Google plugins, yup, that’s the niche. Who would have thought it could bring in millions of dollars per year? Amit Agarwal is a one-person company that makes somewhere between $10m and $25m a year, selling simple plugins for Gsuite.
Amit is a Computer Science Engineer who studies at IIT in India. After founding a popular how-to website in 2004, that writes tutorials on tips and tricks for using Gsuite. He then creates a Gmail plugin that makes mail merge, and a mail merge is simply sending an email to groups of people, allowing you to customise some aspects in that email, such as the receiver’s name etc. Pretty cool, right? Well, that plugin has been downloaded now 7.5 million times. The plugin is free but has a paid tier of $79 per year to eliminate the branding etc. Pretty neat, right? Well, Amit has 13 more of these Gsuite plugins.
- A Document management app called Document Studio – 6.7 million downloads.
- A notification app – 10+ million downloads.
- A Youtube app – 8 million downloads.
Not only that but Amit freelances and builds one-off plugins for clients like Airbus, LinkedIn, Disney, and even the US Embassy has hired Amit to create custom plugins for them.
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This is an incredible example of being an expert in your domain and finding an outlet; in this case, the how-to blog allows Amit to become an expert in his domain.
By writing these blogs, users start associating Amit with being the go-to for relevant information, creating trust from the reader. This leads to visitors exploring the services or, in this case, plugins on offer.
If you’re looking to boost your reach in your field, then this is exactly what you should start doing. It doesn’t need to be a blog; a Twitter or LinkedIn account will do. Start recording your thoughts, or maybe just things you’ve learned. You’ll be amazed by the results.
