Why Are There So Many Free WordPress Plugins?
Any blogger who has used WordPress for any length of time has got to be impressed by the staggering selection of Free plugins that are available for their WordPress blog.
The WordPress CMS platform is Free and ever since its introduction in 2003 it has been developed and expanded “by and for the community” because it is an open source project.
Built on a backbone of PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL, WordPress has grown to become the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world. It’s used by millions of blogs and tens of millions of people each day around the globe.
So, why are there so many plugins given away for free? Well, according to Jun Loayza, of the, ‘Young, Successful Entrepreneur‘ blog, who interviewed six of the top ten WordPress plugin developers, here’s why:
- Most WP plugin authors are freelancers who create plugins as a hobby because they enjoy the work.
- The top plugin authors generate revenues through advertisements on their blogs and through donations.
- Most plugin authors don’t make more than a couple hundred dollars a week.
Loayza further surmised that the only viable way to generate a living from developing WordPress plugins is to create an additional business model outside of selling your plugin or asking for donations.
A viable model for a blogger might be to use their WordPress plugin as an ethical bribe to get more subscribers to their opt-in email list. You would simply set up a squeeze page, which is really a mini sales page that lists the plugins benefits and has a subscription box to collect the name and email address of your plugin users.
You can use this list to send training tips for plugin users, announce when you launch new plugins that they might find useful, and promotional offers that would appeal to that particular market.
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26. Feb, 2010 


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