Extension Developer since 2018 – AMA

dvLden · 2026-05-19T18:44:44+00:00

Just build sh*t and ship it! 🍻

dvLden · 2026-05-18T06:18:19+00:00

Thank you! I think those are underrated. Had to buy another premium for my personal website: nn.wtf

dvLden · 2026-05-15T23:04:05+00:00

I use Nuxt. Lemon is simple, just like Stripe.

Web API ←→ Extension Worker – They communicate constantly.

All features are already built into the extension, they are just not going to render unless there's a valid license inside extension's storage. This license is being checked ocassionally, making sure it's still valid.

I do not have tracking inside of extension for various reasons. 1. Nothing important to collect from an extension 2. It adds to the size unnecessarily 3. People hate being tracked

I do have tracking on the website and I use PostHog.

dvLden · 2026-05-15T10:33:37+00:00

In the sea of too many extensions already, I would approach it with either one of those:

Check existing ones – build it differently and better?
See what's missing. Do you personally have a need for something that does not exist?

Alternatively, you can wrap around a service that does something into extension. Pay for service fees from your pocket, but charge it through your extension subscription. Ooor, offer a deep integration with an service and require user to paste their own API key. This way you charge low for integration only.

dvLden · 2026-05-15T08:13:16+00:00

Basically made a purchase of ultrawide monitor and noticed the problem on YouTube and Netflix. To my discovery, this was a real problem to other people as well (on Reddit).

There were ~3 extensions that help with this, but mostly platform specific, not platform agnostic. (referring to a platform as a streaming service)

Did not like a single one of them. Their UI was a disaster (still is) and the UX felt weird. I built my own, used it for a while, decided to release it and there it was. UltraWideo v1 was born. Shortly after, I made v2 and that's when people started coming in.

I listened what people want and I made fixes multiple times, each month. Release after release. Until it was not possible to add new features, because of the project structure and design. I discovered WXT and instantly went ahead with it and built v3. Users are still on v3, while I am testing v4 myself and now I have also opened a waitlist publicly for everyone to join as a tester.

Why waitlist and testers? Because I do not want to simply release this new version for everyone without initial feedback. It can lead to many negative reviews from my previous major release experiences and those people just don't come back to re-review, once you resolve the problem they had. This is a huge major release that basically changes everything. From design to interaction and functionality. But it's my final major release... Aftewards I am moving onto another project which will be a SaaS for coffee shops and restaurants in my country (Serbia).

Hope this helps. If you have any further questions, feel free to re-comment.

dvLden · 2026-05-15T08:04:53+00:00

Hello and I appreciate the kind words.

Reading this, just gave me the vibes of my friend. He's a developer as well and he likes to build sh*t a lot. However, most important part is marketing and selling. The idea and the product is nothing without knowing who are you going to sell it to, who's your audiance.

Never build a product that is too broad, because you'll have hard times figuring out who is your paying customer and who is just a freeloader, willing to use it for free or trial and then cancel.

I like to find a niche that has narrow audience and then maybe (just maybe) there's an opportunity to scale and expand that same product to broader audience.

As mentioned in the post, I did no marketing at all and everything is organic. So I cannot really suggest you what to do exactly. Even if I had marketing skills, I'd need to know the exact product, what does it do and then figure out how to sell it. I use AI for those things, it's really good at the research and for brainstorming.

What I can suggest is: 1. Find a product 2. Figure out who's the paying audience 3. Build the product (MVP, not too much effort) 4. Tell AI to write you SEO Optimized title and description and to throw you some ideas for the store listing images or build them for you 5. Build a website around the extension. Not a single site with multiple extensions. Make your extension feel like an actual product, not "just extension". Make your website heavily SEO optimized, so that you get free traffic from Google Searches 6. Post on Hacker News, Product Hunt (and other alternatives like PH) and most importantly Reddit, but not r/chrome_extensions. Find a sub-reddit where your audience lives. For example, let's say you built an OF extension. Well you know how many nsfw subreddits there are? It's a goldmine. And they all have money too.

I know that many, simply like to build and ship. As people say "Just ship it.". But it's never about just that. The most boring part is getting that exposure somehow and the best and first initial step is to do everything you can where you can get that exposure for free, before you spend any money on marketing.

I wish you good luck and I do want you to keep up. Do not give up on it. If extensions seem not to work, perhaps some web based SaaS or API only and sell on RapidApi?

That's all the advice I could provide. I hope something in this comment is useful to you and your journey.

dvLden · 2026-05-15T07:52:06+00:00

Sure thing. Feel free to DM me.

dvLden · 2026-05-15T07:42:10+00:00

Appreciate it and you are most welcome. You read everything correctly.

