Little Hope Left for Sponsored WP Themes

If you are a designer who makes sponsored wordpress themes, you probably know that the peek of selling sponsored links on the free themes is already behind us. A few months ago it was a real hit, Digital Point Forum was practically over flooded with titles like “sponsor this unique wordpress theme” and now it’s a safe to say the trend is going downhills. Why? Who brought it down?

1. Thank you, Google. Advertisers buy links in order to increase their Ranking and SERP’s in the big G, so with the wave of penalties that advertisers suffered from paid links, quite a lot of them stepped down from the race for sponsored links.

2. Thank you, Rippers. When people start to get paid for something, they also start looking for a way to shorten the path to the cash… and just rip other’s themes. After having bought twice (!) a ripped theme from someone who claimed it to be 100% original, I really lost trust in “wordpress designers”. Moreover, my themes (mainly Modern Magic) was sold and resold and redistributed a several times already (I will not link to the rippers but I did already in my other blog), fighting against the kids who do it is pretty useless. They are all kids, they are all greedy, and they all get pissed off with you if you point out to their rip-off. Bearing all this in mind, advertisers start hesitating to invest hundreds of dollars in a SEO tactic that stands on shaky ethical ground.

3. Thank you, crap designers. While some people rip, others design themselves, but “unique” design does not always mean “good”. Or remotely good. Or somewhat good. We came to the point that there are TOO many wordpress themes on the market, and for every truly spectacular theme, there are about 20 crap ones. The wp free themes galleries are oversaturated with new releases, most of which are outrageously ugly, which buries the good ones and it reminds me the model of Far East market taking over the world…

4. Thank you, media. There are quite a lot of sanctions agaist the sponsored themes. Started by themes.wordpress.net and followed by v7, many sites like Weblog Tools collection raise the concern about sponsored links over and over again. It feels like distributing a theme with sponsored links is “wrong” or “illegal”… ok — it’s not. While weblog tools say:

WordPress is Free, meaning you’re free to do pretty much anything you like with it. It’s under a license that encourages user freedom called the GPL, which says if you distribute something that links internal functions and data structures of a GPL program (like themes do with WordPress) that also needs to be Free.

…let’s not forget that free wordpress themes are the design of the site, and has little to do with the GPL WordPress platform itself. Html is free also, will websites like outline2design switch to providing FREE design now? Where is the difference? There is a very nice default blue and white theme that comes with wordpress, if someone feels that he needs a spicier design he either gets a custom layout for crazy price or avails of the free ones and have to make do with the small footer links. In other words, sponsored links (unless they point to spammy sites or contain hidden advertisement) — are legal, and ethical enough.

5. Thank you, economical breakdown. The dollar devalues, so those who need to convert the USD to their local currency later, — lose. To make up for the loss, some designers higher the prices, while advertisers (thanks to the same economical breakdown) have less spare cash for advertising. Who wins? Those who manage to offer maximum quality for minimum price. While 2 months ago I could easily earn $300 for an average theme, today loads of kids will gladly make a splendid theme for 1/3 of that.

Bottom line is, it’s a complex of reasons that lead to a little pause in sponsorship. There are less advertisers, and there are more designers. I don’t even know if my tutorial for making a successful auction on digital point forums is even of use anymore… That’s what it’s like to be a freelancer online, the buy and sell process is very dynamic and competitive, however, there are much more ways of making money online so don’t hang your head in sorrow (yet).