Starting a WordPress theme shop is tough these days. The sheer number of competitors in the market are immense. This talk explores skills and practical considerations required to successfully distribute commercial themes and other ways to profit from child theme development.

2. Background & History
● No formal web dev/design training
● Brief educational background
● What I'm NOT:
○ Programming Ninja
○ Marketing Guru
○ Graphic Designer
● What I AM:
○ Decent Front End Dev
○ Know what I like
○ Chaser of Passive Income

3. Premium Theme Market Issues
● Crowded
● High Barrier to Entry
○ Skills
○ Support Infrastructure
○ Cost to get help
● Getting feet to your website

4. Possible Solution: Hijacking
● No actual crime involved
● Build of childthemes / plugins
● Leveraging existing themeshop infrastructure

5. What is a Child Theme?
● Wordpress hierarchy - how things fit together
● Opinion:
○ Childthemes = look & feel change
○ Plugins = adds / removes
functionality
○ Affects support requirements
● Why I chose child theme product
development? Skills

6. Examples - Classipress
● Gumtree on Wordpress

7. http://demos.appthemes.com/classipress/

8. http://classipress-child.tinygiantstudios.co.uk/

9. http://classipress-child.tinygiantstudios.co.uk/

10. Examples - Jobroller
● Wordpress Job Board

11. Prima Screenshots
http://demos.appthemes.com/jobroller/

12. Prima Screenshots
http://jrchild.tinygiantstudios.co.uk

13. http://eva.tinygiantstudios.co.uk

14. Hijack 101 - Tools / Skills / Knowledge
Resources
● Skills
● lynda.com
○ Basic PHP ● teamtreehouse.com
○ WP theme file hierarchy ●
●
Digging into Wordpress
Wordpress Tutsplus
○ HTML / CSS / jQuery ● Nettuts
● Web Design Tuts
● Tools ●
●
Themeforest
Code Canyon
○ Text Editor ● WP Codex
● PHP Novice to Ninja
○ Graphic Design thingamabob ● jQuery Novice to Ninja
○ A website to showcase (and sell) ●
●
Sublime Text 2
Notepad++
● Knowledge ●
●
Photoshop
Fireworks
○ What is happening in WP Market ● pixlr.com
○ Top tier themeshops

15. Hijack 101 - Pick a Target
● How to select a themeshop to hijack
○ Poor theme design
○ Poor theme functions Personal Experience
○ Poor theme support
○ Unanswered User Requests
○ Active user base / showcase
Research
○ Themeshops by Size
○ Themeshop support

16. Hijack 101 - Execute Your Plan
Resources
● The Legwork
● Designshack
○ Handcoding HTML/CSS/jQuery ● CSSWizardry
○ Use existing CSS files from parent ●
●
Supportpress
Github
○ Use CSS3 ● Google Docs
● Bugherd
○ Add spice to CORE theme features
○ Keeps things as modular as possible
○ Advanced: Learn Hooks / Filters
● Testing
○ Find trusted users with field experience
○ Bug logging system
○ Reward testers

17. Hijack 101 - Get Cash for your Stash
● Demo Setup (With Google Analytics) Remember
● Product Screenshots / Box Cover ●
●
Currency
Tax Laws
● Get a Marketplace
●
●
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
○ Own Website
● Hosting & Bandwidth
○ Official Marketplace
○ 3rd Party Marketplace
● Start Marketing
○ Support forum / forum signature
○ Blog comments
○ Email Newsletters
○ Asking official recommendation
○ "Buy Now" links on demo's
○ Social Media stuff
○ Listen to / contact the experts

18. Hijack 202 - Aftersales Support
● Develop your own support system (e.g. forum /
ticket based / email)
● Why?
○ Key to future sales
○ Key to user driven marketing

19. Hijack 202 - Making it Legit
Hijackers (child theme developers)
● Getting themeshop backing
● Joining themeshop marketplace
○ Reduces infrastructure requirements
● Becoming certified partner
● Drawback: Revenue split
Hijackees (themeshops)
● Expanded product offering
● Passive income
● Employee screener

20. My Own Experience with AppThemes
● 1st premium child theme early 2011
● Marketing = Forum signatures
● AppThemes Stalker
● Currently 8 Products total
● Joined AppTheme marketplace in Aug 2012

21. Making it Official - Joining AppThemes
● Front End Developer
● Inside access to upcoming AppThemes products
● Still based in South Africa
● Still earning in USD = Passive Income

22. Questions
http://tinygiantstudios.co.uk/

23. Example - Vantage
● Wordpress - Business Directory Listings

24. http://demos.appthemes.com/vantage/

25. http://vantage-child.tinygiantstudios.co.uk/