If you’re a freelancer, you’re a business owner. Period. Freelancing isn’t the first step towards business ownership. The idea that freelancing isn’t a real business is the #1 reason freelancers fail at freelancing and go back to their corporate jobs. If you want to succeed and prosper as a freelancer, you have to change your mindset. You have to learn now only how to do your craft and do it well, but also how to operate and grow a business. In this presentation I’ll help budding freelancers turn their side hustle into their full time job.

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It’s more important than ever for your digital agency to show what sets you apart from the competition.

Discover how to elevate your agency’s marketing to land more of your best-fit clients by building your personal influence as the agency founder

Join this talk to get inspiration from real-life agency examples who’re excelling at this. You too can master how to confidently differentiate yourself and showcase your agency culture, achievements, and personality without feeling (too) uncomfortable.

Get actionable tips to help you break free from being the industry’s best-kept secret.

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Nicole Osborne: Marketing Coach for growth-minded digital agencies, Wunderstars

I have run a web agency for 8 years and in that time have had more or less that same team of remote contractors with almost zero turnover. I would love to help other web agency owners learn how to build fantastic virtual teams.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the business landscape, and web design agencies have the opportunity to leverage its power to drive growth and innovation.

In this session, we will explore how agencies can harness the potential of AI to build their business and achieve success in a competitive market. From automating repetitive tasks to personalizing user experiences, optimizing content, and analyzing data, AI offers a wide range of applications that can enhance agency operations, streamline processes, and deliver superior results for clients. Through real-world examples, case studies, and practical insights, this session will provide agencies with actionable strategies and best practices for effectively utilizing AI to drive business growth, improve efficiency, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving web design industry.

Join us to discover the untapped potential of AI and learn how it can empower your agency to achieve new heights of business success.

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Fabrice Canel, Microsoft | Itai Sadan, Duda | Ben Pines, AI21 Labs and Wordtune | Andrew Palmer, Bertha.ai

As marketers and advertisers, we spend time and energy crafting our content, ads and messaging. We try to convince people to believe our stories, prefer our brands, click our listings, engage, and convert. But people are only part of our audience. Increasingly, they’re not even the most significant part. Maybe they’re not even the most important part. Because to reach those people – to gain access to an audience and a market – we need to first convince systems, search engines, and social sites that our brands and our content are a good fit. We need to market to machines.

Schema.org gives us access to a rich language for doing that, but barely anybody’s going beyond the basics. They’re chasing rich snippets and fancy search results but missing the bigger picture.

You’ll need to level up your structured data game, to access tomorrow’s markets. You’ll need to understand how to visualize connected data, build sophisticated entity graphs, and think like a search engine.

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Jono Alderson: Head of SEO, Yoast

Fraud, corruption, money laundering and other collar corporate crime not only poison the working environment, but also cause great personal and financial damage to the company, its employees, investors and other stakeholders.

Whistleblowers help to bring such cases to light. Therefore, whistleblower protection is extremely important and starts with anonymous and secure communication and continues through internal investigation and preservation of evidence to litigation.

Blockchain technology helps to create an immutable chain of custody. in this course, we will look at this use case of blockchain technology and examine various legal principles.

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Sarah Afshari: Founder, DISS-CO

As the second most popular search engine in the world and with over 2 billion monthly active users, YouTube has immense potential as a platform for agencies looking to scale their business. However, many have yet to fully harness the power of YouTube.

In this virtual panel, we’ll be joined by a group of experts who have successfully utilized YouTube to scale their businesses. They’ll share their insights and strategies for using YouTube effectively and discuss whether it is an underused resource for scaling agencies.

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Paul Charlton, WP Tuts | Imran Siddiq, Web Squadron | Jeffery Dalrymple, LytBox | Jamie Marsland, PootlePress | Kori Ashton, Press Happi

A question Atarim has been asked a lot throughout the week is: “How was this platform built to host the summit?”.  Join Atarim’s CEO, Vito Peleg, and designer, Dave Nesbitt, where they’ll go through the nuts and bolts of how this website is built.

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Vito Peleg, Co-Founder & CEO, Atarim | Dave Nesbit, Designer, Atarim

Join Vito, Stephanie, Andrew, Beth, Alex, Amber, Jess, Zach and Ben as they recap day 3 of the Atarim Web Agency Summit!

