September 6, 2012 at 12:48How I earned 1 million rubles in the Marketplace 1C-Bitrix
The past week was remarkable because a millionth ruble fell on my account in the Marketplace 1C-Bitrix ! Thus, I earned 1,000,000 rubles in duplicating my decisions in just over 1 year.
I am very happy about this fact and decided to share this success with the professional community in this article. And I want to draw the attention of the fathers to this wonderful new direction.
In the article I will give a maximum of personal experience and recommendations + a little history of the development of the direction.
How it all started
Until recently, I was mainly engaged in the sale of my watches for outsourcing to metropolitan studios and the development of custom websites. But, both directions had a number of significant disadvantages for me:
Engaged in outsourcing, even if your level grows and the cost of an hour grows, sooner or later you will come to the conclusion that after the completion of the next project you have nothing left - there are no assets other than experience. In addition, we need to constantly study in our business, and there is sorely enough time for this - Customers have little desire to pay for our pumping. Money comes only when you code, and when you do not code, money does not arrive accordingly. And before you code you need to be able to sell your hour expensively. Well, thousands of other problems that you know about. Attracting hired labor solves them little + adds new ones. For example, an employee, with all his desire, will not work out more than 132 hours per month, there are restrictions on the cost of an hour - that is, there is always a certain ceiling on income. And with the departure of the employee, you lose all his knowledge and experience, lose important competencies - which is essentially the only asset of the company. Fathers, I do not want to convince anyone, but my opinion is outsourcing is not the best business ...
Website development is even worse. The market is oversaturated. Dumping is huge. Each new project has to start all over again. Consulting again, explain again that it’s better to draw the logo on the left (I'm exaggerating) and so on. You develop some kind of Internet project for years, and just cure almost all the cockroaches in the customer’s head and bring the site to a decent level when finally you can start to do what something really interesting and non-trivial and then bam - the customer’s business didn’t go, or the business went, but the customer has reached his comfort zone and doesn’t want to develop further, or there is no budget for implementing your features. Take a step back and start all over again - a new customer, again wants the logo on the right, etc. etc. Groundhog Day ... It is clear that all this is not so much a problem as a task,
For these reasons, I was constantly thinking about some kind of replication of my experience, maybe creating my own project. Preferably without offline sales and marketing departments. Glancing around, we see that there are two main trends for implementing this today - Marketplace (AppStore, GooglePlay, etc.) and SaaS. And if the second requires serious investments and super-ideas, then the first is implemented quite easily and with a minimum of costs. After all, Big Brother - Vendor takes on a lot: he creates the entire infrastructure and ecosystem, invents the rules of the game that are common to everyone, is engaged in marketing, develops a framework, and we can only generate ideas and implement them.
3 years ago, I started selling my first handicraft components directly on the Bitrix forum. And I remember that they immediately threw tomatoes at me ... There was a whole debate about the admissibility of selling their solutions to fellow developers, about quality issues, about security, and also - "why is all this necessary?" But, I persisted and created a separate group in blogs. I called it “Market” and began to lay out my developments there, and also provided this opportunity to other developers.
Gradually, the number of decisions in the group exceeded several dozen. Separate sites with collections of modules began to appear. Need and initiative were noticed and 1C-Bitrix created a separate section on its website in which it was possible to post its module. Sale and shipment were carried out manually by the developer partner.
An automated processing center for receiving payments was launched later, just a year ago - in August 2011. Starting from the same day, the site has been selling statistics, a screenshot of which I published at the beginning of the article.
The main advantages that I see in Marketplace
1. The possibility of self-realization. You do what you want, and you decide how. Moreover, if you did something to your liking, it is likely that someone else (out of more than 50,000 site owners on CMS 1C-Bitrix) will like it.
2. Passive income. You can suspend production for a while: calmly learn new technology, change developers, and go on the same vacation. Even if you do this for a while, sales will continue anyway. And it gives a certain calm and confidence in the future.
