Now that we have a fine assortment of user suggestions for plugins, we are doubling down on incentives for our community to dip their toes in to the Amplenote plugin ecosystem. If you'd enjoy a complimentary Amplenote subscription, $1,000 cash, and the fame of being announced as a monthly winner, read on.
 | link🤑 Amplenote Plugin Payback ProgramWhat: $1,000 and a complimentary one-year Unlimited subscription sent to whoever creates the most popular Amplenote plugin for the months of June, July, August, September, October and November of 2023. See "How" below for the specifics of how we determine "the most popular plugin." |
For the first monthly payout in July, we will consider any plugins that had been published during or prior to June 2023.
linkFAQ
Questions you might have about the Amplenote Plugin Payback Program.
linkI'm not a programmer, can I create a plugin?
Quite possibly, yes! Our Guide to Authoring Plugins begins with tips specifically for plugin authors with little-or-no development experience. You don't need to install any special developer tooling, nor do you need to use a source control program like GitHub (these are necessary for building plugins for other note apps).
Every past Amplenote plugin that has been published is a potential a starting point for your development. For the author's Yappy and Thesaurus plugins, the default Amplenote AI Plugin was copied as the starting point. Then some prompts and methods got swapped around. Voila.
For my (almost-but-not-quite-functional) "Note to PDF" plugin, I had Phind.com AI author the plugin for me, as described step-by-step in the "AI: Example" section of our "Guide to Authoring Plugins."
linkI'm a professional programmer, where do I start?
The "Intermediate-to-advanced" section of the Guide to Authoring Plugins has suggestions specifically for you, if you want to create your plugin in a rapid-iteration environment. As with the beginning developers, we strongly recommend using a tool like Phind to generate the first pass implementation of your plugin. Since you can provide it reference links, we recommend sending it the URLs for at least Amplenote's plugin API and an example plugin.
Click the up/down arrow next to the "search" icon in right-side of field to open a secondary text area to provide URLs to reference documentation
linkWhat plugin ideas are likely to get the most installs?
There are a list of ideas submitted by the community on our voting board. Those could be a great starting point.
If you use Amplenote regularly, you might also try making a list of the top five or 10 improvements you wish were available. Do any of your ideas align with the public voting board? If so, that could be a rich source of inspiration.
linkHow will I know how my plugin is performing?
The number of installs, at the end of the month, by paying subscribers will decide who wins each month. We have not yet built a dashboard to view how many installs a plugin has received, but there's a good chance we will add it within the next month or two. In the meantime, the number of upvotes that your plugin receives is probably a good proxy for how many people are using it.
linkHow can I get more people to try my plugin?
There are a handful of steps you can take to get exposure for your plugin:
Ensure that your plugin has screenshots users can view. To do this, ensure you have populated the "Instructions" cell in your plugin metadata, so that your Plugin Directory entry will include screenshots. Plugins with screenshots are much more likely to be installed than those that have only text.
Announce your plugin on Amplenote's Discord server. Because that's where many of the power users are lurking.
Build something people recognize they want. A plugin like the "Grocery" plugin is likely to perform well because almost everyone keeps a grocery list, and nobody wants to keep creating the same grocery list over and over.
linkWhat if I build a plugin and it receives less than five Qualified Activations, or it receives fewer activations than competing plugins?
In the month since plugins have been live, we have had very few plugins authored by non-employees. To the extent history is a guide, it's very unlikely that a good plugin will be out-competed.
If your plugin doesn't receive five Qualified Activations during the month it is launched, it will remain eligible in future months that the program is running. Each month will be evaluated based on the number of Qualified Activations that the plugin received during that month. So even if your plugin doesn't win in its first month, it might win on a subsequent month.
Plugins that have previously won the full prize won't be eligible to win later months, so the strongest competitors to your plugin will naturally be reduced as they win prizes. If your plugin ties with another, and you receive a fractional payment, you will remain eligible to earn the remainder of the $1,000 on follow-up months.
linkWhat counts as a "Qualified Activation"?
A user will count as a "Qualified Activation" if these conditions are met:
User clicked the "Install" link for your plugin while browsing the Plugins Directory. The install counts whether the user installed from the list of plugins, or from the page that shows your specific plugin. As long as we can track that a user clicked a button with the intent to install your plugin, that will meet this criterion.
Installation was made by a subscriber of Amplenote that has made a payment that was successfully procesed (i.e., not refunded). To reduce the incentive for developers to create fake Amplenote users and install their plugin on the phony accounts, we will only include activations made by subscribers who have made non-refunded subscription payments to Amplenote.
Have activated the plugin and left it activated through the end of the month. When a user clicks the "Install" button for a plugin, we add it to the list of plugins in their setting page, but we don't actually enable the plugin's functionality until the user clicks the toggle switch to confirm they want this plugin activated. After activating a plugin, a user may decide it doesn't provide them with sufficient value to leave it cluttering up their menus, and they must click the toggle switch to turn off the plugin. Plugin installs that have been deactivated do not count as Qualified Activations.
If the above criteria are met, the user that activated the plugin will count as one "Qualified Activation."
linkIf my plugin receives the most Qualified Activations, what conditions must I meet to receive the $1,000 payout?
The main barrier that we foresee potentially thwarting payouts is government interference. Since Amplenote is headquartered in the United States, we must abide our country's laws about where and who we can wire funds to. If you live in a country like Russia, China, Pakistan or Iran, there are export restrictions that would make it difficult or impossible for us to legally make a payout for this program.
For users within the US, we will need to receive sufficient identifying tax information for us to file a 1099 form. We will email the winner each month to request the necessary information for making a payment.
If we are unable to get sufficient identifying information to legally transfer money to the monthly leader in Qualified Activations, we will wire funds to the plugin with the next-greatest count of Qualified Activations that is authored by an entity eligible to receive a payout.
linkWhat to do if I have some other question not answered here?
Drop a line in the comments and we will get back to you as soon as we're able. Thanks for your interest!
linkA different new opportunity for free months of Unlimited Membership
Last week we launched v2 of Amplenote's incentive program for participating in spreading the word about Amplenote. Now, if you create an Amplenote Public Profile, you should see a new button to "Apply to Amplenote Boosters":
Apply to Amplenote Boosters when editing your public profile
We are starting with a limit of 25 total members of Amplenote Boosters, so we expect these slots to fill up quick. For each Amplenote-Boosting Objective you complete, you will receive a free month of Unlimited subscription. The average objective takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
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