Plugin suites for niche markets

Mod Note: Split from Forking Genesis - #86 by LinasSimonis
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Has anyone tried creating and marketing premium suites for niche markets? Or, is that agency territory? I’m thinking something like, rather than adding plugin functionality to themes, it could be a theme + n supporting plugins to bring the experience together. Or, has this already been tried to no avail?

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I had… a Restaurant theme. :sweat_smile: 4 yars ago.
It stopped at an early stage (not for technical problem but for a personal problem of one of us, we were three and one guy left the project).

Every feature was developed as plugin but then merged to the theme (dishes, opening times, online booking).
That decision came from the marketplace choice… we choosed to sell on envato and so bundling everything in the plugin was the only viable way.

I think that this statement have to be deeply considered on the directory developement. And could add a great value!

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There’s a few so called “marketer come developers” doing this on both the Warrior Forum and at JVZoo - some are making good money but most of the products are atrocious :roll_eyes:

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I think it’s an interesting proposition, as well.

:dash: :popcorn:

I haven’t heard of those. I wonder, do they still call them themes?

I’m kind of interested in this idea. Creating suites (theme+plugins as niche market packages) could probably lead to a profitable business,in time, especially if there was a great deal of focus on standards and quality of code.

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At this moment in time the field is wide open in the ClassicPress arena - I’d say go for it :100:%

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I’m no designer…or marketer… just a lowly coder. :smiley: It would take a team to make a thing of it.

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We travel on the same boat I see :grinning:

I believe there are opportunities to had in this community of ours and most of us should be looking towards collaborating on certain fronts :wink:

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We, that is, I and my long-term colleague, who have been successfully developing sites together for quite some time (eg. the datacolor.com site), got something like this sitting around (actually its in its finalization stage, scheduled for its initial rollout at the end of this week).

But: Its not to be sold on some kind of market place platform, eg. Envato or so, but rather is planned for … hm … lets call it … individual / custom release / on-demand. There is going to be a simple site displaying its main features and a few RL sites as portfolio material. Depending on what my colleague is gonna suggest, its either going to feature some base-line example packaging prices, or a classic “ask for a quote” contact option.

Aside of that, I’ve built plugin bundles speciifically for longer-term clients, which have been reused in several of their projects, again and again (think of design agency which plans and designs sites for clients).

So, depending on the market and how you sell that, this can work out, but also can fail nastily. Its usually a thing of the classic “Vitamin C” (Contacts) or “Vitamin M” (Mouth-to-mouth propaganda).

cu, w0lf.

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I was thinking similar… but, without the custom stuff (to start). The “marketplace” would probably just be a dedicated domain with a simple cart.

I don’t know what this means.

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Just to clarify, in case I am misunderstanding.
Lets say I have created/setup a website for, using your example, a restaurant with all required functions.
Assuming the theme allows the header (logo restaurant name etc,) to be changed from admin. I then replace restaurant specific content with place holder text and images.
I would then have a ready to go site just needing the new client’s content.
There are setups like this available but generally tied to the web developer/agency for maintenance and updates.

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That sounds about right. I’m not sure who the target market is… is it end users? Is it freelancers? Agencies? This would decide who handles updates and support. Moreover, I haven’t really thought any of this through… I’m just thinking out loud about how theme developers might stop adding plugin functionality to their themes (which are then no longer themes, but, suites) … and wondering whether it is worth looking into creating a small team to produce such products.

Something like that could work well on a set up like Dollie

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Providing hosting and infrastructure (effectively) would require a larger team, but, that’s an interesting take on it.

Definitely! This will take some pulling off magic.

Nothing like this exists yet in the ClassicPress arena so the first in will reap the rewards.

This is how they make their themes seem “super good” and gives them their perceived USP
I doubt anything will stop them while customers are prepared to go for the sales pitch.
WordPress is free and themes are relatively cheap so it is an easy sell.

Regarding a pre-setup site with theme plugins,dummy content etc.would likely be a harder sell as a off the peg item, both to end user (lots of parts they need to know about individually) and to developer/agency who probably has their own base theme/framework, preferred plugin set etc.

Having said that if a selection of pre-made sites were available and met my criteria it could be a useful resource.

Perhaps calling them suites also adds to the perceived value.

I wasn’t thinking premade sites – that’s too speculative for so much effort – I was thinking more along the lines of creating the tools (theme+plugins+widgets) that are geared toward particular niches.

At this point, there’s not enough information about usage numbers, let alone the types of sites people are building with ClassicPress, so, it would be a complete shot in the dark aimed at a relatively small user base. Doing something anytime soon doesn’t seem plausible, but, this is definitely something I want to think more about.

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Really interesting topic, not sure how I missed it.

Not yet but I’ve been thinking along these lines for quite some time - time enough to buy several relevant domain names for the niches I envisage! (I’m a bit of a domain hoarder and you could easily extrapolate my 5 year plan from my Hover account.)

At the moment I’m working on a full-featured plugin for a particular niche (I use the term “vertical”) that I have a lot of experience with, and my aim is to use it in two ways:

  1. To sell it as a premium (no free option) plugin with support on an annual license basis. Much as I love open source, this one will have a proprietary license and encrypted code, like a lot of the WC payment gateways do.

  2. To package it as part of a turnkey solution (i.e. this is a complete web solution for your industry, you give us the branding, we’ll use our fantastic plugin, create a theme that complements it, deploy it as a complete site for you and support the whole thing going forward).

If we were to take the real estate vertical as a theoretical example (though this is NOT the vertical I’m aiming at), I think there’s potentially a lot of money to be made in selling a complete specialised web package, given a capable plugin to underpin it, which does property search using CPTs, user wishlist, appointments, 3D walkthroughs, integrates with a third party DB, etc.

And you see companies offering packages like “gym websites”, “life coach websites”, etc, all the time. These are almost certainly basic WP sites with a specially-devised custom plugin or two. Seems like a license to print money.

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I’m not sure how I missed this thread either.

I approve of this concept :wink:

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