Show HN: My first try at a WordPress plugin | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first try at a WordPress plugin

codecanyon.net

75 pointsthisisdallas31 comments

There is no such thing as HN worthy. I for one am glad for all the links people post here and click the ones that interest me.

I agree - sometimes the best ones are the hacky-ish looking ones that someone busted out in a weekend, posted here and gained many new ideas and insights on things they should do next. Oh, and this Wordpress plugin is not hacky-ish.

I'm with jhaaps on this! As a group i think our industry is very much into sharing anything and everything we have done, its like our bragging rights even if it is just clicking a button or checking a checkbox. I dont know how many times things that are that simple take me hours to find only to find a google search post that has the answer right there for me.

I always tell (told) my juniors that Google telling you the answers is not as likely to be remembered in 6 weeks as the answer you found for yourself.

And the debugging, test routines you had to write to figure it out will help next time

+1 - You made something. Welcome to the show.

But isn't this just thinly disguised advertising?

I can understand how you see it as advertising but in my case it's not. I've needed a plugin like this for several projects and couldn't find anything like it so, as a learning exercise, I decided to build it. The plugin started out as a basic free version I submitted to wordpress.org and after I saw how many people downloaded it I realized it could potentionally be something useful for a few people. I decided to add more features and out of curiosity I threw it up on code canyon just to see what would happen.

Making this post on hacker news was also for curiosity's sake. I've never released anything and was curious what the hacker news reaction would be. So far, zero people have bought my plugin but I've had a lot more encouragement and well wishes than I imagined I would get. In my opinion, the encouragement and support is worth a lot more than making a small amount of money :)

Good job! It's nice to see new things posted, and also refreshing to see the encouragement and constructive criticism that you've been receiving so far.

You built something useful, and presented it well. Thank you for sharing it with us!

The plugin seems nice. IMO, you should add all the names of the services compatible in your description (useful to the potential buyer, and for the SEO in Codecanyon) and you could add a screenshot of the plugin admin.

Good luck !

Hey thanks for the advice! I will definitely get those things added.

I love the design and the icons, but I'm not confident I'd want to spend $7 on something I could probably whip up in a few minutes in HTML + CSS.

I can see this being useful to a lot of non-tech-savvy bloggers, though. Good luck.

A few minutes includes cross-browser testing? I have the feeling that this would take minimum 30-50 minutes. 7$ for that sounds decent, plus re-usable.

Given the supported browsers (IE9, Firefox 4, Safari 4, Safari 5, Opera, Chrome) I wouldn't think that is a major challenge. Essentially get it working in one and you have it working in all of the rest.

Yeah if you could get the supported browsers for IE back to IE7, I could see that improving the usefulness of your plugin.

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it. It's funny you mention the price because I thought that was a little high too. Code canyon decides on what price the items sell at, and as far as I know, the author has no control over that. Personally I was thinking maybe around four to five dollars but since commission is only 50% ill be ok with $7 :)

Don't worry too much about the "I could make this" people - there's plenty out there who couldn't, and plenty of people who'd rather just spend the money and move on than find out if it's a few minutes' work or not.

Oh this is Envato isn't it? Weird, I've sold stuff on AudioJungle before but I've never tried CodeCanyon. Hope you make a good profit :)

I don't think the price is high at all. 3.50 and 7 dollars are exactly the same to me. They're both below the fold in my mentality for something like this, and like other commenters have pointed out.. to build and cross browser test? Well even if you can whip it up in 20 or 30 minutes with testing, it's still worthwhile at seven bucks.

can you update us in a month on your experiences selling on codecanyon/envato ?

I second that. I'd love to hear more about your progress in selling the plugin. Congrats on launching.

I will definitely give an update. I know it's possible to get strong sales numbers from themeforest but I honestly haven't heard anything code canyon.

I'm not 100% sure how the plugin ecosystem on codecanyon, but I was one of the first authors on envato's tutorial marketplace and I'm still getting the odd sale here and there.

Not to say that you'll be rich, but the sheer number of users on the site (and lowish cost of each item) means you'll probably make a bit of money.

Payments come out each month and there is a limit of $50 per "withdrawl", so because I don't hit that limit very fat anymore, I just use the money in the account to buy random themes and such.

You know, you can see all these great talks by all these founders/entrepreneurs, they are always telling that starting is the hardest part. You've already started. Be that a wordpress plug-in or an iOS app. Congratulations and I wish you success.

Need more screen shots to get a better look. But good effort and show of ambition.

Found a small typo "Each are is optional"

Good luck with the sales.

no demo? not many would be interested to buy without seeing a demo

In that case, I'll have a demo up late this afternoon or tonight. Thanks for the suggestion!

Ok I got a demo page up.

Not worth $7, there are plenty of plugins that do this for free.

So with your logic, the free plugins, even though cost $0, are worth $0? And this includes support (sure, you can find support for free things too).

Oh look, we've made over 140, does that count as HN worthy :/

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