Plugin developers are the heart and soul of WordPress. WordPress plugin developers not only extend the core functionality of WP but they drive innovation for the popular blogging platform. Compared to other blogging platforms, WordPress arguably possesses the strongest and most generous community of all. Despite this however, WP plugin developers receive very little compensation for their efforts to supply the WP plugin repository with quality free plugins. Many developers reach a point at which they are simply unable to continue long-term support their plugins. This is largely due to the maintenance and support costs incurred for their plugins which far exceed the revenue generated by the donation based business model which most plugin developers utilize.
Donations Alone Aren’t Sustainable
WordPress has always pushed to make plugins and themes hosted at WordPress.org freely available under a General Public License (GPL). This has helped distinguish WordPress from some other blogging platforms and has enabled WordPress to become the most popular blogging platform available today. This business model obviously works very well for WordPress but it does very little for WordPress plugin developers. That is, they put in great amount of time, effort, and money into creating and supporting these plugins but the benefits for doing so pale in comparison as they rarely receive donations for their work.
Last year I asked both Alex King and Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan if they knew the percentage of people that contributed a donation after downloading a plugin. Alex replied to my email and said, “I’d say maybe .5%? Maybe lower…” whereas Mr. Chan explained that, “I would say less than 1% based on my 4 years of doing plugin”. Altogether both plugin creators currently have a combined total of 43 plugins (Alex King: 26, Lester Chan: 17) available for free download at the official WordPress plugin repository. Upon answering the same question, Donncha O Caoimh, of the popularly downloaded WP Super Cache plugin, replied, “I don’t have an exact figure but it’s probably far less than 1%”, “I’d be rather happy if each of them even donated a dollar!”. Alex Rabe, author of the heavily used NextGEN Gallery plugin, supplied me with some donation statistics saying, “Less than 1 percent for NextGEN Gallery, 800,000 downloads and approx. 200 donations”. That actually works out to be a donation rate of 0.025%! That’s completely ridiculous! Providing quality support for these plugins is practically a full time job for these guys and donations clearly don’t cover the costs. Because of this, many plugin developers aren’t able to provide free long-term support/maintenance for their plugin and either 1) compatibility falls behind, 2) another developer is needed to assume responsibility to support/maintain the plugin, or 3) the plugin is abandoned altogether.
In a recent discussion with Joost de Valk, I expressed my concern about the challenges that face WordPress plugin developers and the need for a viable, rewarding business model to ensure continued quality plugin development and support. Joost currently provides free support for his 26 plugins at WordPress.org, works full time at Orange Valley, blogs about WordPress SEO tips at Yoast.com, does freelance WP plugin development and web marketing work, and somehow finds time to attend WordPress SEO speaking engagements. Joost proudly displays donation requests on his site in an attempt to cover his costs for maintaining and supporting his plugins but he too knows that donations are not a sustainable long-term business model for WordPress plugin developers. With less than 0.1% of WP users submitting donations after downloading one of his plugins and support and maintenance requiring so much of his time, he’s seriously considering the alternatives:
“Even with my current workload it’s never less than 10 and usually more like 20 hours a week spent on support and upgrades etc…”, “It’s just not sustainable like this.”
Alternative Business Models For WP Plugin Developers
1. Premium Plugins – Paid plugins indeed offer a sustainable alternative for developers but the WordPress regulations don’t allow for paid plugins to be hosted at WordPress.org. Thus there’s greater challenges and expenses involved with this business model to effectively increase awareness of a plugin throughout the WP community. Support for paid plugins is usually very good as most developers know that plugin sales depend on customer satisfaction. Hence, providing poorly supported plugins will eventually damage the developer’s reputation and hinder the success of the plugin.
2. Freemium Plugins – This business model for WP plugins includes offering a free basic version of the plugin at WordPress.org and selling upgrades to the plugin elsewhere (i.e. the developer’s website). The quality and promptness of free support for the basic plugin may vary quite a bit across plugins and developers however. The WP e-Commerce plugin owners have been utilizing this business model for several years.
3. Paid Support – Like the freemium business model this strategy allows for the plugin to be included at the WordPress plugin repository. Support, however, is provided by the developer on a per cost basis and may include such things as theme compatibility issues or paid installation. The potential income that could be obtained by the developer may not rival that of the other two business models though as I could see many customers outsourcing support needs in an attempt to reduce expenses. For example, if the plugin’s creator is charging $100 for specific support request and another individual says they’ll provide support for only $50, it’s a no-brainer that the developer is going to lose-out many times. I would hope that the plugin’s author would be selected to complete the support request as I believe that no one should be able to provide better support than the plugin’s creator but unfortuantely not everyone sees it that way.
