Last week we talked a little bit about premium Wordpress themes when we discussed the business model at Theme Forest. That got me thinking about the whole premium Wordpres theme market a little bit more.
It is no secret that the creators of Wordpress aren’t really that jazzed about premium themes. After all, these themes are built off of their open source software. In all actuality, no Wordpress designer really has the right sell a premium Wordpress theme. Am I right on this?
My question though is this, what other options does a premium Wordpress designer have to sell premium themes? How can one make money, but still be in line with Wordpress?
13 Responses to “Discussion: How to sell premium Wordpress themes?”
If you think like that, i think half of web dev industry will go down… OsCommerce is also GPL, same for phpBB, zenCart, drupal, and so on.
Even so, if we go further, we can say this:
php is free, mysql is free, why should we charge clients for sites? We all need to learn commercial languages like cold fusion and oracle, right?
The creator of WP build a great framework. How rails is for ruby, wordpress is for blogs (if we have a wide imagination
)
I think it’s quite sad really that Matt Mullenweg and the WordPress team take this stance on premium themes.
At least they aren’t trying to stop themes being sold; they’d just rather it not happen.
Other CMSes licensed under the same license welcome the idea of premium themes (such as Joomla) as it helps to take theming to the next level.
I believe the only way to be in WordPress’ good books is to not use any of the WordPress PHP functions.
“In all actuality, no Wordpress designer really has the right sell a premium Wordpress theme.”
GPL doesn’t forbid reselling does it?
If using GPL code (WP tags) in our themes make our themes GPL, then every bleeding site ever made on WP is technically free.
That means I could basically download this theme, Elliot Jay Stocks theme and Matt’s theme and pack it up in a zip file and make it available for download on my website…
Do we think that is right?
Ugh, wow - what if we define it like this: you get to do whatever you want on your site. If you like a design i’ve made and want to buy it, you can. Then you can convert it to a wordpress design, or I’ll do that. So the “fee” for converting an existing design to work with wordpress is free. The design is not free. The design is independent of wordpress. Can we do it like that? Cos otherwise, WTSF?
I think that the stylesheet and images are copyrighted, but the code is free to distribute.
So basically we can all download freelanceswitch.com’s theme, but we are not allowed to copy the images.
What could be wrong with it? As it is true what Magnus Jepso says, there’s nothing illegal and the way i see it, this market keeps the design on Word press-themes renewing and and on a higher level.
There’s always the option to sell services and support for free wordpress themes to customize for customers.
I’m no expert but…
First read this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Then scan through the FAQs for the GPL license found here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
The fact that the Wordpress folks stand against “selling” premium themes is a bit arrogant. If a designer/developer takes their time and skill to create a “premium” theme, then why not sell it? You need only (per my understanding) include the licensing information w/in the core files. In short, the framework belongs to Wordpress the theme belongs to and can be copyrighted by the individual designer.
No you don’t have to shift WordPress, not even if a theme requires modification to core files - source only need to be sent with binaries.
No, you can make money on themes - unless you’re bundling your theme with Wordpress and selling it on as your “product”.
No, I won’t buy a premium theme. So far there’s only two themes that I can think of (K2 and SandBox) that’s complete, most premium I’ve seen isn’t any different than free themes, when it comes to lack of styling elements.
Do I mind people making a buck out of themes? No, go for it.
Are Automattic cranky about if? Of-course, they aren’t making any money of your themes (when you are)…
Actually it is quite a difficult question.
(Just kidding)
By using WordPress at the first place we are using hundreds of hours of people that dedicated their time FOR FREE (yes, not only designers work)
I myself made some plugins, helped other developers, helping in the forums all the time. should I need to charge money for that ?
I think that the Free-approach is what made WordPress such a success in the first place.
Maybe some formula should be invented under the open source philosphy, like for example, for every Theme you sell, you should relese a free one
If you ask me, I have no Idea how to solve this dilema.
All I know is that for now, I answer peoples forums in various forums and on various matters (3D , Scripts, WP etc…)
Somehow I feel that this is the real power of the internet.
Sharing. not online stores.
Wordpress is GPL,
When you buy a theme you are in fact paying for the time it took for the designer to design the site, and implement it onto the wordpress engine.
With that said, the GPL calls for any software liscenced under it to remain free. Any modifications must be free as well. So in my opinion, paying for the design makes sense. If the design has any modifications to wordpress its-self (Changes to the core, or any of the wp code) Then those changes (without the design) need to be made freely available.
But all in all, isn’t the GPL meant to be a commercial software killer?
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