A Dip Into Entrepreneurship

Stack of Coins
  1. Blogging for Benjamin Competition
  2. Why I'm Grateful to Work on the Web
  3. 24 Pull Requests
  4. Update Downloadable Product's Expiration Date in WooCommere
  5. Get Lost in the Flow and Work for More Than a Salary
  6. Why A Plugin's Popularity Matters
  7. Why You Should (Or Shouldn't) Use Premium Plugins
  8. WooCommerce Terms & Conditions
  9. Only Ship to Continental United States with WooCommerce
  10. Just Talk
  11. Why I Love Jetpack
  12. Making Jetpack Better
  13. Remove Billing Address for Free Virtual Orders in WooCommerce
  14. Notify Admin of Customer Address Change in WooCommerce
  15. Open Your Self Up To New Possibilities
  16. 2013 Resolutions Review
  17. Create a Community
  18. Tips for Starting a Community
  19. The Intent of Goals
  20. Create The Ultimate Invoicing System Using WooCommerce
  21. Change From Address in Ninja Forms
  22. Work With People Who Inspire You
  23. Contact Form 7 & MailPoet Integration
  24. Monotasking
  25. Giving Back to The Community
  26. Adding Fuctionality to Lean Plugins
  27. Choose Stripe For a Payment Gateway
  28. A Dip Into Entrepreneurship
  29. Reward Yourself
  30. Blogging for Benjamin Plugin
  31. Blogging for Benjamin Wrap Up

I have some pretty exciting news that I've been waiting to share for a while now. Back in June I released the User Analytics extension for Ninja Forms. That was definitely the start of my entrepreneurship but there is another aspect of being an entrepreneur that I've been looking forward to. Back in November I used the commissions from my extensions to purchase the rights to another developer's plugins so I can resell them as my own. And now I really feel like an entrepreneur!

The Plugins

I took over three different plugins:

  • Pushover Notifications – to send admins notifications when forms are filled out.
  • Freshbooks – to automatically add users to your Freshbooks account
  • Mad Mimi – to automatically add users to your Mad Mimi newsletter lists

It took me a while but I audited, updated, and rereleased each plugin.

Why Buy Someone Else's Plugins?

Contrary to popular belief it takes a significant time investment to build and maintain plugins. In this case the developer wasn't interested in investing that much time in maintaining these plugins. It doesn't make much since split up your time among totally different projects since each one has it's own learning cost. I'm already committed to Ninja Forms with my other extensions so making the same changes I made to MailPoet over to Mad Mimi isn't too much additional time so it makes sense to maximize that time investment.

As an additional perk I noticed some differences in code styling, conditional logic, user interface elements, and broad programming structures. Looking over all of this has been pretty great and there's a couple minor updates I plan to make to my existing plugins.

Where Do I See This Going?

I honestly don't know where I'm going. I rarely do. As with just about everything else in life I tend to just dive in and go where the current takes me. 🙂

I do know that I'm very happy with this decision. I like building up a repertoire of plugins that users can use to get more value out of their site. And I like having a wealth of knowledge that I can use for other development projects. Should another opportunity like this come up I plan on taking it.

Photo Credit: Mukumbura via Compfight cc

6 thoughts on “A Dip Into Entrepreneurship

  1. Good luck and keep us posted! 🙂

  2. I’ll be blogging a whole bunch about this soon, but a portfolio of plugins is a powerful thing. It’s a great vehicle for freedom. You like freedom don’t you Patrick?

    • Absolutely. I love the idea of having a big tool box with a variety of tools to accomplish any task. And I absolutely love the freedom in developing these extensions. It’s nice setting my own deadlines and working on the projects I want to work on. I usually develop an extension to learn something new so it usually turns into a way to pay for my learning which I love.

  3. Thanks for sharing Patrick. As much as I love creating plugins from scratch, acquiring popular yet neglected plugins (or add-ons) is a fantastic way to go.

    Looking forward to hearing your progress on the acquired plugins!

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