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21 Comments

[$$] Devs, how do you monetize your packages?

Are you creator of a npm (or similar) package?

How do you earn on your packages?

I realize building differs from marketing or selling. And the latter are far from building. Especially far for those of us who 'just want to get stuff done'.

Are you such 'one man army'?
How do you earn from your assets?

  • Open source package and paid support?
  • Open source package and donations?
  • Paid package?
  • Other?

What's your way?


Edit: The goal of the post is to learn about common ways of getting paid for such products (and how common are paid packages among indie hackers)

Edit #2: changed 2nd question to sound less confusing

  1. 4

    Most of the time the package is not the value. It's possible that the package contains some awesome assets. In which case you are just using the package as a distribution mechanism. But the package is almost always something that:

    • you can find free elsewhere
    • doesn't drive direct value.

    For us our FOSS packages are all about improving the community. We offer APIs and our customers also offer APIs. There are lots of overlap there, so we use it to enrich the community and drive traffic to our main product. For example, our OpenAPI explorer:
    https://github.com/Rhosys/openapi-explorer

    • Paid support is certainly one direction, but this frequently doesn't work unless you already find people asking for more than just standard issues.
    • Donations are a bit lame, it falls into the above category.
    • Paid packages will never see the light of day, you are literally hiding your package.

    The only software as a package that works, is when the software is the asset/value unit. Font awesome, mongoDB, GitLab, etc... These are products in a package. Think of this as an evolution of the licensing model. If someone 30 years ago would have licensed your software, then instead today, you will create a free product asset service (using npm, docker, etc...) and provide enterprise versions behind payments or paid support.

    1. 1

      Thank you
      I agree most paid packages are, as you say, free with 'enterprise' version

      Off top, loosely related with topic:
      At the same time, I don't quite get this part: `package is almost always something that (...) doesn't drive direct value'

      I understand the package itself is just a mechanism. On the other hand, it bundles something.

      What'd be the point of using anything if it has no value?

      It might not be for the end-user of a service.
      Simultaneously, there's no situation dev uses a package for no reason
      (thus it's valuable for him, anyhow; even if it's just speed of development)

      Btw, I'm not saying whether free or paid is a better way here
      Just curious about ways of monetization ;)

      1. 2

        I'm saying you are approaching the problem incorrectly.

        Incorrect approach:

        1. Build a package
        2. Try to monitize that package

        correct approach:

        1. Decide what people are willing to pay for
        2. Build the package that solves that problem
        3. Monitize

        You can't monitize everything, so you need to structure your approach so it is inline with what developers see as important value add for them. Sure everything has some sort of value, but it isn't the value that someone is willing to pay for.

        1. 1

          Ah, my bad for forming the message incorrectly :)

          I am not building a package.

          And if I did, I'd go with the approach you wrote about: fulfilling real need instead of building and forcing others to buy

          The goal of the post is to learn about common ways of getting paid for such products (and how common are paid packages among indie hackers)

          1. 1

            Yes, it was confusing:

            How do you manage to turn your packages into $$?

            Is vastly different from:

            What tools are available to help me monitize my package

            You might want to start a new post with this explicit message, to make it less confusing.

            1. 1

              Thanks,

              I've changed wording of this question to be as straightforward as possible

  2. 3

    Michal, take a look at the @HacksOfSumit and his GeoMan project. The approach is pretty similar to the FontAwesome one you mentioned.

    It has a free, open-source version, and there's also the Pro version available (paid yearly).

    1. 1

      Thanks, Rafal!

      Interesting project 🙌

      I see it has even simpler approach than FontAwesome - FAQ says about direct link to the pro package
      and licensing key (for npm or artifactory) as todo feature

      1. 1

        Exactly, it's simplicity with good outcomes.

        Do you have your own package you want to monetize?

        1. 1

          No, not yet

          One is in my mind
          (refactoring/ testing helper to automatically catch fetched data)

          I did not build it yet tho

          Anyway, before monetization would come validation - whether people are interested about it

  3. 3

    You can check out https://privjs.com/ - super easy to monetize npm packages specifically.

    @prasanna is a fellow indie hacker and the founder here - maybe he can help with some insights/questions.

    1. 1

      Thanks, John!

      PrivJS sounds like a great way to monetize projects

      @prasanna: I'm curious - is it built on Artifactory or some custom repo management?

      1. 1

        Thanks John and Kardysm We have a custom repo for the codebase and provide effortless monetization of private npm packages.

        1. 2

          Thanks

          Neat idea
          I see privjs growing big on the field in future!

  4. 2

    There's Segment, read their story. The guys realized their initial idea wasn't working and were brainstorming a pivot, and when they ran out of ideas they used their own open-source package, analytics.js, and built a huge business around it.

    Because their target audience is marketers, and marketers love spending money, unlike devs who love spending time on NIH software.

    1. 1

      Thanks!

      I didn't think this way before, but something is in about marketers and devs approach

      I'll surely dive deeper into Segment's story

  5. 2

    I'm a one many army selling SaaS boilerplates at: https://usegravity.app

    I've experimented with a lot of different solutions and the best one for me has been to simply manage distribution myself.

    I charge a one off fee for the product and then an optional yearly updates subscription.

    I don't offer a free plan, or a watered down cheaper plan because these have historically attracted difficult customers that want 10,000 for $0-49 while everyone else on the premium plan is easy to deal with and have no complaints so I just focus on these high-end customers.

    1. 1

      Thanks, Kyle

      I hear that quite often - the more premium a product is, the 'easier' and more understanding customers are

      Would you mind sharing how are you driving people to your site?
      Well established audience or through some ads, etc?

  6. 1

    Example:

    Personally, I like the approach of Font Awesome:

    1. Free version
    2. Paid, pro version

    Free version is generally available, while for pro, you pay and get API token to download package from private repository

    https://fontawesome.com/

  7. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks, Alan

      Cool example, I didn't realize such drivers are that nice market. Not my area, but still, nice to see it working :D

      Agree that FOSS way is not the only way

      I see paying for a lib as turning $$ into fewer problems (easier to implement, better support, etc).

      As with online courses. One could learn skill X for free, but will spend more time searching for quality content instead of spending $ for already filtered and put together knowledge

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