4. Ad Supported – This business model depends on the revenue generated by advertisements or sales of other products. I’m guessing that this would be just as unsuccessful as donations but I don’t have any real numbers to back this up. I haven’t personally seen any advertisements embedded into a plugin’s settings page but I have observed plugins that display such things as their creator’s Amazon Wishlists (i.e. Google XML Sitemap plugin). Again, I’m guessing that traditional CPC advertisements wouldn’t fair well with the WP community and I imagine it would just be a matter of time before someone posted a revised version that didn’t include the ads. Moreover, the number of impressions, or click-throughs for a plugin’s settings page is very low. Therefore, I submit to you that advertisements alone are not a viable solution either as the potential for income is very small.
5. A Combination Model – This would entail using any combination of the models described above. For instance, maybe instead of selling the plugin outright, the developer draws on all the other plugin business models for sustainability (i.e. donations + ads + paid support + paid upgrades).
Plugin Developers Aren’t Alone
The struggle to find an acceptable and sustainable business model for WordPress developers is nothing new. Theme designers have struggled with this issue for many years. Brian Gardner has been a pioneer in WordPress theme development by demonstrating a sustainable premium themes business model as well as venturing out to incorporate a GPL based paid support business model for his WordPress themes as well. Joost de Valk recently joined forces with Brian through a partnership to improve the SEO of Brian’s StudioPress themes. This too is nothing new for plugin developers as, unlike successful WP theme developers, many must do consultation work and/or hold full time non-plugin development jobs.
Why Premium Plugins Make Sense
While many WordPress fans believe that all plugins should be free, it’s actually in the best interest of the developers and the WP community to adopt a business model that helps improve upon the quality and life of WordPress plugins. The premium themes business model worked because the quality of free themes was much less than that of the premium themes. By creating better quality themes that were more attractive, WordPress in turn became more attractive to people as a blogging platform. The same may be said for premium WordPress plugins in that support for a free plugin cannot rival the level of support one could provide if he/she was paid to do so.
Why WordPress Should Sell Premium Plugins
It’s actually quite surprising to me in this age of thriving application platforms (i.e. iPhone App Store, Android Marketplace) that WordPress hasn’t offered a similar platform that gives back to its developers. Let’s consider for a moment if every plugin in the official WordPress repository required a mandatory donation of a mere $1 to download and complete the installation. Most WordPress bloggers don’t use that many plugins so the overall expense for them would probably be less than $20 in total. That’s very inexpensive for the blog owner, yet it could do wonders for the developer (especially in this economy) and give WordPress a nice development boost as well. Developers would not only be able to finally afford to adequately support and maintain their plugins but they could then refocus their attention to further enriching their plugins. Perhaps more importantly they would have more time to explore other plugin development ideas which would ultimately benefit the community and drive innovation for WordPress.
Final Thoughts
I believe many developers that employ the freemium or premium plugin business model have and will find success but I’m not as confident about a business model that depends solely on paid support for sustainability. One thing is for certain however; donations alone do not cover the plugin developer’s costs to maintain and support his/her plugins in the long run. It is my hope that by posting this article you will engage in this discussion to stimulate ideas to ensure that great plugin developers like Alex King, Donncha O Caoimh, Alex Rabe, Lester Chan, and Joost de Valk will continue to develop awesome plugins for the WordPress community. Please take a minute to let us know what your thoughts are on this important issue by leaving your comments below. If you know of anyone that may be interested in this discussion, please invite them to join the conversation by sharing this article with them using any of the services listed below. Thank you.
Update: Michael Torbert, author of the All in One SEO Pack plugin, emailed me saying “The approximate percentage of users who donate is .013%. This includes donations ranging from a few cents to tens of dollars, with a mean donation of $11″.
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Nice article, Kevin. I have released quite a few free plugins and do paid plugin development full time.
My most popular plugin on the WordPress.org repository has only been downloaded about 9,000 times. I have received a few donations (probably 10-15) of ~$10. That’s not bad, but considering I’ve put over 60 hours into creating, maintaining, and supporting the plugin over the years, there is very little motivation to continue development on it.
