I'm looking for materials listing practical tips on how best to promote an addon. Any leads? Your help is appreciated :)
Pop_Art
My name is Mike Darnell and I do marketing work for SemantiNet -
developers of the Headup addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/
firefox/addon/10359).
Despite the steady increase in addon development over the years there
seems to be very little material out there on effective methods for
promoting them.
Best resource I've found so far is this post:
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2009/01/20/know-thy-add-on-user
I'm hoping that perhaps you'd be able to point me towards similar
materials.
Any leads are appreciated :)
Mike
"I tweet @headup"
Eric Jung
> Hi all,
>
> My name is Mike Darnell and I do marketing work for SemantiNet -
> developers of the Headup addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/
> firefox/addon/10359<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/%0Afirefox/addon/10359>
> ).
>
> Despite the steady increase in addon development over the years there
> seems to be very little material out there on effective methods for
> promoting them.
Given the grass-roots nature of most addons, I'm not surprised by this. You
might find yourself trail blazing. My best advice is to approach other
commercial, venture-backed addons and ask them for advice directly. Let me
know if you need the names of some of them.
Eric
Pop_Art
Thanks for responding.
I'd love to get your list of venture backed addons.
Partially inspired by your response I've begun some research into
addons' popularity and trending. Here's what I've come up with so far:
The four most popular addons on Firefox are Adblock Plus, Noscript,
FlashGot & Video DownloadHelper. Their respective authors: Wladimir
Palant, Giorgio Maone (author of both noscript & Flashgot) and Michel
Gutierrez are responsible for about 200 million addon downloads to
date, of which Mr Maone deserves credit for more than half (111
million downloads of his addons to date).I'm currently trying to reach
out to them and hopefully they'll be willing to share here some of
their insights as to the reasons for their success.
The two most popular enterprise backed addons are Xmarks (14 milllion
downloads) and Cooliris (15 million downloads) - I'm reaching out to
them as well.
As exciting as the prospect of Trail-blazing may be I'd be very
surprised if this is the case. In any case I'll try and keep this
discussion going and hopefully we'll end up with a useful pool of
knowledge...
: )
Mike
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requesting their opinions and insights. Hopefully we'll have the
benefit of their wisdom here shortly... ; )
mig
I'm afraid there is no absolute recipe to take an addon to top
popularity. Personally, i haven't done any promotion on Video
DownloadHelper. I just wrote a tool that i needed for myself, and it
appeared that many others had the same need, so it has been
immediately downloaded by thousands.
Ok, one little trick i used: my addon was initially called
DownloadHelper. I have been stuck to rank 10-12 for several months.
Once i added 'Video' to the name, it became obvious for people reading
the addon list that my tool was dealing with videos. It took me to
rank 1-2 in one week.
I believe the most important thing is to provide an extension that:
- provides a real service you can explain in one sentence
- is extremely easy to use for everyone, without having to read a
manual or do configuration (then you can of course have advanced setup
for experienced users)
Hope this helps,
/mig
Wladimir Palant
> I'm currently trying to reach
> out to them and hopefully they'll be willing to share here some of
> their insights as to the reasons for their success.
Unfortunately there aren't too many insights on my side. Adblock Plus is
promoted almost exclusively from user to user - providing good software
and being responsive paid out here. It had a difficult start, with
Adblock being already there and pretty popular but in the end it took
only 9 months for Adblock Plus to displace Adblock which was no longer
being developed and always had trouble communicating with users anyway.
Later Adblock Plus got some news coverage which helped as well but I
think recommendations by users are still the most important factor.
Wladimir
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Your response is much appreciated.
Your story of how the name change boosted your downloads is a great
tip!
Mike
---
For the benefit of everyone else reading this:
"mig" is the nickname of Mr. Michel Gutierrez (https://
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/32479), author of:
1. Video DownloadHelper - 4th most downloaded Firefox addon -
37,976,536 downloads to date - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006
2. Subtile - 620,133 downloads to date - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4906
3. SpamReport - 37,087 downloads to date - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3875
4. PokerEval - 36,214 downloads to date - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3756
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I'm glad you chose to contribute to this discussion.
Both you and Michel stress the importance of having a good product.
In all honesty anyone reading this who believes you can be successful
by pushing a bad product is in the wrong place... ; )
Your tip on the importance of being responsive is solid practical
advice - thanks for that.
