I don’t agree with the sponsored themes movement, with the exception of how bloggingpro did it. People need to know the sponsored link is there. Here’s my take on sponsored themes and where .

If you don’t have time to read my post and don’t know what’s going on, some sponsored theme designers are spamming the Theme Viewer. The quality isn’t there. And it seems like most of those sponsored themes were created just so the designer could have another theme for sponsorship.

WordPress start as open source blogging, but many people/designer take this opportunity to make money by releasing theme with sponsor inside.

IMHO, if the designer want to wait until sponsor before releasing their theme, then better use it themselves. There still a lot of way of earning rather than putting sponsored link in their theme footer.

Backlinks does not = revenue. Bad business model for monetization me thinks.

A link back is considered appropriate. A link to a “sponsor”, 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.

This will probably continue and grow as designers find ways to fund their continued design work, but it could also backfire.

1) We wouldn’t include the link without telling people about it beforehand.

2) And we would allow people to remove it if they so choose.