3. The accumulation of assets. Workers come and go, but the modules you have left are sold, their number and sales turnover are growing.
4. Sale of goods, not services. You can talk about this for a very long time. The difference is huge!
For example, you are not so dependent on a particular client when there are not tens, but thousands ...
5. Marketing and technological support for Big Brother. For example, at 20:00 in Krasnoyarsk I sit in a club and sip a cocktail, and at this very moment a seminar is taking place in Moscow, at which, among other things, my modules are advertised. Well isn't that great?
6. Experience in the development, promotion and sales of own software. This is a unique opportunity to try at a minimum cost. Sin is not to take advantage!
7. Professional development of developers. Producing their own modules, developers have to develop the architecture of the program, write their own classes, database queries, and so on, which adult programmers do. Growth is much more intense than simply pulling design templates onto CMS.
Actually experience ...
One of the first modules that I developed was Kiosk
Enisite, a regional Internet agency, was often contacted by customers who wanted an online store, but for whom the cost of the Small Business editorial office (24,900 rubles) was too high and its functionality was excessive. They were not going to open Eldorado.ru, they just wanted to try what it is online trading. For one such client, I wrote the simplest on-line basket over the evening. And I saw that in the line of editions of 1C-Bitrix there is an acute shortage of such a edition - um for beginners. After spending another evening and packing the solution in a ready-made module, I started selling it in the then-market group. The price was set so that even taking into account the affiliate discount for Small Business, the price of the Kiosk + Start Edition remains attractive.
The module was bought more than 100 times, and I earned more than 300,000 rubles ...
For this, by the way, I love Marketplace - it has an element of luck in it. Excitement like in a casino. A module may not be sold even once, it may only be sold several times, having barely recouped its development, or it may be fortunate and the module will sell hundreds of times! No one ever knows this right away!
Unfortunately, the Kiosk module, now, doesn’t shake it like that - there are a lot of clones and imitators ... Although I have pretty well done it since then ... Probably after this article a couple of clones will appear - like imitators, next time you will know how to copy follow me!
And several recommendations at once:
1. If you have a web studio, then feedback from your customers is your most valuable asset. A vendor seeing sales through an affiliate network often does not have such feedback. It is you who are at the forefront, on the front line, and that you know best of all what customers need.
2. You can easily replicate your decisions made for a particular customer. In this case, you do not even risk anything, since the development of the module has already been paid for by your customer. You can simply receive additional income from its subsequent sale, as a bonus.
3. Extending the functionality of the initial editions is a great idea. But, keep in mind that the more complex the functionality, the greater the load on your technical support.
The second module I want to talk about is the Resizer
It is terrible, but in 1C-Bitrix there was previously no regular mechanism for automatically resizing photos for a property of the “File” type, with the help of which, for example, the functionality of additional photos was realized on the product’s detailed page. From project to project, developers dragged their “crutches” behind them, and since 2005 I’m tired of asking forums to add this feature to the box as standard. Asked, asked ... and then tired of asking, and I spent a couple of days already a full-time programmer to pack my "crutches" into the module and put it up for sale.
The price was made so that it would be more profitable to buy a module than to pay a freelancer 2-4 hours for the implementation of any fancybox.
The module sold more than 300 times, and I earned more than 200,000 rubles.
Later, a lot of resizing appeared in Bitrix out of the box and still appears ... It's ridiculous, but now I am against the fact that this functionality would develop in 1C-Bitrix regularly and I don’t ask about them on the forums anymore ...
Recommendation:
1. If you see that there is something missing in 1C-Bitrix, do not rush to criticize the system and require this functionality on the forums. Make a module and put it up for sale - it is quite possible that you can make good money on it.
2. Be prepared for the fact that sooner or later this functionality will still be implemented in a box. Therefore, you need to "invest" carefully.
3. Take an active part in the life of the platform’s blogosphere, a lot of great ideas and customer needs can be gleaned from client and guest forums, as well as blogs directly on the 1C-Bitrix website. And of course, the most valuable resource is idea.1c-bitrix.ru.
