Starting a Theme Selling Business From Zero

[3dy]

Hello new friends at IMT,

I've just joined you on this forum and, rather than writing an introduction post that nobody will care about, I'm going to keep this thread as a journal of my work towards becoming a successful theme seller (I'm talking about HTML themes, WordPress themes, and all that jazz).

But just so that nobody complains that I didn't introduce myself, here you go: My name is Eduard and I have been working in the web design business for 2 years now, and just recently switched to it full-time.

I am right now more interested in creating and selling digital products (in this case HTML and WordPress themes) than doing client work.

In this thread, I will share with you my process, my goals, and everything else that I feel will have an impact in the number of sales I receive for my themes in the future. Keep in mind that right now, today (August 16, 2012), I'm starting from absolute scratch, only with the design skills I have acquired during my 2 years of freelancing.

So here we go with the themes...

My first theme
I'm working right now on an all-purpose theme, which has a name that I won't share with you just yet. When I'm done designing, I will first submit the PSD to ThemeForest and, if it's accepted, I will move onto creating the HTML version of it, and then the WordPress one.

Goals with this theme:
• Earn $500 from it (sum of the sales for the PSD, HTML, and WP versions). Which is indeed very low but right now I'll settle for it (will explain later why).
• Make a mailing list of 100 people interested in website themes.
• Learn how to make a high quality and easily customizable HTML and WP theme, regardless of how much time it takes me to reach this level.
• Apply some creative marketing tactics in order to boost sales, which I will share with you in this thread.
• Get used to the Take No Days Off approach, which means that social life and any other distractor / time-waster are off, and the entire day is spent exclusively working on my business. Also, the day ends when I crash, and the TNDO period ends when I reach my goal.

Come with me on this journey!
I'm not writing this thread for myself. I mean, I kind of do, since hopefully some of you will get interested in my themes, but that's not the idea.

I'm writing this for anyone here on IMT trying to start a product-selling business from absolute scratch. So if you want to know what I'm going through, follow me:
• Subscribe to this thread (I will update it regularly)
• Follow me on Twitter (3dyro - you'll get freebies too)
• PM me your e-mail address to add you to my mailing list (more deals and freebies, and I'll make a weekly raffle for a free license to one of my future themes)

Hopefully you'll find this stuff useful, and hopefully it will survive the review process of our moderators (if you feel this smells like spam, remove the name of my Twitter account, but leave the text because I'm really trying to provide good advice here and keep this thread as a journal, case study, whatever).

Back to Photoshop now... wish me luck.

[Nemanja]

I wish you luck and can't wait to see your progress.

[Mallotum]

good luck, will be interesting to see your journey

[proseocontent]

He buddy, good luck. I will subscribe this thread to read more from you.

[3dy]

Thanks, guys, for the encouraging comments, I didn't really expect this kind of positive reaction!

Okay, so first day in.

Actually, it's not the first day. I've been working on the layout for over a week now, but only last couple days I worked 12h+/day.

The theme starts shaping up, although I'm not completely happy with it, and I will keep working, doing my absolute best until I'm 100% satisfied with the result and I say to myself "Eduard, you are one hell of a designer, and handsome too!".

Important: I have just contacted the top 10 theme authors on ThemeForest and asked them for feedback on my design. Hopefully at least a couple of them will be willing to give me some tips on how to improve it, 'cause these guys are insanely skilled.

Other than that, it's been a good day. I'm sucked of all my creative juice and can't do anything in Photoshop anymore today, so right now I'm sketching layout variants and working on my marketing.

Marketing before this thread
I haven't done much marketing for my themes (or even my web design studio), other than having an account on 3 big forums (yep, IMTalk included!) and trying to help people with web design-related problems, hoping they would click my signature link. My activity has been low anyway.

I also made an account for the studio on Twitter and Facebook, but I won't give you the links until I'll consider that I contributed enough to IMTalk to deserve them.

Noteworthy: On Twitter, I have made an account and I'm sending a few tweets a day about entrepreneurship / marketing / startups / anything like this, because this is the target market for my themes: a small business or just an entrepreneur who wants to get a cost-effective site for his business / product, and look professional to his clients.

