Monday, November 7, 2011 at 3:45PM I've just had an article published in .net magazine, and I'd absolutely love it if you could read it. It's an opinion piece on why you should take advantage of communities and make a shedload of cash.
Teenage developer Jamie Rumbelow is all for open source but argues that creating a side business surrounding a community can actually help it grow and flourish.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 12:35PM Yesterday, Stephen Ou posted a really interesting question on Forrst about the pricing of his upcoming add-on, ArtsyEditor for WordPress. Having experience in add-on development and sales before, I thought I’d spend the time to write up a proper reply. The following is essentially my answer, with a few bits changed. View the original answer here.
I’ve got a fair bit of experience with selling add-ons to CMSes, and, as I’m sure you know, pricing them is a very hard decision to make. Pricing can make or break a business model. Be that as it may, it’s important to remember that if you get it wrong first time, it’s not the end of the world. Pricing is one of those things that you can always change, and that’s a right you should be able to reserve as the creator of a product.
Pricing also needs to be fine-tuned. If you’re not selling enough, try lowering the price slightly, and if you’re selling lots, try raising it. You don’t have to stick to a price. If you believe you’ve created a good product, you’re allowed to be paid a decent price for it. If you’re happy with the price, and it’s what you actually believe it’s worth, your customers will be too.
As for what to actually price it at, it’s very dependant on your audience. My add-ons are for ExpressionEngine and MojoMotor; both commercial platforms. ExpressionEngine users are more than happy to pay a decent amount for a good add-on that saves them time. Likewise, MojoMotor users are happy to pay for an add-on if it is vital to them.
I charge less for my MojoMotor add-on, MojoBlog, than my ExpressionEngine add-on, Taggable, simply because of the cost of each system. The former is inexpensive - $50 - so I charge $15 for my add-on. It’s not a real investment and $15 is easy to throw away on an add-on. I’m luck that I’ve been able to write a fantastic tool for MojoMotor that so many people need, so it sells a very fair number of licenses.
My ExpressionEngine add-ons goes for slightly more, $29, because ExpressionEngine costs that much more. EE add-ons can be even more expensive: some range up to the over $100 mark. A standard license for ExpressionEngine is $199, and many users see this as an investment. Therefore, they’re willing to pay slightly more for add-ons so that they get a good quality product and great support when things go wrong.
Since Artsy Editor is for WordPress, a free and open source platform, you’re going to struggle charging a lot for it. While a few have made successful business from WordPress add-on development (WooThemes comes to mind), the WP community just aren’t used to paying for add-ons.
Also, since they see WP as a platform that they are investing themselves - and, importantly, their time - into, you just can’t charge a per-site license fee. It will have to be re-usable. A one-off fee for unlimited uses.
As for the fee itself, I suggest something around the $20 area, potentially $19. You’re allowing for unlimited uses after all, and you deserve to be remunerated for your time, energy and skill. The $20 is above the “Fuck it, I’ll buy it” price point where you’ll have many sales but very little support and passion surrounding your product, but not so high that you can’t attract the hobbyists and small-timers that the WordPress community is so famous for.
Artsy looks like it’s going to be a fantastic product and I can’t wait to try it out. It’s always good to see more people getting into the add-on space.
For those of you who are already in this space, how do you go about pricing your add-ons?
addons, business, expressionengine, mojomotor Saturday, April 9, 2011 at 3:00PM I’m absolutely thrilled to see that the brilliant Leslie Camacho, former President and newly inaugurated CEO of EllisLab, is taking yet another step forward to get in touch with the community. He has written the first of what will be quarterly reports on the inner goings on at EllisLab.
I have a lot of time for Les, so it has been intriguing to read about his plans for EllisLab and the way he sees the company heading forward.
This quarter he’s discussed the growth of EllisLab - even some figures, 35% growth is impressive! - as well as discussed what he is hoping to do with the company over the coming year. This includes changes and updates to their core set of products, as well as updates to internal services.
I’m guessing ‘internal services’ means the support system and forum, bug tracker, shop and downloads centre. It would also be great to see an update to the product release and update mechanisms; these are at the heart of their products and frankly, decompressing .zip files and moving files is getting archaic.
Needless to say, It’s an interesting read and one I’d be sure you check out if you’ve got anything to do with ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter or MojoMotor. Stay subscribed to these reports as they’re bound to be informative.
business, codeigniter, ellislab, expressionengine Monday, March 28, 2011 at 10:21AM With 270,000 new businesses launching in the U.K. every year, it's no surprise that the government are looking to back new British business. Earlier this week, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the new StartupBritain initiative - cleverly named after the U.S.'s StartupAmerica - an entrepreneur-led initiative that has been backed by 60 top brands.
The idea is to help new businesses by providing package deals and discounts to new businesses for things like broadband and insurance. I am still hesitant as to what help this will provide, but it will be good to see what the government comes up with.
Learn more at http://www.startupbritain.org/.
