I keep reading about platforms that let you build a workflow template and sell it to other users on a marketplace. theoretically, this is interesting—if you’ve solved a problem elegantly, why not let others benefit and maybe generate some revenue?
but I’m skeptical. is there actually a market for automation templates? are people actually buying them, or is it mostly a theoretical feature that sounds good in marketing materials?
for those of you who’ve gone down this path: did you actually make money? what kind of pricing did you use? how much revenue are we talking about—enough to justify the time to build and maintain a template, or is it more of a “nice if it happens” scenario?
and from an ROI perspective on the licensing side: if you’re building and selling templates, does that change your cost structure with the platform? are you paying a percentage cut, does it affect your subscription tier, or are you basically building for free under your existing subscription?
also curious about the maintenance burden. if someone buys your template and it breaks three months later because the platform updated something, are you responsible for fixing it?
we published three templates and honestly, the revenue is minimal. we’ve made maybe $300 total across all three over several months. so yeah, don’t expect to fund your automation habit through marketplace sales.
that said, the real value isn’t the direct revenue. we use our templates as sales collateral. when we pitch automation services to clients, we show them the template we built and how quickly we deployed it internally. it’s proof of concept. that’s worth way more than the $5-10 per download.
the maintenance piece is real though. customers do file support requests when templates break. we’ve had to update one template three times because platform features changed. so if you’re thinking of templates as passive income, forget it. they’re active work.
we’ve made about $1,200 from two templates in the marketplace. it’s not nothing, but it also took probably thirty hours total to build, document, and maintain. so we’re at like $40/hour after platform fees. that’s not compelling financially.
where it wins is in credibility and network effect. people use your templates, follow your work, ask about your other automations. two clients have come to us directly from finding our templates. that’s worth more than the direct sales.
templates are great for portfolio building, not income. Platform fees eat most of the revenue anyway.