What else is there for WordPress designers?
- Filed under: WordPress
With the exception of working for small business blogs, there aren’t many options for WordPress designers out there. Mainly, it’s because WordPress designers are cursed by a paradox. Non-small-business clients actually expect to pay less for a design just because it’s a WordPress theme. So, what else is there for WordPress designers?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve given up freelancing for a long time. It’s no longer fun or worth while. I’m aiming for higher than what freelancing can pay me on average. Yes, I’m aware there are $10,000 projects out there, but the point is I would be working for someone else. Once the project is finished, I get the money and nothing more.
If you’re one of my loyal readers, you know I’ve been dying to open up my own WordPress theme store, especially after what I experienced first hand from the success of the Showcase theme. Ideally, I want to duplicate that success over and over again with less effort, and without the word freelance.
But at this point, after some research, it looks like it isn’t worth while for me to go with the WordPress store either. First of all, Showcase caters a special niche, website galleries / photo-blogs. Customers are more willing to pay a higher price for a premium theme like Showcase. Second, it’s very time consuming to create a high quality, but regular blog theme that you can sell over and over again.
For example, Template Monster maximum-buys are six per premium WordPress theme. Their high average is five purchases per theme.
Let’s round up Template Monster’s average price and assume that they don’t have to pay any transaction fees. That’s $60 per theme with a $300 revenue potential ($60 x 5). $300? Unless it takes $30 to produce a theme that earns $300, I wouldn’t know why anyone would do it.
In Template Monster’s case, their themes are not hard to produce and duplicate. (They do duplicate and modify a little to come up with new designs). Plus, they probably have in-house designers that work for cheap. I’m talking offshore kind of rates, which means Template Monster’s headquarter isn’t located in United States, Canada, or any Euro countries.
Assuming that Template Monster pays offshore rates for WordPress themes production, I went looking for offshore web design firms. So far, I’ve found a lot of cheap rates, but no high quality results.
Let’s make another assumption, you can’t outsource. So what do you do to compete with Template Monster? You spend several days on each theme to create awesome designs that totally put Template Monster’s WordPress themes to shame so you can run them out of business or price your theme at a higher price. But wait, because each theme will be purchased around five times, what will you do to keep the money coming in? Would you spend several more days on each new theme to create more awesome designs?
How will you get the targeted traffic to average five purchases per theme in the first place?
That’s an exhausting pace and one reason why I’m re-considering the idea of opening a WordPress theme store.
The above are unedited random thoughts. I will post more to expand on this topic as I explore other options and business models for WordPress designers.
SP - I hear you bro… But I don’t neccessarily agree… I think there is a lot of money to be generated from specializing in unique WP designs - especially since the community is demanding more and more great WP work…
I’ve been working with Nate Whitehill and we’ve been selling quite a few themes through the theme store at Unique Blog Designs. So there is most definitely a market for premium themes.
Think you should reconsider…
You can setup a wordpress store through clickbank and utilize their affiliate power to help you drive traffic to your themes. I know that I would promote your themes. Just something else for you to think about…
I wouldn’t disregard pricing at a higher price.
Don’t forget the old (probably apocryphal, but what the hey) marketing story about the wine label that increased their sales by raising their prices. Why try and be the cheapest when you can market yourself as the best?
Template Monster is going to have a way different business model than a small potato. Don’t despair. Keep up what you’re doing. You already have an elitist or exclusive feel to your site (in the best way) and you already have an expert brand. Don’t try and compete on price. I would continue in the vein of Showcase; high quality themes for niche markets with excellent support.
@Adii - I agree. There’s a lot of money in premium themes. But at this point, it isn’t sustainable without me sitting at my computer. If my goal isn’t to take myself out of the equation or development process, I would jump at the premium themes niche and go all out. Compete with Brian. Compete with UBD. Compete with Template Monster.
Competition, interesting and fun…
@Ryan Puusaari - It’s interesting that you mentioned that. I was just thinking about the affiliate module of Oscommerce (a shopping cart script).
@Ian - I hear ya, but I think specializing in multiple niche themes will catch up to me. I despise answering theme support hahaha. It’s a bit difficult outsource support because my specialized theme would function in different ways. If I decide to take that route then I think I’d develop several more themes, put up online guides, and outsource the theme support tasks.
i think the most interesting model i’ve seen is rocketthemes (Joomla! templates), who charge a subscription fee for premium themes. it feeds on the way people use templates, the ability to change as the whim strikes them, rather than being tied to one theme that they’ve bought. plus, it allows them to keep ahead of the pirates, via a monthly release schedule.
Adam - Thanks for reminding me about RocketThemes.com. The subscription model looks like it’ll pay off in the long run. I’ll look into it.