The other thing is that when you release a plugin open source, there is an expectation from the community that you will immediately cater to every support request that they make. I have gotten outright hostile emails from people when one of my plugins stops working because of a WordPress update (interface stuff mostly) or their system doesn’t have cURL installed and the server can’t fetch remote files. People get pissed at me for giving them something for free? No thanks. That is the reason I don’t really work on my open source plugins anymore. It’s just not worth the hassle getting those emails when I could be making money doing client work instead.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 15th, 2009 5:00 pm:
Wow, 15/9000 X 100 = 0.16% donation rate. And that’s just for one of your plugins
That’s worse than CTRs for adverts.
I think it’s great that developers contribute to WordPress in the spirit of open source software but I believe they also need to be compensated for their time. One dollar isn’t too much to ask, especially if it helps benefit the quality/support of the plugins and the community as a whole.
Don’t forget the software-as-a-service model. I wrote a grammar checker for WP and made it free for personal use with paid commercial use. This model seems to work for Mollum, Defensio, and Akismet (granted Akismet has the bundling advantage). We’ll see how it works for something other than protection against comment spam.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 15th, 2009 9:59 pm:
Good point Raphael. I have a tendency to lump that into the freemium model but it’s distinctly separate. I’ll add that one to the list, thanks!
This is such a great topic. I’ve released one plugin to the WP repository and it has only a few hundred downloads. I had a couple feature requests that I added in quickly. Since then, it’s been all quiet. This was on a VERY basic plugin. I have plans for a more complex and involved plugin and I seriously worry that releasing it may cause a “customer service” nightmare for myself.
I love writing plugins and I would certainly love to find a way to monetize that development. Until a real solution comes around, I think my more involved plugins will be available only to a select group of people rather than open to the WP repository.
Twitter/Share/BookmarkWhat a coincidence, I was just thinking about something like your Ads For Old Posts plugin!
Very cool idea for setting a delay before ads are displayed within the content.
John Hawkins reply on June 15th, 2009 11:53 pm:
Hey, thanks for checking out my plugin! It started out as something I had hacked in to my theme and then after hacking it in to 3 sites I realized a plugin was the easier way to handle it. I was right. Nothing like the ‘ol 1 minute install!
Right now it’s difficult to use a premium model because you will lose automatic update and listing in the Extend directory (how will one charge money if people can just download it for free).
What would help is simple page that would list Premium pluging developers that use GPL licenses on the WordPress.org website.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 10:24 am:
That would be a great solution but I wonder just how many premium plugins are released under a GPL? Regardless, it would be a great compromise and that’s probably the only realistic way premium plugins would ever be allowed at WordPress.org.
Barry reply on June 16th, 2009 10:31 am:
The problem, as I see it, is the up-sell. There are still issues with genuine GPL themes being kept out of the wordpress.org repository because the authors site has adverts on it for premium themes ( http://www.antoniowells.com/2009/05/04/caution-wordpressorg-hates-theme-designers/ ). I don’t think it’s hit the plugin side of things yet, purely because there aren’t that many “premium” plugins around.
I think at the moment the wordpress.org repository isn’t worth using for “premium” plugins, you may as well spend more of your time getting your marketing in place so you generate your own leads and not rely on wordpress.org to provide them for you.
WP needs something like the Apple appstore. Apps can be free or paid with a “buy now” button right in the admin panel. Automattic can cut x percentage of the sales. Everyone wins.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 10:37 am:
Yes, I think that would indeed be beneficial to everyone. The challenge is convincing Matt Mullenweg that it’s in the best interest of the WP community to create a premium plugins repository. The next hurdle becomes protecting the plugin developer’s rights to his premium plugins such that someone doesn’t just create and exact copy and host it in the free plugins repository. That by itself maybe one of the biggest challenges. But if Apple and Google can do it for their communities, WordPress should be able to the same.
Donncha O Caoimh reply on June 16th, 2009 3:28 pm:
Unfortunately having a premium plugin site causes a few problems and headaches:
1. Admin. It’ll be a headache handling all those charges and possible chargebacks. Refunds?
2. All plugins have to be GPL. There’s legally nothing stopping someone from buying your plugin and posting it for free elsewhere. The GPL encourages it.
3. If WordPress.org handles payments to authors Automattic may possibly run into taxation issues. Will you charge VAT for European authors selling to European customers?
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 3:43 pm:
Yes, it is a lot of work to deal with.
