How to monetize my code?
Hello everyone!
I am using a CMS product (open source but the owners also have a service to monetize from it), that is well known and used (no, not Wordpress 😊) . I have a problem that is not addressed by the product and as I was reading through forums, I realized this is a common pain point and the developers do not seem to be in rush to add it anytime soon. I have been working on code that resolves it and so far it looks good, but it needs to be more polished/user friendly. It is backend JS code by the way.
This gets me thinking, since there seems to be a common problem out there and I am able to solve it can I make a startup out of it? There are some other pain points users are talking about , which I have not researched yet, but there seems to be an opening of providing solutions to those pain points as well.
So at this point how can I turn this idea/initial code into a startup, if it is possible
- Provide this freely on GitHub , let people test it, add contributors to code and grow it there. In the feature ask for GitHub sponsors, Patreon,etc.
- Sell this code to people one by one. Provide them the code and instructions as they pay for it. Provide support for like 6 months-1 year
- Somehow turn this into a recurring revenue. Maybe build a SaaS product, have the code that needs to be installed onto users machine a client to the SaaS. Not sure if the users would be willing to pay a subscription for a small feature.
- Combine this feature(s) with the main product and provide a service. This would be in direct competition with product owners and they would not take it well.
What do you think?
As someone who maintains a popular open source repo (https://github.com/pqina/filepond/) I can tell you that you can strike #1 of that list. IMHO there is near zero interest in sponsoring.
I’ve had a patreon on there for a year, which resulted in 1 sponsor (the person asked to sponsor). I’ve since switched to “buy me a coffee” and so far, that has yielded 1 sponsor, (another person that opened a issue to ask for sponsoring possibility).
So yeah, it’s bad.
I successfully monetize the repo by upselling to a commercial add on.
Thank you! I was feeling this would be the case . I think this is a common problem with OSS.
I just wanted to chime in and say that you shouldn't completely strike opensource/sponsoring completely off your list if it is appealing to you.
filepondhas way more stars than my wildest dreams for https://www.django-unicorn.com/, but my current ratio is ~350 stars and 5 sponsors which doesn't seem terrible.I think of OSS as sort of a slightly tweaked freemium model and most of my thinking is influenced by https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it. It's not enough to create a popular repo and wait for people to ask to give you money, but there needs to be a drop dead easy way to sponsor and there needs to be some incentives: sponsorware, screencasts, public callouts, gated educational content, corporate sponsors, etc. I also include tons of CTAs to sponsor the project on my landing page and tried to give some meaningful benefits in the tiers (although mostly everyone is on my lowest tier right now).
It might not be the easiest road if the goal is to generate meaningful revenue quickly, however, I find the altruistic part of releasing open-source software to be really fulfilling.
Adam, thank you very much for your feedback 🙏
My man, what's the point of omitting the name of CMS in question? Don't make it harder for others to help.
Here is what I think you should do:
P.S. - Not everything needs to be a SAAS, remember. WordPress ecosystem thrives on annual payments to receive updates. Users can continue to use the old codebase they had access to, forever. But generally a bad idea considering they might miss out on security updates / new features etc.
I agree. It would be much less commitment to start with something small and see how the community responds.
whatever is going to get you directly in-contact with folks you ultimately want to serve / sell to... that's where you should try to head. this way you can build some relationships, community, and get feedback from them directly.
Thanks for your input!
The CMS product you've mentioned sounds a lot like Ghost to me. If I'm correct, then surely it lacks a few features, but is still a great platform.
To answer your question, developing a CMS from ground-up and - most importantly - selling it would be a huge task. The CMS market seems really crowded, and top players are constantly pushing new features. If you were to integrate with the mentioned CMS, then you're possible user base is limited to a portion of the users of the given CMS (smaller addressable audience means smaller actual audience)
Sponsors and Patreons are more often than not not profitable.
So, a different form of SaaS, or one-time sell are what's left. Different form of SaaS might be possible (depending on your idea), but it'll be hard to kick-off. One-time sells might be the quickest way to make a profit, but it'll be one-time only.
