How to sell premium Wordpress themes?

[Charybdis]

Hello,

I have 2 short questions, I hope someone has the experience to answer them!

1) Is the "premium Wordpress themes" niche a good niche? Isn't it too crowded?

2) What does make me more money:
a) Selling a fully commercial Wordpress theme, where there is no free version, just a paid version
b) or releasing the theme as a free theme with the requirement of leaving the footer credit link intact, and just charging for support? People will pay for a closed forum membership where I give them fast support, theme-related tutorials, customization tips, extra child themes, and the ability to remove the footer credit link.

Advantages of the option a):
I can sell the theme for a higher price, if it is really good

Advantages of the option b):
If the theme is good, then a lot of people will use it, and I get a lot of free backlinks, and free advertising.

Disadvantages of the option b):
I can charge less for the support, as opposed to I would sell the whole commercial theme.

[grumpyjacksa]

this is just my opinion....

i do not speak from experience....

but if you have a free and premium version, people who use the free version will be advertising you premium version...

i think

pj

[ascauri]

Hi Charybdis,
I have thought a lot about selling premium wordpress themes in the past months... Eventually I dropped the idea as I am good designer but not a great coder. But maybe I can help you a bit with your questions:

1)It's a great niche, but a little overcrowded. I'd restrict it a little more if I were you. For example, selling WPMU + Buddypress themes, or wp themes for people in the IM niche, as they have different requirements such as squeeze and sales pages and so on.

2) I can't say for sure what makes more money, but I can see some advantages of going with option “b”. People are a little cautious of buying from “new” developers because there are lots of crappy premium themes out there, so they tend to buy from the top-names they already know. However, if your theme is really good and you release it for free, you can quickly make yourself famous in the niche. Justin Tadlock (Theme Hybrid: A WordPress theme club) uses that model and he seems to doing very well. Lastly, there's that whole GPL License thing going on, which I think favors the model “free theme+paid support”.

Sorry for the long post, hope it helps.

[Charybdis]

Of couse you don't need to code the theme yourself, you can just outsource it.
Yes, it's a good idea to target even further inside the "premium Wordpress theme" niche.

@grumpyjacksa: Yes, I could also make premium features users can only unlock by paying for support.

[AdInventive]

1. No niche is ever too crowded if you're able to provide what the buyer wants. Premium wordpress themes are a great niche if you have the design and coding capability of putting out a polished product.

2. It all depends on how good your skills are and how polished your final product is. If you can make a really great looking theme that's super functional, easy to modify for developers, has a lot of built in design styles, and a fully loaded theme options page, then I would say the best bet is to create your own site to commercially sell it. This site should also serve the purpose of showing off all the above mentioned skills.

Additionally, if you go about creating your own site, you should do it with the intention of having an affiliate program. Having a quality theme and affiliate program will all but guarantee that the major wordpress premium theme sites will give you exposure and links. (premiumwp.com for example)

If you also decide to do it this way, you should make sure your themes are GPL so that you can get listed on the wordpress commercial themes pages on their site.

In fact, a great thing for you to do would be to visit that page and study what everyone else is doing: WordPress › Free WordPress Themes


There are alternatives though. There's the themeforest.net marketplace for example. However, I wouldn't anticipate making a living from that.

There are other non GPL models that are extremely popular and successful also. The two biggest that I know of are the Thesis theme and the Headway theme. However, these themes are extremely complex to design and code so it really depends on what your skillset is if you want to compete with that particular market. Google them.

Originally Posted by Charybdis

Hello,

I have 2 short questions, I hope someone has the experience to answer them!

1) Is the "premium Wordpress themes" niche a good niche? Isn't it too crowded?

2) What does make me more money:
a) Selling a fully commercial Wordpress theme, where there is no free version, just a paid version
b) or releasing the theme as a free theme with the requirement of leaving the footer credit link intact, and just charging for support? People will pay for a closed forum membership where I give them fast support, theme-related tutorials, customization tips, extra child themes, and the ability to remove the footer credit link.

Advantages of the option a):
I can sell the theme for a higher price, if it is really good

Advantages of the option b):
If the theme is good, then a lot of people will use it, and I get a lot of free backlinks, and free advertising.

Disadvantages of the option b):
I can charge less for the support, as opposed to I would sell the whole commercial theme.

[AdamLCasey]

Hi Charybdis, I am launching a free theme shortly. We decided that our theme is going to be free because we want everyone in the Information Product Market to be using it. Like ascauri mentioned the GPL licence issue means, we'd rather not have the issue of charging for it and it then show up on arthacker for next to nothing!
Unless your a great designer with some great coders like the kids over at WooThemes then it's a tough place to get noticed. Great Support will do you wonders though.

@ adInventive I spoke to Headway recently and think they are going down the GPL licence route so you should see them included in wordpress recommended list pretty soon.

[turbohips]

There are too many template sites selling 1000's of templates for a low yearly fee. Not too much money to be made for the work involved IMO.

[iworkforthem]

The market is pretty saturated.. I would create these;

- a help/how to website to customize WP themes.

And sell Premium WP themes as the affiliate link.