As an agency owner or developer, you may have heard of website accessibility and that some websites are required by law to be built to be accessible for people with disabilities. Perhaps you’ve even built an accessible website – only to find that the development time and cost were much higher than expected.

This presentation will discuss not only how to include accessibility in new website builds profitably, but also how accessibility can help you to rapidly grow revenue, both on projects and as part of recurring support plans. We’ll talk about pricing, sales language that converts clients, and tools that can help reduce costs. Leave with actionable ideas for how you can start building accessibility into your agency’s offerings right away.

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Amber Hinds: Founder & CEO, Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker

The competition in the website and digital agency space is getting more fierce every day due to people looking for new careers during the pandemic, recent massive layoffs, and the threat of recession. Just performing the same old services just isn’t going to cut it anymore. You need a NEW Unique Value Proposition.

In this session we will cover what clients REALLY care most about, especially when times are tough, and how you can position Project Management (getting done on time and within budget) as your UVP. This works even if you have few project management skills.

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Beth Livingston: Founder & Director, The WP Project Manager’s Academy

That’s what I thought to myself back in 2019 when I launched WPCoffeeTalk. I learned by doing. (Which means I learned by making a LOT of mistakes.)

Since then I’ve launched a few more podcasts, guested on even more, and co-host a few, too.

Launching a podcast is amazing, but there’s a lot you need to take into consideration, and a lot of questions to ask yourself when you get started.

Join me for a session to learn what to do (and what not to do) when you decide it’s time to start podcasting!

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Michelle Frechette: Director of Community Engagement, StellarWP

Our view of AI and how it has already affected the world of content and SEO & stands to continue to affect it.

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How much should you be making in recurring revenue as a web agency? What are the main sources? How do you secure more?

In this session, Kristina Romero – founder of WP Care Market, The Recurring Revenue Retreat and author of The Revenue Relationship – lays out the ABCs of recurring revenue productized-services and where your expectations and stretch goals should live.

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Kristina Romero: Founder, WP Care Market

How the Block Editor jeopardizes your agency workflow and how patterns might fix that. The Block & Site Editor make it possible to change anything on a website. That’s great! But it’s also a problem. In the past, web agencies were able to provide customers with flawless websites on which the customer could change only certain aspects and content.

Now with the Block & Site Editor, customers can easily destroy their websites accidentally. Patterns not only speed up the website building process, but also provide a clear structure. Pursue this approach to the creation of dynamic patterns that separate content & design, and you’ll finally have a solution for this issue.

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Jakob Trost: CTO, GREYD

In today’s digital landscape, selecting the right web hosting provider is crucial. This virtual panel discussion brings together industry experts to provide insights and guidance on how to choose the best hosting provider that aligns with the business needs of your business as well as your clients’.

Topics include understanding business requirements, types of hosting, reliability, security, pricing, and customer support. Attendees will be equipped with valuable insights to make informed decisions and ensure a smooth hosting experience for their business.

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Ben Gabler, Rocket.net | Rajendra Zore, Runcloud | Jessica Frick, Pressable | Tom Fanelli, Convesio | Gianni Ponzi, iQ | Dorin Mihaila, WPEnergize

This panel will feature industry experts discussing the latest developments in page and website builder technology and how it is shaping the way websites are built for businesses by agencies. Panelists will share their insights into the future of website building and how page builders are set to revolutionize the industry, making it easier to create beautiful, functional websites in less time and at a lower cost – increasing productivity and profitability for web design agencies.

Attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding of page builder technology and how they can leverage it to enhance their agency’s development capabilities and improve client outcomes. The potential risks to agencies will also be addressed, in terms of DIYers versus agency work.

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Nick Diego, Automattic | Amitai Gat, Elementor | Simon Best, BaseKit | Russel Jeffery, Duda | Robby McCullough, Beaver Builder | Josh Ronk, Divi | Benjamin Intal, Stackable | Raitis Sevelis, Visual Composer | Dimi Baitanciuc, Brizy

While reading numerous articles and listening to many companies, you can sometimes get the impression that headless is the only right way for WordPress. But is it really so? Or is it just another way for them to make money?

