Foxland

Experiment – commercial theme for free

Written by Sami Keijonen

I’m not happy with my theme sales which are about 1400$ starting from early 2013. That covers pretty much the same as maintaining this site. Kultalusikka theme is leading the stats and have 15 downloads. It’s time for experiment.

The fact is that I’ll never gonna sell so much themes or plugins that it’s gonna bring all the food in the table. I am no Pippin nor Mike. But that’s okay, I’m me and I’m proud of it!

The experiment

Speaking of Pippin he just released another major league Plugin called AffiliateWP – The best affiliate marketing plugin for WordPress. But he and Sumobi also published the plugin on Github. That way they people can contribute much more easily for making it better.

This got me idea that why don’t I release some of my commercial themes in Github. I’m starting with my latest and greatest theme called Mina Olen. I know this situation is completely different but these are the things I’m looking for in this experiment.

  • People love free stuff, just go and get it.
  • I can show off my code, it’s pretty solid. That way I can build more trust.
  • People can test drive the theme before they make a decision do they need it.
  • People can more easily use it in their projects. Yes, I’m talking to you Hybriders.
  • Developers can more easily contribute.

mina_olen

Why do I still call it commercial?

Because I’m not gonna give you support or automatic updates for free. At any point I might make github repo private again. Remember this is just an experiment. It’s ultimate goal is the see how it’s gonna affect popularity of the theme. And does it have some kind of effect on theme sales. Let’s see and wait.

P.S. I still keep on developing public themes, free and commercial ones, for several reasons even if sales are down for ages.

  • It’s fun.
  • It keeps me going.
  • It keeps me learning.
  • It keeps me track of latest WordPress changes.
  • I can do custom child themes in no time, like this jewelry site.
  • I can do custom themes for clients faster and they are much much better because someone have checked my code.

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