Category: Plugins & Themes

Jake Jackson, from Blue Liquid Designs, answered my questions about how Gravity PDF was conceived, the struggles with writing code to format and build PDFs, their revenue generating template system and how he markets the plugin to such a wide potential customer base.

My name is Milan, and I am the owner of Dev4Press, a company dedicated to WordPress and bbPress plugins development. Dev4Press was created in 2009 as a side project, and a lot has changed since then, except for one thing: it is still a team of one. In this guest post, I want to share my challenges and methods for growing a WordPress plugin.

I launched an extension in the WooCommerce Marketplace! It’s been three years since I came up with the initial idea and it’s exciting to see it being sold on WooCommerce.com. For anyone interested in selling WooCommerce products, I wanted to share some thoughts on the process.

I’m a former stock broker and entrepreneur located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I’m the founder and CEO of MH Themes, a WordPress theme company specializing in professional magazine WordPress themes for online magazines, news websites and advanced blogs. Today, we’re making around $360k in yearly revenue.

My name is Amir Helzer, founder of OnTheGoSystems (makers of WPML and Toolset). In this article, I’m going to lay out the reasoning behind our recent move from Lifetime licenses to annual automatic renewals for our products. I’ll also explain why I warmly recommend you consider doing the same for your WordPress products. We need to get paid for our work. Clients need peace of mind. Automatic renewals offer exactly what both developers and the clients need.

This WordPress plugin success story comes to us from The Netherlands, where Jeroen and his team are running Buttonizer, a great-looking “floating action button” plugin for WordPress websites with one purpose: to help increase user interactions and conversions on websites.

With WordPress used by over 30% of all websites, the space can be very competitive! A dilemma for WordPress theme developers is whether to go out on their own or distribute through a marketplace. We’re going to explore first-hand experience of selling themes on ThemeForest over five years, and some of the pros and cons of the platform. If you are still deciding which route to take, this can help you choose.

The United States has a number of tax laws on the Federal, State, and Local levels that WordPress theme and plugin developers need to be aware of. This post will talk about the tax implications of things like outsourcing work, incorporating your business, and sales taxes.

Benjamin Denis is an interesting WordPress plugin creator from France. He agreed to share his entrepreneurial strategies with us, and talk about how he took SEOPress from a mere idea to a sustainable business in one year while working full-time at a web agency.

The thought of ditching your day job, abandoning your clients and selling your themes and plugins can be very tempting. For those who’ve made a success of it, it can be lucrative. But once you’ve written and released your code, the work isn’t over. You’ll need to market it, keep it updated, test it regularly and provide support. But if you follow this advice, your career as a theme or plugin vendor will be more successful and you’ll provide real value to the WordPress community.

If you haven’t yet noticed, online video is changing the way that we learn and make our buying decisions. The ability to use video as an interactive storytelling medium makes it one of the best ways to encourage your potential customers to engage with your brand. In this article, I’ll cover a few different ways that you can leverage the power of video to grow your user base and increase your revenue. If you’re already using video, I’ll also include a few tips and tricks to improve the quality of your videos to give you the competitive edge!

Pippin Williamson is the founder and CEO of Sandhill Development which is well known for its three premium plugins, Easy Digital Downloads, Affiliate WP and Restrict Content Pro. In this episode, Cath talks with Pippin Williamson about how he got started, how he grew his business, how he has dealt with lulls in motivation… And what’s up with this brewery that he owns!

Pippin Williamson is the man behind the fantastic plugins Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads and Affiliate WP as well as teaching others in his plugin development courses at pippinsplugins.com and co-hosting the Apply Filters podcast with Brad Touesnard – and he’s only 25!

Beaver Builder is a page builder solution developed by the three guys (Robby McCullough, Billy Young and Justin Busa). The boys discovered the internet as a career early on in life and came together five years ago to form their first company FastLine Media, from which followed Beaver Builder. This is a fun interview with the 3 guys, discussing the ups and downs of creating a successful business.

Pippin runs one of the most successful WordPress plugin businesses and is one of the most earnest, effective and transparent business owners in our WordPress community. If you run (or aspire to run) a WordPress plugin or theme business I highly recommend you read each one of his year in review posts–they’re full of excellent insight.

The WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem is incredibly competitive. With 50,000+ plugins and themes to date and more added every day, it can be hard to stand out. To be competitive you need to stay at the top of your game with your how WordPress is evolving, how to grow sales and how to run your business.

WooCommerce, iThemes Exchange and some other of the most successful WordPress companies have managed to build significant businesses with the add-ons monetization model. It’s very tempting just to follow them based on their success.

Today we’d like to share one specific example that can help many WordPress agencies (and freelancers) to increase their monthly bottom line with in-house developed plugins & themes. This is the success story of Ryan Theis, a partner of ours. Ryan shares how they did it at their agency – BNG Design, an Inc 5,000 Web Design & Marketing agency from Fargo.

A while ago, we managed to launch a page builder plugin named Forge. It is a freemium plugin– people can use it for free, and then upgrade with some paid extensions. And the actual challenge of creating Forge was not the plugin itself, but rather promoting it. Here’s what we did.

Is everyone getting out of the theme business? In November, 2013 we heard that the theme business at WooThemes was only generating 20% of their revenue. Then, in February, they announced they were stopping the theme subscription club.

2008 doesn’t seem like very long ago. And yet, so much has changed in the last five or six years – particularly when it comes to WordPress themes. Particularly when it comes to selling WordPress themes.

Pricing is tough – I know I say that a lot. When you’re pricing WordPress extensions or addons (dependent products), it’s even harder. What I want to do is highlight a challenge that comes from selling dependent products.

The WordPress economy is changing, and many businesses are feeling it. The market is maturing, and customers are behaving differently. It’s happening slowly, but I think everyone realizes things are changing. Often this change has been discussed in terms of hosts and agencies, but let’s talk about products.

When I write “premium WordPress plugins” I’m simply talking about a plugin you charge for. And when I say you’d be wrong, I’m saying that I don’t always believe monetizing the plugin itself is the right course of action. Here are five reasons you shouldn’t release a premium WordPress plugin, and instead give it to the community for free.

Here’s what I know. These prices are all way too low. I set aside a budget of $2000 a year for plugins that help me make money. The last several years I’ve not spent it. Know why? Because the market keeps pushing these prices down. And the message is wrong, because eventually some folks are just going to look at doing something else.

Can authors still make money selling WordPress themes? In today’s episode, Jonathan Atkinson an Envato Exclusive Author, joins Devin and I to discuss the current state of affairs in the WordPress theme marketplace. Atkinson shares some deep insights into Envato’s recent corporate restructuring, impact of multipurpose themes, and progressive competition in the space.

Everyone loves a good “how to make seven figures in software sales” story, but not every business owner desires to claim that headline. If there’s one trend, it’s that we don’t need world domination as a driving force to grow our business.

In this podcast, Troy talks to the developers of Beaver Builder- Robby McCullough, Billy Young and Justin Busa. This is a fun interview with the three guys, discussing the ups and downs of creating a successful business that came about simply from a need to “scratch their own itch”!

In this article we’ll go through some top tips from the developers behind three of the top WordPress plugins out there: NextGEN Gallery, Easy Digital Downloads and WordPress SEO by Yoast.

We initially offered lifetime support and updates. All was well for a couple of years, but eventually questions about sustainability started: if you purchased a WordPress theme once for $60, is it a fair deal to both parties to offer unlimited support requests and significant updates for years to come? As popular themes started receiving huge updates years after their original release, questions about sustainability started arising.

Many developers in the WordPress community aren’t aware of the power of SEO in WordPress.org directory, but if you think about it, most of the traffic to your plugin’s or theme’s listing is coming from search. So instead of spending days, weeks, months on polishing features (although those are obviously important, too)… you can potentially spend less than a day optimizing your readme.txt file and get a very significant boost in traffic to your listing, which will directly increase your acquisition rate.

What’s the hardest part of any business? Distribution. Getting your product out there in from of prospective customers in order to generate sales is hard! So, we thought we’d help you out. Here’s a list of sites for PR to jumpstart your WordPress business.

