WordPress Guide to Livelihood Without Central Marketplace Dependency
- Filed under: WordPress
Out of the all the two cents already published about WordPress.com upcoming premium themes marketplace, my own thoughts are best described by the following:
You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on. – George W. Bush
What I think of WordPress.com marketplace:
It’s a brilliant idea and I can’t wait to work twice as hard for half of the money (50/50 split with WordPress.com) selling CSS only GPL licensed premium themes to uninformed WordPress.com users and give those themes to everyone else for free because I still wouldn’t be working hard enough to justify my above minimum wage income supported by the generous WordPress blog platform.
Coming up with a high quality premium theme without breaking any law isn’t already hard enough. To all you lazy theme designers spending only a week on each theme, step your game up. If you get on WordPress.com’s good side, you’ll get the chance to sell GPL licensed CSS only themes to more than 1.7 million WordPress.com users. And that’s important because those uninformed WordPress.com users, making you work twice as hard to provide support, is definitely the crowd to cater.
And don’t worry about thieves stealing your theme by simply copy and pasting your GPL licensed CSS. WordPress.com will be there to protect you even when it can’t.
What you should know:
- This is not about you. It’s about WordPress.com making money off of you. Don’t get it twisted.
- You’ll work for exposure to the wrong crowd – people that need more support than you’re willing to give.
- Even if you’re willing to sell your soul for cheap, you won’t get the exposure you’re dreaming of because you’re not allowed to credit yourself for the work by linking back to your site.
- After a grueling week of design and development, you can look forward to splitting 50/50 with WordPress.com. Even if you net $2000 per theme, it isn’t worth it to split 50/50. On your own, you can EASILY make more than $2000 per theme. Just ask me or Brian Gardner. (Splitting 50/50 to sell text link ads might be the right thing to do because you don’t have to directly work for that money. But creating WordPress themes is no joke so don’t get wamboozled into splitting your hard-earned money.)
What you should do:
- Stop dreaming of a central marketplace giving all designers (you) a fair chance to compete. You don’t need one.
- Stop being lazy and build your own buzz. Release free WordPress themes, then advertise your services / products.
- Stop thinking about working with WordPress.com and start thinking about working against WordPress.com. Start a similar service. Get designers on your side. Charge a flat fee instead of 50%. Don’t wait to see what happens with WordPress.com themes marketplace. While the WordPress.com team is working on their own system, you should be working on yours. Launch before them.
- Stop jumping onto the bandwagon. Remember the last time you got wamboozled?
50/50 is too much. Why have 1 centralized place for the best premium themes and lose half of your time? Independent designers can still work together to make sufficient wp themes. Anyway I think its bullcrap, wordpress is supposed to be one of the best open source tools out there. Now their tryin to steal half our money.
You just inspired me to buy a new domain: http://www.buywpthemes.com. I tell you what, ill split profit 25/75
But don’t think it’s easy to start up something like that. You need designers to back you up. WordPress.com is able to do it because they have the traffic.
IMHO it sounded like a bad idea. I’ve seen this in the Poser community, the majority was free and quality products all around. Then more and more started selling and it all went down hill to a degree. Still quality out, just none of it is free. And what is there for pay goes up and up worse than inflation because everyone (the store and the creator) are wanting their share (which is understandable) and your wondering when it stopped being a “hobby.”
There’s an old saying though, the king’s work for the king’s pay. Any of these designers go into it with open eyes, no-one is forcing them to contribute to this. If they’re screwed over then they need to pony up and accept it.
At first i was interested by the idea but after some more reading and digest i begin to see that 50/50 is daylight robbery.
I see the potential of this since there is no clear leader for wordpress themes. yes they need a central place for themes better than what they have now.
in lieu of that I have registered a few wordpress theme related domains just in case. Small Potato you should get a hold of me if you decide to go that route
It seems a bit confusing what Matt is proposing. Especially this part:
“Beyond the obvious guidelines of browser compatibility and general not-sucking, we’ll require submissions be original, link-free, not published before, and GPL-licensed. (That also means that all themes in the marketplace will be available FREE to wordpress.org users. That may force some to switch from .com to .org, but that’s fine.
) Will .com users want to buy premium themes? I think so, but the only people really taking that risk are launch partners, and worst-case scenario you’ve got a cool WP theme on your hands.”
The themes would be free elsewhere? That is odd. So its paid if you are .com. But available free for everyone else. hmm.
