VST Developer Partnership

Development
1

Hey there, I’m Viliam from integraudio.com blog, and I would be interested working with a guy that would develop plugins for free, please read entire thing.

80% of website traffic comes from the articles, so called “best of lists”, like “best delay plugins” and so on. We are pretty good at this.

So my point is - you would make free plugins, once we develop them together, we start selling them in those “best of” categories. I have all the data which plugin categories are best and most searched by people. We would focus just on these.

My idea would be 50/50 split from the sales. So you make a plugin, and I provide already running platform ready to sell these plugins. No branding obligations from your side, nothing, I would take care all of that. You would just take care of the plugins.

This would provide you with a consistent earnings, rather than one big payment. We could sell plugins for 50$ or even 70$.

I’m musician myself, and I know a LOT about the sound. Here is our new plugin that we will release soon, all designed / fine-tuned by myself and coded by developer -
Imgur

I would also share with you complete site’s data - how site is doing and also site earned each month.

I could go in-depth via chat.

I would prefer working with established developer that can also design UI in one person that can provide portfolio of plugins.

Maybe it would sound unrealistic or even funny to some, but at least I try :smiley: if so, let me know at aintegraudio@gmail.com

Viliam

2

As much as this sounds like a good idea for developers, It’s a very big risk for a lot of us. Don’t get me wrong I hope it goes well for you and whoever you partner with, but finding someone willing to work for free without any guarantee of payment will be extremely difficult if not impossible.

My personal advice as a developer, offer an upfront payment, then a commission / percentage of sales profits. My other concern is that putting plugins with your blog’s name written on them in the “best of” categories would look extremely biased and wouldn’t instill much confidence in consumers looking to buy.

Regardless, I wish you the best of luck!

6 Likes
3

Hey, no it would not be biased because we would sell plugins for much lower $ than they actually sell now. And since we rank well already for these articles in the search, people would indeed see
the value of low budget, and still see the product as a premium.

We would just go for quantity. Selling to many, rather to few. It would not only sell well, but releasing 1 paid and 1 free product at a time (and repeat), would mean that we would build a valuable backlinks
from other websites to free products, as they are super popular. Just check this website - bedroomproducersblog.com, just see that comments

But we would need to make those free plugins as I said to be “premium” too, not just paid ones.

If you need some anti-scam thing, you would be the person that would develop the plugin, so what if you put some of your artist name or brand too on it (if you have brand). This would

ensure that you are the guy behind that

4

This has huge smells all over it. Developers, beware of those who ask you to work for free - their contributions are rarely worth the claims! Developers are always senior to marketing! 90/10 or gtfo!

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To prove it’s real I would suggest giving credit to the dev right on the plugin, so not just our website would got a credit but also creator, but that would be just a first step, i would be open to discuss things further so that no one feels scammed… I’m founder of the site and I can’t afford to scam/deceive as there is too much in the game

There are so many things that could be discussed like conditions, to make it good for you, we could also make some llegal contract or so (as on upwork)

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Review one of my existing plugins and I’ll know whether your proposal is feasible, based on the amount of increased sales :slight_smile:

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at the first glance I like the compressor one, it’s pretty detailed so I guess sound will be on the same level

my goal would be to sell plugins for not more than 10$ so that we could go for quantity rather than guys like SSL or UAD

I can’t give any specific plan or something now, for example the blowdio above I sent we plan to sell for that 10$, so anything about that same level of complexity I can imagine going for 10$, we can later increase, (and also increase complexity so it goes hand in hand)

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I honestly think, that if you believe in your marketing strategy, you should be prepared to pay for the development costs upfront, and you could then have a revenue share deal with developers, where the upfront cost is like an advance.

You are much more likely to get developers interested this way, and also increases your chance of getting skilled and experienced developers involved.

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Yeah could be true, but I got some emails from some guys saying they are much more interested in being paid per sale rather than one big payment for a plugin, let’s see how it goes

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Here is an idea on how a collaborator can work with a developer that provides benefits for both parties:

  1. Offer an up front payment for the work that may be lower than the developer(s) going rate, but enough to make it worth a risk. Most developers need (or want) some up front money to ensure they can keep the lights on and balance the risk.

  2. When the product goes to market, the developer would take a smaller (or no) royalty until this amount is paid off.

  3. Once the money is paid, the developer takes a larger royalty per unit sold.

In my experience, there is a balance that needs to be struck between risk for the developer, up front budget for the collaborator, and reward for risk taken by either party.

Here’s an example:

A developer normally charges $100 p/h and decides they will take a cut to $50 per hour for this venture. Estimated costs to develop the product is $20,000, or 400 hours of work.

The developer and collaborator agree that the sale price for the product will be $100 per unit. So they would need to sell 200 units to cover the cost.

The collaborator estimates that they can sensibly sell 1000 units based on their following / influence etc ($100,000 gross).

When the product goes on sale, the developer takes a 20% royalty until the collaborator’s costs are recovered (250 units). From there, they split the net profit 50/50.

