Interview with the Winners of the Monster’s Award Contest

TemplateMonster marketplace regularly organizes online events to promote premium-quality products and award talented authors. Monster's Award 2021, a couple of weeks ago, attracted 13 000+ users who voted for their favorite web assets. Best WordPress products, except templates, were eligible for nomination. Their creators got awarded an online visibility boost and a branded badge of honor.

Moreover, the winners' items will be promoted via TemplateMonster's official blog, social media channels, PPC ads, and email newsletters all year around. We had a short recap with the winners of the Monster's Award contest. This event is still buzzing around social media so here are some ideas that our winners gladly shared with us.

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Meta Box

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Janness Tran: Meta Box - A powerful WordPress plugin to create and deal with custom fields.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Janness Tran: No we haven’t, it’s our first try.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Janness Tran: Our product was nominated in a few categories Dynamic Plugin (1st priority), Gutenberg Plugin 

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Janness Tran:  Share on our community (Facebook group)

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Janness Tran:  there are a lot of powerful and outstanding features, amazing support and reasonable price

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LivingWithPixels

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Rino: Hey! I have a YouTube channel about web design where I show people how they can start their own web design business. I've done this myself and I love it, that's why I've created my channel called: LivingWithPixels.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Rino: No, not really. This is my first one.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Rino: The best YouTube channel

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Rino: I made a YouTube video promoting the contest. First, I didn't want to do it because I don't really like contests that much, but I was excited in the end. Haha, lol.

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Rino: I think people like Living With Pixels because it's right to the point video content. I don't waste any time with my videos and try to deliver top notch content.

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Advanced Shipment Tracking

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Eran Shor: Advanced Shipment Tracking (AST) was created to allow store owners to better manage their fulfillment operations, add tracking information to Shipped order and communicate the tracking and a way to track the order with their customers. We improved the plugin during the last 3 years, added hundreds of new providers, we’ve launched a premium version in 2021 with advanced features such as fulfillment dashboard, tracking per item, PayPal tracking integration and tracking integration with many shipping carriers and aggregators to automate the fulfillment workflow.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Eran Shor: No.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Eran Shor: My product was only nominated to the WooCommerce plugins category and I knew that if we spread the work with our customers, we have 50K+ active installs to the free version and we provide great free support in the last 3.5 years since the plugin was launched and our users paid back with a vote..

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Eran Shor: We created a post on our blog and promoted the nomination through our social media hubs.

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Eran Shor: We provide the best solution to manage the fulfillment in WooCommerce, we work with our customers hand to hand to resolve their issues and add new features, address more business scenarios and answered thousands of support request in the last years, we constantly work to make AST better and our customers paid us back with their vote.

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20i

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Matthew Telfer: We deliver high-performance hosting for every occasion. 600,000+ agencies, freelancers, businesses and side-hustlers use 20i for unmatched speed, reliability and 24x7 expert support.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Matthew Telfer: We're really proud of our hosting platform and support, so we are always looking for ways to let people know how we can help them build and manage super-fast sites quickly and easily.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Matthew Telfer: We were nominated in the WordPress Hosting category

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Matthew Telfer: We’ve encouraged our customers to vote via social media, our monthly newsletter and a blog post.

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Matthew Telfer: Our auto scaling WordPress Hosting is built for maximum speed and performance, to help you build lightning-fast & ultra-reliable WordPress sites without any fuss. Plus you get all your favourite tools baked-in (no bloaty plug-ins required) including managed updates, staging, backups, speed optimisation, CDN, theme/plugin management & security. All this is backed up by expert support from our in-house WordPress fanatics.

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Blocksy

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Sergiu: Blocksy is a blazing fast and lightweight WordPress theme built with the latest web technologies. It was built with the Gutenberg editor in mind and has a lot of options that makes it extendable and customizable. You can easily create any type of website with it without having coding skills.

It works like a charm with popular WordPress page builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer and Brizy. Since it is responsive and adaptive, translation ready, SEO optimized and has WooCommerce built-in, you will experience an easy build and even an increase in conversions.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Sergiu: No, this is our first time participating in such a contest.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Sergiu: Depending on what categories 🙂 But most likely in the WordPress themes category.