The third module that I want to talk about is Migrator.
I purposefully studied the modules of other CMS and looked for something that is not yet available in 1C-Bitrix. I’ll tell you a rather difficult task - after all, Bitrix already has almost everything. And yet I found a couple of such ideas ... One of them resulted in the development of the Migrator module. The module is free and is the locomotive for the sale of our site translation services from other engines, including self-written ones to the 1C-Bitrix platform. Our agency has provided a lot of similar services and is an expert in this matter.
Recommendation:
1. You can earn on free modules.
Where else to get ideas for modules?
The real gold mine today, these are standard solutions. The business logic is very simple. For example, in half a year you can make a website on order for 300,000 rubles as the Customer wants. And you can make the same site, but as you want to make it, then put it in MP for 30000r. and sell within six months 10 times. And then another 10 times ... and another 10 times ...
And here there is still no plowed field, for example: a
typical city portal (at the beginning of 2009 there were 1099 cities and 1318 urban-type settlements in Russia), a
typical website of a television and radio company, a
typical news site, a
typical auction ,
sample coupon sale site,
sample bulletin board site,
portal for the sale / rental of real estate, a
typical dating site, a
typical social network, a
typical newspaper / magazine
website , a typical blog system
site , a typical photo gallery website, photo stock, a
typical entertainment portal, a
typical file sharing service, a
typical torrent portal, a
typical video service, a
typical video chat, a
typical employment portal, a
typical poster site, a
typical electronic library, a
typical site for the sale of used cars,
etc. etc. There is
nothing at all, by and large, except for ems ... If you already have operating time in some topics - come with them to the Marketplace and make your million!
Here is my experience ...
It is clear that I don’t tell all the nuances right now, and the devil is in the details ... If you want to know more, read my blog on the 1C-Bitrix website in the developers section.
In general, Marketplace today is a great new direction for web studios.
Designing modules is fun and exciting! The community is actively involved in ecosystem development. All decisions are previously discussed collectively and thanks to this, there is a spirit of freedom in Marketplace 1C-Bitrix!
PS: By the way, we are recruiting young fighters to the Yenisayt team!
I am very happy about this fact and decided to share this success with the professional community in this article. And I want to draw the attention of the fathers to this wonderful new direction.
In the article I will give a maximum of personal experience and recommendations + a little history of the development of the direction.
How it all started
Until recently, I was mainly engaged in the sale of my watches for outsourcing to metropolitan studios and the development of custom websites. But, both directions had a number of significant disadvantages for me:
Engaged in outsourcing, even if your level grows and the cost of an hour grows, sooner or later you will come to the conclusion that after the completion of the next project you have nothing left - there are no assets other than experience. In addition, we need to constantly study in our business, and there is sorely enough time for this - Customers have little desire to pay for our pumping. Money comes only when you code, and when you do not code, money does not arrive accordingly. And before you code you need to be able to sell your hour expensively. Well, thousands of other problems that you know about. Attracting hired labor solves them little + adds new ones. For example, an employee, with all his desire, will not work out more than 132 hours per month, there are restrictions on the cost of an hour - that is, there is always a certain ceiling on income. And with the departure of the employee, you lose all his knowledge and experience, lose important competencies - which is essentially the only asset of the company. Fathers, I do not want to convince anyone, but my opinion is outsourcing is not the best business ...
Website development is even worse. The market is oversaturated. Dumping is huge. Each new project has to start all over again. Consulting again, explain again that it’s better to draw the logo on the left (I'm exaggerating) and so on. You develop some kind of Internet project for years, and just cure almost all the cockroaches in the customer’s head and bring the site to a decent level when finally you can start to do what something really interesting and non-trivial and then bam - the customer’s business didn’t go, or the business went, but the customer has reached his comfort zone and doesn’t want to develop further, or there is no budget for implementing your features. Take a step back and start all over again - a new customer, again wants the logo on the right, etc. etc. Groundhog Day ... It is clear that all this is not so much a problem as a task,
For these reasons, I was constantly thinking about some kind of replication of my experience, maybe creating my own project. Preferably without offline sales and marketing departments. Glancing around, we see that there are two main trends for implementing this today - Marketplace (AppStore, GooglePlay, etc.) and SaaS. And if the second requires serious investments and super-ideas, then the first is implemented quite easily and with a minimum of costs. After all, Big Brother - Vendor takes on a lot: he creates the entire infrastructure and ecosystem, invents the rules of the game that are common to everyone, is engaged in marketing, develops a framework, and we can only generate ideas and implement them.
