Episode 31: Growing your WordPress theme shop w/ Adam Pickering

May 23, 2013

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in Blog, Business, Clients, Interview, Marketing, Startups

Learn what Adam Pickering did to grow his WordPress theme shop and build his brand.

Adam is co-founder of Mint Themes and designer of the Astoundify crowd funding theme. We have a great discussion about how he built his companies, leveraged SEO to drive traffic, and how to price products.

If you find yourself sitting in a similar seat — don’t miss this!

Interview with Adam Pickering of Mint Themes and Astoundify

Watch on YouTube

Listen to the audio version

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How to drive more traffic to your theme site

You’re going to learn a lot in this episode, so I hope you have a pen and paper ready!

Adam discussed that targeting niche theme markets was the stepping stone for Mint Themes. When he launched his first theme SoundStage, he actually had experience with being in a band. He knew what folks looking to launch a music site wanted. He was able to create great blog articles and keywords around the niche.

What do we call this? Content marketing!

He slowly started building out other niche sites for WordPress themes — including Church based themes. Eventually to wrangle all the marketing under one roof, he needed to build a brand. Thus, Mint Themes was born.

This is a great journey to listen to if you are wrestling with your marketing efforts. Learn from Adam and put it to use in your own WordPress business.

What do you think about Adam’s adventure?

You’re not charging enough for your theme

Oddly enough, my good friend Chris Lema just posted this today.

Adam also felt like we were in a race to the bottom. Mint Theme’s pricing is on the higher side of the average and he justifies it. Adam’s point is to let customers know, you’re a real person or team with real expenses — this is a real business.

Take pride in the product your offering and the price will reflect that.

Your thoughts on pricing WordPress products?

Comments

One response to “Episode 31: Growing your WordPress theme shop w/ Adam Pickering”

Jim Saporito

May 24, 2013

I found this while looking at different theme designs. This was an enjoyable interview! The WordPress community is slowly getting flooded with developers and designers willing to do more for less. A lot of that has to do with the economy. Many people are fighting to make ends meet. Many markets, not just WordPress, are experiencing this along with shrinking profit margins. In a global economy where some people are happy to do highly skilled work for $15/hr. this creates a shift in the market.

On the other hand, people still enjoy doing business locally, with people they can meet and do business with – face-to-face.

Local businesses can establish a relationship much easier with local developers and designers than they can working with someone from India (for example). On the other hand, the fact that people in other countries are willing to do the same job for much less – that’s the exact thing that’s already responsible for millions of lost jobs here in the USA.

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