Commissioned Work or Commissioned Creative Vision?

Creative ownership has always been a controversial issue. Demarcation lines have been difficult to draw with the coming of the information or digital age. As far as WordPress themes go, a piece of work that emanates from the WordPress author, known as the creator or artist, and transferred to the recipient often identified as client, becomes an arduous task because the artist is oftentimes unable to remove or distance himself from the work of “art” even if it has long left his hands.

For example, a WordPress developer or professional, commissioned to work on a project and whose work has been accepted by the client has intrinsically turned over all rights to his design and has received remuneration for it. In essence, the client now owns the work. However, the designer is still credited to the public eye and both are at the mercy of the terms and stipulations of the legal contract between them.

The coming of the internet/digital age has birthed governing rules such as Creative Commons or GPL where artists openly share the rights to their work to the public under specific licenses or terms of use thus complicating further the very delineations that are supposed to protect the interest of the artist. But where do you draw the line? In the eyes of the WordPress author, the output can be treated as artistic and creative output while to the client, the full rights to the use of the output, specifically, the WordPress theme created, belong to the latter once money is exchanged.

Discussions continue to be controversial. Schools train and teach multi media students how to treat their work and how to avoid exploitation or unjust use of their artistic output. But this is not so in the “real world” marketplace where copying is a “generally accepted” practice. It is not uncommon for a best-selling WordPress theme to birth clones and spin-offs of some sort in a matter of days. How do we address the idealism of upcoming authors and developers who are scared that their designs might get ripped off? The exposure and professional experience of seasoned web developers have given them the wisdom and resilience to cope with these real world ripoff concerns. But this should not discourage those who are can add to the pool of creativity because of fear.

Thankfully, there are many mentors within the WordPress community who are willing to give back to the community and pay it forward to those who are just starting. The dialog is also always ongoing. This is perhaps what makes the whole WordPress community strong and what makes its members continue to thrive.

40 Impressive Selective Color Photography Examples

Selective color helps photographers to produce beautiful and interesting images. Using photo editing software we can change some of the areas to black and white, while other areas remain colorful making photos more vibrant. Using selective color, we can make ordinary quality images to extraordinary high-quality images. Desaturating and masking color photos is mainly used in this process.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC) How Does it Work?

You often hear people talking about PPC, CPC, conversion and all those familiar jargon once you start immersing yourself more and more online. Affiliate marketers are quite familiar with these terms and these have become part of their normal lingo. But what if you are just starting out and you have no clue as to how all these acronyms work and if they have any real value to you at all. Let’s take a closer look at these Internet marketing tools to help you maximize them vis-a-vis traffic flowing through your website.

In recent articles, we have pointed out the enormous traffic potential that you can tap into by following some simple traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit. Let’s say you’ve done your homework and you’re starting to see a spike in the number of visitors that come to your site. What next? Having a lot of visitors does not automatically translate into earnings for you. You need to give something to gain something in return. This is where these tools come in. Let’s break it down.

What is Pay Per Click?

According to Webopedia,

Pay Per Click or PPC is an Internet marketing formula used to price online advertisements. In PPC programs the online advertisers will pay Internet Publishers the agreed upon PPC rate when an ad is clicked on, regardless if a sale is made or not.

With pay per click in search engine advertising, the advertiser would typically bid on a keyword so the PPC rate changes. On single website — or network of content websites — the site publisher would usually set a fixed pay per click rate.

How you earn from PPC now depends on which side of the table you are at. You can either be an online advertiser, an Internet publisher, or even both. An online advertiser is someone who pays a publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad he has placed is clicked whether the click resulted in a sale or not. This advertisement cost on the part of the online advertiser translates into several marketing objectives set for the business he is promoting. A few of these goals are: to introduce a product or service, to send the person who clicked to his money site, to encourage subscribers via email opt-in or other sign up strategies, and yes, to make a sale. It’s the advertiser’s tool to earn. Now whether these goals are met or not, the advertiser still has to pay the publisher based on the PPC rate agreed upon between them. This then also translates as earnings on the part of the publisher – similar to how sales commissions work without the sales. It is merely based on the earnings per number of clicks made on a particular ad.

