How much for a WordPress theme – Part 2
- Filed under: WordPress
The results have been in for days. So what’s the verdict if you haven’t seen the poll? Over one third (36%) of you wouldn’t pay over $100 for an exclusive WordPress theme. For nonexclusive (pay-per-download theme), it’s $20 for each download, which sounds about right.
Reality Check
From a web designer point of view, the top voted price for an exclusive theme is beyond comprehension. Let me paint a better picture:
In general web design, a five-page website costs you typically $300 – $500 among the average freelancers; that includes design, coding, and content integration (filling the site with text and images). A ten-page site will yield an $800 to a $1000 quote.
Those numbers are ballpark prices among average freelancers. Contracting a company or highly distinguished web developer to handle your site would for sure cost upwards of $1000.
Why such a big difference?
I’ll go over three outstanding reasons.
Low-level Freelancers – Although you do get what you pay for, however, I’m not talking skill-wise here. The problem is there are many freelancers willing to work for a lower price range just so they can get the job. Although this also applies to general web development, I have to mention this reason because it’s even worse within the WordPress theme circle.
Consider the Client – WordPress theme clients are different from general web design clients. I believe WordPress theme clients are more knowledgeable. Some are interested in modifying the final product rather being happy with receiving a well-designed theme.
Ease of Use and Management – A part of the problem is how easy it is to set up a WordPress blog, add content, manage it, and find free themes for it. What you end up having to deal with is knowledgeable and more experienced clients that simply want custom modifications to look unique instead of a completely unique/exclusive theme.
As a freelancer myself, I can fully back that up SP! Too many freelancers looking for work, means the price gets forced down. I also think the amount of quality free WP templates out there, makes it very difficult to earn top dollar for one’s designs.
No one else feeling the need to comment on this issue?
SP: I’m currently charging $50 – $80 for a generic, unique WP template. And I seem to find quite a few buyers at that price. I normally get the jobs in batches of 6 – 12 templates at once, which nets me a nice profit. Only problem is that I don’t normally get credited with the design work (no links in the footer for example).
Unless you’re simply modifying free themes for them, 50-80 dollars isn’t worth it. You need to get out of that cycle. I’ll post some of my plans for the wp theme community soon.
looking forward to know about ur plans.
Realistically I think that $300-500 is reasonable for setting up WP and building a 3 page exclusive theme. Its what we charge. Though thats roughly what we charge for a non-WP website as well.
yeah $50-80 is not enough for a wp theme from scratch..
I must say two things that will justify me doing WP themes at $50 – $80.
1) The designs are very generic and normally based simple, efficient 2 or 3 column designs. So it basicly involves moving around the header image, find free stock photos and adding a few unique touches with icons and background graphics / textures.
2) I live in South Africa and I basicly get 7.50 ZAR for one USD. So I’m getting between 400 and 600 ZAR for one generic template. And to put it in perspective: 400 ZAR buys me a brand new, top-of-the-range Levi’s jeans…
So maybe I’m in a more favourable position due to the exchange rate, but it is well worth the time spent. I can code WP themes blind… So I normally spend about 5 hours on a theme, which means $10 to $16 / hour, which is standard for a freelancer.
Here is a preview of a recent WP template I did for a client, which will explain what I mean by simple, generic WP templates… PREVIEW
I’m right there with Brian. $300-$500 is about the range I feel most custom themes should fall. Now, this is for your average WordPress functions, and not a ton of customizations and plugins.
In all reality, it’s more than just a number. It’s about supply and demand, as well as the designer you are working with. My range is similar to Brian’s, but my rates didn’t start out that way. (Proving the theory that freelancers charge less to acquire business.)
I also have a full time day job, so for me, I have the luxury of being choosy with the projects I take. I’m still exceptionally busy, and get at least 3-5 requests a day for custom work.
Some advice for those charging less – up your rates a bit, and see if you can still get work. You’ll be surprised what people will spend, and you might be undervaluing your work.
I disagree with Adii, I think the standard freelancer fee is more like $16-20/hr. My reasoning is if you are good enough to be freelancing thats what you should be making. As Brian Gardner stated don’t undervalue your work.
Remember you are building a website from scratch and providing a standards compliant theme with SEO. (or you should be) Things that even the average WP user knows little about and that includes many theme builders. $300-500 is very reasonable for providing a person or business a web identity.
