While browsing my feeds this morning, I found an article by CSS Tricks that caught my attention. Apparently, Collis Ta’eed has created a new addition to the Eden family – Theme Forest.
I checked over at Net Tuts and PSD Tuts to confirm that this was true.
So what is Theme Forest? As Collis puts it, “Think FlashDen for Site Templates. It’s going to be a site where you can sell HTML/CSS Layouts as well as themes for just about every CMS you can think of, heck you can even sell MySpace themes.”
Each theme will sell for $5-$75 with theme authors taking a 25-50% commission. Themes will come for several platforms including Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and more.
I want to just quickly give a few of the pros and cons (that I have seen) in using Theme Forest but I would love to get your input as well.
Pros
- No Advertising – If you’ve ever launched your own product before, you know how difficult it can be to spread the word. Of course, Theme Forest will handle all of this for you as they will be the ones advertising their site with your products.
- Traffic – Theme Forest will receive tons of traffic from sites such as Net Tuts, PSD Tuts, Vector Tuts, Flash Den, and Audio Jungle – not to mention all of their marketing campaigns. This gives your themes a much larger audience and a higher chance of selling quickly and making you money.
- Ease Of Use – With Theme Forest, you don’t have to worry about handling payments, delivery of the products, or any other related tasks. This will save time, energy, and money for users.
Cons
- Commissions – This one is obvious for the developers – Theme Forest will take 25-50% of all the sales you make. That is a LOT of money for themes that sell big.
- Pricing – You don’t get to choose the price of your product. Think your WordPress theme is worth over $100? Well tough luck – it looks like Theme Forest will be keeping the pricing limits between $5 and $75. Will this change in the future? We don’t know for sure – but for now developers will lose this aspect of their business.
- Loss Of Branding – The thing that scares me the most about Theme Forest is the loss of branding and personality. If I were to put a theme on Theme Forest, people would refer to it as “the WordPress theme over at Theme Forest,” not “Elite By Design’s WordPress theme.” Designers will lose their uniqueness and brands will be broken down as designers submit their works to another website.
For now, those are my thoughts and opinions. Will this new development be good or bad? We won’t know until their official launch in the new future. But for now, Eden and Theme Forest are two sites that should be kept a close eye on. What are your thoughts and opinions?
John Campbell
August 5, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I agree. I have made a lot of Drupal and WordPress themes for clients in the past and I am wondering what kind of potential for income Theme Forest might offer. I find that selling a custom theme for 200 isn’t that hard, but will Theme Forest really be able to move 10 of the same theme as easily? (at 75 bucks each with 50 percent commission even then I would only be getting 375). I am a little skeptical but am eagerly waiting to see how it turns out.
- John
http://www.designbump.com
Lindsey
August 5, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I agree completely with everything you’ve said. The commission ratio is grossly skewed to profit “Theme Forest”, and I’m not liking that. They could make enough money just taking something like 5-10%. I don’t believe I’ll ever put a theme up there myself, UNLESS I was allowed to put something in the description like “Like this theme? Come and browse the entire collection at mysite.com”.
I guess we will have to wait and see how it turns out. I’m sure there will be many, many hungry, or very young developers throwing their themes up there powering the Theme Forest library and I hope that they learn that their skills can be compensated for more then a minimum of $2.50 (if you’re theme is marked at $5).
Tracey Grady
August 5, 2008 at 6:28 pm
All good points so far from the article and the comments. I suppose that if you’re new to developing themes and want to get a name for yourself quickly, handing over your work to Theme Forest for $5 a pop (minus the hefty commission) might be attractive.
Also, I wonder how many developers will use this service to sell their themes at the upper end of the pricing range? Will developers feel compelled to undersell their themes in order to get sales? If you truly believe your theme is worth $75, then maybe it’s worth selling it on your own efforts instead.
JY
August 5, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I agree for a new template designer, TF may be a good place to get some exposure. For an experienced designer who can produce high quality templates, I think giving a free template to sites like Smashing Magazine(who often have template designer as guest posters) is a better idea. You’d get more exposure that way.
stephanie
August 5, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I just read the announcement at nettuts.com and it says that the AUTHOR will take a 25-50% commission. So if your theme goes for $5 and you only get 20%…?!
I haven’t decided if I will participate or not. It might be good to get some practice and make a few dollars, but I don’t think anyone is going to be able to quit their day job with this site. *sigh*
Youri.
August 6, 2008 at 2:49 am
A hard one for sure. Yes 50% is a lot, but if Themeforest’s traffic makes it so you sell your theme 4 times for 50% profit vs that one time you might’ve sold it on your own then the deal suddenly isn’t so bad.
It also kind of depends whether you already have an established brand/name. If you don’t the question becomes do you want to invest time (and money) into establishing one? Or do you just want to cash in on the theme?
Colin
August 6, 2008 at 6:48 am
Sounds good. It’s not like there is a whole lot of competition out there doing this.
Thanks
Jeremy
August 6, 2008 at 8:36 am
As Stephanie mention, the author takes 25-50%, not Theme Forrest. You might want to change that in your post.
