we’ve built some solid headless browser automations over the past year. login workflows, data extraction patterns, multi-page navigation logic. they work, they’re reliable, and we keep using them internally for different client projects.
at some point we started thinking: could we actually sell these? like, publish them to a marketplace or offer them as templates for other people to use?
the appeal is obvious: we’ve already solved these problems, why not monetize that work? but i’m skeptical about whether there’s real demand. browser automation is domain-specific. a login pattern that works for site A might not work for site B. the template would need to be generic enough to be reusable but specific enough to actually solve someone’s problem. that’s a narrow target.
plus, there’s the support side. if someone buys your template and it breaks because a site changed their layout, are you responsible for fixing it? do you commit to maintaining it? that could become a time sink that eats the profit.
i’ve looked at some automation marketplaces and seen templates being offered, but i can’t tell if they’re actually moving volume or just sitting there. the ones that seem to have activity are pretty niche—like “extract data from this one specific site” rather than generic patterns.
the other issue is maintenance burden. we’re already running these automations internally. selling them means we’d be supporting them for external customers too. that’s overhead we don’t have visibility into right now.
has anyone actually made real money selling browser automation workflows? or is the market too small and the maintenance too high?
there’s a market, but it’s not the market you’re imagining. the demand isn’t for selling generalized templates. it’s for selling workflows tailored to specific, high-value use cases.
the login template you mentioned? too generic. the “extract this report from your accounting software and import to spreadsheet” workflow? that’s sellable because it solves a specific pain for a specific audience.
successful marketplace workflows share patterns: they’re deep in one domain (real estate scraping, ecommerce monitoring, financial data collection), they handle the tricky parts for you (error recovery, rate limiting, site-specific quirks), and there’s a defined audience willing to pay because building it themselves would cost more than buying it.
the maintenance question is real. if you’re selling workflows tied to specific sites and those sites change, yes, you’re on the hook. but that’s also why the price point works—you’re taking on that maintenance burden and other people aren’t.
the ones sitting idle in marketplaces are usually too generic or poorly positioned. the ones generating revenue are solving specific, expensive problems for a clear customer.
the question isn’t “can i sell a login template?” it’s “is there a specific domain where i’ve built expertise that other people desperately need?”
the barrier to success here is exactly what you identified: maintenance and domain specificity. but that’s actually the moat, not the problem.
generic templates have high support costs and low perceived value. specific workflows for domains where people have budget have low relative support costs and high perceived value.
think about it from the buyer’s perspective. if someone pays $50 for a generic “fill form” template and it breaks, they’re annoyed. if someone pays $200 for “automatically reconcile vendor invoices using OCR and browser automation” and it works, they see it as a steal compared to hiring someone for a month.
the successful template sellers i’ve seen don’t try to be generic. they go deep on one domain, build really robust solutions for that domain, and then market specifically to that niche. they get 5-10 paying customers instead of 100 who expect it to work everywhere.
maintenance becomes an asset when it’s domain-specific. you become the expert in that specific integration. customers pay for that expertise and ongoing support.
Marketplace viability for automation workflows correlates with domain specificity and customer pain level. Generic templates face high support costs relative to pricing. Domain-specific workflows capture value by combining technical expertise with industry knowledge. Successful templates typically address clearly defined, high-frequency tasks in specialized domains. Maintenance burden is real but quantifiable—price accordingly. Market size is constrained but defensible within specific niches.