Your 2nd point is a valid one definitely. But how does StudioPress handle this? That is, they now operate under a GPL as well correct? If so, you should be able to purchase a StudioPress theme and share it with everyone but does that actually happen?
Point #3 outlines another challenge. It always becomes much more complicated when you dive into those pesky details
I have a few plugins up at wordpress.org, but only one that’s moderately popular. It’s been downloaded 200,000 times now and I’ve received something like 20 donations. I occasionally do paid modifications, but 99% of my efforts have gone unpaid.
Still, I’m not sure premium/freemium plugins are the way to go. I love the concept of free software, and would hate to have to deal with piracy and such for my plugins.
Bu then again… plugins are a crucial part of WP and the ecosystem is what makes it such a great platform. Maintaining the current quality of plugins should matter to Automattic, right? Perhaps they should play some part in this?
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 10:53 am:
My thoughts exactly Roy. I’m starting to really warm-up to the idea of a Plugin Store/Marketplace that’s akin to the iPhone App Store or the Android Marketplace. If we could keep prices low and maybe just charge $1 per download, piracy may not be that big of an issue. Especially if all plugins were hosted at WordPress.org. So in that case not only would plugin developers be compensated for their hard work but WordPress could serve as a quality control center to maintain the integrity of WordPress. As it remains now however, there’s no assurance of quality with a premium plugin. Thus if a newbie WordPress owner gets burned from a fraudulent plugin seller he/she could be turned off to WordPress and abandon it for something else not realizing that’s atypical.
I currently don’t have any plugins in the directory don’t know if I will either. I will go with offsite hosting and integrate plugin upgrades from the plugin interface.
But the compensation thing is one of the problems developers need to solve. The support model can be very exhausting also. A popular plugin for a low prize equals possibly many support questions and many hours writing answers because most people don’t check FAQs or search forums for answers.
A premium model with offsite hosting and upgrades could perhaps work better. That is, not integrated with the WP.org system but a separate hosting with easy access from the wordpress admin panel.
Roy Tanck reply on June 16th, 2009 6:38 am:
A 3rd party ‘app store’ that handles installs and upgrades as well as WP itself may well be what WP needs. And could turn out to be quite profitable for whomever develops it…
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 11:01 am:
Yeah, but would WordPress allow it once it got traction? Moreover, how do you prevent piracy or someone else creating an exact copy of the plugin and hosting it at WP for no cost to download?
Roy Tanck reply on June 17th, 2009 5:02 am:
Well, plugins would need to be non-GPL. That would make piracy illegal (or rather: possible). But it would rule out all current plugins (which are already GPL).
I was kind of being a devil’s advocate here. If Automattic didn’t somehow block it a premium plugins/themes marketplace that integrates well with WP (through a GPL plugin perhaps) would turn out to be really profitable. But I actually don;t think I;d sell my work through it.
Great article and an excellent idea! I have only recently started using WordPress, and have been really impressed with the plugins, but it definitely needs to make developement worthwhile. From my experience with Joomla it seems that a mixture of free and commercial plugins work nicely.
Everyone needs an ‘app store’ now!
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 11:12 am:
I think the plugin store idea is golden, now all we have to do is convince Matt Mullenweg to support it. I only wish it were that easy but I’m afraid that’s the greatest barrier of all.
Thank you for writing such a succinct post and to the point post.
This is a discussion that needs to be had, and had soon before the plugin side of WordPress has it’s own “premium theme pulling backlash”.
The main problem with the support model is scaling it. A single developer would find it hard to provide a level of support that can be charged for whilst still finding time to develop new plugins and enhance existing ones. And then try having a life on top of that.
As programmers, we have the ability to create a “product”. A “product” that is useful to a lot of people. License aside, why should it automatically be assumed that this product should be free (as in free beer)? http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-merge-gpl-and-support/
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 11:32 am:
Thanks Barry. The premium theme designers only did what they needed to do. It’s really too bad that WordPress hasn’t supported them.
You hit the nail right on the head there in that free plugins can’t be supported and maintained as well as those that are financially supported.
This is very concerning and first of I will admit that I have used plugins developed by the names above on numerous occasions and have yet to donate, although it has always been my intention. That point will be addressed straight away.
In addressing the issue and creating a sustainable business model or method of generating revenue, if plugin developers have a set or group of plugins could they allow one to be free but in order to use the complete complementary sets then a donation is a requirement? For example, I know Joost has a few plugins for analytic’s and his blog metric could be a free “taster” but the complete set of all three (or more) plugins would cost €x?
