Selling Wordpress themes has become an artform for the few that have mastered it, despite this, we are seeing more and more people making a full-time living from their theme profits. Thus far, it seems to be an exclusive club with few reaping the major rewards. In this article I hope to help you understand the 3 cardinal rules to selling Wordpress themes.

It seems that for many designers of Wordpress themes, the design often comes victim to one’s abilities with functionality. As a huge fan of Wordpress, and after reviewing, buying, and selling many themes myself, I have found what I would call the cardinal rules for building a successful theme to sell.

Rule #1: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” Albert Einstein

Always seek to keep it simple. I am sure many of us have seen very extravagant designs that in the end lose focus. It’s very important to truly understand who your target audience is. You will notice upon scouring over different marketplaces that the top selling tags are business or portfolio based. Business themes have proven to be successful by leveraging simple layouts that can be branded very easily. For example, a great sample of effective simplicity is with inFocus Wordpress Theme.

There is a lot that goes into the process of designing and developing a website successfully for a client. In order for the project to be truly successful, it must accomplish much more than simply an attractive design. In this article we’ll take a look at 7 keys that must be present for the designer and client to create a site that achieves the desired results for the business.

1. A Realistic Timeline

Designing and developing an effective website takes time. Most designers understand this, but some clients assume that the process can easily be done faster without considering the impact.

It’s not uncommon for a designer to be contacted by a potential client who has an unrealistic deadline. At this time the designer can either make promises that they may not be able to live up to in order to land the job, or the designer can explain to the client why the deadline is unrealistic, what steps will be rushed with this deadline, and what the consequences may be. In many cases the client will be more flexible with their projected time frame if they understand the long-term ramifications of rushing through the project.

If you’re a web designer, chances are you are familiar with ThemeForest. For those who have not visited ThemeForest before, it is a theme and template marketplace owned by Envato that allows designers to sell their work to a very large audience of potential buyers. Designers can submit their themes and templates to be approved into the marketplace, and once approved the designer will earn between 40% – 70% of sales if the items are available exclusively at ThemeForest. The designers then do not have to deal with transactions, and any additional marketing is optional.

When starting a freelance design business the natural primary concern is how to find clients and to start getting paying work. While this is necessary in order to achieve success as a freelancer, there are a lot of other details that need to be considered as well. How quickly you’re able to get those first paying clients will actually have less impact on your long-term success than the amount of time and attention you dedicate to setting up your business on a proper foundation.

In this post we’ll look at the early stages of a freelance design business and what aspects can have a significant long-term impact. Focusing on these important issues from the start will help you to save time and headaches down the road, and your business will be more solid because of it.

1. Know Your Goals and Priorities

Not every freelance designer wants the same thing out of their career. Some may want to simply do a little part-time freelancing as a creative outlet that gives them time away from their full-time career. Some may want to use a short stint as a freelancer to build up their portfolio and profile in order to help land a job with a design agency or as an in-house designer. Others may want to freelance full-time for the foreseeable future, maybe even with the possibility of expanding and hiring some employees at a later date.

The goals that you have will impact how you go about marketing your business, and even how you set it up. If your goal is to use freelancing as a gateway to full-time employment, the long-term aspect is probably not a major concern. For the purposes of this article we’ll be focusing on those who want to establish a career as a freelancer and those who want to eventually transition from freelancing into an agency by hiring others.

One example of how your goals and priorities would impact your approach is in regards to your name. If you’re attempting to build your profile within the industry you’ll most likely want to operate simply using your own name, as this will help to build name recognition and to brand yourself as a leading designer. However, if you’re hoping to hire other designers down the road or even sell your business at some point, you’ll probably want to operate under a business name. Any work you do to brand your business or build up a reputation will have a greater impact on the long-term health of your business this way.

Providing quality service and retaining clients is critical to the success of any freelancer or design agency. In this post we’ll look at ten common causes for clients leaving designers. The intent is to provide some clear examples of things that should be avoided if you want to keep your clients happy.

1. Don’t Provide Quality Work

Clients will always have a certain expectation in terms of quality of work. It might seem that these expectations will correspond to their budget (high budget = high quality, low budget = low quality), but this is not always the case. Failing to live up to the quality expectations of a client can lead to a lack of repeat business, no referral business, and even the loss of a client before a project is completed.

Freelancing is attractive to a lot of people because of the opportunity to work on your own and to set your own hours. However, in reality most full-time freelancers face a lot of stress and experience burnout in their work on a regular basis. In this post we’ll look at some things that you can do to avoid burnout and to maintain an efficient and rewarding work process while still having a life outside of work.

