The Story Behind our Free WordPress.org Themes

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This case study outlines our experiences, challenges, and eventual “success” faced by us as we navigated the competitive theme marketplaces.

Challenges

Inspired by the success of themes like Avada, our team decided to test their skills in the growing digital theme market. With enthusiasm and a hint of naivety, we created our first theme and submitted it to ThemeForest, a leading marketplace under the Envato umbrella. However, our initial effort was met with rejection.

Seeking alternatives, we turned to Creative Market and Mojo Marketplace, where our themes were accepted, giving us a needed boost of confidence.

Early Experiences on ThemeForest

The second submission to ThemeForest proved successful, as our theme was accepted. This milestone seemed to signal the start of a prosperous journey. However, the reality soon set in when we managed to sell only 20 to 30 licenses – the sales were disappointing. Subsequent themes also saw similar sales numbers, culminating in several months of hard work yielding less than $1,000 in income.

Shift in Strategy and Licensing Issues

Around this time, tensions were brewing between the WordPress.org community and Envato regarding licensing issues. We aware of the potential impact of these disputes, decided to pivot our strategy. We ceased sales on Envato and shifted our focus to releasing themes on WordPress.org, where the review process emphasizes code quality over design.

Success on WordPress.org

We successfully navigated the different standards of ThemeForest and WordPress.org:

  • ThemeForest prioritizes design quality
  • WordPress.org focuses on code quality

By meeting both standards, we showcased our ability to produce high-quality themes. We have published several themes on WordPress.org, each reflecting our growth and dedication to quality, including:

  1. Pencil
  2. Loose
  3. Blogito
  4. Blover
  5. Boyo
  6. Penciletto

For more about our early work on ThemeForest, visit our ThemeForest profile, you can also visit our profile on wordpress.org.