How we grew ThemeIsle into a $50k per month business | Hacker News Reader

How we grew ThemeIsle into a $50k per month business

medium.com

121 pointsaxelut37 comments

The article is well-written and presents some interesting insight and seemingly useful advice. But there are 2 major red flags here:

There are 2 fawning comments here on HN by newly created accounts. Maybe the green color of new accounts can be used to detect astroturfing. I have to assume this is on the front page in part due to such tactics (I don't know the exact HN algorithms however, so could be wrong--but the perception remains). Why risk any chance of organic interest by poisoning the well like that?

Especially since the article just leads me to uncover more shady behavior. The Medium article reveals and then glosses over a sudden halving of monthly revenue. Why write an article about $50K monthly instead of $100K? The link goes to another self-promoting "transparency" report has a link to a WP ticket [1] where anyone can read that the author refused for over a year to comply with WP theme rules. And these rules were specifically in areas to reduce self-promotion and one could characterize the theme's behavior as spammy. And this lack of rules compliance created extra work for WP in enforcing those rules (in other words copy-cats).

So in the end, what sounds like a nice and encouraging story now seems to be more of a whitewashing. This is sad because the ideas of WP theme development and marketplace sound interesting and perhaps rewarding as a small business opportunity, but now I tend to think success is due to spamminess, bending/breaking of rules, and astroturfing stories (and maybe reviews) on relevant sites.

In this light, the business model outlined and promoted here--buying and improving existing niche products--seems more like adding spamminess for profit. In fact, I am now questioning what creative and useful code did this company actually create (since they talked about buying every single one of their profitable products), as opposed to taking products that can't stand out in a crowded market and adding spammy and sticky features to them to game those marketplaces in ways that are not beneficial to consumers.

[1] https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/35906

> Why risk any chance of organic interest by poisoning the well like that?

You're proclaiming guilt as a matter-of-fact without any actual proof of it. You set up your own opinion and then matched a conclusion of fraud to it, seemingly without a second thought.

If I were to apply your framing approach to your own post, it comes across as though you're trying to talk down the article and injure their reputation by implying they're doing something wrong while possessing nothing more than an opinion. That's a leap too far, throwing around such accusations without solidly supporting them is inappropriate.

Hey @205guy,

Not sure what to say about first accusation, I haven't personally asked anybody to leave 'good looking' comments here, sure I bragged that we got on HN front-page, but I saw that is a flag/hide button that you can use in case you don't find this useful.

For next next part, the goal here wasn't to brag about how much money we made or we make, it was a story that I was encouraged to post initially on IndieHackers, I don't think the fact that we now make 50k instead of 100k makes the article less interesting, I would say the otherwise, sure if it would have been a gossip article, it might have worked better with a higher number.

Now the suspension story is too specific and complex to argue with you same for regarding the business model and innovation that we bring, I am happy that we have been able to bring amazing free products in front of that many people, while finding a business model to fund the initiative, same for managing to build team of amazing people.

On the another note, I appreciate that you took the time to leave your thoughts here, I find it useful since I mostly got positive but not many constructive messages.

I am not saying this is constructive, however it helps me realising how other people are thinking about our journey, even if some of them don't say it loud.

In a strange way, the article is still interesting. While reading I thought, aha, to earn $50000 a month with WordPress themes you have to do a couple of shady things (I also found the ticket you mentioned). The possible astroturfing just fits in the picture... Isn't that called a "growth hack" nowadays?

In the end the truth is always somewhere in between, but there cannot be an "in between" without the other end of the perception spectrum clearly laid out like this. One of the reasons I'm on HN is to see these comments upvoted as they should be. The author clearly chose their words carefully and is not malicious or vindictive. And the perception is absolutely true.

If the original author saw this as a golden opportunity to explain themselves all would be well, granted they are not (too) guilty of anything aforementioned. That would go to show how constructive and valuable such feedback truly is.

Those that love your product will pay you. Those that challenge your product will make your product better.

"Another thing we learned through A/B testing was that changing the default screenshot and the default demo of a theme, along with employing a good copywriter, makes a big difference."

Yup. This is part of why I get aggravated that people are so negative about paying writers. Good copy makes money for a business.

Believe me or not our editor (more than a copywriter) earns a bigger salary than me, but yep, only in this way I can get nicely edited articles on the front-page of HN :D

Do you have any idea what the career/educational path of your editor was like? While it's not a career I've ever thought of having, I've lately realized that at even a portion of that level of skill is a powerful thing to have.

