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Introducing the Promoted Add-ons Pilot

8 responses

Today, we are launching a pilot program to give developers a way to promote their add-ons on addons.mozilla.org (AMO). This pilot program, which will run between the end of September and the end of November 2020, aims to expand the number of add-ons we can review and verify as compliant with Mozilla policies, and provides developers with options for boosting their discoverability on AMO.

 

Building Upon Recommended Extensions

We strive to maintain a balance between openness for our development ecosystem and security and privacy for our users. Last summer, we launched a program called Recommended Extensions consisting of a relatively small number of editorially chosen add-ons that are regularly reviewed for policy compliance and prominently recommended on AMO and other Mozilla channels. All other add-ons display a caution label on their listing pages letting users know that we may not have reviewed these add-ons.

We would love to review all add-ons on AMO for policy compliance, but the cost would be prohibitive because they are performed by humans. Still, developers often tell us they would like to have their add-ons reviewed and featured on AMO, and some have indicated a willingness to pay for these services if we provide them.

Introducing Promoted Add-ons

To support these developers, we are adding a new program called Promoted Add-ons, where add-ons can be manually reviewed and featured on the AMO homepage for a fee. Offering these services as paid options will help us expand the number of add-ons that are verified and give developers more ways to gain users.

There will be two levels of paid services available:

  • “Verified” badging: Developers will have all new versions of their add-on reviewed for security and policy compliance. If the add-on passes, it will receive a Verified badge on AMO and in the Firefox Add-ons Manager (about:addons). The caution label will no longer appear on the add-on’s AMO listing page.

Add-on listing page example with verified badge

  • Sponsored placement on the AMO homepage. Developers of add-ons that have a Verified badge have the option to reach more users by paying an additional fee for placement in a new Sponsored section of the AMO homepage. The AMO homepage receives about two million unique visits per month.

AMO Homepage with Sponsored Ssection

During the pilot program, these services will be provided to a small number of participants without cost. More details will be provided to participants and the larger community about the program, including pricing, in the coming months.

Sign up for the Pilot Program

If you are interested in participating in this pilot program, click here to sign up. Please note that space will be limited based on the following criteria and restrictions:

  • Your add-on must be listed on addons.mozilla.org.
  • You (or your company) must be based in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, or Singapore, because once the pilot ends, we can only accept payment from these countries. (If you’re interested in participating but live outside these regions, please sign up to join the waitlist. We’re currently looking into how we can expand to more countries.)
  • Up to 12 add-ons will be accepted to the pilot program due to our current capacity for manual reviews. We will prioritize add-ons that are actively maintained and have an established user base.
  • Prior to receiving the Verified badge, a participating add-on will need to pass manual review. This may require some time commitment from developers to respond to potential review requests in a timely manner.
  • Add-ons in the Recommended Extensions program do not need to apply, because they already receive verification and discovery benefits.

We’ll begin notifying developers who are selected to participate in the program on September 16, 2020. We may expand the program in the future if interest grows, so the sign-up sheet will remain open if you would like to join the waitlist.

Next Steps

We expect Verified badges and homepage sponsorships for pilot participants to go live in early October. We’ll run the pilot for a few weeks to monitor its performance and communicate the next phase in November.

For developers who do not wish to participate in this program but are interested in more ways to support their add-ons, we plan to streamline the contribution experience later this year and explore features that make it easier for people to financially support the add-ons they use regularly. These features will be free to all add-on developers, and remain available whether or not the Promoted Add-ons pilot graduates.

We look forward to your participation, and hope you stay tuned for updates! If you have any questions about the program, please post them to our community forum.

8 comments on “Introducing the Promoted Add-ons Pilot”

  1. Manuel wrote on

    This is a start but most probably won’t help all the spare-time programmers who make your browser more attractive to their Add-on users.

    I’m not in one of the listed countries and everything above 5 bucks a month would be way too expensive just to get my spare time work verified but we’ll see how this all will work once more info is published.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Yes, we think that the improvements to the Contributions flow is what will be most useful for spare-time developers. Hopefully it will be successful enough to unlock some of these other options for them.

  2. Jo wrote on

    Are you sure that the next step will *not* be that only reviewed add-ons will be allowed?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      We don’t intend to restrict add-on installation like that, no.

  3. My Name is Hans wrote on

    I wonder how pricing is going to work.

    Do you have to pay more if your add-on is complex?
    Or if you update it often?

    1. Caitlin Neiman wrote on

      We’re still working on pricing. We’ll share updates in the upcoming weeks.

  4. Jigar wrote on

    I think donation is great way developer can afford verified extension program. You should prioritize that. And some developers already have links to like PayPal where that can get international donations.

    And you really need to get a partner who can accept donations across borders. It should be really high priority as Mozilla is huge community. And instead of growing you are shrinking audience.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      We intend to expand the countries we support, but there are many legal and logistical hurdles that make this hard to do.