Episode 251: Changing the World of Live Streaming with WPstream

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Show Highlights

Disclaimer – The background audio is a little rough but the conversations was well worth sharing.

In this episode Rob Cairns sits down with Beatrice Tabiltoc of WPstream.

Show Highlights:

1. What is live streaming.
2. How to live stream in WordPress.
3. How WPstream works.
4. Why WPstream is easy.

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Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cancer today.

I’m here with Beatrice Tabultoc from WPstream

How are you today, Beatrice?

Hi Rob, I’m great.

How are you?

I’m doing good so.

Beatrice and I met at the Adam Summit, and they have a remarkable, I think, a bit of a revolutionary product called WPstream.

We’ll we’ll get to that, but I was gonna start a question I always like to ask Beatrice how did you get in the business and?

How did you find yourself in the WordPress space?

Well, I kind of got in the WordPress space through the Lucy Stream, so I had no experience with WordPress before and I was kind of just thrown in and that’s just basically it and after a few months actually not even a few months, a few weeks into it I just saw how simple it was.

Views and I was already just kind of creating pages, obviously with page builders and things ’cause I’m not a coder.

But everything was pretty simple, and that’s just how I got into it through the PC stream.

No, that’s really cool and and I’m not in the I should tell most of my listeners.

No, I’m not in the.

Gutenberg versus page builder.

Fight camp as you wanna call it out there.

There’s a lot of discussion going on and I I just kind of say use what you were comfortable with and and go that route and I think that’s really important, you know?

Yeah, that’s working.

So let’s talk a little.

Bit about live streaming in general. Live streaming’s kind of become really big hesitant.

Yeah it has and I feel like since the pandemic has started, that’s when the boost happened.

That’s where you saw everyone like streaming.

Uhm, Zoom was a big thing.

There was clubhouse the app and just everyone seemed to be like streaming and that’s kind of when WP stream also got the UM.

The boost after the pandemic hits, and that’s when I got hired at WP string.

So yeah, live streaming has been really big.

I watch a lot of people on switch as well.

I love staying on Twitch so even when I’m not at work I’m just always watching live streaming.

It’s a big thing and I don’t think it’s just for my generation.

Specifically, I’m I’m part of the jenvey, but I feel like it’s for everyone nowadays.

Anyone that can have access to the Internet with just like stream.

Yeah, it’s so true.

I I was sharing with you before we went to record.

I used to do BMX bike events and we did them and in those days we literally took a.

Yeah, a Mac book and a web camera and we had somebody sit on the top of a 10 foot ramp in a corner and and live stream right off to 10 foot ramp.

It’s that simple pain.

Yeah, it’s so simple.

Yeah, and it it was and the views he’s God because of the people involved in the community were incredible.

So you know, we’ve done some stuff like that.

We’ve have done some stuff where every year in May we have a ceremony in Toronto where we.

Have a memorial for all fallen police officers in the province and we’ve live stream that event the same way before we get to really high tech equipment.

So the point I’m making is you don’t necessarily have to start with the Rolls Royce setup to live.

Definitely not just need your phone, your laptop, or.

Webcam, you don’t need anything sophisticated.

Just as simple as that, and I feel like in in our world nowadays.

The citizens or.

People have become journalists in a way so they can really quickly take out their phone and like record what’s happening at that moment.

So that’s kind of what you were doing as well.

You just propped up a laptop.

You started live streaming and that’s.

A form of.

Citizen journalism.

Yep, and and that’s the power of live streaming.

Uh, WordPress and democratizing the whole publishing game as we as we talked about in our community.

It it’s funny though it’s and the other thing that’s helped is equipment has gotten cheaper. I mean you can, but you can basically build a video studio for a couple $1000.

You can build an audio studio for under 1000 bucks. I mean it’s it’s become because the equipment is so massive.

Produce now it makes it easier for the average person and the point of entry is actually cheap.

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.

It’s it’s just so accessible to anyone.

Everyone, whether you go buy it in person, in the story, just get it online.

Everything is online nowadays and it’s just that’s your doorstep in a day.

Yeah, I and I would tell anybody.

Amazon is probably your friend in this one, so you know.

Amazon prime.

Certainly partly is my friend.

The joke around my house is do I have shares in the Amazon company and do they pay me?

You understand?

We’re not, we’re not promoting at this point.

Yeah, not at all.

So let’s jump into your product WP script.

Uhm, one of the things I’ll tell you having run through the setup process is.

It’s really easy to set it up.

I didn’t find it difficult at all to.

WP string.

That’s so good to hear.

Talk a little about your product, what it does and what it’s really good use cases.

So WP Stream is basically it’s plugins that you can use to live stream. You can record your live stream and you can take those recordings and create video on demand and a lot of people come to us because obviously they can go live on Twitch or on YouTube.

