My first IH post: How big is the chrome extension market?

by Arbaaz

Hey IHs,

I'm thinking of building chrome extensions. I was wondering about these questions. Thought of posting here, hoping to get some answers.

How big is the chrome extension market?
What are the customer acquisition channels?
How to do analytics for chrome extension?

Arbaaz

on April 18, 2021

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Yeah, there are ~3 billion Chrome users globally and if you make your extension work across browsers (which often requires no code changes) then you're also reaching Firefox/Opera/Edge/Brave/etc users. In the Chrome store there are only around 200k extensions too. For comparison, there are around 1.6 billion iPhone users and 2 million apps in the iPhone store so there's ton of opportunity.

You might get some initial pushback for charging for extensions since there are a LOT of free/crappy extensions in the Chrome store, but I happen to know that there are lots of people that are willing to pay for extensions since I run ExtensionPay and see the sales other extension-makers get. Here's someone from IndieHackers that makes $41k/month in Stripe-verified revenue with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/41k-month-with-a-browser-extension-ih-podcast-3f5a1a8314

Nice things about extensions:
- huge global market
- you can often modify an existing site with an extension rather than needing to create your own app from scratch
- no costs to publish and distribute!
- extensions get a surprising amount of organic traffic/installs from Chrome store. Distribution built-in!
And if you want to take payments in extensions, please check out my project ExtensionPay which makes it really easy.
Glench

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3 years ago
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  Thanks a ton for such a detailed response. I really appreciate it. Will check out ExtensionPay and let you know!
  
  arbaazio
  
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  3 years ago
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In 2020, there were an estimated 2.65 billion internet users worldwide using Chrome as their main browser.

Search on Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Web Store will surface web apps in a variety of ways. Of course, each app gets a page in the store, which will be searchable via the store and other search engines. There will be category lists in the store, as well as a variety of curated and algorithmically generated lists.

from: developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/faq/

Chrome console gives you user count.

On another note check out this kit by another IH'er: http://chromeextensionkit.com/

kamphey

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3 years ago
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  thanks
  
  arbaazio
  
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  3 years ago
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TIL: PayPal acquired a honey(chrome extension) for 4 billion.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/paypal-to-acquire-shopping-and-rewards-platform-honey-for-4-billion/

arbaazio

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3 years ago
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Since months, the Google' review to publish in the store is harder and harder (mainly regarding the app authorization)

Tim12

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3 years ago
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  I've read the docs and couldn't find anything related to authorization. Which app authorization you are referring? Please share some resources
  
  arbaazio
  
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  3 years ago
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    Sry, I mean permissions : https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/declare_permissions/
    If your app needs large permissions, not sure that google will allow.
    But the google team review for chrome extension is like the the review team of play store : all depends of the guy who review.
    For example, I had an app that was using onesignal (for notifications), but by 3 times, the review teams didn't allow me to publish my app because I have integrate onesignal...
    
    Tim12
    
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    3 years ago
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      Got it. thank you for sharing.
      
      arbaazio
      
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      3 years ago
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