Introducing Poken
The time to monetize npm packages is now
Open Source is great. In many cases though, it’s not sustainable. Many library authors put in a lot of time and effort into their projects, without any chance of being properly compensated for it. Poken is a new way to monetize npm packages, sparing publishers the hassle of setting up payment and delivery systems and making it easy for package consumers to purchase packages without having to deal with complex configuration.
“I’m not saying developers shouldn’t publish work as open source and for free. But I believe people should have a choice, and they should have an accessible option to require compensation for their work.”
For library authors, Poken makes it very easy to create a package and offer it for sale. The packager price is determined by the seller, and Poken will collect a 15 % commission on every sale in exchange for facilitating the transaction and for providing the delivery infrastructure.
- Connect to GitHub. Install the Poken GitHub app in your repository. This allows Poken to access your package and distribute it to people who purchased it.
- Create Stripe account. Create a Stripe Connect account via Poken in order to be able to receive the payments for your package sales.
- Start selling. Set a price for your package and share the unique link to your packages storefront. You get notifications for every sale.
For library consumers, purchasing packages and installing them into their project is frictionless:
- Purchase a package. Check out a package’s listing to learn what functionality it provides. If you want to use it, you can simply purchase it with the click of a button.
- Receive personal install link. Use your personal install link to add the package to your project. Keep this link secret, as it might be deactivated when it’s discovered in the wild.
- Use the dependency everywhere. In your development environment, continous integration server, or production deployment, the dependency works everywhere without any special configuration like a private registry.
If you want to experience the process of purchasing and installing a package via Poken first hand, you can try it out using the demo package.
Try it out yourself
If you want to experience the process of purchasing and installing a package via Poken first hand, you can try it out using the demo package.
Onboarding of library authors is a (quick) manual process for now. If you’re interested in monetizing your own work by selling packages on Poken, you can join the Discord or reach out on Twitter.