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Building a browser extension empire

Tau Ceti

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Sep 15, 2014
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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
 
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Matt Sun

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Hi, congrats. Even if people don't pay yet, they download your stuff and use it so they find it valuable. That's great.

If you don't mind me asking, what programing language do you use to create these extensions ?
 

Tau Ceti

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Hi, congrats. Even if people don't pay yet, they download your stuff and use it so they find it valuable. That's great.

If you don't mind me asking, what programing language do you use to create these extensions ?
No problem at all. The tech part is actually pretty boring. React + typescript + JQuery.

I try to keep things very simple.
 

Tau Ceti

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October 2022 report

What went well:
  • Traffic is increasing steadily on the marketing site. 300 hundred organic visitors this month.
  • The extension's user growth is solid. Just crossed the 320 users mark this morning
  • The latest version of the extension is a success. No users have contacted me to report any issues so far.
  • Talked to 4 users this month.
What went wrong:
  • It took too long to release the new version of the extension.
  • The programmatic SEO experiment I am conducting is not yielding any tangible results yet. About half of the new pages have not been indexed yet. So maybe it is just a matter of waiting a month and see if anything changes.
  • I did not publish enough articles on the marketing blog due to being focused on releasing the programmatic SEO experiment and the new version of the extension.
Goals for November 2022
  • Cross the 500 active users mark for the extension.
  • Publish 8 new high quality articles
  • Release the paid plan and get at least 5 paying user
Challenges ahead:
  • My wife is starting a new job which means I have to do more house chores for the next 4 to 6 weeks which it could cut some of my free time dedicated to working on this project.
  • I have to go on a work trip for 4 days where I am afraid my productivity will be greatly impacted.
  • I am catching up with a very good friend at the beginning of December so I need to spend some time to plan the trip properly and book my flights and accommodation as well as research things to do at the destination.
Game plan:
  • Work on the extension/blog between 7am until 9am and also work between 7:30pm and 9pm 6 days a week.
  • Take Saturday off as a family day.
  • Read marketing blog posts and plan the week ahead on Sunday.
  • Try to use the Pomodoro technique to increase productivity.
 
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inputchip

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I'm very bullish on Chrome extensions as a business model. It's one of the most overlooked.

The stats speak for themselves:

Apple App Store: 1 billion iPhone users
2 million iOS apps = 500 users : 1 iOS app

Google Play Store: 2 billion Android users
3 million apps = 667 users : 1 app

Chrome Store: 2 billion users
200,000 extensions = 10,000 users : 1 extension

Bottom line: Launching a Chrome extension gives you 20 times more potential users than an iOS app. There is significantly less competition in the Chrome extension marketplace, making it a great opportunity for your app to gain traction.

1. There is an existing app store for discovery, so it is easier to find browser extensions.
2. Low barrier to install (does not require admin rights even)
2. There is relatively low competition for browser extensions.
3. You can focus on one channel (such as Chrome with 50% or more market share).
4. The natural evolution into freemium makes it easier to monetize
5. People are more likely to pay for desktop apps versus mobile
6. Browser extensions integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, making them even more convenient to use.

Notable examples:

LastPass: 25m+ users
Loom: $73m funding
Grammarly: Valued $1B+
Honey: $4B sale
 

Tau Ceti

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I'm very bullish on Chrome extensions as a business model. It's one of the most overlooked.

The stats speak for themselves:

Apple App Store: 1 billion iPhone users
2 million iOS apps = 500 users : 1 iOS app

Google Play Store: 2 billion Android users
3 million apps = 667 users : 1 app

Chrome Store: 2 billion users
200,000 extensions = 10,000 users : 1 extension

Bottom line: Launching a Chrome extension gives you 20 times more potential users than an iOS app. There is significantly less competition in the Chrome extension marketplace, making it a great opportunity for your app to gain traction.

