What are some useful extensions for the HN crowd?
Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#22Since this is the right crowd, for those who make money with your extension, how do you do it? I'm contemplating building an API for license checking and a simple webapp for registration / subscription management, but if anybody's using the off-the-shelf options I'd be interested to hear about your experience.
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Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#23I run Track & Trace Tools[1], an extension directly targeted at the legal cannabis industry's main compliance platform Metrc.
Since it's targeted at businesses and not consumers, word of mouth has been powerful for me. I've rapidly grown in the state of Michigan thanks to a few very enthusiastic operators.
I also went on a slate of podcasts last year to talk about (read: promote) my product. Podcast hosts are always looking for guests, and most of them didn't cost me a thing.
It's also been helpful to be a Google Developer Expert for web extensions, the Chrome team interviewed me and that gave me a platform to talk about what I was working on[2].
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#24I used to have a pretty successful browser extension that I shut down because the site it worked on shut down. I grew it by adding features that people would ask for on the site's forums, for example a user would say "hey can we have x feature?" and I would respond saying "great idea, I added x feature to my extension y!" This was very effective and over time others would start responding saying my extension had what…
I have a similar type of product that depends on a third party and I use LLMs to automate most of the work. I feed it batches of Discord/Discourse messages from the third party’s community along with a prompt containing my feature set and it flags messages that might be relevant so that I can reply to them (manually, although the LLM generates some starting points based on examples replies). The false positive rate a…
That tool itself might be worth publishing. I've noticed some cofounders (Supabase's kiwicopple comes to mind) that are very on top of HN comments and I am not sure if they're literally reading all the HN comments or doing that in some automated, "notify me when someone talks about Supabase" kind of way. Could be very valuable to notify when even a related discussion happens!
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#25While there aren't visibility-boosting features, don't downplay SEO on the app stores. That is, if your's is the kind of extension that people will be searching for when looking the solve their problem. The Chrome store also shows a bunch of 'related' extensions at the bottom of every listing. It can't hurt to show up there.
Also, since you don't mention it, list on the Edge Add-ons store. My user count over there is ~40% of the Chrome store number.
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#26While there aren't visibility-boosting features, don't downplay SEO on the app stores. That is, if your's is the kind of extension that people will be searching for when looking the solve their problem. The Chrome store also shows a bunch of 'related' extensions at the bottom of every listing. It can't hurt to show up there. Also, since you don't mention it, list on the Edge Add-ons store. My user count over there is…
Great call on expanding to other add-ons stores. I'll need to look into compatibility and find a Windows machine to test...
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#27While there aren't visibility-boosting features, don't downplay SEO on the app stores. That is, if your's is the kind of extension that people will be searching for when looking the solve their problem. The Chrome store also shows a bunch of 'related' extensions at the bottom of every listing. It can't hurt to show up there. Also, since you don't mention it, list on the Edge Add-ons store. My user count over there is…
Great call on expanding to other add-ons stores. I'll need to look into compatibility and find a Windows machine to test...
The Edge store was stricter in some ways but I find I can submit pretty much the same bundle to both. Note also that Edge runs fine on MacOS.
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#28While there aren't visibility-boosting features, don't downplay SEO on the app stores. That is, if your's is the kind of extension that people will be searching for when looking the solve their problem. The Chrome store also shows a bunch of 'related' extensions at the bottom of every listing. It can't hurt to show up there. Also, since you don't mention it, list on the Edge Add-ons store. My user count over there is…
Great call on expanding to other add-ons stores. I'll need to look into compatibility and find a Windows machine to test...
Edge has Linux and MacOS builds
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've added my contact email to my profile, thank you.
You will hear from me shortly. Thanks!
You all have to know this guy is most likely trying to scam you?
Has a secret tool that will grant you success, can only DM you, won't share in public. Scamola if I've ever smelled one...
Re: Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it?
#30I run Track & Trace Tools[1], an extension directly targeted at the legal cannabis industry's main compliance platform Metrc. Since it's targeted at businesses and not consumers, word of mouth has been powerful for me. I've rapidly grown in the state of Michigan thanks to a few very enthusiastic operators. I also went on a slate of podcasts last year to talk about (read: promote) my product. Podcast hosts are always…
> Podcast hosts are always looking for guests, and most of them didn't cost me a thing.
That implies that for some podcasts you can pay to be a guest?