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Yes - chrome extensions or other browser extensions, mobile apps, vscode extensions. A rare skill/environment for people to work in, but it is lucrative. The

Yes - chrome extensions or other browser extensions, mobile apps, vscode extensions. A rare skill/environment for people to work in, but it is lucrative. The first piece of software I sold was a browser extension. It was sold for about 1/5 of my salary but the time commitment was about 1/50th of my salary. I’m working on more browser extensions and currently working on one in the LLM space. And because most browser extensions are very small, or basic or crap quality - if you can build something of any real complexity and usefulness you are pretty far ahead of the common developer making extensions Oh also - LLMs are terrible at understanding browser extensions and how they work and what they are capable of, so you are pretty safe from AI

spacebacon 2y ago
Wordpress plug-ins are also a good path for the same reasons. Wordpress is also a ripe marketing channel to small and medium business.
bodantogat 2y ago
How tough is it to market an extension? I’m thinking about building one as an extra feature for my app or service, but I’ve been holding back because I think it might be hard to get it in front of my target audience
- purple-leafy 2y ago
  If it’s an extension-website pairing it may be harder to market in general because it’s a complex architecture for users (need to do 2 things) But stand-alone extensions are pretty easy to market. For example my most popular extension had about 700_000 users with minimal marketing, I have another extension with 10_000 users with no marketing, another with 5000 users and no marketing, another with 1000 users (and it’s a pretty crappy one, my first) and no marketing I’ve only been a web dev for 2 years, and building extensions for about 1.5 years
  - snicky 2y ago
    What do your extensions do?
    - purple-leafy 2y ago
      All sorts of things - network blocking, devtools extensions, job-site salary revealers, design tools
      - unsupp0rted 2y ago
        I'm curious how to monetize something like a job site salary revealer
        purple-leafy 2y ago
        Oh that one I can’t monetise as people don’t want to pay for something like that, I just made that out of the goodness of my heart :P
profsummergig 2y ago
Something I've wondered for a while... I have a bunch of Chrome extensions installed, but they're all free... so... how do devs make extension-development lucrative? Is this some enterprise-level activity where you market to private players who side-load these extensions for enterprise use?
- purple-leafy 2y ago
  For 99% of extensions it is not lucrative and probably nets 99% of developers a fat $0, because people view extensions as shit-tier fun little hobby scripts and so they built shit-tier extensions, or they build extensions that can’t be monetised. But then you have smarter players (Honey, Grammarly) who realise that if you build extensions to their full potential, you can have a packet sniffing, network orchestrating, data harvesting, insanely powerful privileged web app that can do things most developers have never thought of. So if you build these Uber extensions (Grammarly is the best example I think) you can make insane amounts of money with virtually no competition! I’m all in on extensions. I’m currently building an LLM extension for developers that is a first in the market (unique concept) that is free in Beta, but a paid subscription once out of Beta. It is basically a super-privileged web app that is performing a useful function for devs that would be impossible for a normal website/service. This means it has login/signup as well, which is an extremely rare sight for an extension (Because it’s much, much, much harder to handle auth in an extension. Seriously extension auth is horrible to implement and I think I’m maybe the only dev in the world with a working Google Sign In inside an extension) But also the reason you don’t see many monetised extensions is because it’s extremely hard to securely setup auth and stripe within an extension, as they are client only. So my powerful extensions are backed by things like cloud functions etc for some functionality and for checking auth/db-access/subscriptions
meiraleal 2y ago
How is the extensions store approval process? Is it bureaucratic like the play and app store?
- purple-leafy 2y ago
  It’s not too bad. Usually takes about a week to be accepted. I have only had 1 extension update declined, but that was because I pushed broken code

spacebacon 2y ago

Wordpress plug-ins are also a good path for the same reasons. Wordpress is also a ripe marketing channel to small and medium business.

bodantogat 2y ago

How tough is it to market an extension? I’m thinking about building one as an extra feature for my app or service, but I’ve been holding back because I think it might be hard to get it in front of my target audience

purple-leafy 2y ago
If it’s an extension-website pairing it may be harder to market in general because it’s a complex architecture for users (need to do 2 things) But stand-alone extensions are pretty easy to market. For example my most popular extension had about 700_000 users with minimal marketing, I have another extension with 10_000 users with no marketing, another with 5000 users and no marketing, another with 1000 users (and it’s a pretty crappy one, my first) and no marketing I’ve only been a web dev for 2 years, and building extensions for about 1.5 years
- snicky 2y ago
  What do your extensions do?
  - purple-leafy 2y ago
    All sorts of things - network blocking, devtools extensions, job-site salary revealers, design tools
    - unsupp0rted 2y ago
      I'm curious how to monetize something like a job site salary revealer
      - purple-leafy 2y ago
        Oh that one I can’t monetise as people don’t want to pay for something like that, I just made that out of the goodness of my heart :P

profsummergig 2y ago

Something I've wondered for a while... I have a bunch of Chrome extensions installed, but they're all free... so... how do devs make extension-development lucrative? Is this some enterprise-level activity where you market to private players who side-load these extensions for enterprise use?

purple-leafy 2y ago
For 99% of extensions it is not lucrative and probably nets 99% of developers a fat $0, because people view extensions as shit-tier fun little hobby scripts and so they built shit-tier extensions, or they build extensions that can’t be monetised. But then you have smarter players (Honey, Grammarly) who realise that if you build extensions to their full potential, you can have a packet sniffing, network orchestrating, data harvesting, insanely powerful privileged web app that can do things most developers have never thought of. So if you build these Uber extensions (Grammarly is the best example I think) you can make insane amounts of money with virtually no competition! I’m all in on extensions. I’m currently building an LLM extension for developers that is a first in the market (unique concept) that is free in Beta, but a paid subscription once out of Beta. It is basically a super-privileged web app that is performing a useful function for devs that would be impossible for a normal website/service. This means it has login/signup as well, which is an extremely rare sight for an extension (Because it’s much, much, much harder to handle auth in an extension. Seriously extension auth is horrible to implement and I think I’m maybe the only dev in the world with a working Google Sign In inside an extension) But also the reason you don’t see many monetised extensions is because it’s extremely hard to securely setup auth and stripe within an extension, as they are client only. So my powerful extensions are backed by things like cloud functions etc for some functionality and for checking auth/db-access/subscriptions

meiraleal 2y ago

How is the extensions store approval process? Is it bureaucratic like the play and app store?

purple-leafy 2y ago
It’s not too bad. Usually takes about a week to be accepted. I have only had 1 extension update declined, but that was because I pushed broken code