PrivJs
Buy & sell npm packages
I'm filled with joy as I am looking at the installation logs to see over 900k combined downloads across all the private libraries published on my side project https://privjs.com - Thank you all for your support.
Being an IndieHacker I always dreamt of making passive income and PrivJs has helped me earn decent income. Although the income is not sufficient for sustainability - it does give me a satisfaction of creating a product that people use and love.
I have built a platform that is great for Private NodeJs packages - and now I'd like to take this to the next level. I'm working on a product to secure your computers and organization from malicious npm pacakges - check it out: https://safe.privjs.com
Drop a comment if you would like to receive discount codes or want to be a beta tester of the product.
My gratitude,
Prasanna
Hello all, I have been silent for a long time and today is special because privjs.com crossed $1500MRR. So, I decided to write a blog post about it and also answer any questions that you guys have.
How it started
It was over 2 years ago when I was exploring ways to monetize my open-source javascript library react-gradient-progress. It was a React component for rendering gradient-enabled circular progressbars.
In order to monetize this component, I did my research. Two options that I had was to use EnvatoMarket or host a private registry. Envato market encouraged selling zip files which I didn't like, and hosting a private registry costed a lot of money and time. So, I decided to solve this problem for myself by building a marketplace for nodejs packages - hence privjs.com was born.
Ray of hope
Initially, this project was a disappointment as there were no customers for a few months. Then a ray of hope on the platform was shed when we onboarded Greensock on our business plan ($750/mo then) - it was ecstatic to see first paying customer. This was very special to me personally because this was the first time in my life I had ever sold any product.
Further Distress
Months later I had no other users making any transactions on the platform. To add further distress, all the developers or organizations that I reached out to shun me down. We had a few developers showing interest and publishing libraries, but the sales were negligible. This was the point where I was reconsidering keeping the platform alive as it costed money and efforts to maintain and provide support. I am glad that I kept the platform alive.
Turning point
About a year later, the contributors of webpack reached out to me with an intent to sell licenses to webpack plugins. Few days later the first webpack plugin - https://app.privjs.com/buy/packageDetail?pkg=@module-federation/nextjs-mf was published to the platform. After some tweets and blog posts - for the first time there were lots of transactions happening on the platform. Following this, more companies onboarded the platform and more developers started publishing libraries for sale.
Current State
Right now, privjs.com has processed over 450k downloads on the platform (including public and private packages). We hit a MRR of $1.5k and the open-source developers have made over $8000 so far selling licenses to nodejs packages.
The growth is slow but for an indie maker like me - it works out. Feel free to ask any questions and I'd be happy to answer.
Do follow for more updates related to the monetization of open-source libraries. Also, drop a follow on twitter https://twitter.com/getprivjs for frequent updates.
Hello all, I have been silent for a long time and today is special because privjs.com crossed $1500MRR. So, I decided to write a blog post about it and also answer any questions that you guys have.
How it started
It was over 2 years ago when I was exploring ways to monetize my open-source javascript library react-gradient-progress. It was a React component for rendering gradient-enabled circular progressbars.
In order to monetize this component, I did my research. Two options that I had was to use EnvatoMarket or host a private registry. Envato market encouraged selling zip files which I didn't like, and hosting a private registry costed a lot of money and time. So, I decided to solve this problem for myself by building a marketplace for nodejs packages - hence privjs.com was born.
Ray of hope
Initially, this project was a disappointment as there were no customers for a few months. Then a ray of hope on the platform was shed when we onboarded Greensock on our business plan ($750/mo then) - it was ecstatic to see first paying customer. This was very special to me personally because this was the first time in my life I had ever sold any product.
Further Distress
Months later I had no other users making any transactions on the platform. To add further distress, all the developers or organizations that I reached out to shun me down. We had a few developers showing interest and publishing libraries, but the sales were negligible. This was the point where I was reconsidering keeping the platform alive as it costed money and efforts to maintain and provide support. I am glad that I kept the platform alive.
Turning point
About a year later, the contributors of webpack reached out to me with an intent to sell licenses to webpack plugins. Few days later the first webpack plugin - (@module-federation/nextjs-mf)[https://app.privjs.com/buy/packageDetail?pkg=@module-federation/nextjs-mf] was published to the platform. After some tweets and blog posts - for the first time there were lots of transactions happening on the platform. Following this, more companies onboarded the platform and more developers started publishing libraries for sale.
