Bad News for Theme Designers (or is it?)
Darren Rowse has posted the results of a poll he ran on ProBlogger.net asking the readers who designed their blogs. The results are discouraging for theme designers focusing on doing custom work. Only 8% of the ProBlogger.net readers answering the poll (there was 2 513 of them by the way) had paid for a custom design, whereas 13% had paid for a premium theme. Most people run a free theme. Check out the full results.
So 8% of 2 513 people, that’s just over 200 potential clients for someone like me, although the poll doesn’t state how much these people actually paid for their custom theme. On the other hand, let’s say I do two themes per month, then I don’t need more than 24 clients each year, and some clients are recurring ones (obviously). It would be interesting to know what people who do buy custom themes are paying at an average, wouldn’t it?
What kind of theme are you running on your blog?
On both of my blogs, I have themes which I designed myself, based on a free blank theme which I found.
I’m running Thesis but have done all the customizations my self.
If I could find a designer to help me with my cutomization at a reasonable price, I’d use it. And when I say reasonable, I’m saying not more than a $100. I guess my concept of reasonable may differ from a designer’s one! Small niche, small budget!
A fellow called Thord Daniel Hedengren does all mine. He must be good cos I always use him. :)
This is a bad news for designers since there’re so many free themes with good layout available on google
Although there are many free themes out there for people to use I decided not to use them and design my blog myself as I wanted my blog to be individual to me and not based on a theme someone else had come up with.
I saw themes going from $10 up to $200. Obviously the more expensive ones are the better ones.
I have two blogs. On Greater Profits Group I use a free premium theme called Atahualpa.
On the other blog “The Conservation Guy at http://conservation.g-p-group.com/” I currently use a free theme from wordpress theme repository.
I am busy designing my own theme for this blog though.
As soon as I’m finished with the design, then “The Conservation Guy” is going to get a major revamp.