I've been doing a little digging in this area for few days and see mixed feedback. Some say they havn't seen any result and it didn't give them any backlinks therefore proved to be a failed link building campaign, and some say (including some SEO sites) that it can be an effective technique. People who didn't find it useful often sponsored a theme that didn't have footer link protection or sponsored link was not encrypted. Therefore it could easily be removed by the theme user. I see people selling theme sponsorship with encrypted footer link protection where the link is coded in CSS and only people with knowledge of CSS can remove those links. It does provide little protection on investment. This article here (and I found few others searching G) suggests that it can be an efective link building method. http://www.doshdosh.com/link-building-with-word-press-theme-sponsorship-a-good-idea/ Anyone seen any good result with this? I've just recently sponsored 2 themes with encrypted footer links and before I go sponsor more, just need some feedback from others to see anyone had any success with this in terms of getting any backlinks. Thanks for sharing and happy link building....
Hi there. The main thing behind the low rate of recent success is that the Theme are not that good. As a result, many people don't use them. Compared to better themes, with no sponsored links. It does not matter if Wp.com and weblogtools doesn't accept sponsored links, if your theme is sexy enough, people will use it anyhow. The more people use, the higher success you will recieve.
I have sponsored quite a few themes and I see that I have several hundred backlinks from them. Funnily its the themes without the encryption that seem to have done the best and obviously whoever is using them just doesn't bother to remove it Quite how good this has helped me with the SERPS i have yet to find out and I guess this is the most important thing.
Like eHab says it really will depend on the quality of the theme you're sponsoring. Another example of you get what you pay for. Spend that little bit extra on sponsoring a decent theme and you'll start to see some results. - Matt
sounds good. i don;t mind spending more but i need result. will do a little more research in this area to see which themes are popular and mostly downloaded, then sponsor those thems. thanks for your feedback everyone.
Although it takes a while after the sponsorship for people to find and use the template or theme, then for the SE's to find and report the links, it is a good way of getting backlinks. The thing that seems pretty important is to sponsor themes that would likely be used with content related to your own. Otherwise, it's pretty much a waste.
thats would be ideal as it would give me related backlinks but its kinda hard to control that. no one can tell what blog will be built on that theme. but if i have a computer related site, a computer related theme will be more approrpiate which is understandable. but what i have seen so far is that plain and simple blogs with not specific niche targated gets downloaded and used most. and these plain uncategorized themes don;t get replaced by other thems so often either. also, sponsoring a theme in the related niche is not always an option.
In my case, I target certain sports. So I contact theme builders that have shown great talent and ask them to build specific themes for me. That is my suggestion to you.
never thought about contacting the theme builder about creating theme in my niche. that for your suggestion.
i did sponor atlest 5 thream not much till now but i thinks it a nice way to get links we need to wait
just found out that 2 themes i sponsored about couple of weeks ago, 2-3 backlinks are now showing. hopefully will get more in the near future. one thing i found out that most of the theme sites don't accept any sponsored themes anymore do sponsored theme's distribution is kinda limited.