Selling a Wordpress template isn’t as straight-forward as you might think. Sure, it can be, but in this article we’ll be discussing various strategies to apply when selling your templates so that you can go with the one that best suits your desires and/or template.
It might be wise to think of the Wordpress template marketplace like the stock market — Sometimes it pays to diversify your portfolio.
Exclusive Rights
This is probably the most familiar type of sell for most of you, as well as the most profitable in the short-term. Selling your template with exclusive rights means that you, the author, give up all rights to the template, and the one buyer you sell to will have full control over the template from the point of sale and onwards. Generally all you would have to ask yourself is is it worth it to you. I would base this on the monetary offer — If the template is of quality, follows web standards, is unique in all respects, and is aesthetically pleasing, my advice to you is to not sell it exclusively for less than $75 – $100. Typically on marketplaces such as Sitepoint, you can fetch anywhere from the $75 base price I mentioned above to $300. $300 would be considered a good sale, but if the template is absolutely amazing, you could fetch up to $900 on a fantastic day. This would be the highest I personally have ever seen a template go for, and yes, it was a Wordpress template.
Be aware of some businesses out there, not naming any names, that consider an exclusive sell to be someone purchasing their template for around $1,000 and that template having been downloaded before sometimes many many times over. They justify this practice by no longer offering the template for sale after you purchase it, but what good is that when Joe, Jerry and Jacob all bought it for $25.
Full Rights – Multiple Sells
In my opinion, if you don’t care too much if someone else on the internet has a website that looks similar to yours, then this is the best deal. You can generally grab a really nice template for around $15, but if you’re looking for a really dynamic and robust template, be prepared to spend around $50 – $70. This is the medium range, but this is the internet, and anything is to be expected. You’ll want to base your decision on how many times the template will be sold. Some are capped so that not too many people are allowed to purchase the template — thus keeping your purchased design somewhat unique.
Limited Rights – Multiple Sells
This is another popular sale method a lot of websites are using these days. The practice also seems to be gaining somewhat in popularity. Usually the price depends on the amount of rights being offered, and almost always the template is being sold multiple times.
- One Time Use – You will be charged a small price tag normally; However, you will only be able to use the template one time on one website. I’m not a big fan of this type of licensing, but a lot of Wordpress users purchase these type of licensed templates.
- Multiple Use – You can use the template as many times as you’d like. Obviously this would mean on as many websites as you’d like. The downside to this is you still do not own the template — meaning you cannot resell it, redistribute it, or modify it.
- Developers License – This gives you the right to modify the template, use it as many times as you’d like, and sometimes resell and/or redistribute it. Read very carefully the license before you purchase the template. Regardless, the template even with this license applied to it, is sold multiple times and can come with a relatively high price tag. You can expect to pay anywhere from $30 to $300, so you’ll want to shop around.
Free Template – Charging For Support
This method of selling templates seems to be catching on a bit. You all might be familiar with the Revolution series of Wordpress templates by Brian Gardner. When he first released this set of templates, he used the multiple licenses practice, but Brian has since started giving his templates away and charging only for support. However, I’m not sure how this went for Brian since the Wordpress user base is nowhere near the user base of companies who have done this successfully, such as Debian. His practices may have changed.
Support generally consists of bug fixes, installation and/or just general assistance with installation, and answering the template user’s questions about certain aspects of the theme such as how to increase thumbnail size in posts, hiding certain categories, etc.
Free Template – Charging For Support And Customization
This is the method we use here at JungleJar. Actually, for us this isn’t really a method. I never even had in mind the idea to attempt to make money from our free Wordpress templates. Around the middle of autumn of 2008 I started receiving a lot of requests from our website visitors asking me if I would be willing to do a few, sometimes a lot, of changes to the template if they paid me. I found this to be not only fun and interesting to see the direction they wanted to go with the template, but it also proved to be a nice profitable decision. In my honest opinion, and I say this unbiasedly, this is one of the better decisions when getting a bang for your buck.
When I find myself with a bit of free time, which shrinks down with each passing day, I help our website users with support free of charge.
Sponsored Template
This is absolutely the most frowned upon way to make money with your Wordpress template. While the template is considered ‘free’, you are bound to carrying permanent website links on your website from people who purchased that advertising text link and/or advertising banner spot.
Most websites which allow its users to submit their free Wordpress templates do not accept these types of templates. Often times as well, you will find the footer is encrypted — an attempt by the template author to discourage the removal of the ad spaces. A lot of template sponsors will not even consider sponsoring a template that does not offer some form of permanency.
Using A Third Party
Selling your template using this method consists of joining some sort of ‘club’, if you will, uploading your template, and having the website you joined promote the template for you so you don’t have to. While sometimes this can be a good idea, your experience can and most likely will vary wildly. The third party website will also be taking a cut of the profit of sale as well, so be sure to read every document you can get your hands on that details exactly what you’re signing up for. Some websites won’t allow you to sell your template anywhere else but on their website, some do allow you to sell it elsewhere but take a larger percentage of the profit of sale. Perhaps the most popular of these website services is Theme Forest. There is a lot of debate though as to whether or not this company takes too much of the profit.
Subscription Based
This is another good bang for the buck, but the actual licenses that are attached to the template vary wildly. More often than not you are not allowed to resell the template, but you are allowed to use the template more than just once.
You can expect to pay anywhere from $5 – $10 a month for access to ALL of the websites templates to $5 – $20 a year for access to ALL of the templates to a one time fee of $5 – $20. Again, you’ll just want to shop around a bit. These websites also offer to purchase your templates if you offer exclusive rights, but often the monetary offer they give you isn’t worth it.
If you are dedicated to the practice of selling your Wordpress templates, I would recommend you just start your own subscription based service, as this is the easiest type of marketplace to get off the ground.
One of the most popular Wordpress template subscription sites is also one of the JungleJar sponsors — ElegantThemes.com.
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Wow, Awesome post – I’m such a newbie when it comes to all this, Thanks for this!
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