The Twitter account has been up for - I think - 2 weeks, and the use of hashtags and quality of the tweets has got me a decent number of followers (325 right this second).

Anything else?
Well, not really. Tomorrow I'm going to finish the design (and will show you a screenshot!) and maybe also create the UI kit for it (forms, headings, columns, buttons of different shapes and sizes, and anything else someone might want to use on their website). And, of course, I'll keep you updated - so subscribe to this thread! I'm not writing it for myself...

[castor]

Hi mate, good luck with your themes and your business. I wonder which marketing methods will be used and how successful will you be. Anyway I get back regularly to this post.

[JustGoWithIt]

It seems promising. Good luck with your project friend! Waiting to hear more about your progress..

[salman]

Good luck dude ... Eager to see what you come up with !

[3dy]

Second day in, and this thread has got a decent number of views, exactly as I wanted. As long as it will be seen every day by a satisfactory number of people, I will continue to update it (otherwise I'm not going to waste my time, which is sooo precious nowadays!... [arrogance off now]).

So you might be interested through what I went today and what new ideas I got. Then continue reading...

The Grind
I got half burnt out today, but kept pushing myself. The result was incredible. I didn't expect to finish the design part of Theme no. 1 until many days from now on, but I got to a point where I'm satisfied with the result (not fully, but I consider it of enough quality to be released, and I believe that more work on it in Photoshop won't be justified by the small improvements I might be able to make to it).

From a creativity point of view, I'm sucked. But that's good, because the grind kicks in now. And I'll explain you in a second.

You see, the theme selling business is made of much more than just creative work (i.e. Photoshop stuff). The layout has to be organized (I'm talking about the Photoshop layers), and theme variants should be made. And this takes time.

This means that, for a week (at the very minimum) from now on, I'm going to be busy getting the design ready for being submitted to ThemeForest.


In a nutshell
Today I have finished the main layout for the theme, organized the layers (takes a hell lot of time if you have thousands of them, as I do), and right now I'm working on the demo, documentation and, indeed, marketing (tweeting and making forum accounts and being helpful in order to get people to trust me and visit my signature link).

There are a lot of marketing strategies going through my mind at the moment and I'll share them with you at the right time (actually, I just have to refine them, decide which ones I'm gonna use, etc.).


Also, quick FAQ for you guys
Here I'm trying to answer some of the questions I got by PM, and some that nobody asked, but you might have.

• Why do you want to make just $500 of your first theme?
I plan to make much more than that, but this is the minimum that I want to get before moving to the next one for which I'll expect $1,000, and the next one for which I'll expect double this money, and so on. Based on my research of the market, I can say that it's much harder to earn $500 of your first premium theme than you think.

• Why not give it away for free?
Sales of my first theme will be (hopefully) boosted by some free stuff, and I'll tell you what it is at the right time (subscribe to the thread!).

• Why don't you stick to a niche?
Because I don't want to. I'm confident that my designs will be of high enough quality to compete with other all-purpose designs. Also, I don't care about any niche in particular, but I'm sure that you can apply my advice / findings to a niche as well, if you're going to start doing the same thing that I'm trying to do now.

• OMG you're not taking any days off?
Yes, it's called grinding, and you can learn more about it on YouTube, searching for "HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT PT.II" (not allowed to post links yet, and neither to use an avatar, which is kind of frustrating for a designer). I've set a goal, and I'm going to work on it regardless of what people think, say, or how I feel.

BUT, OF COURSE, this doesn't mean I go full retard. It just means that I'm working harder than 99% of the people and using my time wisely. When I'm not designing I'm planning, sketching, or writing, that's the idea.

• B-b-but your health!!!
I'm completely healthy. I take regular breaks from the computer and have been working out since I know myself. My diet is clean and my eyes are fine.

• One more question: Why so arrogant?
I'm not, I'm just tired and trying to give good advice and, at the same time, motivate you.

That's it for today, folks. Keep subscribing to the thread if you want to see more of this.

If this thread gets 100 views and/or 10 comments by tomorrow (total), I'll show you a screenshot of the design. So share this thread because I'm not writing it for myself.

