WordPress Plugin Business Model
WordPress is without doubt the best blogging platform in my opinion. There are 3 good reasons for this : Frequent updates and developments from the creators Automattic, a large theme repository and a large plugin repository.
Documentation aside, WordPress doesn’t really give support to users, which you can’t really complain about since it is a free product. Though their forum is full of bloggers helping each other, whether it is with regards to themes, plugins or WordPress itself.
It is this community which has made WordPress what it is today. Without a doubt those who release quality themes and plugins to WordPress users have contributed greatly to the community. Though are they being rewarded for their efforts?
Plugin Developers
Kevin Eklund wrote a great post yesterday about this entitled ‘WordPress Plugin Developers In Dire Need Of A Sustainable Business Model‘. The article talks about how many developers are unable to give support for their plugins because of the time it requires and because they get little, if anything, back in return.
I released the Evolution WordPress Theme last year and it proved to be very popular. However, I didn’t realise how much time it would take to help users adapt the theme on their blogs (thankfully Sarah helped out). This was one of the reasons why we had to launch Blog Themes Club as a paid membership site i.e. we just couldn’t afford to spend time helping everyone for free if we were getting nothing in return.
Therefore I appreciate the situation that plugin developers are in. Infact, I’m actually quite surprised that some of the more complicated plugins have been released for free as the developers have obviously spent a helluva lot of time on them.
Most plugin developers have a paypal donate button on their website but you would be surprised at how little people actually give back (I include myself in this!). Kevin contacted a few plugin developers to see how if they were being rewarded for their efforts :
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!
Plugin Business Model
I have no doubt that developers will continue to keep releasing plugins for WordPress, however I am concerned that if a good business model isn’t adopted by some developers, we may see a decrease in good quality plugins.
Kevin suggested 5 alternative modesl which developers could adopt :
- Premium Plugins
- Freemium Plugins (i.e. a premium plugin with a basic version available for free)
- Paid Support
- Ad Supported
- A Combination Model
I personally believe that more developers should start charging for their premium plugins, especially if it means more updates and better support. I know some bloggers may not be able to pay for plugins however I think most would be happy to pay for a plugin if it did exactly what they were looking for. No doubt it would cost less than paying a programmer to code something specifically for you.
I recently paid $99 for the Wishlist member plugin however I believe it to be great value for money because it does exactly what we want and the support is top notch. Obviously, not all plugins are worth that much. I’m sure many good plugins could be costed at $15 or less and still make the developer a lot of money.
What do you think about all of this – would you pay for a good WordPress plugin if the support was good?
You can read Kevins article about WordPress Plugin Developers in full at the link below.
Link : WordPress Plugin Developers In Dire Need Of A Sustainable Business Model
Written by Kevin Muldoon from WordPress ModsPosted on June 16th, 2009 and filed under WordPress Plugins
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11 Responses to “WordPress Plugin Business Model”
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[...] a living wage) online that you may not have considered. In his post, he discusses the business of coding and releasing WordPress plug-ins. WordPress is already a very popular (and free) blogging platform, but money can be made in [...]
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Thanks Kevin. You did a terrific job at explaining this dilemma. I think most people would agree that if it weren’t for the free plugins/themes and the many developers that create and support them, WordPress would fail to be anywhere near as popular as it is right now. The fact that WordPress is not embracing those developers with something akin to a premium plugin store (i.e. like the iPhone App Store or Android Marketplace) where costs are kept low (e.g. $1/download), is quite disheartening. The creation of a premium plugin store would have the following effects:
1. Better maintenance and support for plugins
2. Better quality plugins
3. Financial support for developers could allow for greater innovation
4. WordPress would benefit from all the above
I would be happy to pay for plugins that I use, where the support is good and they’re improved over time.
I think the iPhone App Store is a decent model for seeing success with “small applications”. Certainly adding any cost (even $0.99) will stop some people from using a plugin, but I also suspect peer pressure + quality reviews + obvious support + consistent upgrades from the plugin developers will push many people over the edge to take the plunge.
I’m not sure what the right average price point is, but the App Store model is a good one to follow. Alex King has plugins that have been downloaded over 200,000 times. If he received even $0.50/download and let’s assume adding a price cut the # of downloads by 50%, it would still be $50,000 for 1 very popular plugin.
It would definitely provide the income to help developers deliver better support/maintenance. The risk is that someone would develop a similar plugin and host it for free download at WordPress.org. It’s also possible that WordPress may cry foul at some point if the store ever got traction.
I do think the apple app store is a good example/ Nokia have recently followed suit and released a similar type of store for nokia phones.
Though if there was some sort of centralised store, I’m sure it would cause a lot of contreversy. Consider this : someone releases a mod for free, someone else then takes that code and develops it a bit more. They thank the original developer on their site but they also sell the new plugin for $5 a time via the wordpress tore. Would the original developer be eligible for earnings?
Considering the way that WordPress has implented themes etc, I don’t think this will happen though (people who release GPL themes are not allowed to sell premium themes on their own site, they’re not even allowed to advertise them!!).
So how does a plugin like WP e-Commerce have its plugin listed in the official WP repository and also charge for upgrades to the same plugin on the developer’s own website?
I also remember Brian Gardner’s premium theme set Revolution2 being advertised on the WordPress theme repository but it is no longer. Does anyone know what happened with that? To my knowledge the GPL doesn’t say you can’t charge for a plugin or theme at all. It’s just that WordPress won’t host your theme/plugin if you do.
I have spoke with some fellow bloggers and some theme designers about the current situation. Basically, you can put one link in a released theme however that site cannot sell themes directly or advertise anywhere which does.
So if I had to released a bloggingtips theme through there I couldn’t advertise any site which sold wordpress designs.
Not sure about the situation with WP e-commerce. Is the situation different for plugins?
I believe that the plugin modules available the the WP e-Commerce site are proprietary while the basic plugin hosted at WP uses the GPL as it must. I don’t think the rules for inclusion at WordPress.org are quite as strict as they are for themes. Probably because there’s more money in making themes than there is for developing plugins. But if you consider how many downloads a popular plugin gets, it’s staggering. Most plugins have links in the settings page that point to the developer’s support site and I know of at least one plugin (Google XML Sitemaps) that has an Amazon Wishlist link as well. I think that it’s fine to do this but it’s just not sustainable for the developer or the plugin in the long-term. If Matt Mullenweg is going to support premium themes like he did with Brian Gardner’s Rev2 themes, he should do the same for plugin devs.
Hello everyone. Great post. Need more of these tips. thanks a lot.
Great Roulette Technique.
I just posted a follow-up to the original article Kevin. It would be great to hear your comments about the issues it discusses.
http://tomuse.com/matt-mullenweg-automattic-wordpress-themes-plugins-developer