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As well as how much material, you have to wonder how much marketing he puts in to getting the sales. To be honest, I wouldn't be interested in the median autho

As well as how much material, you have to wonder how much marketing he puts in to getting the sales. To be honest, I wouldn't be interested in the median author/designer. They're most likely putting little to no effort in to promoting their work. Discovering the level of interest you need to create to get near the top earners would be interesting. Orman doesn't have very many themes on the site, but he does do a lot of off-site promotion on his blog (and perhaps elsewhere) and give away a lot of material as part of that. That could be a huge time-cost, but may be well worth it from his point of view given the earnings. I may not have read it closely enough, but I couldn't work out how much of his earnings came from selling his own themes on the site, and how much came from the affiliate income he earned from selling other people's themes when the entry point to the site has included his affiliate code. That affiliate income could really add up if he's sending plenty of traffic their way.

byoung2 15y ago
They're most likely putting little to no effort in to promoting their work. Discovering the level of interest you need to create to get near the top earners would be interesting. This question comes up all the time on the Themeforest forums, but I haven't seen a satisfying answer. Most authors seem to think that if you have to do significant outside promotion, it isn't worth giving 30-50% of your sales. At that point, you might have better luck selling direct, like Thesis.
- paulsilver 15y ago
  The problem with selling direct is, if people don't like your themes, they'll go searching elsewhere and you get nothing. If you're in a larger site, if they go elsewhere and you've sent them to the site with your affiliate code, you get a chance of a sale after all, even if it is less than you'd make off your own theme. Whether that's worth the 30% you're giving away, I don't know. I do know it means the designer/author hasn't had to program (or pay to have programmed) any payment gateway, doesn't have to deal with refunds, isn't a higher target for being hacked as they're dealing with e-commerce, etc etc. Basically, if you have a small number of themes and don't like programming, my gut feeling is you're better off on a large-ish site who is getting traffic independently from your efforts. If you can make a ton of good themes and handle all the programming and marketing, being on your own starts to make more sense.

byoung2 15y ago

They're most likely putting little to no effort in to promoting their work. Discovering the level of interest you need to create to get near the top earners would be interesting. This question comes up all the time on the Themeforest forums, but I haven't seen a satisfying answer. Most authors seem to think that if you have to do significant outside promotion, it isn't worth giving 30-50% of your sales. At that point, you might have better luck selling direct, like Thesis.

paulsilver 15y ago
The problem with selling direct is, if people don't like your themes, they'll go searching elsewhere and you get nothing. If you're in a larger site, if they go elsewhere and you've sent them to the site with your affiliate code, you get a chance of a sale after all, even if it is less than you'd make off your own theme. Whether that's worth the 30% you're giving away, I don't know. I do know it means the designer/author hasn't had to program (or pay to have programmed) any payment gateway, doesn't have to deal with refunds, isn't a higher target for being hacked as they're dealing with e-commerce, etc etc. Basically, if you have a small number of themes and don't like programming, my gut feeling is you're better off on a large-ish site who is getting traffic independently from your efforts. If you can make a ton of good themes and handle all the programming and marketing, being on your own starts to make more sense.