I have created at least a dozen failed products.
Consider these three, that we created around year 2001 – yeah, that early!
- Beehive: An easy to use content management system for a website, powered by PHP and MySQL. Support for multiple authors, hierarchy, media etc.
- SendMax: An email newsletter / SMTP engine built for scale.
- WebRover: A search engine + web directory with intelligent search and extensive content classification.
Unfortunately, Beehive did not become WordPress. Sendmax did not become MailChimp and WebRover was not acquired by Google. All these products died.
I was fortunate to have a string of successful products – albeit much later in my life.
So when it comes to creating a new WordPress plugin, I’m very careful these days.
Why? Watch this video of my talk “Build It and They Won’t Come” during WordCamp Mumbai 2016 and you will understand!
Video – Build It and They Won’t Come – WordCamp Mumbai 2016
WordPress has more than 50,000 public plugins. Should you build the next one? Will it be worthwhile maintaining it over the next five years? How will people discover your plugin? What activities can suck you away from building great plugins? How do you land up with great reviews for your plugins? Does it make sense to listen to customer feedback? How do you run a business around WordPress plugins and make money?
Those are some of the questions you will get answer for, in this talk!
Slides
Can’t watch the video now? Want to skim through the talk quickly? Here are the slides!
Food for thought?