The Business of WordPress Theme Design

Today, I’d like to talk a bit (or a lot) about the business of WordPress theme design. Don’t worry; we’re not going to review how to use Quickbooks and work with accountants – nothing boring like that! Instead, I’ll be covering exactly what is required to become a profitable Premium WordPress theme designer.

Overview

Based on a presentation I gave earlier this year, this article is divided into a handful of sections. Feel free to bounce around to what interests you most.

Who Am I?

First, the obligatory personal introduction. If you have no idea who I am, my name is Jeffrey Way. I work for Envato, where I help out in two different areas of the company.

I’m the editor of a popular web development blog, "http://net.tutsplus.com">Nettuts+, where we offer free tutorials on everything from CSS to PHP to Ruby…to, of course, WordPress. We currently have in excess of 100,000 subscribers and followers, and millions of visitors to the site each month.

I’ve also written a handful of books on a variety of web development subjects. In the WordPress world, I recently contributed a couple chapters to SitePoint’s Wicked WordPress Themes.

Wicked WordPress Themes

And yes – I’ve even written a book about the enemy…

Theme Tumblr Like a Pro

And lastly – which I’m sure you guys are far more interested in – I’m a developer evangelist for the Envato marketplaces, which many folks refer to as the “Amazon of digital goods.”

Envato Marketplaces at a Glance

We currently have seven marketplaces, but like to joke that, at all times, there’s a couple more on their way out the door.

Most notable to readers of this blog are ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, where we sell site templates and code components, respectively. So how does that relate to you, as a WordPress theme designer? Well, if I can be conceited enough to throw some numbers at you, I think this will peek your curiosity!

#1

ThemeForest is, far and away, the most popular resource on the web for buying and selling premium WordPress themes. In fact, they, not too long ago, celebrated crossing the 1000 Premium themes milestone, which is pretty exciting.

ThemeForest crosses 1000 WordPress themes.

Also #1 in the industry, its sister-site, CodeCanyon, is, similarly, the best source for buying and selling Premium WordPress plugins.

Now for some mind blowing numbers.

$290,00

To date, the best selling WordPress theme on ThemeForest, “ Striking Premium Corporate,” has made over $290,000 in sales, in a little over a year. $290,000 for one theme. Isn’t that insane!?

$215,000

And the fastest selling theme ever? In only five months, the “U-Design” template sold a ridiculously impressive $215,000 worth.

$50,000

Don’t think you can work full-time as a freelance WordPress theme designer, how about this number?

Authors have made as much as $50,000 in a single month. That’s profit – all take home pay. I don’t know about you, but that’s well more than I make! Maybe I need to quit my day job.

But the best part is that none of this is beyond the realm of possibility for any of you. The key is consistency. WordPress is bigger than ever, accounting for over 10% of all websites on the web. Think about that! WordPress didn’t exist in 2002!

WordPress accounts for more than 10% of all websites.

So please trust me when I tell you that there is plenty of room in the pool for both money-making…and innovation. You’re certainly not too late.

So You’ve Built a Theme

So you’ve built your first stock WordPress theme. What next? Honestly, probably the best course of action is to throw it in the trash. Your future self will thank you.

Remember – don’t diminish the necessary skills required to become a profitable theme developer. While it’s not rocket science, you do need to have a solid base to work from.

Fast forward a few years, your skills have doubled many times over, you’ve released some free themes on your website to high praise, and, this time, you’re ready to make a profit with your first Premium template. What next?

How Will You Sell It?

Far and away the most important question to ask yourself is “How Will I Sell This Theme?” Don’t make this decision lightly.

Perhaps the natural reaction to this question is – “I’m going to sell it myself!” But have you considered payment portals? Will you accept credit cards, Paypal, checks? What about a special landing page to sell the theme? What about marketing? Will you purchase banner ads? Magazine space?

And that’s just the beginnings of it. All that said, though, you can – and very well may – go this route. Keep in mind, though, that you’re a WordPress theme designer…not a business man or marketer. Or better put, how do you want to spend the bulk of your time?

Coding or Marketing?

But let’s continue on this avenue. You’re going to sell the theme on your own website. I suppose that means you’ll build a landing page for the theme?

How many hours will that take? Have you factored that into your cost? What about when you release Premium theme #2? Does that one also get its own landing page? What about hosting? What about purchasing domain names? What about Paypal fees? All of this adds up very quickly.

