Selling Your WordPress Theme

Would you like to sell your WordPress Theme? Are you a WordPress designer looking for new ideas to help you make money selling your WordPress themes? This article has tips to help you know where to sell your WordPress theme and approaches you can use for marketing your theme.

As a WordPress designer naturally you want to be able to make money online selling your WordPress theme.  This article offers helpful tips on where to sell your WordPress theme and how to create some of the best WordPress Themes.

There are three main things you need to do in order to sell a WordPress theme:

  1. Create a theme that’s attractive and useful.
  2. Create a viable theme that works with a variety of browsers.
  3. Market your theme properly.

Not everybody has the skillsets to do all three of these things, which means that some designers may team up with a tester and a marketing expert, while others may develop the skills to carry out all parts of the process. Here are a few tips on the selling part of the process, assuming that you’ve got a theme that is attractive, useful, and thoroughly tested.

Where to Sell Your WordPress Theme

You can set up your own website to sell your WordPress theme.  Depending on your goals, you might do this from:

  • an ecommerce site that only sells that theme or a selection of themes that you have designed
  • an ecommerce site that promotes your WordPress theme along with your other design-related activities, such as custom design
  • a blog that discusses various aspects of WordPress and also promotes your theme

On your own site, you have to do all the marketing, but you can set your own prices and interact directly with your customers.

There are also sites that promote WordPress themes by multiple designers, and you might wish to present your theme on one or more of these.  Of course, on a WordPress theme ecommerce site run by someone else, you will only be earning a percentage of the selling price, but you need to balance this against the wider audience that your theme will reach.

Some of the websites on which you can sell a site include:

  • Headway
  • StudioPress
  • Templatic
  • ThemeForest
  • WooThemes
  • WP Theme Market

Note that, unlike with your own site, your work will have to undergo an approval process to get listed on a site run by somebody else, and they may be the ones setting the price as well.

Crowd sourcing sites allow you to compete to meet a client’s spec for a WordPress theme.  This is done on 99 Designs, for example.  You might find the variety of specs exciting or motivating, but you can also end up wasting time on a proposition that is a much better deal for the client than the designers.

Approaches That Can Help Sell Your WordPress Theme

If your theme works well with different browsers and resolutions and is well-designed in other regards, users are apt to be more satisfied and give you better reviews.  This is pretty obvious.  But the following elements may not be such obvious sales boosters:

  • Provide good, clear, thorough documentation.  If a customer has a choice between figuring it out for him- or herself and getting some help, it could be the deciding point in a sale.
  • Provide a live preview.  WYSIWYG is another point of good salesmanship. If you have too many options to show easily in one preview, include two . . . or more.  Better yet, use satisfied customers’ sites as previews for your theme.
  • Provide images of different aspects of the site.  Pay particular attention to features that don’t appear in any of the live previews and dialogs that allow customers to easily control their site.
  • Write a compelling description of your theme and its features.  Choosing an attractive name is part of this process.
  • Provide tech support and upgrades as WordPress issues new versions.
  • List the “problems” that your WordPress theme solves.
  • Use Twitter, Facebook, and other social network to promote your WordPress theme.

 

WordPress Widget Development

WordPress widget development is a great way to begin breaking into the website development business. Tons of WordPress users throughout the Internet are constantly looking for new, fun WordPress widgets to add to their WordPress blog. The WordPress widget development can be a great way to make money online and build an online business.

For WordPress designers, WordPress widget development is an important skill to have. With WordPress widget development, you can increase your list of design features you will be able to offer your WordPress customers. With the WordPress widget development, there are many options to choose from.

Web designers are expanding their web building businesses in so many different ways aside from the traditional web page development. Now, with so much competition in the market, web designers are also having to expand the types and amounts of services they offer in their online web design businesses. One of the ways many web designers are choosing to grow their businesses is by expanding to the blogging portion of online services. With WordPress, web designers are opened up to a whole new section of Internet tools and services they can be designing products for including themes, widgets, plugins and more. WordPress widget development in particular is a growing service among many web designers. Because bloggers are always looking for new, fun features to open up their blogging reaches and overall appearance, widgets are continuing to grow in popularity.

Pros and Cons:

There are many widget design tutorials available online for those who are interested in learning more about WordPress widget development. The pros to be able to getting into WordPress widget development include adding a new service to your web development list of services as well as being able to stretch your creativity in being able to think of new and creative widgets to build for the use of the millions of WordPress bloggers out there. However, it is important to keep in mind the cons to getting into WordPress widget development. That is not to say you shouldn’t offer this service for WordPress blogs, but it is also important to remember the amount of competition there is out there for WordPress widget development. For any WordPress widget, there are dozens and sometimes hundreds of versions of the same type of widget. There is a lot of competition among web developers, but that doesn’t mean that WordPress widget development is not a good idea.

Getting started:

The best way to get started in WordPress widget development is to learn the basics of programming particularly for WordPress so you are able to understand WordPress widget development tutorials and other training methods. There are specific training programs that are available for purchase for those who may be new to WordPress designing. There are many options available to learn how to design for WordPress. It is a good idea to find which option works best for you before you begin. Once you have some basic understanding of how WordPress widget development works, it is a good idea to check out the work of others. Be careful not to develop a widget that faces too much competition. However, if you want to design a widget that is specifically for your own use, obviously feel free to design according to your own WordPress blogging needs. However, if you are planning on selling your services, it is a good idea to check out the competition and see how they are doing. This will give you an idea as to the quality of work out there. Be sure to market your services. Having this new service added to your other web design features is guaranteed to help you get started and to be successful in WordPress widget development.

