Which is a better platform for starting a small module development business: DotNetNuke or Umbraco?

I am thinking of making some extra revenue on the side by becoming a module developer either for DotNetNuke or Umbraco. I still want to keep my full time job. I wanted to know which market is more promising. I know there are thousands of modules for DNN (just browse snowcovered.com). While DNN is a much bigger market, it seems to be crowded with a lot of competition versus Umbraco which is smaller but it looks like it lacks modules in certain categories. However I don't know if Umbraco is widely used or whether its customers are loo开发者_StackOverflow社区king for development work.

I want to approach this by either developing commercial modules or doing custom development work. I am looking at this from revenue potential. Not from technical side (easier to develop for, MVC or not,.. etc)

Any ideas? If you are a developer for either platform, are you making some good money? Any pitfalls?

Neither, I'd actually suggest Orchard. There are, in fact, pro's and con's to all three, but the best factors for Orchard are:

1) MS supported 2) It's brand new, so there's a LOT of opportunity for modules that haven't already been written

Just my 2c.

I agree with Tony, Orchard has only just come about and realistically the market is currently very small.

We are an Umbraco Gold Partner, so obviously biased towards Umbraco, but what I would say is that currently there are only a few commercial packages for Umbraco and so if you find a niche product, you certainly still have an opportunity to become the first to market and become the market leader for a specific module type. I think in the DNN camp you will find a lot of competition already exists.

Another thought is to write generic base code that can be used across all three and create a commerical package for each platform, then you have the best of all worlds.

Cheers,

Chris

If you want to do custom dev for clients the platform doesn't matter if you do it on the side.

If you want to create a commercial module it's hard to choose DNN as a platform because there is a lot of competition. Not that that's a bad thing but to get your name out there will take some time. I made the choise to do full time Umbraco Dev in 2008 and made a commercial product for Umbraco called CMSImport. It's quite popular so sales is quite allright. I have thought about the idea Chris mentioned to port it to other systems but the downside is that you only sell products if your product is known in the community and it will take a lot of time to get your name out there if you focus on other communities also.

So pick an idea and platform that has a nice userbase (I would not go for Orchard the community is simply not big enough at this moment) and build your product.

Cheers,

Richard

I don't think it really matters which you pick. The hard part is becoming know as a "good X developer" be that Umbraco, DDN, Orchard, Rails, etc.

Its being the name on the peoples lips at the right time that gets the phone ringing. Tech choice can increase your chance (simply with an increased number of sites for example) but it can also increase your competition.

There is plenty to be earned if you can get the work and the best way of doing that is by being recommended, being spotted as being active in the community, producing packages, etc.

We at Offroadcode chose Umbraco about 2 years ago and have had lots of work of it since and have specialised in it. Through engaging with the community we've got to know a lot of our fellow Umbraco developers (including Chris and Richard who have also posted answers) and we've recommended then and had work passed to us on recommendation too. I guess you get back what you put in.

Pete