Developed a great theme or plugin but still don't know how to sell it? Today we will show you effective marketing techniques that will help you make money.
Design is not always for sale!
The simple truth is that even if you create the best theme on the market, it may never sell! The sooner you understand this, the sooner you start making money.
Talent, creativity and design are important, but that's not all. To sell themes and plugins, you need to develop a marketing strategy, and you need to do this even before your product is completely ready.
Do it for free!
Yes, we know what you want to earn. Giving out your work for free is not part of your plans.
But in reality, things are a little different. If you're just starting out, you don't have a strong online presence and people don't know you or your job. Trying to sell themes or plugins in such a scenario is completely impossible. Not many people will shell out money to someone they haven't heard of. However, they will use your themes or plugins for free. Then the required audience will be pulled up through word of mouth.
But what about money?
You don't have to do everything for free. However, download the basic version.
By adding a few premium features, you can sell themes and plugins without losing any profit. This can be done by finding the appropriate directory for selling themes and plugins, and then releasing a Lite version of your work. Chances are, people who love and use your Lite version can shell out a few bucks for the full version.
The advantages of this solution:
Popularity. Releasing basic versions of your themes and plugins gives you the web presence you need.
Reviews. This will help you get feedback from your potential customers so you can work with them until the full version is released.
Minuses:
Sufficient audience, but not enough money. At the same time, it is not a fact that the audience can become your client.
Where to sell themes
Like Amazon for merchandise, there are various online marketplaces where you can sell themes and plugins for WordPress or other CMS.
Some of the major players in this business are listed below:
WordPress Repository- Since WordPress powers 18.9% of all websites, more and more markets have emerged for selling themes and plugins for this engine. The WordPress Repository is a platform that lets you upload your WordPress themes and plugins and put them on the market. Your products will go through a review process, after which you can get statistics on how many times your theme / plugin has been downloaded, reviews that users have provided, and you can even get ratings. This is the base where you can download the Lite version first, learn the basics of business, understand what works and what doesn't, then download the full version, and sell WordPress themes / plugins for money!
ThemeForest is one of the most popular Envato themed markets on the Internet. More than 10,000 themes and templates from more than 2,500 authors have been published on the market. The site generates very high traffic that you can use if you want to sell themes in this market. The trick is that, as a new author, you have to get approval and give the market a percentage of your sales.
CodeCanyon is also an Envato marketplace, but only if you want to sell plugins. You just have to become a part of the CodeCanyon community and use your audience to sell your work.
We talked about selling your work, but what about making money from it?
According to statistics, ThemeForest boasts 7,986 WordPress themes. The average price range for themes ranges from $ 13 to $ 350, and the average 5-year template income after commission is estimated at $ 52,992.50. Likewise, CodeCanyon boasts 4861 WordPress plugins. The median price range for plugins is $ 5 to $ 299, and the 5-year median income from a template after commission is estimated at $ 9,848.
While there are other markets like Mojo Themes, Mojo Code, WP Eden where you can sell products for WordPress and other CMS, ThemeForest and CodeCanyon are the main players.
The only thing these marketplaces do is take a commission but allow you to connect to a large audience.
Pros:
No marketing required. Once you become a major marketplace writer, you will find it difficult to attract audiences to your work and persuade them to buy your themes / plugins. All you have to do is download the product and you can start making money.
Minuses:
Commission. The essence of these markets is that they charge a commission for their services. The more you sell, the more they earn. However, the likelihood that you will sell more on these sites versus selling yourself is always higher.
Join fellow developers and designers
If you work in a team, marketing becomes less crazy.
You plan to sell themes, but don't know where to start. Don't worry, because you are not the only one facing the same problem. The internet is a tricky place, and finding ways to make money from it can become difficult. However, you can make this process easier by partnering with other designers, developers, and even bloggers to launch your product and make money in the process.
Pros:
Less stress. If you have three people working on three separate objects, you can focus more on development.
Minuses:
"Too many cooks spoil the broth." Teamwork is good on paper, but hard in reality. You may not agree with the characters, or the vision of the result will differ. The result is losses, not profits!
Work on your own
Let's say you're not a very team player and you don't want to give your commission to someone out there. The solution for you is to create a website and sell through it yourself. It will not be difficult for you to create your own website that will become a shining example of good work. People will trust your work and shell out money for your products.
How simple it sounds, but in fact, everything is more complicated. Development, as mentioned above, is the easiest task in this scenario. But earnings are not. When designing a website to sell themes and plugins, you need to keep in mind that you need an audience that drives traffic in the first place. Along with promoting your products, you will also need to promote your site. However, this will not only give you freedom - you will also be able to save every penny you earn.
Think about it, it's not bad, isn't it?
Pros:
Freedom. You don't need to get approval, and you don't need to discuss with anyone whether your topic will sell.
No commission. The income you receive from selling WordPress themes / plugins is entirely yours. No exchange.
Minuses:
Marketing. You will have to work on driving traffic to your site to convince your audience that your product is worth buying.