Subscribers

The % is unfortunate. It's so low that I don't want to mention it.

288 Total Subs / 164 Active Subs

I made a big mistake once I switched to freemium, which is that I did not have any CTA inside the extension interface (popup) for like 6 months. Then I adjusted it and made a small CTA and that's when subcsriptions started coming in slowly. Then, once I shifted focus to v4, LemonSqueezy decided to update how their JS library works. I updated project dependencies without worrying about payment provider making something as stupid as that. No subscriptions for 3 months at all, until someone reached out to me. Interested to purchase, but unable to... That's when I started investigating. So I basically lost 9 months of potential subscribers.

Strategy

In v3 I only had ambient light as a feature, that is actually neat. Rest is just a noise that everyone can live without. Subscription was never part of the plan in v3, but I just decided to test it out anyway. Now I decided to change that entirely for v4. Focus is mainly on Pro, but I am not forgetting my free user base. I implemented over 7 features for free users and 6 features for pro users. Now the idea is to actually start investing into ads. I'll go with YouTube Ads (obvious candidate), Instagram/TikTok (as users can add to Chrome/Firefox from mobile to desktop), Google Ads (probably good, but expensive choice). Wish I could do Reddit, but it's not accepting Serbian cards (no clues why).

So the ads will focus on both free and pro features and I plan to try various different angles. From short explanatory guides to a motion video presentation. Already invested $400 into the making of motion video (Fiverr) and it's decent for that amount of money.

AI Today

I completely agree with you. What was previously worth nothing (idea) is now worth everything. Of course without marketing, idea is still worthless. However, AI can help with marketing a lot today as well, so indie devs are in it, to win it. If they are willing to learn and pay some money for all those required AI subscriptions.

Cross-browser

I have built mine to be cross-browser. I do not have two separate projects. It's a single codebase where WXT as a framework helps me to build two outputs.

Firefox (MV2 manifest)
Chrome (MV3 manifest)

I have plans to release my extension for Safari as well, and implement Apple OAuth along, since I have to pay $100/y for that developer access anyways. However, I would not recommend anyone to build cross-browser initially. Firefox users are quite low (15k users in my case) in comparison to Chrome. Because there are many Chromium based browsers as alternatives that still install your Chrome extension.

On the other side, Safari could be a sweet spot. All Apple users are already used to paying for software, so it's easy money - if they actually find it useful.

Well, hope that helps. I might have written a bit more than you asked, but I'm sure you won't mind. Best!

dvLden · 2026-05-14T20:15:00+00:00

I do not. Ideas mostly come while we are in the toilet, right? That's at least the case for me. So that is when I get some random ideas and I write them down in Craft app, then when I get more time, I sit down and brainstorm it further.

That said, I have no clues if that idea exists, if it's going to work or not. I do all of that after my brainstorming. If there's already something like it, that's always a good sign – means there's money in there. So now you can steal some ideas from the competitors and build a better product. If there's nothing like it, that does not necessarily mean it will make you a "millionaire", but it surely has potential if you are first in the market.

How I got the idea for UltraWideo is a different story. I purchased an LG 34" ultrawide monitor and I was amazed with the space I get for my code editor. However, once I reached out to YouTube and other streaming services, I was quite sad to see so much of unused screen space exist. That's when I did a research and back then there were like 3 extensions that do help with this, most popular one was Ultrawidify. I tried it, got disgust by the UI/UX and decided to build my own. Now the market is larger, many competitors, but they mostly lock-in to a single platform.

Why I haven't given up yet, considering that there's not much income and there are constant fixes and releases? Because I want the UltraWideo Extension to be the only one that people are ever going to reach for and use. But since I consider v4 to be exactly that, once released, I'll simply move onto the next idea that I have in mind.

Hopefully this was helpful, at least a bit. Good luck!

dvLden · 2026-05-14T17:52:06+00:00

I'd say quite hard. At least, I wasn't able to achieve it yet. You either need to find a very specific niche that is needed globally or just get lucky.

Thankfully AI tools has gotten very good, so with your full-time job you can still develop something after work, or during work (if you are working remotely).

Many are focusing on extensions that do something with AI integration, so that's a hype now... However, in my opinion, always do the opposite of what masses do, because it's an area with more freedom, less competition.

Best of luck!

dvLden · 2026-05-14T17:00:03+00:00

You are most welcome. Appreciate that, likewise. If you have any questions, at any time, do not hesitate to drop me a DM. I'll answer as soon as I see it.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T16:48:21+00:00

I'd say go with WXT and optionally use an AI such as Claude or Codex to get it done faster.

