A little over a month ago, Brian Gardner of Revolution Themes made a bold and brave move when he decided to convert his business model to something closer in line with the spirit of open source. With this change came a lot of questions, with the primary question being what would happen to people who purchased these themes? Were they screwed?
After his initial announcement, Brian quickly addressed the concerns of his “clients” by explaining that all existing themes would never be made available for free and would be retired. The new open source business model will instead contain only 100% new themes. Brian held true to his word and the 8 themes available at the launch of Revolution Two were all completely new. The old site was taken down and the old themes are now gone for good.
In a different, yet similar situation, Woo Themes recently celebrated their first birthday (birthday includes 8 months under the name of Premium News Theme). In what turned out to be a controversial move, they actually released a copy of their original premium theme for free to the public. Unfortunately, this is the exact same theme that a large number of people paid $79.95 or $99.95 for (the original price for the first 8 months). Is this fair to those people? Should others who bought themes from Woo Themes also be concerned that a theme they had paid for may also later be released for free?
According to the Blog Herald, here is the official response from Adii of Woo Themes:
We don’t believe that releasing a year old theme for free infringes on our users’ rights, as they have not only bought a theme from us, but also all the goodies that goes along with that purchase (in terms of support, tutorials, theme-specific customization help etc.). We have also been in touch with all of our users and worked out an acceptable situation internally.
Now, I have no idea what the workout was (I’d guess buyers got to pick another theme of their choice for free?). For the sake of this discussion, it doesn’t really matter, as this post is not about Woo Themes or Revolution Two. It was just inspired by the situations described above. What I want to know from our readers is what rights should someone have if they purchase a premium WordPress theme?
The niche as a whole appears to have taken a significant hit with the launch of Revolution Two, and other theme designers have been stepping up and releasing premium-quality themes for free as well. I think for the premium WordPress themes market to survive over the long haul, theme authors need to come together and some standards need to be put into place and followed. If not, there is a good chance that buyers will lose trust in some designers and the niche will suffer as a whole or disappear completely as a result. That, or it will continue its shift to more of a theme club setup.
What do you think? If you pay money for a WordPress theme, what priviledges are you entitled to as a buyer? Should there be a guarantee that it won’t eventually be free? Should you get lifetime code updates? Share your take in the comments below!
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is WordPress enthusiast who took his passion for WordPress to the next level back in 2007 by launching WPHacks.com as a place to share hacks and review WordPress-related products.
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Colloquium 
Kyle – I don’t normally get involved in discussions like these, but I have to say that I don’t think that you are being entirely objective in this post (considering that you hold a position with the new Revolution structures).
I find it amusing that you would mention this:
“Unfortunately, this is the exact same theme that a large number of people paid $79.95 or $99.95 for (the original price for the first 8 months). Is this fair to those people? Should others who bought themes from Woo Themes also be concerned that a theme they had paid for may also later be released for free?”
Where are the unhappy people? Where have our users expressed their concern in this regard? This just seems like a comment you pulled from the top of your head to spice up a really boring topic…
Secondly, you make another slightly-less-than-objective claim:
“The niche as a whole has already taken a significant hit with the launch of Revolution Two…”
What evidence do you have in this regard? Have you seen the sales figures of any other premium theme developers? Have these shown a decline since Revolution Two launched?
The fact that you are one of the top-earning affiliates on WooThemes, makes these claims even more mind-boggling…
One shouldn’t release a paid theme for free after few months, since lot of people will start to use it and that particular theme design will become very common something people usually avoid.
@ Adii – Thanks for taking the time to respond! I think that it is great that you have taken the time to comment and participate in this discussion.
First, I think you make a fair point about objectivity. I do hold a minor position on the Revolution team, though I am not compensated based upon sales or traffic sent to them or anything like that, so I have no gain (financial or otherwise) by playing any sort of favorite. With that said, I think this is a fair claim which I acknowledge.
Secondly, though I fear you took it this way, this was not a knock on Woo Themes. I’ve always enthusiastically endorsed both your products, and now your teams products. I even use the Fresh News theme on one of my websites! I also like that your team has started to release free themes in addition to your premium themes. I will re-read the above post and make sure it doesn’t come off that way, as it wasn’t intended to.