This allows people to get something and see how it works then commit to purchasing in bulk?
An alternative (I may be clutching at straws here im not sure how it all comes together) but could the code be free in its raw form, but the download and add it to the plugins directory (fast and efficient version) would be considered the upgrade and for the convenience would cost €x amount as its a major time saver?
Just some thoughts to get the juices flowing.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 11:09 am:
Your firstly proposed model sounds like something similar to a “theme club” for plugins. Interesting, I might have to add that to the list of models. That would indeed fit Joost’s situation where he is maintain/supporting 20+ quality plugins.
I like your second idea too. If I understand you correctly, in order to receive automatic updates you must pay?
Justin Parks reply on June 16th, 2009 11:18 am:
Not exactly. I ment more that, all the code could be supplied in raw form, so on one big page but it would up to the person (us) who downloads it to put it all together and make it work. Less work for the devs. unless of course they want to pay for the nice neat, fully functional folder thats currently the norm that they DL and add to the plugins folder. (this idea doesn’t have much merit to be honest.)
Probably better to offer a scaled down version of each plugin then offer a purchase of the “complete” version with support for x amount, but that’s up to the Developers how they split the plugin up I guess.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 11:35 am:
Ah, I see now, thanks for the explanation
Yeah, that sounds like the freemium model where you give them something for free but extra functions for the full version costs you.
Donncha O Caoimh reply on June 16th, 2009 3:33 pm:
Unfortunately the “full” version of a plugin has to be GPL licensed too and can be distributed legally after purchase.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 4:01 pm:
So how does WP e-Commerce deal with this issue? And more importantly is it really a concern for them? That is, I haven’t ever heard of someone buying the upgrades to their plugin and then distributing it for free have you?
Donncha O Caoimh reply on June 17th, 2009 3:41 am:
I honestly don’t know. Their plugin is listed on WordPress.org but their shop lists what look like proprietary modules that aren’t GPL licensed, a violation of the plugin’s license unfortunately.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 17th, 2009 11:10 am:
I find it hard to believe that the proprietary modules are somehow in violation with the plugin’s GPL. To my knowledge the GPL doesn’t mean you can’t sell the plugin or anything related to it (modules). I just means that other people are free to do with whatever they want with it (i.e. selling it themselves or distributing it for free). But they couldn’t with the modules as those are propriety. That’s my best guess anyway as an untrained non-legal professional
Andreas Nurbo reply on June 19th, 2009 2:07 am:
You can link proprietery/closed sources stuff with GPL code but you need to write an exception in the GPL license authorizing linking with whatever program you are linking to. You cannot however use GPL code someone else have written when you do so.
But in the case of plugins they are considered part of WordPress so you cannot write plugins that link to closed source stuff. That would be a violation of the license.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 19th, 2009 4:14 am:
I’ve heard that argument that plugins are considered part of the WordPress and therefore are GPL by default. However, it hasn’t stopped WP from generating revenue from commercial Akismet licenses or upselling people to buy upgrade versions of Poll Daddy which is proprietary except for the plugin I believe. So the trick is to offer a free version of your plugin that’s GPL compliant and then do what Automattic did for Akismet and Poll Daddy.
Kevin, your post has inspired me to do what I should have done some time ago – start compensating plugin authors for their work. Thanks.
http://www.philipbarron.net/archives/plugin-deadbeats/
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 12:25 pm:
Thanks Phil. I’m hoping it will also inspire Matt Mullenweg to do the same. That is, at least launch a premium plugins repository at WordPress.org.
Donncha O Caoimh reply on June 16th, 2009 3:34 pm:
Oh yeah, it’s “Matt Mullenweg”
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 3:50 pm:
Ha! I misspelled it
Thanks for the correction Donncha.
Phil Barron reply on June 16th, 2009 3:58 pm:
Donncha, I’m using WP Super Cache on another blog. Your donation is coming.
I’m sure I’m *way* under 0.1% of donations / downloads. I have something like a combined 300.000 downloads for my plugins, and I doubt I’ve received more than 300 donations over the last 5 years.
Definitely not doing plugins for the money, I guess.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 1:49 pm:
Well, that’s at least consistent with what most plugin developers are saying their donation rates are. Would you consider adding a small fee (i.e. $1 per download) and hosting your plugin elsewhere to cover your costs for maintenance and support?