Alone or in a team - marketing is needed!
People just don't know, don't suspect about the existence of your product. You need to tell about it properly!
Use the methods below:
Social media:
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have large user bases and groups and communities with similar interests. You can find a dedicated WordPress group to promote your themes and plugins. This will not only lead to popularity, but it will also cost you nothing. Having a strong social media presence with a personalized page dedicated to your work will also help build the trust you need.
Search engine optimization is a necessity in the modern world. To gain recognition, your site must rank high on the Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP). If you are developing a website, you have to make it SEO friendly so that your rankings grow, as well as promote it competently.
Affiliate Marketing:
Launching an affiliate program will help you find clients. You can sell your product through other people's sites. You can run an affiliate program and target top marketers and bloggers to take your product and advertise it on their websites. For every sale they bring in, they'll charge a small commission. Affiliate marketing is good because it helps you gain recognition and also build trust from strangers as they learn about your product through a site they trust.
Create a form on the website to generate email addresses. If you have a working website with good traffic, creating an exclusive mailing list will help you not only build a community that trusts your work, but also a market in which people can come back to you from time to time to shop.
Influencer Marketing:
Some people become idols for many others. These are bloggers, and there are many who are close to you in spirit. Ask them to tell their audience about your product - it can create an amazing effect, and it will certainly build confidence in you.
Hire someone!
If all of the above sounds too clever for you, you will need a professional to develop a marketing strategy and promote your site so that you can concentrate on development in the meantime. Hiring someone to develop your website and advertise will cost money, but in the long run, it could be the best investment for your money.
Someone who knows everything there is to know about marketing will be a pro in not only SEO, but social media marketing as well as affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and many other marketing technologies. Therefore, you will sleep well at night knowing that your money is in good hands.
Try again
Marketing is not an easy task, but it is necessary. You may not get everything perfect the first time, but no one forbids you to try to achieve what you want by trying again.
Having learned from your own mistakes, you will gradually become a pro not only in development, but also in selling your own products.
The huge popularity of such CMS as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal leads to an ever-growing demand for quality themes and templates. Since there is demand, there must be supply! Just imagine you create what you like, when you like it, from the comfort of your own home and receive passive income at the same time.
There are several fairly popular foreign services on the network, where freelancers successfully make money selling PSD templates, themes for WordPress, HTML, and recently another similar project for the Russian Internet has appeared. We tried to figure out what conditions these sites offer to freelancers. Let's take a closer look.
ThemeForest
One of the most popular resources on the foreign market for themes and templates. Authors are free to register and put up for sale
WordPress themes, HTML templates, PSD, etc. It should be noted that due to the abundance of templates, the site has a fairly strict selection and quality requirements. Prices on the site are set by the moderators.
Percentage of sales of unique templates - from 50 to 70%
Percentage of sales of non-unique templates - 30%
Affiliate program to attract new users - 30%
Ability to set your own prices - No
сreativemarket.com
A relatively new, but quite popular platform for posting logos, illustrations, templates, fonts, etc. Designers can register for the sale of their work by asking for an invite in advance. The site also states that having received an invite, you can publish products for sale without additional verification.
Percentage of sales of unique templates - up to 70%
Percentage of sales of non-unique templates - up to 70%
Affiliate program to attract new users - No
Registration - By invite
Content Moderation - No
The only Russian marketplace of this kind. The site focuses on selling unique premium quality Russian-language themes, PSD templates, HTML, WordPress. Registration is open to everyone, authors can set their own prices and publish both unique and non-unique templates. The site is relatively new, but the sales statistics on the site are growing steadily. In addition, now there is a bonus of 150 rubles at registration.
Web-Stocker.RU
This is a new project on runet. Let's see what he offers to authors:
Percentage of sales of unique templates - up to 80%
Percentage of sales of non-unique templates - up to 30%
Affiliate program to attract new users - 15%
Ability to set your own prices - Yes
Registration - Open to everyone
Content Moderation - Strict Moderation
Additionally - 150 rubles bonus on the first deposit
There are a number of other resources where registration is available only upon request. We decided not to dwell in more detail on these sites, because after a detailed study it is not clear whether it is possible to sell there at all. We could not find information about specific users who sell, but suddenly you will succeed! Here is a list of these sites:
templatesold
flashmint
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buystockdesign
If you are engaged in design, development of sites, templates and themes - we advise you to try these resources to generate additional income. According to statistics, today, only selling English-language WordPress templates, the best authors earn, on average, from $ 10 thousand to $ 50 thousand. dollars monthly, and the total annual revenue from sales of templates is measured in millions.
Before moving on to the main topic of the material, namely, selling website templates, it is necessary to define the term. This concept appeared back in the period when the first content management systems (CMS) appeared. Initially, the layout was carried out from scratch in the form of separate pages containing a large amount of texts and other information. For this, exclusively HTML was used, in rare cases CSS. Website development at that time required highly specialized knowledge, so a simple user could not cope with this.