Thanks for giving us the behind the scenes view SP, as always straight and to the point and telling us like it is. Maybe you should get something going of this nature, something which has more of the ingredients which you think are more fair and beneficial to us little guys? You’ve got the support and the skills.
Definitely!
I agree with nomad-one, you do have the support and you obviously have the skills.
Hear, Hear. A libertarian argument! A pro capitalist one!
You just made my “blogroll” with this, so the 35 people that read me can definitely know about you!
I third that notion. 50/50 is way too much. All WordPress is doing is putting your theme up (without credit) and selling it (if it even gets sold).
Don’t get me wrong. I want to see a WordPress Market Place. But I want to see it from Small Potato.
Why? Why not. Tung, you’re the bomb:
1. You have the skill set to do so.
2. You have our support; a big community behind you.
Good luck bro. Thanks for showing us the light about this Market Place that WordPress.com was trying to start.
spot on!
I’m glad to hear your premium theme is doing so well.
1. WP.com Premium Themes will not be CSS-only.
2. If you can make more money doing your own thing, then do it! Good for you. We think this will be a good opportunity for folks, if you don’t then no one is twisting your arm to participate.
3. If this was just about us making money, we would commission a bunch of themes overseas and sell them. (There’s a big site that does this.) We’d make way more money ourselves. Oh, and we’d keep them proprietary. We’re not doing any of that.
4. Our Presentation page in the WP.com backend got 2.4 million pageviews last month. Someone is previewing a theme every 1.6 seconds.
2&3. First its great to see you respond Matt. I do believe while its true you could commission someone, it would net you more profit upfront and in the long run to do it this way. More designs, less money to pay per design and the money doesn’t come out of pocket since you are splitting what a person pays. That said the concept is nice and I do agree for new developers or those looking to expand this is a good way to make money. My issue is that the themes would be free to .org individuals which doesn’t seem fair.
Long term comissioning themes would be more profitable because we’d keep 100% of the long-term sales over years, the commission would pay for itself after the first week or two, and it’s pure profit for as long as the theme is available. (Forever.) I know this because we talked to folks who do this and modeled it out. However I want to provide an opportunity and reward for creative folks, not treat them like a commodity.
We’re also not saying theme authors have to give away their theme for free, just that it has to be GPL licensed. These are different things, and it’s important to note that even if the theme was given away for free, people can still make a ton of money on customization, support, etc. (Which they’re doing anyway.)
On .com, people don’t mind buying things, and 200-1000x more has been spent there than all the .org-sold themes I’ve heard about combined.
Brian was simply pointing out splitting 50/50 is less work than outsourcing theme development. Despite the assumed long term commision, one up side to selling for theme designers is the ability to reject the ones you don’t like without having to waste money developing it.
Please explain the GPL license to me because I don’t understand what you’re saying. Releasing it to the public under the GPL license without charging for each download, that sounds like giving it away to me.
People making a ton of money on customization sounds nice, but that doesn’t paint the whole picture. They’re making customization money off of themes they sold.
Correct me if I’m wrong, under the WordPress.com system, we’d have to make customization money off of our work that were supposed to be sold, which means our opportunity to make the first half of the money is gone.
That’s like releasing free WordPress themes and waiting for jobs again. Isn’t that what premium theme designers are trying to avoid in the first place?
The potential of making more than $2,000 per theme is tempting, but the reality of losing more than $2,000 to WordPress.com, thieves, and .org users should make people think twice.
Your system basically asks us to fork over a lot of potential money to make…potentially a lot of money. Not to mention, that potential has not been tested. My post simply reminds theme designers they don’t have to make that sacrifice.
Matt, I’m glad you pointed out that “theme authors [don't] have to give away their theme for free, just that it has to be GPL licensed.”
On your own blog you said, “That also means that all themes in the marketplace will be available FREE to wordpress.org users.”
I’m just confused right now.???
Mr. Potato,
I think you’re missing a large aspect of the point. Matt is offering a wonderful foundation & marketplace to offer themes — if you can get that sort of market elsewhere, power to you!
In all actuality though, you really can’t. The reason (I suspect) there’s a clean 50% being swiped off the top is partially distribution, to cover the .com hosting costs & cover the remainder of the WordPress expenses.
Again, this is all completely optional. You’re free to setup your own shop if you feel the need.
David J. – Please don’t use hosting and distribution to justify the 50% cut. Hosting is nothing.