The inspiration for this post is strictly my desire to gauge what exactly people feel they are entitled to when purchasing a premium WordPress theme? I am not aware of it ever being discussed before, so that is why I brought it up. This is a grey area as there are no contracts or guarantees with a theme purchase. The seller gives licensing information, but what guarantees does the buyer get? This is the kind of stuff I want to discuss with our readers! With its current setup, there doesn’t seem to be any rights or protections granted to the theme/plugin buyers.
I have my internal analytics to go off of as well as word of mouth. I maintain strong relationships with a majority of the premium theme authors (you included!) and have confirmed from two that there has been a dip in sales since Revolution 2 launched. Of course that site is less than 2 weeks old so that could be a temporary hiccup while it is new. If you are saying your team hasn’t experienced a dip, that is a compliment to your team and shows you have a great business model and loyal user base.
Howdy Kyle!
A theme doesn’t age like fine wine unfortunately, so giving away PNT for free was a judgement call from our side, as we knew what the sales statistics were, and could see that not that many people went for it anymore. It was original when it was released a year ago, but not any more
We haven’t heard from any upset customers, and I think it is a bit harsh and a grand overstatement to predict that the market will take a hit because of this, or eventually cease to exist because of it.
As for this, I won’t reveal if WooThemes have taken a hit or not, but maybe you should turn it around and say that everbody else has taken a hit because of WooThemes?
Or could it be that since the exclusiveness of Revolution is now gone, that customers have moved to the “next best” thing which is WooThemes? Just a thought…
Maybe the economic crisis is the reason for the downfall you talk of?
I don’t think theme authors should have a say over each others business. If BG wants to release revolution for free, that is his call, and it is not for us to say he shouldn’t. If we did make standards, we would probably make BG not go open source, because we thought that would diminish the value of our market…
But I believe that leaders will lead and followers will follow . I’m just saying there is room in this market for many leaders
Paid money and get a free theme. lol!!!
I would like to ask Adii a question, will you refund to customer who bought it 1 months before it goes free ?
There are blogs may still in developing
@ Magnus – Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It was a very well written comment and you could definitely be correct! Also, if the market is down, then that will ultimately benefit sites like Woo Themes, which are leaders within the niche. The startups will be the ones who ultimately suffer trying to get their business off the ground.
Anyway, I appreciate both of you defending Woo Themes, though I still (even after re-reading the post) do not feel it was an attack on your business in any way. I was just providing the two recent examples which lead to me asking the question “what rights do buyers of themes have?” Are premium theme authors obligated to “retire” a theme instead of giving it away for free? That is the issue I ultimately wanted to explore with this post.
It will be interesting to see if any other theme authors (outside the Woo Themes umbrella) care to share their thoughts as well.
I think this conversation was something brought about by Matt Mallenweg’s comments posted at Darren Hoyt’s site about the whole premium theme market. In essence that there shouldn’t be premium themes as WordPress is opensource.
That, and this, conversation misses a few obvious points. One is that Automattic itself profits from modifications, tweaks, deployments and other services offered to the enterprise niche market (niche as in “separate” not in scope).
So much for opensource.
The second problem arises when you look to what you are getting (if you are wise in your selection) with a premium theme. Mainly support. Support in the terms of use of the theme, modifications, additions, and customization of the ui. These are things the average user can’t do.
Third, you have uniqueness. I appreciate the counters on theme sites that tell you in essence who has a site like yours. If 4,000 people download a theme so what? There are over 4 MILLION users on wordpress.com! How often do you think the open market is going to rub elbows and say “whoa, dude, you got my theme!”
Numerically almost zero (note: WP theme developer’s are a different breed in that they specifically seek out WP installations).
And finally, you can stifle growth by restricting, or denying, the premium theme market. The advances in the upcoming release of WP 2.7 is in direct relation to the plugins that had handled certain aspects of a WP install that is being folded into the framework. These would include comments, dashboard and the handling of certain internal functions.
