I didn't want to hijack this thread so thought it best to start a new on on the subject.


As Kae said it doesn't have to be something new and there is huge room to develop for niche areas or products.
We developed a commercial firefox extension for Basecamp a little over a year ago that I consider to be a big success for us (actually I think it might have been one of the first commercial extensions (although given the open source nature of Firefox I am not sure that is a bragable claim ). Basecode is a simple tool to add formatting options to the input boxes and a few other Basecamp specific functions.
In terms of the revenue generated it was no great shakes. It more then earned back the development costs but where it excelled was in terms of marketing for Spoiltchild.com. A huge number of downloads and an even bigger number of visitors which led to some nice work including the interface design of the Performancing Blog Extension.

For us internally it was a test to see if we could develop a product that people would use. It was a small test but the great feedback gave us the confidence to persue our own bigger projects.

Marketing is something that not many have considered as a purpose for extensions. At the moment they are a tool for the early adapters and techies. It has huge potential for targeting the exact target market you want for your own product or service. An example is if you have identified that your target market is the same as ApplicationX. Develop an extension that makes life easier for users of ApplicationX.
1. You get associated with ApplicationX brand and access to all their users.
2. If it makes ApplicationX a better product you could even be endorsed by ApplicationX. As happened here.
3. Your brand now appears within ApplicationX and your core target market interacts with your brand daily.
4. Your target feels good about your brand already because it makes their life easier.
5. Traffic to your own site where users of ApplicationX must go to download the extension. This is where you can guide them to your core product or service.

We have version 2 of the Basecode extension built and ready to go. This time it will be free and we are linking it in with the launch of a new web application next month. I will let you know how it goes.

(After writing this i think there may be a blog post in the making )

You know you can post from here directly to the more common social bookmarking sites ?

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It would need a bit of a tidy up first

SEO for firefox plugin is another great example of promoting a website by creating a plugin. Plugins can have great link value also

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Interesting. How so?

You can offer the download on your site. If the plugin is something people will use, you'll be surprised how many people will link to it. You don't have to host it on the Mozilla servers.

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Also better known as 'link-bait'.

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