SP, I am currently using the Payloadz program that Cory suggested, and it works great. It’s linked to Paypal, so when people buy, I get paid immediately, and then Payloadz sends them the link to download the theme immediately.
With this model, all you need to do is create a theme, offer some tutorials as people email with questions, and then periodically update the theme.
This runs pretty much by itself now, and I also get a TON of custom freelance work on the side from it. I’ll tell you, it’s really nice to wake up in the morning and see a few sales overnight while I was sleeping.
Definitely the way to go.
Brian - I’ve considered both Payloadz and E-junkie. They’re not the ideal solutions for me because I know if I run a store, I’d have a lot of different products.
I’ve been looking into Oscommerce, which comes with Paypal and digital product delivery. I also came across Magento, which looks very promising, but it’s not ready yet.
Yea, starting a store is gonna be risky, WPboard.com already closed last month, people are not willing to pay for a theme unless it’s something unique,fresh and caters to a specific need like your Showcase theme
I think your premium themes are awesome. I’m really looking forward to more of your premium themes as they come out.
I think what sets your work apart from the pack is that everyone designs wordpress for a blog. But you’ve shown us through the showcase theme, that wordpress can be used for more than that. So why not make that your niche? Creating wordpress sites that go beyond the blog. I’d pay for a wordpress theme that can do the following:
1. Job board
2. Real estate theme
3. Newspaper theme
4. photography portfolio
5. Photoblog
6. community site (similar to the drupal functionality)
7. forum (like phpbb)
I love using wordpress, and if you can make the theme do one of those, I know I’d purchase them.
Also, if you look at similar stock sites: veer.com, istock.com, gettyimages.com, they’re all built by someone who then asks for contributors to submit their own work. The site doesn’t pay the contributor until the work is bought, then they split the proceeds 60/40, for example.
So, you could set up a site for wordpress stock themes. Then let others submit their work according to your guidelines.
Keep up the great work!
I’d buy a WP theme from you over Template Monster any day just because you’re a person who has earned my respect regarding WP. There’s a personal aspect here that no big company can offer. Even if your templates cost $100 more than Template Monster, I’d buy from you just for that simple fact.
Thanks Tim
If you put your thumb and index finger a few centimeters apart, that’s how close I was to starting an online WordPress theme store on its own site/url, using PayLoadz. I didn’t go through with it for a lot of the same reasons you mention. This was about six months ago.
I still might do it for the occasional theme on my own blog, rather than a separate site. But free themes are great backlinks and calling cards. I make money from them indirectly.
[…] all those beautiful designs and themes for all you bloggers. But, do you have something for them? A popular WordPress designer shares his side of the story. With the exception of working for small business blogs, there aren’t many options for WordPress […]
Hi SP,interesting watching your business plans unfolding. As a newbie to offering wordpress sites to clients something which increasingly comes up is configuring functionality for the specific needs of the client.
I have highlighted quite a few areas where specific types of clients would benefit greatly from a wordpress powered site but configuring wordpress to suite certain needs is sometimes complicated for someone who just does design & HTML/CSS.
I think there’s a great need for someone to start helping people use wordpress for different purposes on a layout and extended functionality level. If you had a few custom plugins to suite the needs of some niche type clients and your set up a test site for example showcasing hwo your theme is preconfigured to fullfill certain functional needs you could end up getting a storm of requests. Example … I’ve highlighted as one niche area recruitment agents and agencies could get great return on investment by running their site through wordpress, just there are a few technical issues I have not been able to solve myself and a few plugins I need to hunt down.
A recruitment agency package would sell well I think if you set up a real example and let recruitment companies use it to post positions. You’ve done it for CSS galleries so you need to keep looking at other niche areas where wordpress solves the problem better, quicker and easier than other solutions.
I’d pay you for a recruitment configured theme & plugin package and I’m sure there are many other industries just dying for a package tht will allow them to style, content manage and modify their own site in the easy way wordpress allows them to do.
i digg for you , and that’s why all my themes are free.
Hey… I got your story on DIGG
http://digg.com/design/…
Digg users are complain about website getting down. I suggest you to install wp-cache.
Please contact me on GTalk: interactivecode@gmail.com or mail your IM contact.
digg it
small photato , i love yout themes , tigopedia
This comment on Digg made me chuckle:
“Why is this guy crying? He can’t make money making wordpress themes? Hardly anyone makes any money for skinning applications web based or desktop. It’s usually a hobby sort of thing. If this guy wants to make some money he needs to get a job as a web designer and make real websites instead of skinning wordpress crap.”
TemplateMonster is run out of the Phillipines. Their designers make about $6 USD/he. I know, because when I was at my last job, we outsourced much of our website builds to their parent company, OpenIntegrity.
You can’t compete with TM on price, so don’t try. Instead, offer what they can’t - customer service and better customization. Also, learn to recycle your themes once they have been exhausted. Maximize productivity.
