Is there a market for commercial plugins and themes?

vrijvlinder

Off Topic: Don Peregrino's Troll flag counts for five trolls....what is the max troll power you can have? Now that's is something you could incorporate into your project with the badges. Higher rank gets to have more cans of whoop ass

businessdad

@mcu_hq said:
You have a good point on this, however you should always do your homework and make sure that the seller is willing to fulfill a refund if the client is not satisfied.

Of course, I always check T&C before purchasing anything. Everybody should do that.

@mcu_hq said:
No doubt my chocolate theme/plugin is on that list.

To be honest, they both were. I used them anyway as a starting point, though. They underwent a huge deal of refactoring, and I can say that at least 70% of them has been rewritten. However, I decided not to release them, as the result is not up to my standards. I will probably rewrite everything from scratch.

I haven't had a whole bunch of questions relating to the duo, so I suppose it worked for most people. In fact, if I google search for my theme, I can see that a great deal of sites are using it successfully. So I guess it wasn't an ultra fail afterall .

They weren't a complete failure, or I would not have used them.
However, they were clearly "a hack of a hack", which may stay together, but they would not be easily maintainable or expandable. If one can use them out of the box, that's perfect. My client requested so many changes that it was simply not feasible to "hack them in". After all, I must provide a guarantee and I like to sleep at night.

x00

jeez, this thread is getting tired.

Personally I'm not totally against proprietary software. You have to follow the business model that make sense to you.

However I find the extreme copy left brigade just as controlling. For instance I find Affero General Public License beyond ridiculous.

On another level I have issues with current intellectual property laws, as they are protectionist for all the wrong reasons, I believe they should be there but more limited. For me competition leads to invitation, so I see no reason for lifelong patents, it should be limited in years, and there should be a lot stricter criteria for getting one. I encourage other countries not to enforce these laws for that reason. Why should they copy our complacency?

Some people argue that patents lead to invitation, I refute this argument, and there are plenty of examples of it stifling invitation, it is what hasn't happen that is important. It certain sector it is the only thing they are focused on, patent trolling, and obtaining patents and doing none or the work, or going to court. Partners going bust an locking the patent in for decades.

In some case people have been tricked, thinking it is a genuine investor, they intended all along to prevent the patent from being used. I believe run flat tires was an example, where it didn't come out for decades, because tire manufacturers initial saw it as a threat.

I'm not idealistic about GLP I find those that are slightly loopy, I tend to favour permissive, and focus on work rather than licences, However I'm glad GPL exists becuase it has helped against complacency. I no more think GLP is the answer for everything as I think proprietary is. There was a reaction against complacency in he 90s, and that helped,

I think there is some confusion over sponsorship, there is no set definition of what that means. I know what it mean to me.

I've used it to get clients.

I'm actually very in favour of SaaS. I think that is a good model, especially where you need very specialised resources and expertise. Usually works with some kind of subscription.

I'm less into giving over exclusive right to the code. Because if I can make money off it myself, I'm not going to hand it over to some who has done zero innovation or not cheaply anyway. Ideas are cheap. Also like I said examples = clients.

I'm not going to argue over what examples mean either.

Todd

Just to riff a bit on the selling plugins for $1 (usually called a micro-transaction). This is typically difficult for most companies because of the cost metrics associated with payment processing companies. When you charge for something online there is usually a fixed cost of about .20-.40 as well as a variable cost of about 2-3%. When you charge such a small amount the fixed cost ends up killing your margin.

vrijvlinder

@Todd , I don't think the price should be the same overall. Look at the app store for example. There are free apps 99 cent apps and there are 999 dollar apps. The price should reflect the complexity of the plugin.

When you charge such a small amount the fixed cost ends up killing your margin.

I would think It works when you add volume to the equation.

Does this mean a Vanilla store is out of the question?

Maybe a developer could have their own paypal button on the plugin download page.
Or a donate button would be nice.

businessdad

@vrijvlinder said:
Todd , I don't think the price should be the same overall. Look at the app store for example. There are free apps 99 cent apps and there are 999 dollar apps. The price should reflect the complexity of the plugin.

Bingo! The formula to determine the price of a product is simply cost + added value, where:

• cost: in case of Software Development, it can be the time you would dedicate to it, including analysis, research, testing, learning, etc.
• added value: the value that the product would give to the clients. This is even more important than the cost itself, but it's also harder to estimate.

That means than a simple project doesn't necessarily have to be sold cheap, if it adds great value.

Tip
Such a simple formula is also great to manage clients' requests and expectations. When clients ask "how much would it cost to do X?", the calculation will give you a ballpark figure, without requiring you to spend too much time on writing an offer that may not be accepted. Then you can add some margin, and start the negotiations. Some (sales)people say that "whoever says a number first, loses", but it's BS. Showing that you are able to give a quick estimate, at least in terms of time and work required, makes you look much more professional than simply asking "what's the maximum amount of money I could possibly get from you?".