DIY WordPress

There are many ways to practice DIY WordPress when it comes to developing themes, plugins, widgets and more. The DIY WordPress tricks and methods are great ways to build your WordPress blog to save money by not having to hire a professional WordPress designer. You can count on making money blogging through DIY WordPress.

When it comes to DIY WordPress, it can seem like an overwhelming project, but those who are up to the challenge and enjoy DIY WordPress will have an easier time with WordPress. Keep reading to learn more about DIY WordPress themes, features, widgets and blogging.

Do-It-Yourself WordPress can be intimidating, but it is also a great way to save money on the costs of hiring someone to set up your WordPress site and blog.  You also get full creative control with DIY WordPress over  your entire blog and website integration. However, there are many pros and cons to DIY WordPress. In this article, we’ll review some of the basics that must be covered before anyone should trying to DIY WordPress as well as useful hints and tools to help you along your way.

What you need to know before DIY WordPress:

When it comes to DIY WordPress, it is important to have a good understanding of certain aspects of web development and programming. Understanding PHP and MySQL are important in helping you understand how to install WordPress and integrate themes, widgets, plugins and other WordPress features. It is also a good idea to know how to integrate your blog easily with your website. To many, this might be too much work, but for others it may be a welcome challenge. Take advantage of some of the best DIY WordPress tools on the web to get a basic understanding of how a WordPress blog works and how you can learn the programming tools to help you build your website and blog.

DIY WordPress tools:

Some of the best DIY WordPress available  include video tutorials, step-by-step blogs and other articles. To become affluent in DIY WordPress design is is best to have a basic understanding of how the programming platform works. This will not only help you with WordPress installation but the overall set up and design. If you are someone who likes having full creative control, this is why DIY WordPress is a good idea because you will have the direct say in exactly how you plan to program your website and blog. For the learner who is a bit more hands on and needs clearer and more direct instruction, video blogs and tutorials describing how to DIY WordPress and some of the other basics of programming and blogging is a great resource. Read all you can how to DIY WordPress before you begin. Be sure you have a comprehensive understanding of how DIY WordPress should operate or you will encounter endless problems and issues with your setup process.

Pros and cons of DIY WordPress:

There are many pros and cons of trying to DIY WordPress. Out of the top pros to DIY WordPress, it will save you money. There are already the basic costs of paying for a domain name associated with WordPress, but this will save you money, time and energy on setting up a blog with WordPress. Many simply do not have the time to spend learning how to DIY WordPress, however, which is why it can be considered one of cons. Many feel that spending the money to hire a profession to DIY WordPress is worth the cost. DIY will also give you complete and total control over the look and operation of your WordPress blog and website. However, with the assistance of having a professional web designer or programmer, you can get advice and expert information on how to make the best website possible using WordPress. Pros who know how to set up WordPress also can build and design you a custom theme for your web space verses learning how to DIY WordPress themes.

Becoming a DIY WordPress professional:

If you are interested in learning DIY WordPress tips, programming, feature information and more in order to learn how to become a professional in designing web pages using WordPress, learning the most you can about DIY WordPress is a great place to start.

Overall, the choice to DIY WordPress can be a difficult one to make. However, it is best to choose the option that will work best for you individually, possible business needs, cost and other factors all play a roll. Consulting a professional prior to beginning your DIY WordPress project might be a good place to start to determine if you want to hire someone to do the WordPress setup and design for your, or if you still want to attempt to DIY WordPress.

Marketing Your WordPress Design

When it comes to marketing your WordPress design, it is important to employ the best online marketing tools to help WordPress users know about your WordPress designs and custom designs that are available. There are many ways to market your WordPress design including affiliate programs with other sites, blog posts, etc.

There are a few useful ways you can step outside the box and come up with new ways of marketing your WordPress design. Optimizing the resources available on the Internet is a great way to work on marketing your WordPress design. Keep reading to learn more.

There are many traditional ways to advertise and work on marketing your WordPress design especially through traditional advertising online in banner ads, press releases about your company and many others. However, in today’s economy, it is important to utilize every tool possible when it comes to doing your best with marketing your WordPress design. Because the Internet is where it is at for your design business, be sure to monopolize on that by showing off your designs with a quality website that is built and designed with search engine optimization in mind so your website will be an easy find in any Google search.

Marketing your WordPress design:

There are a few alternative ways you can market your WordPress design business. One of these ways is to work with an affiliate program. There are many businesses out there that will work with you to promote  your business.  When marketing your WordPress design, you could work out an arrangement with a series of affiliate programs and pay them for promoting your site giving them credit each time the tracking link is used to go from their site to yours. Affiliate programs are also a great way to promote your site in other ways like with articles, reviews, promotional pricing codes and tracking links to your website. You could also work with a reseller program where the reseller would also promote  your product and might do so under white labeling. For example, you could work out an agreement with a reseller to sell your WordPress themes that you designed and once they make a sale, they pay you every time their business makes a sale using your WordPress design products. This is a great way to continue furthering your online business and products.

Another way you could work toward marketing your WordPress design is to take advantage of social networking tools to help your further your business efforts. Maximize your Internet enterprise by showcasing your designs on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Give regular updates as to what is new with your business to help new potential customers learn about all you have to offer in terms of your WordPress designs, new themes and other new features. One other way you could try marketing your WordPress design of themes and features is to offer customers custom designs. Charge a flat rate for exclusive and custom themes. By offering this service, you can charge more per theme and it also showcases your unique design talents that customers can use to essentially promote your business by showing off the design on their website. Customers will enjoy being able to utilize a unique service of a product that is designed especially for their use.

When it comes to your own website, be sure to design a professional and easy-to-read website. This will ensure customers will be more likely to come back for frequent visits and will find your online business to be reputable and reliable. Remember to keep all of the above tips in mind when it comes to marketing your WordPress design business.