I was watching an interview with Robert D. Smith the other day, and he said something that really struck me. He said you should be generous with things that aren’t your primary income source, but you shouldn’t feel bad charging for your core business. His example was that a heart surgeon might gives speeches or advice for free, but generally doesn’t do heart surgery for free.

When it comes to customizing and deploying Firefox, I’ve been giving lots of help and advice with the expectation that folks would hire me as a consultant to help with their business needs. That hasn’t really happened though, so enterprise really doesn’t provide much income for me at all. My primary business is building add-ons for Firefox, Chrome and Safari and I’ve been successful at doing that.

At the same time, the CCK Wizard has been downloaded almost 100,000 times. Thousands of people use the tools that I build and look to my blog for information about customizing Firefox.

I love helping people with Firefox, but my time is limited. So I’ve decided to leverage my 15+ years of Firefox experience and create a consulting service around enterprise Firefox.

Here’s my plan.

As of January 1, 2014, I am introducing paid support for the CCK2 and the CCK Wizard.

There will be three support levels: free, basic and premium. (The CCK2 and CCK Wizard software will remain free.)

For free and basic support levels, all issues will come through cck2.freshdesk.com. Premium support subscribers will have the additional ability to submit confidential issues to me directly. Anyone will be able to open defects or participate in discussions, but the only way to guarantee any level of support is to purchase a support package.

My goal is for enterprise Firefox to become the primary focus of my business and maybe even my full time business. I hope you’ll support me in this endeavor.

You can get full details at the CCK2 Support Page.

http://mike.kaply.com/2013/12/18/changing-focus/