Gradually, webmasters decided to group individual pages that are present on many similar sites, creating a so-called "hang", which greatly facilitated the development process. This is just about the templates of the pages of the web resource. As a result, the template is a group of the same type of data from the database, responsible for the layout of the site pages and other features of its design and content. There are now a large number of templates for various resources, including paid and free options. However, practice shows that it is the paid template that is the best solution. So it makes sense for developers to tackle selling ready-made website templates... Such earnings can bring a good income.
Benefits of paid templates
A paid template can always be customized based on personal requirements... This is the main difference between it and free website templates. In the process of working on a web resource, there is often a need for revision or changes. And this is much easier to do if you buy a suitable template.
It's easy to find a template that suits your appearance. Sale of website templates carried out quite widely, different options are offered, which allows you to find the ideal one without much difficulty.
Unique design... The best quality free templates are already widely available on the web. So, if you need a really unique template, it's better to purchase a paid one.
Rich functionality. Sale of ready-made website templates good in that it allows you to invest in a functional option, thanks to which the web resource will be convenient, which means it will attract Internet users.
How to sell a website template?
So, above we have named the main advantages of paid site templates. In this regard, it always makes sense to engage in their development as a main or additional income. You should know at least such programming languages as HTML, PHP and CSS, as well as carefully study the engine for which you plan to create templates. You should start by researching the work of existing templates, and then you can try to implement your own ideas. Once you have a really good template, publish it freely for download.
Sell Website Template you can use your own blog or using a special service that offers this option. Be sure to take customer feedback into account when trying to offer unique and functional templates. Over time, you will understand what the potential customers are specifically interested in, and then earnings will become more stable.
How much can you sell a website template?
In Russia sale of website templates does not bring such a high income as abroad, however, it also makes sense to do this here. On average, a template costs from one to five tens of dollars. There are also more expensive options, the price of which is about 4 thousand rubles per template. Therefore, when selling through special services, you will receive from 5 to 35 dollars for one sale of the template. Since any of the website templates can be sold many times, you will make good money in the long run. In some cases, the template is purchased with copyright and is used exclusively on a specific site. But for this, the creator receives a larger amount than for the usual sale site template.
The main task of any developer is to track trends, not stand still and try to do their job as competently as possible. After-sales customer support is also important. With the right approach, success will surely come, and income will grow every month.
Creation of templates is a very popular business in the West, which opens up a lot of opportunities for the developer, without the need to focus on the taste preferences of the customer. Templates or themes for websites are in enviable demand, providing an opportunity to save money for the client and earn money for the developer.
This kind of income is suitable for everyone who is familiar with the basics of programming, layout and design. Understands such engines as Wordpress, Joomla, DLE.
How much can you earn from developing templates and themes?
The average cost of a template ranges from $ 10-50. When developing higher quality projects that differ in their design and design, you can request about 5,000 rubles per template.
At first glance, the proposed income does not look tempting, but it should be borne in mind that the same layout can be sold an unlimited number of times. By spending your time developing one template, you can regularly receive passive income. But you will most likely have to update it, of course, adapt it for new versions of Wordpress, for example.
At times, buyers may want to fully repurchase a template. In this case, upon sale, exclusive rights are transferred to the buyer, and you no longer have the right to resell the template. However, in this case, the cost of the product increases significantly.
If you do not want to personally search for clientele, then you can post your templates on specialized exchanges. In this case, the profit received will decrease due to the exchange commission. However, the number of customers will also increase, compensating for monetary losses due to sales. Many specialists unite in the studio to increase their efficiency and earn more.
List of exchanges for selling themes and templates:
- ThemeForest- the undisputed leader, the most popular portal. It is one of the parts of a large Australian content store, opened back in 2006. The portal contains an impressive variety of site templates, amounting to about 18,000. Many buyers are gathered here, sales are going quite quickly. The site is localized in many popular languages. Authors of projects can receive here up to 50% of the sale;
- TemplateMonster is an American company that started in the online content market back in 2002. There are about 15,000 templates here. The exchange offers a minimum developer rate of 30% with growth potential. On average, here you can get about $ 27 per sale. The weak point of the exchange is the relative poverty of the assortment. It is difficult to find the notorious "flash" here, for example. Clean design files are not very diverse either. However, there are many interesting social media templates here;
- MOJO Themes is another American exchange, which is quite young, but does not lag behind more experienced competitors, meeting all quality standards for both buyers and template developers. The number of layouts on the exchange exceeds 2000. However, it has the best level of service support;
- CreativeMarket is an American company with about 3000 templates on the stock exchange. The company's advantage is the emphasis on the quality of the presented layouts and the freedom of sellers. The exchange is ideal for beginners who feel constrained by other resources. Here, projects do not undergo strict moderation, and designers have the right to independently set the requested cost for the template. The portal has a huge number of tools for webmasters;
- Web-Stocker.ru- the Russian platform, which is the most popular in the domestic market for the sale of templates. Note that the portal is not distinguished by an impressive variety of layouts and their design. The advantages of the company include a large number of payment options, as well as the presence of a referral program.
