Preface to the Journey
I’ve often wondered about the underlying motivation, the bigger picture, for why one would create or commission a custom plugin for Wordpress. I imagine that most plugins are brought into existence in the first place in order to extend what Wordpress does already or to manipulate some existing WP behavior. It would be safe to say that a custom plugin meets some special need or satisfies some particular want for a particular individual.
However, I believe that other motivations enter the picture when a plugin originally designed to meet one person’s need is shared with the general public. Other motivations at this point might include the desire to increase the popularity and the rank of the plugin developer’s website, the want to see some kind of financial benefit, and the desire to contribute to the welfare of the Wordpress community at large. In the case of the Amazon RSS in Wordpress plugin, the motivation was a mixture of each of these points.
In the Beginning
In the beginning, I searched for an existing plugin that did what I wanted it to do, but found none. Don’t get me wrong. I found plenty of groovy plugins, but none met what I envisioned. I wanted an Amazon plugin that combined product images with blog posts underneath the umbrella of word-to-product relevancy — automatically.
I believed that focusing on product relevancy would lead to higher sale conversions and increased Amazon affiliate earnings. In addition, I wanted a plugin that needed minimal babysitting, and I want a plugin that featured more than static product placement. Having scoured the net, I decided to have a plugin custom made to fit my needs.
Custom Plugin Development
Because I’m good with ideas, and not necessarily with programming, I turned to eLance in order to find a coder who could actualize my ideas. The process took around a month and cost me a little over $500 USD… $550 USD to be exact. However, the process was well worth it because I now have a plugin that does what I need it to do in the manner that I want it done.
Fork in the “Free” Road
Having just spent over $500 to develop Amazon RSS in Wordpress, it should not be surprising that I want to see a return on my investment. In addition, the plugin needed to be profitable because with the profits, I would pay to have it maintained and tweaked in order to offer more features in future revisions. I would use the improvement suggestions found in the forum for ongoing development.
To this end, the initial release of the plugin was protected with ionCube. Using ionCube protected my code from tinkering, thus ensuring that my affiliate-id would have its place on one image out of the total number of Amazon images. After announcing the plugin’s availability on blogs and in forums, I was met with an interesting situation.
On the thread that I created on the Digital Point Forums, my contention that this was a “free” plugin was challenged. Because affiliate traffic sharing was built into the plugin, one member was entirely “turned off” at what my plugin offered. The baby was tossed out with the bathwater. And for that matter, the bathtub was discarded too. In essence, one image from the total number of images would be associated my Amazon affiliate-id. If someone clicked on this one image and made a purchase, I would receive the affiliate credit. But this was too much.
Affiliate traffic sharing was out of the question. Never mind my financial investment, forget my time, and pay not attention to my effort that went into developing this plugin. I image that many people would protest along similar lines in the future. Everyone wants something for free, no matter the cost to some one else.
Fork in the Advertising Road
I wanted to advertise my new plugin on WebBlogToolsCollection by purchasing a graphical banner (125×125) for $149 per month. However, part of their requirement for advertisement is that plugins be GPL compatible — meaning that my protected code would not meet their requirements. I would have to release the unprotected version of the code — meaning that now the code is available for tinkering … and I know what this means.
In the End
In the end, I re-release the plugin without any kind of protection for the code, thereby making the plugin GPL compliant. All I can do know is hope others find value in my efforts and use the plugin that I funded.
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