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How To Monetize Open Source Code – A PieceX Guide

As an Open Source developer/contributor, you may find that helping the community and giving back to it is the most possible reward you could get.

However, in today’s economy, you will still need to pay the bills. So you may wonder “How exactly do Open Source Code developers make a living and still have time for the community?”

The answer to that question is simple. They make money through their Open Source Code!

How, you ask? Let’s take a further look into it. In this quick guide, we will get you through the different methods of monetizing your Open Source Code.

Open Source Sponsorship

Most, if not all, Open Source Developers are GitHub dwellers. GitHub is considered to be the home of Open Source Code and the Open Source Community.

On Github, Open Source Developers or contributors often make use of the GitHub Sponsorship program which allows them to gain sponsorship for their open source projects.

This is one of the greatest ways to make money as GitHub doesn’t take a single percentage of the provided sponsorship.

It is also possible to get Open Source Sponsorship from a variety of different places such as Patreon, the Open Collective, and self driven links.

The downside of this is that sponsorship is often difficult to get, you’d have to heavily market your Open Source Project as well as wait for people to take a look at your project and sponsor it also as a support for the community.

This takes us to the 2nd and most important method of monetizing open source code.

PieceX OSS (Paid Support)

The most prominent way for Open Source Developers to monetize their projects is to provide paid support.

Everyone uses Open Source Code, and it is very popular that due to common reliability on open source, various issues occur.

A startup may try to build their entire business on a single open source project and then have difficulties navigating through it as they have no knowledge of the code arrangement, resulting in major confusion, time/resource burnout, and occasionally failure to completely integrate.

When this happens, which it does very often, most users of the Open Source Code try to find a way to reach out to the Open Source Developer.

The reason why they do that is because they often need support from them, whether it is to navigate through the code, to add/remove features, understand more about the dissection of the project, or to request debugging or implementation services, there is always something that a user may need from an Open Source Developer.

Hence, PieceX OSS is the best platform for Open Source Support. This platform opens up great new opportunities to the market as it allows Open Source Developers to list Open Source Support plans.

The way this works is by providing paid support for Open Source Code on the marketplace so owners of the Open Source code can benefit as sellers of the support service and thus monetizing their open source code.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a service may just be one of the most convenient ways to monetize your Open Source Code.

With a simple cloud delivery model, you can host your very own software, especially specific types of products that offer complete Application such as Marketing tools, automation tools, etc..

Keep in mind that the downside (or upside) of this is that if you host the software yourself, you will be required to maintain it, keep up with its security, code issues, and anything related to the dangers of hosting.

That aside, doing so is a great way to target non-tech developers and business/marketing teams to make use of your software without having to go through the mumbo-jumbo of tech, granting you, the open source developer, a great market to tap into and make money from.

Paid Feature Requests

Sometimes users of Open Source Code just want specific features and want to reach out to contributors, maintainers, designers, or developers of a specific open source code in order to request that feature from them for a price.

Paid Feature Requests are a great way to monetize Open Source Code as it is a very hyper-intuitive method and open source users ALWAYS need new features.

Finding the perfect place to offer those services may be difficult, which is why PieceX OSS remains the most likely useful platform to use.

PieceX OSS’s current model makes it so that you can offer the creation features in your One Time Support Plans or your Extended Support Plans for a price relevant to the difficulty and complexity of the feature itself.

Conclusion

There are many ways to monetize Open Source Code, but before thinking of monetization, it is important to keep in mind that the project in which you contributed or developed is well-made and that its current state makes it significant within the millions of open source codes available across the internet.

If you, however, have your gears ready and you are sure of the quality of your code, following one (or more) of the methods above will definitely increase your chances at gaining a passive revenue stream for your open source code.

For more articles make sure to check out the knowledgebase blog.

Tips on How to Win PieceX OSS Seller Contest

As you all know, PieceX OSS has been released, and with it comes yet another PieceX Seller Contest with a prize pool of $1,000! Since the last contest was a major success and many of you participated (and won), we believe it’s time to give you a few tips on how to win this year’s Seller Contest.

But before we dive in, let’s talk a little bit about the contest. The contest is divided into 3 categories: Open Source Support, Web, and Mobile.

The way it works is, you list your project on the PieceX platform in one of those categories after the start date and the product that gets the most amount of sales after 3 months, wins!

So without further ado, let’s get into some tips and tricks on how to win the PieceX Seller Contest.

Stay Ahead of The Curve

The earlier the better! The contest starts in March and lasts for 3 months, so the earlier you list your project, the longer time you will have to get sales.

So stay ahead of the curve and list as many projects as early as possible to increase your chances at winning the contest and earning the most.

Join in All Categories

Since there are 3 different brackets, if you have listings in all 3 categories, your chances of winning one of them get significantly higher.

Aside from the exposure and earnings you’ll make with every sale in each separate category, when you join each category you compete in its separate bracket and so if you join all, you compete in 3 different contests.

And who knows? Maybe if you work hard enough, you can win all three!

Study The Trends

Let’s face it, like any industry, the Tech industry has favorites. Sometimes people are all about Mobile Games and other times the craze is all over Web Design Temps. The software industry is ever-changing and barely stays in its place.

That’s why it’s very important that you study the current trends and find out which project is currently most needed and demanded by the market.

This way, you won’t have to put great effort in getting your project out there as its content will already sell itself.

Advertise Your Project

This is the most important part of the process. Like any functional and successful marketplace, PieceX does its part in featuring some products and giving users an algorithm based on their choices and searches.

However, like any marketplace, PieceX’s advertisement stops at that. It is very important that you advertise and market your product using your own means.

You can start by reaching out to your respective audience. For example, if you are offering Open Source Support, then it’s important to spread the word to the developers currently using your Open Source Code and to spread the word in the Open Source Community.

Social Media is also a very strong weapon. If your company has a page on Facebook or a Niche Subreddit, you can always tell people that your Mobile App is up for sale on PieceX.

This way you will get the word out about your product and you will manage to get as many sales as possible.

Start Now

Don’t wait! The contest is up and this is finally your chance to make use of all the Source Code you spent hours and days developing, make money from it, AND get a reward.

What are you waiting for? The PieceX team believes in you.

JOIN NOW!