Some great stuff from WPCandy this week that has prompted us to publish a highly irregular post 🙂
First of all go read the excellent Hypercritical Analysis of $35 WordPress themes.
Theme developer Mike McAlister takes us through his thoughts on why he think commercial WordPress themes are priced too low.
Mike makes the very interesting and valid point that while themes have advanced significantly over the past few years that prices have largely remained static and are not a fair reflection of the value provided by some commercial themes.
As someone who builds WordPress themes for a living I can sympathise with Mike and know exactly where he is coming from. While I build WordPress themes for a living I don’t currently sell them either here or via any of the big theme marketplaces. Why? Simply put, I choose not to compete on price. Yes price is important – it always is. But marketplaces like themesforest are like reverse auctions for me – it’s a race to the bottom.
If you consider that theme prices have not significantly increased over the past few years but the quality of the top themes in the marketplace (not the majority but the best developers) has increased dramatically, I would argue that real prices have actually fallen significantly (to borrow the macroeconomic notion of real interest rates). I’m staying well away from it.
There has been a massive reaction to the post and I encourage any buyer or seller of WordPress themes to go read the post now.
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