How to Make A Successful Auction on Digital Point (quick guide)

gr8 post. surely worth a rep. shouldn't tht be sticken then?

 

thanks for your info, very good post

 

thanks again everyone for the feedback and kind comments!

I already had thought about it, yes, but got a "no"


feng, thanks for your comment i believe some (i dont say all!) designers also use the "lowering the prices" technique to bump their own thread later. For example you would see a theme that is, let's say, below average with BINs $80+ per link and that designer has never even sold any theme for more than $40/per link. After a few days he or she would keep "lowing the BIN prices" and bring their thread back to the front page.

I agree with you that lowering the prices is never a good idea. Some well known brands never have end of season sales or never lower the prices even if the item was never sold only in order not to lose their reputation. If the advertiser knows that a certain designer always lowers the prices after 1-2 days, he will learn not to bid directly, and its catch 22 -- no one bids because the designer is expected to lower the prices and eventually s/he does lower it because no one bids.

Another aspect in advertiser's psychology is -- "WHY no one bought yet, if its good?" More experienced buyers would be able to separate high quality themes that were just unlucky with sales from lower quality ones, but some advertisers (unfortunately) do rely on other's choice, i.e. if one has lowered the price 2 times already and still no bids, they assume that there must be "something wrong with it".

It's really important to think of a reasonable price before you auction it. Browse others' auction, see what gets sold and what does not, what trends advertisers are looking for and what is the quality standard for each price level.

oh and.. Good luck!

 

Great guide!
Is it general auctions or just wordpress themes?

 

Hi Lorelei,

May be I am reading this post very late. You have a really nice article setup here. There are some useful general guidelines which if followed would make the sponsored theme auctions run much better. But if your target audience are the majority of sponsored theme designers, I think most of them would not care.

I am in this field for about an year now. In the early days there were very few of us. I am not going name them all, but we all had our own style of making themes. None of us copied or ripped each other. Most of us maintained a signature style of work which gave us an identity. I could simply recognize the designer of any theme by a single glance at it. There was a healthy competition to make unique themes.

It was then the opportunistic lot of , crappy, so called over night designers jumped in to the scene smelling chance to make some quick cash. They were not one or two, they were too many, like virus they multiplied taking duplicate accounts. They did not have any idea about this industry, they did not had any respect for talented designers. I am not talking about me, but about those designers out there like Brian, Cunningham, Bartelme, Nick and more, whose designs would humble me anyday.. Themes made by these designers and ours also were ripped and sponsor links were sold on them for even $5.

They flooded the official themesite of wordpress with these crap for months. What is so annoying that this new population of crappers actually represented the sponsored theme designer community , not the designers who followed some ethical princples, whom to blame ? majority rulez. The outcry for removing this craps from the official themesite of wordpress was so loud that they eventually removed all sponsored themes, not just the crap , the good ones too. So many new themesites emerged on the following days to keep the market going. But it is steadily falling as these crappers still contaminating the scene. so many have been banned but nothing has changed.

May be I am going too much into the history, ..sorry.. This is the first time I am writing down these things which I had in my mind for too long..

My tip for running a successful auction is to be unique.
Present your auction in a unique way, display your preview picture in a unique way, most important make sure your theme is at least not just a color variation of your last theme.
But you cannot stick to one style for too long as there are so many copycats.
These copycats wants to copy how you display your post title, preview image, auction setup even the demo site contents..
Make sure to keep a good relation with your repeated customers and make them understand that you could do the best for them than any one else.

Never set a price too high or too low for your designs than what you think it actually deserves. If you have a habit of setting a BIN price of $100 for a link and drop it to $25 in two days, you are ruining your own business. Buyers will learn your pattern and will wait to bid on your theme till you drop your price. if you did not sell links on one theme, its more worthy to release it with your own links than with a bunch of $5 links.

well I guess thats all I wanted to say, and as in Mark 4:9 in the Holy Bible " And He was saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

cheers
Jinsona

 

There is some really good info there. I like the fact that you went to the trouble to include images to suplement the content.

 

Great job, You have worked on this article serously. Thanks

 

Thanks for taking the time to write a reply Jinsona. As being one of the leading designers today I really value your opinion and You outline a lot of issues with today's market that i am sure many people have the same thoughts in their minds but there is no place or opportunity to vent all the rant out.

I know it's true, and the problem is even bigger than you portray.

For example, I am not a wp coder, I am graphical designer (that can do css sites), so in order to make a wordpress theme I need to either buy one with reseller rights that I can freely modify, or team up with someone who will code my psd for low price. Over the past months, I bought 2 themes with reseller rights here on dp -- both turned to be ripped, one of them as you know was yours and the "designer" who begged practically on his knees not to disclose his nick later on sold your themes here also in public and I saw you nailed him. If it was a pure mistake and misunderstanding like he tried to convince me, why would he do it again over and over? Guess now you know who it was. That's today's market, and you are right in saying that they just couldn't care less.

The iTrader misleads big time also, you see a few possitive itraders from buyers and trust the person, but you don't take into account that those who bought a beautiful rip off, got their link added, and gave an iTrader for the good and fast deal, don't always know they paid for a ripped theme.

