MBA1416 Building a Chrome Extension Business

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Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that gives you what you need and nothing you don't every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA A a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn all about building a Chrome Extension business. A Chrome Extension is a piece of software that is installed on your Chrome browser, your Google Chrome browser and it allows you to do a lot of different things when using that browser. Technically, this is a hybrid between a cloud based platform or a cloud based software and a desktop app software. The beauty of these Chrome extensions is that they often solve a very specific problem and they make nifty tools. From a consumer point of view, Chrome extensions are often quite inexpensive but most importantly frequently used so it's really hard to cancel. If you're looking to get into the software game, start a software business. Maybe a Chrome Extension is a good place to start and I'll explain why. I'll be sharing some success stories as well as why this type of business might be a great next business for you. So so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Recently a Chrome Extension called Honey, which is a Chrome extension that allows you to apply automatically discount codes to any online shopping site. It basically scavenger hunt for all the coupon codes out there on the web, crawl for them and then apply them to your cart on any site like Amazon, Walmart, even boutique e commerce stores. This became a very, very popular Chrome extension because people love saving money. And recently Honey, this small little Chrome extension company was bought by PayPal for $4 billion. That's 4 billion with a B. In fact, it's breaking records in terms of return on investment from some of their early investors. As much as 300 times as much as they invested. Just for context, if an investor made a modest investment of $100,000 today after that acquisition from PayPal, that a hundred thousand dollar investment is thirty million dollars. Now. Now obviously this is like the Cinderella story of Chrome extensions, but there's plenty of entrepreneurs that are making great 6, 7, 8 figure businesses selling their Chrome Extensions. And just like any other software, they have a free version as well as a paid version. There's reoccurring fees if you want, or a one time fee. And I'll walk you through all your options. Here are some of the advantages of starting a chrome extension business. 1. Building a chrome extension is not as large and complicated as a full on software that is cloud based or even desktop or mobile based. It's often small and light and delivers a specific outcome just like in the Honey example. But let me give you some other examples of Chrome extensions. Wistia has a Chrome extension called Soapbox that allows you to record right off your browser using your webcam. Demos like sharing your slides and being on camera and then editing on the fly. It's not there to compete with, you know, Final Cut, one of the premier video editing software by Apple. It's a small simple app that helps you do a certain job and they have reoccurring plans monthly and annual. A company like LastPass, which allows you to store your passwords in a secure place and populate it right on your browser, has a Chrome extension. So, so these are just a couple examples. So it's a small type of app, so you can actually deliver a beta version of it in a short period of time even if you hire somebody out. But many people build their own Chrome extensions themselves and they actually are self taught. They take some courses online and in a few months they are in beta. So the small specific type of app idea is really, really approachable to many people. Number two, you're listed in the Chrome Store. This is like being in an app store and it gives you sort of free exposure and a marketplace for you to be found. But of course, you can do your own marketing on your own website and do everything else on your own, just like you do with any other app. But it gives you that little extra advantage by having a little exposure in that store. A lot of people search the store for certain solutions and you can come up, you know, depending on how popular you are or your ratings. And it's a really simple way for you to do this and get exposure just by being a Chrome extension. Another hidden advantage that people don't talk about is that if people are using Chrome extensions, they're familiar with it and they are a customer of yours. They tend to be a tech savvy customer. They're not somebody who is low tech. They understand the concept of extensions, they're shopping for extensions, they know how to get the best out of their browser, they have some tech knowledge. So you're going to have a lot less hand holding that is needed in customer support. Most of your customers are going to know how to sort things out themselves. If you have a documentation and you have some help articles and most of your support tickets or emails will be because there is a bug or something that you need to fix. So what are the disadvantages? Well, it's not as popular as a standalone app that people can just use on the web, a web app or a mobile app. It's a little bit more of a niche audience. The other thing you need to keep in mind that is sort of a disadvantage is that the price for a Chrome extension in general is pretty low. So you're not going to make so much money per customer. Your ARPU is going to be quite low average revenue per user, but you're going to be