Then, despite these additional expenses, the next dilemma is: how do you connect and cross promote your themes? Should you develop an additional home-base for all of your Premium themes? This is starting to sound like a lot of work!

Let’s continue even further on this road. Remember – this boring business stuff is all part of the process. What about pricing? Have you researched the industry? What’s the average pricing for a premium WordPress theme these days? Well let’s see.

As you can see, pricing covers the spectrum. So how do you personally decide? Do you massively undercut the competition and sell themes for $5? Well, true, that’s an option.

ou get what you pay for…

But, the saying is especially true here. You could have the best theme in the world, and, if you sell it for $5, people will naturally assume that it’s worth….wait for it… $5! Never undercut yourself.

Now, on the other hand, let’s say that you go the opposite route and price your themes considerably high…we’ll say, $200 per. That’s absolutely an avenue you can take, and plenty of developers choose this one.

With pricing on this level, though, you can be assured that you’ve successfully priced yourself beyond the mass market. If that’s your choice, then excellent. You’ll certainly have corporate buyers…and, of course, the buyers who don’t know any better. But ask yourself this – and this is an important one: would you rather sell 20 licenses of a $200 theme, or 200 of a $20 theme? Your ultimate compensation is identical in both situations. All else being equal, who wouldn’t prefer to reach 200 people instead of 20?

180, 180, 180

That’s 180 more referrals. 180 more chances for repeat buyers. 180 more happy customers…potentially happy customers! So perhaps the only downside might be increased support time, but if you handle your theme’s documentation appropriately, you can mitigate your support time significantly, and we’ll talk about that more shortly.

Now, as the hugely opinionated web developers we are, it’s easy to laugh at the idea of selling a WordPress theme for $20. Some of you may even be offended by the idea.

Here’s a recent quote I received via email:

I did not spend 40 hours on a theme to sell it for $20. That’s .50 cents hour!

Well, certainly this true — if you take it at face value. But remember: we’re talking about stock templates. Every time you make another sale, your hourly rate increases.

20 Sales | $400 Gross | $10 an hou

And 200 sales??

200 Sales | $4,000 | $100 an hou

As you can see, very quickly, this becomes a non-issue. After 200 sales, your hourly rate has jumped to $100 an hour — and that doesn’t even take into account continued sales throughout the year. All of that is more icing on the cake.

“Well yeah, Jeffrey: 200 sales would be amazing! That’s not likely,” you might say. Don’t think that’s an achievable goal?

The average number of sales per WordPress theme on ThemeForest is 262, (or $9000 in sales).

But here’s the best part. When you’re selling stock templates, every new theme you create gets thrown into the income pile. A few months ago, an author on ThemeForest took home $40,000 in a single month. Certainly, that wasn’t from one single theme! The compound effects of selling dozens of Premium themes is insane and I think you’ll find…addictive.

While we’re on the subject of pricing, if I can go on a quick tangent: ThemeForest is often criticized for selling $35 themes.

“A $35 is an insult to web developers.”

Want to know what the irony is? You rarely find ThemeForest authors who complain about price. How come? Because they’ve quickly learned that they make a hell of a lot more under that system than with any other avenue. That’s a simple fact, and it’s the reason why ThemeForest is the #1 theme marketplace on the web.

But sure – some do consider $35 themes to be offensive. A couple months ago, an article on this very subject was released on WPCandy. Here’s a quote from within the comments:

as shocked at how low the prices are. I would have paid four times as much!“
– WPCandy Comment

It’s an excellent article, but I always laugh when the “buyers” on that site make declarations like, “I couldn’t believe it was that cheap. I would have paid 4 times as much!” Well sure – you would have! You’re a WPCandy reader! But I promise you that small business owner, John Doe, does not see things in the same light.

For instance, my mom recently started a small business. When I brought up the idea of purchasing a $40 theme, she replied with something along the lines of “Whoaa…too much.” Because you know how these people are. God forbid they invest $50 into a website. Go much beyond this price point, and you lose your target market.

Compare this to the video game industry. Let’s say Fallout 3 — one of my favorite games of all time.

They spent years and millions of dollars creating this game. Does that mean that they should sell it for hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, per copy, as a result? Of course not! Even though it’s worth it, and I would honestly pay it (and I’m even the type to read the Fallout blog), they understand that you absolutely cannot price yourself beyond the mass market. It’s a simple fact. So always keep that in the back of your mind when determining pricing for your own themes.

The Ins and Outs of Licensing

Next, we come to licensing. How will you license your theme?

Umm…GPL?