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Sergiu: We simply published a link to your page in our Facebook community, and that’s all 🙂

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Sergiu: It’s not a secret that Blocksy is a good and robust theme that gets the job done in the simplest possible way. That said, more than the product itself, people value the team underneath it and their responsiveness, honesty and commitment to user happiness. We really believe that this caring approach is the reason people voted for Blocksy.

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YOOtheme Pro

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Hanna: We started back in 2007 as a typical theme club, but since 2016, we have a new product called [YOOtheme Pro]. It is a complex feature-rich WordPress plugin and comes with a page builder that allows you to create layouts for pages, posts, archives, search and 404 error pages as well as custom post type and taxonomy archives. It even has a dedicated WooCommerce builder to design your e-commerce shop. Additionally, YOOtheme Pro comes with tons of different styles and page builder layouts which can be loaded from a dedicated library with just a click. YOOtheme Pro regularly gets feature releases and so-called "theme package" releases which basically add more content to the style, layout and image libraries and show it in a dedicated demo website. So with YOOtheme Pro you get a future-proof one-in-all plugin to power your website.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Hanna: Sure, YOOtheme has been on the market since 2007, and we have participated in various competitions since then. But it is the first time we participate in the Monsters Award.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Hanna: Best WordPress Page Builder

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Hanna: First of all, we are very grateful for all the support from our amazing community! What makes YOOtheme Pro special is that it is a very powerful yet easy to use tool to create beautiful websites without any coding. One of its most powerful features is dynamic content which allows you to load content directly into your page layouts. And this is not just using prebuilt elements! With YOOtheme Pro you can load content from WordPress, WooCommerce or other custom sources into any YOOtheme Pro element and display it in slideshows, sliders or galleries. Just imagine what this could mean for your website or shop! We also regularly release theme packages which consist of new layouts, styles and images and add them into dedicated libraries. So with every update you get new layouts, styles and images that you can load into your website with just a click.

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Hanna: We shared our participation on Twitter and Facebook. It was overwhelming to see how many people submitted YOOtheme Pro into the list of contestants, commented and voted for YOOtheme Pro. It was really a great experience.

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Droit Addons for Elementor

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Md. Shahadat Hussain: Droit Addons for Elementor is a creative, professional website building toolkit for WordPress that helps anyone to kickstart his/her website in no time. How so? Well, it is a collection of beautifully designed and professionally developed widgets, section blocks, page templates and modules that can be used to design and build your website pages efficiently and swiftly.

It includes 75+ custom Elementor widgets that can be used to design a page by dragging and dropping from the Elementor widgets panel. It comes with 250+ pre-made design blocks and 20+ ready page templates that can be imported from the library. And it has 15+ intuitive modules that can perform powerful stuff to enhance your website with advanced features.

What problem does Droit Addons solve?

While Elementor provides many things on the paid versions of it and the features are awesome, the plans are pretty expensive. Also Elementor now does not offer lifetime subscriptions. So many are looking for a cheaper, more convenient option and hence our product gives them the perfect opportunity to fill the gap.

Droit Addons is currently based on only Elementor page builder, but we have a plan to include a full fledged Gutenberg version of it, hopefully pretty soon.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Md. Shahadat Hussain: Not yet

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Md. Shahadat Hussain: On this same category (Elementor), where it won

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Md. Shahadat Hussain: We have been in the WordPress industry for 5 + years and many people know our name - DroitThemes. We are the creator of the top selling Technology theme "Saasland WordPress Theme" on ThemeForest.net, so many people already knew us as a quality WordPress product seller.

So, our brand mattered to the ones who voted. And also the product itself is pretty nice. Even though there are lots of other Elementor addons plugins out there, our product is still good in terms of design and features, we can compete with them toe to toe. The design of the widgets, blocks, page templates are top notch and better than most other Elementor addons out there. And we have some unique features, too. Such as, Popup Builder (Exit Intent popup is our best one), variation swatches for WooCommerce products and so on.

So, we believe our voters wanted to cheer for a new player in the game with great, competitive features.

