I’ve been suggesting to my users that they pay for a customised version of the plugin to suit their site. This has been moderately successful but involves a lot of emailing to and fro debating whether they should do it or not.

So I’ve now partially automated the process by offering paid access to a private premium support forum. There they can receive as much support as they need (within reason) for both my free themes, plugins and CSS generators. It was fairly easy to get up and running as the latest version of SMF features a paid subscription service built into the software.

Another way I’m looking to monetize one of my WordPress plugins is to charge for access to the CSS generator which accompanies it. I’m working on an improved version which will do much of the work which I’m doing by hand at the moment for the users in my premium support forum. Once they’ve paid their money via credit card or PayPal they’ll get instant access to the premium CSS generator, hence making money for me but without removing the open source nature of the plugin itself.

Might as well write about how you did it since any decent coder can figure it out anyway. They might even try to claim that they already knew how and not credit the source.

My question in mind is, what would happen if you sell premium themes with special features, but you’d also write articles explaining how to create such and such feature?

I guess that would actually be beneficial still to the theme author. Sure, fellow author might “steal” your technique, but any good coder should be able to imitate a feature just by seeing it in action anyway. Might as well open up and start a conversation about it, right? That way everyone can learn and contribute.

Also, I don’t have any statistics, but I think people who buy themes aren’t those who would cancel their purchase and start coding up their own theme anyway (not all people have the technical skill, experience, or time). So I don’t think the articles will affect the theme’s market negatively. In fact, the articles could only give us more buzz about our theme, exposing us to more potential customers.

Aren’t open source great?

Your point sounds very interesting about describing how theme authors accomplished something within one of their themes. That sounds like a good compromise.

If I’m not busy @work next week, I’ll be sure to call in and say a few words or at least participate in the chat room. Thanks

@Adii: I completely understand where you’re coming from as for I’ve seen that kind of stuff going on a lot outside the wp community.

The good thing is that the difference between those supposably “A-listers” and you is the fact that you support open source so it wouldn’t be as tempting to do something like that.

As far as charging 100 dollars per theme, again, there’s nothing wrong with putting that kind of price on your work, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it. Maybe doing something like Jeffro said above and kind of tell your readers how you do curtain stuff in your themes, kinda giving them more insight on how you make your themes. Again, I don’t think something like that should be too hard for you since you’re already very open with your business as is. But try out different things though, there’s no deadline or anything like that.

@PJ: Matt didn’t tell us any specific date for when the marketplace was going to launch, but I wouldn’t be surprise if it was anytime this year.

He has mentioned his views on premium themes a while ago, in terms of integrating them into an official marketplace for .com bloggers for a 50% cut, and allowing self-hosted bloggers to use them for free via the GPL licensing. Theme designers who operate outside of that arrangement are naturally not going to be approved of by Automattic.

Many Premium Themes use custom fields, which aren’t available for wordpress.com blogs, so it really could be difficult to provide similar functionality for those users.

By the way, does any one know if/when this marketplace will materialise?

I’ve just been busted by the awesome Ptah Dunbar! I thought I could fool him by only linking to one site and not get caught by his super awesome spam filter.
He totally knew that my comment was completely spam so I encouraged him to edit my comment willingly. Thanks Ptah, I won’t do this ever again!

You were wise to ask Matt about this. In fact, I’m sort of surprised it hasn’t come up in a manner like this already.

I don’t find anything wrong with Premium themes, I’m just somewhat surprised at their popularity. I mean, to me, they don’t really offer much of a benefit to most users, or am I missing something?

As for you chat with Matt, I too was surprised to see him say that he didn’t like where premium themes were headed. But after his explanation, I think I get his drift. You also brought forth the question that I had in my mind while reading the post, and that was, “Keeping the open source mentality while still finding ways to profit off of your work”.

What an interesting conundrum. It seems to me that it would be counter intuitive for a premium theme author to describe how they accomplished something within one of their themes so that someone else could take that feature and implement it into a free version. I believe that to be one of the main reasons for this not already taking place.

I for one would not like to see a new market open up for Premium WordPress plugins but, we are already starting to see many Plugin authors go the route of taking money and then offering support. Doesn’t sound like the market is that far away from the plugin stand point.

Interesting post by far and I think I’ll add this blog to my feedreader. Also, please try to stop by the live show and participate in the chat room or by calling in. Would love to you have you on.