Is WordPress Theme Sponsorship a Good Business Model?
Saturday
Apr 7, 2007
I reported on the Blog Herald how Blogging Pro has released its latest InSense theme under a sponsored scheme. This means a sponsor paid for a link at the footer of the theme. The benefits? Users get a great DesignDisease-designed theme, the designer gets paid good money, and the sponsor gets inbound links.
I know several designers who give away WordPress themes to blog hosting services for free, so long as they get a link back to their sites. Now this seems to be a great business model for people who want to monetize their theme creations. Not all bloggers can afford to pay for your themes. But there are companies and businesses that would be willing to foot the bill. In the end, everyone’s happy: users get great themes, designers get good money, companies get inbound links.
There are some who aren’t too happy with such an arrangement, and view sponsorship as a sneaky way to get backlinks. However, Blogging Pro is quite candid with the fact that their theme is sponsored, and the theme license even allows for the removal of the sponsor link if a user chooses so.
Fellow Blog Herald writer Lorelle VanFossen has this to say about sponsored themes:
Actually, this was brought up over a month ago and was seriously slammed. People were digging into their WordPress Themes to remove these. There was a huge backlash against Theme designers and sites which sponsor such links.
A link back is considered appropriate. A link to a “sponsorâ€, aka advertising, is very much frowned upon by serious bloggers and WordPress fans. The average blogger won’t care or even notice, as you say, but the ones who do have spoken loudly that they find this bad manners, poor taste, and, for some, criminal.
Personally, I would think there is no harm in having themes sponsored, as long as this is stated explicitly outright, and not done in a sneaky manner. Even better if the user can opt to remove the link.
What do you think?
J. Angelo Racoma is a technology journalist and blogger. See more of his blog posts here at racoma.com.ph, commentaries at racoma.net, and Twitter feed at @jangelo.
Comments
jhay
April 7th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
There should be an opt-out option for the user who uses sponsored theme. Not allowing so is a perversion of the spirit of the Creative Commons license which 99% of all free themes use.
Sassy Lawyer wrote about this and she’s calling for a boycott on sponsored themes.
ade
April 7th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I actually am using that theme right now. We do have the option to remove the link, it was in the license, but I decided not to.
AhmedF
April 7th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Criminal? Whew – people and their high-horses.
Small Potato
April 8th, 2007 at 8:01 am
I have no problem with sponsored themes; people have to make money somehow. As long as it’s done like BloggingPro, I don’t have a problem with it. But, there’s a downside to this sponsored themes movement. It’s deteriorating the WordPress theme community.
If you don’t have time to read my post. Here’s the quickie:
Number of Sponsored Links – Some themes have 3 to 4 sponsored links. That’s too much.
Transparency – Not every sponsored theme designer notify their users of sponsored links.
License requirement – unlike BloggingPro, most theme designer require the sponsored link to stay as a part of the license.
Just out right shady – Some designers are porting existing CSS templates to WordPress and have sold sponsored link positions on those themes. They made money off of the work that they even put in.
GeloTon
April 8th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
For me it’s okay, provided that the sponsored links are not “overdone” or placed “sneakily” in different places, as such give the site a crude appearance.
Moreover, the option to have these removed is a must.