When I released my first theme last year, I never imagined that it would lead me to releasing multiple commercial themes that would actually help pay the bills. I only did it because I enjoyed designing websites and I wanted to play around with jQuery Masonry, which had just came out. I spent the weekend tinkering around with a gallery theme idea and released it the next Monday for free. It was just very basic, lacked commenting functionality, and was completely CSS. I figured a couple people would download it. I was wrong…a lot of people downloaded it, and they were hungry for more features. After several months and a couple hundred comments on the original blog post, I decided to dip my toes into the commercial theme market. I haven’t regretted it ever since.
I’ve learnt a lot over the short period of time since I released my first commercial theme, from the WordPress side of things as well as the business side. Below are several of the lessons I’ve learned so far…
Don’t Undervalue Yourself
If you’re a first-time theme seller, setting a price for your theme may be one of the trickier decisions that you’ll have to make. Theme prices are a hot topic right now and rightly so. Don’t undervalue yourself. You have to remember that the customer isn’t just paying for the theme, but also for support and theme updates. Keeping your theme up to date and digging through support hell requires a lot of your time. If you’re unsure of what to charge, pick a price that you feel is appropriate and then add $10 to it. It’s a lot easier to lower the price than it is to increase it. Whatever you charge, it’s still one hell of a deal for the person buying it, when compared to what a custom website would cost.
Localize Your Theme
I would venture to say that over half of the people who purchase a theme of mine are from a country where English isn’t the first language. With localizing a theme being as easy as it is, there really is no reason that your theme shouldn’t be translatable.
Your Theme Will be Pirated
It’s just part of the game. I was pretty bummed when I first found out that a commercial theme of mine was made available for free on multiple websites. In response, I quickly implemented a verification process to my support system so that I could pick out the bad apples. This proved affective in not only cutting out a chunk of nonpaying support requests, but also led to additional sales. Some people who originally downloaded my theme for free ended up purchasing it so that they could receive support and reliable updates.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel — Unless Your Wheel is Better
Thanks to the generous WordPress community, there are a ton of resources available for you to take advantage of. If you’re thinking of building a theme options page, there are several frameworks that you can use as your foundation. Just to name a few; UpThemes Framework, Options Framework, and OptionTree. If you plan to include widgets with your theme, why not check and see if someone has already built what you’re looking for, more than likely they have.
You Don’t Need All of Those Options
Even though the theme frameworks I mentioned above make possible the creation of every theme option in the book, doesn’t mean that you should. In fact, don’t. There are plugins for SEO and Google Analytics, so let them do the work for you. This saves you work in the long run and takes away a layer of complication from your code. I’ve recently gone back and removed unnecessary theme options from my first theme. Guess how many people noticed or complained? Zero.
Build Value
Adii recently wrote a post on the WooThemes Blog expressing that marketing to your existing customers is a viable revenue model. Although I’m far smaller than WooThemes, I’ve also noticed this. It’s important that you build value behind your brand and your products. If you do, you can count on loyal customers to come back for more of your themes in the future. They’ll also help spread the word about you, which is nice.
Encourage Feedback — Don’t Always Listen
Receiving feedback from existing users of your theme is great. You learn several important things, like:
- How your product is being used.
- If you’re communicating all features properly.
- If the customers’ expectations are being met.
- Feature requests that may help improve your theme.
That last bullet is very subjective. If I implemented every feature that has been requested, my theme would be the GeoCities of WordPress. You don’t always have to listen to your customers. Think about whether or not the requested feature fits with your product and if it would benefit the majority of your customers. If it doesn’t, then it’s probably best to leave the idea on the cutting room floor.
Theme Support Requires Hard Liquor
Congratulations — you’ve written theme documentation, made your theme as user friendly as possible, and launched your theme. You kick back your feet and are about to call it a night when you get an e-mail from someone who just bought your theme, asking how to change the ordering of the blog posts and why their 20 plugins are breaking your theme. Welcome to the life. This is something you’ll need to deal with on a daily basis. When I first started, one thing that surprised me was how many e-mails I got asking how to customize/add/remove a particular feature. I had to decide early on how much support I would offer for customization requests. Typically I point them in the right direction, but if they’re looking to really go to town on things, I point them to a site like WP Questions or Customyze.me. After awhile, I’ve gotten into a routine of blocking out an hour every morning to knock out the support requests.
Do What You Enjoy
This is probably the best piece of advice I could give to anyone, and one that I give the most. My first theme was a gallery theme because I love photography and design. I want to create themes for websites that I would actually enjoy visiting. One of my favorite quotes came from an interview with Oliver Reichenstein when he said:
“Don’t do it for the money. Don’t do it for no money”
Luckily, I can now design themes for sites I enjoy visiting while also being able to pay for an unhealthy amount of domain names.
