Who are you?
I’m Gijo Varghese, a blogger (30%), developer (60%) and an entrepreneur(10%). A WordPress speed enthusiast.
I started my career as a freelance web developer. Later built an agency with two of my friends where we provided web and mobile app development services.
After getting bored with service projects, we started to build our own set of products. One of them is Quotzap – an online marketplace for building materials. I did not find much success!
Later a side product we developed for Quotzap, called Messengerify ended up being a success.
Messengerify is now CornerCart, a Facebook Messenger automation platform of Shopify.
I left CornerCart in July 2019 and entirely focussed in WP Speed Matters.
I have also had some side projects in parallel. One of them is Typing Bolt – An online personal typing tutor. Now acquired by a German company, this was the result of me being a blogger and developer, I had to type a lot, fast and this tool helped me with it.
Can I see your real face?
You might have seen this “G” in all my social media profiles.
But here is how I look:
How did you become a speed enthusiast?
I got my first computer and internet in 2008. Being in a middle-class family, I struggled to get a good internet connection.
I still remember the days where it took almost 15mins to upload two photos for writing a blog post.
Upgrading the internet was not an option, so I started researching how to speed up the internet.
I ended up hacking Firefox to max out some network limits and other tweaks. During my college days, I got exam results first even if university servers are flooded with traffic!
That’s how I became a speed addict and got to know in-depth about how web and browsers work.
Things have changed; my internet speed is now 1500 times faster than 12 years ago. But websites are still slow, and hence WP Speed matters, and I matter 😉.
Where do you live?
Thrissur, Kerala, India.
How old are you?
27
Where do you work?
I work from home, full time.
How do you make money?
Right now, I earn from consultation and service projects, by helping companies to speed up their site.
I also earn a little from this blog, but that only contributes to <20% of my total earnings.
Do you promote affiliate products in this blog?
Yes, I do. But I’m highly selective about the products, and I recommend only the ones that I use.
For that reason, you’ll not see me recommending Bluehost or GoDaddy anywhere in this blog!
What else do you do other than blogging?
More than a blogger, I’m a hardcore developer.
Other than writing in this blog, I develop plugins to speed up WordPress sites. Few of them are:
Currently, I’m working on a much bigger plugin to speed up WordPress sites.
How does your typical day look like?
I start my early morning by checking emails, our Facebook group, blog comments, support tickets of plugins, Google Analytics reports and other stats.
Then I’ll spend 1 or 2 hours in the Gym.
Until noon, it’s all about working with clients and resolving support issues related to plugins.
Yes, maintaining open-source plugins is hard!
The rest of my day is either writing blog posts or developing plugins or researching on web performance.
To maintain a work-life balance, I spend the evening with my friends in swimming or some other activity.
How can I contact you?
You can contact me via the contact form in this blog or Twitter or Facebook.
Can I hire you?
Yes and no. I’m currently busy with developing a plugin. But I might be available if it’s an exciting project. Try contacting me.
Note that I only take projects to speed up websites. If you want to develop a site from scratch in WordPress, I might not be the right person.