

Ask HN: Selling Wordpress plugins - JoeCortopassi

Just curious how many of you sell Wordpress plugins, and where you sell yours. Bonus points if you list the name of your plugin, and/or what sort of revenue it brings you
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DanceInside
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!

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tnorthcutt
_I'll post the marketplace and plugin names upon request. I don't want this to
seem as self-advertising._

Consider this a request :).

~~~
DanceInside
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.

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paulhauggis
Consider the fact that your plugin needs to be under the GNU license.

This means:

Anybody that purchases it can then go ahead and give it out for free or even
use it in their own commercial project. The main Wordpress site could also
give it out for free as part of their services.

I steer clear of all open source projects (aside from some libraries) when it
comes to commercial apps.

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JoeCortopassi
Is this actually true? Wordpress is GPL, but why would a plugin need to be
under GPL, unless it used actual code from Wordpress (not just API calls). Can
someone clarify?

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byoung2
<http://wordpress.org/about/license/>:

 _Part of this license outlines requirements for derivative works, such as
plugins or themes. Derivatives of WordPress code inherit the GPL license.
Drupal, which has the same GPL license as WordPress, has an excellent page on
licensing as it applies to themes and modules (their word for plugins).

There is some legal grey area regarding what is considered a derivative work,
but we feel strongly that plugins and themes are derivative work and thus
inherit the GPL license. If you disagree, you might want to consider a non-GPL
platform such as Serendipity (BSD license) or Habari (Apache license)
instead._

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byoung2
I haven't sold any, but <http://codecanyon.net/category/wordpress> has a good
selection of people who have.

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japhyr
Are you just interested in plugins, or are you curious about people selling
themes as well?