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Join Oded to learn how your agency can scale up customer acquisition and drive business growth by offering a range of website-building solutions.

With a low entry barrier, you can help SMBs get an online presence quickly by leveraging DIY, while presenting DIFM upgrade flows that improve conversion rates.

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Join Vito, Stephanie, Andrew, James, Josepha, Soeren, Michelle and Rob as they recap day 2 of the Atarim Web Agency Summit!

An increasing number of digital agencies are switching to WHMCS to benefit from its integrations, marketplace, hands-free automation, and ability to grow recurring revenues.

WHMCS is the platform of choice for web hosting providers to grow their recurring revenue.

Join this session to discover new opportunities with WHMCS and WebPros.

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Matt Pugh: WHMCS Founder and WebPros Chief of Innovation

A session that describes the challenges and benefits of designing and creating architecture and systems that use microservices, API, cloud, and headless CMSs. The session will also cover the value that businesses get from creating them.

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During this session we start at the basics on how to use GTmetrix and talk about how to identify common issues like:

• Slow TTFB
• Slow Fully Loaded Time
• Low PageSpeed Scores
• Common Issues with Caching

…And many more

In this value-packed webinar, you’ll learn:

• The Basics – A quick introduction to GTmetrix and Google Lighthouse
• Understanding the key elements of Google Pagespeed
• Diagnosing and fixing common performance problems

…And much more!

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Thomas Fanelli: CEO, Convesio

Hundreds of web agencies are using Brizy to create client websites fast and easy, to build a stronger brand, and to grow and generate more revenue.Join this session to discover how to unlock more revenue by using a white label website builder & Brizy.

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In an ever-evolving industry, agencies often prioritize technical expertise and tools over their most valuable asset – their people. This one-sided focus hinders true success and growth, leaving untapped potential on the table.

By neglecting to prioritize people and their well-being, agencies risk stagnation, high turnover, and a lack of innovation. The consequences of ignoring the human element can be detrimental to an agency’s reputation and bottom line.

In this talk, I will invite attendees to redefine success by embracing a people-first culture. I will share practical strategies for creating an inclusive work environment, establishing a team charter, and fostering continuous improvement. Attendees will learn how prioritizing people can transform their agency, unlocking its full potential and setting the stage for sustainable growth.

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James Giroux: Founder, TeamWP

We have a mouthwatering selection of leading experts here to talk on our panel about how the expansion of WordPress is affecting the wider technology landscape and what effect that has on web design agencies.

These industry leaders will explore how WordPress has transformed from what you could call a simple CMS to a digital powerhouse, disrupting the tech industry and creating new opportunities. Topics include WordPress’s impact on web development, digital marketing, accessibility, and more.

Join us to gain insights into the latest advancements in the WordPress ecosystem and strategies for staying ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Our outstanding selection of panelists includes:

Josepha Chomphosy, Executive Director at WordPress
Greg Karelitz, Director of Platform Partnerships at Hubspot
Lukas Hertig, Senior Vice President Business & Corporate Development at WebPros
Soeren von Varchmin, Chairman of the Advisory Board at CloudFest
Maja Loncar, Field Marketing & Community Manager EMEA at GoDaddy
Remkus Devries, Truer Than North (Co-Founder and Organizer of WordCamp Europe and Netherlands)
Alain Schlesser, Director of Technology at XWP
Andrey Lipattsev, Partner Development Manager at Google

Running an agency can be tough. Finding, hiring and retaining rockstar team members can be even more difficult. In this practical session, Johnny will unpack his process for finding, vetting and hiring quality team members overseas and how they have successfully built a strong team culture in their agency.

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Building an engaged community around your web design agency can be an effective way to attract new clients, generate referrals, and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. But how, exactly, do you go about building a community, and what are the most effective strategies for doing so?

In this virtual panel, we’ll be joined by a group of experienced agency owners and business founders who have successfully built communities around their agencies. They’ll share their insights and strategies for building a community that can help grow your web design agency, and at the end of the session you’ll have the opportunity to ask your burning questions!

