Donate or Die!!! Why do some plugin developers shout so loud?

[dgwyer]

Impressive Plugin project, e-commerce! Got to give you credit for that considering it is a free Plugin!

I have seen much discussion about PHPurchase recently. Have you any idea how your Plugin stacks up against that, and would you ever consider doing a 'Pro' version of your Plugin (that supports more Payment gateways etc.)?

[Ryan]

If I was going to build my own e-Commerce plugin, I'd make sure I was building it for a specific purpose of my own first. That way I could justify the time and investment in building it as I'd be utilizing it heavily myself.

I do this a lot with my own plugins; the theme integrator plugin in my signature below is an example of that. I wanted something to integrate my WordPress powered section of my site with my forum, so I made something, then released it. It takes a bit more effort to make something for public release, but these days I keep my support for the plugin low and just rely on people paying to have integrations done to cover the costs of it's development (it paid itself off fairly quickly).




I used to make quite a bit from donations, almost enough to live on, but when I started offering paid support and reduced my free support, those donations plummeted quite dramatically. So I'm assuming people were donating because they were happy with my free support.

[Ryan]

Lolz.

About 30 mins ago one of the users of my plugins asked me what sort of phone I have. I told him it was a crappy Nokia brick, to which he replied by asking if I'd like him to send me a free iPhone as he was really happy with the support I gave him!

My Nokia brick will be filed into the rubbish bin shortly :)

[guileshill]

I used to make quite a bit from donations, almost enough to live on, but when I started offering paid support and reduced my free support, those donations plummeted quite dramatically.

I'm never likely to produce a plugin, unless I offer a polite version of the one that climbed up my nose but any idea, Ryan, on why yours did comparatively well on the donations? You traded it off against paid support, but might there have been something else (like your plugins scratching a real itch or the economic climate or something).

Obviously this thread has taken a direction of its own, just as strongly felt as my first post, but does anyone think that the WP guys could help, for example, by rethinking the presentation of the repository to endorse the work of developers, putting in a default subscribe action (something that adds a reminder panel after a couple of months of usage) and pushing a 'Contribute what it's worth to you' campaign to declare their appreciation of the work of the community?

[Rich Pedley]

Impressive Plugin project, e-commerce! Got to give you credit for that considering it is a free Plugin!

I have seen much discussion about PHPurchase recently. Have you any idea how your Plugin stacks up against that, and would you ever consider doing a 'Pro' version of your Plugin (that supports more Payment gateways etc.)?

No idea, I haven't really looked in depth at the competition since I wrote the thing some years ago. No to pro version, if it can go in core it goes in. payment gateways will not only be added via additonal plugins. I'm not interested in actually setting things up to try and make money - but I'll take whatever comes my way ;)

[Rich Pedley]

If I was going to build my own e-Commerce plugin, I'd make sure I was building it for a specific purpose of my own first. That way I could justify the time and investment in building it as I'd be utilizing it heavily myself.

totally agree, eShop was born out of a need for someone, he knew I'd coded something for my own CMS, but had never released it. So I adapted what I'd got, and used what he had - and thus eShop was born.

[Ryan]

... any idea, Ryan, on why yours did comparatively well on the donations? You traded it off against paid support, but might there have been something else (like your plugins scratching a real itch or the economic climate or something).

Dropdown menus. They're a pain to make and unless they know their way around CSS pretty well, people tend to get stuck often and need assistance.

Also, menus in WordPress were a bit of nightmare until WP 3.0 and so plugins which helped with that seemed to be quite popular. Oddly, people still use my old dropdown menu plugins although I tend to suggest they upgrade to the new WP 3.0 menu system now as it's a lot more user friendly and serves most people's needs much better.

So I think the main reason is that I was literally saving people thousands of dollars. I've had people sign up for my premium support subscription after having employed people for weeks to do a job, then completed it from scratch in under an hour. That's not because I'm awesome, it's because they were employing idiots. Fortunately for me, there are a lot of idiot web developers out there fleecing people so when I can fix something for people mega fast that would have otherwise cost them a lot of money, they're usually happy to send some spare cash my direction.

Also, dropdown menus tend to be used on websites with a lot of content and various sections, which tend to be for companies, rather than random bloggers, so I was directly targetting those with money and the justification to invest it. Lots of other plugins of comparable quality/popularity aren't necessarily used by those with the cashflow.


WP 3.0 kinda killed that side of my business unfortunately. It's still whimpering along, but it's not enough to live on unfortunately.

[Ryan]

One more thing: I took a hit on donations on moving from hosting my plugins on my personal blog to PixoPoint.com. I assume this is because people are more happy to donate to some guy whose obviously working out of his bedroom whereas a corporate looking site is less appealing to donate to.

[guileshill]

Good points Ryan. There must be psychological and emotional triggers that come into effecting according to the perception of the recipient. I wonder, too, if donations from companies are unpopular because a) they are discretionary and b) informal and hence are not tax deductible?

[Otto]

It's debatable whether that sort of thing works or not.

For reference, I do have an "about me" box on some of my plugins which suggest "buying me a beer" and a Donate link in their plugin listing boxes where you can paypal me money. I also have a "buy me a beer" box on all my websites. This is not because I need the money, I just like beer. Also, sometimes people ask how they can send money to me to help them, and my response is invariably "I'll help you regardless, but if you want to donate to my beer fund, there's a box on my sidebar to do that."

I get at least one $5 donation every other day or so. After helping somebody with a problem via email (and I do try to help everybody that emails me), sometimes they throw $20 in or so.

I made about $2000 off it last year. Okay, so it's not living money, but it pays for the hosting and some of the beer. :)