The idea is a good one. It will have to compete with many sites like Template Monster and so forth, but Ethan products already generate high amounts of traffic.
They take a seemingly large cut, but the fact of the matter is that they are footing the bill for everything. This means that you as a developer do not have to buy hosting, pay for e-commerce, and dump tons of money into advertising. Keep in mind, that if you were to sell it on your own, the overhead would take just as big if not bigger a cut into your profits. At the same time, you would still probably not near the same exposure that you would on ThemeForest.
All you have to do is make templates and upload them. Very convenient. I would suggest that ThemeForest would let the prices be variable and not static at $5-$75. It is understood that the reason for this is for the buyers and not the sellers, however, the sellers are going to make next to nothing at this rate.
Brian
August 6, 2008 at 10:56 am
Those are all very interesting thoughts and valid points. I don’t think that either option is right or wrong – to use, or not to use Theme Forest.
@John – I expect that that is the reason TF charges so much of a commission – because they provide the audience. Of course, we don’t know how large of an audience this will be quite yet.
@Lindsey – I am in complete agreement. Sure, there will be some pretty well done themes on the site, but my expectation is that the initial flood of themes will come from new designers and developers. Who knows though…
@Tracey – It makes me wonder what type of theme will be classified as a “$75 Theme” and who will be the judge of this.
@JY – Again, agreed. For a starter, this might be an encouraging way to pick up a few bucks. But new developers will eventually start to realize that there are much more beneficial ways of getting a brand known and into the blogosphere.
@Stephanie – Whoa, good catch. Fixed that in the article. So this means that TF will be taking a maximum of 75%!?! Wow.
@Youri – A very valid argument. For the sake of time, marketing, and building a brand, TF allows you to skip all of that and get straight to making money. In the long term though, these developers may get stuck without their name ever being known even though their themes have been purchased dozens or hundreds of times.
@Colin – You’re right – this is the first site of its kind in a way. Until launch day, we won’t know how big it will get though!
@Jeremy – Changed
Thanks for the catch. Of course, what you have mentioned is what TF is making its selling point on. Basically developers spend no money in order to make less money as opposed to spending lots of money to make lots of money. I think that this will just have to be up to each individual developer’s preferences and business attitude eh?
Travis Vocino
August 6, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Do they actually change the footer text with credit to Theme Forest or whatever instead of the author?
Chris
August 6, 2008 at 1:38 pm
The commission and price range is definitely the biggest problem, I imagine it will work like their Flashden site, but what specifically determines if a theme is worth $5 or $75.
I couldn’t imagine putting time into a theme and then only making $1.25 each sell.
Brian
August 6, 2008 at 2:40 pm
@Travis – I don’t know for sure. I’ll be sure to check it out on launch day.
@Chris – I think you’re right. This will probably be a big determining factor in how many developers TF manages to get involved.
Youri.
August 8, 2008 at 3:50 am
@Travis : Since you’re selling the theme instead of giving it away I think you can be assured that whatever is in the footer text will be replaced most of the time…
Erika
August 9, 2008 at 10:21 am
I’m against templating websites, but I’m for capitalism. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Eden is now Envato, so perhaps you might update your post?
I couldn’t see myself selling my templates any other way specifically for the reasons you listed. I’d rather go the route of WPDesigner and build my own hype and then go into selling my templates. The payoff is much sweeter in the end, IMO.
kailoon
September 1, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I think the team have take this into consideration as well. So, I believe the price may go higher in the future depend on the performance of the site.
For me, it is hard to sell a theme on my own site. Simple reason, not enough of exposure. Marketing is something that I can’t handle by myself while I need to put effort in developing new theme. So, it may be great for some theme developer for the beginning. Then only decide whether continue to upload on TF or your own site. It is all up to you
Nir@ Belt Buckles
September 1, 2008 at 5:24 pm
That is really not bad price. For someone that gets freelancer to do his work there still room for profit specially if selling large quantities.
Jennifer
September 7, 2008 at 12:47 am
If I’m making a custom WP theme for a client I charge an awful lot more than the top price listed on Theme Forest. That price would cover installation, setting up plugins, testing and a charge for client pain in the ass-ness. So it’s much more of a package. However it would be interesting to put up a couple of themes on Theme Forest and see how they would do over time. It could be a small residual income working away in the background if you sold a lot. Do you know if you can put in a small link in the footer to yourself?
John
September 5, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Theme Forests business style is the same as that of the big corporations. The decide the price of the theme and they get 75% of the themes price, paying the developer only 25% of its price, while the theme developer provides also the support and everything.
This is totally getting advantage of people from poor countries. Do you see any difference between them and the blood sucking corporations? Yes, they have a better style of doing that same thing.
I wonder why those theme developers don’t sell the themes on their own, while most of them have websites.
Alexander
October 22, 2010 at 7:20 am
Nice template
petra jordan
November 28, 2011 at 4:50 pm
The commission and price range is definitely the biggest problem, I imagine it will work like their Flashden site, but what specifically determines if a theme is worth $5 or $75.
I couldn’t imagine putting time into a theme and then only making $1.25 each sell.
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