Don't know what your idea is, but mine was similar in it's core - to improve upon what others had to offer. The result of it was CodeWrite - "the best blogging tool for developers", which I sell as a subscription, with a free tier. It's a Chrome extension that connects with developer blogging platforms (Dev.to, Hashnode and Medium for now) through auto-fill mechanism, and provides better writing experience for code-bloggers, i.e. integrated code editor for snippets, better Grammarly support, and great UI + UX. Anyway, this is just a personal, IMHO similar to what you're saying, example.
Thanks! I'll check CodeWrite. I've seen some Twitter threads on developer centric blogs, which makes me think this is still an areas that is not addressed.
Yeah, I noticed that too. However, moving in to address such a market requires some preparations. Your product might become a star overnight, or just yet another addition to a growing pile.
You could be solving a real problem but if the size of the user base is small you won't be selling enough.
Also you need to figure out distribution : where can you reach your potential customers a part from the forum, repeatedly. Also does this cms have a future ? Because JS tech has high churn.
I think it does. Their market size is very small and people who switch to it seems to love it (based on what I've read, watched so far) So users have a very emotional connection and this may be their advantage
Hello again! Thank you all for great input. I read all of it multiple times.
Two things I wanted to add are:
The simplest way to go about it might be to either put it on GitHub with good documentation and not charge anything but earn recognition within the community which may lead to sales in the future or reach out to users with the problem directly and do a one-on-one with them and charge them once and be done with it. But I certainly would not want to miss a chance of a bigger future if there is any.
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People always repeat that "nobody is going to steal your idea."
It's a somewhat useful rule of thumb - especially when said to early stage founders - because it encapsulates several related ideas:
All that applies more often than not, but if it was universally applicable:
Some ideas are eminently stealable. I do not know anything about the OPs idea, but it is very common that extension developers for platforms find their extension rendered useless when the platform releases similar functionality. This happens all the time. The platform has data about the popularity of various integrations, and they have customers complaining about having to buy another thing. They have every incentive to replicate the extension functionality and bring it in-house.
The other side of it is that the idea is not necessarily stolen. Different people facing the same problems often come up with very similar solutions without any communication between them. If there is a clear business case for something, then lots of people may try to provide a solution. You should be more worried about not having any competitors.
Copycat businesses are also very common. I had a competitor replicate many pieces of functionality quite exactly, and even rip off copy from my landing page. I probably still made more money than him, but I don't have access to his financials, so I don't know for sure.
Whether it is worth worrying about is another question, but if you have any level of success with anything, yes, people are going to steal your ideas.
Patent laws cover implementations, not ideas. And espionage steals implementations / blueprints, not ideas.
Everyone has an idea. You don’t steal the idea of a cold-fusion reactor, you steal the actual blueprints / science on how to build one (if it existed).
Why do you think SpaceX doesn’t patent their technology? If they did, their implementation details would be stolen by the chinese.
This is just pedantry. The implementation details are also ideas, or at least they started as ideas. Ideas are subjective properties of minds, and are thus impossible to steal. An idea can only be stolen once it has been fossilized in some physical form, either as words on a page, or sound waves moving through air, or what have you.
Blueprints contain fossilized ideas. So do patent documents. An idea for how you implement another idea is itself an idea.
You seem to be using the word "idea" to mean the kind of undeveloped mental impression that one might form before solving any of the hard problems that have to be solved to transform it into something workable. That is not what the word means. Of course those are pretty worthless.
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That's the point. He didn't share enough information to offer anything but generalities.
Maybe it's a great original idea with a large market for it. Maybe it is an obvious idea with no market for it. Maybe it is an original idea with a large market for it. Maybe it is an original idea with no market for it because this guy is on another level, in which case he probably doesn't have the resources to convince people to buy something they don't even know they need, but do, so he should put his time into something else.
There is no way to know.
Thank you both! Rhe idea itself is not original. Points well taken from both of you!