Ship It Scared: Why I Almost Didn't Launch My Paid Product

Three days.

That's how long it took from hitting "publish" on JWT Auth Pro to getting my first sale.

But before that moment of validation, I sat there with a finished product, ready to ship, paralyzed by a simple question: "What if it's not good enough?"

Twenty years of writing code. Fifty thousand users on my free plugin. Previous success selling WordPress products. And still, that voice in my head whispered: "What if people think your code is garbage?"

This isn't a post about JWT authentication or WordPress development. It's about that moment when your finger hovers over the launch button, and every insecurity you've ever had comes rushing in.

The Comfortable Life of Free

For 8 years, my JWT Authentication plugin lived in the WordPress repository. Free. Safe. Comfortable.

50,000+ developers were using it. The maintenance was minimal, maybe 4 hours a month. Feature requests came in regularly, but I could always punt: "It's a free plugin, I work on it when I can."

Free meant no expectations. No support obligations. No refunds. No angry customers questioning if my code was worth their money.

Free was safe. But free was also a lie I was telling myself.

The Fear That Almost Won

When the PRO version was ready, actually ready, tested, documented, I froze.

Not because I didn't believe in charging for work (I've always believed good products deserve to be paid). Not because I lacked experience (I'd sold WordPress add-ons back in 2010-2014).

I froze because suddenly, putting a price tag on something makes it real. It transforms "hobby project" into "professional product." It invites judgment not just on your code, but on your worth as a developer.

What if nobody buys it? What if the code isn't as good as I think? What if twenty years of experience isn't enough? What if... what if... what if...

The imposter syndrome hit different this time. It wasn't about whether I could code. I knew I could. It was about whether my code was worth $X to someone else.

The Realization That Changed Everything

Here's what finally pushed me over the edge: Those feature requests weren't complaints. They were signals.

Every time someone asked for token refresh functionality, custom endpoints, or advanced security controls, they were essentially saying: "This is valuable to me. I need more."

They weren't asking for free additions. They were showing me where the value lived.

I spent weeks researching pricing, looking at other plugins. Most were cheap, race-to-the-bottom cheap. But I realized something: My plugin served a specific niche. It solved a real problem for serious developers building production applications.

Those developers didn't want cheap. They wanted reliable, supported, and professional.

Three Days to Validation

I launched anyway. Scared, but I launched.

Three days later, on April 19, 2025, the first sale came through.

Even though I'd made money online before, even though I'd sold WordPress products for years, that first sale hit different. It wasn't just $X in my account. It was validation that:

The fear was worse than the reality
My work had value beyond "free"
Someone trusted me enough to pay for my code

Want to know the craziest part? Not a single angry email. No backlash. No "how dare you charge for this" reviews.

All that fear, all that worry, for nothing.

The Truth About "Good Enough"

Here's what 20 years of coding doesn't teach you: Your code will never feel good enough when money is involved.

You could have written the Linux kernel, and the moment you put a price tag on your next project, that voice will whisper: "But what if this one sucks?"

The difference isn't in the code quality. It's in recognizing that "good enough" isn't about perfection. It's about solving real problems for real people.

My code wasn't perfect. No code is. But it was good enough to:

Save developers hours of authentication headaches
Handle production traffic for thousands of sites
Warrant professional support and updates

That's not just good enough. That's valuable.

The Publishing Imperative

There's a talk by Aaron Francis called "Publishing Your Work" that perfectly captures something crucial: If you don't publish your work, nobody else will do it for you.

Aaron nails it: Your work sitting on your hard drive helps exactly zero people. That brilliant solution you crafted? That elegant code you wrote? It's worthless if it never sees the light of day.

The world won't know you're good at what you do unless you show them. And here's the kicker: nobody is coming to discover your unpublished genius. You have to put it out there yourself.

What I'd Tell My Past Self (And You)

Launch. Ship it scared. Put your work out there.

The market will tell you if it's valuable faster than your anxiety ever will. People will find you. Your stuff will be used.

But none of that happens if you're sitting on a finished product, paralyzed by "what if."

Those 50,000 users of my free plugin? They didn't materialize overnight. They found it because I shipped it. That first PRO customer? They couldn't buy what I didn't launch.

Your fears are valid. Your code probably isn't perfect. Someone, somewhere, might think it's not worth the price.

So what?

Ship it anyway. Because somewhere else, someone needs exactly what you built, and they're happy to pay for it.

You just have to give them the chance.

The Bottom Line

As I write this (August 7, 2025), it's been just under 4 months since that first sale. In that time, JWT Auth Pro has generated over $7,000 in revenue.

Not life-changing money, but that's not the point. It's $7,000 that wouldn't exist if I'd let fear win. It's validation that my work has value. It's proof that shipping scared works.

The fear never fully goes away. It just gets quieter with each sale, each happy customer, each problem solved.

But that first step, that first launch while scared? That's where everything starts.

One More Thing

You know what else is "putting your work out there"? This blog. This very post.

For years, I waited for the perfect topic, the perfect writing style, the perfect design. Years of drafts that never saw daylight. Years of "I'll start blogging when..."

This is literally my first blog post after years of waiting for perfection. And you know what? It's not perfect. The blog isn't perfect. This post isn't perfect.

But it's here. You're reading it. It exists.

That's the whole point. Launch the blog. Write the post. Who cares if it's not perfect? Nobody's reading your perfect drafts folder.

Your turn. What are you sitting on that's "not good enough" yet?

Ship it scared. I'll be your first cheerleader.

Have a project you're afraid to launch? Hit me up on Twitter, check out my GitHub, or drop me an email. Sometimes all you need is someone to tell you it's good enough. And if you need JWT authentication for WordPress, well, you know where to find it.