Website where you could buy and sell code
The idea is that you could monetize your code however big or small it is. You would buy the code off of someone and it is yours forever. Essentially you could make a few bucks or even a living just by selling your code to other people.
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I tried this with SugarKubes.io. Was very difficult to find developers who have stuff they want to sell.
Then there's the buyer's side. They come in looknig for something extremely specific. The long tail of what they're looking for is enormous.
All this adds up to a failed experience for the buyer and seller.
i couldn't figure it out. Tried for a year. If you can though it's a multi-million dollar opportunity, perhaps larger.
There's also Git.Market
Take a look a codecanyon. How does your idea compare?
Also, I’m working on https://premiumjs.com. And privjs.com from @prasanna. Similar ideas to helping you sell code.
Theoretically, though, most people don’t buy code, big or small. People don’t really even buy code. They buy solutions to their problems. Sometimes that solution is code. It’s good to think about who would buy code and why.
It be cool to have some experienced devs available for a quick "advice, mentoring, or coding session". Maybe like a fiver style scheduling where you pay $ to $$$ for specific tasks like security review or CSS centering or help with WordPress templates, or setting up NodeJS etc. I'd expect beginners to need recurring help and willing to pay to solve easy issues. Could be more like a stackoverflow that pays for answers too.
I'm 100% self taught through google searches. Sometimes I get stuck, or worry about if something I'm doing has security vulnerabilities. I'm pretty sufficient at finding code examples in the wild to solve problems, but when I get stuck stuck, it be nice to get advice.
As for buying code, sure, I've paid for licences to things like GSAP, popular WordPress plugins (ACF, Elementor), eCommerce solutions. Generally only willing to drop money at times I know I will recoup money or solve advanced coding challenges like eCommerce.
You could have a look at https://monetizeyourcode.com/.
It's a listing of the different solutions like sponsorship, paywall, grants... that help you make money with your code.
Hey, this looks like a cool project. Do you know the maker of this website?
That's actually me and the team behind MESG (one of the items in the list) but I didn't have enough time to really push it. It didn't go much further than a side project, unfortunately. So if you like it feel free to share it or contribute to it, that would be awesome :)
will try to contribute during my free time :)
@BubbleBear, @prasanna, @jones_spencera - If I have built a React component and want to monetize it, how does that work? Once somebody has access to the code for the React component component, what's to stop them from distributing to their friends without paying? Is there any way to control who has access or to charge based on a subscription fee or for usage of data flowing through that component?
It seems like the most common model in the industry is to charge for API access and to give away components and npm packages for free to facilitate interaction with that API.
What I do at PrivJs is require the user to login to PrivJs registry before installing the paid packages. This prevents the user from distributing your packages. This is how the flow is:
$ npm login --registry https://r.privjs.comthen enter username & password$ npm install <yourpackagename> --registry https://r.privjs.comIf the user has purchased
<yourpackagename>then the installation would be successful. Otherwise, the installation would be blocked and the user won't get access to your code.I recommend you to try out https://privjs.com and experiment by publishing packages to get a hang of how it works.
hey @ryanh1, good questions.
This should be the straightforward part ... publish to the registry, add pricing options, profit (hopefully!).
They could, for sure. But, here's a few ways I'm thinking about that—people can do the same thing with mp3's from artists, PDFs of books from authors, etc. And people do do that; many won't. People still create even though there are folks who won't play nice.
So, you license the code in such a way that makes that re-distribution off-limits. Most folks will comply. Some won't.
Folks who get it re-distributed ... well, they won't be able to get the most recent version when they run
npm update, their CI servers won't be able to pull it off the package registry, and they'll live with a guilty conscience. ;)Also, lots of people are already selling code. You could re-distribute WordPress plugins easily, but people still make a good living selling paid plugins. See https://codecanyon.net/ (downmarket) or https://www.componentsource.com/ (upmarket).
I've also written about an open source strategy known as dual-licensing, here: https://blog.premiumjs.com/001-dual-licensing/.
If you mean, like, API usage from the React component? Probably not with this model. But, yes, you could charge a subscription fee for access to the code.
@ryanh1—thanks for the good questions. Happy to talk more if you've got more. :)
These are really helpful answers, @prasanna and @jones_spencera. @jones_spencera, I read your blog post, and @prasanna, I checked out privjs.
Are there any major tech companies that make money primarily from selling code like this? It looks like these platforms have mostly small independent development shops. Who do you think are the biggest players -- other than the marketplaces?
Also, is there a name for the industry of selling code such as npm packages or UI components for money?
I think PrivJs and PremiumJs are the only two products that supports buying/selling code as npm packages. Apart from these, you might wanna checkout Scarf (https://scarf.sh/) that is kinda solving similar problem, but they don't support npm cli, instead they have their own cli for installing packages.
Also, is there a name for the industry of selling code such as npm packages or UI components for money?I might be biased but I think PrivJs introduced CaaS (Code as a service) for javascript packages. And for me this looks fairly new to the market. Also, it has driven quite a lot of criticism and is not yet accepted fully by the developer community, but I think only time could tell how it turns out in the industry. To answer your question, there is no name in the industry just yet for selling npm packages - but at the moment it is PrivJs.
Thank you for sharing. This is fascinating.
like - gists marketplace?
do you mean the github marketplace?
gists are relatively short snippets of code meant to solve some particular problem: https://gist.github.com/discover