Once you’ve created 1 theme and put it up for sale I’m pretty sure it would make a few initial sales, then you will get the occasional sale per week for months and months.
If you have 30 themes, you’re going to be making occasional sales every week. You could also repackage the ones you’ve already made and allow people to remove copyright notices.
With a simple affiliate scheme set up offering around 50% you would get heavily promoted as you are offering a quality product.
Add on top of that “Additional Tweaking Service” and you have additional revenue. Perhaps work out a joint venture with someone else on a Wordpress eBook Guide and thats another set of sales, which would also go well on Clickbank.
I think the idea is totally feasible.
What else is there for WordPress designers?
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SP, given the volume of viewers you’re getting, you must be making good money from your advertising. I’d keep making some kind of templates, just so your content remains fresh and it keeps drawing people back to your site. Even if the templates don’t sell that much, the adverts will.
I hear your pain, but let me share my pain as well. I’m a podcaster. I’m also a web developer, but not designer. If you draw a picture of a website and give me the image files, I can make it happen. But give me photoshop, and a blank slate, and I’m useless.
Our podcast website is ugly. Seriously ugly. We want to have, and we think we owe it to ourselves, to have a professionally designed site. However, we can’t just use an off the shelf WordPress theme because we have special needs for our site that we need to be accommodated.
What you need to realize is that just about everyone who is downloading off the shelf web site themes has a special need. There are lots of these people, and they are all downloading themes because they are unable to create one on their own that looks as nice. These people usually can’t justify spending thousands on their site, but many can justify spending hundreds.
I seriously think there is a big opportunity to make money by doing lots of very small web design jobs. One person has a layout, they just need to make it look nice. Someone else just needs a new header to stand out from the crowd. Someone else needs a custom archive page. Take up all these jobs at reasonable prices. It won’t take long to do any one of them, and if the jobs keep coming, you can make more money in less time.
It’s worth looking into.
I’d suggest another option:
If you can install, design for, and manage Wordpress, then you can install, design for, and manage Drupal. Wordpress really only appeals to small businesses, but Drupal is flexible and powerful enough to appeal to medium and large businesses as well as small businesses.
I love Wordpress, but I don’t think it is the right tool for the job (where the job is profitable web designer).
-John
Nice article, if you love fried food move to scotland!
we fry everything up here from pizzas to marsbars , icecream, haggis, sausage, fish, chicken, beef!
I totally agree with scott and john.
We custom design and build web-sites to meet the needs of our clients (small & large) business. We make good money. If they say their CEO or Marketing person wants a blog we give it to them free because there’s no work involved besides install wordpress and picking a theme. At the most we’ll find a theme with an underlying structure suitable for quickly tweaking the css to make their blog look like the main site.
You could start designing for Drupal.
What about mediawiki themes? Thats a challenge! and might add that there are no official designers for that cms system
I would love to incorporate Wordpress if it only had some more features…
why not sell more than 6? is that a limitation set by monstertemplates? Have you considered throwing up your own store?
The way I see it can be described by stating that there are hundreds of thousands of woman out there buying the same LV bags.
If your designs are original enough i don’t see what the problem is with removing exclusivity all together, up your prices, or set a hire purchase limit.
You could always include better quality in the packaging, for example taking the time to write out an instructional guide that looks nice, or offer to remove your branding for an additional price.
Best of luck.
JMM
[…] Small Pototo […]
I’d pay for someone to make me a theme that has the SAME look for my worppress blog AND my website.
The author of this article needs to find the VAR in his skills / offerings.
I agree with a previous comment SP, what first attracted me to your site was the free themes and even though you will be selling the more customized themes your traffic is gonna drop if you stop developing at least a few themes for free.
The writing on your site has picked up and become much more beneficial as time has passed and It’s great watching you slowly develop things on wpdesigner. I think wordpress is here for the long haul, yes there are other systems, some which have much better functionality but wordpress has something special and as more functionality gets added its becoming mroe and more beneficial and solving more website problems.
I reckon you could even put together a little book in a few months time or a years time with some of the things you’v elearnt about blogging, wordpress and development. Keep going and don’t let anyone stop you. You’re an inspiration to many out there.
I sympathize with your predicament. Wordpress is a great tool, very good for smaller sites. However, if I’m going to do a larger site with a lot of pages and additions like mailing lists, photo gallery, etc., I use Expression Engine, an open-architecture product that also runs on MySQL + PHP. I can’t see using Wordpress for larger projects.
Most wordpress style designer do that for something more profitable than just sell, that maybe will be as object of piracy.
If them give themes for FREE, hope the user will give feedback with good page rank link, and the owner of the style can get money from different side that maybe more much than just sell 1-2 copy of themes.