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50 signups for browser extension payments! What now?

Just got my 50th signup today for ExtensionPay! ExtensionPay lets developers easily take payments in browser extensions, replacing the Chrome Web Store payments system that was shut down in February.

I'm happy that there's interest and signups! Over the past couple weeks I've been marketing in a few channels: IndieHackers, the official Chrome extension mailing list, a browser extension slack group, and direct outreach to extension developers that used to use Chrome web store payments. I was expecting to grow the userbase a lot more from these channels but only got a few signups so that's a little disappointing, but I guess that's part of the process — finding channels that work.

Does anyone have advice for what to do next? My thought was to redo the landing page a bit: add a featured extension or two, add a couple content marketing posts reassuring folks that yes you can make money with extensions, add some social proof (maybe how much extension developers have earned with ExtensionPay so far). Then market a little more widely in subreddits, producthunt, etc and start to work SEO (which I've never done before so any specific advice would be helpful). But I'd love to hear other thoughts! Please leave any in the comments!

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    I think building some content around your product to start ranking in SEO keywords to things like "Accept payments for chrome extensions" etc would help people find you organically. I think as more people build extensions and you are the top search result people will find your product.

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    Seems to me most payments for extensions take place outside of the extension itself, at least the ones that I use. Is there a huge benefit to collect payments inside of the extension vs a web page that I'm not aware of? I suppose you could make the argue that it's a little bit better of an experience, but curious as to whether there is something else?

    Aside from my ignorant question, no matter where you go from here, it's certainly time to reinvest in your landing page. It needs an overall, and could desperately help you gain more traction here.

    Lastly, one little thing I noticed in terms of the way you convey fees:

    "5% + Stripe fee (2.9% + 30¢)". I would change this to say something like: "1% transaction fees + Stripe fees". This is far clearer as to what that means.

    Good luck!

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      Is there a huge benefit to collect payments inside of the extension vs a web page that I'm not aware of?

      I'm replacing Chrome Web Store payments which was the easiest way to enable payments in extensions — there was no need for the developer to think about an external page at all!

      Gumroad is the only other service I know of currently that lets you pay on a page and then validate the payment in extensions, but they require copying and pasting a license code which is a terrible user experience. Customers end up having tons of questions and confusion about it.

      In my view it should work just like all other apps: you pay and your features are enabled right away. And the developer should just be able to do one simple call to determine if someone is paid. That said, I may add the ability for people to pay through pages outside extensions since one customer has wanted that. It just wasn't in scope for an initial version because it requires making a page builder UI which is a lot of work.

      Aside from my ignorant question, no matter where you go from here, it's certainly time to reinvest in your landing page.

      Yeah, that's the plan.

      "5% + Stripe fee (2.9% + 30¢)". I would change this to say something like: "1% transaction fees + Stripe fees". This is far clearer as to what that means.

      I have no idea what you mean by "1% transaction fees" means and it actually seems wrong. It's 5% of the total transaction, same as gumroad and chrome web store payments.

      I followed Gumroad's example here to convey pricing. It's good enough for them so it's good enough for me: https://gumroad.com/features/pricing

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    How did you get these 50 users?

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      Direct outreach, mostly. Either emailing people who used to use Chrome Web Store payments or commenting around the web to people that are building extensions. A few came from posts I made in various places.

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        Got it, thank you. How long did it take you to get these 50 users?

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          It's been about 3 months. Most of that was getting some initial users to make sure everything was working — didn't do much marketing/distribution work at all.

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    The problem is that not many people believe in browser extensions as a good source of income, so not many are creating paid extensions, so people get used to free extensions, so making money selling extensions is hard.

    Yes, adding some social proof and a few blog posts with use cases for SEO might help. Maybe a page with the list of all your clients so that they get some additional promotion.

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      Ditto to what @uluhonolulu mentioned about social proof and blog posts.

      In general, I believe this is an untapped market and there's room for innovation.
      I'm currently working on an extension and will actually look at monetizing it, I'm very early in the process so there's much to learn.

      I'm very curious about where and how the extension market will evolve. Only time will tell.

      On a side note @Glench, you mentioned you are a part of a browser extension Slack group. I'm looking at ways to connect with other devs in the space. Would be great if you can send an invite!

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        Yeah, agreed. Seems like part of my job is to hype browser extensions, which I already knew might be the case.

        Happy to invite you — send me an email: [email protected]

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          Oh yeah! I think hyping browser extensions is a way to get the word out that there's an opportunity to build neat things!

          btw sent an email! thanks!

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