Building a browser extension empire

[uhhfeef]

Rooting for you man. Keep pushing!

 

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[uhhfeef]

Exciting stuff!! Would love to see how you navigate the execution in those 6 months.

By the way, what do you use to monetize your extension? I looked into extpay, paypal, paddle, stripe.. but i'm going to go with extpay as that's the easiest way to start monetization for my extension.

 

[uhhfeef]

I use Paddle because I dont want to deal with sales taxes.

They take care of everything. At the end of the month, the send me the money.They pay the taxes on the sales to the various governments around the world.

I send a copy of the wire transfer to my accountant, and they report it to the Swedish tax office. It literally takes 2 minutes of my time each month.

I have a Nextjs web application that receives the payment notifications from Paddle. The extension talks to the Nextjs app to know which user is paid or free.

ah thank you so much for clearing that out. yes I've heard paddle makes payments seamless

 

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[Tau Ceti]

LMAO. I'm proud of your progress, you're an inspiration to me. Currently done with the idea validation process and am now about to move to learning the tech.

Can't wait for the reflection post.

Thanks man. I am rooting for you as well. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have some questions.

 

[Matt Sun]

Thank you, I read all your post. Very inspiring.
I'm currently halfway through the Odin Project's React course, then NodeJs course and then try to get a part-time job and launch my app and heavily market it through TIkTok.

Still there is much to learn and work to do so this post is not wishful writing but something concrete.

Hope you do great in 2024 !

 

[Tau Ceti]

Thread moved to GOLD, thanks for sharing your insights.

This business, no matter how it ends or proceeds, was a WIN. Congrats to yourself.

Thanks a lot for the Gold. I did not expect that.

This forum and your books changed my life, they opened my eyes to new possibilities and I am very grateful for it.

 

[Tau Ceti]

Thank you, I read all your post. Very inspiring.
I'm currently halfway through the Odin Project's React course, then NodeJs course and then try to get a part-time job and launch my app and heavily market it through TIkTok.

Still there is much to learn and work to do so this post is not wishful writing but something concrete.

Hope you do great in 2024 !

Nice. it's great that you are going through the Odin project. I personally used FreeCodeCamp which is completely free as well. (not saying the Odin project is bad)

I will try my hand at TikTok marketing in 2024 as well (potentially)

I hope you do well as well in 2024.

 

[Tau Ceti]

Interesting, that does seem like a massive benefit indeed.

How do those tests work?

I know about puppeteer for testing websites, but doubt that works in the context of browser extensions (or does it?).

And even then, not sure how you'd structure this and what to test for.

Can you give a quick insight into that?

No worries. This is still subject to change but it will be a combination of API tests, UI tests and finally some basic uptime checks.

I think the API test will account for 85% to 90% of those tests probably.

This is one service I am thinking of using for the uptime tests: Online or not .

For the API test use mostly Jest + Chai (both JS libraries) and for the UI tests I am not sure yet but I will probably try to do something similar to what is described in this guide: UI tests guide with Nextjs

With the UI tests, you want to test that your components render properly base on a set of parameters. You can make these tests as simple or as complex as needed.

For the API tests, you wnat to test that the endpoints validate the users, and update the data according to the code. That can be quite complex depending of the actions that your endpoint do.

The uptime checks are quite easy because its done mostly through a GUI and those are just basic sanity checks. A sanity check is there as an early warning and it usually detects that a site is up or down and maybe you can also watch the latency. So if your site usually renders in less than 1s and after an update it takes 2s, then maybe something happened and that needs to be investigated.

 

[Bounce Back]

No worries. This is still subject to change but it will be a combination of API tests, UI tests and finally some basic uptime checks.

I think the API test will account for 85% to 90% of those tests probably.

This is one service I am thinking of using for the uptime tests: Online or not .

For the API test use mostly Jest + Chai (both JS libraries) and for the UI tests I am not sure yet but I will probably try to do something similar to what is described in this guide: UI tests guide with Nextjs

With the UI tests, you want to test that your components render properly base on a set of parameters. You can make these tests as simple or as complex as needed.

For the API tests, you wnat to test that the endpoints validate the users, and update the data according to the code. That can be quite complex depending of the actions that your endpoint do.

The uptime checks are quite easy because its done mostly through a GUI and those are just basic sanity checks. A sanity check is there as an early warning and it usually detects that a site is up or down and maybe you can also watch the latency. So if your site usually renders in less than 1s and after an update it takes 2s, then maybe something happened and that needs to be investigated.

