How I made $1.7k MRR from Wordpress Premium Plugins - Story of Codection

Hello ! Who are you and what are you working on?

My name is Javier Carazo. I live in a not very big city in Spain, in Andalusia. I am 34 years old and I am Software Engineer. I worked in a reseach institute for 9 years as a software engineer and a sysadmin. While I was working there I started Codection with a colleague. He left the bussines but I continue with it.

Our main bussiness is create projects for others, but I try everyday to move it to a recurring bussiness model. We sell premium plugins for Spanish payment gateways and we have some free plugins like Import and Export Users and Customers that are growing in their user base. The idea is to create some profitable model of it in the future, but now, we are trying to have as many users we can doing a great import/export plugin for WordPress.

What motivated you to get started with? How did you come up with the idea?

I love to do own projects, work in what I love (develop with WordPress) and have a different kind of life. Working from wherever I want, doing whatever I want.

Can you tell us the story of your business from idea to where you are now?

We started doing many kind of projects related with software and hardware. After sometime, we move to specialize only in web and only in WordPress. I am a software engineer so I always liked to create plugins, instead of doing thing in the front-end.

We gave services to many ecommerce and we knew in Spain, local payment gateways (RedSys and Ceca) does not have so good support in WordPress and WooCommerce. So we started preparing premium plugins for them.

Also, we need to some big imports/exports of users with WordPress. So I prepared the plugin and I make it free in the wordpress.org repository. I have continue doing support for it. Increasing options, compatibilities and functionalities.

Now it has more than 1 million of downloads and more than 40k active installations.

What has been your biggest failure or struggle?

Spend so much time in other projects different to plugin, but we need this income.

And what has been your biggest achievement or success?

Start selling premium plugins.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers? 

Fast, good and reliable support

Describe the process of launching the business.

In Spain creating a business is not so easy or cheap. So you have to be really sure of having a regular income. We started doing projects (we continue doing it), for customers. We study what they need and how others do it.

We try to normalize some process, make it easier to do for us and try to automatize as much as we can.

When you are able to do something so fast and so good, you start to be competitive and maybe, sell things that do the work for you.

Did you use Betalist or PH or other Startup Launching Platform for Launching ? How was that experience ?

No, we didn't.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We are project consultants and also we sell premium plugins.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles you’ve overcome? What are your goals for the future?

We need to have some good license model to have recurring payments every year with plugins updates and extendend support.

Let’s talk about your marketing strategy -- how do you market and grow the service?

We work our blog, we have spoken in some WordCamp and we try to talk about our projects and services in different websites.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Try to do always something easy to reproduce. You can be an excellent engineer but you cannot always do a perfect job. You have to create code useful for much people that can be used without your interaction.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

WordPress

Who’s your most inspirational CEO or founder?

Matt Mullenweg

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

I have listened "El Valle de los Tercos" but I also read blogs from other plugin owners like this is very good because this also write about tech.

What’s your advice for fellow aspiring entrepreneur who are just starting out?

Work, work and keep excited. It may take some time to see results, but you will see it.