Or all these other platforms?

But some of our view.

May want to monetize their live streams, for example.

Or they just don’t want to use a third party.

They just want to add it straight to their WordPress website.

So that’s why most of our users come to us because they want a solution on their WordPress websites white label and they can just squeeze their own thing on it.

Uhm, so that’s basically what we do.

We make live streaming as easy as possible and a lot of our clients there.

So beginners, there are first timers, and like you said, and I’m so happy you said that it’s really easy to set up.

So even a beginner can.

Get sparse is.

Now I would agree and you guys have a really good video that shows you how to get started and honestly.

You know, I’ve heard a lot where people say oh, this only takes 5 minutes and I’m pretty techie, but I think a beginner could set up your product in 5 minutes with help.

It is a deal, I don’t.

I don’t think that’s.

Like a barrier on this one, and often with these types of products, the setup is the barrier like I was sharing with you I I used to use OBS sort and problem with OBS is it is a pain.

I will.

I will say that.

I know it’s a favorite, but it.

Yeah, full screen keys and everything else it becomes.

It becomes tough to to set up so.

Yeah, it’s not.

And that’s why we you can just go live partner browser.

You don’t need to be assessed fairly.

A lot of people do choose obvious because like you said, it’s pretty popular.

Everyone uses it, but if you’re a beginner you may not know what OBS is or you’re not just staring at so you just can go live with your browser straight from your phone.

The webcam so you don’t have to go through these other streaming apps like HOVIUS or.

Uhm, Stream Labs Stream lab is very similar, so obvious, but yeah, that’s another story.

Yeah, and and the other.

Thing you mentioned was UM.

If you were doing paid content and what people forget about.

Is if you’re posting on YouTube.

And that is a paid video. You’re actually violating YouTube’s terms of service and people forget about that all the time. You say Oh well, my video got pulled down and then you get into the.

Issues on YouTube of copyright music. In the background having improve your having to prove that you bought copyright to the music that you’re using in the background and and people you know. Generally they their AI or their artificial intelligence is imperfect.

So they they’ll yank some videos down, they won’t yank others down, they’ll only yank them down and people complain.

And then if you’re trying to monetize that video, that’s actually grounds to yank the video down in itself.

Oh yeah, yeah, and we actually get a lot of those use cases with faith communities like churches and things like that.

We have a lot of churches who use light streaming for their website because for this specific reason exactly either copyrights or their music, they don’t have licenses.

A lot of times they they’re saying that we we aren’t any actually breaking any rules.

We’re the ones in our core.

We’re singing it or we’re playing it on our instruments.

We’re not actually using any music, but it’s so it’s just the way that You Tube it’s robots, the algorithm and things like that.

There are some things that you can’t really take the point of what is going to lead to your videos being taken down, so they just prefer to do it on their website.

Yeah, uhm, the product runs with inside WordPress so I have to ask the question which I always do every time we look at.

WordPress products, so whether that’s a mass product, whether that’s a.

Marketing product like Groundhog come major and totally undermines who’s the founder, Groundhog, and we’ve talked about this.

Yeah, that’s right.

Whether it’s the CRM inside the WordPress and now why stream product inside the WordPress?

What is this?

Due to the resources of the WordPress website?

What is it do running your WP string inside WordPress does it slow it down?

What does it do to the resources of the website?

I mean, we don’t we all our videos on our live stream is hosted on our platform, so it doesn’t affect your websites in any way.

It doesn’t slow it.

Down it doesn’t affect it because everything just takes place on our servers, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

Actually it’s the same way a number of.

WordPress based SAS products.

Kind of workers never plug in and then they connect to their servers.

Uhm, so that leads me to my next question and I don’t know if you can say I can’t say where are your servers located ’cause that could be an issue for somebody who’s got.

Country or restrictions based on the type of industry during so are they like in Europe or they in the US or they?

Oh, we actually have a few on different continents, so wherever you’re located, if you.

Find that your live stream is not going well, it’s slow or things like that.

Our customers usually drop us an e-mail and yeah, we can sort that out for them.

So we have servers all over the world.

So it it.

Shouldn’t be an issue.

Yeah, and one of the reasons I asked that question too is certain industries has certain restrictions.

So if you’re live streaming, safer.

A financial industry in the US. They might have an op. They might have a restriction in their industry that says that that data has to be stored on the US server. I mean, I know in Europe certain GDPR countries certainly have.

That risk.

Yeah, that’s that’s the case.

And GDPR is kind of made a mess with the the online world from a big perspective.

As far as I’m concerned.

That’s true.

Especially in Europe.

So you talked about video on demand?

What type of video on demand do you?

Does your service provide?

I’m I’m not sure I understand.

OK, so you you mentioned that one of the great things with WP streamers.

