Licensing / monetization future decisions

[leonstafford]

have written up tentative plans here

Would love to hear ideas from @szepeviktor about how to manage keeping repos clean and including Freemius SDK & markup in the wp.org builds (or tell me it's all a terrible idea!)

[szepeviktor]

Do I understand correctly?

Adding Freemius WP SDK to the plugin at release time?
(I do not have experience with money except for asking a small monthly fee for 5-10 years.)

[leonstafford]

Yes, that was the idea:

• have my wp.org plugins contain freemius for payment
• but keep repos free of the SDK code, allowing people to continue using freely from git/Packagist

I'm not great with money and struggle to ask people to pay for my stuff. Patreon is slowly building up, but not enough to cover minimal expenses. I figure if I can keep the projects free and open source, but ask for $ from those who want/need the convenience of wp.org listings and simple installation, it may be the right balance.

If only there were automated tests for life!

[patrickposner]

@leonstafford that could be easier than you think.

Freemius is automatically parsing your code and provide a free version and pro version of your plugin.

There is also a composer package available: https://packagist.org/packages/freemius/wordpress-sdk

So you can still provide a development version on Github without having users to hassle around with licensing,
include the package only on builds for w.org and add a constant or another indicator for the prefix_fs() function to run.

That's pretty much the same way I will do it with Simply Static ;-)

[leonstafford]

@patrickdk77 that will be brilliant, thanks! I'll give it a try

[petewilcock]

I'd be happy to pay for a premium version tbh. I've paid for themes and a variety of other plugins here and there, so one that I can really leverage for a static site is worth the money. Always happy to pay for something that'll be refined and developed over time with more options and error handling/feedback :) I'd always pick that over something promising that gets abandoned because the author needs to eat!

[leonstafford]

Thanks @petewilcock! Eating less a concern for me, can probably survive on my body fat for a year :D Shelter is the kicker here in Australia. Still holding off on going Freemius route for now, but will definitely be submitting plugins to wp.org repo. I re-enabled other donation options besides Patreon, which has brought in a few more $ already this week. Also working on a job app for a WP engineer role nearby, which could definitely help take the pressure off.