Hello buddies, I have opened a similar thread in which I wanted to keep a journal of how I am going to start, run and market my theme selling business (creating premium HTML and WordPress themes, and selling them to people who need high quality design for cheap). So I decided to not give up this idea, but instead I'm not going to reveal anything regarding my own business (in other words, I won't give you links to buy them or anything like that). I'm just going to tell you what I do to create them, and what marketing strategies I do - and also how they work. So here we go, this is what I did today and what I plan to do... • Created the design of my first theme You can see it here (no affiliate link, there's nothing to buy, it's just a screenshot of the layout I made). • Gathered 300+ followers on Twitter How I did this? Well, since my target customers are entrepreneurs, I searched on Twitter for terms such as "entrepreneur", "small business", "startup", etc., and followed people. Many of them have followed me back. Also, I'm tweeting frequently (marketing tips and stuff like that, which interest my target customers) and using hashtags, so I get a constant stream of new followers, and that's how you can do it too. • Advertised my intention to give my first theme away I wrote on Facebook and Twitter that I will give away my theme to my followers and subscribers, to attract potential customers which, while they will get my first theme for free, they might buy one of my next ones. Right now I'm interested more in building an audience, than on the profit - so keep this in mind: first comes the audience, and only then the profit.. If you only want to earn money right now, chances are that in the future you won't be able to do it easier. That's about it for today. I'm going to keep working on the design of my themes, creating layout variants, and so on. I'm also going to think of new creative marketing ways, and I will share them with you here - so subscribe to this thread, and ask any questions you might have!
It took a long time to finish the design of the theme, but I can finally say that (after a bit over a week of work and no updates from me) I'm content with it. So keep reading. What I did this week • Finished organizing the PSD file of the theme I'm talking about the main one, because I'm going to make 15 PSDs for it - it's hard, but that's what the best guys on the market to, and that's what I'll do as well (and you should do too, if you're gonna jump into this kind of business). • Replaced the Lorem ipsum with some descriptive text about the theme Not many people do this, but it definitely attracts buyers. So keep this in mind when you're creating your themes: Lorem ipsum says nothing, maybe just "I'm too lazy to put maximum effort into my creation". Be smart, and use it as an advertisement for your product. • Prepared a marketing stunt Well, maybe not exactly a stunt - it's just a little marketing strategy that you can definitely adopt too - I decided to offer my first theme for free to those who give me their e-mail address. How am I doing it? Well, I set up a subscription box on my website (powered by MailChimp, but you can use Aweber or any other e-mail marketing tool you want), accessible just by those who have a special link - a link which I will share on Twitter, my signature in forums (DigitalPoint included!), etc. It looks something like this: 3dy.ro?secret#digitalpoint. And right now I'm trying to spread the link. I'll tell people that they'll get my premium theme for free if they subscribe, and hopefully they will do. And regarding you getting it too... I don't know whether or not this kind of advertising is allowed here, so I'm not going to push it. Addressing some questions I got two questions by PM, and will address them here. • Why don't you go for Bootstrap instead of WordPress? Honestly, I don't believe that much in the possibility that Bootstrap will beat WP anytime soon. However, I will turn my themes into Bootstrap, as long as there will be requests for it. • What about the warez, man? THEY'LL BE STEALING YOUR CONTENT!!! Aaand I couldn't care less about this. Warez is a fact, everyone who creates a product that's worth something will eventually face this problem. Some people waste their time trying to combat this, but I won't. WHY??? Because those who download my theme from torrent sites wouldn't buy it anyway. I can't earn anything from those guys, so let them have it. Preview of the theme Please note that this is probably the best design I have ever created, and I have worked for over a week on it, almost day and night. And you can do it too if you really want. Talent is a myth, trust me with this, DPers. Note: Click on the attachment below to see it in full size and high quality (DP's attachment system is kind of restrictive). Also, I realize that I'm not allowed to encourage following me on Twitter or anything like that because it will be considered spam. Instead, I recommend you to subscribe to this thread so you will be noticed as soon as I post something new from this journey of mine! But enough with this now. I will keep working (starting to make the other layout variants, ex: with sidebar on the left, sidebar on the right, portfolio page, etc.). Take care, guys. Will come with a new update soon, hopefully in a day or two.