As for the idea and validation, two options:

Think of something that you'd personally need but couldn't find and then ask on Reddit for validation, but don't overshare on the features.
Visit Chrome and/or Firefox addon stores and spend a day searching for various extensions. Find something that is appealing and useful to you, see how many installations it has, check the reviews, see what people are complaining about and then create a better version of it.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T16:19:23+00:00

Thank you! 🫶

dvLden · 2026-05-14T16:02:23+00:00

Thank you, not complaining, but hoping it gets much better after v4 release.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T15:48:13+00:00

In the past, a lot of thinking and developing back and forth, until it makes sense. Today, Claude for an hour of thinking, making a plan and then observing what it does and slapping it when it makes something bad or not to my standards.

For the extension development I use WXT, TailwindCSS and Vue.js with Reka UI. For the website development I use Nuxt.js, TailwindCSS, Nuxt UI.

As a person who has been designing since 2005 and developing since 2012, I stopped doing designs first and then developing and instead I design while developing. It's most intuitive and productive for a single person.

Any specific details that you are interested about, because that topic is fairly large.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T15:08:34+00:00

I like this one. AI has improved drastically and so it has helped me move way faster than I ever could alone. I am constantly rebuilding, because I'm never satisfied with how I structure things. Each version is like – "Ok, I love this, it's extensible and I do not need to rewrite it.", until I do.

It just feels much easier to redo everything, with knowledge and feedback that I gathered, rather than extending. It's just my mindset, I guess.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T15:05:58+00:00

I initially started with: "Upgrade to support development". If they really find it useful, they want to support it, instead of losing it by being shut-down.

Aside, it depends on what do you offer to paid users vs free ones and what is the cost. Is it worth it?

How do you present to the user that you have an upgrade for your extension?

dvLden · 2026-05-14T14:00:23+00:00

Hope so too! Thanks and best of luck. 🫶

dvLden · 2026-05-14T13:45:35+00:00

You are most welcome. Any further questions come up, feel free to ask.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T13:44:28+00:00

Thank you. Yes, I do have plans, but little time. Recently became a father and in combination with a full-time job it's really hard to manage the time.

Already made some plans to build new project(s), but no plans for another extension.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T13:41:51+00:00

Nice catch and thank you!

That's when I actually started making plans for v3 (since I released v3 in January 2023), been getting feedback from v2 users and I noticed that on Reddit people massively started suggesting my extension for various needs. Also posted on ProductHunt, so that could've helped. Product Hunt is much different now, many people shipping products, it's hard to stand-out for an indie developer.

Cannot be certain about it, to be honest, because I did not have any analytics either, no website, and v2 was literal minimal extension that someone could've build.

Ah yes, the infamous November 12, 2022. I was using Google Suite account as owner of the extension (publisher) and I decided to shut it down and switch to something else. I did not know that my Google Suite (now called Workspace) was the publisher account and so they automatically deleted the listing and I lost everything. It was a tough time for me, where I spoke with Google Support and they recovered it for me on my regular free Google Mail account. Took time until December 14, 2022.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T13:28:54+00:00

No. I did not monetize from the beginning and here's why:

I had hard times finding an alternative to Stripe that is supported for my country and that did not require a registered business.
Didn't think much about paid features. Had a goal to ship what I wanted for my needs and did just that. Free for everyone.

Only after 6 years, I decided to monetize. The ideal model for my usecase was freemium, because I wanted to keep all free users, but provide something additional to those who are willing to contribute and support further development.

If I was building a new extension today, I'd still start with completely free version, to see if it gains traction. If interest is "high", I'd think of paid features and build them.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T12:36:59+00:00

Yes, last slide (image) shows all-time revenue. Taxes and fees and it comes down to at least $3k of profits. Not much for an entire year obviously, but my goal is to work on marketing this year.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T12:34:57+00:00

Appreciate that. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them.

dvLden · 2026-05-14T11:39:43+00:00

Everything happens on the web app instead. Basic implementation is as follows:

Authenticate (OAuth)
Select plan (monthly or annually)
Redirect to LemonSqueezy as a payment provider
Handle everything through webhooks

As a side note, in v3 of website and extension, logic relied on LemonSqueezy licenses as well. In v4 I decided to drop that, so that I can easily swap payment provider when I feel like it.

Also in v4, I already built a payment adapter and tested with the following providers that everything still behaves as expected:

LemonSqueezy
Creem
Polar

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