Advice to someone who has never released an addon before?

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
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Hi guys. I think that I’m almost done with an add-on that I’ve been working on and am close to wanting to release it. So I was just wondering if any of you guys who have already released add-ons for blender have any advice about that: advice about things to do as well as advice about things to not do.

Things are going through my mind …
Should I get a separate email for the add-on since the license statement appears to require that I provide a way to contact me. Should I start a separate website or make a page on a current website for the add-on?

Licensing? I’m leaning toward the GNU General Public License, since that’s what Blender itself is released under. Pros and cons?

Since I’ve been broke most of my life and have relied on free add-ons, and have paid for add-ons whenever I felt like I could, I am considering releasing it as free but encouraging donations. What are the pros and cons of that? Should I make a webpage where the add-on could be downloaded but there would be PayPal links for donations? Should I release it on Gumroad with a pay what you want option? Should I release it on as many platforms as I can think of? What are the best platforms to release it on?

I would also like to release it for free at first to get feedback about the add-on. Is that a good idea? Is there a best way to get feedback on an add-on in a kind of pre-release?

Is there anything I should be thinking of that I’m not?

Thanks in advance.

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Present the features well, in good looking scenes
Polish the user experience to the bone!

Should I get a separate email for the add-on since the license statement appears to require that I provide a way to contact me.

Yup

Should I start a separate website or make a page on a current website for the add-on?

Completely overkill :wink:

Licensing? I’m leaning toward the GNU General Public License, since that’s what Blender itself is released under. Pros and cons?

You have no choice unfortunately/fortunately depending on some’s point of view

Since I’ve been broke most of my life and have relied on free add-ons, and have paid for add-ons whenever I felt like I could, I am considering releasing it as free but encouraging donations. What are the pros and cons of that?

If you believe you have a good plugin with a bright future, that users can rely on every day and in the long term, then a good monetization solution is needed.

encouraging donations.

Generally, donation rates are extremely low

What are the best platforms to release it on?

I would also like to release it for free at first to get feedback about the add-on. Is that a good idea? Is there a best way to get feedback on an add-on in a kind of pre-release?

WIP topic works great for this purpose; i started like this with my topic
Geo-Scatter - 5.4 Scatter Groups :slight_smile:

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I released Turbo Render a few months ago.

My advice is:

Don’t make it entirely free, make it cheap enough to be tempting, and then increase the price as it becomes more popular, and as you add new features. I’ve released things for free in the past, counting on the generosity of grateful downloaders, but was a bit disappointed that out of the 1082 downloaders, only around 10 of them showed their gratitude with a donation. After that I made it £4.99, and it made around $800:

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image1795×150 49.6 KB

Licencing, it has to be GNU legally because it’s run inside of Blender. Stick this at the top of your init file and you’ll be golden:

"""
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTIBILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>."""

EDIT: I’ve revised my opinion in a new comment a bit further down.

Regarding where to sell it. Gumroad is by far the best option. They take less than 10% of your earnings, and that decreases automatically the more sales you make. Compare this with other places like Blender Market. They take an astronomical amount of money (works out around 40% including fees). You can pay them an upfront monthly fee to get a better percentage, but that’s a big risk, because you’ll end up losing money every month if you don’t make many sales on their platform. Once upon a time it might have been worth while to put it on the blender market because it was exclusively for Blender, but now it has so much content, your work will just get lost amongst the competition. If they automatically gave you the best rate based on your end of month sales, that would make it a decent option, because there’d be no upfront risk.

Advertising. Make regular posts on social media, build a youtube channel, and keep improving the product and adding cool updates. Basically make sure everyone knows about it, and then keep reminding them :smiley:

Also, make sure you set up a support email address to include on the receipt, so that you can always ensure your customers are happy should they need any help.

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simple : release on github , put a paypal donation link in the description and your account description

better: do that + release it on both blender market and gumroad , get a new email of course with a a good name which you can use for your belnder stuff on youtube/github/gumroad/etc. … create also twitter account for some reach

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I’d like to revise my statement above regarding Blender Market. I think it’s totally worth it now, because listing it there does help with sales. My Turbo Tools addon has made around $70,000 on the Blender Market. I have similar sales on Gumroad, but I have noticed that Gumroad sales take a dip when I’m not actively marketing the addon, whereas Blender market sales are pretty constant regardless. The Blender Market sales events are also really good.

So I’d recommend to list on Blender Market for free initially until you get sufficient sales to warrant paying a monthly subscription to reduce Blender Market’s commission.

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It’s interesting that you should say this right as BM has announced a massive hike in the cut % they’ll be taking on each sale, substantially reducing how much creators will be making. What are your thoughts on this?

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I don’t like it, because I’m already paying them a $150 per month subscription, so the reduction of my commission from 95% to 90% equates to an additional $150 per month I’m losing. Taking my total monthly payment to around $450. It’s a substantial loss, but it’s still enough to pay my bills in combination with Gumroad earnings. Gumroad take 10% with no subscription, but it requires much more marketing effort than Blender Market once your addon is reasonably successful.

I’m a little surprised they need to make the payment increases considering their turnover, but what can you do when it’s a major part of your income? They have me by the short and curlies :cry: I’m just glad they aren’t increasing the subscription for existing subscribers, otherwise that would have been an additional $50 per month.

I think perhaps they should waive the subscription when their commission exceeds $200

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Maybe they took your advice from earlier:

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LOL, yes, but I started at an insanely low $5, and I only increase the price when the additional work warrants it, such as adding new features or major version releases, or when storefront costs significantly rise. Although I’m going to try and avoid raising the price due to this Blender Market increase :+1:

I also never increase the price for existing customers, it’s a one time purchase for lifetime access to all future versions at no extra cost. I think it’s a pretty good deal, especially considering I’ve been keeping it updated to work with all versions of Blender since 2.93 :grin: I hate subscription models.

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I love your addon, and have been using it every day for a couple of years, but to be honest I think your undercharging considering what it does, the support you offer, and how often you release updates. Not to mention lifetime updates… It’s saved me so much in rendering costs, that I’d actually be happy to pay again for the major releases.

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Cheers Geoff :+1:

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A very belated response…it seems I have blender market connected to an old email I rarely look at any more.

At any rate, thank you all for the discussion. I can’t even remember what add-on I was thinking of releasing here (I think I know, just not sure).

I ended up making an addon for Rhino and that has been a real time sucker since they released Rhino8 and I seem to spend all my time making my add one work after they break things. I released it on CG trader. I released a free version and a paid version. I charged too little for paid version and I gave away far too much in the free version. Lots of people download the free version, almost no one buys the paid version. Tons of work for less than $200 over a year+.

I am in the process of updating the script and in the process I am reworking it so the free version has fewer models, materials, and scripts and the dialog panels of free version will have buttons that say “Get the Full Version!” and when clicked will open up the browser to the paid version at cg trader.

Lots of lessons learned. Again, thank you all much for the discussion!

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