Big, BIG update! (Yes, I'll reply to your comments guys, but let me first go on about what I did these days.) Well, I'm excited. After lots of hard work I can finally say that the UI Kit for the theme is ready! And yeah, I know what your question is. What is this UI Kit that you're talking about, Eduard? What does it have to do with theme creation? A UI Kit is a set of elements that those who buy your theme can use based on their needs. Why should you include one into your themes? Because if someone wants to put a pricing table on their site while using your theme and it doesn't fit the rest of your design, he/she will be pissed off. You can use my UI Kit as a reference for what you should include in yours. But, for the sake of lists, it should contain: Navbar with hovered / active / inactive buttons and sub-menus Share buttons Slider styles (the more the better) Portfolio thumbnails / frames Many, many button types with hovered / active / inactive states Description / caption boxes Content widgets (I made a tabs and an accordion widget) Form elements: fields, text areas, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, submit buttons, error / success messages / tooltips I added a team member card as well, and you better do it too Tables Pricing chart Comments List style types (as many bullets as possible: circle, arrow, plus, minus, tick, x, etc.) Anything else is fairly optional What about the marketing? Well, not that bad. Although I didn't have too much time to take care of it, my Twitter account is rocking 480+ handsome followers (follow me, follow me, follow me! 3dyro), and my mailing list... uhm... 10 subscribers, but growing. Lots of people want to get e premium theme for free, you know? So if you are going to start a similar business make sure you give something away for free to make people come at you. Replying to mah friendz Thank YOU! And I really hope I can get some more feedback so I know how to improve my themes and tell others how to do it too. One of the reasons why I'm so so open is because I really love reading comments like yours, and hopefully there will be some people who don't agree with something I did and tell me, so I can improve. Thank you so much for your comment! I'll make sure this thread will continue to be worth reading. And that's how the UI Kit looks (Use it for reference ONLY. It's copyrighted. And by the way, think twice before posting a link to a large image from your own server on a forum like this one... it consumes a hell lot of bandwidth with every thread view.)
Some split-testing Today I realized that I didn't pay enough attention to something: the subscription box for my mailing list through which I'm going to offer my themes for free for a few days, before submitting them to ThemeForest. More exactly, I built the whole "this is a unique secret link which allows you to subscribe" in just one afternoon, without paying enough attention to details and without making the viewer curious enough to want to join. Hence I only got 10 subscribers in about two weeks. So today I took several hours away from my theme designing time to replace this: With this: NOTE: You can find this at the same link as before, but you might need to refresh the page in order for it to look right, if you viewed it already. Difference, huh? Hopefully it will attract more people. So moral of the story: don't half-ass something as important as your subscription box. If you need subscribers, make sure you do your absolute best to attract them. Working on theme variants Right now I have finished 5 out of the 15 PSD files that I will offer together with the theme. These are: Home page (with slider) Page with sidebar (on the right) Page with sidebar (on the left) Page with two sidebars The UI kit This is actually pretty fast, since I already have all the graphics I need in the UI kit I made. I just need to put them together. And yes, I will tell you what all the files in the theme will be, so you can have the same ones (or more? or less? it's your decision) in your own themes. I'm also close to reaching 500 subscribers on Twitter, but I'm not going to tell you to follow me. Instead, I would like you to subscribe to this thread, comment to ask me any questions you might have, or offer feedback. I'm trying to make this thread as informative as possible, but I need your input too so I know what you need. I will be back as soon as I have something interesting to write about.
I don't feel like doing any design work today (although I totally should), so instead I'm working on my marketing and sharing some (hopefully) helpful stuff with you. Please note that I'm a complete newbie in regards to what I preach, so use my advice only if it makes sense to you. Files your theme MUST have I'm not only talking about the PSDs you must offer, but also about the page types that MUST work properly inside your theme so that buyers won't have trouble creating a certain kind of page. Here is the list: Home page (preferably with image slider included) Simple page with sidebar (on the right, on the left, and on both sides) About us page Team page (preferably with team members having some kind of "vcard" on the page, a short description about them, and links to their social media profiles) Hiring page (with a contact form, maybe) Pricing page (with one or two types of pricing tables for the buyer to chose from, "Sign up" button, and maybe also a little signup form) Blog page (posts, sidebar, page numbers, stuff like that) Single post (sidebar, comments, share buttons) Portfolio / Image Gallery Single portfolio item (quite optional, but good to offer) Page with a minimalist footer (instead of 3 columns with content, make it just a "Copyright" and maybe a small website navigation and "go to top" button) Whatever else you think someone might need. Think for yourself. Because this isn't exactly a blueprint, and I don't have enough experience for you to follow me too closely, I'm just trying to help. How I plan to promote my themes with Pinterest I have recently joined Dribbble and Pinterest. For Dribbble, I still don't have an invite yet, but I managed to get a Pinterest account (and you should too). I've read some stuff about Pinterest on teh internetz and this is how I'm going to try to get followers and also make more people sign up to my mailing list for free themes / special offers / kangaroos... Strategy Make a Pinterest account (seriously, did I really have to mention this?...) Create a board called "Themes" to upload screenshots of my upcoming themes. I also made sure to arrange all my boards so that this is the first one, and it has a link to join my mailing list in the description of every screenshot I pin. Also created a Portfolio board right next to the Themes board, because why the hell not. Create various boards related to your industry. I made Websites, Logos, User Interfaces, Illustrations, Business Cards, 3D, Flyers, Icons, and a bunch of more boards. I'm gradually uploading pics of my Passia theme in the Themes board, maybe one pic a day or even less. THIS IS WHAT I DO DAILY: Repin 10 images from various people to my Websites board, and 5 to each of my other boards. I also leave 10-20 comments a day to some of those who I repinned, telling them that I love X about their pin and I repinned it to my X board. This attracts people - hopefully. I also (daily too) follow roughly 100 people, but NOT at random. I look for those who follow more people than they have followers, so that they will most likely follow me back. Don't look just after having followers while not following anyone if you want to promote yourself! Repeat everyday until rich, and regularly advertise your own stuff (but not TOO regularly). See how this looks HERE. It's pretty much like this, but you'd better see it live: That's pretty much it. As you can see, I'm trying to build audience from 3 main sources (and a few secondary ones): Twitter, forums, and Pinterest. Also, pretty please: I know that people are reading this thread since I get quite a few PMs from you, but could you please comment if you really want to help me? Otherwise, if I am the only one writing in this thread, the DP moderators will regard it as spam and delete it... I've put a lot of effort in it and I know that you guys find it helpful, so please comment. Thanks!
