I’ve built a handful of reliable web automation workflows over the past couple years. Nothing revolutionary—login flows, form submissions, data extraction from specific sites. They work well in my projects, and I started thinking: could I sell these on a marketplace?
The pitch is appealing. You build once, document it, then sell it to others who need similar automation. Passive income from your work. But I’m skeptical about the actual market.
First, there’s the question of specificity versus generality. A login flow for one specific site isn’t valuable to someone else unless they also need to automate that exact site. The more general I try to make an automation, the more complex and configurable it becomes, and the harder it is for someone to use without modification.
Second, I’m not sure who buys these. Are there many people out there looking to purchase pre-built automations? Or is the market mostly other developers who’d rather build custom than pay for something generic? I imagine businesses would want custom automation tailored to their specific processes, not something from a marketplace.
Third, there’s the support burden. If someone buys your automation and it breaks because the target website changed its UI, are you responsible for fixing it? How do you handle that?
Has anyone actually made money selling automation workflows on a marketplace? Is there real demand, or am I looking at oversaturated supply and minimal buyers?
The marketplace works, but you need to think strategically about what you’re selling.
You’re right that site-specific automations have limited appeal. What sells well are workflows solving common business problems: lead generation automation, invoice processing, data migration between tools, email list synchronization. These have broad appeal across industries.
The key is abstracting away site-specific logic and creating workflows around common patterns. Instead of “scrape data from website X,” build “extract structured data from any website with configuration.” That scales to hundreds of potential buyers.
Support gets easier if you build with good error handling and clear documentation. Most marketplace customers are comfortable with self-service—they understand automation requires some configuration. Clear instructions about what breaks when and how to fix it go a long way.
I’ve seen success selling data transformation workflows, basic integrations between popular tools, and automation templates for common tasks. The volume is smaller than consumer software, but margins are healthier because development cost is spread across many buyers.
Start by solving a problem you know has demand. Document thoroughly. Price reasonably. Don’t expect massive volume—expect steady, sustainable income from good work.
I listed two automation workflows on a marketplace last year. One got maybe 3 sales, the other got zero. That’s my market sample.
The successful one was a workflow for syncing data between two popular SaaS tools—problem many teams face, solution straightforward. The two that didn’t sell were more specialized.
What I learned: demand exists for common problems, not site-specific automation. The friction is that people want customization for their specific situation. A generic workflow doesn’t automatically solve their problem—they need to understand it, modify it, maintain it.
I didn’t invest in support beyond documentation, so maintenance burden was minimal. People either figured it out or didn’t. One buyer asked about customization—I declined since supporting custom versions wasn’t worth my time.
If I did this again, I’d focus on selling data transformation logic or integration patterns that work across multiple tools, not automation for specific sites.
Marketplace viability depends on solving problems people actively search for. I built workflows for common ecommerce tasks—inventory sync, order processing, refund management. These sell because businesses regularly need them.
The demand is real but niche. You’re not selling to millions—you’re selling to thousands of businesses facing the same problem. Price accordingly.
Support burden is manageable if you’re clear about scope. I document what the workflow does, what it doesn’t handle, and common configuration issues. Most customers are technically sophisticated enough to handle basic troubleshooting.
What didn’t work: workflows tailored to one specific website or overly complex multi-step processes. What worked: straightforward solutions to common integration problems. Think less “I built this for my company” and more “many companies face this problem.”
marketplace demand exists but its niche. sell solutions to common problems, not site specific stuff. support burden minimal if documentation is good. expect supplementary income, not primary revenue.