1. There is an existing app store for discovery, so it is easier to find browser extensions.
2. Low barrier to install (does not require admin rights even)
2. There is relatively low competition for browser extensions.
3. You can focus on one channel (such as Chrome with 50% or more market share).
4. The natural evolution into freemium makes it easier to monetize
5. People are more likely to pay for desktop apps versus mobile
6. Browser extensions integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, making them even more convenient to use.

Notable examples:

LastPass: 25m+ users
Loom: $73m funding
Grammarly: Valued $1B+
Honey: $4B sale

I agree with everything you said. The Chrome extension market is not very saturated once you removed the old/outdated/broken extensions.

Just like everything, it's comes down to the niche that you choose and the existing competition. My extension has some pretty big extensions as competitors but Its growing nicely.

I have a lot of ideas to expand the niche I am currently in but none of those will work if I don't get those 5 first paying customers, so that is my main focus now.
 

Tau Ceti

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Mid-week update

I published a new blog post today.
The goal is to publish 2 high quality blog posts peer week until the end of the year.

Yesterday was a great day SEO wise. I got a CTR of 22% in Google search which is more than I could expect. I try to target the keywords that the big players are overlooking.

Tonight I will start working on the next blog post.

Then back onto building the paid plan's functionality.

I also gained 10 users yesterday. Good momentum but this is a marathon and until I get my first paying user, it means absolutely nothing.
 
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Tau Ceti

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Small update.

I published the 2nd blog post yesterday and also did a bit of maintenance by compressing all the images on the marketing site. The goal for the compression was to have faster loading pages which is metric that Google watches like a hawk.

The compression was a success.

I shed about 50% of the images weight on average which means that in theory, the site will load faster. Which is great from an SEO standpoint, which in turn should lead to more people trying the extension, and finally hopefully turn them into paying customers.

Is this a premature optimization? Maybe but its done now so...

Next, I created a Stripe account to accept payments and spent some time setting up the plans and subscriptions as well as reading how to integrate the subscription logic in the site.

There is still the challenge of checking when a user has an active subscription(from the extension) but I ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I think that the payment plan + account creation will be done by Sunday night or Monday night next week. To make this work I have to work simultaneously on both the extension and the website at the same time as the account creation/payments happens on the site and not via the extension.

Anyway, all of this to say that I am busy thinking, planning and doing.

As for the paid plans, i have settled on:
- $0 free plan - Basic (existing functionality, extension as is currently)
- $49/month - Starter (extended functionality for the extension, still requires the user to do some things, priority email support....)
- $199/month - Pro - fully managed version (Basically a SAAS version of the extension that does everything for you)

The Pro plan is not available(and not even planned at this stage) and wont be built if I don't manage to get at least 10 paying users on the Starter plan.

One step at a time.
 

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HOLY SHIT! I am following this thread for knawwledge!
FASTLANE Forum rocks since 1999
 

football4life

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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
good stuff buddy.
 
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Tau Ceti

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Quick update on this beautiful Monday.

Number of users: 395
Blog post published last week: 2
Blog post published this week: 0

The account creation on the marketing website is done. The payment part is taking slightly longer than expected but should be done soon.

Then comes the implementation of the premium functionalities within the extension. I have a rough list of features that need to be added. Expected development time left before able to release the paid plan is roughly 20 to 30 hours. then I will need about 8 hours to test the payment flows and the new functionalities.

Then the extension will need to be submitted to the Chrome store for approval which can take up to 5 business days.

The goal for this week is to published 2 blogs posts, finish the payment system and start working on the premium functionalities for the extension.

Upcoming issues:

I am going away on a work trip for 4 days this week, so it will impact my development time but I ll do my best to do some work everyday.
 

Tau Ceti

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It's been two weeks since my last update.

What went well:
- released a new version of the extension to fix a few bugs that some users had reported
- wrote 4 blog posts
- the user base is growing nicely => closing in on 600 active users

What went wrong:
- I had to go on a work trip for 4 days which put me really behind in terms of feature released and blog posts written so I had to play catch up this week and work longer hours to make up the time.
- I made some progress on the users accounts and payment plans but I still have to implement the paid plan functionality. At this rate the payment plans won't be available for public use before mid-December if all goes well.
- found a new bug in the extension just after getting the new version published so I need to spend some time on fixing it and submit a new version for approval this week.

