{"id":211,"date":"2010-04-01T17:55:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T21:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocwordcamp.com\/?p=211"},"modified":"2010-04-01T17:55:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T21:55:19","slug":"how-to-create-a-premium-wordpress-plugin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/how-to-create-a-premium-wordpress-plugin\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Premium WordPress Plugin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-218\" style=\"padding-left: 5px;padding-bottom: 5px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ocwordcamp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/iStock_000005268579XSmall-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Premium WordPress Plugins\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/files\/2010\/04\/iStock_000005268579XSmall-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/files\/2010\/04\/iStock_000005268579XSmall.jpg 283w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\" \/>One of the biggest misconceptions among WordPress plugin developers is that you can&#8217;t legitimately make money from your plugins. This is complete bunk &#8212; the truth is if you develop a plugin that complies with the <a href=\"license.txt\">GPL<\/a> and provides value to your users there are actually many ways to legitimately make money from it.<\/p>\n<p>In my presentation at OC WordCamp, I&#8217;m planning on covering a complete process you can use to release a premium plugin including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong> Selecting the type of plugin to write<\/strong> &#8212; This could be the hardest and most important part of this process. If you&#8217;re going to spend as much time as it takes to create a valuable plugin, you better select a feature set that you&#8217;re interested in, other people actually want and has a market large enough to make the development and ongoing maintenance of the plugin worth your while.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Technical differences between free &amp; premium plugins <\/strong>&#8212; WordPress offers an awesome repository for deploying and upgrading free plugins &#8212; but not for premium ones. Since WordPress&#8217; entire plugin repository and code-base setup to only deal with free plugins, you&#8217;ll have to create your own system for deploying and upgrading your premium plugin. This system will no doubt include code within your plugin that will link to a plugin repository of your own. Sound hard? Don&#8217;t worry, there are several other plugins and software packages that will help you to get your premium plugin deploying and able to auto-update in no time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Legal considerations<\/strong> &#8212; WordPress is released under the GPL and is fully open source &#8212; doesn&#8217;t that mean that legally speaking premium plugins need to be GPL and fully open source? Well, yes &#8230; all plugins, including premium WordPress plugins need to be GPL and hence, fully open source &#8212; but that doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t charge money for them. The GPL restricts your plugin to being &#8220;Free as in Free Speech,&#8221; not necessarily &#8220;Free as in Free Beer.&#8221; \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li><strong>Strategy<\/strong> &#8212; There are many different ways you can release a premium plugin and you&#8217;ll want to select the one that works the best for your offering. Some of the strategies that I&#8217;ll cover include free plugins (monetized with advertisements), premium plugins, freemium plugins (premium plugins that offer a free version), and plugins that connect to a premium service you&#8217;ve created.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marketing &amp; Building Credibility<\/strong> &#8212; You may love to program in a dark room and only require that a bucket of mush be slid under the door every day to keep going &#8212; but you&#8217;re going to have to get out there and market your plugin if you want it to be successful. My presentation will cover some of the basics of getting your plugin some visibility.<\/li>\n<li><strong>How to get a system up quickly to deliver your plugin<\/strong> &#8212; This is where the nuts &amp; bolts come into play &#8212; I&#8217;m planning on covering this from the technical setup to mobilizing your community and getting some help.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ongoing Support and Updates<\/strong> &#8212; I&#8217;m surprised how many premium plugins make no mention of support or updates on their landing pages. It is absolutely critical to the success of your plugin that you plan out how you&#8217;ll put this in place well before you release your plugin.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m really excited to give this presentation at OC WordCamp &#8212; I think it will be highly useful to anyone wanting to release a premium plugin or service. Hope to see you there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest misconceptions among WordPress plugin developers is that you can&#8217;t legitimately make money from your plugins. This is complete bunk &#8212; the truth is if you develop a plugin that complies with the GPL and provides value &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/how-to-create-a-premium-wordpress-plugin\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6138191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4977,4980],"tags":[4995,4999,5001,5002,5004,216,5010,5017,25,14],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-awesomeness","category-presentation-topics","tag-gpl","tag-legal","tag-making-money","tag-marketing","tag-monetization","tag-plugins","tag-premium-wordpress-plugin","tag-strategy","tag-wordcamp","tag-wordpress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1oLzi-3p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6138191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}