The Problem

The number of themes available out there for WordPress and other platforms is a great way for designers to make money. However, the current market setup is causing some major problems caused by these marketplaces as well.

Low Quality

When it comes to finding a WordPress theme, there are many sites out there that offer very low quality themes. From the theme being simply outdated having a bad coding or simply, being badly designed, the number of low quality themes available is astounding. However, there are a few sites out there that offer high quality themes. The problem is that the average theme buyer does not know the difference.

Pirate Sites

Another huge problem with the industry is a number of sites that are selling themes that they are not legally allowed to sell. While pirated sites can work in the favor of a designer, by giving them exposure that can lead to paid work, it can also work against them. If you are a designer and your designs are available on this site for free, why would anyone pay you to use them?

Fewer Options

When you start browsing through some of the sites that offer free themes, you will begin to notice a pattern. All of the themes seem to be the same. The reason for this is most of the sites are getting their themes from the same people. The problem with this is the rate at which each site pays the designer for use of them, can be extremely different.

Quality Control

The simple fact is that with so many theme sites out there, quality control is a huge problem. When it comes to themes, low quality can give everyone a bad name. This is sad, because there are truly some great designs out there, but when people use sites that do not test the usability or functionality of a theme before allowing people to use it, the whole industry gets a bad name.

Good Things About the Market

Even with all of the bad things going on when it comes to the theme marketplace, there are a few good things as well. There are some very good places out there for selling themes. These places hold designers to high values and are raising the bar when it comes to theme design.

In addition, the number of places available to sell themes means that there are some very good opportunities available for designers that are selling themes. The best marketplaces for themes encourage their designers to be creative and come up with innovative ideas.

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Although open source platforms and languages are free, there is a lot of money being made from developers of services and products, which use open source software. This includes things such as premium themes and development frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails and jQuery.

Open source is symbiotic and allow the use of software that would not otherwise be in the market place. The commercial extensions of these sources create a self sustaining economy, while adding versatility and competitiveness. Open source software has two different sides. which are commercial and free. Each brings something unique to the table and people benefit from them both.

Open source: the commercial side

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and three of the biggest open source CMS platforms available. They are each made using PHP, which is also open source. There are many other management systems out there, which are not as well known.

Out of the three platforms mentioned above, WordPress is probably the best known. It is open source and free, just like the others. However, if you would like to get more out of your usage, and you are willing to pay fees, you can upgrade to a premium service. Dupal is also open source and free, but there are premium services available. By selling these products companies can be competitive and earn money through open source platforms.

Developers can create plugins and modules for use with open source platforms, like the above mentioned Drupal, WordPress and also Joomla. These give greater functionality beyond the scope of the basic packages, and give users a more versatile experience.

Trying to make money through open source development has its pros and cons. Companies are able to release extensions for existing platforms, utilizing forums to make their work usable by thousands, or even more, people. However, unless you have a team of marketers that know what they are doing, it can be difficult for your work to reach the masses. Small time developers are constantly trying to make their work known so that they can actually make some money.

Following is a list of software market places where you can pick up some modules and extensions that are available.

Chrome web store

This site has themes, apps and extensions available for use with the open source browser, Google Chrome.

Android Market

This site has thousands of free and paid apps, which are all on offer through the open source mobile platform, Andriod.

WP Plugins

WP Plugins is a software market place that distributes WordPress plugins. They have premium plugins which can extend the features of WordPress, such as e-commerce plugins.

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