3 years ago, I started selling my first handicraft components directly on the Bitrix forum. And I remember that they immediately threw tomatoes at me ... There was a whole debate about the admissibility of selling their solutions to fellow developers, about quality issues, about security, and also - "why is all this necessary?" But, I persisted and created a separate group in blogs. I called it “Market” and began to lay out my developments there, and also provided this opportunity to other developers.
Gradually, the number of decisions in the group exceeded several dozen. Separate sites with collections of modules began to appear. Need and initiative were noticed and 1C-Bitrix created a separate section on its website in which it was possible to post its module. Sale and shipment were carried out manually by the developer partner.
An automated processing center for receiving payments was launched later, just a year ago - in August 2011. Starting from the same day, the site has been selling statistics, a screenshot of which I published at the beginning of the article.
The main advantages that I see in Marketplace
1. The possibility of self-realization. You do what you want, and you decide how. Moreover, if you did something to your liking, it is likely that someone else (out of more than 50,000 site owners on CMS 1C-Bitrix) will like it.
2. Passive income. You can suspend production for a while: calmly learn new technology, change developers, and go on the same vacation. Even if you do this for a while, sales will continue anyway. And it gives a certain calm and confidence in the future.
3. The accumulation of assets. Workers come and go, but the modules you have left are sold, their number and sales turnover are growing.
4. Sale of goods, not services. You can talk about this for a very long time. The difference is huge!
For example, you are not so dependent on a particular client when there are not tens, but thousands ...
5. Marketing and technological support for Big Brother. For example, at 20:00 in Krasnoyarsk I sit in a club and sip a cocktail, and at this very moment a seminar is taking place in Moscow, at which, among other things, my modules are advertised. Well isn't that great?
6. Experience in the development, promotion and sales of own software. This is a unique opportunity to try at a minimum cost. Sin is not to take advantage!
7. Professional development of developers. Producing their own modules, developers have to develop the architecture of the program, write their own classes, database queries, and so on, which adult programmers do. Growth is much more intense than simply pulling design templates onto CMS.
Actually experience ...
One of the first modules that I developed was Kiosk
Enisite, a regional Internet agency, was often contacted by customers who wanted an online store, but for whom the cost of the Small Business editorial office (24,900 rubles) was too high and its functionality was excessive. They were not going to open Eldorado.ru, they just wanted to try what it is online trading. For one such client, I wrote the simplest on-line basket over the evening. And I saw that in the line of editions of 1C-Bitrix there is an acute shortage of such a edition - um for beginners. After spending another evening and packing the solution in a ready-made module, I started selling it in the then-market group. The price was set so that even taking into account the affiliate discount for Small Business, the price of the Kiosk + Start Edition remains attractive.
The module was bought more than 100 times, and I earned more than 300,000 rubles ...
For this, by the way, I love Marketplace - it has an element of luck in it. Excitement like in a casino. A module may not be sold even once, it may only be sold several times, having barely recouped its development, or it may be fortunate and the module will sell hundreds of times! No one ever knows this right away!
Unfortunately, the Kiosk module, now, doesn’t shake it like that - there are a lot of clones and imitators ... Although I have pretty well done it since then ... Probably after this article a couple of clones will appear - like imitators, next time you will know how to copy follow me!
And several recommendations at once:
1. If you have a web studio, then feedback from your customers is your most valuable asset. A vendor seeing sales through an affiliate network often does not have such feedback. It is you who are at the forefront, on the front line, and that you know best of all what customers need.
