I'm intrigued that you have that many buyers on wpplugins.com. Are people signing up for your support contract, or is that really 40 purchases in the first month? Do you expect this volume to continue, rise, or trail off?
In any case, I had a reasonably successful plugin a while ago that I still get occasionally pestered to update... I'd be a lot more motivated to do so if I thought I could release it to a marketplace and net a few hundred a month.
I'd say go for it. One major problem I had in the past was not taking into account the effects of growth over time.
The Wordpress marketplace is growing. Even if you've only got x amount of sales immediately, you can iterate, build stuff to sell back to your customers you've already acquired, and generally grow with compound interest.
No matter what you build, entropy will be built into your product. You can't ever sit on something and expect growth without continual effort. That's another major illusion I've struggled to deal with.
Takeaway: It takes the smallest snowball to begin rolling along and building momentum.
You took us from concept to implementation to actual usage. Along the way you included just the right amount of implementation info (your use of google alerts) and pointed out why you made some choices (wpplugins vs. other). Well written.
I shall second Jun8 - need more articles like this.
I'm mostly curious what the revenue curve is on this project - was the majority of the earnings within the first week? How do sales dwindle when using this route?
Actually, I came up with the name, and only found out later that it had already been a product. Woops, stuff happens when you build and launch in a day.
i'm curious when you submitted to wpplugins.com. i wrote them off as dead after my plugin sat pending for a week last month. they didn't respond to my emails, either.
[+] [-] mikepurvis|15 years ago|reply
In any case, I had a reasonably successful plugin a while ago that I still get occasionally pestered to update... I'd be a lot more motivated to do so if I thought I could release it to a marketplace and net a few hundred a month.
[+] [-] burningion|15 years ago|reply
The Wordpress marketplace is growing. Even if you've only got x amount of sales immediately, you can iterate, build stuff to sell back to your customers you've already acquired, and generally grow with compound interest.
No matter what you build, entropy will be built into your product. You can't ever sit on something and expect growth without continual effort. That's another major illusion I've struggled to deal with.
Takeaway: It takes the smallest snowball to begin rolling along and building momentum.
[+] [-] armandososa|15 years ago|reply
http://plugik.com/
[+] [-] deskamess|15 years ago|reply
I shall second Jun8 - need more articles like this.
[+] [-] elliottcarlson|15 years ago|reply
Either way - great job and very informative.
[+] [-] Jun8|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burningion|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Whinner|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burningion|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|15 years ago|reply
In fact, I am wondering how this works. Are plugin authors providing support as an value added service?
Otherwise, what is to stop someone crazy enough to buy all the relevant plugins and release them on their own site(pay or free) ?
[+] [-] adn37|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golgo13|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slouch|15 years ago|reply