When someone takes a high quality (someone's..) photo, puts it on a quality (someone's..) theme and sells links like you say for $5, the buyer don't see a reason to pay $xxx for an averagely looking theme (never mind how unique it is), when he sees a mind blowing work for a price of an icecream. You can't blame buyers because they are not as deep in this industry like the designers (and mostly don't understand in themes so much), but on the other hand you can't fight the rippers cos there are way too many of them.

I wrote a post about it in my blog a while ago, I think eventually the good designers will step down from making free wp themes, either thanks to the current low price standard, or the lack of serious advertisers, and the sponsored themes market will fade away.

That's simple. They see you sell your links for BINs and they do not, so they think if they will add [[ to their post title or make a screenshot like you, they will get binned also...

I wrote in my thread here that many sellers (and I think that is the most suitable word) say they will promote on v7 and themes.wordpress.net while these sites don't even accept sponsored themes, I see some went farther and include a few of MY sites in their list (including my web design service site), where they can't even make an account. That only proves they blindly copy a list without even checking if they can promote there.

Lately I noticed that a few dozens of wp sellers got banned on DP and its great to see that the mods take some action on this, although I doubt they got banned for ripping, probably for multiple accounts. It's a shame that april's fool joke was just a joke, I am sure if there was a listing fee, the $5 link sellers would automatically get thrown out of the market...

 

Thanks for that, it was really helpful (+REP)

 

This was a great post thanks

 

very nice guide. Appreciate!!

 

All the WP theme designers must have a minimum selling price not lower than $250 for four sponsored links including the designer link. I have seeen people selling 3 links for just $80 bucks, Please don't ruin this industry and give it the same curse where the web hosting industry is hvn, as you know there are web hosts who practically sell web hosting for as low as $0.50 cents per month. but at the same time you cannot expect a higher quality service from such hosts.

So plssss have a minimum standard pricing for WP theme sponsorships without selling your skills for peanuts, in order to make a quick buck,.... other wise this industry also will rott in hell

 

That is so informative, great job!

Just what I needed for my upcoming debut product launch!

 

I think it's already rottening for some time now..

Well, forcing at least a minimum BID / BIN is a great idea to somehow set a standard for link sales, just like we all known an average price for a certain PR link, and anything that goes below/over the estimated price is suspicious, but while its perfect in theory, its impossible in practice because of the geographical and age differences.

First, you can't put all the webmasters worldwide on one scale. Please don't take my comment as racist in any way because its not, I am speaking strictly from world's economical viewpoint. Let's take the $250 you suggested -- $250 for a webmasters somewhere in west Europe are not same $250 for a webmaster somewhere in the Far East. In somewhere like UK, you can maybe buy yourself a few stuff with these money, but it's not a mind blowing sum, while a webmaster in far east can probably feed his whole family the entire month for this money and even afford loads of luxuries.

So, there is no need, for a webmaster from a country with cheap prices, to set up such a high standard. He / She can work 2 days on a theme, sell it for $100, which will be equal to the monthly minimum wage in their country and he will be more than happy. If I (or anyone in an overpriced country) work 2 days on a theme and get $100, I only gather 1/20 off the monthly minimum wage in my place, so practically; I can't sell for such money even if I want to beat the competition.

Second aspect is the age. Some designers are 25-30, others are 12-15, and yes there are real kids in this business today, especially now during the summer vacation when EVERYONE seem to make wp themes in their leisure time. So again, for an adult (anywhere) $250 will in no time dissolve into bills, food, and tons of other expenses, while for a kid (even in so-to-speak "expensive" countries), even half of this sum for his solely lil` expenses is more than he could ever dream off, he can make one theme and go buy himself a play station, which otherwise you could have never got.

That brings us to the point that if we put all the webmasters in one line, not everyone really needs this minimum barrier, some will be happy to flog their theme for $80, or even less. I am not even talking about aspects like quality and we all know that some themes released today are an outrageous crap. I won't point at any specific themes, of course, but some auctions I see here really amaze me, there are themes below any reasonable quality standard..

I'd rather enforce some quality standard for auctioning the theme, together with price standard. But again, it's a good idea that can't really be implemented into reality as there is no one to actually monitor this business and set the standards, just loads of random individuals selling and buying..

 

Awesome guide Lorelei.. hats off!

 

@jinsona: i do remember the time when there were only like about 4 of us doing theme sponsorship.. what was great about that time was we all had different styles .. and completely different themes ( you are right on that). then i decided to stop offering themes for sponsorship and moved on to doing custom wordpress themes. what was great about that time was knowing we don't try and rip off themes. we respect each others work. looking at the theme sponsorship market now, it is very saturated indeed but then it is still easy to separate yourself from others because of the quality of theme being produced.

i hope other people who are in into wordpress sponsorship now, would give the same respect as before.. never rip off themes then sell it for $10 each link. this isn't easy money. there are a lot of work being put into producing wordpress themes.

sponsors don't even check if the themes they are bidding on are ripped. sure you get 5 cheap links at $10 each but are you getting the most out of your investment? why not use $50 on one theme that is a high quality theme and that you are sure will get more downloads than 5 crappy ones?

@lorelie: i salute you for putting up a very good guide.as i have said before, i do like your themes and you have my respect. not only is this applicable to wordpress theme sponsorship.. but running a general auction as well.