Marketing Free Wordpress Plugins

[markfail]

Hi All,

i was wondering if anyone could recommend ways to market a wordpress plugin that is offered freely?

Since there is no revenue gained from the plugin itself the only other way to generate revenue i can see is via advertising.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

[Jason Johns]

Hi there,

Have you got it listed on all the wordpress plugin directories?

If so, then find your page and drive traffic to it the usual way. Aim to get that page (or your own page on it) ranking high for the keywords "wordpress shopping cart" and the like and you should see some traffic.

Get people to use it and rate it on the main Wordpress.com plugin directory as it will appear in Wordpress itself when people type in shopping cart.

All the best to you

Jason

[john_kennedy]

I haven't looked this over in detail yet (I will be today). At the outset, this looks really nice! I did go to download the pdf for the manual and got a 404 error. You might want to check that link.

John

[markfail]

Originally Posted by Jason Johns

Hi there,

Have you got it listed on all the wordpress plugin directories?

If so, then find your page and drive traffic to it the usual way. Aim to get that page (or your own page on it) ranking high for the keywords "wordpress shopping cart" and the like and you should see some traffic.

Get people to use it and rate it on the main Wordpress.com plugin directory as it will appear in Wordpress itself when people type in shopping cart.

All the best to you

Jason

Thanks Jason,

Yes its already listen in the wordpress plugin directory and seems to be getting alot of good feedback and downloads i think over 1k in the last 3 days.

What about other options apart from wordpress? Have you got any experience with this?

[improductsandservices.com]

A while back I joined a membership site that had a free software that I wanted - the reason was they gave a video inside the members area that showed me how to use it.

Perhaps you could offer something similar? The only problem with this is that I guess WP plugins are quite simple in essence...

[Tyrus Antas]

Freshmeat.net is popular for free software projects. You should try that.

Tyrus

[markfail]

thanks for sharing.

what about adsence and banner advertising?

[Jason Johns]

Hi again,

If you google "Wordpress plugin" you will find some other directories I am sure it can be listed there.

Can you list it on sites such as hotscripts.com?

I think if you get yourself ranking for the keywords then you will get some decent traffic and downloads. Encourage the people who use it to rate it on the Wordpress site so that people can see it and download it more.

1000 downloads in 3 days is a great start!

All the best

Jason

[john_kennedy]

I installed this on my test site. Way too much advertising for my taste. YMMV. Never could figure out how to add a product.

[ikontent]

Originally Posted by markfail

Hi All,

i was wondering if anyone could recommend ways to market a wordpress plugin that is offered freely?

Since there is no revenue gained from the plugin itself the only other way to generate revenue i can see is via advertising.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Mark

You've got a nice site, and a plugin / themes that look good.

But - and here's the but - I don't see ANY effort to either monetize the activity, or even capture visitors for later monetization. Read the "I" below as "Mark Fail" and "You" as the visitor"

1) Sure, I'm giving away the plugin for free; but why am I not asking people to sign up to access the freebie? Or maybe register on the forum?

> Right now, once the visitor has got what he wanted (the freebie), he's going to forget all about my site and is off elsewhere... And nothing on my site (even the adsense down at the bottom) attracts money (or someone else's money, with the visitor clicking..)

2) Or maybe - yes, the plugin is free. Want to have the nice themes? Sign up, please.

> That way, visitors can kick the tires. But I still capture them for the future.

3) Or better. 2 nice themes for a sign up. Want more premium themes? Membership costs $$ - one time / monthly / multi level?

4) Ok, so you've got the plugin. Want install help? Just pay $$ and get it all done..

5) If you've got the plugin, you'll need hosting. I recommend hostxxxxxxx (with my affiliate link). Buy hosting, and I'll throw in the install for free...

6) And won't you need to build YOUR list? Check out my recommended autoresponders (and hey, my themes have an easy way to include aweber / getresponse...)

> Maybe that's an addon that you get, when you sign up for the autoresponder; or you can pay me $ for that instead?

7) Don't want to spend money? Ok, here's the cpalead page - complete a survey or an offer, and you can get it free (or use the trial pay option).

8) A real "don't spend your money" - If you have a site / blog that's relevant and gets decent traffic, write a nice review about this on YOUR site and I'll throw in some extras.

9) Oh, and by the way - here are some other nice plugins and themes (think MaxBlogpress / Bigsellingoptins / OIO publisher / Revolution themes / iThemes..)

10) Get the word out about YOUR site. Link building services on the right. Social bookmarking on the left. I'm the guy in the middle!!!!


Hey, give me an hour and I'll think of oodles of variations. There are hundreds of related stuff that you CAN monetize - if you're capturing visitor emails.

And if you've figured out the related stuff you can offer your visitors.

Get your "Free" hat off. And your "business" hat on.

[markfail]

THANK YOU!! Thats exactly what i was looking for, at the moment i have google adsence within the application and a help page back to the site when you activeate the plugin but i will be trying the options you mentioned above!