There are several PPC models out there which you can study to find out which one works best for you. You can adopt the Flat Rate PPC model or the Bid Based PPC.

From Wikipedia,

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the cost per click (CPC) within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors.

In the bid based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot. Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower.[8] This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

There are several reputable Pay Per Click websites that will make money online for you as you look into monetizing your website. Do your research before you sign up and make sure these PPC sites are legit. It will take more than one website to really make a difference in your income stream so study the market and get into the forums. You’ll find a lot of useful information and real life experiences you can learn from. Once you sign up with the legit ones, refer others and continue to grow your networking cycle. The world wide web is actually getting smaller as more people get interconnected.

If you’ve just started your website, accepting ads from online advertisers is a great way to start making passive income online. Just make sure you agree on the terms and that expectations and results are clear.

Pandas and Penguins – SEOlogy According to Google

You either love them or hate them. Who would have thought that these cute and cuddly creatures would be the object of so much debate and controversy and even dread in the land of SEO. Because of Google’s recent and ongoing algorithm updates, it has given the gentle panda and the prim penguin new personas. These powerful updates have sent SEO heads spinning and scrambling to regain lost rankings, search engine visibility, web traffic and revenue. But what’s the buzz really all about? Let’s go back to the source.

The Goal and Philosophy Behind the Panda / Penguin Updates

According to Google,

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

What animal is that?

The Panda Update – It’s all about your content

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. (Note: Panda Update 24 – Jan 2013)

The Penguin Update – It’s all about your credibility

This update is an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. (Note: Penguin Update 3 – Oct 2012)

What should you avoid?

  • Unnatural links – spammy links
  • Using techniques outside of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
  • Thin, duplicate content
  • Overuse and abuse of keywords (keyword density)
  • Spelling, stylistic, or factual errors
  • Sloppy, overspun, unhelpful, poor quality or nonsensical content
  • Dubious link building and black hat SEO strategies
  • Over optimization of content, internal links, backlinks, and anchor texts

What’s the Penalty? the Reward?

Of course nothing escapes the eyes of big brother, Google, and people who have been gaming the system have been severely hit. On the other hand, legitimate quality sites and small businesses have not been spared either.

It only takes a few poor quality, or duplicate content, pages to hold down traffic on an otherwise solid site. Google recommends either removing those pages, blocking them from being indexed by Google, or re-writing them.

However, Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer (that’s the head of the Webspam team for Google, warns that re-writing duplicate content so that it is original may not be enough to recover from Panda — the re-writes must be of sufficient high quality. High quality content brings “additional value” to the web. Content that is general, non-specific, and not substantially different from what is already out there should not be expected to rank well: “Those other sites are not bringing additional value. While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table.”

Theoretically, these updates reward well-designed and carefully thought of websites that provide an optimal user experience with high rankings. Failing to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and best practices for content creation, site design, and link development will definitely affect a site’s ranking and SEO chances. Conventional SEO tactics will no longer cut it. Efforts should be directed towards using clean Code, publishing quality Content, and establishing site Credibility instead of black hat or grey hat techniques. The marriage of white hat search engine optimization techniques, exceptional web design, coupled with effective marketing practices won’t hurt any company wanting to be on Google’s good side. But more Google updates are still anticipated so the results remains to be seen.

More on this next week.

WordPress Themes Should Be More Expensive: HERE’S WHY

If this post has caught your eye, you are probably a current WordPress user, author, developer, designer, or if not, perhaps a potential one. The subject of pricing is a tricky topic that some prefer to ignore or avoid – the proverbial elephant in the room. Why, because this is a hot topic indeed.

How should WordPress Themes be priced anyway?

