What size cash offers? Not that I want some of it, but then I do think there could be an industry re-scamming these people and want to know how much we're talking about.
Convincing offers to buy it for $10-40K. One offer said $250K but I doubt that one was serious, more likely just a straight up scam. I have often emailed them back feigning interest to see if I can get them to state what they plan to do with it, since I cannot see anything that could possibly be ethical, but they always just start talking mumbo jumbo about their innovative monetisation strategy.
Recently I’ve had a serious sounding offer to inject an ad, i.e. a one-off ad would open in a new tab when the extension updates, for $3K a pop, which I just ignored, then he emailed again saying $4K, then just yesterday he emailed again with a bunch of emoji and said what about $8K.
It’s tempting, but it would still be selling out my users, who may be ungrateful little brats but I could never do that to them, I value their approval too much.
Thank you very much for the very informative response. As with any offer I think it's crucial to know what's at stake. You're very admirable for turning down tens of thousands, but if it had been tens of millions I'd have been questioning your judgement, as morally odious as the buyer might be.
Many are weakly motivated by wealth and power. I work a modestly comfortable job, enjoy the company of friends and family who I love, and my sleep is excellent. Selling my integrity may buy the softest sheets, but my sleep will never be as good as it is now.
The dev for uBlock origin must have received million and maybe tens of millions dollar offers, yet they refuse so much as token donations.
You are doing some pretty decent market research here too. I think you said your app had ~2M users so that's 0.4c per user.
What is the ad for? If it is a US equivalent to Great Ormand Street Hospital or some other worthy thing, then why not! I suspect it isn't and you will be offered quite a lot more vapid dollars because your user demographic is ... nerdy and installs addons 8) That is worth a lot more than 0.4c per head.
It may be that the ad offers are not as unpleasant as we might make them out to be but you do need to live - up to you. However I suspect they are just as genuine as the crap that lands in my Inbox, sometimes.
