[wp-hackers] anyone looked at Chameleon closely?

[Mark Jaquith]

On Jun 9, 2006, at 11:05 PM, Matt Mullenweg wrote:

> For people just looking for some extra beer/server money from their  
> work, the biggest mistake I see is simply not asking. Make it  
> *really easy* for people to find your Paypal or Amazon wishlist. I  
> won't say how many times I've tried to buy a book or something as a  
> thank you for people on this list and couldn't for love or money  
> find something on their site that enabled me to. (As an aside, if  
> you're overseas try to have a donation mechanism that's easy for US  
> folks too.) Have a mailing list for release announcements. If you'd  
> work on something more if you got more money, then tell people.  
> Provide amazing free support and put a "if you found this useful"  
> link at the end of every email. If you're open to people sponsoring  
> features, or paid customizations, make that obvious. Also consider  
> publishing how much you get in donations, as most people VASTLY  
> overestimate donations, or they assume someone else is doing it so  
> they don't need to.

I can speak to the success of these tips from experience.  When I  
first put up a "Donate" button at the bottom of all my plugin pages  
[1], I got about $5 in 6 months.  Then, I was on someone else's site  
and I saw that they were posting how much money in donations they'd  
received that month.  The mindset is "well, this is popular code, so  
people MUST be donating."  And then you see the little line that says  
that they've received $5.00 and you feel a lot more inclined to hit  
that donate button!  Once I started posting how much money I'd  
received, donations went up considerably.  It's still not going to  
pay for my server, but it helps.  More than anything, it acts as  
encouragement.  I'd be doing it anyway, but sometimes you just need a  
(monetary) pat on the back.

> At the same time, don't forget to budget time for community.

> Before I started left CNET and started Automattic I knew about a  
> dozen people doing full-time WP consulting and work, names you  
> mostly don't know because they were so caught up in their own work  
> they weren't improving the core platform they were building their  
> livelihood on

If you make your living from WordPress-related services, you're  
really be stupid not to contribute back to the community.  If you're  
finding ways in which the software can be improved, and you're NOT  
sharing them, you're going to waste so much more time maintaining  
your separate fork that you won't have time to respond to the  
specific needs of your clients.  Besides, if you do work with  
WordPress, part of your job is convincing people that WordPress is  
the right tool for them.  If they read a review criticizing  
WordPress' poor handling of X, it might not help that you have a WP  
fork that addresses X... you've already lost the sale.

==
[1] http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/
--
Mark Jaquith
http://txfx.net/