- 12
- Apr
Sponsored Themes
Well, well.. look what the cat dragged in ; another debate on sponsored themes. Now don’t get your panties in a bunch, just let me have my say and then I’ll forever hold my peace.
1. We designers are ‘Commies’ : We’re doing it for the community
In the end you are doing it for the community. At least that’s why I am designing themes for Wordpress. Some of the new designers are only in it for the money, the ‘Dinero’ if you will. Well, brothers and sisters, you’ve got another thing coming ! It’s not all Glitz and Glam here in Theme-land, I myself for example have put in more than a 1000 hours of ‘community service’. It’s only fair I get something in return, isn’t it ? Yeah, I see you nodding.
And to quote the guys over at headsetoptions:
To the users who find sponsor links offensive: I would like to see y’all work for free. No matter what jobs you hold, just work for free, and deliver what ever you do at par with the industry standard, provide support if there is an issue, spend time answering users questions and get paid nothing, all for free, everyday, for the rest of your life. If you are able to do it, so will I. If not, make your own WordPress themes, with your own time and money and stop whining.
Don’t forget that we are not only designing themes. It’s much more than that. Everyone expects us to help them with their specific problems with the themes and Wordpress. Besides that we also have to help the users with problems that haven’t got anything to do with Wordpress (themes). But nobody sees the ugly side, everybody is blinded by the sponsor links.
Amsterdamn.org has had a donation button on it’s website, but nobody ever showed me the money ( to quote Jerry Maguire ). Somehow everybody is convinced that Wordpress should offer everything for free. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s true that there are designers who release themes that are plain crap, all in the hopes of striking gold and making big bucks so they can pay for their Macbooks and early retirements in Boca. But don’t let all this fool you, a great amount of quality themes have been released all thanks to theme sponsorships. I’m truly convinced that sponsorships have had a positive impact, more good themes are being released. I won’t deny that it has also resulted in some badly looking themes, but they have their own niche I guess.
Now maybe you’re still convinced that designers are only in it for the money, even after my little plea here. But theme sponsorship is just a way to get something in return for the hard work and long hours we put into Wordpress. And let’s be real about this : A couple of links won’t hurt anyone. if you are anti sponsored links there is always a way to get them removed. E-mail the theme designer and ask about the conditions.
What it all boils down to is that as a designer you should strive to help the Wordpress community, and if having your themes sponsored helps you do this : More power to you !
2. Add value to a theme
This is a little something i like to call ‘aemulatio’ just because it makes me sound smart. It’s an old Roman word, and basically it means that you should try to improve things. Everybody can alter a theme, a smudge of paintshop here, a dab of coding there, a new header and you’ve got yourself a spanking new theme. If you want to be a good samaritan : Add some serious value to a theme. Try to improve the theme. Look for things the theme is missing and add them. You know what they say : Nothing is perfect, so why would themes be the exception ? Improvement, improvement, improvement !
Now I know what you’re thinking.’ oh wise one learn us more!’ Well, grasshoppers, be patient. First i’d like to discuss the porting of themes from other platforms. Try to do more than just porting it to Wordpress. Make it even better, so that it suits the Wordpress users. What you see is that some theme designers are making themes so that they can target them in order to get more sponsors. Magic 8-Ball says: Don’t be afraid to enter a niche. We need more options when it comes down to themes. But don’t just release themes for the love of the game, when you hit that upload button your theme should be user friendly and well constructed.
Ofcourse stealing other people’s work is tempting because it’s easy. But beware the wrath of the Wordpress Gods ! Stealing themes from other designers gives bad karma. And believe me, you don’t want to end up a cockroach in your next life. If a designer doesn’t want reproductions : don’t . If you use someone else’s work give them credit. A lot of designers don’t mind you using their themes as long as you credit them.Give the people some mad props for the love of God! And once again: add some serious value to the theme.
Your best bet is to design new themes, but that’s not obligatory.
Remember kids: ADD VALUE!
3. Work together
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.†Henry Ford
My uncle used to say that it takes a village to raise a child. Well in this case it takes a community of designers, users and developers to take care of Wordpress. Working together is the keypoint!
It’s a know fact that Wordpress would never have become the best weblog experience if it weren’t for the great collaboration between designers, users and developers. The power of open source software lies in the wordpress community working together.Instead of being tangled up in pointless discussions on sponsored themes we should all join hands and work together. As Elvis Presley said : A little less conversation, a little more action baby please!
4. Keep it real
Releasing a theme with sponsored links is one thing, but demanding the links not to be removed is another. If a user wants to thank you for the free theme then they will leave the links. If they don’t agree upon sponsored links or it doesn’t suit the content of the website then I can understand that they want to remove the links.We trust on the goodwill of the users. We’re grateful for the ones that leave the links intact.
Besides that I believe that themes should have a clear purpose. There is no need for themes that are just designed to suit the website of the sponsor. In other words: We don’t need creditcard themes!
Another thing that annoys me is the fact that some of my fellow theme designers are advertising the theme sponsorships as a great way to improve your SEO. That’s not the right approach in my humble opinion. If you are actually a good designer then it won’t be a problem to get in touch with sponsors. You are not doing this to make some money. The money is just a way to help you make more and better themes.
According to Matt Mullenweg it’s adware what we are doing right now. I’d like to say to him: Get your facts straight before you randomly accuse others.If this is adware well so is the Blogroll then. We don’t want it, but we’re getting it everytime bundled with the themes. It’s obvious that you are doing it for the linkjuice of your own blogs. Let’s remove those links next time and replace it with really useful links (Codex etc) instead of some Myspace blog. And stop telling the crowd that all the links are for shady viagra/casino website’s. Most of the sponsor links are trusted website’s that have been around for years.
Sponsored themes aren’t that bad if the author clearly states that it has sponsored links. Some of the better themes contain sponsored links nowadays. This whole sponsorship thing has been going on for more than a year now. But all of a sudden it’s a problem.
You can’t fight the free market. Okay, you can try to ban it on wordpress.org / wbtc. But there is a demand for sponsored themes. And it’s true that nobody is forcing us to make themes. But I was making themes even before there were sponsored themes. I do this because I love Wordpress.When you get a good response from users thanking you for your hard work, you get that warm fuzzy feeling inside. Monetizing our website in order to pay the bilss didn’t work. We couldn’t even pay the hosting bill.
What I’m trying to get across is that there’s nothing wrong with sponsored themes as long as you are not forcing the users.The majority of Wordpress bloggers is okay with using a good theme with sponsored links. If you start banning the sponsored themes then there is less choice left for the users. Sponsors are actually motivating us to release more and better themes.
Free choice is what we want….
