Writing and selling my Wordpress plugin

I've used dozens... hundreds... of Wordpress plugins. They have been huge to me in my learning how to freelance and successfully being able to execute my ideas. There are amazing, great ones, like Advanced Custom Fields, or WPML, or Contact Form 7; there are an eternity of old, broken ones that kind of do the thing you want but are way out of date.

I didn't really think I'd get to making my own plugin, beyond those for clients; everything's been done already, right? And it would be hard to sell it. Ugh.

But, well, never say never.

The Big Idea

My cousin works in maps a bit, like me (I run Mapster, a small software company based around interactive maps). But he's more a technician than a programmer. He's been using Mapbox, something I use a lot nowadays too in my work. He mentioned there were no good plugins for Mapbox. I did a search, and was amazed that the last one was about three years old and using a total out-of-date technology. An opening! At last!

People obviously think of Google Maps when they think of online maps. But I really think Mapbox might be going places. I immediately registered the name WP Mapbox GL JS (now, I'm thinking I should have put "Maps" in the title...). It was the best, most basic name I could think of, which was all that mattered. I wrote a basic shortcode plugin and within a month had a first proto-version out.

I wrote all the plugin with a mash of ReactJS and Wordpress like I've described in another post. This was a really good exercise, because I thought I'd understood Mapbox... but this really made me learn in inside and out. By making a fully interactive and responsive administrator map that also translates into a straightforward, compact front-end map, I learned some very deep ins and outs of Mapbox. That was hard, but fun, too!

Putting in the work

My first version, with marker creation, management, style display and much more, was ready a few months later. We made some nice documentation and released it into the wild. Today, it's got about 500 or 600 active installs, which is a good start!

Based on its reception, which I thought was pretty encouraging even without much promotion, I decided to forge ahead with a premium version. I added a bunch of features, which took a few more months of work, more testing, and user interacting. It's hard to say exactly how many hours went into the work, but it certainly taught me even more.

Now, I have that first premium version out and for sale. I already dropped my initial prices to try to help the momentum along. Building this thing took a lot of consistent work.

The plugin is quite unique, with a ton of features, and it's definitely the best thing on the mapping market of plugins for Wordpress in terms of Mapbox. I think it's one of the best mapping plugins out there, period. I want to keep working on it but I need to be realistic to make sure I'm not pouring in too much time.

To handle payment and license keys and all that stuff, I used Easy Digital Downloads. It took some work to set up and I had to find a couple of workarounds, but it seems to work great now -- which is a huge relief to my programmer brain, which often forgets the pain of setting up the store and protecting your work.

Getting the word out

So, now, it's time for promotion and good support. It's time to gain more attention for the plugin, now that I have a premium version ready to catch any customers. I'm going to write across the web for a few blogs, and try to get WP Mapbox GL JS into the conversation, so that over the next couple of years, it sifts higher and higher in the search results for "maps wordpress plugin".

My plugin strategy is to focus on this little niche that I'm very good at, and have a totally exclusive project in there that I and my team at Mapster support in a friendly and helpful way. With any luck, I'll find a place where it's profitable enough to keep working on, and fun enough to keep my interest. Maybe it'll eventually pay for itself, if I'm lucky!

It's fun to have my first real product, even if it's just a little plugin. I've got a way to go, but I think that with quality and ongoing work, it'll really grow in its own way. My goal now is to get daily sales!

Check out the plugin at WP Mapbox GL JS, and let me know any of your tips for blowing up your new product!