According to data from W3Techs, WordPress is currently used on 25.9 percent of websites online. This is a huge market share among content management systems, with the percentage gradually increasing on newly registered sites. This offers an excellent opportunity for developers, whether in the form of themes, plugins, or web design. While all these opportunities are profitable, it can be argued that WordPress theme development offers the best chance to develop a lucrative, long-term business. 

It is important to set up a WordPress business. It allows you to get them right if you hope to make a profit in the long term. You need to start with a play and stick to your strategy in order to attain your ultimate goal. 

Pick your area of focus 

First, pick a niche and make it your area of focus. It helps you to identify your targeted audience and then you can deliver according to the expectations of your audience. Moreover, trying to push out mass products with no particular niche can lead to confused audiences. Ultimately, you will be fighting with so many other people for a limited pool of consumers. Rather use online tools to identify your targeted audience and their needs. For instance, use Google trends to gain in-depth insights on what keywords people use when searching for particular items. 

Choosing a Theme Type

Initially, you will need to decide the type of theme you plan to develop. Since you have already identified your niche, it is time to decide on the themes you want to develop. Some of the most successful themes are multipurpose, aiming to provide a solution to every web design need. These more elaborate themes will take more time and money to create, with the need to remove the various bugs you will inevitably discover. 

Another option is to create a simpler, more targeted theme. A theme with a narrow focus, such as a business theme for dentists, lawyers, or plumbers, will attract fewer buyers, but can stand out from the broader competition. You could even create these targeted themes based on one central design, developing a series of job-specific options. However, developing different themes for fewer audiences can lead to different cost implications. 

Another option is to focus on creating a targeted product. When you focus on a specific area, you tend to gain a limited pool of visitors or customers. However, this can turn into a limited pool of loyal customers which is way more advantageous. 

Developing the Theme

Theme development can be done individually using a WordPress theme builder like TemplateToaster or outsourced. Many themes are created using the free Bootstrap platform, with plenty of coding elements available for integration. There will be a little learning curve to developing and marketing a theme, but it can be a good challenge to set for yourself. The alternative is to outsource the work to an experienced theme developer. If you can plan out exactly what you require, there should be no issue in getting a quality theme at a respectable cost.

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Creating a Free Version

One proven method for promoting the theme is to create a free version, it is called Freemium model. This version should be perfectly adequate for simple websites, but with an improved premium version available. While many users will not upgrade, you can increase the user base to a point where enough people want the extra features. This type of marketing is effective if you have a broader theme, with narrower themes struggling to build up a large enough user base.

Testing your theme

Before you start distributing your themes, it is important to carry out an extensive testing of your theme. It will enable you to collect invaluable feedback from the participants and correct the issues before it becomes an issue with your real customers. Moreover, you can get insights that will help you improve what you already have in place. Just accept and take every criticism under consideration and be ready to work upon it. It may help you save a lot of time and effort while helping to move forward.  

Selling Independently

Selling your theme independently allows you to keep the bulk of the profit, with more income to invest in future projects. There are numerous payment options, with PayPal being an obvious example. If you choose the independent route, though, it is important to have a strong marketing plan. Ranking your website in the search engines can give you access to targeted traffic, while paid advertising can be used if you can generate a profit on your ad spend.

Nevertheless, the best thing to do is sell your theme from your website. It allows you with total control over your online visitors. Moreover, it helps you with marketing purposes by incorporating SEO (search engine optimization). It will basically offer better rankings on search engines. Therefore, your targeted audience can find you easily. Moreover, you can incorporate a sound portfolio of the themes you offer to your audience. It is one of the most critical marketing tools that allows you to showcase your work to your audience. 

Using a Marketplace

The alternative to selling independently is to use a marketplace. Two of the most popular options are Themeforest and Mojo Themes, but there are smaller alternatives that could suit your style of theme. There are a lot of places you can start selling your themes. However, you need to be a bit more careful while deciding on third-party marketplaces. For once, you will have to pay a transaction fee. Moreover, you may experience a fierce competition on such platforms. While you have to follow certain guidelines, you do benefit from the visibility you gain on these popular platforms. A generous portion of your profits is also taken by the marketplace, but you can also benefit from the promotion of active affiliates. Ultimately, there are good and bad points to independent and marketplace selling, so you have to make the decision you are most comfortable with. 

Things You need to look out for

Creating and selling WordPress themes may seem like a difficult business but indeed doable. You will be fine as long as you are able to identify the challenges beforehand and work on them. Some of the most common challenges you may encounter are as mentioned below- 

Competition 

WordPress theme development is a lucrative market and many individuals are fighting for their marketing share. Therefore, if you decide to develop and sell WordPress themes, you need to understand that you’re entering a pretty competitive market. Moreover, it becomes a battle of who can attract the most attention. If you are just starting, then spending money on SEO and marketing ad campaigns can be out of budget. It becomes too difficult to attract attention when there are many companies with huge budgets, who are fighting for the same attention. In that case, you must take advantage of what is available freely and make the most out of it.

Focus on developing a product that is unique and offers everything your targeted audience is looking for. It offers an edge to you. In order to gain an edge, understand the gaps in existing products and respond to those gaps with your product. 

Navigating through WordPress platform

WordPress is a pretty ease-to-use platform that continues to attract developers due to its negligible entry barriers. Moreover, the thousands of plugins it offers is another bonus point. Therefore, developing and distributing themes is pretty easy on platforms like WordPress. However, it can still be a bit difficult to navigate due to the fact it drops updates pretty frequently. Take the Gutenberg editor as an example. Although the intention was to offer a rich editing option, it ended up being another unclear update. Some had to learn the interface while others disabled the Gutenberg editor on their WordPress. Moreover, it doesn’t offer much communication on the way forward, making it more challenging to implement some processes. However, the good thing is that it offers a consistent product and service delivery. Therefore, it continues to power so many websites. 

Also Read: Gutenberg WordPress: What are the Reasons Behind its Failure?

Pricing 

Considering you will be competing with a lot of new and established individuals, you will have to keep the pricing in check as well. No one is going to purchase your theme if they can find a similar theme at a lower pricing rate. However, you can’t just lower your prices because of all the time and efforts you are investing. Moreover, the overhead associated with theme development in countries like the USA may be higher than from lower wage countries. Therefore, it becomes even more challenging to generate a reasonable return of investment on your theme.  

Conclusion

The popularity of WordPress, along with the growing number of websites, means theme development is an excellent market to enter. Theme development can become a primary or secondary business, with the possibility of expansion if you require. Your WordPress themes also become assets, offering the chance to sell your business in the future. While the WordPress platform continues to grow, creating themes is an enterprise worth pursuing. Check out free WordPress themes. You can create your own website with TemplateToaster.

 

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