Your first reaction is probably, ummm…. Jeffrey, WordPress is GPL, so all themes have to be GPL as well. That’s completely untrue. In reality, you have three primary choices when it comes to licensing. Of course, there are hundreds of licenses, but in general, and what you’ll see in the wild, we have…

100% Proprietary

If you want to piss off Matt Mullenweg, this is the way to go. A 100% proprietary license is, for all intents and purposes, a screw you to the WordPress platform. It disregards the fact that the framework, itself, is licensed under the GPL, and instead intends to lock open source code into a proprietary license. I wouldn’t recommend that you go this route, but some successful companies do.

Some feel that the entire notion of the GPL is a contradiction of itself. GPL is all about “freedom,“ but it it ironically restricts you from using the software how you see fit. Nonetheless, it’s always best to make the WordPress team as happy as possible. They are the people behind your business, right?!

Dual Licensing – A Meeting of the Mind

A dual licensing setup is a meeting of the minds, so to speak. In fact, it’s what we use on ThemeForest for WordPress themes.

[…] The actual PHP code that generates a theme uses WordPress functions… so theme PHP needs to be GPL. – Matt Mullenweg

The general idea is: we ensure that all code which hooks into WordPress’ functions and filters remains GPL compliant. Now, for the JavaScript, images, and CSS files, we retain a proprietary license, accordingly – which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense. What if you’re using a particular JavaScript file or library that requires a specific form of attribution? In these cases, a dual licensing setup really makes good, good sense, and provides authors with a stronger sense of security.

Redistributio

May people still redistribute a theme with a dual license?

Only partially. Let’s imagine that I purchase a Premium WordPress theme from ThemeForest that has a killer, say, options panel built in. If I wanted to, yes, I could rip out that options panel and use it in my own themes, or even redistribute it. However, I could not do the same with the CSS and JavaScript. And, since themes are invariably redistributed in their entirety, we’re then able to send take-down requests to any potential offending sites. So it can fill you with a good sense of security.

When choosing a dual license setup, make sure you consider the different uses that a buyer might have for your item. One size fits all doesn’t work here. For example, if I buy a license for a premium theme, does that then afford me the right to use it on every client’s project? What about if I run a magazine and want to redistribute the theme to all of my readers, via an included cd. Quickly, you’ll start to realize that it might be worth considering multiple levels of licenses — just make sure that you don’t overdo it.

When you provide a buyer with too many options, they, more often than not, choose none.

100% GPL

If you purchase a premium theme from marketplaces like WooThemes or even WordPress’ new growing marketplace, you’re getting a 100% GPL theme. As another example, all premium WordPress plugins on CodeCanyon are full GPL as well.

This means that you are free to modify or redistribute the theme how you see fit, without any worries. So what are the advantages to going full GPL?

You’re in the best graces of WordPress’ community and creators. If your business depends on the WordPress framework, it might not be a bad idea to have a good relationship with them!
Your themes can be promoted on WordPress’ website.
Buyers are potentially filled with more security.

Now as plenty of authors will tell you — perhaps incorrectly — when you go full GPL with your Premium themes, you put yourself at risk. Technically, I can buy a GPL theme, and then sell it on my own website for half the price. This is part of that “freedom” keyword, guys.

The GPL offers you the freedom to sell your themes. But it also provides any buyers of your theme with the option of selling it as well!

But here’s the thing: even though this is allowed, it just doesn’t happen very often, if ever. Being knee-deep in the industry for the last few years, except for a couple of one-off situations, it’s never been an issue.

Core Buyer Types

For instance, let’s consider your three core buyer types.

A blogger who simply needs a nice theme to write about their travels.
A small business person who is looking to get a website up and running quickly.
A fellow web developer who is possibly looking to get a head start on a project, where their client doesn’t have a large budget. In these cases, it’s quite common to use an existing theme as a jump-start.

In all three of these cases, do you honestly think the buyer is looking to sell and redistribute your theme? Of course not. These are good people! In most cases, it would never occur to them that they even had this right…let alone to take advantage of it! Want proof? Many of you are theme developers.

Have you ever personally read the GPL? I’d bet no. (Wouldn’t blame you either!)

Now, keep in mind – just because you’re selling with the GPL, that doesn’t mean that you can’t sell different “packages.” WooThemes, for instance, offers developer and enterprise packages, which provide you with access to PSDs, additional themes, extra support, etc.

The next most important factor to consider is certainly support. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that, when you sell a Premium WordPress theme, you’re selling more than a template. You’re selling support!

