ThemeForest author to sell more than $1million in WordPress stock themes
notes.envato.com
notes.envato.com
The $1M story is amazing but I think it is even more important to note how many authors are making a good living on the Envato marketplaces, not just the super-success stories. There are many, many authors who are making a good side-income or even enough to quit their day-jobs. The barrier to entry is super-low and making money is much easier than marketing your own wares on your own site. Have a look at the top sellers pages for the past month, or quarter, and do the sums. The money is excellent.
Their latest marketplace, Photodune is growing rapidly. It has very good payment rates compared to competitors. Worth trying out if you are a good photographer.
Also, if you are a Ruby dev in Melbourne, they are ALWAYS hiring. It is a great place to work.
End of unpaid commercial. I could go on forever.
I finally convinced my brother to submit some of his music clips to AudioJungle and he was thrilled when they actually sold.
Ok, so as a composer $60 for a few clips isn't much (when you really want commissions in the $1000+ region :)) but it was validation that people were interested in his work.
Great stuff :)
Watching someone go through their design submission process recently, I heavily disagree. It seemed purposefully arcane and difficult.
Edited to put a little bit of substance:
- They don't make all information you need public. You'll only find out about the not explicitly stated rules/policies/guidelines after you're rejected for not following one.
- They provide minimal to no feedback on rejections.
- They made many statements that were demonstrably false about various things.
And other things. It didn't seem to be a very pleasant experience.
Disclaimer: I work for the company that owns ThemeForest!
Once you get past the first ten, they generally look fresh. Sometimes the first ten are great themselves, for sub-categories. Regardless, after you customize the colors and logo it looks even more fresh.
Edit: and I wonder what the cost of support is, here is his forum http://www.kriesi.at/support/ he seems to have a few support staff on there.
As long as the themes and plugins are GPL-licensed, it should be fine by the community is my understanding. Selling, by itself, was never an issue.
Wordpress.org itself showcases some of these commercial themes: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/
ThemeForest actually uses a split license, wherein the templates within the theme are GPL, but the CSS, images, or non-WordPress dependent things in the theme are "protected" under a different license.
GPL has essentially turned into a non-issue for commercial WordPress entities that have gone that route. This doesn't mean they don't get copied and stolen, because it happens all the time - just like non GPL products. But the business models are well beyond selling a template and forgetting about it. Support, updates, reputation, code quality, and other factors are a driving force as to why someone would buy a theme from the actual provider rather than a "legally" ripped version for a fraction of the price.
Themes get stolen and copied all over the place. I often have a hard time advising clients to not do that just because it is available. Most of the redistributed versions often contain hidden links and other security issues.
For that and all the points you have mentioned, the price of these themes are nothing compared to the service a good theme developer provides you.