Over half a year ago I started work on a WordPress plugin called Sharepress. Today, I shipped a commercial product: my first, hopefully, of many.
Like many of my recent projects, it was a solution inspired by problems presented to me by Corey Brown. Can we automate the process of posting links to WordPress posts on the wall of a Facebook Page? The easy answer was, "Yes."
In fact, developing the solution was pretty easy, too. I had some Facebook development experience under my belt, and some WordPress plugin development experience too. The first working prototype was done in about twenty hours. Corey was thrilled, and so was I. I enjoy solving problems.
And then we started talking about the marketability of the solution. A piece of software that shaves minutes off of a process that you were already doing three, four, or five times a day? And lets you schedule that task into the future? Yeah, I'd pay for that.
So the quest began! Finally, I was going to embrace a personal dream: I was going to write a sell my own software.
Give a problem to an Engineer...
Being an engineer, I subscribe to a particular way of thinking that prefers engineering to, well, any other preoccupation. That is to say, I love to build stuff almost as much as I like solving problems, and I especially love building stuff to solve problems.
The original registration site, which was supposed to be a quick way to test the market.
Having solved Corey's problem, I quite naturally moved onto solving my own. I discovered that as it related to selling software on the Web, I had a huge list of problems to solve. How to sell it? How to market it? How to license it? How to indemnify my company? The list was long.
The problems I focused on first were the ones I felt my skills were best lent to: building a platform from which to sell and distribute the software. I decided that I would borrow from the lean start-up mentality, and deploy some sort of test site from which to measure market interest and capture potential customers.
I bought an HTML template from Theme Forest, added some form elements, asked my friend Gannon Beck if he would do a little illustration for me, and the end result was a very professional looking advertisement for software that wasn't yet commercially viable. There was much rejoicing.
Then I started implementing the site.
And instead of launching a lean startup, I started to build a yacht: I started to think about the next 10 steps. I knew I wanted to deploy some sort of license management tool: a site where my customers could register, buy a license key for my software, manage their license keys for this and other plugins I would write, seek support and community, yada, yada, yada.
I couldn't launch my test site without a proper registration form! It would be a lost opportunity.
So back to the drawing board I went.
But wait: what am I selling to these people?
In the meantime, I was still thinking about how to market my products and drive sales. (Clearly one part of my brain never really cared about testing anything, least of all the marketplace. Build, build, build!)
I don't remember how or when it happened, but at some point I realized that I needed to have two plugins to distribute, not just one.
WordPress operates this great resource they call the Plugin Repository. Their system integrates with all of the custom WordPress installs of the world, and from within those installs, the entire catalog of plugins is available for effortless download and installation.
"Effortless." Sounds like a good way to market something, right? So it occurred to me that the best way to market my plugin would be to split it into two versions: a "lite" version, that would ship from the WordPress plugin repository, and a "pro" version, that users would acquire from me through my system. But I didn't have such a system... yet.
So it was decided: I would build one. And if was going to be selling WordPress plugins, I might as well really flex my mental metal, and use WordPress as the platform for my plugin sales and distribution system. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and measured in terms only a nerd would understand, it was good.
Drop customers into the user management system? Sure! Simultaneously drop those users into a MailChimp subscription list? I got that. Screens for managing purchases, and license keys? No problem. PayPal instant payment notification for automating license key distribution? Man, that was a bitch.
A month later, I had a working prototype for a platform for selling license keys for WordPress plugins. No lean startups for my shop: I was too busy polishing an idea that hadn't even been tested yet.
At this point, against all odds, I did experience some forward motion. I decided to stop where I was and make what I had live to the world.
I stood up the "lean" site (complete with user registration, and MailChimp integration). I deployed my plugin -- dubbed "Sharepress Lite" -- into the WordPress Plugin Repository, complete with links suggesting the availability of a feature-full "pro" version, directing users to register on yon plugin platform yacht.
I would eventually have 340 registered customers, and as of today, the "lite" version of Sharepress has been downloaded over 3,000 times.
But I was far from being done building my yacht, and I was yet to discover just how strongly I was being directed by the Lizard Brain.
(To be continued...)