On UI functional side industry standard has become cypress but webdriver/selenium still the go-to / still running in a lot of enterprise shops.

On UI unit side RTL (react-testing-library) but its very different than the typical approaches that have been around for a while like enzyme where you can't really be so particular about coverage %s since its more behavior driven (simulating functional/ui integration)

 

[circleme]

Great post. I hope you are doing well with the paid version at this point. Any updates?

I'm in the building process of an SaaS myself and this thread helped me to get some valuable insights. Keep it up if you don't mind!

 

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[circleme]

I see, ty.

I'm starting small as well. The "let the market guide you" recommendation is gold. I'm pretty sure that I'm unaware of many problems that someone else or maybe a lot of my potential customers have.

Regardings your content marketing strategy:

So, you are basically writing content about topics or questions that your potential customers might have, right? Have you created a new blog/website for that or do you have your own website where you promote your chrome extension + blog about anything realted to it?

It kind of surprises me that you aren't doing keyword research at all but at the end of the day, if the content you are writing creates value, keyword research is secondary anyways.

 

[Tau Ceti]

I see, ty.

I'm starting small as well. The "let the market guide you" recommendation is gold. I'm pretty sure that I'm unaware of many problems that someone else or maybe a lot of my potential customers have.

Regardings your content marketing strategy:

So, you are basically writing content about topics or questions that your potential customers might have, right? Have you created a new blog/website for that or do you have your own website where you promote your chrome extension + blog about anything realted to it?

It kind of surprises me that you aren't doing keyword research at all but at the end of the day, if the content you are writing creates value, keyword research is secondary anyways.

I let the users guide me in terms of what they want me to build. This way I know that it wont be a waste of time.

I don't do keyword research. Instead I put myself in the shoes of my users and ask myself, what would I be looking for if I had the problems I am trying to solve. I write down questions and then write articles about the answers to those questions. Then I update the articles later on to polish them.

Is it perfect? probably not. I am not an SEO guru. I just do my best and refine my technique. I tried my hand at programmatic SEO last year. It was disaster and I am still paying the price for it. So there is room for improvements. That's for sure.

The marketing website is also the entry point for the saas and it has a blog section.

 

[circleme]

I let the users guide me in terms of what they want me to build. This way I know that it wont be a waste of time.

I don't do keyword research. Instead I put myself in the shoes of my users and ask myself, what would I be looking for if I had the problems I am trying to solve. I write down questions and then write articles about the answers to those questions. Then I update the articles later on to polish them.

Is it perfect? probably not. I am not an SEO guru. I just do my best and refine my technique. I tried my hand at programmatic SEO last year. It was disaster and I am still paying the price for it. So there is room for improvements. That's for sure.

The marketing website is also the entry point for the saas and it has a blog section.

I see.

I'm curious: What did you do with programmatic SEO that did not work? What was your initial goal with programmatic SEO?

 

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[circleme]

Thanks for your update @Tau Ceti !

As your thread title is "Building a browser extension empire": Any plans for other browser extensions in the near future? Are u trying to get the first to a certain amount of MRR and then switch to project B or what's your plan for increasing your extension "portfolio"?

Kind regards

 

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[leviathan]

Quick end of the week update.

I think it is important to share when good things happen and when bad things happen too.
Entrepreneurship is not smooth sailing and it certainly is not for the faint-hearted.

Something started happening a few days ago, the extension started losing users by the hundreds. Its now sitting at around 1700 active weekly users and going down day by day.

At first I thought maybe I had a lot of users uninstalling the extension because they did not need it anymore or did not like the latest update.

But after looking into the numbers I couldn't find any reasons to believe that is what happened.

The reason for that is that when a user uninstalls the extension, I redirect them to a web page on the website so that they can leave some feedback if they so desire.

99% of them do not leave any feedback but my website analytics pick up that someone visited this page, this way I know approximately how many users uninstall the extension each day.

I use the same process when someone installs the extension as well.

Looking back at the last months, I can see that the number of people uninstalling the extension is pretty steady while the number of installs is increasing.

That means in theory that the number of weekly users as defined in the Chrome store should be increasing. And that is what I was seeing until a few days ago.

So something changed but I am not sure what.

According to the chrome store, the definition of weekly users is as follow:

The approximate number of Chrome browsers that loaded the item in the past seven days. This includes enabled, disabled, and unknown statuses of the item.

So it looks like some browsers have not loaded the extension in the last week. When I released the new version a week ago with the paid plan, I also had to request one extra permission in the browser. If a user does not re-enable the extension with the new permission, then it won't work.

