MrinTech » Wordpress

[Short Guide] Sell WordPress Themes Effectively on Marketplaces

Saqib Khan — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:35:07 +0000

WordPress is one of the most popular open source CMS (Content Management System), which is currently being used by millions of people around the world for developing & maintaining their Blogs. WordPress is not just limited for Bloggers, but it can also be used to create any Portfolio, Magazine, Photography, E-commerce etc. Websites!

If you are a WordPress Theme developer, then you can turn your talent into a profitable business by selling your WordPress Themes over various popular Marketplaces. Popular Marketplaces over the World Wide Web are the best medium which connects potential buyers and some awesome sellers (Theme Developers). Developers normally contacts Marketplace/creates a Seller Account and submits their theme for a Review Process. As per marketplace guidelines, if the theme gets approved, than the developer is ready to sell his/her theme.

Sometime a Developer design/develop a theme for a particular client and the client rejects the theme completely! In such a case, the theme developer has only got 2 options viz. either offer the theme for FREE on WordPress Themes Directory OR simply put the theme for selling over any popular Marketplace.

Selling WordPress Themes

Following 2 Popular Marketplaces can help you sell any particular theme of yours. There’s no need to do any marketing/advertising stuff from your end, as because these Marketplaces takes care of everything, once your theme gets approved! If people like your theme on the DEMO Page, than expect it to be a hit soon!

ThemeForest

The first and most popular is Envato’s ThemeForest. Envato has got many other marketplaces also, each focused on a particular niche e.g. AudioJungle to sell Stock Music and Audio, PhotoDune to sell stock Photographs, VideoHive for selling motion graphics etc. There are many people who already know, that ThemeForest is a good resource for WordPress themes and submitting a theme there will give access to a large number of potential customers.

On ThemeForest, every time an item is sold, 50% of sale price goes to the Theme Developer and the rest goes to ThemeForest, as because they are providing a huge platform to sell Developer’s work. New authors begins at 50% commission level and as the sales volume increases, the commission percentage also increase!

The final price for listing and selling any particular theme will be decided by ThemeForest. Here there are again two plans – To sell the theme Exclusively on ThemeForest and To sell the theme Non-Exclusively. Selling Non-Exclusive items on ThemeForest enables the Theme Developer to sell his/her theme on any other marketplace or on his/her own site. But in this case, the author commission percentage drops to mere 25%! So, the developer needs to decide what plan on ThemeForest is best for him/her?

As soon as you have decided to submit and sell your work, you will also need to pass through a strict review process, which includes an Author Quiz! This quiz may become tricky at times, so make sure that you have already read the Authoring Tutorial thoroughly and only then proceed with the Quiz. The theme will also be reviewed by Envato staff, so try to give your best work, because it may happen the work can be declined without giving any explanation or reason!

Mojo Themes

Another marketplace is Mojo Themes, which is progressing slowly, but steadily. This marketplace is not as big as ThemeForest, but if you are selling items Non-Exclusively somewhere else, then you can submit your work here also.

Here also, read the How to Sell? guide first and then proceed. The payment structure is similar to that of ThemeForest. Selling an item Exclusively can get you around 50%-70% commission and selling Non-Exclusively can get you 25% of sales commission. When you first start, percentage of the sale is set at 50%. Later on as sales volume increases, profit percentage also increases.

Caution

If you’ve finally decided to jump the bandwagon and sell your work, then here are some points to think before doing so:

There are thousands of files/themes on marketplaces, so are you ready for the competition? If you are, then go ahead. If the product is outstanding, then there is no need to worry, as it will definitely get noticed. A Good Product always Shine. Always give your best, so that it gets noticed and stands out from the crowd!
Think from a user point of view. If you were to select a WordPress theme, then what points will you consider before buying/comparing a theme? Features, Price, Functionality etc.?
Another point to think about is: You cannot fix the price of your own work. It’s the marketplace who will set the price for your work.

Hope this short guide has helped you in getting information on selling your WordPress Themes effectively on marketplaces. So, Go Ahead and Submit your work.

Always remember the following Success Mantra:

Provide the Best Product, Follow Standards, Always ensure that your theme is compatible with latest version of WordPress and give Good after sales Support!

This is a Guest Post by Saqib Khan, who blogs on Technostarry! If you are also interested in writing a Guest Post for this site, feel free to Contact Us.

This Post: [Short Guide] Sell WordPress Themes Effectively on Marketplaces was originally made on MrinTech

Run Google AdSense & other Advertisements on WordPress.com

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Wed, 25 May 2011 09:26:08 +0000

Running Google AdSense and other Advertisement Network Scripts (like from Chitika, Tyroo, TextLinkAds etc.) is quite easy for self hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) Blogs, but running these Advertisements on WordPress.com Free Blogs is NOT allowed/supported.

But if any particular WordPress.com Blog is quite popular (with appropriate content) and gets thousands of Pageviews per day, than following Advertisement solutions are currently offered by WordPress.com:

Ad Control
WordPress VIP Program

Ad Control

Ad Control lets any WordPress.com blogger, with lots of traffic (greater than or equal to 25,000 Pageviews per month) and appropriate content, turn on AdSense and Skimlinks for his/her blog.

Although, the blogger has to share his/her 50% of total revenue with WordPress.com. In case, you are interested in enabling WordPress.com Ad Control, you need to contact WordPress.com Support by means of a form present in THIS PAGE

WordPress VIP Program

WordPress VIP Program is available for few selected Webmasters whose Blog/Website gets millions of Pageviews per month. Some features of WordPress VIP Program are as follows:

Your site will be running on the WordPress.com grid (over 1,200 servers in three data centers)

Unlimited space and bandwidth

24/7 IT support

Content Delivery Network and hourly backups

Enterprise-level Akismet spam protection

Optimization and security feedback on your site’s theme for a faster and more secure site

Integration with WordPress.com features like Blogs of the Day, My Comments, Tag Surfer, and Gravatars

Promotion of your new sites on our Publisher Blog

Sitemap and News Sitemap for better search engine and Google News exposure

People logged in to WordPress.com will be logged in on your domain, making it easier for them to comment on your site

How WordPress VIP Program works?