1. Establish Reasonable Working Hours

One of the most obvious contributors to burnout is simply working too much. Most freelancers, myself included, struggle with setting working hours and sticking with them. It’s easy to work more hours than you plan when things don’t go as you expected, or when you have a lot that needs to get done. Certainly there are times when upcoming deadlines may force you to work longer hours, but that should be the exception not the norm.

The first step towards avoiding burnout is to have some sort of a set schedule that involves only working a reasonable number of hours each week. Most freelancers cherish the freedom that they have to work whatever hours they choose, and this often leads to a hesitance to establish a normal schedule. Setting working hours doesn’t require that you have a boring schedule with no room for flexibility. You can work varied hours that change from one week to the next, but the important part is that you set a schedule for yourself that will help you to avoid working ridiculously long hours on a regular basis.

It’s no secret that times are tough all over, even for those who work in the Web design industry. Maybe you’ve found full-time work as a web designer, but in this economy it’s just as likely that you’re piecing together several part-time or contract gigs just to stay afloat.

Whatever your situation, you could probably stand to make some extra cash. We all could, right? Luckily, skills in design and development are in demand, and due to the downturn, companies are more likely to hire freelancers to do their web design and development work. And, even better, you can make extra money with the work you’re already doing! Here are 11 ways, then, that you can make some extra income as a freelance designer by adding some value to your existing services, or by leveraging your expertise in a more piecemeal fashion.

Become a Hosting Affiliate

When a client hires you to design their site, sometimes they have a hard time understanding that not only do they need a domain, but they need to host that site somewhere. And, usually, they leave it up to you to decide who will host it. You probably already host the majority of sites you design with the same company, so why not profit from that loyalty? Most hosting companies offer a commission for hosting account referrals, so give them a call and ask how that might work for you. Most hosting companies will also allow you to add an affiliate link to your own site, and that will pay off anytime someone clicks through the link and purchases hosting. Both scenarios will earn you some extra money with very little extra effort on your part.

Networking is a critical part of building a successful freelance business. A strong network can lead to more referral business, better recognition within the industry, new opportunities, and much more. Although it isn’t the type of work that directly produces income for a freelance designer, networking should be a priority that warrants some time and attention.

In this post we’ll look at 10 things you can do if you’re looking to improve the strength of your network. This may be helpful for those who are just getting started in their careers or for people who simply want to make more of an effort to build a better network.

1. Know What You Have to Offer

One of the most common mistakes made in networking is only focusing on what you can get out of the relationship. Networking is a two-way street and must be beneficial for both people in order for it to have any long-term success. If you are focused only on what other people can do for you and on getting connected to people that can help you, you’ll be missing out on great opportunities to build strong relationships by helping others.

As you work to get to know other professionals and build your network, be sure that you know specifically what it is that you have to offer other people. As a web designer you have valuable skills and experience that many professionals would like to have as a part of their network, and your existing connections may also be very valuable to the people that you meet.

One of the benefits of working as a freelance designer is that you can work with clients all around the world. Location isn’t the same type of barrier that it is with most traditional businesses. However, because of the possibility to work with clients in just about any location, most designers do not market themselves to clients in their local area.

With the amount of competition that exists from other freelancers and design agencies, one way of standing out and potentially increasing your workload is to specifically target clients in your local area. This can be effective both in terms of offline marketing as well as search engine optimization.

If you would like to pick up more clients in your local area here are some tips.

1. Make it Evident on Your Portfolio Site

Having an effective portfolio site is an essential contributing factor to the success of almost any designer or design business. If you are targeting local clients, in order for your portfolio site to be effective it must address the needs of this audience. One of the first steps towards attracting more work from local clients is helping them to feel comfortable with you and showing them that you are interested in working with them.

For targeting local clients your portfolio site should clearly state where you are located and what services you can provide to clients in the area. Some clients will not care where you are located, but others will feel more comfortable with a designer that they know lives and works nearby. When these people arrive at your portfolio site they should clearly see that you are interested in working with local businesses.

WordPress has been nothing short of spectacular for freelancers and clients alike. Of course, we all know it’s the go-to system for blogging, but these days it’s much more than that.

In this post, I’d like to cover how different types of freelancers can build their businesses around this great piece of open-source software. And I’m not just focusing on programmers! There’s something for everyone here, thanks to the flexibility and versatility of WordPress.