On January 28th of this year I made available my first WordPress plugin – Simple AdSense Insert. I now have 6 in my portfolio, with another 2 about to be published. And in this short amount of time I’ve already learnt a few things.

1. Users don’t talk to you much, unless something isn’t working. Not that it’s a bad thing – I’ve been able to tweak instructions and even create new versions of my plugins thanks to this kind of response. However, I’d love to hear about what people would like to see in the way of improvements or even new plugins!
2. Users don’t donate So I’ll just have to keep trying to make my money from advertising!
3. Niche products aren’t so popular. I’ve created plugins for Wakoopa, TheThingsIWant and Readbag, but all have failed to do well. However, those for Twitter, Adsense and PayPal are doing a lot, lot better.

To demonstrate my last point, here is a graphical representation of how many people have downloaded my current plugins…

Pretty conclusive. Having said that, some of those result are scewed because of the length of time the plugins have been made available. So let’s change the results to represent the number of downloads over the days the plugin has been available…

Wow, that makes a huge different to my code embed plugin – the only one of the popular ones that isn’t somehow linked to another product.

In this case it’s popular, well, because it’s not linked to another service and it’s filling a role that doesn’t currently exist. When I wanted to put some code into my posts I couldn’t find a plugin to do it. There was one but the author kept the download to his site¹ and insisted on your email address (for sending you emails at a later time all about his other great stuff) before letting you know how to download it.

And this is it – populariting comes through one of two things.

1. A link to a service – money making or social networking – that’s rather popular
2. Being unique and providing a service that people are looking for

Now all I need to do is think of that one plugin that ticks both boxes. Of course, if you have an idea, I’m happy to hear your views!

1. if it’s not on the WordPress plugins site it won’t automatically inform you when a new version is available [↩]

Another week, another customer service fight

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who will argue the toss over the slightest thing, expecting immediate recompense for anything and everything. But if I pay for something and the end result is, well, a bit rubbish, then I will stick up for myself.

Recently I ordered a camera case from eBay. Ok, I know. It was cheap – just £5 from Hong Kong – but I’ve had other similar goods before and not had a problem. This time, though, the product was less than satisfactory. The logo badge on the front was loose and so badly finished that the tops of some of the letters were missing and the plastic edges were sharp. And to make things worse the case was too large for my camera – even though this was, supposedly, specifically for my model of camera.

Anyway, I contacted the seller, explained the problems and requested a refund. It took them a few days to reply but when they did they asked for some photos of the problems. I happily did this and sent these along. However, upon seeing these they responded in 2 ways…

1. To suggest that the extra space in the camera case were for “accessories” such as memory cards
2. To say that they would refund the item, but not the P&P

The second point, you’d think if fair enough. However, in this case, this was one of those items with a “nominal” selling price but a big P&P. This was (I don’t know if it’s still the case) a fiddle to pay less fees to eBay. That would mean that I wouldn’t get back over £4 of my original cost.

As to the first point, well, most of the room was in the side of the case. Enough to fit a USB memory stick into but certainly not an SD card. Or battery. No, this was a rubbish excuse. So I told them that (in more polite terms). I also pointed out that the item was (and remember this phrase) “not fit for purpose”. Being the nice person I am I suggested a compromise – a refund of £3 would be acceptable.

In the end, they refunded the full amount. An excellent conclusion, done with no shouting, screaming or threatening – just the way it should be.