I like to hack together web site function, however I am short on time and therefore my style takes the brunt of lackiness.
Sure I can create a WP theme with hidden widget areas and I can create any kind of widget interface so you can have anything from Google gadgets to zoho database forms.
Who would pay for such tweaking? Is there really a market with so many free tools out there?
I think the pleasure is going to be more with the artists who love to create and play on the NET.
Like myself.

You have a point, when you look at free themes like The Unstandard Theme, why would you need to pay anything for themes like it, unless the designers/coders being ‘brought in’ are going to be creating similar ‘outside the box’ themes.

I’m interested to see you the business model can be expanded, and also if it can ever now succeed having had such a set back.

Alex

For me, the biggest con is in fact the low price and right now the ratio of subsidized free memberships to actual paying members is about 4:1 right now. That’s not encouraging from a support perspective (because how invested are people who signed up for a free membership — I forget about 90% of the free stuff I sign up for a week after I sign-up), so the potential community support/involvement is already greatly depreciated.

Not only that, $5 is almost too low of a price point to be taken seriously — I mean, I did it because I thought I liked one of the themes in demo better than I actually liked it. And because $5. That said, if you look at the Joomla theme club market — like Rocket Theme — the pricing is higher, but the theme quality is exponentially better (and part of that is because Joomla is just better for theming than WordPress, it just is), the featureset is far more advanced and the support is far better because the price can afford the actual designers to be involved — and not just volunteer users on a forum.

I’ve seriously considered switching to Joomla for an upcoming project just because of their theming engine and some of the Joomla premium themes, and I hated Mambo way back when. My biggest criticism of pretty much every premium theme available for WordPress, theme club or otherwise, is that they look downright amateurish compared to other platforms. The truly revolutionary WordPress design is being done by individuals who aren’t hawking themes but building them for themselves or for individual clients.

If the quality and variety of the WPDesigner club doesn’t improve, even at $5 it will fail because of the plethora of free alternatives that will be just as good for the user base (and that user base is largely dictated by price — price higher, for a club, you can attract the attention of more serious users).

@zinni Sure, that is indeed a con. But you wouldn’t be able to use a unique theme if they were all free, that would just mean even more people would be using the themes garnishing even less of a chance that you’ll be unique. Of course, you could limit who buys the theme by charging $100.00 for it but I think the price is too steep for mass adoption.

@Magnus Ok, 400 of the 1320 members are paying, but after 1 year who is to say that the rest of the member base purchases a 1 year account because they have been impressed with what they have received through the club. And let’s be realistic. $5.00 is cheap enough where I believe people would spend the cash on the theme club just for the hell of it, to see what they would get. But, all aspects of the theme club begin to be successful only after a very large number of people become part of the club.

@Joshua I write things the way I think them, if that makes any sense. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll try to get Michael to fix that grammatical error. As for Pawel Ciszewski, all one needs to do is check out the commenting section of his introduction post and you can see the trend of poo pooing the new owner before he has really had a chance to get started.

Made-up words aside, this is a good article. I personally think that premium themes are a bit of a rip-off but then again, the £5 themes club seems different. I too feel that the arrival of Pawel Ciszewski could be its downfall though.

SP was such a friendly guy too, despite the sometimes ‘aggressive’ and personal posts he made. I had occasional personal email contact with him, as I solved an issue on a theme and added some functionality to another, and he was always willing to give back.

I feel that the WordPress community will miss him greatly, despite what some comments say on his blog at the moment.

My problem with WPDesigner at the moment is that nothing is being posted, not even updates as to what is going on behind the scenes.

I still check the feed everyday, waiting for a post of similar quality and insight into WordPress as I used to read.

I hope the themes club carries on, its a great resource.

Alex