For the purpose of this article, let’s start off by saying that a WordPress theme is a downloadable digital product as compared to an actual physical product that can be shipped. When you purchase a WordPress theme you do not receive any physical items at all but instead, you are given permission or license to download an electronic/ digital product (the theme), via email or a provided link, and use it according to the author/developer’s specific TOU (Terms of Use).

Traditionally, the actual cost of producing/manufacturing tangible products can be arrived at by adding the cost of materials used and the labor paid to produce these products to arrive at the total cost of goods. Others may add on overhead costs but strictly speaking it’s simply materials +labor. For services rendered, actual cost can be arrived at based on a rate applied to the number of man hours spent (time) on a project or the professional fee charged by the person (expert) rendering the service.

However,

Digital products require an approach to pricing that differs from that used for physical products. Most digital products have common characteristics which includes:

  • high fixed cost to produce the first unit, but low marginal costs to produce subsequent units
  • quality is difficult to judge without actually experiencing the product

The most common pricing method that can be used for digital products is to use a licensing approach.
(source: Digital Economy: Impacts, Influences, and Challenges by Harbhajan S. Kehal, Varinder P. Singh)

The Digital Products Cost Equation

The cost structure of digital products = high fixed costs that are sunk, and tending towards zero marginal costs.

Fixed costs refer to the costs associated with a product, that are fixed over a number of units. Thus regardless of the number of units produced and sold, the fixed costs remain the same. With digital products, much of the fixed costs are actually sunk costs, and therefore non-recoverable costs. A large portion of the costs associated with digital products are fixed, and sunk, and not variable costs, which are more typical of traditional manufactured goods.

Sunk costs refer to costs that are non-recoverable fixed costs. Digital products usually have significant sunk costs (when compared to other fixed costs) in the form of research & development and intellectual property (copyright, patents etc.) for the product. If the product is not successful in the marketplace, the costs associated with the the product development (intellectual property, labor) cannot be recovered. Thus when making pricing decisions about the product in the future, one should not factor in the sunk costs. If a product’s cost structure is made up of sunk costs (no other fixed costs) and zero marginal costs then any price above zero will contribute to the company’s bottom line. Other fixed costs, that are not sunk (rent, depreciation on equipment etc.) should be factored in when making pricing decisions in the future, since these are ongoing costs to the company. The company will continue to have to pay these costs in the future, this is not the case for sunk costs.

Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).
(source: http://www.udel.edu/alex/dictionary.html#d)

What costs go into the creation of a WordPress theme anyway?

How many of you enjoy BTS (Behind the scenes) footages of upcoming movies? BTS clips give you a sneak peek of how these movies were filmed and the production process these films have gone through. Similarly, if we could do a BTS video of how a WordPress theme is created, can you imagine the amount of work that goes into creating a theme? Can you identify which activities fall under fixed costs, sunk costs, or marginal costs? Can you tell how many working hours have gone into its creation? Can you measure the education, experience, competence and expertise of the author/developer?

When you purchase a WordPress theme from a reputable WordPress author/developer you typically get a long list of features like the one below. But, have you ever associated any cost to these features?

1. Theme Features and Functionalities

  • Fancy Sliders
    • Simple jQuery Slider
    • Slider Pro ($25)
    • jQuery Carousel Evolution ($10)
    • TouchCarousel ($21)
    • LayerSlider (Parallax Slider) ($15)
    • Paradigm Slider ($15)
    • Slider Evolution ($18)
    • Nivo Slider WordPress Plugin ($19)
    • Pinwheel Slider ($9)
    • Responsive Ken Burns Slider WordPress Plugin ($18)
  • Plugins/plugin compatibility ($4-$50)
    • eCommerce/shopping cart plugins
    • Audio/Video/Images/Slideshows/Widgets/Portfolio
    • SEO, Social Media
  • Multiple page templates (more than basic Blog and Archives templates)
  • Graphic Design Elements
    • Icons
    • Fonts
    • Stock Photos
    • Multimedia
  • Mobile device compatibility and display features
  • Styling Short codes (buttons, columns, tables, boxes, dropdowns, drop caps, etc.)
  • Custom admin panel and customization features

