Your Guide to Selling WordPress Themes: From Concept to Cash-Generating Strategy
Unlocking Your Theme's Potential
A WordPress theme is the perfect digital product, you build it once, and it can be sold infinitely. Whether you've built a theme already or you're planning a future build and promotion strategy, this guide will give you everything you need to turn your theme into a money-making machine.
Getting the theme basics right
Be aware that WordPress website developers have multiple core requirements before even considering purchasing your theme, like:
- Excellent WordPress Security,
- Compatibility with the leading Payment Gateway systems, like WooCommerce
- SEO features like the ability to optimise Meta titles
- Conversion rate optimised payment information and processing pages
- Compatibility with page builder plugins like the Gutenberg plugin or a simple built-in system
- Options for using custom fonts like Google Fonts or installing local fonts
- Simple ways to set up performance tracking like Google Analytics or the Facebook tracking pixel
Social media marketing
Ensuring that you are live on key social media platforms is essential; we'd recommend LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook at a minimum. However, you should tailor your social strategy to the demographics of your target audience and be sure to be present and active wherever they are.
Google ads marketing
Google Ads is a fast and direct means to drive visitors to your theme. A Google Ads agency like Disturb Digital who specialise in paid search marketing and lead generation, can not only help you with the setup and management of a Google Ads campaign to promote your WordPress theme, but they can also help you set up paid social campaigns that will help drive theme sales.
Innovative pricing
Using the Freemium model is a great method to get more visibility and sales for your theme. Free basic usage of your theme pulls in the crowds however you can then upsell users to the premium wordPress theme that has more functionality and features. The same concept can also be achieved with WordPress plugins that are designed to work together seamlessly with your theme, or even better a plugin collection.
Community targeted discounts
Discounts are a great approach that allow you to align your WordPress Theme with causes you believe in or relevant communities, such as charity discounts or even offering the theme for free in situations where the theme will receive lots of attention and the online business in question doesn't mind promoting the theme in return.
Affiliate marketing
An affiliate marketing campaign is a great way to drive visibility for your WordPress theme (and your WordPress plugins). They not only drive awareness for your theme, they also have the added benefit of driving sales, although you do then also have to factor scheme membership management, affiliate software licensing and the impact of paying out commissions on your theme pricing.
Envato marketplace
Becoming a power elite author on theme and plugin marketplaces like Envato Marketplace can help drive sales, awareness and trust in your WordPress themes and plugins.
For the immediate future we doubt AI website generators or platforms like Framer will immediately disrupt the marketplace for WordPress themes and WordPress hosting, although we do expect the CMS market to continue to expand and evolve.
A helpful support department
Ensuring that theme support tickets are answered quickly and efficiently, and that the support department offers friendly and polite customer services is a commonly overlooked way to drive sales. Your theme can be beautiful but if users can see a well maintained Support ticket system you may easily miss out on sales.
Email marketing
Email is a powerful tool to help promote WordPress themes, however if this is your first theme or plugin the biggest opportunity may come from getting featured on existing email marketing lists whilst you work at building up your own list.
Strategic partnerships
Partnering with specialist WordPress hosting providers like InstaWP store can help drive visibility for your WordPress themes in the right target audience group. Partnering with digital resources providers generally presents a distinct opportunity as WordPress powers 43% of the internet so it's very likely someone seeking any digital resource may be part of your target audience.
Demo content
Ensuring that you have a strong demo site and demo content will allow users to visualise the site that they want to create and may make the difference between a sale and them hitting the back button. If design skills are not your strong point then consider finding someone to create demo sites and multi-skin templates that really showcase your theme functionality and give users an easy starting point for creating their websites.