My theory is that the users who appear to have gone actually still have the extension but it was automatically disabled after the update and therefore it never gets loaded, which would explain the steep decline without seeing the matching number of uninstalls.

I have reached out to my network to understand a bit more about the user count on the Chrome store but there is not much that I can do about that for now.

I am not going to worry to much about that for now and keep focusing on the important stuff.

I am going to keep developing the missing features of the Starter plan and get a new version of the extension out by the end of next week.

My goal is to get at least another paying subscriber.

If I can get 1, then I can get 10 and if I can get 10, I can get a hundred.

Perseverance is key.

In retrospect, perhaps a better approach would've been to make the paid version as a separate extension. This way you could've just offered a link that redirected the users from the free app to the paid one that they would then install it with all the new permissions.
The google extensions are a bit laggy in this regard. Great insight though, much appreciated!

 

[circleme]

So at this point the browser extension empire is on hold as I am focusing on becoming ramen profitable and then grow this business to become a fastlane business.

I see. As I'm not as far as you are with my SaaS, I still thought about diversification when thinking about the business model for the first time. What I mean by that, is, that I completely understand that focus on one thing or one project has it's advantages (more than disadvantages imho), but you kinda put all eggs into one basket. I for example work on ONE business model but my plan is to produce MULTIPLE SaaS products - not necessarily in the same industry as well. Of course you can't go BIG that way and I focus myself on creating Micro SaaS products but at the end of the day not just one. I guess there are many pros and cons regarding my process.

I'm glad that the user drop stopped for you and I'm looking forward hearing from you every now and then if you don't mind taking the time to update us! =) All in all a really interesting story so far. As interesting as your "CV", as I've read your introduction yesterday.

Kind regards

 

[circleme]

IMHO diversification is only good if you have a few things going for you first:

- a stable income
- spare time
- a good way to multitask

I'm exactly in that position right now, except the last one. You can read my initial threads if you want. tldr: I'm an ex software dev that has transitioned into data-driven-marketing freelance a few years ago after university. I have reduced my client base a few weeks ago so I can invoice around 1 day per week which is enough for me to cover my bills. The rest of the week will go into my fastlane business. (which will be micro SaaS)​

I mean it is already hard enough to start one SaaS, i cant imagine what it takes to start multiple ones concurrently and keeping a job at the same time, and have enough time for family obligations and so on.

I'm completely with you here. I did never say that I'm going to start them concurrently and the rest of your sentence applies to you, not to me.

I understand what you are trying to do. i get it. You probably want to create a few Saas and then market them and then kill the ones that don't work.

That's basically the plan, yeah. At the end of the day it will be something like:

1. Find really niche problems with niche audience
2. Potential need analysis
3. Creating MVP (it's a bit more than that, as I do focus on micro SaaS and the difference between the MVP and the final product isn't that huge in terms of functionality; I'm really bad at frontend design, so the alpha, beta version will look like shit most of the time)
4. Market the product through a pre-defined process (Inbound & Outbound)
5. Repeat 1-4 with a new solution

I'm not talking about MVP development which takes upfront of 200 hours. I'm taking about one or two weeks max. and get it out instantly to validate it even more.

I hope you do understand my reasoning behind a little bit more now but even if you do and as you've already mentioned, I can be completely wrong with my whole process.

Actually as of today, I am officially at $USD 100 MRR. I hope to get to 500 by June and 2500 by the end of the year.

Big congrats! Especially in your status quo, that's quite something!

 

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[Simon Angel]

Thanks for your response.

I need to start emailing my current users with the weekly updates. I need to get on with it as soon as possible.

I will keep doing what I am doing and keep iterating and improving the product.

Since there was a recent thread about creating a Chrome extension with just ChatGPT, I'm curious if the extension you coded is replicable with it as well.

I've also read through the whole thread, but as someone with little coding knowledge (and SaaS in general), are your paid clients for the extension itself, or are they paying for a separate software that they have to download?

Also, how are you pricing this? You had some price points laid out earlier in your journey, but then there were some talks about your charging $250/m per client. Or is that per year?

 

[circleme]

@Tau Ceti

The majority of your users are free customers. How is your offer differentiated for free customers and premium (paying) customers? Freemium model with more features?

I myself have to start thinking about the right pricing model and thought that at the beginning I would like one thing above all: to make my solution available to as many users as possible. How do I achieve that? By giving away the software for free. In general, I think a lot of the subscription model, but not necessarily at the start of a new SaaS. Especially if my server/hosting costs per new user are within limits, I think to myself, why not just go 4free?