2. You can easily replicate your decisions made for a particular customer. In this case, you do not even risk anything, since the development of the module has already been paid for by your customer. You can simply receive additional income from its subsequent sale, as a bonus.
3. Extending the functionality of the initial editions is a great idea. But, keep in mind that the more complex the functionality, the greater the load on your technical support.
The second module I want to talk about is the Resizer
It is terrible, but in 1C-Bitrix there was previously no regular mechanism for automatically resizing photos for a property of the “File” type, with the help of which, for example, the functionality of additional photos was realized on the product’s detailed page. From project to project, developers dragged their “crutches” behind them, and since 2005 I’m tired of asking forums to add this feature to the box as standard. Asked, asked ... and then tired of asking, and I spent a couple of days already a full-time programmer to pack my "crutches" into the module and put it up for sale.
The price was made so that it would be more profitable to buy a module than to pay a freelancer 2-4 hours for the implementation of any fancybox.
The module sold more than 300 times, and I earned more than 200,000 rubles.
Later, a lot of resizing appeared in Bitrix out of the box and still appears ... It's ridiculous, but now I am against the fact that this functionality would develop in 1C-Bitrix regularly and I don’t ask about them on the forums anymore ...
Recommendation:
1. If you see that there is something missing in 1C-Bitrix, do not rush to criticize the system and require this functionality on the forums. Make a module and put it up for sale - it is quite possible that you can make good money on it.
2. Be prepared for the fact that sooner or later this functionality will still be implemented in a box. Therefore, you need to "invest" carefully.
3. Take an active part in the life of the platform’s blogosphere, a lot of great ideas and customer needs can be gleaned from client and guest forums, as well as blogs directly on the 1C-Bitrix website. And of course, the most valuable resource is idea.1c-bitrix.ru.
The third module that I want to talk about is Migrator.
I purposefully studied the modules of other CMS and looked for something that is not yet available in 1C-Bitrix. I’ll tell you a rather difficult task - after all, Bitrix already has almost everything. And yet I found a couple of such ideas ... One of them resulted in the development of the Migrator module. The module is free and is the locomotive for the sale of our site translation services from other engines, including self-written ones to the 1C-Bitrix platform. Our agency has provided a lot of similar services and is an expert in this matter.
Recommendation:
1. You can earn on free modules.
Where else to get ideas for modules?
The real gold mine today, these are standard solutions. The business logic is very simple. For example, in half a year you can make a website on order for 300,000 rubles as the Customer wants. And you can make the same site, but as you want to make it, then put it in MP for 30000r. and sell within six months 10 times. And then another 10 times ... and another 10 times ...
And here there is still no plowed field, for example: a
typical city portal (at the beginning of 2009 there were 1099 cities and 1318 urban-type settlements in Russia), a
typical website of a television and radio company, a
typical news site, a
typical auction ,
sample coupon sale site,
sample bulletin board site,
portal for the sale / rental of real estate, a
typical dating site, a
typical social network, a
typical newspaper / magazine
website , a typical blog system
site , a typical photo gallery website, photo stock, a
typical entertainment portal, a
typical file sharing service, a
typical torrent portal, a
typical video service, a
typical video chat, a
typical employment portal, a
typical poster site, a
typical electronic library, a
typical site for the sale of used cars,
etc. etc. There is
nothing at all, by and large, except for ems ... If you already have operating time in some topics - come with them to the Marketplace and make your million!
Here is my experience ...
It is clear that I don’t tell all the nuances right now, and the devil is in the details ... If you want to know more, read my blog on the 1C-Bitrix website in the developers section.
In general, Marketplace today is a great new direction for web studios.
Designing modules is fun and exciting! The community is actively involved in ecosystem development. All decisions are previously discussed collectively and thanks to this, there is a spirit of freedom in Marketplace 1C-Bitrix!
PS: By the way, we are recruiting young fighters to the Yenisayt team!