Lessons from failing to sell WordPress themes (during the gold rush)
I’d like to take you back in time six years, to a time when the world of blogging was very different. The “premium WordPress theme” was in its relative infancy, the default WordPress theme was Kubric (HuffPo claims “Kubrick has helped change the face of cyberspace”) and WordPress 2.9 had just launched, boasting the addition of being able to “trash” posts.
The default WordPress theme at the time, which “helped change the face of cyperspace”.
At this time I was 15 and running writing a lot of WordPress tutorials, alongside studying for my GCSEs. I could see the gold rush to sell WordPress themes happening and reasonably assumed I could be part of it.
I spent six months building an okay theme with a partner and didn’t go great. The product failed. After talking about survivorship bias (and accusing the classic product case study of misleadingly highlight success) I figured I should share my story and (in an attempt to avoid survivorship bias) clearly say what I’d do differently now.
Let me walk you through what I did wrong and what lessons can be learned from my unsuccessful foray into the WordPress theme market.
Building
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/13707/lessons-from-failing-to-sell-wordpress-themes-during-the-gold-rush
source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/lessons-from-failing-to-sell-wordpress-themes-during-the-gold-rush/