website gets hacked? (27:28 mark)
• What was Jan’s break away moment in his life? (28:44 Mark)
• Jan’s words of wisdom? (33:58 Mark)
• BONUS talk – Who is Rand Fishkin and what does he have to do with the WP Summit? (36:55 Mark)

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