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The Story of WonderThemes: Why starting a WordPress theme marketplace isn’t easy

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The Story of WonderThemes and building a WordPress theme marketplace

Photo and graphic: Michael Kimb Jones

Michael Kimb Jones — or Kimb, as he prefers people call him — sat waiting for his time to stand up and speak. There he sat, on the ground floor of Surgeons Hall at the Royal College of Surgeons, running over the things he was about to talk about. His presentation was for WordCamp Edinburgh in 2012, the largest WordPress unconference event in the UK.

The slide sitting behind him on the projector, waiting for him to start, read “How I Made WonderThemes.” His pitch on the WordCamp Edinburgh wiki said that his presentation included the initial concept for WonderThemes, cost breakdowns, development struggles and how he sometimes felt like he was “punching [himself] in the face.”

Because this presentation wasn’t all positive. In it Kimb would tell his WonderThemes story, as well as the various elements that contributed to him closing his WordPress theme marketplace down and moving on.

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Stand in awe of the WonderThemes marketplace with themes to sell

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WonderThemes came out of beta as a new theme marketplace in May of this year, but at the time didn’t have any themes for sale. It took a couple of months for them to see a few submitted themes come through, but they’ve made it. This month WonderThemes has nine new themes for sale from seven different theme authors.

The first handful of themes reared their head the same weekend of WordCamp Portsmouth just a week ago. The currently published themes range from free (a price few will argue with) to $50, keeping them within the range of prices theme marketplaces are maintaining right now.

The first vendors selling on WonderThemes are in for a treat as well: the first group of authors to sell on their marketplace are earning 95% of their sales, forever.

At this point WonderThemes is another solid GPL theme marketplace, adding another layer of variety to the market. Are you personally excited to see another theme marketplace beginning to grow at WonderThemes?

Variety and competition aside, at least we have another marketplace’s theme prices to scrutinize.

Winners: Results of Theme Madness Round 2

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We have the results of Theme Madness Round 2 in this post, and there are some real upsets here. In fact, this brings us the veritable Sweet 16 theme shops in our competition. We’ll start Round 3 tomorrow, and take one step closer to having our Theme Madness 2011 winner.

Who’s excited? The results are just after the jump.

How we scored the games

Just to recap, each game was run on three fronts. First, we counted up the polls for each game. Secondly, we counted up votes on Twitter. Finally, we counted up comments generated (if they were) on the competitor’s blogs. Top score won.

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Shop smarter: 4 WordPress theme marketplaces compared

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There are no shortage of places to find WordPress themes. Some prefer to make their own themes, some use only free themes, and still others—perhaps yourself—that purchase WordPress themes. Assuming you are purchasing themes online you have a number of places to look. Commercial theme shops are many and varied. There is also another type of commercial theme resource, typically referred to within the community as a WordPress theme marketplace.

After how well received our WordPress theme framework comparison was, and how often theme marketplaces were brought up when we discussed how to find WordPress themes, there was just no way we couldn’t do a rundown of theme marketplaces as well. In this post you will find a bit of a background on theme marketplaces in general, a rundown of everyone we know about, and a poll so that you can weigh in with your experiences.

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WordPress theme mascot throw-down: Who would win?

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It’s Friday and the week is close to wrapping up. You should spend some time this afternoon musing on a simple question: which WordPress theme mascot would win in a no-holds-barred throw-down?

Oh yeah, we’re going there. We have the colorful and creative mascots from Themes Kingdom, Wonder Themes, WooThemes, Theme Warrior, and Mojo Themes facing off in the post below. Loosen up and have some fun with it: just make sure your boss isn’t peering over your shoulder!

Update: Not sure how I missed it, but UpThemes has a sweet mascot too. He’s been added to the lineup as well.

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