Hi everybody I'm a wordpress theme designer and working in this field for about 2 years. I have made more than 300+ themes up to now for several sites and bloggers. I usually check my themes' stats and my clients' links on footers to see the efficiency of the themes for sponsors. Although, I'm a new member of DP, but found here a good place to share my experience with sponsors. Hope it can help you to decide what kind of themes would make more backlinks to your sites. 1- Magazine wordpress themes are more popular and lots of bloggers like magazine style wordpress themes. so better to invest on them. 2- Cute, girly, colorful and women related themes are great to be sponsored. 3- Some themes have some ad spaces on top or sidebars. ask the sellers to link them to your sites too. most of newbies don't know how to change ads links for several weeks and it would make some backlinks for you. also ask the buyers to use your own images or your site logo on their themes as ad, I see some newbies never remove these ads!!! 4- General themes always make more backlinks for you! because most of bloggers can use them. I sometimes see some of my general themes with some changes in headers, but no change in footer links and major style. So it means some bloggers change the header of the theme and re-design it for their own niche. 5- (This is very important!!) Unfortunately I've seen some professional bloggers change the footer links. Although designers encrypt the footers but it's not too difficult for prfessional bloggers to use another footer file instead of main file. But most of wordpress users are not so professional and they can't change the footer links. So Most of backlinks come from none-professional blogs! Noobs can't remove the links and use the original footers. So I'm sure a well-designed girly style theme (or something like that) can make more backlinks than a business related theme (for example)! 6- Ask the designers not to forget to put your links in themes' preview pages. it can make some backlinks too. 7- Always check zip files and test them. Sometimes there's some broken links or small problems in themes. So you can ask the seller to fix the issues. Some main problems are: Wrong links and titles on footer, wrong screenshot image and not working good on wide resolutions! 8- Always track your backlinks and see what kind of themes have made you more backlinks, then try to buy the same themes. Also don't forget to try new styles. 9- More submissions will bring you more benefits! a theme that is submited to 100+ sites is great deal better than 20+ sites! So don't hesitate to pay more for more submissions! 10- As a result of my experience the most requested themes are for these niches: Adults, magazine style, Music, diaries, women, health, news and personal themes. 11- (Bonus Tip ) The themes with graphical headers and specially illustrations are more popular than themes with real images or photos on header. So better to invest on them! Enjoy!
here are few more tips: 12. well written theme installation instructions including screenshots with theme zip file or on designers website and support from theme designer if the user needs any help. The readme file should be in txt format, as it will work on all platforms or a weblink would work. 13. Also, sponsors can add/distribute the theme on their blogs too. Each and every download will bring them backlink. 14. License details in a text file. like the images used and their terms & conditions. I will agree with most of your tips except few like adding our own ad in theme files. This may cause unnecessary issues. so I will say NO to that. I can provide more details on that if needed. other than that, Great tips, BTW.
Thanks mate for these 3 helpful tips, I see you have good experience in theme submission and glad to meet you. About this tip, it's just my own experiment. once I was checking some backlinks and I found this. Some backlinks came from ad links!!! When we use nice banner ads, related to the theme niche, style and structure, some bloggers don't remove the ads until they find some sponsors and replace the new banners. So it may help to improve backlinks lil more.
I will agree with most of your tips except few like adding our own ad in theme files. This may cause unnecessary issues. so I will say NO to that. I can provide more details on that if needed.
It depends on themes you sponsor and the niche. but it really works. Choosing right theme can help you more
Thanks for this tips. I think a well-designed magazine style theme can make a lot of backlinks, but I think also it's difficult to find real well-designed business related theme. License details in a text file is necessary in a lot of cases, with reproduction of branded products for example.
Pretty Nice tips indeed, actually these are basics we all Theme designers do, but yeah i liked your point about "Linking those advertisement blocks to link buyer's website" [125x125 and 300x250 ad blocks].
all i can say from my experience that 5 sposored themes wich i pay for them half a year back for one of my web directories made me some nice cash flow. I get arround 400 organic trafic from MSN for " Web Directory " and " backlinks " and 90% of my backlinks are from those themes. As the op said, themes were most from the general niche, just one was more for kitchen, receipes niche. Regards.