Whether you are looking to purchase development rights to plugins, pay developers to create plugins for you or learn to and develop your own, you do need a strategy or two to monetize the plugins. Here are 7 different ways you could profit.
Look at some WordPress stats.
- WordPress powers 27% of the internet.
- WordPress has a 59% share of the CMS Market
- 500 new WordPress sites every day
- Your Own website
You can sell your plugins on your own website and keep all the profits. You can use tools like Easy Digital Downloads plugin, or management sites like Freemius or Shopify - CodeCanyon
You can put your plugins on sales sites like code canyon. They will take sales and pay you a generous commission. However, be aware they want exclusivity, so you may want to make special plugin versions for them. - Sell via affiliates
If your plugins will interest other internet marketers, either for their use, or their customers, you could promote your plugin on the warrior forum or ClickBank
You can sell your plugin on JV Zoo and then use muncheye.com to promote it to affiliates to sell it for you. You share the profits but take advantage of using other’s mailing lists to bring in the sales. You may even decide to create a plugin and give 100% commission to the affiliates so you create your own list of customers to whom you can sell more plugins, or upgrades afterwards. - WordPress.org
Give a plugin away for free on WordPress.org. You can then promote a pro version or other plugins to this group who now have confidence in your produces and use one every day. - Bonus Offers
Give a plugin to other big internet marketers for them to use as a bonus in their offers. This gives you great access to all those that take up the offer. - WordPress Support Service
Provide a premium WordPress support service and include your plugins as part of the monthly fee. This way you encourage people to use your plugins, which will be easier to support, as you own them. - Premium WordPress Hosting Service
Provide your own premium hosting service and include access to your plugins within the price. This allows you to control who has your plugins and where. It also means you have more reasons to charge a premium price for the hosting experience. - Provide a custom plugin design service.
Take your plugin list and provide custom versions for the customer for a monthly, or one-time fee. Such customisations can often be quite simple and this has been my preferred method of generating revenue. In 2017, I averaged a ‘new’ customised plugin every week. You can also then offer a premium hosting and support services for these plugins and that is how we started the WordPress Business Club concept over 7 years ago. (Although it had a different name at the start)
So, before you chose, let me make one thing clear. Within some limitations of certain sites, you are not limited to one method. You can select multiple paths over time. Especially, if you have the skills or access to the ability to roll out multiple versions of multiple plugins.
