What Do You Think to Sponsored Themes?
Matthew Mullenweg the famous Matt behind WordPress has written about his dislike of sponsored themes and has written an essay about it here on Weblog Tools Collection.
I’ve been offered good money for links on themes and turned it down rather than add a link to something totally irrelevant. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right and to many a credit link is far more than they want anyway.
I agree with Matt and think that sponsored links shouldn’t be put on themes but it’s a pity they aren’t quite so ethical when it comes to giving proper credit when it’s due.
What do you think - Are sponsored themes acceptable or not?
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 7:04 pm and is filed under WordPress Themes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
It feels sad to turn down the sponsoring offers, since it is amounts that could turn several hobby designers into active professionals. But I respect Matt’s wish, and I also point out that my themes have always been free to edit (just like the templates) which is similar to his GPL licensing view for themes. Design credit is always asked for and always appreciated - but never required! And I don’t release a new theme every day just to get more incoming links…
I’ve made three own public themes - and a few more are ready for release. All are made on popular demand, and based on some of my most popular website templates. I have never sold any theme to any sponsor that has put their own name on it for promo or SEO reasons. I used to have sponsored links before, but removed them when Matt asked me to months ago. Now I have a link to my own site and to the site of a friend of mine, and I’m happy to say that noone have been mad about that…
Now, I’m lucky to have advertisers and sponsors on my site that makes it possible to me to work as a professional designer anyway. That makes it easier to turn down the theme sponsorship offers. Out of tradition, I also turn down regular XHTML/CSS template sponsorship offers - even though I could definitely add that if I wanted to since the templates have no connection to WordPress.
I honestly don’t mind sponsored themes, as long as the sponsorship is handled in a good way! If the themes are really good, completely free, credits and sponsored links may be removed if wanted, the theme is clearly marked as sponsored and the sponsored link is discrete but still visible and not spammy (no ugly tricks such as hidden links or keyword abuse is used), then I think that sponsored themes are all good. If it brings more themes that site owners can choose from, then who would that hurt?
There may be more to the story than people see. Remember that WordPress.org was involved in a link farm scandal years ago, and that Matt wants to make sure that the search engines treat WordPress well. As said, I respect that. But to be completely honest: I don’t turn down sponsorship offers to make Matt happy. I do it to make sure that people can find, access and use my themes and designs without any worries that WordPress (or some other part in the story) would point me out as an abuser and a bad-guy.
I’m releasing themes to help people, and I would get really sad if people would ignore that fact and point me out as a bad-guy because I had a sponsored link in my themes. I wouldn’t be ashamed about the sponsored link itself, because it wouldn’t hurt anyone. But I refuse to be “evil” when I do my best to do something good!
My two cents, posted exclusively here.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Regarding the wordpress.com links: Did you contact the WordPress.com admins and ask them to correct it? If so, did they respond in any way?
April 16th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I don’t really have a problem with sponsored links, although i do object to templates which have too many, i came across a template that had 8 sponsored links! 8 links!
Thats just far too many, and spoilt an otherwise good theme.
I think the problem is there are too many ‘designers’ realising they can make a quick buck out of selling links on their designs, rather than just profiting (like yourself) from the links you quite rightly put on your designs.
I’ve just installed your excellent chameleon skin on a new blog, thats how i found my way here
April 16th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Hi Andreas, I agree with you, I don’t really think there is anything wrong with sponsored themes as long as they are above board and honest. There are certainly more “evil” things in the world that we should be worried about than a few sponsored links.
I’ve been offered good money for sponsored links and making themes for other people so they can give them away with there link on and not mine.
I have avoided both as popular opinion seems to go against them. It does seem that opinion seems to be turning against even a credit link though, which seems a little over the top.
Hi Ash, thanks for the encouragement. 8 links is most definitely over the top. Even more than the default WordPress theme
April 30th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I wouldn’t have a problem with sponsored links. (but dont use them - not that I get any offers :P)
I wouldn’t use them on my site, and if I used them on my templates, I would have it undrelined on my site, that I’m using sponsored links - and would add that the links are my way of income.
Some people could live with the income from sponsored links.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Ad-sponsored themes are probably the worst way of trying to make money from your work. It’s not the making money that’s wrong - it’s the unpredictable side effects for the theme user. So for example if Google starts to penalise sites that use a certain theme because it links to a disreputable sponsor it could be disastrous for users relying on Google to bring in traffic.
Crediting the theme author and having links that go back to the author’s site are fine. After all, the user is saying they like the author’s work by using the theme, so they ought to be prepared to say it publicly.
I’m using your Chameleon theme on a charity web site. If a big bank gave us lots of money we’d put their logo on our site if they wanted us to and we’d also happily link back to their site. So if someone donates to us by their work we should be happy to do the same.
But we’d not accept money from any source - it might upset our other sponsors. This is another problem with ad-sponsored themes when the theme user is something like a charity, religious or community group. We have to be careful who we take help from.
Are there better ways for the people creating interesting Wordpress themes to make a bit of money? The only ways I can see are:
(a) to attempt to monetise the popularity of your site by for example putting Google Ads on it. This should be completely acceptable to everybody but probably won’t make much money.
(b) to monetise your enhanced personal reputation by doing paid freelance work and/or getting a better job. This is probably how most people eventually derive at least some benefit from putting good work in the public domain.
May 4th, 2007 at 3:47 am
I had been noticing the rise of sponsored themes for a few months. But today when I was doing a search for a new theme (thats how I ended up here), the amount of pimping that is going on is really annoying. Designers auctioning off multiple sponsorship spots on their new slightly altered design, or ports of designs from other systems.
I completely agree with Ian. A link crediting the author is perfectly fine, but I will not go near a sponsored design. The upside is Google will tweak their algorithm, and this tactic will do off soon enough.
Ernie