I'm still at the beginning of the topic of price model + SaaS and don't really know any other besides the classic subscription model and freemium. I would still be interested in which versions you still consider generally useful (far from exactly your product).

Somewhere I have the feeling that the subscription idea is actually not always the right one. Once I have enough users, you should always be able to capitalize on it in some way, shouldn't you? e.g. reselling the data, or forming partnerships, etc.

I'm curious about your opinion and maybe other SaaS founders would like to comment.

 

[srodrigo]

Following. You are doing amazing!

I heard on some video of Chrome extensions being a very overlooked business. I think you are right.

I actually built a Chrome extension for a client a few years ago as a one-off. But I never thought of approaching them as micro-SaaS. I'll stay away for now as I've got more than enough ideas dragging me haha, but good to keep an eye.

I was thinking about making a free "site blocker" extension, just for GitHub portfolio. Also because I used them, but the free ones suck (usually bad UI), and I'm not paying to add more than 3-5 sites, lol.

 

[circleme]

It's a freemium model. I offer some well designed and useful functionality to the free users, and offer more functionality to the paid users.

Is your freemium model time-gated as well? e.g. 7 days free, than continue with the free and restricted version or switch to the premium (paid) version.

Yes the majority of my users are free users.

How is customer support effort for those free users so far? Do you offer any at all or do you have a FAQ or knowledge base?

 

[circleme]

And a few more questions:

Why did you decide to go the Chrome Extension route, even though it kind of restricts Control in CENTS? Are Chrome Extensions the only way to deliver your solution to your customers or have you had any other reasoning behind it?

I do love the "simplicity" of Chrome Extensions or any other plugin-orientied apps (like Shopify Apps or Wordpress plugins) compared to a full-stack web app (where you basically have to do everything yourself and don't rely on a "marketplace") but still went the route of the latter.

I'm really looking forward hearing about your reasoning for Chrome extensions and also your opinion on other types of SaaS (like other plugins, Desktop apps or classic Web and Mobile Apps).

Thanks in advance and keep going, your journey sounds awesome!

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Also I have an FAQ, lots of blog posts and I am working on upgrading my documentation.

 

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[circleme]

I love your thought process behind this.

So the bottom line is, you start with a MicroSaaS that doesn't necessarily meet the control and barrier to entry imperative, for example, but you later get control of a standalone SaaS app that is similar or the same as your Chrome Extension?

I always think of things like this a bit too complicated and should that be the case, I think your "strategy" is really great. I am, as you noted, facing challenge after challenge after having to do everything myself and no one knows my standalone SaaS. Since my solution could also be mapped via a Chrome Extension, I've been thinking about going that route for a few weeks now. This way I could make progress much faster and get the first user feedback and scale (albeit 4free, which I wouldn't care about either).

If I understand correctly, the Chrome Extension is considered the option for you with the highest chance of success, since you already have on demand traffic in the Chrome Store, right? Would you recommend the same approach if you were programming for an eco-system like Shopify, for example?

With my solution, I actually have the problem that I would have a lot of options to launch it (standalone app, chrome extension, shopify app, etc.).

Also, do you have any references for me from other people who have taken or are taking a similar path as you? I've been following Rob Walling and Rick Blyth for a while now (I highly recommend the latter, he specializes in Chrome Extensions).

Thanks again for your input. It helps me more than you think.

 

[Pranav_Banerjee]

Thanks for the follow.

i don't necessarily agree that building an extension is any easier than building a SaaS.

In fact depending on the kind of extension you are building it could be a lot harder as an extension requires to learn new paradigms like:
- what does a background script do?
- what does the content script do?
- how does messaging work between the scripts?
- async/await confusion

and many more.

One thing I am going to recommend is to use Typescript. This will provide you with best DX and will catch many mistakes you will inevitably make.

Good luck to you!

It definitely got more complex with the MV3.

I need the chrome.webrequest API to certain things that were allowed in MV2 but are no longer allowed in MV3. This is replaced by the declarativenetrequest API, which is far too complex for me to understand, and the documentation for it is a mess. I am taking my time to get it working.

Sorry for that short rant, needed to let that out.

Anyway, waiting for your progress threads

 

[adnanazmi]

Current status

After posting my introduction post, I thought it was time to create an execution thread.

I have two browser extensions currently live.

Extension #1

This extension is dormant, as in I haven't updated it in a while and it is very niche browser extension. I have looked at monetizing/selling it but I don't think there is way to currently do that. It sits at around 150 installs and does not grow much as the market it is serving is relatively small. Nonetheless I consider it a success and used it to build the foundation of extension #2. At this stage I am going to focus on extension #2 exclusively and leave this extension to be. It doesn't require any maintenance fortunately.