Note: probably this thread should be split into two (or more) threads, considering how off-topic it's going (especially because of me).

Todd

@vrijvlinder said:
I would think It works when you add volume to the equation.

This is not true which I'm trying to explain to you. You are going to lose 30-40% of every .99 sale. That's great for the credit card companies, but not viable for a business.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that what Apple, Google, Facebook et all do can be done by every other business. They have a tonne of negotiating power with credit card providers that most anyone else does not have.

All this being said, a Vanilla store is not out of the question in theory, but we aren't even close to thinking about that kind of thing right now.

vrijvlinder

Thanks Todd , Understood, pero no me gusta !

hbf

@businessdad said:
The formula to determine the price of a product is simply cost + added value

i disagree, since taking both factors and adding them up is likely to yield a price that is unfathomable to most consumers.

the actual price setting approach that i use is something more or less along the lines of the greater of (cost / anticipated sales) || perceived value

if the perceived value (what you referred to as added value) is greater than the cost / anticipated sales then you charge that, otherwise you must charge the cost / anticipate sales or you are losing money.

that's why most people that come to me through this venue don't end up hiring me... since the anticipated sales is usually = 1, they have to bear the brunt of the full development cost. my time is worth more than what they perceive to be the value of the plugin, and therefore they are unwilling to spend the money.

x00

I think grandma has enough eggs to suck now

businessdad

@vrijvlinder said:

Now that's is something you could incorporate into your project with the badges. Higher rank gets to have more cans of whoop ass

Just spotted this now. Granting roles and authority automatically, without any human review, is too dangerous, as I already explained in a previous post. Therefore, I'm not planning to add this feature.

businessdad

@hbf said:
if the perceived value (what you referred to as added value) is greater than the cost / anticipated sales then you charge that, otherwise you must charge the cost / anticipate sales or you are losing money.

I can say that most plugins are at a high risk of being sold at a loss. None of the serious ones require less than a couple of days of work, which brings their cost to several thousands. Even pricing them at $100, it would take quite a lot sales to break even (for example, I would be surprised if the Awards plugin would reach 30 sales).

@hbf said:
that's why most people that come to me through this venue don't end up hiring me... since the anticipated sales is usually = 1, they have to bear the brunt of the full development cost. my time is worth more than what they perceive to be the value of the plugin, and therefore they are unwilling to spend the money.

The same happens to me. A good percentage of clients can't afford to pay the full costs of development, therefore the projects are put aside, or they simply migrate to another platform, as it happened a couple of times.

hbf

@businessdad said:
The same happens to me. A good percentage of clients can't afford to pay the full costs of development, therefore the projects are put aside, or they simply migrate to another platform, as it happened a couple of times.

yep.

peregrine

. dupe - my mistake.

peregrine

. edited.

vrijvlinder

as I was sucking on some egg....I thought about this:

@buisnessdad said: Just spotted this now. Granting roles and authority automatically, without any human review, is too dangerous, as I already explained in a previous post. Therefore, I'm not planning to add this feature.

I would think that this would be achieved on merit . I doubt it is solely automatically generated reputation points, or anyone would be able to do it through cheating.

The whole system of rewards is a psychological formula to gain involvement by people.
And this can't more true than in the virtual world of the internet where make believe is what people believe and want to believe. I am willing to bet it is a feature that will be requested by those interested. Now , that it could be modified anyway you want. It does not have to be anarchy or totalitarian or bogus....
But if people care at all about rank and merits (which they seem to be since they asked for it to be created for them), they will eventually want a bonus reward on top of the points aka authority or something like it. More pull on votes and punishment for bad behavior. There are groups of people, those who lead those who would like to lead and those who follow. In my opinion these systems need to follow human nature to be successful .

People who abuse the power given to them would be demoted with a D badge...

UnderDog

Besides, you need to cheat a lot to get those badges and that's where the moderators come in.
You need to give yourself lots of LOL's or Awesome's to get a badge and you can only vote once per comment, right? Moderators should be able to undo those votes / self-votes.

vrijvlinder

I was under the impression you can't give yourself that stuff...? Or it is something you can write into the game. you can't like yourself ... this kind of stuff needs to be included as a failsafe for human naughtiness potential.

hbf

@vrijvlinder said:
I was under the impression you can't give yourself that stuff...? Or it is something you can write into the game. you can't like yourself ... this kind of stuff needs to be included as a failsafe for human naughtiness potential.

In my 'I like this plugin' a person can't like their own post. But that doesn't stop someone from creating two accounts and bucking the system. Underdog is right, this is where moderation plays a role in the community.

vrijvlinder

yea I notice that the Voting plugin is also open to abuse, I was messing with the css and noticed every time I clicked it recorded a vote. I personally don't care for that kind of inaccurate rating system. Anything that can be exploited is suspect I suppose...