Never underestimate the importance of providing support.

As developers, it’s easy for us to think of support as being a bit superfluous. Why search for the documentation PDF when we can instead dip into the code for a few moments and find the solution? Well sure, that’s true for us! But what about the bloggers and small business owners who only recently learned how to publish a post? I can assure you that providing top tier support is not superfluous to them. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

So keep in mind that, even if your theme will potentially be redistributed, your provided support will remain exclusive to your paying customers!

Ultimately, if you sell a theme on your own, your choice of license is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Consider all your options, and then choose the route that works best for you.

Premium WordPress Marketplaces

In the last few years, the number of available WordPress theme marketplaces has sky-rocketed. Five years ago, the market was sparse at best. Luckily that’s not the case anymore. There’s dozens of thriving marketplaces on the web, with ThemeForest leading the pack. Let’s take a look at the three most common types:

Subscription Site

Subscription clubs are a neat concept. Rather than per-theme transactions, marketplaces like WooThemes sell yearly subscriptions, where buyers gain access to their entire catalog of themes at once. Effectively, this reduces the per-theme cost to mere cents.

With a total of 61 designs in our collection, the price per theme is a mere $0.64 – Elegant Themes

High level subscription-based theme marketplaces include:

Certainly the pros to marketplaces like this is that you have anywhere from dozens to hundreds of themes to choose from at any given time — all for one yearly price. On the other hand, the obvious downside is that subscriptions scare people. When you think the word subscription, you very likely also think of your history of sitting on the phone trying to cancel subscriptions. Further, excluding one or two marketplaces, most subscription-based sites are much more expensive than purchasing single themes. Of course, this varies from site to site, but it’s still something to keep in mind.

Lastly, marketplaces like the ones mentioned previously aren’t meant to be selling avenues for designers and developers like yourselves. Generally, they’re closed marketplaces, where the themes are developed in-house. Certainly, as this article is about the business-side of selling YOUR OWN themes, they’re probably not the best bet.

So here’s the interesting part: strangely, there aren’t too many notable open marketplaces. I use the term “open” to refer to marketplaces where, assuming their skillset is up to par, anyone can sell their themes And this brings us to our last option: Buy and Sell marketplaces.

Buy and Sell Marketplace

ThemeForest was built to fill this gaping hole. We believed there was a better way to earn money online selling digital items. We believed that, if a large group of developers – like yourselves – joined forces, only then would we all benefit the most.

The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself AND the group.” – Nash Equilibrium

Who wants to browse through dozens of websites searching for a website theme? What if we gave developers a way to sell their own website templates without having to worry about the legal and advertising and business and financial aspects of running a marketplace. At ThemeForest, in exchange for a percentage of every sale, we take care of all of that for you. That way, you can focus on what you do best. And what if we gave buyers the assurance that they were purchasing staff reviewed themes that passed our set of quality tests?

Notable marketplaces of this sort include, of course, ThemeForest, and MojoThemes.

So when you hear people compare WooThemes to ThemeForest, that’s not really an accurate comparison. Instead, you’d compare WooThemes to a single author or team that sells on ThemeForest.

It’s like comparing Sony to Amazon.

7 Rules

Okay, fast forward. You’ve chosen a method for distributing your theme; what’s the next step? The next step is to get cranking building the next great Premium WordPress theme. Let’s take a look at seven rules that the best WordPress themers follow.

1. Simplicit

It’s easy sometimes to get swept up in the idea that more is better. We see this idea exemplified in TV remotes all the time. They offer a hundred buttons, when, realistically, we may use five.

The same is true for Premium WordPress theme. Some of the best selling themes on ThemeForest – and we’re talking over $100,000 in sales – are really quite simple.

Note how the design is quite basic. Truthfully, I think this is typically what bloggers are looking for. “Keep it simple stupid.” Now certainly, just because the aesthetics of a theme are simple does not mean that the inner workings are as well.

This particular theme has an advanced options panel, custom widgets, multiple page templates, and plenty more. But you get the idea.

Rule #1 – Keep it Simple (And Eat Your Greens!)

2. Options

Next, a dedicated options page is virtually a requirement for all Premium themes. Consider WooThemes’ option panel that is built into all themes.

At Envato, our WordPress extraordinaire, Derek, created the immensely popular OptionTree, which allows you to dynamically create new option keys and values. It’s really excellent.

In fact, if you’d like to use it in your own projects, you can download it for free at wp.envato.com.

