Hey plugin developers, I am curious if you have any tricks of the trade for launching a plugin and getting those elusive first 10 active installs.

We launched our plugin and got it in the WordPress marketplace about a month ago, but we still haven't had a single install. We've tried various forms of promoting on social and optimizing the content of the plugin description, but we are hitting a wall.

For context, it’s a security/bot protection plugin. We built it as a local-first alternative to cloud CAPTCHAs, so it uses invisible proof-of-work and behavioral detection to stop things like WooCommerce card testing without needing API keys.

Do people tend to pay for testers/reviewers?

How did you get your first 5-10 beta users to trust your code?