2. Admin/Marketing/Support Costs

  • Business license/ applicable taxes (cost = based on your geo location)
  • Developer’s fees
  • Hosting costs
  • Theme preview designs
  • Copywriting
  • Analytics – Marketplace sharing
  • Support staff, Forum maintenance, Live chat support
  • Documentation, PSD/XML/Demo content files
  • Video tutorials, screencasts and video hosting costs
  • Setup, installation of WordPress, theme, plugins (time spent)

3. Labor: Professional fees and software (personal or outsourced)

  • Man hours to create and develop theme
    • (design and coding)
    • design concept | creative process (R&D, selection and decision making: colors, fonts, graphics, icons
    • testing, browser compatibility
  • Software: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, etc – ($1500 up)
  • Training, Seminars, Education

Did you know that creating custom themes for clients range from around $1500 up to $50000 depending on the project. Looking at the list above, and seeing everything that goes into creating a theme, would you say that WordPress themes are underpriced? overpriced? or fair enough?

Let’s ask the next question. What’s important to you? How much do you value your business? your brand? yourself?

The answers to these questions will more or less determine how much you are willing to pay anything actually – whether it’s paying for your website, for your family needs, or even for your own personal growth.

How important are these WordPress designer’s traits to you?

  • Competence – work portfolio
    Web development requires many skills: Proficiency in Photoshop and design skills, CSS and HTML skills, copywriting and SEO skills, programming skills, with subsets of skills across a vast array of programming languages.
    If you’re comparing costs between developers, make sure it’s apples to apples – you should know what you’re getting in terms of feature set and functionality. Then take into consideration the experience and portfolio of the individual or company you’re looking at hiring, the attention you can expect to receive and the general rapport between you and a potential developer. Even if the cost is perfect and everything else seems right on paper, you may want to think twice about hiring someone if you don’t feel that somewhat ethereal sense of connection and comfort.
  • Experience – good working knowledge, coding skills
    A less experienced person may charge less because he doesn’t have the full-blown skill of a seasoned professional. It’s always a risk when you’re working with freelancers who build websites “on the side”, self-taught “learn web design in 21 days” types and people who are just starting out in the industry.
  • Number of years in practice
    Experienced developers can charge you more because they bring the weight of their expertise to bear on your project. An experienced developer may be able to do your site in half the time and charge twice as much, but remember you’re dealing with value and not cost.

Sometimes you have to make your decision, not based on cost, but based on value – which company do you want to work with? Which one has the most experience, the best portfolio, the most responsive people? A higher cost should not disqualify a company if that’s the one you’re confident can get the job done.

Pricing is not a magic, secret recipe. It’s just the cost of doing business, plus the value of expertise, plus the time needed to complete a project in a particular set of circumstances with a particular set of requirements. (reference: Websearchsocial.com)

At $39 you can already get 80 premium WordPress themes, no sweat. It’s about the same price, more or less, of a plugin or a slider, isn’t it? Do you agree that these themes should be worth a whole lot more than that?

Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Useful WordPress Utilities to Start the Year Right


Give your WordPress site a tune up to keep it running smoothly with these helpful WordPress utilities. Remove forgotten spam comments, beef up your site’s functionalities, or simply improve the overall browsing experience of your audience, and give your website a little TLC. Check out these utilities to see which ones will work for you.

Smart Cleanup Tools

Smart Cleanup Tools is an easy to use, powerful plugin for database cleanup. With this plugin you can remove data that is no longer in use or not needed like trash, spam, or orphan posts and comments. It can help you restore database overhead and speed up database operations. This plugin supports WordPress multisites, and it has few tools designed for Network administration.

