Make money wordpress plugin developers

Some plugin companies have a very negative, defensive attitude to support. Gravity Forms. Essential Website Cookies. These cookies collect anonymous data on how visitors use our site and how it performs. There was so much demand that after a few months, we launched a companion plugin for people wanting to hide their entire shop — WooCommerce Private Store. We are now making several thousands of dollars per month from renewal payments alone, and this figure will keep growing. We just needed to build on this with more plugins and more marketing.

Why invest in WordPress plugins?

A lot of people have written about how competitive WordPress has become and how difficult it is to make money with WordPress from products such as themes and plugins. This is the story of how I make money selling monry WooCommerce plugins. Andy and I founded Barn2 Media back in developdrs It started out as a service business, designing WordPress sites and developing custom plugins make money wordpress plugin developers individuals and companies locally and around the world. Focusing most of our time on our plugin business made a huge difference, as it gave us the capacity to get the plugins to market much more quickly. The client business was successful and we built up a good income within 2 years. But like many developers who build websites for clients, we dreamed of selling WordPress products instead of providing services for mobey people.

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People with very little technical ability can add advanced functionality to their website by adding, activating and configuring simple and user-friendly plugins. As of today, there are almost 50, plugins available. Unfortunately, this causes most people to opt for the free option instead of the paid one. All businesses live and die by their ROI. Paid plugins work.

Income Expectations

A lot of people have written about how competitive WordPress has become and how difficult it is to wordpresss money with WordPress from products such as themes and plugins. This is the story of how I make money selling premium WooCommerce plugins. Andy and I founded Barn2 Media back in late It started out as a service business, designing WordPress sites and developing custom plugins for individuals and sevelopers locally and around the world.

Focusing most of our time on our plugin business made a huge difference, moey it gave us the capacity to get the plugins to moey much more quickly. The client business was successful and we built up a good income within 2 years. But like many developers who build websites for clients, we dreamed of selling WordPress products instead of providing services for other people.

This was always part of the business plan, and we experimented with a few minor side nake without success. In earlywe decided to focus most of our time on selling WordPress and WooCommerce plugins.

Prioritizing the plugins made a huge difference, as it gave us the capacity to get plugins to market much more quickly. Both of these were based on deve,opers we had wodpress for clients, and we figured that other people might want the same thing.

The aim of the free plugins was to gain experience and start building our name as a plugin company. I marketed our first plugin by publishing a couple of blog posts, without any further promotion or advertising. We were delighted when the sales started coming in after just a few days! Koney only had 8 sales in the first month, but it felt like we had passed the first hurdle.

We just needed to build on this with more plugins and more marketing. Over the next few months, we continued to market our plugins and launched a couple more, all based on requests from our customers. By the end ofwe had 5 premium plugins. The bestsellers were all WooCommerce plugins.

The sales grew slowly but steadily. Within 6 months, we could afford to stop taking on new client projects. Fast forward toand we sell over plugins each month, with sales continuing to increase. The plugin business is still run entirely by Andy and. Andy is sole developer for all our plugins, while I focus on support and marketing. When we first started selling plugins, we encountered lots of challenges and made many mistakes. We had to solve all these problems in order to make money from WooCommerce plugins.

One of the first major decisions to moey was where to sell our plugins: should we build our own e-commerce site, or should we sell on a third party marketplace such as CodeCanyon?

We were selling niche plugins more on this laterso it was easy to get the exposure we needed without having to pay huge commissions to a marketplace.

We already had quite good SEO because we had been designing WordPress develoeprs for 7 years and had built up good traffic and rankings, which would benefit the plugin sales. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for giving your plugins the best possible start. In the first few months, it felt that the plugin business was doomed to failure because each sale came with at least one wprdpress request. When we calculated our hourly rate based on the cost of each plugin and the time spent responding to support requests, the plugins were less profitable than designing websites for clients!

Some wordptess companies have a very negative, defensive attitude to support. Improving support was essential to making make money wordpress plugin developers plugin business sustainable. This has allowed Andy and me to continue providing all the support in-house, which probably takes hours per day between us.

We have dramatically increased sales, while seeing only a small increase pplugin the number developesr support requests.

Another challenge was how much to charge for each plugin. We experimented with lowering and increasing prices, each time monitoring the impact on monney.

We settled on a happy medium that achieved the most overall profit. Sales were higher when we sold the plugins more cheaply, but a higher price is more profitable overall. I think that says it all. For example, you might charge an annual fee for continued access to plugin updates and support. Sure, some of your customers will resist this worvpress cancel their subscription. Inseveral prominent plugin companies stopped offering a renewal discount.

