When did you start monetizing your extension?
I just released an extension two weeks ago and the number of users is slowly climbing. I currently have almost 200 of them.
This alone seems to indicate that it has value. I only posted it on a single Subreddit and I haven't yet advertised it anywhere else.
Now, onto my question, I think that I could reach 1000 installs before the end of the year.
The question is when do I start charging my users? I want to really make this extension as useful as possible , so I have a backlog of things I want to add/improve but I am just not sure when I need to stop adding "free" features and start adding paid features.
For those of you who have created extensions with paid users, could you let me know how and when you decided that the "free" feature were enough?
Also what kind of ratio of users actually pay? Can I expect 5% paid and 95% free? Or less maybe?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
I know that for some extension makers they charge right away and others get traction and then start monetizing. Often the up-front hassle of making a payment system makes it hard to test if an extension is worth monetizing. Part of the reason I made ExtensionPay tbh so I could release extensions with payments without spending a lot of time.
I'm not sure you will receive concrete answers to some of your questions as most of it would depend on what kind of an addon you are making.
That said, I would say that you should charge for your addon as soon as possible to avoid blow back from the users that expected it for free -- I've worked with clients that switched from free to paid and inevitably there is a wave of users complaining about it. In general, a freemium model works well with addons, tho obviously your mileage will vary. If its a business based value add, then you may want to avoid free altogether and go with a paid only model right away
First thanks for your response.
I realize now as you pointed out that the answers to my questions depend on the type of add-on I am building.
To tell you the truth I was hoping to avoid having to split the features into paid and free ones until the product was a bit more stable, however, as you also pointed out, If I don't do it now then there could be a blow back.
So it looks like I need to get to work on this and come up with enough paid features to justify charging the users.