Plugins got there first. And most were installed to make a person’s WP theme unique and easier to acquire new functionality. The premium market does that by default. So if I get a free theme, free plugins, etc. will it still be unique, supported and upgraded in the long term?
No.
That is why a theme is premium. To expect designers, developers, programmers, etc. to freely advance a framework simply because it exists, while the originators make money from the same codebase is not sound thinking.
If it is to be opensource at all levels then Automattic should provide it’s enterprise services for free. Unfortunately that will not feed the kids and pay the mortgage. People who buy premium themes have given their opinion by the very fact they “buy” the themes.
And the client-base is what drives the market, not the framework!
Jonathan
After reading your response Kyle, I see what you are getting at. However, it wasn’t obvious until you actually stated it (smile)! As a designer getting into the market, my take is that at a certain point you simply retire the theme.
If your niche is magazine themes, then make a new one, etc. This then gives a lifecycle to themes and an impetus to buy while it is available. The original theme(s) should still receive support via forums, user-to-user type of communications. But if the theme has been out there awhile, bugs et al, should have been ironed out long ago.
Can you spell “patch” anyone? (smile)
But mainline support should have a lifecycle as well. I come from a corporate world, contracting and working directly with HP, Intel and such. There was always a lifecycle for a design and the debugging end of things as well. Like time, the design would move on to something new.
This should be applied to the WP premium theme market as well.
Just two cents more!
I agree…whats the point in putting forth all the work of designing a theme if you aren’t able to reap at least some fo the rewards for it.
Well said Jonathan, I couldn’t agree more.
The main reason why people want to get premium theme is not just because it is a paid and/or not commonly used. They know that the theme they purchased will be updated and won’t get deprecated along with the new releases of WordPress also they will get support for their questions.
Releasing a premium theme for free; this is a hot question that I came across before. But in regard of respect to my clients I’ve decided not to release it for free and to keep it as is. It really doesn’t matter how long time passed since the release of theme. If even its been sold once, It should never be made free (in my opinion).
I am not sure that Revolution Two hit the market Kyle. The market is huge (slightly growing) and there is a room for many others. I can even say that the impacts of Revolution Two has been very positive for the premium theme sales of Gabfire.
In regard of support and theme updates; Most of premium theme sellers has Terms of Conditions page where updates and supports has been clarified very clearly. Though, seller gets its protection by mentioning that updates are not guaranteed, but I believe a client must be supported at least for 1 year from the day he purchase theme. Otherwise, why he bought it
A good read on OpenSource providers at http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/10/31/this-is-the-money-being-made-today-in-open-source/ I am NOT affiliated with them (in fact until I found the article at WebAppers I didn’t know they existed! lol!)
Jonathan
I’m hesitant to jump in here, but I’ve purchased premium licenses to a number of different premium theme packages. When one of the themes I’ve purchased suddenly becomes available for free or at a promotional rate, I’m not offended.
Last year I bought a truck. Since it was the last day of the month, I was sure I’d gotten a great deal. The next day a commercial came out offering better financing than what I had received 24 hours before. I could whine and cry, or be thankful for my truck.
Sometimes we pay for something because it’s nice and new. Later, that product is offered at a discounted rate. Eventually the themes available now will be out-of-style. Will we require the marketers to continue to sell them at full price forever?
I was tempted to sell a theme at a premium and ended up offering it as GPL for reasons similar to Brian’s, and I’ve been happy with my decision. But I don’t think it fair to question what a business owner does with his product. We’re whiners! Declining prices and special deals are part of what we pay to have the newest technology instead of waiting.
In my opinion, the license terms should be set in stone forever, but the price is totally subject to change.
@Brandon – Well spoken sir!
Such an interesting conversation!
From a legal standpoint, users are simply purchasing the ability to use the theme. You pay a fee for that license. There’s no reason why the developer can’t later change the price or give away licenses.
@Brandon – I completely agree!
@Kyle – I didn’t think you were attacking us; and thanks for clearing up some of the thinking that went behind the post. As Jonathan said – many of the things you said in the comments went clear from the post itself.
