coded

Sep

2010

A WordPress Theme Designed And Coded

A couple of weeks ago, and just before I came down with a slight fever, I started talking about having your own unique premium WordPress theme created. Here’s the gist of it.

The same designer who created the two very successful Multiple Streams Themes for me will create a WordPress theme for you to your specifications. No-one else in the world will have a theme like yours.

You will own it outright and you can do anything you like with it. Give it away, sell it, have it designed for a client, whatever you want to do with it.

It’s yours and yours alone and we’ll have no control at all over what you do with it. It will be completely copyrighted to you:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/your-very-own-premium-wordpress-theme/

And I also then spoke about the importance of having a game plan.

If you decide that having your own unique theme created is the thing for you, then you also need to make sure you know exactly what your game plan is and how you expect to make your money back on the expenditure. I like every project to pay for itself within at least 2 weeks of launch:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/the-importance-of-having-a-game-plan/

Let me put it like this. If you sold your new theme directly to your mailing list of say a few hundred people and without any other promotion, then I would expect you to easily make at least a thousand dollars if you sold it at $10 a copy.

If you have a larger mailing list, then you’d make a whole lot more money.

This is only true as long as you know what you’re doing.

Now I’ve taken care to say all this because I don’t want you to buy this design service if you’re not going to at least double your money on the deal and do it quickly.

You may not care about this, but I do.

The only exceptions I can think of with this is if you’re going to give it away to promote a site and build your mailing list in preparation to making money, or it’s for some other long term promotional plan you have running, or it’s for a site you have that you want to look a little bit special.

I also want to point out that right now at this point in time, I have no idea if there’s any demand at all for what I’m offering.

I know people like to buy WordPress themes if they’ll help them make money, and I also know that clients like well designed and functional WordPress themes.

But what I don’t know is if anyone will want to dig in their pockets and have a custom theme designed and coded for them and then cash in like I have. This is certainly not for everybody.

Okay?

I’ve spoken to the designer, and he’s told me he can take on TWO jobs. The graphic design and conversion process to a WordPress theme from beginning to end will take 2-3 weeks depending on the complexity and the number of design changes you ask for.

It will go much faster if you already have an idea of what you want from a theme and can show us a site you already like the look of.

Right…

In a couple of days time, I’ll put up a buy link on this blog to purchase a theme creation and the first two buyers get the job done for them and I’ll then take the buy link down.

If you want both slots, buy one and then do it again. 😉

One of two things will happen. Either both slots go immediately, in which case the link will disappear almost as soon as I put it up, or I’ve done such a good job of asking you not to buy if you’re unsure, that no-one will buy.

I’ll say it again, this is NOT for everybody.

-Frank Haywood

Aug

2010

Your Very Own Premium WordPress Theme

A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email explaining that it would shortly be possible to have your own premium WordPress theme designed and coded from scratch.

That time is nearly here.

Early next week we should be in the position of being able to completely create a WP theme for you.

You’ll get everything that I would get from my designers. All the WP code and graphics, the Photoshop PSDs, and the whole thing completely designed to your specifications.

If you want us to, we’ll also include the same multiple sidebars you’ve already seen in the two Multiple Streams Themes I’ve released myself, with plenty of opportunities for placing ads.

The entire process for designing and conversion to a theme takes about 2-3 weeks.

Once completed, the entire theme is YOURS and YOU totally own the copyright.

You can then sell individual copies of it, or give it away as a freebie in return for backlinks, or use it for blog flipping, or maybe if you have a client of your own who needs a site building, you can get us to do all the design work for you.

On that last one, I’ve just picked up a local web design and SEO client, and convinced him that a site built around a custom built WordPress theme is the way to go for his steel centreless grinding business. His theme is now built, and when he gets back from vacation on Monday we’ll install WordPress, activate the theme and load up his content.

After that we’ll do all the on page SEO and then start a backlinking campaign. In a few weeks he’ll dominate most of the steel grinding terms in the search engines.

(I’ll ask him if I can share the name of his business with you and give you a talk through what we’ve done.)

Most of the income from that project will be from the SEO. Relatively speaking, the design and conversion to a theme was a small (but VITAL) part of the work involved. And if you’re into this, any of these design costs can just be passed directly onto your client.

Now I’ve only told you about that to give you an example of what you can do with your own theme. You don’t have to do that, but it might be something you want to do, or something you’re already into.

Like I said, as you’ll own the copyright you can do anything you like with YOUR theme.

So if you are into blog flipping, you could have a unique but generic theme built that you can use to tweak into a series of sites you can flip – especially as you have all the PSDs.

Cool huh?

Although I’d just like to make it clear that this offer will be for a theme only, ie the design and coding to make the theme work to WP 3.x standards. We won’t be doing huge amounts of coding to make a product that is a theme and then something more on top of that.

So you will get multiple sidebar regions if you want them, and you will get Custom Menu support. But we won’t code in an autoresponder or do any special scripting that would otherwise be a separate plugin.

Okay? 😉

Now for the bad news.

We can only realistically do one of these per month (maybe two) unless I can get more WordPress designers on board. And I won’t hire any more designers unless I know I’ve got work for them.

So when I formally announce this service is open, I’ll take one or two customers only and then close while we work on those projects. If you’ve paid and you’re number three or four, then we’ll just refund you until we have another open slot.

I can wholeheartedly testify that having your own WordPress theme can put a nice wedge of cash in your pocket as long as you have a game plan.

So if you know exactly how you’re going to monetise it, then you’ll make a lot more money than it costs you to have it created. If you have even a small fresh mailing list of a few hundred subscribers, a couple of thousand dollars at least is easily achievable just by selling the theme at a low cost.

If you don’t have a mailing list, then it might be a little harder to monetise, but not impossible – that’s what JV partners are for. You could even use it to build a mailing list in the first place if you don’t already have one by offering 100% instant commissions through PayPal. Affiliates LOVE that, and YOU get a mailing list of buyers.

***

I’d like to end by saying that because this is something new and we’re still finding our feet, then the first few clients to take up this offer will be getting it at a discount.

When we have a system in place we’ll put the price up to something more realistic, but to begin with we’ll hold the price low.

Watch out for an email with more info early next week.

-Frank Haywood