Brandon Kelly - Make A Market Out Of Our Community: The Whys and Hows of Selling Add-Ons

Categories:

ExpressionEngine

Tags:

brandon kelly, expressionengine, extension, fieldframe, playa

Published:

11:21am on Monday 26th October, 2009

Brandon Kelly is an ExpressionEngine add-on developer, responsible for the extremely popular FieldFrame and Playa extensions. He spoke on the importance of commerciality in add-on development.

You can watch a video of Brandon’s talk on Vimeo.

On commercial add-ons

• Got into ExpressionEngine at the beginning of 2008, releasing Playa in April 08 (it won Devot:ee extension of the year). Gypsy was released in December 2008, and FieldFrame in March 2009
• Supporting and working on these add-ons was starting to feel more like a job
• Decided to charge for Playa 2 - $69 seemed like a good number to choose ;)
• Released Wygwam for $29 in September 2009
• Making enough money now to support myself, so going full-time freelance at the end of 2009
• There are lots of free add-ons; we need to change this. Only really simple things should be free
• It pays to sell. Maybe this is a unique siutation to EE; WordPress users won’t pay for anything
• Get paid because you deserve it - you’re never done when you release a popular add-on
• It is easier to support paid add-ons - there are less but better users, more knowledgeable requests, and you feel more obliged to help
• Pricing: Wait until you’re finished before setting a price. Play customer - you’re picking a price that the customer will want to pay
• Effort != Value. Find a price point that feels right
• Marketing: an entry on Devot:ee and a forum post might be fine for free add-ons, as someone else will try it and talk about it more. But you can’t do this with paid add-ons; you need to put something together for your users. Be excited! If you’re not, what do you need to change to have a product you are really excited about
• Playa is a great example for how to set up a site to sell an add-on
• Buy advertising on EE fansites

Q&A

Ever had any issues with piracy?
Not bothered - the time needed to combat it is more than the time stolen in support.

Leslie Camacho: What do you want EllisLab to do for add-on developers?
Would be nice to be able to advertise add-ons on the official site, but ultimately it’s up to the individual developer to market their add-ons themselves.

Why make Wygwam?
I received several requests to make a WYSIWYG editor for FieldFrame. Wygwam represents the first time I’ve made an add-on that wasn’t to solve my own problem.

How do you sell online?
Using a hacked version of Simple Commerce module.

What do you think about an Add-On Store?
Would be good, maybe. But it would need good quality control.

How long do you spend on support?
About 10-15 hours per week.

What happens if you decide to give up?
One of the benefits of selling add-ons is that you don’t want to give up. But probably another commercial developer would take over my add-ons.

Will you accept commissions from agencies?
Possibly, but I have a big backlog of ideas already.

How do you develop?
Frontend first - HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - before looking at the backend.

Any plans to integrate add-ons that compete?
No - competition is a good thing.