@Jonathan – Great comment re: open source. But since that top has been hotly debated on countless occassions before, I’d rather skip to comment on it…
@ Jonathan – Wow, that was very well said regarding open source and has been debated a lot lately (including previously here). In fact, that probably deserves its own post!
@ Mehmet – Thanks for sharing your experiences with us!
@ Brandon – Well said! Analogies can often help prove a point and I think those are fair analogies.
@ Virginia Will – You are correct. I don’t think there is any reason why a premium theme author can’t give away his themes for free (technically speaking). I DO think, however, that there is an existing assumption amongst SOME buyers that it will never be made free, whether there should be or not. That is what inspired me to ask what rights buyers should have and gauge the opinions of our readers.
@ Adii – No problem. Your comment was left less than 3 minutes after I published the post (while I was editing it for clarity), as I often do right after I publish a post. I guess that shows how attunded you are to the WordPress community!
Like I said above, my mention of Rev 2 and Woo Themes was setting the stage or providing a background of two situations which inspired the post itself. The actual post was designed to gauge reader feedback on what they expect to get with their premium theme purchase.
Oh, and you may or may not have noticed that I have intentionally not given my personal opinion yet as I didn’t want to influence others to see it my way. The only personal opinion I’ve given is the following:
I think the downfall of one theme author is the benefit of another. Whoever can give the buyer the best bang for their buck in terms of quality of themes, support, updates, options etc, will end up winning over those who don’t.
This niche market is a pretty big market, and I don’t think buyers will unify and disband the market because of differences in the theme authors marketing.
I agree that the downfall of one theme author usually comes from neglect to provide support or lack of vision to upgrade his or her theme, just as you imply — give them your best and you’ll have a loyal following, and repeat business!
As the Revolution 2 guys have proven, there is a marketing profile that can work well that is not the standard fare. You of course need to execute it properly, and be ready for the risk of losing a hard won client-base, but it can be done, which they seem to have accomplished.
Time will tell.
But the premium theme market is opening up and not closing down. People want things that work out of the box without too much fuss. A premium theme gives them the benefit of assurance someone will be there if they need help, much less the other perks stated before.
This leads to another thought not connected, per se, with what we have been talking about, namely plugins.
I have read where some in the development end of things prefer a theme to have little or no plugins needed for theme functionality. In talking with friends, who love the WP framework, they are of an opposite mindset. They want functionality at their fingertips, and not go seek it out in the “extend” directory.
Some don’t even understand what some of the plugins offer, much less that it is really filling a need they want!
So like the premium theme itself, there is a place for the plugins, extensions, modifications, etc. in the marketplace. Some plugins are even mandatory in my opinion, like the IDs being visible again so you can actually work with your theme! Others are more in line with additional information for seo positioning or content mainstreaming.
Yes, many are mandatory — but I said that! (smile).
For example, anyone running a commercial site wants stats! Matt (of Automattic fame) even has a plugin for them. WPStats, or Woopra, or Sitemeter, et al, provide that type of functionality. So plugins really do have a place in the scheme of things. Where you can avoid plugins, do so. It streamlines the theme’s complexity, which in and of itself may be a barrier to a user.
But make the theme robust.
Free themes are usually not robust, flexible or easy to administer (especially after adding all the bells and whistles it DIDN’T come with). And the market is there for the savvy end-user or contract designer, to grab a premium theme and run with it. Like WP itself, a theme is a platform or framework that enables a vision to become tangible. It takes the artistry of the designer, end-user or developer to bring the masterpiece to life.
We just provide the canvas!
Just wanted to drop that I downloaded and activated the Premium News theme, just to take a look around at the control panel for the theme, and it just doesn’t work. Heck, maybe it’s my wamp server! I uploaded it to a Unix server and it still doesn’t work.
I wonder if this happened to the WooThemes customers, just think about it, you pay the license, upload the theme, activate it, you’re ready to go to the control panel to set things up, eeerr! not so fast dude, let’s begin a long journey through forums, knowledge base, troubleshooting, support, etc.
Then again, I wonder if WT changed the coding when they released it for free so that it won’t work.
Nah! I’m just speculating things.
