Read This Before Buying Thesis Theme!

Update Feb 2nd 2010 – after writing this, I decided to offer a couple of bonuses to deal with the shortcomings of Thesis. Skip to end of article.

I am a big fan of using wordpress to build websites.

I’ve worked with dozens of themes, both free and paid-for. I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve had many headaches resulting from themes. Lots of themes are junk, a handful are very good.

Yet…

Shortly after getting to grips with it, I transferred all my wordpress sites (blogs AND other content sites) to the Thesis framework. I also use it as the starting point for 80% of my clients’ websites.

Big yellow Thesis banners

q. Have you noticed how many big yellow Thesis banner ads have been sprouting up in the sidebars of your favorite blogs lately?

This says two things:

1 – Thesis is more popular than ever, and;

2 – (more importantly), Thesis users are proud to show off that their blog runs on the Thesis theme.

Yes, those yellow banners are often affiliate links, but the fact is that these blogs are using Thesis, and displaying a Thesis banner has almost become a proud emblem that says ‘I take my blog seriously, I invested in Thesis’.

This should be a strong signal to you that Thesis excels as a wordpress theme. No other theme’s users are such strong advocates.

What separates Thesis from other themes?

The goal of the vast majority of themes is to look pretty.

However, if you take only one thing from this article, it’s this – DON’T choose a theme based on looks alone.

Chris Pearson, the creator of Thesis, explains this splendidly:

If you’re serious about getting a new theme for your website, then you must understand that themes are much, much more than just designs. The most important thing WordPress themes do is serve your site’s underlying HTML, and as a result, themes are 100% responsible for your in-site SEO.

By extension, this means that choosing a theme based solely on its design is a poor, misguided decision. Also, this means that a good theme has a lot of responsibilities—it must provide rock-solid code and a savvy design, and it must be flexible enough for you to customize as your site grows.

The Thesis Theme is my answer to the problems associated with smart Web development, and I do hope you’ll consider the aforementioned factors when selecting a theme for your site.

While Thesis has some awesome customization options, it does so only AFTER serving impeccable, optimized code.

For me, these principles distinguish it from virtually every other theme out there.

The shortcomings of Thesis Theme

Thesis Theme is excellent and I highly recommend that you purchase it.

But it’s not perfect.

Here are two problems:

Inaccessible core wordpress files

If you are like 99% of others this won’t affect you, but if you are a hardcore web developer looking to make sweeping changes to core wordpress files, then Thesis will make this difficult for you – it takes over these files for its own use. However, check out Thesis’s hooks allows you to make a lot of custom changes on the fly.

Despite customizing, it still looks like a Thesis blog

To a certain extent, no matter what you do in the Custom Options panel in Thesis, somebody else might recognize your blog

Shortly after getting to grips with it, I transferred all my sites (blogs AND other content sites) to the Thesis framework. I also use it as the starting point for 80% of my clients’ websites.

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Holy Crap, Thesis Theme Is Now A $1.95m Business.

You know what, I think I’m a little bit jealous of Chris Pearson. Aside from being a damn handsome man, he’s also making money hand over fist with his Thesis Theme brainchild. $1.95m bucks a year, to be exact.

Who would have thought that a single, simple Wordpress theme could pull in such an outrageous amount of money? I certainly didn’t. In fact if you’d told me 12 months ago that creating a premium wordpress theme could pull in anything more than pocket change, I’d have laughed at you.

The wordpress community is completely saturated with free themes, so surely you’d be pissing in the wind by building a business around a premium theme, right?

Oh how wrong I was. Let’s look at the numbers.

Thesis Theme made $1m in its first 12 months.

How do I know? Well, being a long-term affiliate for Chris, my affiliate stats show the invoice number for the sales I refer. Since they start at 001 upwards, I know how many copies of Thesis Theme he’s sold at a particular point in time…

  • Chris sold 10,008 copies of Thesis from 29th March 2008 to 29th March 2009 (i.e. 12 months to the day after Thesis Theme was launched.
  • There are 2 prices – $87 for a personal license and $164 for the developer’s license. My affiliate stats show an approximate 50-50 split in sales between the two, so let’s presume this is the case across the board.
  • Multiply average purchase by number of sales and BANG, Thesis Theme pulled in about $1.26m in the first 12 months.
  • Since then, the number of copies sold each month has been on the rise. In April, 1287 licenses were sold, making Thesis Theme at least a  $1.95m business (likely more if monthly sales continue to rise).

Of course there are affiliates and developers to pay, but let’s not beat about the bush here – this is one mother-fucker of a cash cow. God I wish I’d thought of it first.

Why has Thesis Theme become so popular?

It comes down to this… FEAR.

Thesis Theme has become the dominant wordpress theme because it redefined what a good theme was. That making a theme look pretty is actually not so important, and that before you even THINK about design you need a framework for delivering consistent, optimized HTML code. Chris made this the core feature of Thesis, then on TOP of this makes it incredibly easy to customize the design yourself. So Thesis is more a framework, rather than a theme.

Wordpress bloggers are therefore flocking to Thesis out of fear.

  • Fear that their current code might be holding them back.
  • Fear that if they change their blog theme in the future it could change the entire HTML structure of their site (= you disappear from Google).
  • And because Thesis is now the dominant wordpress theme, fear that if you don’t buy it you’re immediately going to be at a disadvantage.

And to be honest, these are good reasons to be fearful. Thesis is a damn good product. And it’s fundamentally changed the world of wordpress themes.

How big can Thesis Theme get?

Heck do I know, but it’s certainly got momentum in its favor, particularly as more and more high profile bloggers make the switch (and blog about the experience – ).

What I’m actually more interested in is what Chris Pearson is going to do next to grow this business.

Will he continue to only sell $87 and $164 Thesis licenses, or is there a bigger picture? He’s got a growing community of extremely happy customers (I am one of them) who would love a reason to send more money Chris’s way.

My prediction…

A natural extension of the DIYThemes business would be to start offering premium skins on top of the Thesis framework. In the next 6 months we will see premium Thesis skins offered on the diythemes site, in the $17-$27 range. It wouldn’t surprise me if he opened up an entire Thesis skins marketplace where designers can sell their own skins, with Chris naturally taking a cut).

He’ll do so only when there is sufficient traction, else he risks alienating first-time buyers (“why should I buy Thesis when I’m going to have to buy a skin on top of that?”).

But then again, what do I know? What do you think?

Keep it up Chris, it’s a genius product and a fucking marvellous case-study for online entrepreneurs who are doubting whether their idea is big enough. I mean come on, $1.95m a year from a Wordpress theme. Who’d have thought it.

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