To add a bit from a customer perspective. Don’t make themes that make you look good, make themes that make your customer look good.
I’ve been trough a gazillion themes for my photography website before finally installing Sawyer’s Shaken Grid (the original one) for one simple reason. all the other were made to look good on a theme marketplace, not to actually work.
I’m a photographer. And even though a portfolio theme looks fine, cool and dandy, the header and thumbnails make me crop my pics to a 1:5 ratio. My clients don’t get to crop my pictures, I sure as hell ain’t letting a WP theme do it.
(I switched to another theme per my agent’s request right before shaken grid premium got out, otherwise I’d be using that right now. The problem was that it only included single picture posts)
Thanks Borna. It’s always important to keep the customer in mind when designing a theme and to think about what features are important to them. One thing that I always ask myself is, would I use the theme for myself? If the answer is “No”, then I’m doing something wrong.
Thanks for a great article, Sawyer ;)
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages and never got around to it ~ great writeup which will help me lots, I’m sure ~ thanks ;)
Glad to hear it, thanks!
Great article ! Thanks for sharing
Great to see the first article being published! And it’s a good one. Having started selling my first theme as well the past year, I recognize a lot of things. The biggest mistake I made was not properly localizing my theme, and I was I did that from the start.
Finding the right balance between giving support and going overboard on “simple customization requests” is always challenging. Sometimes when the customization could benefit the theme (for future updates/new features) I decide to tackle the request, most of the time helping me sell my theme and getting an extra happy customer in return.
I’m looking forward to see more articles appear :-)
Thanks Bowe. I was really surprised at how many international customers I receive, and also wish I knew going into this that localization is so important. Glad I’m not the only one.
For anyone who is thinking about selling a commercial theme, I would highly recommend releasing a free theme on WordPress.org first.
Going through the official theme review process was invaluable for me as a theme developer and ensured I was using all the best coding practices. It also gives you an idea of the amount of documentation and support requests you’ll receive, and perhaps like Sawyer, a base of users who might be interested in your commercial work.
+1 to everything said here. Great article.
I absolutely agree, that’s a great point. I’m not sure if this endeavor would have been as successful if I didn’t release my first theme for free. Although I haven’t formally went through the theme review process, I learned a lot from the interactions with everyone who downloaded the theme.
I would really like for theme developers to take notion of the language issue. I mainly use bought themes for my clients who are dutch and therefore i’m digging in the code too often to make translations.
Also, my personal opinion is that the focus should be on the theme design and how the theme works. And with that I mean that too often themes are now being advertised with tons of options and widgets, while that effort could have gone in making the theme itself better.
And just to keep the discussion going started I think by Orman Clark, let’s all just get rid of the gazillion shortcodes and use css instead for end customers and for that matter, I would like to see paid support implemented vs free support. Like you said in your article, it takes hours a week.
Wow Sawyer, it seems like your srticle was directed at me. I am in about to embark on the process of creating premium WordPress themes for resale. Your ponters above are truly valuable and will most likely save me a from many headaches and pitfalls.
Thanks again :)
Thanks Graham, I’m glad you found the article useful!
This article has enlightened me in so many areas as I’m being a novice in the trade of the Designs..
Thanks for the tops… :)
Glad to hear it!
Thank you for this article (and Jason for this new blog). It’s already proving useful to me as I think about diving into commercial theme design myself.
Awesome… we have several more articles in the works.
Great post. Lots of the advice goes beyond just theme creation/businesses. It spreads to other areas as well.
Its always good to read article about starting commercial themes..If you planning on selling themes or creating free ones, Support will be a big one.
When I first stated in premium themes my idea was based on 37Signals-people don’t need all these features, plugins etc.. Keep it simple and clean.
This is some very valuable info to me as I am myself planning to release a free theme soon. Very inspiring article and thank you so much to all authors who are behind theme.it
Good to hear you found the first article on Theme.it useful. Many more to come.
Sound advice and info .. especially I love the headlines over each paragraph – eyebrow raising – and an encouragement to keep on reading.
Great new website and a blog about Themes was more than needed. You guys do a great job, keep up the good work!
Thanks, Hody!
Well said, Sawyer!
This is just the kind of advice I was after. I don’t know that I’ll be ready to make my own themes for sale anytime soon but it is on the horizon somewhere and this kind of article is very helpful for me in learning what to look for and how to position myself.
So, thank you for a well-written piece.
Glad to hear it, Annie! Thanks for reading
I just ready your article about theme selling on Smashing Magazine and now read this one. Thank you very much for your help! This is extremely helpful :)