@Daxion – That is just a ridiculous comment! The theme works perfectly fine and the only reason it wouldn’t work fine, is if you haven’t followed the theme setup (available in the free theme docs on our website) or you have an error on your server.
To even suggest that we’d release a broken theme for marketing purposes, is just being stupid. Or maybe I’m just speculating…
I’m posting the same thing I posted on your blog:
The control panel link menu doesn’t correctly links to the control panel page. It works if you change add_menu_page() to add_theme_page() in functions.php, and I’ve tested it in a wamp server and uploaded to a Linux server before changing that line. Perhaps it’s because of WP 2.6.3? which is what I fresh installed on both servers?
again, maybe it’s just wp 2.6.3
@Daxion – The theme works – just ask all of our users that are currently using the theme. If you’re a WooThemes user, we’d gladly assist you to get it working within your hosting environment.
I bought the rights to have all the rights of all the original Revolution themes. I made that on the assumption that these themes would have a premium rate.
The themes were/ are very good and the support forum was one of the best on the internet. I was therefore happy to pay the price to assist this develop and give Brian Gardiner an income.
I would consider it completely unethical to give these themes away for free to the entire WordPress community.
I accept that he may want to change the price and conditions. It would be fair for the price to be reduced or offered as a bargain. This would be acceptable.
I accept that he may want to give say free theme as part of a deal, but a deal that involved some sort of charge.
But when a person pays a reasonable amount of cash for the rights for a set of templates it is reasonable for them to expect some form of exclusivity.
I am pleased for Brian Gardiner that he has come up with a different business model and I wish him every success. Some of the new themes look very good.
However, I have now lost my helpful support forum and have to decide whether or not to pay for support through this new business. That I accept, but to devalue the themes I have bought would be wrong.
I certainly find this topic interesting primarily because it baffles me to no end regarding the suggested “expectancy” that customers “should” have regarding what they are “entitled” to.
I thought Brandon’s comment was spot on in that if you look in the “real world”, you can see a TON of examples where products are sold for a price one day and the next they are cheaper, updated, have more features or whatever.
For example, are iPod users entitled to get a new iPod everytime a new version is released?
No.
Do iPod customers get a rebate check everytime their iPod is sold at a cheaper rate than what they paid?
No.
So why are premium theme designers expected to do the same?
They are both paid products so why should the rules of business be different?
Here are my answers to your questions…
Q1. If you pay money for a WordPress theme, what priviledges are you entitled to as a buyer?
A1. You get the product(theme) that you paid for and a guarantee that it works with the latest version of WordPress at the time of sale. Any upgrades or additional support are provided at the discretion of the theme developer of which is outlined in the terms of sale for that theme.
Q2. Should there be a guarantee that it won’t eventually be free?
A2. No. The theme developer could use this as a marketing element but there should NEVER be a “standard” that a premium theme can never be given away for free. Otherwise you are giving control of the theme over to the customers and not the original person who created it!
Q3. Should you get lifetime code updates?
A3. No – unless the theme developer agrees to this as part of their terms of sale. Apple doesn’t send me a new iPod everytime they update it. I have to pay for a new iPod if I want the latest version.
If a premium theme is sold, it’s a product and should follow similar business principles unless otherwise stated in the terms.
Just my 2 cents
Take care.
I agree with Stu.
This discussion could just as well be about ipods, cars or clothes… The seller has the right to do what they want with their products and prices.
If Apple had a whole container of 1G ipods that they couldn’t sell now because they want to promote their new shiny iphones etc, and they decided to give those away to customers at their stores as a PR stunt, would this mean that all 1G ipod owners should either get a refund or a new ipod?
It is still in our interest to keep every customer happy, but giving the customer to many “rights” is not a good idea.
I agree with you Magnus, who owns the rights has the liberty to do anything. It’s like a designer that charges every work and one day he does a site for free for a friend. All his other customers should get a refund? that’s ridiculous.
Magnus, the theme indeed works, although I had to do that change, and I’m not using WPMU, just vanilla wp 2.6.3 in a WAMP local server and a Linux CentOS remote server.