Selling the Magento theme on ThemeForest

As you know, ThemeForest is the most popular marketplace where you can sell professional themes and get some extra money. To sell a theme, you need to perform the following simple steps:

  1. First, create an account and pass a simple test to check if you understood the conditions of the conditions of the site.
  1. Once you create an account and are ready to sell, open the Upload page, as shown in the following screenshot, from your account menu at the top:

  1. On this page, shown as follows, you have to select the category where you want to upload the theme; in our case, we will select the eCommerce category:

  1. In the next step, you need to insert all the theme information, such as the Name and Description:

As you can see from the tip, the name of the theme must have maximum 50 characters. You can use a name such as BookStore Responsive Magento theme.

You need to think of a name that reassumes the theme concept and the main features. Think of it with the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques in mind, because the keyword you use will also appear on the search engines.

For example, try to search Magento Responsive Theme on Google. Actually, this was the first theme I created while I was writing this book, which is on the ThemeForest Marketplace on the first page of Google. This is because I used some SEO techniques while writing the title and the description.

The theme is called Emphasis and you can find it at http://themeforest.net/item/emphasis-multipurpose-responsive-magento-theme/5503789. The following screenshot is of the current theme cover on ThemeForest:

  1. In the next section, you need to insert all the As you can see in the following screenshot of the theme, you can upload the zip file you created (Bookstore_Theme_1.zip):

  1. Then, you need to upload all the files including the theme ZIP file and a custom image to represent the theme that will be the cover of the ThemeForest item For example, you can create a custom cover to represent the theme features, as shown in the following screenshot:

  1. Next, you need to insert all the theme Fill in all the files and select all the options, and finally, submit the theme.

In a few hours, you will get an answer from the ThemeForest team; if everything is done well, the team will accept the theme and you are ready to make money!

1. My personal experience

I would like to share my personal experience. The first time I sent the theme Emphasis to the ThemeForest team, the review team there loved it; however, for some reason, they did not accept it because there were some concerns regarding the copyright issues with the brands used in the theme.

So, I corrected the problems indicated by the team and then submitted the theme again. After those small modifications, my theme was approved. Emphasis made 60 sales between October 2013 and March 2014. A good result for the first theme!

A few months after the Emphasis theme publication on ThemeForest, the Envato team selected my theme to include it into a special e-commerce bundle pack. This was another very good occasion and I had the opportunity to earn some extra money with that special event.

The eCommerce Sampler Pack included four themes for four of your favorite e-commerce platforms; mine included the following:

  • WooCommerce
  • Magento
  • Opencart
  • Prestashop

The Emphasis theme was selected to represent the Magento category. I was really surprised with this occasion and I earned a lot of popularity in the marketplace.

The following screenshot shows the banner provided for the eCommerce Sampler Pack, where my theme was featured:

Now the pack is complete; you can see the landing page created for it at http://go.themeforest.net/the-ecommerce-sampler-pack/.

This is only to let you understand that sooner or later, the effort you put in to create a theme will be paid for. So if you do a great work, you have a great possibility of gaining a lot with ThemeForest and other marketplaces.

2. Theme pricing

The theme pricing is decided by the review team. Consider that the pricing of Magento themes start from $80 on ThemeForest and are the most expensive items on the marketplace. Also, consider that you will not earn the full quoted price of the theme; ThemeForest will initially give you a commission of 50 percent that will increase based on the sales. You can see the actual commission rate table at http://themeforest.net/make_money/become_an_author.

You can also consider the possibility of selling the theme in other marketplaces too; however, the commission will decrease to 30 percent.

So the more you sell, the more you earn. You may think that this is not very fair, but this is the easiest way to start selling your creations and getting some extra money for your work.

Source: Sacca Andrea (2014), Mastering Magento theme design, Packt Publishing; Illustrated edition.

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