I made it! Ten episodes of Genesis Office Hours in the can. Thank you to everyone who’s watched and participated! I also hit a second milestone this week – 100+ subscribers on the GOH Google+ community! It’s not a numbers game, but it’s encouraging to know folks find the show valuable – it makes the time and effort worthwhile.
This week I was joined by Susan Ramsey, champion of the StudioPress support forums, official support guru for Pretty Darn Cute Designs, and theme customizer for Graphically Designing. (Whew!)
Before we dive into show notes, here’s a fun fact this week about the Genesis Framework:
Wow, #GenesisWP runs more than 2x the number of Alexa top 500K sites than its closest competitor: http://t.co/L8f7zv3bsE
— Nathan Rice (@nathanrice) May 13, 2014
What We Talked About
Support (& Hiring Support Help)
Susan – what are the most common support issues, user frustrations, etc. that you see? I’m thinking about ways that theme creators could make things less painful for buyers
Susan, Can developers/designers hire you to give (forum) support if they sell commercial themes?
Susan, do you have a favorite support application? (zendesk, helpscout, etc.)
What’s outsourcing support worth?
What are the three most-frequently-asked questions about Genesis themes?
What are your tips for hiring help to support themes?
When you’re providing support for your own theme, it seems it would be hard to judge the line between a reasonable level of support and where the questions cross the line into theme customization service. How do you balance that and keep the customer happy?
As a designer who hires talented help a lot (especially recently), what are some of the main tips you can give to people who want to hire assistants, or need someone like you…a right hand (wo)man so to speak…?
Every designer/developer have some genesis tricks. Do you give it away on the forums?
Susan, do you have an “archive” with ready answers available for returning questions?
Q: for Susan – Do you want forum users to mark their threads “resolved”?
How do you know if someone is a legit owner, would asking them to post in the support forum be a way of seeing if they are a legit owner (because they have a password)
Grab Bag
How do you get started setting up your products or services for affiliate marketing/sales?
Susan – how did you get involved in WordPress?
Any suggestions for a WP membership plugin that plays nice with Genesis?
You seem to be getting more comfortable with GOH, how are you feeling about it so far?
Referrals please? I am looking for a graphic web designer I can partner with who will do a psd layout for clients Custom Site Design
How do people get on this show, Carrie?
Pricing
What do you think is the best model for making the most money — hourly gigs? project based pricing? a mix of both?
Susan, how do you decide your price. Some themes get more questions than others…
Development
Would love to hear more about dev process models using github
Carrie, I have to confess that I’m still struggling to understand how it’s done with Genesis. Filters, actions… where do they go? Which kinds of templates?
Show Notes & Links
There are a handful of affiliate links in this post. If you’re curious about how affiliate programs work or why I use them, read about it here. Otherwise, just know they help me keep the lights on and keep the free resources flowing.
Affiliate Marketing Tools
AffiliateWP for EDD – new plugin by Pippin Williamson (haven’t tried it, but heard great things)
Affiliates Pro Integration Pack for EDD – plugin by Pippin Williamson and itthinx (not my favorite option, honestly)
ShareASale – 3rd party affiliate program management (used by StudioPress)
E-Junkie – 3rd party affiliate program management (used by RocketGenius/Gravity Forms)
Articles
The Best WordPress Membership Plugins – comparison post by Chris Lema
Editing Your WordPress Site 101 – Some basics before you ever edit your WP site
Learning some dev basics (CSS, PHP, Genesis, WP)
Udemy.com – web dev tutorials
Code Academy – web dev tutorials
7 Day Free Trial to Lynda.com – PHP, CSS, and WordPress tutorials (and Genesis tuts coming soon :))
The TADA! Workshop – One-day live workshop with Pretty Darn Cute Designs
Beefing up your Genesis Skills & Developer Resources
Genesis Explained Series – by Nick Croft
Genesis People on Github to Follow (a non-exhaustive list!)
StudioPress Community Forums – go answer some questions! 
Workflow using Bitbucket & Mina – by Simen Schikulski
WordPress Template Hierarchy
StudioPress Resources
StudioPress Snippets
Watch it Here
Join Me Next Week
Join me Thursday, May 22nd at 1pm central! To receive a reminder via email, join the Genesis Office Hours community on Google+.