I made over $100,000 with a browser extension (CSS Scan), AMA!

Hi, Ken. The best channels so far were Product Hunt (2 launches), Life-time Deals Facebook Groups, Youtube videos (such as this one from WpTuts), Twitter, word of mouth, and SEO.

Yes this please . All of us wanna understand how you've attracted audience and convert them into paying users. Cheers!

Thanks, Toon! Wish you the best of luck with jobdispatch! Unfortunately, there's not that much material about building extensions. I'd say the Chrome Documentation and Firefox MDN helped me the most: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/getstarted/

https://github.com/fregante/Awesome-WebExtensions is pretty nice

Thanks, Harry! Love your work with MarketingExamples.

Hi, Fajar! Thanks, wish I can meet you again too! I love Codecademy's Javascript course, I learned JS from there! For extensions, I'd say Chrome's Docs.

Hi, Leo! Yes, I've failed quite a lot, haha.

I've been trying to build Silicon Valley-ish startups when I was in school (tried Education, Fashion, both failed)

Then I also tried with 2 indie projects before building CSS Scan: mprove ($129 in revenue) and Moniesto (maybe $60 in revenue haha). I did them in my 3 Products in 3 Months challenge:

• Post 1 (mprove)
• Post 2 (Moniesto)

The third product was CSS Scan! :D

What I learned from these:

• Build and launch fast, iterate later
• Build an audience
• Don't be afraid to charge money for your product/service
• You can charge much more than you think
• Sometimes simple is better (mprove sold more than Moniesto)

The product is amazing (at least the v2 version), they were complaining about the pricing. Personally, I wouldn't pay that much, but IMO it's perfectly fine for a Web studio or even a solo UI developer.

I wonder how much you can charge for a non-business extension and still not get canceled.

Hi, Tony. I've made it better, check the 2.0 launch:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/css-scan-pro-2-0

Wow yeah! @gvrizzo how are sales of CSS Scan Pro even though this was the reaction on Product Hunt?

Yes! @jdnoc makes $38k/month with a browser extension!

Thanks, firefields!
Yes, you can :)
It's not easy tho because everyone expects extensions to be free

Thanks, ugurkilci! Haha

In the beginning, the pricing model was Pay What You Want (but with a minimum of $1.99). 😱😍

Thanks for using CSS Scan Pro, areknawo! toast.log is going very well too :)
It got a bit less attention than CSS Scan so far (although the pre-sale tweet was better) but already has over 1,000 users. Lots of people from CSS Scan bought it.

Hi, umen242!

1. Gumroad
2. Gumroad License API (generates a license key every sale) + Custom backend (to manage and limit activations)

You can actually check yourself in the extension's source code here.

But if you don't want to do all the licensing yourself you can also use ExtensionPay.

Thanks, Lee! No, just unlisted.

Thanks, howdyfolks1000! I'm very happy that you like beachguide.co :D

Your website looks great. Do you get some SEO traffic? How did you grow it?

Thanks for adding the beach 🙌 Really appreciate it!

Thanks, Izzy!

Thanks, Gene! :)

Awesome! Thanks, orliesaurus!

Thanks, Niko!

The first launch was pretty much just posting it, that's it. But I posted it on a Tuesday (to get more traffic). Yes, I got initial traction from it, but the price was sooo low ($1.99) that I didn't make that much money. I also think the landing page didn't convert that well. So I focused on improving the product and the landing page, and then the second launch was 20x better in revenue.

For the second launch, I also posted some reminders on Twitter like 7 days and 1 day before the launch, reminding them what day I'd launch and etc.

Hey I just registered for when usepinbox launches. It seems like a great idea! Any idea how far off you are from launch?

Hi, Eyk! Congrats on your work. I'd love to see some screenshots on the landing page to understand more about how the boxes look.

I use Gumroad License API + a custom backend to handle licenses. Licenses are counted by browser, yes.

Hey Eyk, turns out he uses Gumroad + the Gumroad licensing API via a custom backend. You can actually look in the source code yourself using the CRX viewer site (check background.js and search for 'license')

Thanks, Ryan!

Most browser extensions don't need to be modified at all to run across browsers. Most browsers support the chrome object, it seems like browsers are heading toward the webextension standard, and Mozilla made a webextension polyfill to fill in the gaps. I've run into a few small undocumented differences between browsers but it usually doesn't require much to make them work.

Thanks, ZeroPointSix! For Chrome and Firefox, they're like best friends, so they share almost everything (around 98% I guess) except the manifest.json, and occasionally there are some small bugs from either JS or CSS differences between browsers, that's when I need to fix it.

For Safari, I'd say I re-use only around 80% because the background script needs to run in Swift, as a Mac app, not Javascript.

Thanks for buying it, Josh! :D
I'm sorry, I don't like creating courses so I currently don't have plans for that.
Maybe I'll change my mind in the future haha!

Thanks, Cole! Yep, very nice. I always scratch my own itch, so when I thought about CSS Scan, I started building because even if nobody bought it, I'd still use it myself. The validation wasn't the best tho, nowadays I'd validate with pre-sales (like I did with toast.log) instead of simply asking people if they would pay, without them making a commitment.

Testing pricing is also very very important. I recommend always trying higher prices.

Thanks, Alok!

Thanks a lot, Jason! :D

Thank you so much for buying it, Satvik! :D

Thanks, Chris!

Hi Wayne, the subscription model is definitely better for the long-term, but it depends if you're product is valuable enough so that people will subscribe to it.

If it helps them make money and save time, I'd try a subscription model.
If it depends or you're unsure, I'd probably start with life-time pricing.

Thank you, Ricky! 🙌