Answers to Frequently Asked Questions from the r/chrome_extensions Community#

After my last posts about earning my first money with a Chrome extension, quite a few people started messaging me with similar questions.

So I decided to answer the most common ones in one place. Maybe it will help someone who is just starting.

Q: Did you do market research before building your extension?#

A: No. My original goal was simply to solve my own problem. I constantly lost my browser tabs and needed a way to save them in one click as sessions and store them safely so they would not disappear. That is how Locker was born.

Q: How do you accept payments from different countries? Do you need to open a company?#

A: No. You do not necessarily need to open a company in the beginning. You can use services like Lemon Squeezy that handle payments, taxes, and payouts for you.

Q: I’m just learning programming. What tech stack should I use?#

A: My stack is pretty simple.

Frontend

TypeScript
React
TailwindCSS
Astro

Backend

Deno Edge Functions
Supabase for authentication, storage, and database
Lemon Squeezy for payments

There are many ways to build Chrome extensions. This is simply the stack that works well for me.

Q: What motivates you to keep building extensions?#

A: Honestly, I just enjoy building products. Time is the hardest part. I work full time helping international companies enter the Central Asian market. It is consulting work, and it is exhausting. Even so, I try to spend about 90 minutes every day working on my own products. I do not wait for the perfect moment. I just do what I can.

Q: How do you promote a Chrome extension?#

A: If there is a formula, it probably looks like this.

Experiments + Time = Results

Keep trying different things, see what works, and double down on it.

Q: How do you find ideas for extensions?#

A: My personal rule is simple. Solve one of your own browser problems. It might sound naive, but there are more than 8 billion people on this planet. If something annoys you, there is a good chance thousands or even millions of other people experience the same problem.