Case in point, if you expect bloggers to manually edit source code to update, say, the logo, then you’re doing it wrong.

Rule #2 – Convenience is key.

3. Color Themes

Who’s to say that your eye for color is going to be the same as all of your buyers’? Another aspect of providing convenience with your themes is creating additional skins that allow for a variety of different color schemes.

Some of the most popular Premium themes available provide up to a dozen different skins. Don’t underestimate this one. It might seem superfluous to you…but it’s certainly not to the buyer. It may take an extra hour or so, but the increase sales will make the extra time more than worth the cost.

The best selling theme ever on ThemeForest, inFocus, contains 10 different skins.

How about this equally popular theme?

Karma sports 20 skins!

Remember, people can get free WordPress themes anywhere. If you want to make a lot of money, your theme must quality for that Premium label. Don’t skimp.

Rule #3 – Buyers like color. Give it to them.

4. Documentation

And now we come to the most neglected – understandably so – aspect of selling a Premium theme. You must, must, must provide top-tier documentation.

Trust me, I get it. Writing documentation is the worst part of building a theme or plugin. You might even be tempted to choose the “Oh the buyer will figure it out” route. Don’t do this. Just invest an hour or so, and get it done.

This extension’s documentation is around twenty pages, and is beautifully designed. You need to do this too.

Far and away the massive benefit to this is that you won’t find yourself answering the same question over, and over…and over. Answer these questions once, and you may never have to again.

Templates

…But, that said, you know as well as I do that some people simply do not read help files. These sorts of buyers will still email you. That’s why it’s a common practice for sellers to have customized email addresses for support questions (assuming they don’t use a dedicated forum). For instance, help@mysite.com.

This way, you can auto-respond to all emails sent to this address with a FAQ type response, and notify the author that you’ll be in touch with them as soon as you have a chance.

Screen

Many authors take their documentation even further by providing video tutorials, which are really helpful to the more visual buyers. Services like Screenr make the process of creating screencasts as easy – and free – as possible.

You will be amazed by the Striking theme support! I have a dedicated support forum and not only do I answer questions, but the very large Striking community is extremely active in helping each other. The support forum has hundreds of custom code snippets posted, and solutions for almost any situation you are likely to encounter.

Think about it: all else being equal, if a buyer has a choice between one theme, and another that has pages and pages of documentation along with video tutorials, which theme do you think they’ll pick? You’re in competition with other sellers, so be the best.

Rule #4 – Documentation is essential.

5. Layouts

I’ve heard that one gripe about PSD->HTML services is that the slicers don’t anticipate anything other than what’s in the PSD. As a result, as soon as you need to use, say, an h6 element on a page for the first time, the design partially breaks.

This is also true for WordPress themes. If you anticipate that the blogger may want to create a new page with, for example, two columns instead of three, you’ll make them very happy! Not to mention, that’s one less email that you have to respond to.

Try to make a habit of, with each new theme, creating a handful of additional page templates for your buyers. They’ll thank you for being so considerate.

Rule #5 – Anticipate the unexpected when designing.

6. Targeted Markets

As a rule of thumb, it’s better to create more generalized themes. Now I’m not implying that you should rehash the same theme that hundreds of others have created, with a minor revision here and there. But what I am saying is that, if you create a Premium theme that is targeted for, say, bowling alley owners, your theme is only going to appeal to….wait for it…bowling alley owners!

Now there’s certainly room for these sorts of themes (such as church templatesº, but, in my experiences, it might be better to create those as one-off projects for your clients.

With all of that said, you can still target your themes to specific markets. Just make sure that the market is big enough. Bowling alleys?? Maybe not. But what about real estate? That’s a massive market. If you were to build the definitive real estate WordPress theme, you’d stand to make a lot of money.

In fact, Chris Robinson has done this very thing, with little competition from his appears.

This particular theme, so far, has brought in roughly $30,000 in sales since November of last year. And again, not only is the theme incredibly feature-rich, but, tying in with a previous rule, he often records quick screencasts to introduce his themes. This is really quite effective. Let’s see a quick sample:

Rule #6 – Be cautious, but not afraid of building for targeted markets.

7. Aesthetics

Ahh, we come to aesthetics — the very thing that separates Apple from the rest of the pack. The reality is: people absolutely do judge books by their cover, and so will your buyers. Note that I’m not even referring to the aesthetics of your theme itself1, which is equally important. Instead, I’m referring to how you sell your theme.