Ozh reply on June 16th, 2009 2:00 pm:
No, I wouldn’t.
(also, I’m pretty sure I didn’t check “receive two emails when someone replies”, yet I’m receiving them…)
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 2:10 pm:
Sorry about that Ozh. I hit the reply to button to shoot you an email and didn’t see that you had subscribed to the comments.
I have to admit that I have used dozens of plugins and have not been the quickest to donate money. I have donated to some developers in the past, but it’s not a regular occurance for me.
Take a look at http://premium.wpmudev.org/. Maybe as a community, if several developers made a marketplace for premium plugins that was marketed broad-scale, then it would be a workaround to this whole thing. I mean, do we really NEED to rely on wordpress.org to supply the storefront, or would it just be easier for a group of developers to create an “app store” and then create a plugin that ties directly into the store. The plugin could be free, and it would showcase some of the newest preium plugins in your dashboard.
A good way around the whole copy/re-post plugin shinanigans that would go on, would be some type of encryption or activation key for the plugins, similar to recaptcha, askimet, etc…
That’s just a basic idea, and I don’t really know all of the ins-and-outs, but in theory, I don’t think it would be that tough.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 16th, 2009 2:03 pm:
WPMU DEV looks like a great community. I don’t think we necessarily need WordPress.org to make it happen but it would certainly help and it would be in their best interest to do so. A big challenge is regulating the quality of the plugins that are allowed into such a plugin store. You would have to test and verify that each plugin is legit and up-to-date. Further more the developer would have to run his own support center.
Yes, an activation key would be especially helpful to prevent piracy. But how do you prevent someone from developing a similar plugin and hosting it at WordPress.org?
Nick Norris reply on June 16th, 2009 2:25 pm:
Good point, plus trying to find people to moderate such a site would be a pain. It was a whimsical idea that would probably never pan out anyway:)
Let’s turn the argument on it’s head. Instead of trying to sell a plugin, only offer paid support. If a user wants a new feature they pay for your time.
That will work for business clients but of course won’t with the vast majority of users.
Why not offer businesses a commercial support license? Akismet has commercial subscriptions as it’s clearly a service, but your time and effort is a service too.
“Subscribe to this plugin” ?
Justin Parks reply on June 17th, 2009 7:05 am:
Or people could, quite simply, make a donation as standard in the first place rather than just assuming its free and the whole situation becomes null and void
Phil Barron reply on June 17th, 2009 8:03 am:
If users were angels, we’d all do just that. Apparently, we’re not angels. But we can / should certainly do better than a < 1% donation rate, and should make some noise about it.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 17th, 2009 11:43 am:
A commercial support license would indeed be a nice option. I don’t think that it would be very successful for most plugins though.
Let’s compare WP to other OSS projects. As far as I know, donations are rarely sufficient to fund OSS development, so it shouldn’t be a surprise here. There also tends to be two kinds of OSS developers, which is important for any kind of “Business Model” discussion:
1) prolific developers who work for companies that use OSS software and subsidize the development of the OSS software (so I download MySQL for free, but Oracle’s paying lots of people to work on it),
2) smaller contributors who either use the software for personal or business use & contribute to “give back” for years of using others’ contributions for free (this is the “cost” of choosing free software over proprietary software) or simply because it’s fun.
For WordPress core, Automattic’s found a way to sell a service that pays for WordPress core development (#1 type developers). How do most plugin authors make a living? I’m guessing many — the prolific ones at least — make a living working with WordPress (if not their specific plugin) in some way, either full-time (#1) or part-time (#2 type contributor).
If the goal is to directly make money off of plugins, as “Independent WP Plugin Developers” akin to independent Windows or Mac software developers, I’m skeptical. Yes, there’s the iPhone apps store, but that’s an entirely different software ecosystem.Where’s an open source project that works this way? There’s a reason there’s not really a comparable software niche for Linux. (Not being snarky here: find such projects that work well & there’s your model.)
The OSS model seems to be either find a company that needs the plugin & is willing to fund it’s development (and allow you to still GPL it) or realize your job will be generic “WordPress work” (either working for a company that uses WP or freelancing on the sorts of jobs you find at jobs.wordpress.net) and integrate your plugin work into that somehow. Once you’ve got a big, vibrant community around GPL’d software, it’s hard to import the “commercial desktop software” model and sell “premium” software add-ons: service & support (including customized code for specific customers) is the way to go. As a user, an “app store” for plugins sounds unappealing to me: most of what I need is freely available already. What I would pay for is maintenance & customization.
