How to earn money with Chrome Extension

There are several ways to monetize the extension.This is not a complete list. If you know of any other type of possible revenue stream for Chrome extensions and you want to share, feel free to drop me a line.

Showing ads

The extensions can show ads.

Some of them claim showing ads is their revenue, and that’s okay.

Others violate the rules, because they have one purpose, and use the mechanism of the extension to push unrelated content - ads, and they do that under the black hat. More examples can be found in this article.

There are examples which partially belong to this category. Tero shows the ads on the browser’s Start Page and they commits 80% of its revenue to climate action, such as planting trees.

Showing some ads (called acceptable ads)

Ablock extension claims it shows acceptable ads.

The company behind AdBlock created Acceptable Ads, which transformed to Acceptable Ads Committee. The committee decides what is an acceptable ad and what is not. The acceptable ads are shown by default, even when Adblock is installed and on. There’s a way to turn it off.

Adblock charge large entities (probably large ads providers) for whitelisting the ads claimed to be non-intrusive. According to them, thanks to payments, they can keep the extension free for others.

Selling the data

You know what they say. If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. You either pay with your data or attention.

Anyway, there are extensions which work under the grey or black hat.

The ones under the grey hat put the information in their Privacy Policy or Terms of Conditions, they can share the collected data with third parties.

The ones under the black hat, just do that without saying.

This is a good example, where there is no obvious example of the extension bragging it sells user’s data. However, I found an article with some examples.

If you want to find out more about selling the data, I recommend this article.

Cross-promoting paid products

One product in the company’s portfolio may be popular, widely needed and free. This product can cross-promote a paid product.

Adblock as a feature blocking ads, is free(ish), and it promotes premium product - AdBlock VPN.

Using affiliate network

If the extension has anything to do with e-commerce, affiliate links may be the solution.

To benefit for the user may differ, but the mechanism is the same. The extension provides the benefit the users, which is usually a lower price. In exchange it attaches its affiliate parameter.

The extensions like Honey, Coupert or Letyshops offer the program of cashback. It works as follows.

1. While visiting the e-commere website, they ask user to activate cashback.
2. When user does it, they change the affiliate parameter.
3. When user purchases something on e-commerce site,
   1. e-commerce site pays a commission to an affiliate network,
   2. the affiliate network pays a part of that commission to the extension owner,
   3. and the extension owner pays a part of that commission to the user who purchases something.

The extensions like Slickdeals or Buykers have a database with discount coupons valid on e-commerce sites. It works as follows,

1. They offer the user the possibility to check in the shopping cart if there’s a discount in the form of coupon available.
2. While checking that in the shopping cart, they change the attribution (affiliate parameter)
3. The affiliate network can recognise that the transaction comes from them.
4. When user purchases something on e-commerce site,
   1. e-commerce site pays a commission to an affiliate network,
   2. the affiliate network pays a part of that commission to the extension owner.

Supporting voluntarily / patronise payments

Some extension creators do it without any reliable and predictable stream of revenue, basing purely on user’s payments.

Having Premium version

Some extensions offer something extra that comes with premium version. Momentum is the extension which turns a standard browser’s Start Page to beautiful and organised one, e.g.,

1. shows motivating quotes and wallpapers
2. supplies with a TODO list mechanism
3. helps managing bookmarks and links
4. and more

In premium version, user can:

1. have own wallpapers
2. manage the colours and fonts of the Start Page
3. integrate own TODO mechanism, such as Todoist
4. and more

Being sold

I don’t care about cookies is an extension which removes the popups showing the cookies consent. In 2022 it was sold to Avast.

Getting no money at all

By the way, there are some extensions, which don’t want any money.

The authors of uBlock Origin explicitly write on their website and in their manifesto that:

1. they don’t accept any donations or sponsorships
2. they don’t participate

If and how they earn money, I don’t know.

Difree is an extension, I’m a co-creator of, which doesn’t have a revenue model. We work on it, based on our time and money resources. I don’t know if and when this will change.

To sum up

As I mentioned in the beginning, that is not a complete list. Drop me a line if you want to share another way.

Written in Difree | Graphics thanks to #dalle