With a little patience, you can get the same exposure on your own. And on your own, you can make $2 without giving someone else another $2. Don’t tell people they really can’t when you haven’t done any testing. Baseless assumptions can be dangerous.
Please check with Matt to get the number on how many people are using the WordPress.com CSS service. That should give you an idea of how many people are willing to pay. And be sure to take the CSS service pricing into account. Premium theme pricing (will be set by theme designers) are going to cost much more than that. How many people are willing to pay now? I almost forgot, those premium themes will be available for free to .org users. Ok, how many people are willing to pay now?
I sold my theme and continue to sell it without any sort of promotion. The post I used to sell my premium theme is lost in the archives, but people continue to find that post and continue to buy the Showcase theme.
Selling to the .org crowd also give you more room to differentiate your product. Take my Showcase theme for example. It was built for image galleries.
This completely optional marketplace is a nice idea, but it’s not worth the sacrifice.
“Please don’t use hosting and distribution to justify the 50% cut. Hosting is nothing.”
Actually hosting 1.7 million blogs that reach 100 million uniques a month is non-trivial. There is no other similar opportunity to sell customizations to as large or affluent a market in one place on the internet.
When you say you’re “losing” $2,000 dollars, you’re ignoring the fact that you’re making $2,000 you never would have in the first place. Do you think Amazon thinks it’s “losing” money to its affiliates?
In real estate it’s location, location, location. If you’re selling something (anything!) it’s distribution, distribution, distribution.
On top of that, consider that WordPress.com is adding 150,000 blogs a month and there is no additional marginal cost for you to reach that audience, every one with one-click integration so simpler someone who couldn’t spell FTP could buy your theme. Is that the same people you’re reaching now?
I was talking about hosting the themes.
You’ll get the opportunity to customize for WordPress.com users, but you’ll lose the opportunity to sell in the first place to .org users (again, the GPL licensed themes I’m waiting for you to elaborate on). Last time I checked, as a theme designer, I want to sell more than I want to charge for customization.
Like I said to David, with a little patience, you can make the same $2 without having to give WordPress.com another $2.
How much are affiliates earning from Amazon? I’m pretty sure it’s not 50%.
150,000 more blogs each month is impressive, but if you’re marketing to the wrong audience then you’re marketing to the wrong audience. I don’t care how much potential there will be. If it doesn’t convert then it doesn’t convert.
And I’m not so sure I wanna be selling to people that couldn’t spell FTP. Those people probably couldn’t spell CSS too and selling to them means I have to spell CSS for them. (Double the work for half of the money) No thanks.
hehe. You can be quite funny sp.
I repeat my initial concern. While you will gain money indefinitely through .com. The product will still be available free at .org. Its just something that bothers me. Maybe a different license. I realize you may be trying to accomplish two things with this (add quality themes to .org and earn money by selling themes on .com) but I am sure others may have issues with that strategy.
To offset the ‘free’ issues and knowing implementing this marketplace will have low overhead costs maybe 50/50 isn’t a fair split?
By the way just to clarify. I think a marketplace is a great idea, just I am questioning a few of the concepts.
I think we’ve all been waiting for something like this, but not at the price this marketplace is asking us to pay along with other requirements.
@matt –
1)
does this sound even vaguely familiar?
i’ve said all i need to say about that, but i’m glad to see you lay out your position in black and white. It’s contradictory and hypocritical, if not outright illegal.
I’m still waiting on the the whole “Selling/GPL” issue too Adam.
“Those people probably couldn’t spell CSS too and selling to them means I have to spell CSS for them.”
SP, this is going down in my all-time favorite quotes text file. Might even put it on Facebook.
Yeah. Considering they are using gpl it requires the direct source being available. I think they might be riding the line of legal. But they will provide the source on .org from my perspective everything appears legal. The question is whether .org and .com are different entities. My problem is the fact you will be giving your work away. A premium design can catch a pretty penny. Look at what template sites charge for cookie cutter designs and they aren’t even wordpress configured.
matt has said over and over that automattic does not equal WP (as in .org). So therefore they are different entities. If throwing them up on .org is what they do so they can make money on .com, that’s sad. Sad to see WP (and it’s community) turn into just a scheme to make money for matt. Of course, shouldn’t exactly be surprising after what he’s done in the past with .org (anyone remember the search engine spam?)
It’s obvious nothing I say will change your preconceived notions, and now the trolls are here so I’m going to exit.
