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:
- It is great exposure for web designers,
- there is possible direct monetary compensation,
- 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