No More Sponsored Themes On Wordpress or Weblogtoolcollections
- 15 Comment
As most of you may know, one of my largest earners is the fact that I sell links on my wordpress themes, people pay upto $200 to get a link listed on one of my themes. I know you may be thinking that this is an exuberant amount of money to pay for a single link, but you have to remember that a link on a theme can lead to 1000’s of backlinks. And some of these backlinks can end up on high pr blogs or even .edu sites.
I have had my themes on both .edu sites, and even 2-3 PR7 sites. The value of these are tremendous and because of the fact that a theme is always there, there will always be a chance that you can get an extra backlink.
Most of the people that buy backlinks are directory owners, or people that want to maintain their high pr. I believe they will have to move onto paid postings on blogs and other methods of getting links now. It is time now for everyone to start thinking about how they can take advantage of this situation.
I for one, am extremely pissed off at the hypcrosicy that is Wordpress.
The devolopers and their friends can embed all their links into blogroll, that will in the end of the day lead to them getting high PR sites, and more backlinks. This in the end will help them make money. Think about it, everytime you log into your dashboard you see all the recent posts from the blogs that they want you to see.
I know your thinking that because they provide a free service they should be able to do what they want. Sure thats cool, but than why take the moral high road and put all these poor designers out of work, when you yourself are profiting off of this free service??? Why not be like wikipedia and take donations instead of trying to fool everyone into thinking that you are so great??
Im not too worried about it considering that I have other avenues of revenue but I do feel bad for the designers that took time to make wonderful themes, and they would no longer be distributing them for free since they have no other way to make money BUT to sell them.
Would you like to see a snapshot of what weblogtoolscollection looks like?
Notice all the ads on the side? There are more Google ads on the bottom of the sidebar but I decided to just show one snapshot.
What do you think about this? Let me know.
15 Comments on this post
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TheAnand said:
I Disagree. I think many will agree with the fact that designers usually make themes for the backlink or for the money they get for selling the links or the theme itself.
But people like you, who buy the theme, put in some 3-4 links per theme and upload it on your sites and make money out of it. Your motives are totally money oriented. Have you ever considered donating something back to the community that made you so much money in the first place? Did you design those themes? Did you put in any effort for those themes? The answer is no. Forget all that, but have you done anything to enhance or develop the community? NO.But those people in the blogroll you are talking about, they have given their time and expertise to the project. They totally deserve the linkback they put in.
Most probably this comment will be deleted, but i dont care, but I feel strongly about this.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:34 pm -
Boys Like Girls said:
Money is money TheAnand, Mubin had a great business idea and made money of it, it’s now gone and he must move on to others.
I’m yet to find anyone else who disagrees with WLTC’s decision, from what I can see all 100 comments on their blog post agree with what they’ve done haha.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:14 pm -
TheAnand said:
Money is money I totally agree, but this is not the right way to make it., encashing on someone elses efforts. Mubin is bissed off due to his revenue stream being blocked, but for me as a third person I think Wordpress is doing the right thing by banning these type of themes that will make the footer of every blog a link farm.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:05 pm -
mubin said:
Just for the record I dont delete comments, the whole point of this point was to get a discussion going, I posted my point of view and in the comments section is where I like me readers to post their opinions.
As long as your comments are not obscene they will never get delted.
Calling me greedy is a-okay in my book. As long as you understand that you smell.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:11 pm -
Boys Like Girls said:
lol theanand smells!!!
There are way too many ‘dirty’ ways to make money online, one of those just got stopped but I’m sure another will be taken up by Mubin very soon. :p
July 12th, 2007 at 10:15 pm -
Jonathan Franzone said:
WebLogToolsCollection isn’t the only way to distribute themes… or am I missing something? Sure they are a high trafficked site and now that they won’t support your themes, well… that sucks for you. But it doesn’t mean you have to stop making money off of it, does it?
July 13th, 2007 at 5:15 am -
Business Twins said:
Even though this was a big part of his revenue, I don’t really see it declining. Even though a lot of wordpress themes are hosted off of wordpress’s website, a lot of them are also hosted off people’s own hosting (usually the popular themes). I don’t think the ban will effect many people. But maybe I’m wrong.
July 13th, 2007 at 6:26 am -
mubin said:
Actually your write weblogtoolscollection was not the only place to host wordpress themes, you could also host them off of themes.wordpress.net, but it seems they are also going to be taking down all sponsored themes.
Sure there are other ways to promote themes, and I will continue to do it.
I run my own theme site at http://www.themehq.com, and http://www.themehq.com/blog
July 13th, 2007 at 9:04 am -
Cicero said:
I think th decision is wrong. After all its probably the only way a designer can make money building free templates. BTW Mubin your link to THemeHQ has a .,com in the code
Correct it
July 14th, 2007 at 12:21 pm -
chatmasta said:
TheAnand, do you mind telling me how what Mubin did was immoral? For one thing, all that matters is the ethics of who’s actually doing it. For another thing, I think it was pure genius…I can’t believe I missed out before this happened. He wasn’t STEALING the themes or anything, he was buying them. That’s paying the designer right there. And then HE had to put in the extra legwork to get the links sold.
Sounds alright to me.
Anyway, does anyone know of large theme download sites that are still allowing this? It’s obvious that the ones who do will get a ton of traffic, because that’s where the designers will submit to. The others will slowly fade out…
July 15th, 2007 at 9:07 pm -
andrew wee said:
Mubin,
If anything, the clampdown is a validation of your business model.Being an innovative guy, I’m sure you’ll leverage MySpace or CraigsList to expand your distribution efforts.
As they say, “as one door closes, another opens’.
PS: I think buying a theme, inserting your link at the bottom is a form of “WP theme arbitage”.
All this talk of “immortality” smacks of the same shite that people post on my blog talking about their efforts at “pure blogging” (ie. making absolutely zero from their blogging efforts…. way misguided if you ask me!)
July 16th, 2007 at 7:46 am -
IMPAIDEVA said:
To me it is necessary to find
February 25th, 2008 at 12:44 am
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