When I came up with the idea of Pro Theme Design I wanted to do two things, 1 make money from kick-arse premium themes, and 2 give something useful back to the community. So when I read that Matt Mullenweg, the man behind Automattic, said he thought that Premium themes were holding back the community - I felt a little hurt.
So I ask him why and he explained to us (Mike, Alain, and I) that the current state of selling WordPress themes aren’t helping the community grow, which defeats the purpose of WordPress being open source. How are other theme authors going to learn from your themes if you’re only giving them an option to buy them? [source]
Obviously his statement wasn’t directed at us since at the time we hadn’t released anything, however it is now relevant - so I thought I’d write a post explaining why - for Darren and I - it’s not the case.
New Code
One of my objectives with my premium themes is to develop top quality themes with top quality code. I also want to innovate creating new features not before seen in Wordpress. Part of this development has led to me creating a number of plugins (with more to come) that I have open sourced and even host on Wordpress.org - currently a small selection but there’s more to come.
When developing Mimbo Pro Darren came up with the idea of creating a thumbnail script that sizes and crops images saving people time and effort. It sounded like a great idea so with the help of one of his work colleagues timthumb was born. Since then it has been tweaked and adjusted and is soon to be released as an open source project. It will also be seeing use in Adiis upcoming Premium Wordpress themes.
New Tutorials
So there’s plugins and a widget, but something else both Darren and I like the idea of, is creating a series of tutorials explaining some of the more advanced features we developed for Mimbo Pro. I have been posting Wordpress Tips and Tricks on my own website for some time, and it’s a tradition I intend to continue.
There are plenty of ways to give back to the community and still make a profit. My intention is to try as many of them as possible.