That may be a bummer for people who like writing plugins and want to make it their job. But a huge ecosystem of free, open source plugins is also a great thing for WordPress as a platform and for users of WordPress…
Kevin Eklund reply on June 17th, 2009 11:40 am:
There’s already people that make a living as independent WP plugin developers without a current app store-like model. Just because there is no such open source software that uses an app store-like model doesn’t mean it couldn’t exist. There’s always a first time for everything. After all, Brian Gardner’s premium themes are GPL and were advertised on WordPress.org as premium themes with Matt Mullenweg’s permission. While that advertisement is no longer there, according to StudioPress, Brian’s premium themes are still GPL.
The GPL doesn’t mean you can’t charge for it. And while you, being a knowledgeable WP expert, may not need or be willing to pay for WP plugins/themes others do it all the time. Blogging and WP adoption is not just for tech experts/enthusiasts anymore.
Free plugins are great but I think there’s plenty of room for premium plugin development as well. Especially since free plugin support can’t rival that of paid support. It would only help WordPress to do this as it would drive innovation.
Jon reply on June 17th, 2009 1:04 pm:
I actually agree with everything you said here. But if “people are already doing it” and it’s working for them — great. I took the article, and a lot of discussion like this lately around WP, to be suggesting it wasn’t working for people, hence the need for a better business model.
To the extent that it works, & great for the plugin authors who make it work. I just don’t think there’s huge room for growth (and who knows, I may look stupid for saying that in a few years). The problem, in my opinion, is that there are people who just want to blog, and stock WP or wordpress.com fill that need just fine. Then there are people who want to customize & supercharge everything about their blog. The former don’t care about paying for plugins and the latter probably want something customized & specific to their site. I’m all for building a bigger market for the latter kind of development.
Kevin Eklund reply on June 17th, 2009 1:45 pm:
You’re right the title isn’t as descriptive as it should be. I meant to insinuate that plugin developers that use free plugins at WordPress.org to generate traffic and therefore income should reconsider this model.
You may very well be correct and there’s just not a market for such a thing. But then again there’s a huge number of professional blogging sites available today. Popular sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, and many others use WordPress. Furthermore, more blog are springing up everyday with the owner’s intent on doing it for a living. I think we are experiencing a very interesting time with the downsizing of print based media and the explosion of online publication. It’s quite exciting isn’t it? BTW, you’ve done some pretty remarkable things at Contexts.org. Compete.com has US uniques at over 50k and climbing. Congratulations Jon, that’s awesome! Great content and great technology make a great pair huh
I have the same amazingly low rate of donations as reported by everyone here. I don’t think plugin users are naturally stingy – I think it’s the anonymity of the situation, plus the ease of updating a plugin at the click of a button, that leads to the low donation rates. In the face-to-face situation of a pizza delivery person knocking on your door, just about everyone will tip him/her a a few bucks, but hardly anyone tips their plugin developer.
Making a donation requires a detour when downloading a plugin update. I think upgraders rather than first-time users are the audience to target for donations, since they most clearly see value in the plugin and aren’t just trying it out. So the model that comes to mind is one where upgrading with a donation is what can be done with the click of a button, and downloading without a donation is what takes extra steps.
Plugin developers would need to set up subscription/recurring payments in Paypal, and the upgrade link on the plugin panel would need to route through it. So this would require help from the core WordPress team. I haven’t thought through all the mechanics, but the idea would be to have the download of a plugin upgrade trigger an automatic $1 or $2 donation, unless the user deliberately takes extra steps to avoid the payment (or to avoid the initial sign up for the subscription).
Twitter/Share/BookmarkI’ve read a lot of these posts, but definitely not all. As a WordPress plugin user, I’ll throw in my experiences with plugins. Usually when I’m trying a new plugin, I download several before I find one that will work. Either they are over my head and I don’t understand how to use them, or they are limited in what they can do and I don’t discover this until after the plugin is installed.
Or, the needs of my website changes and I don’t need the plugin I downloaded. I never mind paying for something I use, but I am never sure how long I will use a plugin. I used to donate, only to use the plugin a week or so.
I would suggest several things. 1) a trial version that deactivates after 30 days. 2)monthly charges for support 3) more planning BEFORE the download so quality educational materials are available to the user. There are many plugins I would use if I knew how.