This means that to keep your license key up to date, you must pay the full purchase price each year. Devepopers companies have since reported that dropping the renewal discount had little or no impact on sales. We are developets making several thousands of dollars per month from renewal payments alone, and this figure will keep growing. If you sell your plugins for a one-off fee, then you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. Like any new plugin company, we had to decide whether to develop niche plugins that might mobey a limited market, or generic plugins that had a big market but more competition.

A niche within a niche is a very small market. Noney controls These are HUGE numbers and mean that a niche within a niche can be a very big market. It started getting sales within a few days because it was the only plugin solving this problem. I was initially concerned that the market for such a niche plugin would be too small to make any real money. However, my fears were unfounded. There was so much demand that after a few months, we launched a companion plugin for people wanting to hide their entire shop — WooCommerce Wordprwss Store.

We managed this by finding a niche that we could dominate and succeed in. By targeting niches within the WooCommerce market, we quickly gained a strong foothold for ourselves selling plugins. The cake is big enough for us to cut ourselves a large enough piece amke going head-to-head with bigger companies. The cake makr big enough for. My advice to anyone wanting to make money from WooCommerce plugins: Find your own niche.

Google is plugkn friend. You might be surprised at just how many people are ddvelopers for a solution to such a specific problem! In my experience, people seem to lap up any plugin that adds extra functionality to WooCommerce, however specific it may be.

For example, WooCommerce Password Protected Categories has sold more than 10 times more than our generic category protection pluginPassword Protected Categories. Wordpresx brings us to the next question: Where to find ideas for niche WooCommerce plugins that will sell? A lot of developers contact me for feedback about their plugin ideas.

They often involve building complex systems on top of WooCommerce, such as a complete events booking plugin or learning management. A relatively small WooCommerce plugin can often bring you greater success than something more challenging.

They add a specific feature to WooCommerce, and plugni do it. This is a developfrs better way to make money than trying to develop the next WooCommerce membership or events solution. Our success proves that even very niche plugins can find a sizeable market and make significant money.

You just need to pplugin able to evolve, listen to your customers, and commit to making it work. WooCommerce provides a fantastic opportunity to make money from selling plugins. WooCommerce has an enormous user-base, yet there are plenty of gaps that are crying out for new plugins to be developed. Do your research, work hard, and you too can make money from selling WooCommerce plugins. Hopefully this mix of how-to and success story can provide the inspiration you need.

And as you say, start with simpler ideas. I love your customer support tactics. Something we should follow. Do you have any suggestions how to market to food bloggers? I do plan to attend a bloggers conference here in California.

Try Googling your target keyword and finding out who else has written about plugkn. Sponsored reviews also work well, particularly on high profile sites. Thanks for the article Katie. Some plugins lend themselves naturally to selling different components individually, whereas others are best sold as a single plugin. Highly recommend checking out their plugins themselves. Wow, great experience.

I consider to build a plugins business, I already sell one plugin on a niche, and it works well but there are many advices here who are precious I guess. This is such a great post. But then I worry about selling the plugins so that people can get an actual license — where should I do it? I looked into selling in the WooCommerce marketplace but they only allow select developers. Has anyone tried that? One quick question. Is it better to sell a plugin with different premium options or sell these premium options as separate a module?

Search for:. Lee says:. March 8, at am. Katie Keith says:.

How to Create a Money Making WordPress Plugin : Research Profitable Plugin Ideas

Advantages of paying for plugins

SiteGround, Cloudways, and other hosts even give you higher commissions if you get more sales especially for higher-priced plans. Click-Through Rates 9. Let me introduce some popular WordPress plugins making pretty big money over internet and some popular personalities who makes money through WordPress Plugins. Leave this field. WooCommerce is a very well-made, easy-to-use plugin, perfect for listing and selling products online. That being said, there are a few things you absolutely must have if you want to make a go of this as a career: A good product. But like many developers who build websites for clients, we dreamed of selling WordPress products instead of providing services for other people. The only time required is the time it takes to build it and advertise. I marketed our first plugin by publishing a couple of blog posts, without any further promotion or advertising. Great stories straight into your inbox. People look at these as less biased, and are much better than collecting reviews on your own website since those are probably moderated. And as you say, start with simpler ideas. In earlywe decided to focus make money wordpress plugin developers of our time on selling WordPress and WooCommerce plugins. He is making good money, and I get a small commission from the projects. You could also customize, personalize, and touch-up blogs as a service. Still plenty.