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Rob Cairns, Stunning Digital Marketing | Davinder Singh, WP Weekly Newsletter | Courtney Robertson, GoDaddy | Sima Parekh, 48in48 | Lee Jackson, Agency Trailblazer Podcast | Francisco Opazo, Led by Community | Sally Wadhwa, Dandelion Fuse Digital

In the era of increasing concerns about user privacy and data protection, the digital landscape has undergone significant changes. My talk “Who Stole My Cookie?” delves into the evolving world of cookie-less analytics and the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online tracking.

We will explore how businesses can adapt to these changes and develop innovative strategies to collect meaningful insights without infringing on user privacy. As the traditional methods of tracking user behavior through cookies become obsolete, it’s time to embrace new approaches that ensure compliance with GDPR while empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions for optimizing their digital marketing efforts.

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Many professionals struggle to acquire new clients on LinkedIn due to various challenges. One common issue is a poorly optimised profile that fails to showcase their expertise and personality. Another challenge is finding the right content to share with their network and target audience. Engaging with their network and establishing authority within their industry can also be difficult. I’ll show you methods of boosting your profile, sharing tips of connecting and networking, and how to balance time between your business and social media. Almost 50% of our business clients come from LinkedIn; this is how and why.

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You’ve heard the term “CDN” for years and maybe even this new term “edge” or “Cloudflare Enterprise”… but do you really know what it all means and how crucial it is for you and your customers?

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Ben Gabler: CEO at Rocket.net

In technology, and specifically WordPress, there are several certificate training courses a person can take to learn the basic knowledge they need to be successful.

But how do we translate that into the workforce? When someone states they are a developer what does that actually mean? Does this person have baseline skills or 10+ years of experience?

Establishing credentials in the WordPress space not only affirms a baseline of knowledge and education, but also gives standardized meaning to the words we use, such as “designer” and “developer.”

In this session I will talk about the importance of credentials in the WordPress workforce, the primary differences between certificates and credentials, how individuals can use credentials to find employment, and how employers can use credentials to ensure their teams are well-prepared to meet the needs of the organization.

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Talisha Lewallen: Founder and President, CertifyWP Foundation and WPConnects

Are you an agency or freelancer struggling to keep up with the demands of client requests and project deadlines? Through this session learn how to gain back control of your business with our visual collaboration and workflow management platform. Vito will show you how to reduce up to 80% of the time it takes to do any type of website project work and increase your project profitability. He’ll also provide insight into how our platform has helped over 12,000 teams leverage our platform power and collaborate with over 1.2 million clients. Add to your calendar now and learn how to make collaborating with clients easy, dare we say, fun.

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This year participants from CloudFest, the world’s largest cloud industry event, took part in a global market research survey, illuminating the broad perspectives of the world’s top internet infrastructure providers, on the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and core challenges of the Cloud in 2023.

Trust and security are top concerns—for agencies as well, since your customers don’t understand the inner workings of the services you connect them with. By illuminating the insights of industry-leading service providers, this session will help web agencies refine their product offerings, drive more business and form more powerful partnerships as you help build the framework of the future.

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The world of WordPress has seen significant changes in recent years, with a number of important acquisitions by industry giants. This panel discussion brings together industry experts to discuss the impact of these acquisitions on the future of WordPress and what it means for web design agencies.

The panel will delve into the potential implications of these acquisitions on WordPress development, community, ecosystem, and market dynamics. Panelists will share insights on how businesses can adapt and thrive in the evolving landscape, including potential opportunities and challenges that may arise.

The panel will also explore strategies that design agencies can utilize to stay informed, make informed decisions, and leverage the changing landscape to drive growth and success with WordPress. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the future of WordPress in light of industry acquisitions and how it may impact your business.

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Marieke van de Rakt, Yoast | Devin Walker, GiveWP | Miriam Schwab, Strattic/Elementor | Saad Iqbal, WP Experts | Cory Miller, Post Status | Heather Wilde, theDifference | Vito Peleg, Atarim

Are you currently struggling with projects targeting multilingual markets? Join us for a webinar hosted by Weglot, featuring Buro86, a leading web development agency based in Belgium. Discover how to unlock success with multilingual projects as Buro86 shares their tips and insights.

From website and webshops development to SEO and email marketing, learn how Buro86 navigates the challenges of supporting their clients in a multilingual context and helps their clients thrive in global markets.