Without plugins, WordPress would be very bland. I’m all for helping the plugin developers develop a solid business plan for their product.
Twitter/Share/BookmarkI absolutely agree that the amount of users who donate to a plugin versus the amount of users who are using it is downright horrendous!
I’ve received a total of $150 worth of donations over the past 10 months for a plugin which has been downloaded over 15,000 times!
That totals a whopping $.01 per download!
Assuming that each person who downloaded the plugin were to donate .01, there would have to be 8,000 new people download the plugin each month just to be able to pay the hosting fees associated with the site on which I offer FREE support for the plugin!!!
That doesn’t even take into consideration the fees that PayPal would undoubtedly take out of each donation… It’s really a losing battle no matter how you look at it.
Twitter/Share/BookmarkThere should be some kind of limitation on the plugin or you can say a system that will check whats the status of its creator (Developer) – if its bad, plugin stops itself and ask the user to pay the developer so plugin works again…. i think that will be better than donations… anyways..its just an idea
Twitter/Share/BookmarkSix months ago, I added a checkbox titled “Insert Google AdSense ads to support Tweet This” to my Tweet This plugin. Checking it adds a banner AdSense ad to your footer and a box one on single post views below the text of the post. I don’t know who is supporting me, but I have earned $300 from the feature so far and Google has upheld all the earnings as valid.
This is risky because you are responsible for the content of the webpages where your ads appear. However it has been worth it to me, and it will continue to be worth it as long as the checks keep coming. I’m making about $2 an hour for programming work on my plugin now.
Twitter/Share/BookmarkI wrote a comment previously to this article as a way to sort of “log” the progression of my plugin versus it’s donation rate.
Previously, my donations sat at about $150 with 15,000 downloads… Unfortunately, it seems that the more it’s downloaded the worse that ratio gets.
Now my plugin has been downloaded nearly 80,000 times and I’ve received a total of $197 worth of donations. haha
I’ve also been running a test (one that I figured would be doomed from the get-go) with an “in-dashboard” ad slot that’s located on the options page for my plugin.
No surprise that the impressions skyrocketed for that ad slot (compared to the ad slots located on my site) due to the large amount of people who are configuring their options for the plugin, and thus forcing another impression on the ad.
Even though this ad slot is receiving much higher impressions by an extremely targeted group of users (WordPress users), the ad has only been sold once. That sale was actually just someone who said they did it as a sort of “donation” to the plugin, but figured they’d get something in return as well.
I’ll be removing that ad slot soon, as it’s obviously a complete and utter failure. However, I do still have a few tricks up my sleeve regarding potential monetary ideas for my plugin.
I’m going to take the #1 most requested feature for the plugin (interchangeable skins/themes) and make it a “premium” option that can be purchased for a small fee.
At this point in the game, I really don’t give two flying hoots what the rest of the so called “community” thinks about this decision, because let’s face it… For every ONE who disagrees, there’s bound to be TWO more who really don’t care.
Necati reply on January 9th, 2010 9:22 am:
I have written a plugin making a lot of use of other plugins available, and completely with the expectation of selling hundreds or thousands of copies, as there are already several “selling” products at a price range of $17 to $97 that are way way way worse thatn what I have at the moment (if you are at all familiar with this crowd, you may have guessed only by figures alone that it is the Internet Marketing community.
I am not a great programmer, actually not a programmer at all, so I have spent quite a long time (embarrassed to say how long) hacking this bit by bit to get it working.
Anyway, the endless support requests possibility had been haunting me so I was thinking of a price that would justify releasing this. Then I thought perhaps I would release this free as a promotion. And maybe I would include a donate link which may help a little bit.
I already reas several posts(and tens of comments)saying donations such. Then many which tell that even free releases get people to think that you are their developer slave for the rest of your life (even more so when you release it free), and now Josh says ads don’t work either (which really my last hope in this.)
It will be heartbreaking to just leave it aside and use it myself, heartbreaking as I don’t usually make bad decisions.
Wanted to share, so if in any case Matt is reading this, it may add to the noise.
PS: The opportunistic person I am, I checked whether wpapps.com or wpappstore.com was available… both gone in many tld extensions. Public whois results shows edublogs.org getting some of these… I actually envy them for not getting tied down about these discussions and charging $100 a month for support of their WPMU plugins. Only a big package like that and a team of developers could possibly support a venture into plugin production and support business, I guess.