Are they worthwhile? just wondering if anyone has had any success stories with these.. How many backlinks will a well designed theme give you?
I have heard many successful stories, but I designed one template one time(it wasn't wordpress), and I didn't get any backlinks.
With themes.wordpress.net and weblogtoolscollection.com coming down heavily on sponsored themes, its not a worthwhile option anymore. If you want to promote your site via WP themes, its better to make them ourselves. Sponsored Wordpress themes market seems dead.
It really depends on how well you promote/market your theme. IMO, sponsoring WP themes to get backlinks is a nice method but there are already tons of em so you need to make something better. Also, the WP theme market is going kinda down so its cheap these days to sponsor a theme !!
I've found any benefit is rather transitory. You get a reasonable number of people who install the theme and then either: 1) It's a new blog that doesn't get past the first few posts - so nothing else happens 2) If they get their act together - they switch out of the theme a few weeks later - so you lose the link anyway. Dylan
I have sponsored about 20 and yes its a very common problem, they either remove the link or change the theme. Out of all those themes i have only had one big success, and thats a PR6 .edu library blog using it with about 300 pages. The rest that are still being used are basically zero or low PR sites. So its not really worth it anymore.
to avoid the issue of people removing the sponsored links, look for one that offers encrypted footer link which cannot be removed very easily. and also on how many sites the themes are being submitted. theme designer will be able to tell you which sites the theme will be submitted. more the better.
i have become two wp theme sponsor but i did not get success from them. it's better to find another way