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Ask HN: How do you build and monetize Chrome extensions?

30 points by matbram ↗ HN
Does anyone have any experience with successfully creating and monetizing chrome extensions? I'm looking into doing this and want to see what I'm up against and if this is feasible.

Also, being that chrome extensions are comprised of just HTML/CSS/Javascript, anyone can easily view and replicate the source code and compete against you. The only way that I know to circumvent this is to have your chrome extension interface with your server, where the actual functionality is hosted.

What are your thoughts and experiences on this?

11 comments

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madprops
I don't know the site to create a merchant account is blocked in my house.
amine_benselim
minify your css, uglify your js and you're good to go. the visual part of your code will be available anyway, that's how the browser knows how to render your app.

when i comes to monetize, that depends on what kind of application you're making, just like a website you can use freemium model, a premium one, you can run ads on it.. as i said, it greatly depends on the type of extension you're creating

GhostVII
How would minifying and uglifying help? It's not hard to read minified CSS and uglified JS, and you can still use the minified/uglified versions in a knockoff app just fine.
mattm
IIRC minifying is against the terms of use and is more likely to result in your Chrome extension being removed from the Chrome webstore.
anandkulkarni
Chrome extensions are just another interface to a web app. They're easy to reproduce by another hacker, but most people won't bother reverse-engineering an extension just to get it for free. You'll probably sell product to people who don't know how to do that, anyway.

If you're concerned about it, then just make sure the IP doesn't live entirely in the extension itself with a simple third-party authentication & payment system.

There are more than a few companies set up like this already. SalesLoft started as a paid Chrome extension!

matbram
Very valid points, especially about the type of people using the product, they're usually not tech savvy enough to do so, or care about it enough to do so.

Yeah having the IP live on the server instead of the extension itself should be enough to keep things safe.

Interesting about SalesLoft, didn't know they started out as a chrome extension :D

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seanwilson
> Also, being that chrome extensions are comprised of just HTML/CSS/Javascript, anyone can easily view and replicate the source code and compete against you. The only way that I know to circumvent this is to have your chrome extension interface with your server, where the actual functionality is hosted.

I wouldn't worry about this. If a competitor literally uses your code that's copyright infringement. For the vast major of apps you don't need to look at their code to figure out how to replicate them anyway. Minifying your code will make it unpleasant enough to look at the source files.