When I started with Nodemailer, my goal was to build a cool product—not to become an unpaid helpdesk employee for life. But here we are. So, I’ve been trying to monetize the project in various ways for the past ten years. I’ve tried everything (license restrictions, freelancing and consulting, paid extensions, etc.), and each approach failed for different reasons. The only strategy that actually took off was using Nodemailer’s documentation page as a referral source for another relevant paid project.
For example, I once switched the license of Nodemailer from MIT to EUPL, with the option of still getting a MIT version if you paid for it. I had some paying customers, but it turned out they were all spammers using stolen credit cards (I guess they misunderstood what the paid offering was). So, when the chargebacks came in, my account actually went into the negative.