Create WordPress.com accounts and import your content

Edit your templates via Subversion

Point the records for your domain name at your new WordPress.com VIP site.

WordPress.com will then load balance your site across hundreds of their servers

No restrictions on Advertisements, JavaScripts, etc.

You can run most plugins that don’t modify database tables

Things WordPress.com asks its VIP Bloggers in return:

You should have an in-house WordPress developer or you should be working with a top consultant

A Powered by WordPress.com VIP link on your VIP site

A few standard hooks in your template for WordPress.com’s centralized stats

Use of either custom themes and plugins or GPL compatible ones

Your tags go into and point to WordPress Tags community

Pricing for WordPress VIP Program?

The price for WordPress VIP Program starts at $2500/month for up to 5 sites and then $500/month per additional site (with a one-time setup fee of $1,500 per site) — but it’s flexible depending on your circumstances and number of sites. WordPress.com also requires that you signup your developer(s) to their VIP Support program.

So, in conclusion either get one of WordPress.com’s restricted and expensive Service or simply get a reliable Web Hosting Provider, which will be comparatively cheap and there will be NO restrictions, although you’ll have to manage everything, pay additional charges for CDN etc.

This Post: Run Google AdSense & other Advertisements on WordPress.com was originally made on MrinTech

Anatomy of a WordPress Theme: How WordPress Theme Functions?

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:52:10 +0000

WordPress is one of the most popular and widely used Content Management System (CMS). And WordPress Themes plays a very vital role in the overall functioning and looks of a WordPress blog.

Let’s check out in this Post, a very informative Infographics about How a WordPress Theme Works/Functions?

The Anatomy of a WordPress Theme:

[Infographics/Image Credit: Yoast and Creditloan]

Also See: How to Select a Premium WordPress Theme for your Blog?

This Post: Anatomy of a WordPress Theme: How WordPress Theme Functions? was originally made on MrinTech

Exclude Post/Page from WordPress Blog Homepage & RSS Feeds

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:50:08 +0000

Case may arise, when you want to exclude specific WordPress Post from appearing in your Blog’s Front Page as well as RSS Feeds. This can be easily achieved by means of Stealth Publish WordPress Plugin.

The Plugin adds and assigns a value of 1 to custom field stealth-publish for a particular post, so that it doesn’t appear either in the FrontPage of the Blog or in the RSS Feeds. Once you have added Stealth Publish Plugin to your WordPress Installation, a small checkbox will appear in the Right Sidebar of Add New Post Page:

If it’s checked, then that particular post will never appear on the FrontPage of the Blog as well as in the RSS Feeds. In case, you have also included WordPress Pages in the RSS Feeds (using plugin like RSS Includes Pages or manually), than this plugin will override that function and that specific Page will not exist on FrontPage as well as in the RSS Feed of Blog.

Pretty Useful Feature for WordPress Bloggers who want to blog certain topics silently.

This Post: Exclude Post/Page from WordPress Blog Homepage & RSS Feeds was originally made on MrinTech

How to get Free Backlink from RSS Feeds of WordPress Blog?

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:45:12 +0000

Do you know that, there are many websites bots which crawls and publishes posts from WordPress Blog RSS Feed on their own website? Either these website wants to earn money from your Website Content, by using their own advertising networks on pages which have your Blog Posts/Pages OR they simply want to get Ranking in Search Results by using your content.

A Webmaster can’t completely block all these crawlers, as either they are crawling and publishing your FeedBurner RSS Feeds OR the number of these Website bots are too many. Under such case, adding suitable Hyper link(s) in every post of your blog’s RSS Feed will give you Free Backlinks coming from those Websites!

By using RSS Footer WordPress Plugin, you can easily add a line of content at the top or bottom of every post which appears in the RSS Feed of your Blog. This additional line of content can be a personalized message written for your Blog Readers or Hyper link(s) to your Original Article/Homepage/any other Webpage:

On the Settings Page of RSS Footer in your WordPress Dashboard (Settings >> RSS Footer), just add any additional content line as per following format:

%%POSTLINK%% : A link to the post, with the title as anchor text
%%BLOGLINK%% : A link to your site, with your site’s name as anchor text
%%BLOGDESCLINK%% : A link to your site, with your site’s name and description as anchor text.

And the Plugin will insert those lines/links to all posts in the RSS Feed of your Blog. You can also customize the position of this Additional Message from the Plugin Settings Page. For example, following line of code in the Settings Page of RSS Footer:

This Post: %%POSTLINK%% was originally made on MrinTech

Resulted in following message in each and every post which appears in the RSS Feed of MrinTech:

Note:

If even after installing RSS Footer plugin, your FeedBurner Feed (assuming your Blog uses FeedBurner for managing/delivering RSS Feeds) doesn’t show any changes, than you may want to Ping Feedburner for immediate update or ReSync FeedBurner, so that it clears the Feed Cache and start building your Blog RSS feed again from scratch!
The Plugin Adds Hyper Link(s) which are dofollow in nature, but if crawling websites specifically uses nofollow for all outgoing links, than your blog is not going to get any backlink from those websites. Though modifying links which are present in your Blog’s/FeedBurner RSS Feeds is almost impossible, and because of this you can enjoy full benefits of this plugin.

This Post: How to get Free Backlink from RSS Feeds of WordPress Blog? was originally made on MrinTech