Whats next?
- tidy up a few things and check the articles written this week for spelling mistakes and grammar(it was a very rushed job)
- keep building the user accounts/payment features and get approved by Paddle for the payments

All in all, its been a tough week, on top of that I have been put on major project at my job with a hard deadline so my days are long and tiring. But that is the price to pay to regain my freedom so I am not about to throw my hands up and the air and give up.

Things will get bumpier once the paid plans are released. No doubt. So I better toughen up and be prepared to handle issues.
 

BigBuddha

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It's been two weeks since my last update.

What went well:
- released a new version of the extension to fix a few bugs that some users had reported
- wrote 4 blog posts
- the user base is growing nicely => closing in on 600 active users

What went wrong:
- I had to go on a work trip for 4 days which put me really behind in terms of feature released and blog posts written so I had to play catch up this week and work longer hours to make up the time.
- I made some progress on the users accounts and payment plans but I still have to implement the paid plan functionality. At this rate the payment plans won't be available for public use before mid-December if all goes well.
- found a new bug in the extension just after getting the new version published so I need to spend some time on fixing it and submit a new version for approval this week.

Whats next?
- tidy up a few things and check the articles written this week for spelling mistakes and grammar(it was a very rushed job)
- keep building the user accounts/payment features and get approved by Paddle for the payments

All in all, its been a tough week, on top of that I have been put on major project at my job with a hard deadline so my days are long and tiring. But that is the price to pay to regain my freedom so I am not about to throw my hands up and the air and give up.

Things will get bumpier once the paid plans are released. No doubt. So I better toughen up and be prepared to handle issues.
Loving the updates - keep it up! The growth in users looks awesome!

I follow some TikTokers that post about different extensions that solve everyday problems - have you thought about eventually tapping into the use of influencer marketing?
 
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Tau Ceti

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Its been a while.

What went well:
  • User base is growing. Just passed 700 users roughly. I should have close to 1000 users by the end of the year.
  • Recruited 3 beta testers for the paid plans
  • Published 2 new versions of the extension to fix more bugs. Also made the extension lighter(in MBs) (66% lighter in fact) which means that it's better for users with computers who are a bit slow or don't have too much RAM.
  • Published 2 new blog posts
What went wrong:
  • Did not make much progress on the paid plans yet. Bug fixes and blog posts have used up all my time.
  • Found 1 bug that I can't seem to be able to fix. This user has been telling me that there is something wrong with the extension for the last 2 weeks. I have tried to fix the issue in many different ways but it doesn't seem to do the trick. At this point, I have sent the user a video with detailed steps to have them do more investigation on my behalf so that I can help them but the user stopped responding after my last email.
Notes:

I spent 3 days on a trip with a childhood friend I had not seen in a while. Obviously this is the kind of thing that takes time away from the business.

I am not ready to sacrifice every relationship while building a business so I bit the bullet and accepted that this time was not going to be spent on building my business but it was worth it. Time with loved ones is invaluable in my opinion.

One of the beta testers is part of a large group of my target customers(around 500 members) and has agreed that they will recommend the paid plan to the group once it meets their expectations.

The beta testing group will be a process of co-creation if I can call it that. The beta testers get 6 months on the paid plan for free and in exchange, they will tell me which pain points they want to get rid of by using the extension and also help me prioritize the next features as well as report the bugs if some are found.

To me this is a win win situation. The beta users will help me create the paid plan and I will get some early feedback. By the end of the beta testing phase I should have a rock solid paid plan.

Non beta users will still be able to purchase the paid plan during the beta testing phase but it wont be complete until the beta testing phase is over. I will keep adding features to the paid plan until I deem it worthy of $49
/month and then get on to building the the pro plan.

I am thinking of adding error reporting software to the extension but I am a bit reluctant since this could be small invasion of privacy. On the other hand I would not have to wait for users to report bugs and could preemptively fix the bugs found.