Preconceived notions aside, some of us are waiting for you to elaborate on the GPL license requirement. Is it simply like what Adam said?
From your comments on PhotoMatt.net, it doesn’t sound like you have a plan to deal with un-paid copy and pasting of CSS until it becomes a big problem. That might be alright for WordPress.com, but shouldn’t be for theme designers.
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The GPL issue is a non-issue. As long as the source is distributed it’s legal. You’re free to charge a fee for installation, distribution or anything you wish: As long as you make it freely available.
In this case, the ‘charge’ is going toward the installation (I suspect it’s being handled via a nice automated system). Overall, Matt is onto something here & it’s going to skyrocket.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the system they’re setting up. If they can make money off open source, ugh — power to them!
It’s a really fine turning point to see.
And Small Potato,
Again, you’re splitting the fee to sell your theme via the distribution method. If you have a theme that’s free, you can sell it there & get something for nothing really.
I don’t see what the issue is. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. This will be a unique way of getting a massive ‘reach’ without any effort for themers though — again, Kudos Matt!
(And I do hope you reap the rewards equally)
Then the question goes back to why are you forcing designers to sell for installation fees instead of selling the theme itself. It doesn’t make sense to sell something to a group of people and turn around to make it freely available to different group of people.
If I have to pay simply for installation then I’ll just wait for the chance to install it myself and grab that premium theme for no charge at all. It isn’t hard to install.
Selling GPL to person A and turning around to give person B the same thing for free. What part of that is a non-issue?
Slight clarification on the GPL – you don’t have to distribute it. You merely have to make it available if asked for it by a customer.
Selling themes is a good idea (must be, or no one would do it). Most users just want to install a theme and forget about it. These are the people catered to on the .com and, to an extent, on the .org front. For the relatively small number of people who want/need to tweak and further personalise it the source must be available. You can satisfy that requirement by providing a link to the subversion files.
And the GPL does not prevent you from making a sale –
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic
But don’t forget, copyright law still applies.
SP,
You’re missing the point. The users of WP.com are not allowed to install their own themes on the blogs they have setup / hosted with WordPress.
They’re selling the installation, not the theme. The theme is freely available at WP.org
[...] of which we were already well-aware, but his contempt for the users of wordpress.com: people ‘who couldn’t spell FTP’ and therefore deserve to be [...]
interesting discussion ….
I tend to agree with the position of Matt and the gang … although I do see some slight inconsistencies in the process, as others have.
WP.com is offering you exposure … and that exposure will cost you. Think of it like marketing fees/advertisements. Hey, if you have an audience big enough to make $4000 by selling the themes yourself, then go for it. You can even spend $1000 on marketing and come away with $3000. But if you think that’s too much work, or impossible for you in your current situation, then 50/50 is a pretty good deal, considering the fact that you are paying WP.com for the advertisement … and it’s based on commission, so that’s even better. They don’t get paid unless you do … which is a good incentive for them.
I say that as long as the requirements are fairly loose (no signing over ownership, no requirements to release the theme for free to .org users, no requirement for your theme to be a CSS mod for sandbox, etc.) then I can see some good potential for designers looking to get a little exposure. Currently, there is no efficient way to market to the WP.com user base.
Since you’re talking about a company (automattic) with a large user base, if you want to market to said user base, you have to do so on the terms of said company. If WP.com wanting to take 75% of the sale, they could … and they’d be justified in doing so. They own the asset, and we aren’t endowed with any God given right to sell to the users of that asset.
That said, with a little work, I believe whole heartedly that the better strategy for most, including myself, is to put my efforts into doing something myself and marketing to .org users who do, on average, have a better understanding of this whole internet thing.
Like SP said, I just don’t think it’s worth it for me to give over 50% of profits to a WP.com, and ensure myself 2x the support work having to deal with deficient users. But for others, it may be a lucrative business proposal.
“It’s obvious nothing I say will change your preconceived notions, and now the trolls are here so I’m going to exit.”
Matt. No one is trolling. We really just would like an explanation in regards to the GPL statement. I’d say thats reasonable. I’m one who MIGHT contribute if things were a bit more explained. 50/50 isn’t that bad of a deal if you have a few good designs you haven’t used lying around and want to make some extra change.
On one point you say the themes must be GPL, then you say that they don’t have to be on .org or given away for free. Which of course would end up being against the licensing, then comes my statement in regards to .org and .com not being related and the same company. Simple questions. Please if you don’t address them here. I’d like to see them at your site.
