We're profitable! — payments in browser extensions

ExtensionPay's revenue exceeded its costs for the first time which means profitability baby! 👶🏻

➡️ For those who aren't following along, ExtensionPay is a service that lets browser extension creators take payments in their extensions without needing to run their own backend server. It works cross-browser and is free to sign up. ⬅️

(Caveats: For costs I'm only considering hard costs like the domain and server. I'm not accounting for the equivalent cost of my time since due to my health I wouldn't be able to make money another way. Also, Indie Hacker's Stripe integration doesn't count Stripe Connect application fee revenue so unfortunately my revenue isn't showing up there.)

I'm kind of shocked at how fast profitability happened! This is because I targeted extension makers that already had a lot of paid users. My first customer's extension is selling surprisingly well and my second customer's extension just came online today and is getting a bunch of payments.

Let is be known! Browser extensions can make money!

There was a lingering question in my mind whether this service could actually be lucrative but I'm slowly being convinced it can. I made this service hoping it would be a source of income that isn't tied directly to my time and that's being proven out!

Of course with customers come features requests so I've been building a few things that I knew I'd need to do eventually but put off until someone explicitly asked — like a "change password" form or the ability for extension users that have already paid to log in instead of paying again.

My next step is to finish adding subscription/recurring payment support. Onward! 🙌