You can do video D or video on demand.

How, how well does that?

How does that work and how is it?

How is it pushed out?

Uh, so basically you can record either you can record your live streams or you can upload your video files onto our servers and then you take those and you basically create a.

Kind of a product, but it depends if you’re doing pay per view that is considered.

They taught us, but if you’re doing a free one, it’s just a free to view video on demand.

So you just give it a title description and then you publish it and then once you publish it you can post it either on a specific page.

Or you can just use the link that’s provided automatically.

Please when you publish it.

So that’s how VOD works.

It’s either through your recording or recording your live stream or uploaded files.

Does a lot of your customer base used to VOTVOD service Beatrice or or is most of it people just going live like do you know what the breakdown is?

Most yeah, most of it.

Most of our customers do go live, but we have quite a few of them who also use the VLD and mostly recording their live streams.

It’s also worth asking what type of resolution do you guys push out in? Is it like 1080P or 720? Or Geno offhand?

Uh, it depends on what type of resolution.

You want you.

Set it up yourself on whatever you use or whether you’re going through the browser you set it up from there.

But yeah, the.

More the higher.

Quality you want.

You will need more resources so we kind of calculate that.

Uhm, or you calculate that it depends.

We also have custom plans, so if a customer wants a plan that’s bigger than what’s currently available, we can set that up.

We ask them what quality they want.

If they want a higher quality, we.

We have to provide them with with more resources.

So it just depends on each user.

Yeah, and I think people need to be aware of truly is if you’re going to record in 1080P or or even go to 4K yet you have to remember what’s your audience and what are they. Keep reviewing this in and 4K videos. Play Coldwater bandwidth and they take a lot of.

Resources and people need to realize that maybe your audience might not have the ability to watch those.

Dish really well and that could be an issue too, so I always say to people before you just jump to the the top end.

Think about what your your consumers will need, and that’s to me more important.

Yeah, we also recommend that to our clients as well, especially when they come in with a need for a bigger custom time.

We just recommend hey, listen.

You might not need.

This big of.

A plan and we’re kind of helping your wallets here.

Your users may not be watching at the very high quality.

Depending on the region they’re in their Internet connection and different factors, so yeah.

I I share a story, I did a event about five years ago.

And everybody was insistent that all the pre roll stuff had to be in 4K.

And I looked at him and said.

You don’t want us and they looked at me and.

Said, just do it.

Right?

Just we had a.

Progressional video and we dumped these videos into the stream and they all looked at me and said these file sizes are huge and I said well you asked for 4K, that’s wait.

Wait yet on that one.

If you know what I mean, like the bigger the the stream size, the bigger the file size, the higher the quality.

Yeah, and I can imagine people that don’t don’t really know the industry and they just expect someone to do it for them.

They don’t understand that 4K requires a lot of resources, bigger file size, and things like that, and they don’t think about these.

Yeah, and they don’t think about the bandwidth requirement on the internets to consume the 4K video. And you know?

And I don’t.

Know about Europe, but in North America most of the TV stations are still running like on cable are still running like 1080I. They don’t even run 1080P.

We can get 4K on selected channels, but.

It’s not.

Or maybe if you pay more or something, right?

But it’s not as commonplace as people think.

Like it’s just.

But whereas Japan, for example, because our technology haven is totally different, all the other TV in Japan in 4K now pretty well.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, they’ve.

They’re kind of on video.

They’re always like the high end in the echelon.

Yeah, so to speak.

I mean, Japan is just the years ahead of everyone else, so.

Yeah, it’s.

They’re amazing.

It’s true, uhm, So what other features do you guys?

Have on the road map for WP.

Uhm, so for the future or currently.

Yeah, post well currently we have we still have.

Certain features like setting up your Netflix websites with different types of subscriptions so we have just regular subscription where we pay either weekly, monthly, yearly, things like that.

Then we have our bundles where you can purchase a certain life video or.

A live stream or a video, and then you have access.

To a group.

Of product.

Or the third one which we call our global or Netflix type subscription where you purchase one thing and you have access to everything on the website.

And then we also have our second our next feature where regular users can go live on your website somewhere to switch so.

Of course you don’t.

Not everyone exactly can go live unless you provide them with permissions too, so this is kind.

Uh, security thing so that not everyone has.

The right to go live on your website so you can just assign different users.

They can set up a live stream and.

Uhm, just start streaming so we have a lot of ecommerce marketplace type of businesses that use our this feature so that.

Their influencers, for example, can just go live on their websites and the influencers fans come on and they start scribing all today.

We have this product to sell.

Make sure you check it out down below and there.

They set up different products, for example with the T shirts or trousers shoes, things like that.

So in this video I’m recommending the following, and then they’ll find the links to all these products, right?

Under the live.

