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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[...] Offer it for free: We realize that you most probably need some income in order to maintain and support your plugin, but people like free stuff. If it is new, then people would want to try it first. Try to offer a free version, and at a later stage, try offering some special features for a small fee. Some developers depend on donations to sustain their plugins, but that is usually not enough, check out other advices for sustaining your plugin financially here. [...]

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).

[...] people begin to pursue a different form of benefitting from their work and efforts.A recent post on ToMuse by Kevin Eklund sums up some ways that the business model could be created, although I will be [...]

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

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.

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.

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…

[...] Eklund who operates ToMuse.com published a thought provoking article the other day which has become yet another piece of this puzzle known as ‘How To Make Money [...]