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WordPress

Are You Considering Building WordPress Themes and Selling Them Online?

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at WordCamp Chicago. My presentation was titled Solutions Before Development – Creating WordPress Products That Actually Sell.

If you’re considering building WordPress themes and launching a theme shop, this talk is a must see video for you.

My presentation followed this outline: 

  • The Internal Fight
  • The Concept Was Simple
  • In the beginning… We were completely and utterly clueless
  • At First We Were Just Another WordPress Theme Store
  • Find Your Niche
  • Holy Cow, It Worked!
  • Start With a Plan Evaluate
  • The Small Town Solution
  • Develop a Marketing Strategy
  • Know That Good Design is Critical
  • Structured Code Was Key
  • Pay for a True Code Audit
  • It’s a Team Effort
  • Use the Right Tools
  • Understand Your Cost Structure
  • Plan for Trouble
  • What WordPress magic will you create?

A video of my presentation was recently uploaded to WordPress.tv and is available for viewing:

If you’d like a very frank discussion of the pros and cons of opening a WordPress theme store, then grab a cup of coffee and have a watch. I talk openly about hurdles we encountered in building WordPress themes and lessons we learned about successfully selling WordPress products.

If you’d like to grab a copy of my presentation slides, they are shown below and available for download at SlideShare.net.

 

If you enjoyed the talk, please consider leaving a review over at WordPress.tv or drop a comment below. I’d love to receive feedback and/or hear any lessons learned you’d like to share with our audience.

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Rebecca Gill's avatar

Rebecca Gill

Rebecca is the founder and president of Web Savvy Marketing, a Michigan digital marketing agency. She has a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides SEO consulting services for clients, SEO coaching on Clarity.fm, teaches SEO at diySEOcourses.com, and has a weekly podcast at SEObits.fm. Learn more at RebeccaGill.com.

Comments

  1. carrie dils says

    Rebecca,
    Thanks so much for your transparency and tip-sharing when it comes to running a successful theme store. You are amazing!

    Cheers,
    Carrie

    • Rebecca Gill says

      Says the uber incredible Carrie Dils. I appreciate your personal encouragement to get out and speak at WordCamp’s. =)

  2. Brenda says

    I have just watched this with my morning coffee. It reinforces what I learned this past weekend at WordCamp Columbus. You were really thorough with excellent advice that is applicable to launching any enterprise, not just website themes. Thanks for the insight, and letting us peek into your well-earned success!

    • Rebecca Gill says

      My pleasure Brenda. It’s a bit hard to cover two years of activity in a 45 minutes presentation, so I hope I gave people a good overview of the ups and downs of launching and running a theme store. It’s been a good two years.

  3. Carlana says

    This is so timely. This is something I’ve been pushed to do by niche clients. I find it scary and daunting and maybe something for the future. Who knows. I love your themes and apart from those I have as a StudioPress member, I only purchase from you exclusively. I just trust the themes and the code and they have a nice balance between professionalism and a great look. Thank you for your honesty and the great detail here. Very great stuff.

  4. Marcus Tibesar says

    Great video!

    By the way, I have a (broad-market) niche and I have a prototype theme called ‘Family’.

    I am looking for someone to partner with who can commercialize said theme and bring it to market.

    If you are interested Rebecca, would you please e-mail me?

    Again, thanks for a great video on your theme business.

    • Rebecca Gill says

      Thanks so much for the comment Marcus and the offer. Unfortunately at this time we are solely focused on promotion of our own internally designed and coded child themes.

      Good luck with your venture!

  5. Donesia Muhammad says

    Hi Rebecca, Thank you for a great video. You really gave the reality of what you need to know when creating theme stores. While it is definitely not the easiest thing to acheive, it can be done. I think many marketers would make it seem as you can throw it out there for less than $100 and then be able to stand out from the rest. WRONG.

    I would find out so many things along the way that I would say “oh yeah security, oh yeah support, oh yeah developer rights, oh yeah image rights” and so on and so on. Thank you for laying it out. And thank you for taking your themes to a new level of “well I didnt think of those type of themes, smart niche” 🙂

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