Finding Your Plugin Users?

First off, I wasn't sure if this belonged in Plugin Development, so I thought I'd post here to be safe.

Hello!

Like lots of "old school" Bukkit plugin devs I came over from hMod. I made a simple plugin for Bukkit that grew over time and eventually attracted a pretty decent audience. I didn't really have any download tracking metrics at the time so I can't say what kind of install base I had, but I can say that I had a very active and communicative fanbase in the plugin thread. I had a lot of fun talking to the players, and particularly getting new ideas from them.

Unfortunately I changed jobs and lost the free time it takes to keep up with an active Bukkit plugin (it's a lot of work...) I tried to at least keep the plugin up to date, but eventually that fell by the wayside too. I think I lost all my players at that point.

The last official release I made before leaving has over 6,000 downloads.

When I came back and updated the plugin, the jar started getting immediate downloads. The most recent version is up to about 380 now - respectable.

But... who are all those people? I was posting in my thread and on bukkitdev for a while, new feature announcements, etc. But then it just felt like I was bumping a ghost town thread

Are there just autodownloaders out there grabbing my plugin? Are admins not as active in the community as they were? Or is there something I'm doing wrong to reach out to people?

Just curious how the successful devs do it How do you find your players, or know who's using your plugin? Is there more to it than "if you build it, they will come"? I guess it was easier back in the day, there were only a handful of plugins and most people tried them all out...

Well thanks for listening, this is just something I've been thinking about lately. I enjoy working on my plugin, and I enjoy having it on my own server- so I'd probably keep working on it whether or not anyone else wanted it.. but I have to admit it was a lot more fun when other people were interested

 

NathanWolf
Respecting you, I have the same issues. I just figure that most of my clients that download my plugins don't have an account, or are too young to understand how to do so. I don't know... Looking at your plugin... Holy gracious. Your plugin should have more of a database in my opinion, considering you have such a detailed description.

I wish you good luck. Just gave my opinion.