Refer to the image above. This is the initial image that buyers will see when browsing his item page. It’s clean and simple. If we scroll down a bit, he uses a magnifying trick to point out notable features.

Next, he provides bullet points and screencasts to illustrate exactly how the product works.

But even better, the author built a landing page that’s 100% dedicated to this plugin. Notice how he brands himself beautifully? When you use consistent styling for all of your items, buyers begin to recognize which items are yours without ever viewing who the author is. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is.

Far and away the top authors on the Envato marketplaces brand themselves. You should too. We have authors on our sites who never even take the time to brand what’s essentially their “About Me” page…their profile page. This is really lazy, guys. Think of it from a buyer’s perspective: if you won’t even take the time to brand your profile, why on Earth would I ever put trust in the quality of your themes?

Rule #6 – Aesthetics and branding should receive top priority.

8 Ways to Promote your Theme

This last section will detail a variety of ways that you can promote your themes.

Free PSDs

Some marketplaces make you pay more for the PSDs for a theme. This is certainly one option, but many sellers have found greater success in offering the PSDs of a theme for free. The advantage to this is.

Everyone likes free stuff.
Freebies brings in traffic.
You get to promote your portfolio and coded version of the PSD.

Remember, selling themes isn’t simply a matter of putting the theme up, and waiting for the sales to roll in. The best of the best treat their business as a full-time gig.

Selling themes isn’t simply a matter of putting the theme up, and waiting for the sales to roll in. The best of the best treat their business as a full-time gig.

Social Networking

You’re in a tough spot if you hate Twitter and Facebook. It really is a fantastic way to connect with your buyers and keep them updated on your new themes and plugins.

Hopefully, to most of you, this is common sense, and is similar to me declaring that the internet is the future! Yeah – we know that! But, that said, some people really don’t like the idea of social networking. If you fall into this bucket, maybe it’s time to reconsider — if only for financial reasons.

Tutorials

Tutorials. This is something I know a thing or two about! One way to gain more sales is to increase your presence in the community. And what better way to do that than to educate your fellow developers on popular sites like Nettuts+ and Smashing Magazine?

There are multiple bonuses to doing this.

Educate and give back to the community.
Make extra money!
Promote your portfolio.

Freemium Model

It’s easy – once you begin selling themes – to assume that everything must be sold. But that’s not the case, and try not to fall into that trap. People like free stuff, as I noted earlier. Many successful theme developers create GPL plugins for the community, and then, again, link back to their portfolio in the process. Even better, you could create free and paid versions of a plugin.

Here’s a perfect example.

This plugin has brought in over $75,000 in sales since it was released last year. One of the ways that they funnel traffic to this item is by offering a lesser featured free version within WordPress’ repository. It’s a nifty little technique! Try to think outside the box like that.

Purchase Banners Ads

If you want to personally invest in marketing your themes, services like BuySellAds.com make the process a cinch. The developer who created the Events Calendar plugin advertises his items on various sites, including Webdesigntuts+.

This can be a costly investment, so make sure you do your research before plunking down hundreds of dollars for a banner on some site. Take it slowly.

Double-Dip

Bring in additional income for what is essentially the same amount of work.

If you’re clever enough, you may find that there are multiple ways to profit from your designs. On the Envato marketplaces, we use the term, double-dipping, to refer to bringing in additional income for what is essentially the same amount of work.

For example, when you’ve finished building your Premium WordPress theme, what if you also sold the theme as a static template, for maybe half the price? This way, you bring in buyers who aren’t interested in WordPress, but still need a base template to convert to some different CMS, like ExpressionEngine. What if you also sold the PSDs for your theme as a stand alone item? What if you sold add-ons for your theme — such as a pack of 20 additional theme skins for, say, $5?

Be creative and double dip for maximum earnings.

Word of Mouth

This one is simple! Be nice. Make connections.

No amount of promotion will make up for a poorly built item.

Conclusion

So that about does it. To complete this article, I thought you might find it helpful to hear a few choice words from some of the most successful WordPress themers in the business.

Quit yo Jibber-jabber! You ain’t hurt, yo pathetic! If I ever catch you acting like a crazy fool again, you’re gonna meet my friend, pain! – Mr. T.

Plan every step of the design and development process, then sleep on it. – Cudazi

Learn from mistakes of other developers and keep it simple. – Freshface

“Quality over quantity. One unique best-seller will accumulate significantly more sales than a couple of cheap remakes.” – Alex Pascal