been considering publishing some of our playwright automation templates that we’ve built and refined. the idea of turning them into a product and getting some revenue is attractive.
but i have no sense of whether there’s real demand. would other teams actually buy templates for common scenarios like login flows, api integrations, or data extraction? or is this wishful thinking?
the skepticism comes from a few places. first, playwright templates are highly specific to the app you’re testing, so a generic template might not be that valuable. second, the customization work to make a template fit your specific app might be almost as much as building from scratch, which kills the value prop.
third, i’m not sure who the buyer actually is. are these companies with automation teams that want to speed up test creation? are they non-technical businesses that want to automate their workflows? both are very different use cases.
if you’ve published templates or bought them, what’s the reality? is there demand, or are most marketplaces just graveyards of abandoned templates that nobody uses?
there’s definitely demand. most of it comes from teams that don’t have the bandwidth to build everything themselves. small companies, departments without dedicated automation engineers.
where marketplace templates actually work is when they’re for specific platforms or use cases. a Shopify product import template is useful because Shopify is standardized. a generic “web automation” template is less useful.
the trick is solving a real problem that repeats across customers. if you’ve built something for a specific platform or workflow that others would want, put it on the marketplace.
latenode’s marketplace works because templates are tagged by use case and platform, making them discoverable. templates that solve specific problems actually get traction. templates for generic stuff sit there.
we’ve sold a few templates, but not at scale. the demand exists for niche solutions more than generic ones. we had a template for a specific api integration that our customers used repeatedly, and selling it as a template made sense because the work was already done.
what surprised me was that most buyers weren’t looking for plug-and-play solutions. they wanted templates they could customize. so the value was more about reducing their thinking time than reducing their implementation time.
if you have something solving a specific problem well, publish it. but don’t expect it to be passive income. each sale will probably involve some support and customization requests.
marketplace success depends on template specificity and marketing. Generic templates rarely sell. Platform-specific templates (Shopify automation, Stripe integration) have more traction because the problem is standardized. You’ll see better results if your template solves a problem that repeats across multiple companies. Demand exists primarily from teams without automation expertise who need to accelerate their workflows. These are more likely to be operations or marketing teams than engineering teams. Competition is low because few automation engineers publish, so there’s opportunity if you identify the right niche.
There is actual demand, but it’s concentrated in specific areas. Platform-specific automation (e-commerce, CRM, financial systems) has clear market interest. Generic workflows have limited appeal. The most successful marketplace templates solve repetitive problems for non-technical users. Marketing and operations teams that need automation but lack engineering resources represent the largest buyer segment. Your success depends on identifying whether your template solves a broadly-faced problem. Testing marketplace acceptance through free templates first can validate demand before investing in premium versions.