First of all, thank you guys for rating this thread (it used to have 4 stars, now it has 5!) and giving me Thanks for my posts. I'm soon going to not have so many limits anymore, edit my posts and, of course, post images. Which you want to see. So keep rating! Back to the journal now... I decided to make some changes to my business strategy, and I'll explain them to you right now. 10 PSDs instead of 15 Why? Because I just don't feel they are important enough to make a PSD for them. Sure, they should exist in your theme demo (I'm talking about the HTML, WordPress, and whatever others may be), but it's useless to create a special PSD for each because all the elements already exist somewhere else. Red stuff must die: Home page (preferably with image slider included) Simple page with sidebar (on the right, on the left, and on both sides) About us page - Because it looks like a homepage without the image slider Team page - Because it's exactly the same as the About us page, plus the member cards that can be found in the UI kit. Hiring page - Same reason. Pricing page - Unless you are going to make it really special, forget about it. It's the same as the others I removed, plus a pricing table that's available in the UI kit. Blog page (posts, sidebar, page numbers, stuff like that) Single post (sidebar, comments, share buttons) Portfolio / Image Gallery Single portfolio item - Not really removed, but merged with the Single post, because it's almost the exact same thing (plus comments). Page with a minimalist footer (instead of 3 columns with content, make it just a "Copyright" and maybe a small website navigation and "go to top" button) • But Eduard, I really feel like I need to make a separate page for each thing you told me to forget about!!! Then make it. Simple. You don't have to follow what I say, pick up just what you think it's good for your business. Find a niche I know, I KNOW (oh, just shut up!) that I have previously said that my themes will be all-purpose because I believe my design is so heavenly that people would buy it regardless of what site they want to build. And I still believe this. I will, however, join a niche that I think would fit my themes the best. In my case, it's one-page portfolios (and blogs, which won't have just one page, but bear with me). I kind of start believing that, even in theme building, niches beat all-purpose stuff. I have analyzed the top theme sellers and, while they don't sell themes for a specific niche (ex: fitness, restaurants, etc.), each one of their themes fits one purpose. There are almost no "this theme does everything" pieces in their portfolios, and each one of their themes appeals more to a niche than the others (photography blog, electronics store, etc.). So what I suggest you? Well... Create themes for something you are interested in / know would sell well / there aren't many themes for (ex: fitness, churches, animals, educational institutions, web hosting companies, forums, weddings, whatever the hell you wanna make). Focus on a specific type of theme (vCard, ecommerce, CMS-specific themes, photo galleries, responsive designs, minimalist sites, etc.) Experiment. Make each theme of yours appeal to a specific niche. Pick just one of the 3 things above. Or hell, do whatever you want, these are just suggestions. After all, you know your target market better than I do (and if your target market is "everyone that needs a site"... good luck). I will come with more ideas for you, since I had to think of lots of them before finding what appeals to me the most. I'll share my lists of ideas with you all, eventually. Just keep this thread up for anyone to see (but don't exaggerate, because the mods would probably kill my a*s for it). That's it for today, and I really hope it helps someone. Maybe. I go work on my own stuff now, and you should too (I know, I say this all the time). Please comment! It takes me a lot of time to write all this stuff, and I'm sharing this with you simply because I try to have a positive impact on this forum. I won't, however, continue posting in this thread if nobody is going to comment, give me feedback, critics, and so on. I don't like talking to myself. people are viewing this thread, and sending me PMs. Instead of doing this, why won't you ask me your questions here for everyone to see?