How to find a profitable WordPress plugin niche

Most plugin businesses on WordPress.org use the free listing as distribution: the free plugin brings sites, and the money comes from a pro version, add-ons, a hosted service or support. So a profitable niche needs two things the directory can tell you about, enough people looking and a realistic way in, and one it can’t: people willing to pay for what the free version leaves out.

This guide covers the first two. It shows how to size a niche from its tag, read how concentrated it is, spot leaders that are losing ground, check whether newcomers actually break through, and judge its searches. It doesn’t estimate revenue, because WordPress.org publishes nothing about it, and any figure would be a guess.

What the directory can and can’t tell you

The directory gives you, for every plugin: active installs (rounded down into bands such as 10,000+), downloads, rating and number of ratings, support threads and how many are resolved, the date of the last release, “Tested up to”, the date it was added, its tags, and its position in WordPress.org’s popular order. From those you can measure demand and competition well.

It doesn’t show search volume, conversion rates, prices or income. Demand has to be read from what existing plugins earn in installs and downloads, and willingness to pay from the outside: whether the leaders sell a pro version, what they charge, and what their 1- and 2-star reviews ask for.

1. Size the niche from its tag

Tags are the closest thing the directory has to categories. Each tag page on TrackWP, such as /plugins/tag/booking, lists every plugin carrying it in popular order.

For a tag, look at:

• How many plugins carry it. A handful means either a gap or no demand; hundreds means a crowded field.
• Total active installs across the tag. This is the clearest measure of demand. Under 50,000 installs across a whole tag is a small market, however empty it looks.
• Downloads a day. Installs change slowly; downloads show what people install now.

Tags aren’t policed, so treat a tag as a starting point. Some plugins tag themselves broadly, and the plugins you’d really compete with may be spread over two or three tags.

2. Check how concentrated it is

A big tag can still be closed. If the top five plugins hold 80% or more of all installs in the tag, most new sites are going to one of them, and you’d be competing for the remainder.

Also count the plugins with 10,000+ installs. Twenty or more established plugins at that size usually means a crowded first page for every search in the niche.

The Niche Research tool works these out for any tag from TrackWP’s daily snapshot of the directory: size, installs, the top five’s share, how many have 10,000+ installs, the leaders and the newcomers, then a verdict of open, mixed or tough from the signals below.

3. Look for leaders that are losing ground

Openings usually come from leaders that have stopped trying. Three signs:

• They’ve stopped releasing. WordPress.org’s search lowers a plugin’s freshness score after 180 days without a release, and keeps lowering it: ×0.70 at a year, ×0.50 at a year and a half. When three or more of a tag’s top ten haven’t released in 180 days, search is already pushing them down, and a maintained plugin can climb past them.
• Their users are unhappy. If the top ten average under 4.2 stars, counting plugins with at least 5 ratings, a well-supported alternative stands out. Read their 1- and 2-star reviews: they list what users want and aren’t getting, which is often what a paid version should do.
• Their support is falling behind. Unanswered threads pile up, and few resolved threads also lower search’s support factor, which counts threads resolved in the last two months.

The opposite is a warning: leaders that release every few months, answer support and hold 4.5 stars are hard to displace.

4. Check that newcomers break through

The best evidence that a niche is open is that new plugins already get in. Count the plugins added in the last year that have reached 1,000+ installs. Two or more is a good sign; none, in a large tag, suggests the leaders keep new sites to themselves.

Look at how those newcomers did it: their names, their short descriptions, the searches they appear for. Directory-wide newcomers and climbers are on the statistics page.

5. Judge the searches, not just the tag

People don’t browse tags much; they search. So a niche is only as open as its searches. For each search someone in this niche would type:

• Who ranks in the top ten, and how big are they? If all ten have 1 million+ installs, that search is out of reach for a new plugin.
• How many installs would a new plugin need to get in? The Keyword Difficulty tool scores the current results with WordPress.org’s own formula and estimates the installs a well-maintained plugin named for the search needs to reach the top 10, the top 3 and first place.
• What do the top ten earn? WordPress.org doesn’t publish search volume, so demand is read from the installs and downloads a day of the plugins that rank.

Search only returns plugins whose text contains every word of the search, so long, specific searches have fewer competitors. A niche often opens up one level down: not “forms”, but forms for a particular kind of business or a particular integration.

6. Watch which niches are growing

A niche whose downloads are rising has more new sites arriving each week. TrackWP compares every tag’s downloads a day with the week before, counting only plugins with a figure on both days so a tag can’t grow just by gaining plugins, and only tags with at least 8 plugins and 300 downloads a day. Niche Research lists the tags rising and falling most.

One week is noisy, because a big plugin’s release spikes its downloads. Look for a tag that keeps appearing among the risers.

7. Then check willingness to pay

The directory stops here. Before building, look outside it:

• Do the leaders sell a pro version or add-ons, and is the free plugin generous or limited?
• What do the features people ask for in reviews and support threads have in common, and would a business pay for them?
• Who are the users: hobby sites or businesses? Businesses pay for things that save time or make money.

A niche with healthy demand, ageing leaders and businesses as users is worth a closer look. One with heavy concentration, active leaders and hobby users usually isn’t, however many installs it has.

How TrackWP helps

• Niche Research reads a tag in seconds. The example tags work without an account; other tags need a free account, which includes 10 lookups a month (100 on Boost, unlimited on FullCharge).
• Keyword Difficulty scores any plugin search for free.
• Acquisition radar (FullCharge) lists big plugins nobody updates, popular plugins with unhappy users (20+ ratings under 3.5 stars, or 10+ support threads with under 30% resolved), and young plugins climbing fast: candidates to compete with, or to buy.

Checklist

1. Total installs across the tag: comfortably above 50,000?
2. Top five’s share of installs: well below 80%?
3. Fewer than 20 plugins with 10,000+ installs?
4. Leaders that haven’t released in 180 days, or average under 4.2 stars?
5. At least two plugins added in the last year with 1,000+ installs?
6. Searches in the niche whose top ten you could realistically reach?
7. Downloads rising, week after week?
8. Leaders selling a pro version, and users who are businesses?

Once you’ve picked one, How to choose a plugin name, short description and tags that search can find covers getting your new plugin into those searches.