Premium WordPress themes are something of a mystery to me. I find it hard to believe that the people making, and selling, these premium themes, get the maximum benefit from their work. Giving away your WordPress themes is a great way of getting a lot of traffic back to your blog. This traffic grows over time since giving something away for free is a pretty easy sell. It doesn’t take much to persuade a blogger to try your theme if it’s free.
Make it clean. Make it useable. Make it free.
Do these three things and large amounts of traffic will come back to you. Do it regularly and your back links will grow and grow, your Google Page Rank will rise, and your traffic will snowball.
If you charge money for your WordPress theme then the number of people using it will be substantially less. Sure, you’ll make money from selling it but you’d probably make more money from the traffic you would have got from giving it away for free.
With that in mind, it was with a raised eyebrow that I today found a blog giving away free copies of Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme and Brian Gardener’s Revolution theme. I was searching for examples of magazine themes in use, as part of my research for the forthcoming Futurosity 2 theme, and stumbled across a very simple blog that is quite happily giving away things that people have paid good money for.
Is this piracy? I suppose it is. But it’s hard to feel very sorry for the designers when I know that they are benefitting from this extra channel of distribution that they don’t know about. It’s a bit like having your car stolen but the thief replaces it with ten times it’s value in cash.
It’s still wrong though. Isn’t it?
If the credit link had been replaced by a link back to the free distributor then I would be the first in line to point the finger in condemnation.
It’s also hard to understand why these themes are being given away. The free distributor doesn’t benefit since the original credit is intact and it is unlikely that anyone would pay for a premium theme and then give it away to anyone and everyone.
Unless the designers themselves are making them available for free. I’m playing Devils Advocate here I know, but I’m not being deliberately provocative.
There are music industry parallels here, many that I wrestle with on a daily basis. I know that giving music away is a good idea since it allows the musician to easily communicate with as many people as possible. But I abhor the idea of music becoming nothing more than a juicy hook to catch the advertising fish.
So, going back to the premium themes showing up as free downloads, what do you think? Who uploads these themes and who, if anyone, are the winners and losers?
Obviously it’s some sort of warez community. Members usually upload stuff to get access to other high profile downloads.
And you say the designer is benefiting? .. By having a link in the footer of the design on a pirated theme? I don’t think such a link is worth $75 or whatever the designer is charging.
Premium wordpress themes will continue to be made and the industry will grow. Sell 100 a month and you have $7500, already more than you earn here. And the fact is, the theme only has to be made once, you have to make new blog posts every other day to keep your audience engaged.
Ofcourse, with more competition in the premium wordpress theme niche, prices will go down.
And besides, the revolution wordpress theme is still linked to from everywhere. It is simply worth it’s price. People are raving about it. Everyone knows about it. They have all the benefit that you think would come from a free theme, because the theme is so good people don’t care about the price.
you are a winner if they use your theme, free or not whatever,
humans are not stupid>>>>>>give a lot free, there is always a moment when people feel it natural to “pay/donate”, kind of open source?
(hidden inside this i see lot of motivating force to work better and better)
While i agree on what you’re saying i think it wold be nice to see some numbers to back it up :).
*note i agree and think you’re right!
What a weird coincidence. I found (I’m sure) the exact same site this morning. Also on a random google search.
It is indeed a paradox, and a world I’ve been frequenting heavily over the last few weeeks as I’m setting up several new satellite blogs, and a new niche site.
Revolution for FREE? Yowsers…
It is such a genius way to create snowballs that will eventually turn into an army of snowmen.. and being a music producer, I compare it to the mp3 download phenomenon. Labels purposely leak albums to gauge public interest pre-release. There’s no difference between the kids who download the album illegally compared to the ones who paid – they will still purchase the same amount of shirts, and go to the same concerts.
Someone giving away a theme that others have paid for is not harming anyone because the owner is still getting backlinks – and that is adequate compensation in my opinion.
Great post!
Hi there, I’m pretty sure that none of the premium theme developers have anything to do with these free download sites, as they seriously undermine the earning potential of the themes. Most of the premium theme creators also release free themes from time to time, so it’s not like they need to give away their best work for the credit link.
The free distributor gains traffic from the free distribution of these premium themes. It may not even be necessary to purchase the theme, as you can steal themes from an unprotected theme folder.
However, it’s quite risky to use themes from those warez sites as they could easily insert dodgy code into the themes for nefarious purposes.
I know that, with the Thesis theme at least, it’s actually sort of legal to do that with the $164 developer licence. “I’m not sure this is smart on my part,” writes Chris Pearson.
How does the naughty blogger benefit from doing this? Does he or she not like Messrs Gardner, Pearson and co for some reason? Or perhaps it’s a bit like Robin Hood.
@Josh: It’s not legal to distribute the thesis theme. Read carefully:
“By upgrading to the Developer’s option, you’ll be able to use Thesis on as many of your own sites as you want (and get rid of that pesky attribution link). I’m not sure this is smart on my part, but it’s a great deal for you.”
He also says further down on the page that you can also use Thesis on your clients’ blogs, but not that you can redistribute the theme.
I’d like to see a web template designer enforce a click-thru EULA. Really, I would.
if wp is free then it will be good to make all themes free. This is not a case for only WP but also for joomla too. I like Open source.