Why the WordPress Theme Marketplace is a Good Idea

Disclosure: I’m not sure if it matters, but before I get into things I thought I would mention that I plan on participating in the Theme Marketplace. Now, on to the post!

When Matt Mullenweg announced the idea of the WordPress Theme Marketplace on his blog several weeks ago there seemed to be a lot of backlash to and criticism of the idea. I suspect it’s probably a vocal minority, but nonetheless it was there.

I’m on the other side of the argument. I think it’s a good idea for three reasons:

1. It is great exposure for web designers,
2. there is possible direct monetary compensation,
3. and it should elevate the overall quality of themes.

The State of WordPress Themes

When the theming system first came out in version 1.5 it allowed for an easy way to build a stand-alone blog design and mass distribute it. The WordPress 1.5 Theme Competition held by Alex King produced some timeless themes, like Beccary’s Almost Spring.

Over time though, the quality of themes became burdened and overshadowed by a large quantity of poorly crafted and mediocre designs. Then of course there was the sponsored theme debacle that continued to reduce the overall quality of themes.

However, on a positive note, there seems to be an upswing in the quality of themes being created recently. Magazine style themes, much like Hansel in the movie Zoolander, are so hot right now. There was also the recent Sandbox Theme competition that produced some great skins for the Sandbox theme such as Essay by Ian Stewart and Moo Point by Will Wilkins.

To generalize, there are a lot of themes—many good, many bad.

Benefit 1—Exposure

Currently, if I had to guess, I would say there are tens of thousands of themes that are immediately available. It’s a crowded place, how do you stand out? There is Weblog Tools Collection and the WordPress Theme Viewer. There are “designed by” links in the footer and numerous other blogs that may link to your theme for varying reasons. These provide good exposure and get your theme out to a high number of people, but in the end you’re still among many.

There also have been several theme galleries that have appeared recently that showcase well-designed themes. This is good way to distinguish and reward quality themes. However these are new and don’t carry a significant amount of traffic.

With the WordPress.com Marketplace the exposure goes from thousands to nearly two million. For the month of October, the themes page on WordPress.com had 2.4 million pageviews, or a theme previewed approximately every two seconds. (Source: Marketplace Followup)

Even with a thousand themes in the Marketplace that’s still about 2,500 page views a month per theme; but of course that won’t be evenly distributed, more popular themes will have a greater exposure and less popular ones probably won’t see a life-changing surge in site traffic. Lorelle VanFossen has more thoughts on the possibilities the Marketplace will create for designers. I recommend reading it.

In my opinion, it’s a win-win situation with the WordPress theme marketplace. There is still the same opportunity to increase your notoriety through the .org framework. Though now, you have a second user base, a very large one at that, to which you can cater with very little effort on your end.

And of course there’s the money.

Benefit 2—Financial Rewards

What motivates theme designers? Reputability, contributing to the WordPress community, indirect marketing, and more of the similar I would say. Now there’s another motivator—money. The math is easy, price at $50, sell 10, pocket $250. There’s no denying that this can be a motivator with more force than the aforementioned reasons (even though I think that over time there is more benefit with the others).

If this extra motivator doesn’t produce higher quality themes then the simple fact that there will be a human filter making sure that themes adhere to a certain quality before they’re allowed on the Marketplace should.

Benefit 3—The Overall Quality

As you can probably guess, I think the Marketplace will be large enough to create a new standard of quality for themes in the WordPress community. No longer will it be worthwhile to create a sub par, rushed theme—no one will want it. There will be thousands of other higher quality themes from which to choose.

Although in many ways design is subjective, and what one calls good design will vary. Yet, in general, good design can transcend personal bias; and I think that when you compare the number of high-quality, ready-available themes pre-Marketplace and post-Marketplace a year from now the difference will be, well, incomparable.

Afterthoughts and Issues

Obviously there are some things with which people have disagreed, or else there would be no controversy. It seems the two major issues are the 50-50 split between the designer and Automattic, and the possibility of people using the CSS editing option to bypass purchasing the premium themes.

The 50-50 Split

First, you have to remember that Automattic is a business. It’s not Matt sitting in his parent’s basement. They have employees that have to be paid, overhead costs for the incredible amount of hosting, taxes to pay to the government, etc.

Still, to some, 50-50 seems too high. Personally, I am okay with it; mainly because they are not demanding any type of ownership of the themes and you still receive the regular benefits of releasing a theme to the rest of the internet.

Maybe an incremental pricing structure would suit everyone, say 50-50 for the first 25 themes sold, 60-40 (designer-Automattic) for the next 25, 80-20 for the remaining, etc. That way Automattic gets the collective long tail for all themes and if you create a theme that sells extremely well you reap a nice financial reward.

CSS Editing

Another concern voiced was the possibility of someone upgrading their account to enable CSS editing and then going outside of WordPress.com, finding the theme, copying the CSS and pasting it into their editor; bypassing the Marketplace altogether to get access to multiple premium themes.

I don’t see this to be too large of a problem in the long run, especially as the Marketplace matures and the ability to go beyond CSS-only is enabled. Nevertheless, as of now this is a legitimate concern, but it shouldn’t keep the Marketplace from ever getting off the ground.

Conclusion

In short, the Marketplace is a good idea that should elevate the overall quality of WordPress themes. I’m excited to see how it matures and what kind of designs we’ll see from it. Notwithstanding everything written here, in the end it’s an idea that has yet to even launch, so there is still much that will be illuminated over time. Either way, success or failure, I’ll still be creating themes!