Stream and this hasn’t been a big thing, especially in China.

The past few years, so it’s just been recently become a thing in the West.

So yeah, that’s our second feature.

And then in the future we have a lot of things coming up, but unfortunately I can’t really speak on it right now, but I’ll let you know you might be the first to know when something new comes up.

Yeah, and and like stay tuned and I get that.

The point is what they’re doing up at WP stream Beatrice and their team they’re.

Keep evolving their product and making it better and that’s the really important thing.

Yeah, we actually had some.

We started to interrupt.

We just recently updated our website.

So this was last year at the end of last year.

So the website you see now is like the new and improved version and the user ability on the website so.

How you set up the live streaming and the channels and things like that.

We also updated that.

I forgot to mention that part so we’re constantly working on the plugin itself and the way we.

Use the plug in how we talk to our clients and things like that, so yeah.

I think I think that’s really important too.

Is making it easier for clients making it easy?

If we’re getting around making the website experience really good, a lot of a lot of SAS vendors forget about that.

They just kind of throw it up there and say I’ll buy the product and that’s a big part of the marketing further.

Product so I.

Yeah, that matters.

One of the things I really liked was he touched on that influencers are starting to use.

No live streaming or video on demand to showcase that’s becoming.

A big deal.

Especially if you’re in things like affiliate sales.

I’m not typically, but a lot of people are, and when and into that affiliate sales.

That makes it a lot easier, so you know, I think.

I think that’s a good way to showcase some products.

Is is use video and a product like this can just make it even easier, Frank.

Yeah, because you can even imagine so.

A big brand collaborates with an influencer who’s also big.

So the brand already has there.

There are their fans or their loyal followers and then the influencers comes in with their own brands, their own followers and it’s just a very good combination and it’s very fruitful for both parties and it just.

And that’s and that’s the key.

Like folks having played with the product enough before we did this interview, I can tell you it.

It just works.

It’s simple, it’s easy to use if you don’t want all the complexity of setting up all the settings.

I, I think this is a great product to look at.

Who failure euro ice cream needs to come.

Let’s talk pricing.

What’s the pricing for the product at this point in time?

So when you first sign in when you first register, you do get a free trial that you can use and then if you want to do some more streaming.

If you figure out if it’s good or not for you, the lowest plan is our family plan, which is at $19.00 per month.

And we also have the team plan, which is $49.00.

Our friends plan is $149 and fans plan is $399 and this is all, by the way, American dollars.

This will be clear.

What’s the typical plan that people tend to go to once they get going?

Usually they get the friends plan.

But this is I feel.

Like this is more for those advanced.

Uh, streamers those who already know what’s going on, but then for our beginners they usually go for the lower plan.

The family plan, which is at $19.00. Which makes sense because if you’re still a beginner, you’re not sure what’s going on.

You don’t know how this works.

You want to start low and see how it goes and the thing about.

Our plans say you can cancel them at any time.

You’re not committed to a yearly subscription.

So yeah, you can either upgrade downgrades so you’re not.

It’s you’re not placed there by force on a particular subscription plan, and the first one, the family plan you can you get 100 gigabytes of streaming data. You can have five concurrent Live Channels, so five different channels can be active at the same time.

And you also get 2 gigabytes of storage.

So yeah, I think that’s a pretty wholesome subscription plan for beginners.

Yeah, and and that’s a that’s a good way to start and get your feet into the world of live streaming.

As I, as I’ve said a couple times, I think once you start doing it.

Live streaming’s, like anything else, it just takes practice and it takes time and then you’ll start looking at your equipment and saying I need to upgrade this camera. I need to upgrade this audio.

Audio to me on video is more important than most people think.

I need to upgrade my lighting.

There’s some really good solutions out there you can purchase, like LED lights, which I’ve got.

And it makes life so easy now and they’re inexpensive.

I mean, the cost has come way down, so.

Yeah, and even with the settings themselves there you can set them up so that the default whenever you create your channel to go live all the default settings are there already so you don’t have to.

It’s instant.

To enable or disable each setting each and every time.

So whether you want your viewer account to show or you want.

I don’t know if you want to record your live stream.

If you want to record each and every one of your live stream, you just sets that by default, and each time you go live you’ll know for sure if that live stream is being recorded so you don’t have to go each time to deal with these settings.

Yeah, so true.

If somebody wants to find out more about your product or talk to you, how’s the best way to be stressed?

Well, the best way is to e-mail us at office at wpstreams.net or you can follow our social media pages on Twitter @streaming4wp

You can also find us at https://wpstream.net/ our LinkedIn is WPstream.

Thanks very much, Beatrice.

Thanks for coming on and talking about your product.

Have a wonderful day.

Thank you so much for having me and it was so lovely speaking to you once again.

Thank you.

Have a lovely day.

 

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