I’ve written a number of posts about WordPress plugins, their place in the overall WordPress economy, and my perspective as it relates to writing and releasing plugins.
To be sure, it’s a challenging place to be. Arguably, the most popular business model for plugins is freemium. For those who are new to this whole thing, this is basically means:
- You offer a version of you product for free. Perhaps it’s a crippled version or it’s a version that’s designed to last for a definitive period of time.
- You present the user with the opportunity to upgrade the plugin through the use of prompts throughout the plugin (or your mailing list) or however you’re capturing the leads.
- This will grant all of the features and/or greater access to support, licensing, add-ons, etc. (depending on how your plugin is built) for a one time or even a subscription-based period of time.
This model works, but it’s not without it’s challenges. For example, take a look at any of the plugins in the WordPress Plugin Repository and you’re likely to find that many of them have support questions.
That is, people who are granted free software are asking for support for it. Then again, what else is to be expected?
Inherently, there’s nothing wrong with that and I’m not saying this is wrong. If you’re going to offer something for free, then expect to receive some demand for support. How much you choose to offer varies.
Regardless, many plugin authors may be a single person or may be a small number of people all of whom are trying to provide a solid product. And, generally speaking, when you offer a premium version of the plugin, only a small percentage convert.
Some people say only 1%-10% convert (though I’ve read reports where somewhere around 3% might be more correct). Regardless, it’s easy to see that going with the freemium model has its defined set of challenges.
So say you’re a WordPress plugin author, you’re looking to apply the freemium model to your business or to your product, but you want to make sure that you’re doing so with as much insight and strategy as possible.
What do you do?
