So you’ve have a plugin and you’ve finally released it on WordPress.org to allow the masses. It’s going well, you’ve run a couple revisions with no major issues. But how can you tell how ‘well’ your plugin is actually doing?
Realistically, you’re going to have to wait a while, maybe even a year, for things to even out realistically. After a year, you should have something like this on your Stats panel and this CAN be explained!
Here’s what Ban Hammer’s stats look like. It’s just about a year old right now.
1) Initial Release – This was when I released it and started pimping it.
2) First Major Revision – This was when I started adding in more features, making the code faster, and debugging something.
3) Certified for 3.0 – This was … well, yeah, that.
Look at how the spikes ramp up a lot. The first one is moderate, the second one is twice the first, and the third is another moderate change. It’s not impressive, my plugin is for a pretty niche market and I don’t expect it to be hugely popular. Impostercide gets about 80 a day right now, compared to the 10 to 30 Ban Hammer got in its first days. But the basic picture is pretty clearly painted.
It’s not quite an exponential jump for each update, but the update is what’s telling you who is really using your plugin.
Let’s look at the very popular WP Super-Cache plugin:
His spikes are pretty static, standing at 11k downloads on every major release. That’s really impressive, but it gives a far more realistic understanding of your plugin and how many people are really using it.