He finished a computer science university, funny enough I don't know much more about his story, I need to ask :D http://karol.cc

Do you mind telling me how much he charges? What would be the expense for say 10-15 articles per month?

Hey!

As I noted before Karol isn't only writing stuff, this is in fact a small part of his job, he is editing/managing our other writers and he get's paid on an hourly basis.

The deal that we have is a bit more complex, but to get an idea we pay >$50 / hour.

There are copy writing services that can write articles for you. The one I am familiar with charges per word, so the cost would depend on the length of the article. If you want higher control that involves in house editors checking everything before it goes to you, you can set up a team. That will tend to cost more.

It irks me when bosses say that to employees (happened to me in the past). The boss works on his dream. The employee works for money. It's perfectly natural for the boss of a young company to earn the least of all (at least if you don't count various tax magic entrepreneurs can pull by buying everything they use "for the company").

I agree, that's why I earn less and yes, is not cool to say that to the employees :)

One big take away is how much these guys just kept at it despite fiscal failure for months/years on end. This business isn't for the meek at heart. It's so easy to get so discouraged, when your livelihood depends on it.

A big lesson here is to have a good financial education, what helped me a lot was the fact that even the business started to go really well, I didn't started to spend more, I pay myself a decent salary and I try to live with it, so even if the company get bankrupt, I would probably easily find a job somewhere else.

This helps to think more long term and do what is best for the company, while avoiding the extra 'personal' pressure from your wife, kids or others that rely on your income.

I'm curious why this was posted on Medium instead of using it as an opportunity to show off one of your WordPress themes?

Medium is its own network with visibility, its easier to surface an article through it than doing SEO.

It was a sort of the experiment to see how this will influence engagement.

I don't know enough about SEO to be sure but I believe Google will ding you for copy and pasting from your IndieHacker article. However, since neither of these sites are your main business, maybe it doesn't matter if G drops your medium account ranking a bit.

For me this is quite old fashioned Google approach, the whole medium re-posting + HN exposure I am sure it would have done better, even if the re-posting was on our site.

At least how I understand Google and I saw from some tests, he is quite smart in getting if an article/site is delivering great content or not and ignoring such issues.

What is the google SEO game like for themes nowadays? I see so much competition. It is even possible for a new player to get on the first page? I feel like all the big outfits like thememonster etc own all the real estate.

SEO game is not that difficult if you compare with other niches and is not owned by big theme players, due the how people are searching for themes is owned by blogs building collections of best xx themes.

A recipe that works now is something like : release few free themes, write some great articles and continue to keep them updated.

Well done.

How heavy is the support load for themes? With plugins there is a lot of customer support involved, and this is why good premium plugins are so expensive. Is it the same with themes?

Hey,

The load is quite big here too, especially considering the fact that we support free themes as well. What is challenging is to educate the users and help them understand that paying one time, upfront isn't helping them in the long run :)

What type of questions users usually asked?

Most of the questions are about how they can customise the look of their site, unfortunately most are out of the theme capabilities.

No questions (at least for now) but Zerif Lite has been my personal favorite. Have used it for several client sites. Thanks for the theme and all the best.

e.g. http://lamindiallo.com/

Glad to hear, right product and the right time :)

Interesting read, I appreciate stories like this and I think they are even more interesting when the struggles, dips, failures, mistakes, etc, are included in the narrative.

Often, persistence pays off. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

Cool to see this picked-up as a 2nd chance experiment on HN front-page. I would to answer questions about it :).

Until now is interesting to see how most of the people see it as a success story while we lost 50% of our revenues few months ago.

What was the cause of the 50% drop?

Hey,

Our main product got suspended from the w.org repository ( in short )

They had a really popular freemium theme that didn't meet some of the requirements the WP.org imposed. Some changes were nontrivial and so they weren't made (at least in time) and this very popular theme was suspended. More here if you're interested:

https://wptavern.com/zerif-lite-suspended-from-wordpress-the...

This is a great write up. Blog posts like this, open and honest help a lot for starting entrepreneurs. I recommend it to everyone who is here just for comments.

I feel like I had a quality business consultancy session worth top dollars after reading this. Thanks for the inspiration, and by the way, I love the Hestia WordPress theme.

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