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Md. Shahadat Hussain: Facebook and Emails

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Astra

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Vijay Devkar: Astra is a WordPress theme that allows users to design WordPress websites without any coding knowledge. Using our pre-built templates, users can design websites within a few minutes.

It’s currently installed on more than a million websites with thousands of 5-star reviews.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Vijay Devkar: No

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Vijay Devkar: Best WordPress Themes

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Vijay Devkar: Astra is the only theme with such an extensive repository of pre-built templates that allow users to create websites within a few minutes in the least possible steps. Apart from that, it’s a very compatible theme that works smoothly with almost every WordPress plugin out there. Users get to present their online brand in the best possible way.

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Vijay Devkar: We noticed most of our users promoting Monster's Award entry in our Facebook and Twitter Community.

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Stackable

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Benjamin Intal: Stackable started back in 2018 and since then we're really grateful for having accomplished being one of the first and most feature-rich page building collections for Gutenberg. Stackable strives to provide an all-in-one solution for creating stunning websites with Gutenberg by providing a large library of UI Kits, design templates, custom blocks, dynamic content, global settings, and powerful customization options all whilst boasting speedy performance.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Benjamin Intal: As for if we ever participated in other contests, the Monster's Awards was actually the first contest we participated in! Definitely a fun and memorable experience.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Benjamin Intal: Our team honestly did not. Stackable was up against other amazing Gutenberg plugins that we did hope to win but were not expecting to. However, when we found out we had the chance to take home the prize, we asked help from our community for one last push to the finish line!

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Benjamin Intal: We reached out and promoted in our newsletters and Facebook Community

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Benjamin Intal: One reason as to why people voted for us is that Stackable has come a long way since we started back in 2018 as a block plugin. We've continuously developed our plugin and collaborated with our users to make the plugin a better fit for their needs. Stackable has changed how users create with the Gutenberg editor and gave it more flexibility and freedom when it comes to building any website. We have definitely grown in terms of our features and have improved the design workflow of many.

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Fluent Forms

Monsters Post: Please tell our readers about your product, what it does, what problems it solves, and so on.

Sadiq Ahmad: Fluent Forms is a WordPress form plugin that helps create any kind of form you could imagine. The drag and drop form builder makes forms creation easier with a rich and organized set of form fields. All you have to do is choose the right form field and get your form ready in a few minutes. You can edit fields, duplicate them, or even delete one without requiring any tutorials. Fluent Forms has a conversational-style form feature that is used to create keyboard-focused forms, and it reduces form abandonment. As payment is a big concern of online businesses, Fluent Forms comes with multiple payment solutions, including Stripe and PayPal. Connecting your favorite email marketing tool is a breeze since Fluent Forms has a lot of integrations with powerful tools like Salesforce, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and FluentCRM.

Monsters Post: Have you ever participated in other contests?

Sadiq Ahmad: Yes, we have recently participated in The WP Awards by The WP Weekly.

Monsters Post: If your product was nominated in a few categories, where did you expect it to win?

Sadiq Ahmad: We were very hopeful that it would take the first place because our customers trust us although the competition was high. However, we ended up in second position.

Monsters Post: How did you promote your Monster's Award entry to get votes? For example, social media posts, customer emails, blogs, etc.

Sadiq Ahmad: We didn't spend any money to get votes, such as paid ad campaigns or email marketing. The only thing we did was posting about the contest on our social channels. That's it!

Monsters Post: Why do you think people voted for you?

Sadiq Ahmad: People love Fluent Forms mostly because it's very easy to use. A rich set of features help users to create forms up to their imagination. Fluent Forms also has a handful of integrations to connect additional apps and get more tasks done.

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Our Final Thoughts on Monster's Award Contest

All in all, such events give participants many benefits, including testing their knowledge, improving their skills, analyzing competitors, feeling the spirit of competition, and simply having fun. Customers tend to trust those who have achievements and actively update their skills. So, once you receive an award, you can showcase it in your social media accounts and boost your project's brand. Follow our news and don't miss this year's competition. Participate and present your best works worldwide!