Building a Sustainable WordPress Plugin Business
Jakob here 🖐
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Michael Barinov is a WordPress developer born in Belarus and based in Poland, specializing in WooCommerce plugins. He has worked with WordPress for over a decade, starting with basic freelance projects before experimenting with themes and eventually focusing on plugins - an area better suited to his strengths and, at the time, less competitive.
Today, Michael runs two plugins full-time: Advanced Woo Search and Advanced Woo Labels. Advanced Woo Search has been on the market for nearly ten years, while Advanced Woo Labels launched in 2020 after about six months of development. The latter is available in free and paid versions, with the paid plugin offering advanced features through a yearly subscription.
Most growth has come organically through the WordPress.org repository. The free version of Advanced Woo Labels has over 10,000 active installs and has driven the majority of paid conversions, now supporting several hundred customers and consistent monthly revenue.
Read the full story
https://www.fakemayo.com/p/how-michael-is-making-a-living-from-two-woocommerce-plugins
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The freemium strategy via WordPress.org repository is such an underrated distribution channel. 10,000+ active installs acting as a funnel for paid conversions is the dream - you're essentially getting free distribution from the world's largest CMS ecosystem.
The decade-long timeline is interesting too. Advanced Woo Search being around for nearly 10 years shows the power of compounding in plugin businesses. Every year of consistent updates builds more trust and more organic SEO juice.
Curious about Michael's approach to handling support at scale - that's usually where plugin businesses hit a wall. Free users expecting paid-level support can eat up all your time if you don't set boundaries early.