After 1000 units sold, both parties win.

Developer
Upfront payment = $20,000
250 units * 20% royalty = $5000
750 units * 50% royalty = $37,500

Total: $62,500

Collaborator
250 units * 80% royalty = $20,000 (pays for developer cost)
750 units * 50% royalty = $37,500

**Total: ** $57,500

This is not accounting for other costs (i.e. licenses, website, ecommerce cut, taxes etc)…but it’s a rough “sketch on a napkin” to hopefully provide a creative spark on how these collaborations can work.

I hope this helps!

11 Likes
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Thanks great value, there were no such information online about this, thanks!

Anyway, I still believe there are people that would just want to go my route. For me it all comes down whether the guy wants to build a brand and do branding stuff or just to make plugins and take the other person take care of the other things. It’s not about that the first plugin would bring tons of revenue or what, it could or could not be true, it’s about evolving whether person wants to go for something more.

One might say - But I want to be paid! But if the plugin will be good enough, what are you scare of? It should sell I guess, I mean I just don’t like the idea paying someone anything, I like to paying for the results, which some will find weird but that’s just me :smiley: and I’m already got 5 emails from guys about this, so I just have this vision with it, maybe it’s not very good approach to some, but it’s my vision, when something is good enough, it just should sell well… question is if you are confident in your abilities and have vision too…

Another thing is that it builds relationship with that person, rather than paying for one plugin big amount and then relationship ends becuase the guy doesn’t have any money to invest, this way, people can work together on a thing until it gets better and better, until the point where we are improving little things here and there and we could charge more… that’s how i think about it

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Personally, if I were to engage in a 50/50 royalty deal with someone, then I’d have to feel that person,

a) can deliver on their end. It shouldn’t be that the developer does 95% of the work for 50% of the profit. There are a lot of Idea Guys out there.

b) is someone I actually like and is professional.

With a deal like this you’re essentially becoming business partners, and it’s wise to be careful about choosing who you go into business with. It takes more than a couple of forum posts to convince the good developers. :slight_smile:

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13

It doesn’t even sound like good developers are the target of this post.

The attitude of “you should be able to make it cheaper than all the existing ones” doesn’t sound like it is valuing the developers work.
Offering stuff under value is a legit approach, but I don’t know if I would split with a person just for that piece of generic advice.

An alternative would be a kickback provision for each sale that comes through your review.

1 Like
14

Yes, I think you underestimate the huge investment in time and money that the development of a serious plugin entails. That’s probably why you think a 50/50 deal is fair.

You seem to have a great platform for promoting plugins. You should maybe stick to a commission on plugin sales instead. This way the developer remains the sole owner of his/her product.

But if you find interested developers, why not.

1 Like
15

This whole proposal is predicated on OP providing value in the form of the plugin company brand. However, visiting the website posted in the original post, it looks like a bedroom producers’ blog more than a plugin company. Frankly, I’m not convinced that OP has ever built a plugin brand before, they’ve built a blog. And I don’t want to gamble my time and IP so someone can try their hand at building a plugin business.

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I’m looking for someone that has great plugins done but is bored to do “one time” deals and rather work on something bigger and for a longer time, so we could evolve

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Ok I decided I would be willing to spend that 3K a month for a plugin, I know it’s not a lot for lots of you here and you will complain that to make good plugin I need 20K, but I still think here will be people willing to work on it.

But my idea is to spend 3K is meant to be one plugin to be done per month. Now, of course I don’t expect making any kinf of huge things like synth, or virtual instruments.

I’m all after theseVST effects:

  • Pitch shifter
  • Freq Shifter
  • Ring Mod
  • Filter
  • Saturation
  • Clipper
  • Distortion
  • Noise Reduction
  • Chorus/Flanger/Phaser/Fuzz

Etc. etc.

When you consider this, it’s way more friendly conditions I believe?

Let me know at aintegraudio@gmail.com in case you would be interested and provide some ideas please. I would welcome if you can provide plugin portfolio as well.

Also you should be designer and coder in one person and the most important thing - working on it until it’s done and perfect as per my suggestions.

Lastly, it would be good if you have similar design taste / could design in a same way as plugin above I sent (Blowdio)

Good thing about this is that - we would work together for a long time, rather than jumping from one thing to another, so we can just build our systems around plugins and just have some nice relationship.

Happy to work with you

18

Designers alone can easily ask for more than 3k on a single plugin design with a set amount of revisions.

No sane freelancer will accept a fixed budget to “work on it until it’s done and perfect as per your suggestions”.

Another thing to consider is the cost of maintenance/updates that nearly everyone with great ideas, but zero coding experience, forgets. Over the years can easily add up to more than the initial time/money investment. Unless, of course, you don’t care about that.

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19

Hey, so how would we do that? First you agreed and then you said it’s not very doable

Let me know at aintegraudio@gmail.com with some some plan if possible, would be great

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I really can’t decide whether to laugh or cry at this.

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