Mike
--
For the benefit of everyone else reading this:
--- Wladimir Palant ---
Mr. Wladimir Palant (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/
346) is the author of:
1. Adblock Plus - 2nd most downloaded Firefox addon - 48,956,166
downloads to date - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
2. Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper - 1,364,789 downloads to date -
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4364
3. JavaScript Deobfuscator - 30,613 downloads to date -
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10345
--- Responsiveness ---
The blog post by Mark Cramer, CEO of SurfCanyon, that I mentioned
earlier http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2009/01/20/know-thy-add-on-user
elaborates more on the point made by Wladimir regarding the importance
of being responsive and gives a few good pointers on the subject -
specifically the importance of following up on user feedback on the
AMO page and having an uninstall survey.
Use a (free) feedback service -
Not that I'm an expert but if your addon also has a website then a
feedback service like GetSatisfaction is a great free way to not only
communicate with your users, but also gradually generate a valuable
support resource. As an example you can check out how I've been using
it here: http://getsatisfaction.com/headup
Twitter is cool too -
I've had really great experience using Twitter as a two way
communication tool with users. It's fast and still populated mostly by
people who generally belong to the techno-phile, rather than techno-
phobe crowd. Examples? follow @headup @xmarks @adaptiveblue
Giorgio Maone
> Hopefully we'll have the
> benefit of their wisdom here shortly... ; )
Not much wisdom from me, I'm afraid. Like mig, I've started both my
projects to scratch a personal hitch: I was an IE+FlashGet user before
switching to Firefox and being orphaned of my favorite download
manager, and I'm a security paranoid guy.
This, though, means also there was (and there's yet) absolutely no
competition in their niche, otherwise I'd probably just use someone
else's product myself.
FlashGot has been greatly helped by well-established commercial
download manager vendors promoting it as an instantaneous way to
switch from IE to Firefox without dropping download manager
integration (for them, this was much more cost-effective than
developing their own native bridges).
NoScript gets lots of free press coverage, because most web security
experts out there are also loyal NoScript users.
So, if I can give any advice, build something unique which people do
use spreading the word about it. Better if your users are also opinion
leaders of some sort ;)
Pop_Art
discussion and has value:
http://www.slideshare.net/osunick/addons-in-2009
It's a presentation given by Mr Nick Nguyen at the Mozilla-all-hands
about the future of addons.mozilla.org
Nick discusses addon statistics, plans for the AMO and more - 66
slides well worth flipping through...
Cheers,
Mike
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It's a privilege having your input here.
I find it very interesting that you credit the success of FlashGot to
promotion by commercial download manager vendors seeking to address
client migration from IE to Firefox. Perhaps this is still an
actionable opportunity for creating another hit addon...
I'm not making the connection between NoScript's popularity with web
security experts and it's extensive press coverage, unless you meant
that it's popular with web security experts moonlighting as
journalists. In any case it definitely belongs in the "Easily
understood product with great value" category that has been a
recurring theme in all the responses we've gotten on this discussion
so far.
Thanks for stopping by here
It's much appreciated : )
Mike
--
For the benefit of everyone else reading this:
--- Giorgio Maone ---
Mr. Giorgio Maone (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/143)
is the developer responsible for two of the most successful Firefox
addons out there. Currently he has a staggering 112 million downloads
to his creditwith no sign of a slowdown in download rates anytime
soon...
Mr. Maone's addons are:
1. FlashGot - THE MOST DOWNLOADED FIREFOX ADDON EVER - 64,200,741
downloads to date (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/220)
2. NoScript - 3rd most downloaded Firefox addon - 48,495,103 downloads
to date (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722)
Check him out on his blog is at: http://hackademix.net
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here:
http://blog.headup.com/2009/05/how-to-promote-and-market-firefox-addons-part-1
I hope you enjoy it - comments and additional references are very
welcome.
Pop_Art
benefit from. It's a blog post listing the 50 most popular searches on
the AMO site.
Stands to reason that knowing what's in demand can help you fine tune
your supply.
http://micropipes.com/blog/2009/05/26/top-50-searches-on-addonsmozillaorg
taraba...@gmail.com
Hey,
I developed new extension for firefox which enables chatting (forum)
for any web site using Facebook Platform. I am wondering how could I
promote this more and I would not mind even more feedback in order to
get this extension successful. Any help?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12683
Thanks,
peter