Current State
Right now, privjs.com has processed over 450k downloads on the platform (including public and private packages). We hit a MRR of $1.5k and the open-source developers have made over $8000 so far selling licenses to nodejs packages.
The growth is slow but for an indie maker like me - it works out. Feel free to ask any questions and I'd be happy to answer.
Do follow for more updates related to the monetization of open-source libraries. Also, drop a follow on twitter https://twitter.com/getprivjs for frequent updates.
Hello everyone, it's been a long time since I provided an update about PrivJs.
We now have a clear path on what to pursue and I'd be focusing entirely on the marketplace for npm packages. We have a few cool packages on the platform and the sales beginning to take place - visit privjs.com to checkout the packages.
Will keep you guys posted regarding the progress.
Have a great day everyone
-Prasanna
Hey everyone,
Being a part-time maker is difficult as you usually get flooded with work. Today I introduced guest checkout to PrivJs.
if you are selling on Priv, your customers no longer need to create a new account to purchase - they can directly checkout as a guest with only their email and then install the package as usual. Personally, I feel this feature to be pretty cool.
I have a lot more features lined up - working hard to get them added ASAP.
Cheers!
We launched PrivJs earlier this morning and got over 50 votes, but still were not featured on the homepage.
So, I decided to reach out to the ProductHunt team asking them for a reason why it was not yet featured in the homepage, and immediately they made it available on the homepage.
Takeaway: If your product doesn't get featured on PH homepage - reach out to them. They'll feature it.
Cheers!
-
1
Nice tip 😊
Hey all,
After months of hustle, PrivJs is finally ready and we have launched the same on Producthunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/privjs-monetize-npm-packages
If I could borrow a minute of your time, then could you please head over to ProductHunt and upvote PrivJs.
Thank you!
Hello all,
I've been tirelessly working without breaks for about 2 months now building PrivJs. And today I am extremely happy to announce that PrivJs MVP is live at https://privjs.com - this is such a happy moment for me.
I have spoken to quite a few open-source developers and have added so many features just to make sure that the developers don't have trouble selling any package on the platform.
To summarize, here is the list of features available:
- Marketplace to buy/sell npm packages
- Public package landing page to drive more sales
- Stripe connect to receive money directly into your bank account
- NPM tokens to install the packages on CI/CD environments
- Option to provide access manually to your team members
- PrivJs api to integrate in your websites
- 100% access controlled packages. Nobody apart from you, your team members and your customers can access your package.
And there are lot more which I leave it up to you guys to have a look.
Please let me know your thoughts. I've put in too much efforts in this and would love to hear your thoughts as well.
-Prasanna
Hello everyone,
As the previous landing page was not quite attractive, I decided to redesign and give it a fresh new look. The new landing page is much cleaner and Product communication is improved drastically.
Visit https://privjs.com to check out the fresh new design.
Tech used:
Html, Vanilla JS & tailwindcss
Illustrations: Undraw.co & shape.so
Cheers!
Today morning I woke up to a tweet that had PrivJs mentioned in it. And it was not from anybody that I knew, nor was it from a person within my contacts/followers. Someone from Google found out about PrivJs and took the time to tweet about it. It's just a tweet, but why am I so excited? Let me quote the tweet over here and you'll know:
"Between this(PrivJs) and @devonzuegel's work with Github Sponsors, I can clearly see a future where developers aspire to live off their open source work, rather than products and services.
Whole new meaning to Software as a Service."
Followed by:
"Which is such a productivity gain to society. Think of all the amount of work that goes into wrapping the useful bit of work into a SaaS product, when the real value is just a chunk of code that users can interact with directly."
Reading this I'm sitting on my desk, thinking about the future of PrivJs and journey that is ahead of us. This tweet gave me a sensation of how we have paved the way for global developers community to monetize their code instead of a platform. I am indeed very happy and very excited to be a part of this change.
I'll be posting the future updates about PrivJs over here, so if you are also interested in knowing more about our journey, please hit the Follow button.
Additionally you can follow us on twitter too: @getprivjs (https://twitter.com/getprivjs)
Thanks for reading :) Your support drives me everyday.
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