If someone has an opinion on this matter, I would be happy to hear it.

That's it for now.
 

Tau Ceti

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Loving the updates - keep it up! The growth in users looks awesome!

I follow some TikTokers that post about different extensions that solve everyday problems - have you thought about eventually tapping into the use of influencer marketing?
Thanks for your reply. Once the paid plan is out of beta-testing then I don't see why this could not happen.

For now i don't pay for ads and only rely on SEO or the Chrome store listing to get new users. This basic approaches have serve me well. It allows me to grow the user base relatively quickly but I am not overwhelmed with bug reports. If the user base grew from say 1000 to 3000 overnight, that could be a problem in terms of customer support.

Only time will tell. For now the focus is getting the paid plan out, then onboard around 100 user on the paid plan, then maybe start advertising.

Thanks for your suggestion in any case. I appreciate it.
 

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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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Tau Ceti

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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!
Hi.

Thanks for your comment, I haven't written here in a while. It's been a pretty busy start of the year.
The extension is growing well. Approaching 2000 active users.

The paid plan has been released about a week ago. So far I have about 70 users on the free trial and 1 paying user who did not even bother with the free trial and signed up for the paid plan straight away.

I suspect that out of the 70 users on the free trial, I will only be able to convert 5 of them to the paid plan.
But i will only know that once some of those user's trial end.

The reason is simple, the paid plan is not yet complete. I am adding more features and fixing bugs as we speak and this process will continue for the next few months until it is offering enough value to the users.

I did not want to wait until the plan was complete before releasing the plan so here I am.

Once that is done, I will start working on the higher tier plan , called the Pro plan which will require a lot of work but enable me to deliver even more value.

The plans are structured on the basis of automation.

What I mean by that is, if you use the free plan, you need to do a lot of things manually. The Starter plan(which is the middle of the road plan I just released) allows user to automate some tasks but not all.

The Pro plan( most expensive plan around USD 200/250 per month) will allow users to automate 95% of the tasks as well as allow them to get to the data they need a lot faster.

All of this to say that I am very happy with the progress I have made. I have also negotiated with my employer to go part time for 3 months so that I can spend half my week building new features and do some marketing for the extension.

At the end of the 3 months, the Starter plan should be complete and the Pro plan should be released but not complete).

I have also on-boarded a few beta testing users who are getting the Starter plan for free for 6 months in exchange for their feedback and ongoing bug reports/ feature suggestions.

One of those beta testers is supposedly part of a large group comprised of my target users and agreed to share the extension with the rest of the group once the Starter plan is completed and mostly bug free.

Obviously i am a bit skeptical of such promises but who knows? If it works out then great, if not, then that's ok too. I am not getting my hopes up and will hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I ll try to write more regular updates although I am trying to avoid distracting myself with anything that doesn't help the business grow currently.

If feels weird saying "I have a business" I actually did not realize this until just now. I have a business. Until now it was just a project that I hoped would turn into a business, but I have crossed the Rubicon.
 

Tau Ceti

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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.
 

circleme

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Hi Tau,

thanks for your in depth answer. Really appreciate it!

200/250$ per month seems to be quite a lot for a chrome extension. Do you mind elaborating a bit regarding your the use-case of your extension?

I'm sorry to hear, that users are uninstalling but maybe it's just a tracking issue as well.
  1. Can you tell a little bit more about your "from idea to implementation to marketing process"?
  2. Why this app (how did you find the problem you are solving?
  3. Why chrome extensions as the first touch-point and the SaaS as the Up-Sell
  4. Why Chrome Extensions at all
  5. How long did it take you to develop your app in total?
  6. Do you follow anyone else in the SaaS industry?
  7. Are there any other monetization opportunities besides the paid plan that you would/wouldn't consider? (like ads for example)
I'm looking forward hearing other updates from you!
 
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Tau Ceti

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Hi Tau,

thanks for your in depth answer. Really appreciate it!

