Making Money Selling WordPress Plugins: A Comprehensive Guide

 

WordPress is a widely used freemium content management system software used for creating blogs.

WordPress makes it extremely easy for anyone to create and start their blog or a website with minimum technicalities and without learning to code.

What are WordPress plugins?

WordPress plugins are software add-ons that add all kinds of features to any WordPress site within seconds, in a hassle-free manner.

Plugins usually contain files and code that expand, alter, or add functionality that already exists in WordPress.

Why create WordPress plugins?

More than 400 million websites use WordPress today, which itself provides an excellent marketplace for WordPress plugins.

Almost every WordPress user use a free plugin, and a vast majority of professional blog owners install multiple paid plugins to add more features to their blogs.

Creating WordPress plugins offers a huge passive money-making opportunity for anyone willing to put efforts.

Passive because, just like any app or software, once you create the plugin, you just need to update it from time to time without putting much effort, and you'll continuously make money as people will pay to use it.

Who is this ideal for:

Suitable for WordPress lovers who understand the nitty-gritty of WordPress, programmers, bloggers, and internet marketers.

What skills will you need:

WordPress software is written in PHP programming language, so in order to create a plugin for it, you should know programming in PHP or at least be good in computer programming.

How much money will you need to invest:

WordPress plugins can be simple ones that provide simple functionality, such as adding a notification on the top of a page as well as something complicated that can handle all the complexities of your on-page SEO.

Hence, the monetary investment will be dependant on the scope of your plugin. 

The simpler one will require less investment while the complex will need more.

How much time is required to get started:

Time is a challenging factor to determine in this scenario.

We'll say that it will depend on your programming expertise and scope of your plugin.

Plus, you'll also require time for understanding the WordPress coding standards and testing plugin.

Some helpful tips:

1) Find your target market first

Before you even think about any plugin idea, it's a must to know for whom you're going to make the plugin for and what needs you're going to cater to or problems you're going to solve with your plugin.

For instance, the highly popular Yoast SEO plugin caters to the need of setting on-page SEO right, which almost every blogger requires.

The point here is to find a need that a substantial number of bloggers are hungry for and create a plugin to satisfy that need.

Because your plugin will only sell if you create it based on demand; otherwise, nobody will even care about it.

2) Make your plugin easy to use and aesthetically pleasing

When you are selling the plugin for a price, users will expect pro experience from it.

Most professional WordPress bloggers are busy people, and they want a plugin that's easy to understand, use, and has a low learning curve.

Also, aesthetics play a vital role in making your plugin look professional and look like a brand.

Hence while creating your plugin, make sure you get these things right.

3) Start a marketing campaign for your plugin

Currently, there are over 50,000 plugins in the WordPress repository.

Hence marketing your plugin is extremely crucial to make your plugin reach the target audience.

There are multiple ways you can market your plugin. 

Start with reaching the influential bloggers and offer them to use your plugin in exchange for a review.

You also can pay them a fee in exchange for writing a sponsored post on their blog or promoting your plugin to their email list.

Another way is to hire several affiliates and offer them more than 50% commission for every plugin sale they bring in.

If finance is not a constraint, then you can start running paid ads to generate plugin sales.

How to make money:

You can charge either a one-time fee or a monthly subscription depending upon the plugin's scope and usability to make money.

You can also add additional features and offer them as paid upgrades for an extra fee.

The formula for making money here is simple, the more plugin sales you generate, the more money you earn :)