Fair warning. While this post is meant to be informative for you, it is also a little bit of a rant.
Years ago, I somehow came across a marketer who had a fairly large stable of WordPress plugins. It came across that plugins were his business and all he really did at that time were plugins. Being also in this business, I’m always on the look out for people of like minds not just for market research but to see if there were opportunities to work together. So I joined the list.
One day, he pushed out a super interesting plugin. It was something I wanted to create myself but he beat me to the punch. But you know, that’s OK because there’s always something called an affiliate program and what better way to earn and not having to spend time building on my own right? So I bought the plugin. It was unbelievably cheap, something like $7. The plugin looked fabulous with its beautiful graphics, nicely designed admin interface. So yeah, I’m a sucker for great user interface or in geek speak UI. You can witness my obsession on Pinterest. It really looked like a plugin I could wholeheartedly recommend.
Until I installed and dug into it.
You don’t even have to be a tech geek to see the plugin is incomplete.
Now, don’t misread me. Plugins by nature are somewhat incomplete because they are not fully blown software. They are plugins. Meant to extend the functionality of the core software it snaps into. A good plugin does one thing only and should do that very well. The rub is, this plugin didn’t even do this one thing very well. What bothered me even more, people were fawning over it, giving it the highest reviews and ratings.
Sidebar – I won’t be listening very much to those reviewers. So remember, your reviews matter and can come back to bite you.Over time, I’ve seen quite a number of these type of plugins. Here’s what I mean by it being half-baked.
- A plugin that lets you display limited offers, yet after the expiry date the order links still get displayed. It is not a bug. It was simply not coded in.
I know what many of these marketers do though. They create these plugins, hire developers as cheaply as possible, then they create huge hype and earn thousands of dollars on the launch, funneling hundreds and thousands of people…
You got it. Into their mailing list.
In short, these plugins are list builders. Not just any old list but a list of people willing to fork over money. Plugins – software isn’t really their business. Their business is to build lists, offer affiliate stuff and on to the next. No continuity.
Now you know… just watch out. $7 or $10 may be a small amount to pay for a plugin but don’t ever think you can pay someone that kind of money once and expect long term support because there’s simply no way anybody can make that $7 or 10 stretch that far. Also, there could be huge security holes in them that could cost you $7000 down the road and by security, I’m not just talking about hijacking, hacking and stealing. It could be something as simple as leaking your products, showing your slip.
I didn’t start off the post as promotional but just to be up front and clear, at TechBasedPlugins that’s not how we operate. I’m not saying there’s anything crooked about that model. We just don’t agree with it. If you like that, check out our plugins, get on our notification list.