Have a great day, guys. I know I will. Back to work nooow... (I'm actually going to eat right now, but you don't care anyways. )

[proseocontent]

Im really waiting for more post and a scrennshot of your theme ! Wait ... wait ...

[Nemanja]

Nice write up so far... I'm waiting on next one...

And you will be able to post links and other stuff as soon as you reach rookie level here at IMT,
I assume you are familiar with it(the activity system) and the reason why it is introduced and used here.

[raglady]

i want the screenshot of the theme too.

[Prestiige]

I love journey threads and this is a type of journey I've never seen before. I can't wait to see how it goes over he next couple months. Do you still do layouts for a single customer? I'm looking for somebody to design one for my new project.

[3dy]

It took a long time to finish the design of the theme, but I can finally say that (after a bit over a week ok work and no updates from me) I'm content with it. So keep reading.

What I did this week
• Finished organizing the PSD file of the theme
I'm talking about the main one, because I'm going to make 15 PSDs for it - it's hard, but that's what the best guys on the market to, and that's what I'll do as well (and you should do too, if you're gonna jump into this kind of business).

• Replaced the Lorem ipsum with some descriptive text about the theme
Not many people do this, but it definitely attracts buyers. So keep this in mind when you're creating your themes: Lorem ipsum says nothing, maybe just "I'm too lazy to put maximum effort into my creation". Be smart, and use it as an advertisement for your product.

• Prepared a marketing stunt
Well, maybe not exactly a stunt - it's just a little marketing strategy that you can definitely adopt too - I decided to offer my first theme for free to those who give me their e-mail address.

How am I doing it?

Well, I set up a subscription box on my website, accessible just by those who have a special link - a link which I will share on Twitter, my signature in forums, etc. It looks something like this: 3dy.ro?secret#imtalk.

And right now I'm trying to spread the link. I'll tell people that they'll get my premium theme for free if they subscribe, and hopefully they will do. And regarding you getting it too... I don't know whether or not this kind of advertising is allowed here, so I'm not going to push my luck. I'll put it in my signature as soon as I'm allowed... until then, you can follow the link I mentioned above.

Addressing some questions
I got some questions by PM / comment, and will address them here.

• Why don't you go for Bootstrap instead of WordPress?
Honestly, I don't believe that much in the possibility that Bootstrap will beat WP anytime soon. However, I will turn my themes into Bootstrap, as long as there will be requests for it.

• What about the warez, man? THEY'LL BE STEALING YOUR CONTENT!!!
Aaand I couldn't care less about this. Warez is a fact, everyone who creates a product that's worth something will eventually face this problem. Some people waste their time trying to combat this, but I won't.

WHY???

Because those who download my theme from torrent sites wouldn't buy it anyway. I can't earn anything from those guys, so let them have it.

The preview you've been waiting for...
I'm not allowed to post links, and I tried to attach it but the attachment system is really restrictive... so here is a link (yes, you'll have to copy and paste it into your URL bar):

3dy.ro/themes/PassiaPreview.png

Also, mr. Nemanja-administrator-thingy, I understand that my account is too new for posting links and I have no problem with this.

And to all those who seem to like reading my "journal entries" and encourage me too keep going... a million thanks! It's insanely motivating!

But enough with this now. I go keep working (starting to make the other layout variants, ex: with sidebar on the left, sidebar on the right, portfolio page, etc.). Take care, guys. Will come with a new update soon, hopefully in a day or two.

[3dy]

I forgot to mention that the screenshot still has Lorem Ipsum in it rather than real informative text, because I still have to work a little bit more on it (make it sound prettier... I'm not really good at this, as you can see).

[Phoenyx]

I think it looks pretty awesome I love the color scheme and the layout.

[3dy]

I think it looks pretty awesome I love the color scheme and the layout.

Tomorrow I will come with something even bigger, so stay tuned. I've been working on it for the last 2 days (and thinking about it for the last few weeks), so I really hope it will be of value for you all. Thanks so much for your comment... and by the way, there are going to be about 10 pre-made color schemes and buyers will be able to make their own easily... and I'll tell you how to implement this too into your themes.

But for now I'm off to sleep.