200/250$ per month seems to be quite a lot for a chrome extension. Do you mind elaborating a bit regarding your the use-case of your extension?

I'm sorry to hear, that users are uninstalling but maybe it's just a tracking issue as well.
  1. Can you tell a little bit more about your "from idea to implementation to marketing process"?
  2. Why this app (how did you find the problem you are solving?
  3. Why chrome extensions as the first touch-point and the SaaS as the Up-Sell
  4. Why Chrome Extensions at all
  5. How long did it take you to develop your app in total?
  6. Do you follow anyone else in the SaaS industry?
  7. Are there any other monetization opportunities besides the paid plan that you would/wouldn't consider? (like ads for example)
I'm looking forward hearing other updates from you!

Hi circleme.

Thanks for your questions.

I want to preface that I am not an expert so the answers I will give are simply my own and do not indicate in any way that this the right way to do things.

Do you mind elaborating a bit regarding your the use-case of your extension?

I can't really elaborate more on this topic as my niche is quite small. But regarding your comment on the price, what I can tell you is that my product aims at turning a process that would take many hour each day into a 10 minutes process.

The savings in terms of time would pay off for the users within a week.

Other platforms charge double what I am asking for less functionality. So I think my pricing is on point. It may be slightly under-priced at this point tbh.

Can you tell a little bit more about your "from idea to implementation to marketing process"?

There is really not much to it. I found a small gap in the market, created a simple extension and released it on the chrome store. Then I created a marketing website with a blog. I publish 3-4 new articles every months that are highly targeted for my potential customers. That has allowed me to get the SEO juice going. I am getting around 500 organic clicks from Google and couple hundred more from Bing for free each month.

All posts are written by hand by me. No AI or Chatgpt. I use the google search console to find topics and key words. I keep the process simple.

I don't do paid ads nor guest posts. I haven't posted anything on Reddit. I use to share on Twitter some things but my customers don't use Twitter so I stopped.

I have a contact form on my marketing website and I respond and engage with all the users who message me. That's how I found the beta testers for the Saas.

Why this app (how did you find the problem you are solving?

In my introductory post I talk more about how I got the idea. I wont spam this thread since all this info in the other thread. If something is not clear in the other post, please let me know and I can elaborate a bit more.

Why chrome extensions as the first touch-point and the SaaS as the Up-Sell

Because it is easier to market and target users on the Chrome store. There is relatively low competition and it is good medium for a freemium app.

Why Chrome Extensions at all

Because I could get it out quickly and move on if it did not work.

How long did it take you to develop your app in total?

Impossible to say because I don't track my time but if I had to guess, hundreds of hours between the development, debugging and research.

Do you follow anyone else in the SaaS industry?

I follow a few people on Twitter. I am also part of a small Slack group of saas builders.

Are there any other monetization opportunities besides the paid plan that you would/wouldn't consider? (like ads for example)

Yes, I don't like ads, so I will never monetize with ads. That is the line I am not willing to cross.
 

circleme

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Thank you so much for your response.

my product aims at turning a process that would take many hour each day into a 10 minutes process.

The savings in terms of time would pay off for the users within a week.
My software idea also aims for process cost optimization. How do you market this? Like for example: Before your chrome extension people had to spend 10 hours per week, now only 30 minutes, or something like that?

That has allowed me to get the SEO juice going. I am getting around 500 organic clicks from Google and couple hundred more from Bing for free each month.
That sounds awesome. Especially if the niche is really small. Can u tell how many installs come through SEO and how many through social media like Reddit?
I use the google search console to find topics and key words
Do you mean Keyword Planner? If so, do you target only long-tail kewords or just focus on traffic-rich keywords?

Thanks
 

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Thank you so much for your response.


My software idea also aims for process cost optimization. How do you market this? Like for example: Before your chrome extension people had to spend 10 hours per week, now only 30 minutes, or something like that?


That sounds awesome. Especially if the niche is really small. Can u tell how many installs come through SEO and how many through social media like Reddit?

