Using Plugins To Get Out Of Debt

You have to give Daniel a lot of credit. He recently published his personal quest to conquer non-mortgage debt by selling his plugins. The debt amounted to $67,000 and he was able to pay it off in just 8 months. He is now creating an emergency fund equal to six months of income. But how did he conquer that monster the majority of us know as debt? He made the tough choice to sell two of the first plugins he ever developed despite them bringing in 4-5 thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue. The plugins he sold were Authorize.net, AIM, and PayPal Express.

We were sick and tired of our debt hindering us from being able to follow our passion of slow travel with our family as digital tentmakers. Our one goal became cleaning up our financial mess and removing that hurdle. So when we received the offer to sell we asked “Does this get us to our goal?” and the answer was “Yes.”

Congratulations Daniel on beheading the monster that is debt. I hope your story serves as inspiration for many others to accomplish the same feat.

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4 responses to “Using Plugins To Get Out Of Debt”

  1. I normally would say it’s a bad things for the users when a developer sells their product, but in this case these are payment extensions to WooCommerce so they are something another developer could easily pick up.

    It’s not the same as if say we sold Gravity Forms to another developer and they could pick up where we left off or do things the same way we did them or as good as we do things.

    So kudos to Daniel for taking advantage of a situation that presented itself that could help him and his family.

    That being said. Think about it. Those are payment extensions for WooCommerce. They were bringing him $4,000-5,000 per month in revenue and they sell for $50 a pop.

    The base version of Gravity Forms sells for $39. Cheaper than the Authorize.Net or PayPal Express Extension for WooCommerce. Maybe Gravity Forms is underpriced as Chris Lema has blogged about… hmmm.

  2. @Carl Hancock – Right. Usually how these things turn out is that a developer purchases a plugin from someone and since they don’t have the save vibe as the previous author, users jump ship. So it doesn’t always work out as well as it did here.

    I think $39 for one year of GravityForms is a steal and I have no problems with that price but then again, my tolerance level probably peaks around the 50-60 dollar price range which is still affordable but not out of my price range.

    I wonder if GravityForms is still showing a major upward swing in growth or if it’s slowed down a bit and is now a gradual climb. Which license segment has the most customers, the Developer tier or single site use?

    @chris mccoy – It was listed in the post which plugins he sold.

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