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.

Transcript

1. How to survive people discovering your plugin @michaeldewildt
2. Who has had their blog hacked?
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
4. Keep it simple stupid
5. Kept it simple stupid
6. People love K.I.S.S
7. All the numbers • 82,008 connected Dropbox accounts • 278 Facebook shares • 485 tweets • 215 Google +1’s • 15 languages
8. Growth is awesome! However...
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
10. How can a free plugin cover its costs?
11. Research yielded three options 1. Premium support => Neglects a lot of users 2. Advertising => Tacky 3. A premium version => ...
12. A premium version Status quo => Poor user experience
13. Why not sell extensions?
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!
16. Can an approach like this work?
17. The answer is YES! http://nuttybeaver.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/van_damme_dancing.gif
18. Goals achieved Not only have my costs been covered, beer has been too!
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!
20. Question time @michaeldewildt #wpb2d http://wpb2d.com michael.dewildt@gmail.com Images purchased from iStockPhoto.com