Do you mean Keyword Planner? If so, do you target only long-tail kewords or just focus on traffic-rich keywords?

Thanks

No worries about the response. My pleasure.

My software idea also aims for process cost optimization. How do you market this? Like for example: Before your chrome extension people had to spend 10 hours per week, now only 30 minutes, or something like that?

Once again its my personal opinion, can't guarantee it applies to you. If I were you I would not roll out a full solution yet as you dont really know what the market wants/needs.

Start building something small. If the process that you are trying to optimize has 20 steps, create something that automates the first 2,3 steps.

Then market it, write about it. If its useful, soon people will reach out to you with use-cases that you haven't thought of and suggestions on how to make your app better.
Basically, you let the market guide you.

As you add more features, you update the copy of your marketing website to reflect the new functionality. That is how I am doing it now.

i build, market, validate, and so on and so forth. And I talk to users. As much as possible.

That sounds awesome. Especially if the niche is really small. Can u tell how many installs come through SEO and how many through social media like Reddit?

I cant say. I don't post anything on Reddit so it does not really apply to me. Also i have no way to know where the users come from when they install the extension. I know how many use the app but that's about it.

I know its been shared on social media like facebook for example, but that is organic and I dont know who shared it or when.

Do you mean Keyword Planner? If so, do you target only long-tail kewords or just focus on traffic-rich keywords?

No I mean the Google search console. You can see queries that led to people clicking on your website. Once a keyword start coming up again and again, i write an article about it if possible.

I keep the process simple. I dont do any keyword planning or anything like that. i write about a topic and I try to mention the app when it is relevant.
 
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circleme

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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.
 

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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

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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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I see.

I'm curious: What did you do with programmatic SEO that did not work? What was your initial goal with programmatic SEO?
It was in hindsight a waste of time. It took me a while to get the programmatic pages out of the door and the search indexes had issues indexing them. I tried to fix the issues but some errors were too esoteric to work out what was going wrong.

In the end I gave it a few months but as it was taking time away fro more productive work I decided to shelve it and move on.

The goal was to create thousands of pages with data collected and create use cases for the extension. The lesson here is: don't fix it if it ain't broken.

In any case, I kept the code and will try to re-implement it later (maybe next year) when I have more bandwidth and have reached PMF.

For now I am sticking with what I know.
 

Tau Ceti

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Quick end of the week update.

I had to take a few days off for medical reasons.
But while i was incapacitated, I actually got 2 new paying customers.

One customer bought an annual plan and the other one a monthly plan.
I also have a customer who subscribed with a coupon code and 2 beta testers who I am giving the product for free during the beta phase.

It feels good to make money while not working. I could get used to that.

Obviously this is just the beginning, the paid plan is not even complete. I will be releasing new functionality next week which should improve the conversion rate as I ll be able to remove some of those "coming soon" labels from the site.

I have big plans for the future, the vision of the product is slowly taking shape in my head and the steps to get there are becoming clearer each day.

In any case, I feel very motivated and despite all the talk of recession and people tightening their belts, it seems that if the product delivers value and fills and actual need, then people are willing to pay for it.

Maybe that will change in the next few months but I will enjoy my temporary success as much as possible.

I try to keep a cool head and tell myself that things can change very quickly.

I also need to start sending emails to my registered users. I need to leverage my list of users and send them product updates more often.

So far I have tried to not reach out unless they reach out to me first. I don't want to spam them. But I need to get over that and come up with a plan.
 

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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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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!
 

Tau Ceti

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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

Well, I guess the title of the thread is becoming little by little irrelevant.

My thought process when creating this thread was to create one extension, market it until it reached around 5K MRR, then find another platform that could have used an extension and repeat the process.

However, after talking with my users and thinking about their pain points and needs, I am fairly convinced that this project could be the only one I need to reach the fastlane.

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.

To be honest I am not thinking this far into the future, I focus on the tasks i need to accomplish for now and take it day by day.

Things are changing and will keep on changing until I reach PMF if I ever reach it.
I will keep my options open.
 

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