playing the volume game. The other disadvantage I would say is that very often people that create Chrome extensions, it's not just one Chrome extension that does well. What they do is they kind of aggregate all their efforts. They create a lot of Chrome extensions and hopefully if they create 10, two or three are really going to do well. The rest are kind of just there because hey, they have to try things out to see what the market needs and they may make some money on some of those, but really they're heavy hitters. They're winners, are a handful. The good news is, is once you create one Chrome Extension, it's a lot easier to create several others. But the bad news is that if you have 1012 different Chrome extensions that you've built and are out there in the market that you're selling and serving. You can't kind of manage all that on your own. You're going to need somebody to help you, some team members to manage that, to fix the bugs, to answer, support tickets, to be able to have different sites and different information about each one. So in a lot of ways, this is like the mobile app game. Many people that create mobile apps, they create several different mobile apps with the hopes that one of them will take off. This is especially true in the game community if you're creating games for mobile. You know, Angry Birds is one of the biggest mobile hits, but it was after many, many failures, many different tries of different types of games, and this is the one that kind of took off. So where do you start? Well, I would first definitely look into how would you create your first one if you want to create it yourself. There's some really good courses on Udemy, as well as Coursera, as well as Skillshare. These are great sites for learning how to create Chrome extensions. There's different courses you could search for and shop around with. You can, but even if you're not going to do the developing, you're going to hire somebody. I do recommend you go through one of these courses to understand the process, understand what you're actually hiring for. If you are hiring, you can find tons of freelancers that are skilled in this area on freelancer.com or upwork and start with just a beta version. You can create a very simple sales site on a website, one page sales site. And a lot of people start with just a free version to get people to sign up, to get an email list, to get feedback. And it's a very, very stripped down version of the idea or concept that you really want to fulfill with this Chrome extension. But that's okay because the fancy stuff is going to be for those who want to pay. But starting out with that free version allows you to get some momentum and some feedback. One of the things you're going to learn in this process is people want an easy to use product. So you're going to have to refine or refine until it's even easier than you imagine. It's gotta be lightweight, it can't be too heavy. Again, this is getting installed on people's computers, so you don't wanna slow down their browser either. And of course it has to directly solve the pain, the problem that you're solving with this app. I actually really recommend thinking about this. If you wanna start something on the side while you're working. This is a great side project. Something you could learn, something you can build, something that you can afford to fail in and take a few risks and hopefully make a few sales and learn something in the process. You might learn hey, I love this concept. I'd love apps as Chrome extensions. You might say, no, I want to build a mobile app. That's something that's more up my alley. Or no, I want to build a web app. The beauty of a Chrome extension, it's like a hybrid of both. You could see the good and the bad of both type of options and see if that's really something you like. Or you might like the other options that I just mentioned.

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To wrap up today's lesson. If you're looking to get into the software game, a Chrome extension is a good place to start and take a look at if you're into this idea as a concept, as a business, as something maybe you want to build on the side. It'll give you a window to the web game, the web app game, or the desktop game, or the mobile game. You'll figure out if you want to even get into software in the first place. It's a low risk, low cost way. And hey, you get to learn something new with minimal risk. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Also by leaving us a review, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. We do a random draw with anybody who's left us a review on Friday episodes. That's tomorrow. And if you win, you win a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course. Our 30 day course on how to build your own online course is a $500 value over at EasyCourse Co, but it's yours for free if you win. Free Ride Friday. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you can win. Before I go, I want to leave you with this with new technology, there's new opportunities. And yes, Chrome has been around for a while and Chrome extensions have been here for a while, but for many people, they haven't explored them as business options. I think with the success of the Honey Chrome extension, a lot of people are going to be like, hey, what are these Chrome extensions? But this is going to open even new opportunities. More people are going to be there to support these types of businesses, knowing the potential is there. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in tomorrow's episode. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.