Creating and selling digital products has become a great way to earn a passive income stream to your monthly budget. What’s ideal about them as opposed to handcrafted items is that you don’t have to worry about inventory or mailing costs.
As the world continues to move toward an electronically-driven environment, there are tons of digital products you can make. And the WordPress plugin market can be a highly profitable one.
A WordPress plugin refers to a piece of software that integrates with your WordPress site to add new functionalities or extend an existing feature. It allows you to virtually establish any kind of website, from e-commerce stores to portfolios and directory sites.
However, building the product is only half the equation. You need an outstanding strategy to sell WordPress plugins if you want to make a huge amount of money.
This article will show you 3 golden methods to sell WordPress plugins. But first, let’s find out how prospective the WordPress plugin market is.
- The Prospects of the WordPress Plugin Market
- Take Advantage of the WordPress Directory
- Sell WordPress Plugins on a Marketplace
- Sell WordPress Plugins on Your Own Website
Prospects of the WordPress Plugin Market
Currently, WordPress has grown into the world’s most famous content management system (CMS). It powers 43% of all websites on the Internet and holds 60% of the market share.
Its popularity also soars over time. More than 600 sites using WordPress pop up daily on average. Whereas, only 60-80 sites per day are launched on platforms like Shopify and Squarespace, its competitors.
Simply put, WordPress comes as the best CMS in the world and continues to become even more popular in the future. The software now significantly outperforms its rivals but it won’t stop there. WordPress’s greatest ambition is to monopolize the website market.
A bigger number of WordPress users leads to increasing demand for upgrading and expanding websites. That’s why the WordPress plugin market becomes so prospective.
There are now approximately 60K plugins in WordPress. Their total downloads have reached 1 billion and counting, due to both the rise of technology and the increasing need for using plugins.
If you’ve developed WordPress plugins with useful features, don’t wait any longer. Let’s start selling it now!
3 Methods to Sell WordPress Plugins
First and foremost, you should identify your niche to know who you are selling to. Understanding the target market helps you craft business strategies that appeal to your customer base.
After defining your niche, apply the following methods to grab the opportunity to reach those potential customers and sell WordPress plugins.
#1 Take Advantage of the WordPress Directory
In fact, you won’t be able to make any money in the WordPress directory as it’s only for free plugins. However, millions of people visit the repository, it gives you a great way to reach your prospective customers.
Those who use your free version may want to upgrade to the paid version with more advanced features. You should redirect them to the premium version on other platforms or on your own site. That’s when you can make money.
To upload your plugins to the WordPress repository:
- Prepare the plugin readme.txt file
- Sign up for an account on WordPress.org
- Head over to the Add Your Plugin page
- Click Select File to choose your plugin’s file
- Press the Upload button to submit your plugin for review
After being reviewed, your plugin will be approved or you will be emailed and asked to make corrections.
Once approved, you’ll be able to access the Subversion Repository where you’ll store and manage your plugin.
Shortly after you upload your plugin and the readme.txt file to that repository, it will be automatically displayed in the Plugins browser.
#2 Sell WordPress Plugins on a Marketplace
Online marketplaces allow you to sell WordPress plugins effectively with low start-up costs and risks. They have built their own name, having their own fans with highly trusted websites. You don’t need to work hard on improving website traffic and SEO strategies.
To sell WordPress plugins on a marketplace, you have to create an account and upload your plugin to their website. Then your plugin will be reviewed and published there by the marketplace’s quality assurance team.
While uploading a plugin on a marketplace, ensure that your product has an attractive description and a clear demo.
But the thing is, there are now numerous online marketplaces. Choosing the best place for your business to sell WordPress plugins can be a daunting task.
That said, this section will unveil the 2 most excellent platforms so that you can determine which works best for your plugins, resources, and most importantly, your vision.
CodeCanyon
This is by far the largest and most renowned marketplace to sell WordPress plugins by Envato.
At CodeCanyon, you can sell scripts and plugins for a variety of languages, currently including JavaScript, PHP, ASP.NET, and Java. Your product will be priced based on the complexity, quality, and use of the file. It means that you can’t set your plugin price.
Of course, CodeCanyon does take a cut of your sales for distributing your plugins. But in return, you can skip the hassle of building a freemium model. You’ll immediately reach a large audience, which is perhaps the hardest part of selling WordPress plugins online.
Codester
Codester is another awesome option to sell WordPress plugins. First of all, it comes with a no-hassle signup. Users can create a seller’s account in a matter of a few minutes without a lengthy contract signing procedure.
You can get a high commission rate of up to 70%, which is way more than most of the other digital marketplaces. No minimums or exclusivity is required like CodeCanyon.
Additionally, the growing user base also promises sufficient exposure, ensuring the products are discovered and bought by prospective buyers.
If you are just starting out with plugin development, the 2 marketplaces mentioned above could be perfect places to test your offering. You can also learn a bit about your competitive landscape and see if your paid WordPress plugin gets any traction at all.
However, in case you want to build and sustain your business, the odds of getting there with these marketplaces are very-very low.
#3 Sell WordPress Plugins on Your Own Website
If you aren’t happy to give up a proportion of your sales, selling WordPress plugins on your own website would be a great choice.
That way, you are able to take full control of your store, data, and price. Plus, you can build your own brand identity, while on the marketplace, you’re just someone trying to sell a plugin.
But in return, you have more than one thing to worry about. It would probably require a lot of resources and effort to deploy marketing strategies to attract people to your site.
Of course, there are a lot of solutions available to help you sell WordPress plugins on your site. WooCommerce can be considered the best tool to add payment gateways and manage licenses for digital products.
Learn about how to sell digital products on WooCommerce here.
Sell WordPress Plugins Like an Expert!
We’ve gone through 3 different methods to sell WordPress plugins. It depends on your resources and vision to choose the right solution.
Although you can’t make any money from the WordPress directory, it’s still a great place to reach your potential customers.
If you’re just starting to sell WordPress plugins, a marketplace will be an excellent tool to help you reduce start-up costs and risks.
But if your ambition is to build an empire, we highly recommend you sell WordPress plugins on your own site. Then you may be interested in the 11 best WooCommerce plugins to generate more sales.
Make up your mind and start to sell WordPress plugins like a pro now!