Shaun Alberts has written 2 plugins for NextGEN Gallery, NextGEN Gallery Voting and NextGen Gallery Custom Fields. With over 50 000 downloads between the two, the endeavour has not proven profitable, as he only has $32 in donations to show for it.
Ashley: Shaun, first off, can you tell us a bit about how you got involved with developing plugins for WordPress?
Shaun: Well, I’m not trying to make a living developing WordPress plugins. Initially, it was just for the challenge of it, and to see what the WordPress system had to offer. Once I saw there was interest in them, I spent some time adding features and making them better to use.
Ashley: You say that you feel that there is a lack of support from the WordPress community for free-plugin authors. Could you elaborate?
Shaun: Well, as you’ve noted I’ve developed 2 plugins that have gone on to be downloaded and used by over 50 000 people, and even though these plugins help people and they benefit from it there seems to be a general unwillingness to donate anything towards the author of the plugins.
It would be great to see that sense of community translate to donations and support to awesome free-plugin authors.
I would be interested to see how many people have honestly supported a plugin author (donation, bug reports/patches, translations etc), and how proportional that support is to the benefit gained of using that author’s work.
Ashley: It seems that the end user does not understand your blood, sweat and tears that go into developing a plugin. Would you agree?
Shaun: I do. An example of under appreciation is the following: A user asked me for a new feature to be implemented. I explained that I don’t make cash from this, and need time, so I will add it to the to-do list. He then donated 1 euro, and said hopefully that buys him the development.
I can only remember 1 time where someone wanted an extra feature, and they actually tried to implement it themselves. He wrote a custom function, but was coming unstuck with a couple more complicated points. When he showed me what he had done, and asked for help, I happily sorted it out, and even added it to the core functionality.
Ashley: What do you think compels the end user to donate to a developer?
Shaun: Well, nothing right now it seems
Ashley: Do you have any solutions in mind?
Shaun: Free Theme and Plugin development is not very rewarding, it seems developers are moving towards more paid for development, along the lines of the theme world (woothemes, obox etc).
There are of course other options for developers. Here’s my quick opinion on other models I have considered:
Free plugin, paid support: The problem with this is it doesn’t work if you write great code. If the plugin is easy to understand, works well and is customisable and flexible, what support do you need to offer?
Freemium: Essentially crippleware. This is a popular route to go. You just need to have enough features and then figure out what you are going to allow for free. If your plugin is focused and doesn’t do a lot of things, this can be difficult.
Premium: The “You want it, you buy it” way of doing things. Probably the best bet if you’re trying to make serious money. Requires you setup a dedicated site for your plugin, and handle the payment process etc.
Ashley: There seems to be no solution other than developers building a premium site with support for their GPL plugin
Shaun: It does seem that way. The obvious problem is people are very hesitant to purchase something they can’t try, and that means you need to use the ‘freemium’ model
Ashley: I have heard many developers complain about this, developing free plugins doesn’t seem to be rewarding
Shaun: I have a feeling that there aren’t going to be too many quality free plugins for too much longer.
Again, from a personal point of view I can do 2 things. Either stop making free stuff (and complaining about it), or make everything paid for (and then be required to support it).
As someone who uses lots of free and open source software, it’s a difficult decision to make…