Extension #2

This is the focus of this thread. This extension has potential to become a source of income. It is growing steadily and my SEO efforts are starting to payoff. It has about 300 users currently and gets about 30 to 50 new users every week.

At this stage the extension is free and voluntarily limited and could do a lot more. But so far I have not been providing more value to my users because I wanted to keep some functionality hidden to be able to release a paid plan with these extra functionalities.

Before spending more time on this project, I validated the idea in several ways bay asking myself the following questions:

1. Is this a problem that people are willing to pay for?
   
   Yes, because there are other competing extensions that are quite popular ( around the 5000 users mark) and charging users around $30 per month to use the full extension's functionality.
   
2. Can I provide a better experience than the competition?
   
   Absolutely. I currently receive emails from my users every few days, and exchange with them regularly. I understand their problems and what they are trying to accomplish. I can build what they need. I do things that don't scale and treat every user very well by responding to each and every question they have in timely manner and spending as long as it takes with them until their issue is resolved.
   
   
   
3. Can I outrank the competition in Google search results?
   
   Yes, I am currently in the process of ranking many articles and blog posts above the competition's results which leads me to having a steady flow of users visiting my landing page every day (currently I have 10 to 15 organic clicks on the website).
   
   
   
4. Can this business be scaled?
   
   Yes, this business can be scaled. The plan is to have the extension as a middle of the road solution. User's get all the benefits of the extension but they still have to do some of the work themselves.
   
   The fully automated solution to their problem can be created via SaaS platform that will do everything on their behalf. This solution is not hard to build, I already have a prototype working.

Whats is the expected conversion rate between free users and paid users?

After reading a few articles on this issue, I have come to the conclusion that the conversion rate is between 5% to 10% usually. I follow this guy who has an extension whose made up of 30% paying users. This is the exception and not the rule but one can dream.

Current goals for the next 30 days

• release the paid plan for the extension
• convert at least 5 users to the paid plan
• finish the MVP the SaaS platform and find at least 2 beta users

I had a very similar idea. Can we chat? I get tons of Chrome Extension Ideas! and some of them are GOLD. I tried implementing some but man I can't seem to get the extension to actually work... Can I inbox you? Maybe we can partner on an idea? I am a 2nd-year at Uni pursuing a Software Engineering Degree part-time. More than Coding, I feel my strong suit is in sales, business planning, and ideas!

 

[adnanazmi]

Hi. Thanks for responding.

Can I inbox you?

If you want , I am always keen to have a chat.

Maybe we can partner on an idea?

Unfortunately I don't have time to take on another project. I am currently working on my project and I have my day job as well so time is limited.

I feel my strong suit is in sales, business planning, and ideas!

I think being strong in sales is an asset but unfortunately being strong in ideas does not mean much tbh. You will find that most business work based on their execution not the idea itself. Myself, I have tons of ideas per day but only a limited time to execute them so I suggest you work on executing your best ideas.

As for your implementation issues, I suggest you start with something basic. Then increase the complexity of your project as you add more features.

There are tons of chrome extensions starter packs available on GH. That's usually where I look when I don't know how to do something. The official docs are pretty good as well.

Good luck to you.

Thank you Tau for the advice!

Tau, is it really not possible to collect your users email addresses? When they download your extension can't you redirect to a page to collect their information? I think you can use this to get more 5 star ratings as well. Please double down on this I think this is something that will open up more possibilities for you...

I read somewhere that if you are charging $1 for a product, make the product worth atleast $10 better yet worth $100. This way your customers will promote your product themselves. If you can get them to be really impressed with the value they will be free promoters of your brand. This is key to expanding business as this way as you scale you won't have to worry about marketing.

Also Tau why don't you create an Instagram account for this extension and promote it? 1 post a day. Comment on posts relvant to your niche. Post memes (if feasible). Post dumb videos that gathers attention. That's what I would do.

Also Twitter!

 

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[Simon Angel]

I'll likely be undertaking a similar venture very soon after spontaneously coming up with a solid idea and doing market research with promising results. Will re-read this whole thread.

 

[Andy Black]

My users don't hang around on Instagram, most of them have private Slack/Facebook groups that are closed off to outsiders.

Do you have a Facebook group for free and/or paid users?

 

[Tau Ceti]

Maybe I ll create one in the future. I am not sure yet. For now, I am working mostly on getting to PMF as soon as possible.