“Oh there ain’t no rest for the wicked
Money don’t grow on trees
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed
There ain’t nothing in this world for free”
– Cage The Elephant
I genuinely want to keep this whole plugin free. This plugin stands as my statement against capitalism, deception, exploitation, and fabrication in WordPress: No ads, no asking for reviews, and no useless features. You don’t have to look far to see what I’m fighting against.
On the other hand, the Extension Manager isn’t part of The SEO Framework–it’s add-on software that pays for both the free and premium side of things. Nothing in it replaces features in The SEO Framework. Both plugins are capital investments, that took tens of thousands of hours to create–all the code in them are first-party; it is why I can optimize it in every possible sense: performance, stability, scalability, etc…
I have (had) other businesses relying on WordPress (hosting, SEO consultancy, proprietary theme/plugin development, implementation, etc.). But, seeing how TSF grew in popularity, I wanted to invest all my time in it; I truly do love working on it, and I adore your feedback.
Unfortunately, while doing so, I still do have bills to pay, even while I never wanted to capitalize on features that have little to no maintenance costs; a download is only disposable in the sense of hosting, after all. And without advertisements or downplaying elements in The SEO Framework, it’s a fight for creating a necessity while still trying to grow the main plugin; finding a balance is difficult.
This mentality wore me down both physically and financially, and I explained it all in this blog post: “All for nothing” (“nothing” means “free”, it’s a double-entendre). I won’t be able to stand against the goliaths who were here first and reaped all the benefits; otherwise features like these would remain free.
So, here we are. This plugin is meant to be an automated do-all SEO plugin for your WordPress website, in every circumspect sense (i.e., white-hat). Some features were created out of necessity, and others were built to feed the market. Regardless of which side a feature was spawned from, I’ll never release something that doesn’t add value in SEO, and I’ll never rush releases or features just to stimulate users to purchase.
With that, you still have a choice. You can either pay off advertisements or pay for extra features; or, do neither and pick a plugin that best suits your needs.
In any case, the Focus extension is open source under the GPLv3 license. You’re free to manipulate, unlock, and rebrand it as if it were your own; although that’ll be a huge investment, especially so in the long run, which you could otherwise get for a relatively small payment.
