DanceInside's comments

Glad to see I'm not the only one that relies on this. I would pay for a similar plugin in Chrome.

This is awesome. I was actually thinking of making a custom deck for my friends, but it would have been too time-consuming. But now...

Maybe you could start charging a modest sum for downloading the complete PDF file? I know I would totally pay for that.

The marketplace is CodeCanyon.net and the plugins can be found at http://codecanyon.net/user/liviumirea/portfolio . They take a 50% cut, but it may be worth it considering the exposure I received without any marketing whatsoever.

I've been developing on PHP for several years, but I've only learned WordPress about half a year ago. Each time a client wanted something new that didn't already exist in the WordPress "ecosystem", I separated that feature into a new plugin. This way, of course, I could reuse the plugin on other projects. On top of that, I've submitted two of these plugins on a marketplace and, to my surprise, made about 1000 USD in 5 months, without that much additional time invested.

Of course, there are downsides. You have to offer support for those customers that have problems (and there will be a lot of them). When they ask for new features, you have to choose to either deliver or refuse them, each option having its ups and downs. When a new major WordPress version comes along, like 3.5 just did a few days ago, you'll have to make sure your plugins support it, or you'll end up with unhappy existing clients and close to none new ones.

It seems it's common practice for clients that experience problems to give you an admin account on their server (either a simple WordPress account or even FTP/Cpanel access). It sure is faster to troubleshoot this way, but I really believe it's a very dangerous practice and you should be wary about it.

Besides all the customer relationship hassle, you have to make sure your plugin supports (almost) all of the possible scenarios that your customers may be using. Things like compatibility with different themes, different plugins, themes or plugins that do not-so-orthodox things in totally unexpected ways, different version of them, so on and so forth.

Overall, I can say it's an interesting ride but I'm not sure whether it's worth it or not. It really depends on a lot of factors.

P.S. I'll post the marketplace and plugin names upon request. I don't want this to seem as self-advertising. Cheers!