The WordPress Plugin Competition is the best moment of the year, plugin wise. This year's edition is still running till the end of the month of July and as of writing, there are about 10 plugins (with some really interesting stuff).
Still, new plugins are released every day. Why aren't these authors joining the competition?
Participating in the competition is
Instructive: you *will* learn something. Guaranteed. Or refunded. Basically, joining the competition is asking for feedback, so judges will tell you what they liked, disliked, loved and hated. I will be an official judge in this competition and I will definitely tell you what looked cool and what sucked in my opinion (for the record, read my review of last year's edition here and there)
All the feedback you'll get won't be golden rules for sure, they'll be personal points of views, but there has to be something to be learnt from it.
Exposing: definitely, participating will give you good exposure. You will end up being listed in various places that will blog about the Competition, including on very high traffic blogs. More exposure means more users for your plugin, obviously.
Motivating: as the competition deadline will approach, you will get more comments from readers, and hopefully more ideas for your plugin. Plugin authors themselves cross-pollinate each other.
Rewarding: you'll get exposure, feedback, and eventually you might be a winner of some prize or cold cash. While this should probably not be the main reason of your participating, well, that's the icing on the cake, right? :)
Participating in the competition is not
For the pros only: please don't be too shy and just think "I'm not good enough, this is my first plugin, competition is not for me". So, you're a beginner, and so what? Nobody is going to laugh at you, you will not be mocked or anything, and everybody was a n00b at some point. This is a unique opportunity to have your plugin and your code reviewed by rather experienced coders and WordPress users.
Time consuming: it's not like participating will require you to dedicate more time to your plugin or to support requests. Once your plugin is released, you're just one tiny blog post and a mail away from being officially a competitor. Really, a short announcement is all it takes. The competition rules are no extra burden.
What you should do now
If you're a plugin author, well, JOIN! Don't release a plugin in the next few weeks without getting it listed in the competition.
If you know people who do or will release plugins, tell them about the Competition and explain why they should join. There's just no valid reason not to.
Blog, tweet, reblog and retweet about the competition. I'm sure there are more reasons to participate than the ones I've listed here, so post about them.
If you're an internet business and are more or less related to WordPress (premium themes or plugins, hosting service, ad platform…) or just anyone cool, consider sponsoring the Competition and tell your customers and readers about it. That's cheap exposure and positive karma for you (for this matter, please get in touch with Mark from Weblogtoolscollection.com)
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Hi,
I'd love to participate, but unfortunately released the 1.0 version of my plugin a few days before May 1st. By the rules, that was too early and therefore I'm out I guess…
Regards
Tobias
Tobias » indeed you're out with this particular plugin. But come on, I'm sure you have some other terrific ideas to code! :)
AAAAAA the trophy has the wrong W!
Is it legal as an author to participate with multiple plugins? I already submitted a plugin to the competition. Also I'm writing another one with someone else for some time already. Is this second plugin with me as (one of the) plugin authors accepted?
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[…] was inspect by OZH. Also this year, you can expect to get some feedback from Ozh as you can see at contribution to the Plugin Competition. Sure, the opinion of Ozh can be different then yours, but his feedback is crucial. As a developer, […]
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