[Phoenyx]

Excellent. Having it in more than one scheme would be awesome instead of just one. I have seen many themes that would look great in other color schemes, but the theme itself just doesn't support it, or sometimes it does, but you can only make basic changes and there's no real fun in that. Will this theme come with plugins installed, or will you leave that up to the buyer when they have the theme on their site?

[3dy]

Big, BIG update!

I'm so insanely excited! After lots of hard work I can finally say that the UI Kit for the theme is ready!

But before anything else, let me answer your question...

What is this UI Kit that you're talking about, Eduard? What does it have to do with theme creation?
A UI Kit is a set of elements that those who buy your theme can use based on their needs. Why should you include one into your themes? Because if someone wants to put a pricing table on their site while using your theme and it doesn't fit the rest of your design, he/she will be pissed off.

You can use my UI Kit as a reference for what you should include in yours. But, for the sake of lists, it should contain:

• Navbar with hovered / active / inactive buttons and sub-menus
• Share buttons
• Slider styles (the more the better)
• Portfolio thumbnails / frames
• Many, many button types with hovered / active / inactive states
• Description / caption boxes
• Content widgets (I made a tabs and an accordion widget)
• Form elements: fields, text areas, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, submit buttons, error / success messages / tooltips
• I added a team member card as well, and you better do it too
• Tables
• Pricing chart
• Comments
• List style types (as many bullets as possible: circle, arrow, plus, minus, tick, x, etc.)
• Anything else is fairly optional

That's how it looks.
(Use it for reference ONLY. It's copyrighted. And by the way, think twice before posting a link to a large image from your own server on a forum like this one... it consumes a hell lot of bandwidth with every thread view.)
i.imgur.com/om6NV.jpg
(No, it's not a link. I can't post one...)

What about the marketing?
Well, not that bad. Although I didn't have too much time to take care of it, my Twitter account is rocking 480+ handsome followers (follow me, follow me, follow me! 3dyro), and my mailing list... uhm... 10 subscribers, but growing. Lots of people want to get e premium theme for free, you know?

So if you are going to start a similar business make sure you give something away for free to make people come at you.

Replying to mah friendz

Will this theme come with plugins installed, or will you leave that up to the buyer when they have the theme on their site?

It won't come with any pre-installed plug-ins (most probably), but I will make sure it will support them all. I'll also include a list of suggested plug-ins in theme's documentation.

And that's pretty much it for today. Now you guys go work on your own projects.

[3dy]

Some split-testing
Today I realized that I didn't pay enough attention to something: the subscription box for my mailing list through which I'm going to offer my themes for free for a few days, before submitting them to ThemeForest.

More exactly, I built the whole "this is a unique secret link which allows you to subscribe" in just one afternoon, without paying enough attention to details and without making the viewer curious enough to want to join.

Hence I only got 10 subscribers in about two weeks.

So today I took several hours away from my theme designing time to replace this:
oldSubscriptionBox.jpg
(Very restrictive attachment system... and I can't just link to images yet. Sorry for now.)

With this:
newSubscriptionBox.jpg

NOTE: You can find this at the same link as before (which is 3dy.ro?secret#imtalk), but you might need to refresh the page in order for it to look right, if you viewed it already.

Difference, huh? Hopefully it will attract more people.

So moral of the story: don't half-ass something as important as your subscription box. If you need subscribers, make sure you do your absolute best to attract them.

Working on theme variants
Right now I have finished 5 out of the 15 PSD files that I will offer together with the theme.

These are:

• Home page (with slider)
• Page with sidebar (on the right)
• Page with sidebar (on the left)
• Page with two sidebars
• The UI kit

This is actually pretty fast, since I already have all the graphics I need in the UI kit I made. I just need to put them together.

And yes, I will tell you what all the files in the theme will be, so you can have the same ones (or more? or less? it's your decision) in your own themes.

I'm also close to reaching 500 subscribers on Twitter, but I'm not going to tell you to follow me.

Instead, I would like you to subscribe to this thread, comment to ask me any questions you might have, or offer feedback. I'm trying to make this thread as informative as possible, but I need your input too so I know what you need.

I will be back as soon as I have something interesting to write about.