WordPress.com Theme Marketplace?
November 2nd, 2007 by ses5909Looks like you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single conversation! Thanks for visiting!
Everyone is trying to get into the “premium themes” game and apparently, WordPress.com is no different. They are thinking of having a theme marketplace to sell “premium” themes. These themes will need to be of a certain quality in order to make it in the marketplace, but it’s a way to let designers earn a little something from their themes. If it is sold for $50 and 20 people download it, that’s $500.
Sounds like a win/win scenario right? Not exactly. All themes will be free for any WordPress.org user but WordPress.com user’s, you have to pay. This doesn’t make that much sense to me for a couple of reasons.
- A big reason people have their blog at WordPress.com is because they don’t want to pay for hosting. Why would they pay for a premium theme?
- To me the people you would want to target are WordPress.org users. I know if I pay for a premium theme, i will want control to modify it, if even a little bit.
What do you think about this? Who really benefits from this? It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what percentage of the cut WordPress.com gets. The idea in general, is a good one, but I just don’t quite get the business model they may use.
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November 2nd, 2007 at 3:37 am
I think the success of this will largely depend on the cut WP are taking from sales. It has to be substantial enough to warrant them doing it but if it’s too high, I can’t see designers taking to it.
It could, however, offer designers who would otherwise have little exposure sell their themes and make a name for themselves. If they sold a few themes through the marketplace, I’m sure interest would generate around their site where they could sell themes without WP getting a cut.
People not willing to pay for hosting definitely wouldn’t pay for premium themes, the whole reason they choose free hosting is because they don’t want to spend money to have a blog! The minority may use WP hosted services just for the reliability but this a minority of users.
I will be following the progress of this closely anyway
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:22 am
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that people who choose free hosting would only use free themes. If they’re satisfied with WP’s .com hosting, why pay for a different host? On the other hand, themes tend to fall more into the self-expression category, and you don’t have to understand things like cron jobs and name records in order to use them.
Another thing to consider is that there are already a lot of free themes for .org users to choose from, while .com users are limited in that regard. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that.) That makes .org users, for the most part, a harder sell.
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:34 am
@Dave - yeah, they haven’t mentioned the cut yet so we will have to see how it goes.
@Sam - Good point. I guess from the people that I know that use a hosted solution it is because they really don’t want to pay for hosting because of the cost factor so this could very easily just be my personal experience and not a good representation.
.com user are limited but they still have a ton of choices. If someone can get their theme into WP Theme directory (relatively easy to do), it will be an option for a .com user.
I look forward to seeing how all of this plays out!
November 5th, 2007 at 7:39 am
I have just come across the following on problogdesign.com:
“Automattic (Matt’s company) will take a 50% cut from all sales.”
I think that’s pretty rediculous for them to take that much personally. If you want to check out the topic, heres the link:
http://www.problogdesign.com/general-tips/paid-theme-directory-is-fine-by-me/
November 9th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Hey Sara, finally getting around to actually checking you out on here. When I read the news about the marketplace idea I was at a 50/50 stand still on how to react.
It’s good news for designers and WP users overall… but I think WordPress might be delving into territory that is reminiscent of “templatemonster”. Something a little too corporate. I’ve been following the digest of blogs covering this topic and most seem to think it’s a great idea. I agree that it is a great idea… in theory. However, the early stipulations outline make me kind of… weary of the motives.
For example: it must be put on WP’s marketplace first if it is to be sold there (search engine traffic for your personal release will suffer). I think it’s just a ploy for more search engine traffic to lead to WP (dont they have enough already?).
P.s. thanks for the comments as of late
November 9th, 2007 at 6:27 am
@Mark I think the idea is good in general , but yes, it could become the next template monster which would be unfortunate. Hopefully the standards are kept high. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. And no problem for the comments. I subscribed a week ago I think–you’ve got a good blog
December 5th, 2007 at 5:18 am
I’m scared. Maybe one day wordpress is not going to be free anymore.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:59 am
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