@Brian,
He hasn’t stated anywhere that they don’t have to be on WP.org, in fact he’s already stated they have to & that they’re GPL’d. They don’t have to be distributed anywhere else though, in essence.
Either way I see it, there cant be too many wordpress blogs that are out there that have 4k to spend on just a wordpress theme. 4k can buy a lot of fried food, if I want my site to look 4k better, I would have to think twice about my website and how much money I feel like wasting. I would rather make my own theme with microsoft paint than throw $4000 off the bridge.
I would be interested in one of these $4000 themes, I hope its made of gold.
Try around 4%-ish.
-KB
“That also means that all themes in the marketplace will be available FREE to wordpress.org users. That may force some to switch from .com to .org, but that’s fine.”
Really we may have misinterpreted what he said there. But it would make little sense to post them on wordpress.com. But perhaps that is where they would be posted.
David J – When I mentioned installation earlier, I meant installation for .org users.
According to you, it seems like I’m missing a lot of THE POINT. When really, you and Matt are making excuses to dodge our questions and you say nothing new.
So WordPress is charging for premium theme installation, which is not currently available to WordPress.com users. That, we do get.
However, selling installations instead of selling the themes doesn’t justify making those themes freely available to .org users. It simply makes it legal for people to copy and paste. Theme designers should not have to make that sacrifice in exchange for the repeated BIG POTENTIAL along with the 50/50 split.
David J., if you haven’t gotten the point… At the expense of theme designers, Matt is trying to kill two birds with one stone by selling premium themes to .com users while making more free themes available to .org users.
The sad part is he’ll probably succeed because some designers, ignorant of the truth, will buy into the hype.
matt was referring to me questioning his questionable practices, with this (let it be known i don’t know anything about the GPL, but with the amount of comments on this subject on various blogs, he is being questioned) and his actions in the past with .org.
Mr. Potato Head,
Again, Matt isn’t forcing anyone to utilize the system. It’s purely available for anyone who wants to tap into the market of over 1.7 *million* users.
You’re free to do that on your own, of course
I know if I were a designer, I would be first in line — that’s a *massive* advertising base for *zero* upfront costs.
In fact, it’s absolutely stunning.
I wish that were available in the industries I target for my other projects.
That’s exactly my point about you David. You say nothing new; you ignore the point and you ignore the questions.
Thanks for pointing that out, but I think we all realized that point before this discussion. And that’s not why this discussion will or will not continue.
Let me save you the trouble for the next response: No. We’re not forcing anyone to NOT join WP.com marketplace either.
There, now I deserve the Mr.Big Potato title. According to your previous comments on this blog, I degraded to a Small Fry, temporarily sat pretty at Mr. Potato and now back down to Mr. Potato Head for missing your point.
Although your sneaky cheap shots lack creativity, at least you’re consistently making a fool out of yourself.
[...] Small Potato on the themes marketplace issue. Hear hear. Back to top © The Vidar Site. Swollen Goat = Danish Icons + Blueprint. [...]
This “You can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on” was indeed from a Gridiron Dinner in 2001. It should be noted that this is the time of the year when the president traditionally tells jokes, and this was one. Whatever grains of truth you might see in it, its misleading to present it as a straight quote. The discrepancy between whether Robert Strauss or POTUS said it is due to the nature of the joke: The president was (falsely, in a humorous context) relaying advice he’d gotten from the Democratic strategist, who we can assume didn’t really have such a conversation with the President. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1241240.stm
“In my sentences I go where no man has gone before.†-George W. Bush
Really. Does it matter? I found numerous websites verifying it as a quote from him and other news articles quoting this as a Bush quote. Whether he ment it in a literal sense is irrelevant. I think you are nitpicking a bit.
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funny, you love to design or you love making money with smart ideas, any way i guess there will be people always who you use wordpress as content managment, and create or buy custom design, the rest is dressing in uniform and even pay fo it.
[...] And then points out what has become inevitable each time Matt Mullenweg generates an idea – the silly controversy; [...]
I used to do a lot of theming in WP before themes even started:) And before I got pissed at Matt. The bit I do not understand is the releasing said theme on org nonsense. This is obviously a way to side step the GPL by Matt. But here is the thing. Org and com are coded completely differently. So you need to write the theme twice. Make sense?
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Hmmm… isn’t Adsense 50/50?
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