Hello, I am wondering, how far can you go with the sponsored wordpress themes ? I can see many are going along with that service, I even found some with DP links on them .. IS this a good method for backlinking ? Can anyone post any review about how they`ve gone along the way ? Cheers
Well, this type of marketing can work good, but before going for such option, must ensure that the places particular wordpress theme will be advertised/marketed are good enough to attract more and more downloads.
if you are considering this specific method of link building, then you need to sponsor a LOT of themes from various different designers to get some backlinks. i myself sponsored few themes and couple of them way back last year. yet to see some backlinks
The main thing that scares me off from doing this is if the theme is used on what's considered a bad site, then I'd have bad sites linking back to me and I'd be penalized, but I could be wrong about how that works.
I don't think that bad sites linking to yours is an issue, as that is something that is completely out of your control. The issue that the search engines would penalize you for is if you linked to bad sites from your site. If you sponsor a theme, I'd recommend that you try to pick one that is likely to be used on sites with the same subject matter as yours, where possible. If you have a tech related site, then try to get sponsored links on tech related themes, for example.
I have gained some backlinks from sponsored themes in the past but I have mixed feelings about it, I read that google started punishing people for sponsoring themes I'm not sure whether or not it's true but you should look into it.
This can be very beneficial! I have an outdoor related hiking site and could not find a theme that really fit. I had one made offered to share it (with the link back to me in it) and my site has done well since other outdoor sites are linking to me just by using it.
They are very good in link building. You can also see your technorati stats go high. The only problem is that it depends on how many are going to download and us the theme with your site on it.
Something to consider is that Matt Cutts specifically mentioned that Google is discounting this form of link building in his blog. While it will probably not do you any harm. If Google was successful in creating the algorithm to detect these, they will will probably not do you any good either, At least form a link building point of view. People seem to often click on the links at the bottom of a page. If you design sites and they like the design of the theme, you are likely to get traffic from it.
I sponsored some themes (2 or 3) and only 2 sites ended up linking to me (after a year or so). When people download the themes, the just delete the footer links. I won't do that again.