Well, it seems like I’m working for the wrong people then… : )
I must state that I’ve only done freelancing (online) for about 6 weeks now, so I am still building up a reputation. I would really not mind making $300 / template on average…
I’m on the buying side here, not designer. I’m the guy who doesn’t know how to change any of the designs, but know that it’s fairly easy to do, but I don’t have the time nor desire to do it myself (I’ll rather outsource it).
I don’t want to pay $100 for the theme (I’m also in South Africa, same as Adii) as that is a lot of money for me, especially if i know that the designer is merely tweaking a design here and there, fooling around with the CSS.
If it’s an entirely new template, that’s a different story all together.
But remember, I’m the guy who is building the site, getting the business requirements, loading any plugins, doing training and finally making sure that the client is happy. What I expect as a deliverable is that 100kb (or so) template that plays nicely with all the other plugins and that I have. And at the end of the day it really does depend who the client is… If it’s a small local school, then why go through a massive effort fi they can’t pay you? Time to find alternative revenue models then. While if it’s a bank, that’s a different story. I think the key is to work together with the developer, designer and business analyst to see where you can all make enough money without getting schnarfed.
Great site this, I’ve subscribed
[...] That’s it in a nutshell. It’s a bit of a slap-dash put together. I haven’t had some time to research other plugins properly, or play around with any of the navigation and the sidebars will probably still change a hell of a lot. What do you prefer? One, two, three or four panes?The other thing to do now is get a new design. This template is by Lorelei Web Design and is called Darklight WordPress Theme. I’m still going to change the header soon, but I’m looking for a total redesign of the template. Any offers? I could pay And I’ve done my research now hear, you can find what I’m expecting to pay over here. [...]
“schnarfed” = interesting work Uno!
*Sorry I meant WORD – not work…
I agree with Adii,
The cost of the theme should vary depending on whether it’s a complete custom theme or not. What I mean by custom is that it’s unique to that person not he this is a theme that I release to the general public and 3000+ other people also have this same theme. I hate seeing whatever disigner or programmer actually did after he charged me $50 or a $100+ dollars for something that all he had to do was change something simple like entries in the CSS file. Example I wanted my sidebar on the left side instead of the right. This guy wanted to charge me $50 for custom coding when all he had to do is change the float value to right for the main content and left for the sidebar. I decided to email someone and ask before I paid this guy $50 to change a whole 9 characters.
You are right about the user-base. I’m not a designer, but I’d rather handle all the PHP code and plugins on my own. There’s an obvious difference between “complete product” and “I’d like a new style sheet”
While I do see the point of Adii, etc. I should say that its not EASY to build a good custom theme. Especially if you are optimizing it (fixing queries, SEO, etc.) and to say it is, well that ludicrious. Its easy to make a poor theme, but not to make a good solid theme.
I do have a base xhtml file and css file that I use to ease the burden, but 90% of the themes and website I have made are fresh code with the base simply as a starting point, often much of it is scrapped.
Plus you have to look at the time it takes to work on a theme. Yes you can get a theme out in 5 hours. But it doesn’t work that way with clients. As SP posted you often have to grid the site out and get approval on a design which can take a couple of days of back and forth. Then you build the full design, which may take more delays waiting for approval. I had a website take 3 months to build and it was only 8 individual pages. Yet, I still only charged that client $500. And now that we have a working relationship, you know who he comes to if there are problems? Me. And in most cases the fixes are free of charge unless its a redesign thats drastic, etc.
If you want to pay $50-80 then go buy a template. If you want a custom website. Then pay me. hehe.
Hi!
I don’t do like Adii. He only changes the colour scheme and the stylesheet and just adds a different header image. This can’t be called an exclusive WP theme.
Each of my designs are made on Photoshop. I try to make a different and unique design each time and I care about little details that make a theme look professional. Then I have to slice up the images, optimize and export them before I can code up the theme. It can’t be done in just few hours. In total, it takes me about 60 to 100 hours to create a good looking and professional WP theme and to test it on all the major browsers to make sure there’re no bugs.
As Brian, I use a base css file but only for the global classes and common formatting. I still have to do 80% of the work.
For my last customer (the project was a shopping cart), I had to create about 20 designs on Photoshop before she finally agreed on one. This took me about two weeks before I could start coding the site. Customers don’t want to pay much but they always want to change or improve something. They are never satisfied.
Basically, I need about two months to make a website (up to 5 pages) from beginning to end if not too many delays (there’re always some).
Well, all this speech to say it is not worth working for $100 for an exclusive WP theme.