If you’re a WordPress plugin developer who is trying to make a living from selling plugins – you may have heard of CodeCanyon and want to know if you can make enough to support your living through this marketplace. I’ve been keeping people up to date on progress via my transparency reports. However, I’ve not done a direct comparison of plugins sales vs CodeCanyon… until now.

I’ve been working on my WordPress plugin, RatingWidget, for a while. It was clear to me from the beginning that the number of reviews and average rating were playing a crucial part in the success of the plugin. Having said that, it took me over four years to figure out the right formula.

We all know that having a buggy plugin or dropping the ball on support is a quick way to kill off your plugin business, but what other, more subtle mistakes can leave you wondering if you’ll ever make a successful business out of your plugins? Or worse yet, put you onto the maintenance treadmill, leaving you without any time, or energy, to actually create a viable business at all.

With over 45,000 plugins in the official repository, and many more on websites or even marketplaces such as CodeCanyon, how can you possibly increase your chances of success? Here’s how.

Anyone who has ever built a product for WordPress (plugin or theme) and tried distributing it via the WordPress.org repository knows that user emails are not part of the bargain. You do not have access to this direct way of communicating with the people who are trying out and using your product. So what do you do?

Getting a plugin to market takes a lot of hard work. But once you’ve crossed that major hurdle for your product and your business, you’ve still got some work to do. From customer support to bug fixes and content updates, there are several ways to keep a product current, relevant, and growing even well after its initial release.

After you’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating a high-quality WordPress product to sell, you might be tempted to simply put it up for sale and let the money come in as you move to your next project. Unfortunately, that often isn’t an option. Getting sales requires marketing. This article gives you 10 ways to get the word out and get customers.

Have you ever created a premium WordPress theme? If so, a big consideration is where to sell it. You could sell it yourself or you could post it to one of the existing theme marketplaces. Here’s we’ll help you evaluate whether ThemeForest, the largest WordPress theme marketplace, is right for your premium WordPress theme business.

Are renewal discounts right for your WordPress theme or plugin business? Learn the ins and outs, and dos and don’ts, of renewal discounts for WordPress themes and plugins to make an informed decision on whether to offer these types of deals to your own customers.

When you own a WordPress plugin or theme business, the big challenge is getting enough people to pay for it. This is where free trials come in. Free trials come in many forms, but if done right they can boost conversions. This article goes in-depth into all the options, advantages, and considerations, covering everything you need to know about free trials for a WordPress plugin or theme business.

Most WordPress professionals serve individuals and small business, but there’s another customer that’s willing to pay you more: Enterprises. If you can earn their trust and meet their needs, you may have what it takes to land your first enterprise customer.

IconicWP, a WooCommerce plugin shop, started out selling on Envato but then transitioned to Freemius. After switching to Freemius they doubled their WordPress plugin revenue in under a year. Learn more about how they did it to see if you can apply these lessons to your business.

Katie Keith joins us to share the story of Barn2Media’s successful transition from designing WordPress websites to selling WordPress plugins.

This week’s guest is Garth Koyle from Event Espresso whose goal is to grow his business into a $100 million dollar revenue company. How do you do this I hear you ask? Well, let’s get some hot business and marketing tips from Garth.

With so many WordPress themes available on the market, it might sound crazy to even try and start a business selling your own. There are super-huge, multi-purpose themes selling $100k worth a week with option panels the size of their revenue charts, others with big passionate communities supporting them, and countless other shops just as successful in their own right. How can you compete?

To say the theme marketplace is undergoing a transition is probably an understatement. We’ve seen many shops sell or change focus over the past year. A few have maintained their place in the market or even grown some, but it’s not easy work.

Taking into consideration years prior to 2013 as a reference we can see that on average 50%-60% of “freemium” plugins have been updated in 2015 or 2016. This is a significant difference compared to the findings of previous analysis I did on the WordPress repository. The survival rate after 3 years for the average plugin in the repository is around 10%-20%. We are looking at a 200% improvement.

A few months ago, I decided to challenge our plugin’s pricing and try the “WordPress way” by removing the monthly subscription. Keeping only the annual and lifetime billing cycles. We ran this pricing experiment for one week and saw a drastic fall in new customers. “Drastic” is an understatement – we lost 54% in our customer acquisition rate.