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Mikey De Wildt: How to survive people discovering your plugin

Mikey De Wildt: How to survive people discovering your plugin

Mikey talks about his plugin 'WordPress Backup to Dropbox' and the issues he has had to overcome as it grows in popularity. He also talks about 'extensions' as a viable way for plugin developers to make a little bit of money while keeping open source values.

WP Australia

April 28, 2013
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Transcript

  1. How to survive people
    discovering your plugin
    @michaeldewildt

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  2. Who has had their blog
    hacked?

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  3. Three options
    1. Move to a new host that provided it
    2. A premium WordPress plugin
    3. A free one that worked and was secure

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  4. Keep it simple stupid

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  5. Kept it simple stupid

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  6. People love K.I.S.S

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  7. All the numbers
    • 82,008 connected
    Dropbox accounts
    • 278 Facebook shares
    • 485 tweets
    • 215 Google +1’s
    • 15 languages

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  8. Growth
    is
    awesome!
    However...

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  9. Free software ain’t free to support
    The hidden costs include:
    • Software and hardware to code
    • Internet
    • Web servers, because it’s not
    going to sell itself
    • Support services, email just didn’t
    cut it
    • Coffee and beer, a lot of it

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  10. How can a free plugin
    cover its costs?

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  11. Research yielded three options
    1. Premium support => Neglects a lot of users
    2. Advertising => Tacky
    3. A premium version => ...

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  12. A premium version
    Status quo => Poor user experience

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  13. Why not
    sell
    extensions?

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  14. And make them easy to install
    Just as simple as installing a plugin:
    1. Purchase
    2. Download
    3. Configure
    All from within the WordPress admin!

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  16. Can an approach like this
    work?

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  17. The answer is YES!
    http://nuttybeaver.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/van_damme_dancing.gif

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  18. Goals achieved
    Not only have my costs been covered,
    beer has been too!

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  19. So, how do you survive?
    1. Hold onto open source values
    • Keep your core product free
    2. Listen to your users
    • No matter how obscure their issue may be
    3. Make it viable
    • But don’t break the first two!

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  20. Question time
    @michaeldewildt #wpb2d
    http://wpb2d.com
    [email protected]
    Images purchased from iStockPhoto.com

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