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Thibaud Guerin from Weglot & Dries Van Liefde from Buro86:

Agency Partnerships Manager at Weglot; Business Manager at Buro86

In this session, we’ll review some of the most exciting features of FSE, the existing shortcomings, and the enhancements coming in version 6.0. WordPress is a diverse community that includes everyone from DIY builders to agencies with hundreds of clients.

While FSE may not currently be for everyone, the potential is truly incredible. It’s time to get serious about FSE.

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Nick Diego & Brian Gardner: Developer Advocate & Principal Developer Advocate, WP Engine

Nick Diego is a Developer Advocate at WP Engine and has been working with WordPress for over a decade. Passionate about the Gutenberg project and “modern” WordPress development, he splits his time between creating educational content, building experimental plugins and themes, and contributing to WordPress Core.

As a co-host of the Women in WP podcast, I’ve been fortunate to have made the world a much smaller place by interviewing over 100 women from 20 different countries over the past three years. Especially during the pandemic, getting to share our respective stories of being in lock down has helped us all feel not so alone.

In this talk, I will share with you how much the women of WordPress make a difference to both their local communities and the WordPress project, including interviews with 8 of the 46 women on the all woman WordPress 5.6 Release Squad.

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Angela Bowman: Owner, Ask WP Girl & WordPress Developer

I am a WordPress developer living at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. When I’m not slaving over websites, I raise backyard chickens and make art. I also co-host the Women in WP podcast and have spoken at a few WordCamps including doing the keynote for Denver WordCamp in 2018.

I’ll be sharing WordPress security statistics from 2021, compare them with 2020, and discuss how the latest trends affect web agencies & hosting companies.

Years of working with digital agencies and web hosting companies have shown us how providing website maintenance plans is one of the best ways of generating recurring revenue and making the customers trust you with their online presence.

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Oliver Sild: Founder & CEO of Patchstack

Oliver Sild is the founder of Patchstack, a company known for bringing together the security community to protect the WordPress ecosystem from plugin vulnerabilities.

It’s about time that I answered a question that I’ve been asked a lot about How to Get Clients. The methods that I reveal here are FREE and easy to implement. They can also be applied to any industry – and not just Web Design Clients.

I discuss low income models using Fiverr and Upwork to gain reviews, and how to scale up with better proposals, pricing ladders and pricing strategies to reach your dream benchmark.

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Robert Cairns: Owner, The SDM Show Podcast

Rob Cairns started The SDM Show Podcast in 2019 to share his thoughts on the Digital World with his listeners. He runs Digital Marketing Agency in Toronto Canada that focuses on WordPress Security, WordPress Design and Email Marketing.

Since the invention of social media platforms, companies have been trying to utilize them to keep in touch with their customers and promote their businesses. Many small agencies struggle to grow their social media following and get leads from these platforms. There are a lot of mistakes companies make which prevent them from growing and utilizing social media as a growth powerhouse.

At Clio, we get thousands of visitors to our website every month from our social media platforms and get half a dozen leads through instant messages. In this session, I will give you some tips on how to use social media to grow your audience, and get new leads and customers.

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Nat Miletic: Founder, Clio Websites

Lance Robbins has spent the last 13 years in people and operations focused roles. He’s an outspoken remote work advocate and excels at dad jokes. You can find Lance featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, or writing for the blog at XWP where he led the growth of the team from 25 to 100+ over the past two years.

Managed hosting has been declared obsolete and no longer relevant many times over the years. And yet, a support phone number when you have an “Oh Crap!!!” moment still seems like a great idea. In this discussion we’ll cover:

– What is managed hosting?
– The various flavors of managed hosting and when those flavors taste best.
– How to know if you’re too big, too small, or just right for managed hosting.

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Josh Ward: Director of Sales and Marketing , Nexcess

I spent the first decade of my career going from IT Manager to Sys Admin to IT Consultant before finally landing in a Sales role at a Marketing company. Then in 2011 I became the Director of Sales and Marketing growing a three headed web hosting monster.

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Tatiana Chamorro: Co-Founder and VP, Hite Creative

Tatiana’s passion is in marketing and design, focusing on ROI-driven strategies and creating a balance between functionality and aesthetics. In 2020, she started a digital marketing agency mid-pandemic. In 6 months, she had scaled her agency to 6 figures.