Easy Post Google Fonts

This plugin allows you to use over 600 Google fonts (even multiple fonts) in one post or page. You can specify every page element and tell it which Google font to use. No flash required.

The Countdown Pro

Add countdown functionality to your content or your sidebar area with The Countdown Pro powered by jQuery. Features and options include: date picker, expiry url, expiry text, date format, custom labels, custom callbacks, template styles, and so much more. It also comes with a shortcode generator and a multi-instances sidebar widget.

Interactive World Maps

Create as many interactive maps as you want (world, continents, countries, regions, states, metropolitan areas) with Interactive World Maps. Add and display colored regions and display them as regions or with colored markers. Useful for travel websites, multinational companies, NGOs, infographics and many other applications.

Ajax Translator Revolution Dropdown WP plugin

This user-friendly translator plugin is based on the highly rated AJAX Translator Revolution Lite jQuery plugin this time with an easy dropdown menu. Translate everything or select sections, show languages flags and names, remember visitor’s selected language.

Sugar Event Calendar for WordPress

This is a simple, lightweight event calendar plugin with just enough features you need for event management on your site. Neat way to keep visitors updated with scheduled weekly, monthly, yearly recurring, or new events and activities on your site.

30 Inspirational Non-Profit WordPress Themes 2013

Amongst all the civilized life of shopping malls and movie lexes we must not forget that there are parts in this world whose inhabitants don’t get even the basic necessities of life like food and water. Innocents get killed everyday in calamities like bomb blasts, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. Children are out of schools as their parents cannot pay for their education. People die even from minor curable diseases merely because they didn’t have the money to see a doctor. The situation is far more serious than what I can describe in a few sentences. The statement that I wish to make is that we should care about others and should donate generously to non-profit organizations that are trying to help those in need.

Perhaps the following collection of 30 WordPress themes, designed especially for the non-profits may make a small contribution in making the world a better place.

Of course different niches have different site design requirements. A social networking site should look and behave in a completely different way than what a gaming site should look like. Special care and attention was devoted to the following templates so that they craft out into a good and clean look, which is what is required for non-profit organizations.

Some of the templates below are without charge but due to certain restrictions we can’t just giveaway everything absolutely free, although we would have loved to. Hence we have charged a nominal amount in the remaining templates. Scroll down and take a look.

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WordPress Theme Marketplaces 2013: Trends

A good way to spot emerging trends in the WordPress themes market would be to look at the behaviour of theme marketplaces like Themeforest, Mojo Themes and other boutique WordPress marketplaces. Here are some of our observations of what is currently ongoing and our take on what is to be:

Themeforest – The WordPress Marketplace Giant

With about 2500 themes in its inventory, Themeforest is probably the largest theme marketplace there is. Collis Ta’eed, founder of Envato which runs Themeforest, observed that the main trends on theme sales for 2012 have been: responsive, e-commerce and app themes (themes that have app like functionalities).

These trends are indeed reflective of trends observed by developers in the industry. With mobile platforms taking their place as the new mainstream it is just fitting to find responsive themes becoming more of a necessity rather than a trend.

The introduction of Jigoshop and WooCommerce plugins are making people realize the viability of turning WordPress themes into robust e-commerce solutions.

Specialized app themes will remain and will continue to flourish because of the specific niches they service. These niche WordPress app themes will continue to evolve as the themes market matures.

Mojo-themes and other WordPress Boutique shops

A look at the top 10 sellers on Mojo Themes similarly shows 4/10 themes are already responsive indicating that the trend towards mobile friendly themes is indeed a phenomenon. Their top selling theme is an e-commerce theme validating the emergence of WordPress as an e-commerce solution. The rest of the themes are multi-purpose or portfolio themes which target professionals, small or medium scale businesses and corporations.

Boutique theme shops and clubs such as StudioPress, Thematic, Press75, iThemes, WooThemes, Templatic and many others continue to thrive with their own loyal following.

Outlook for 2013

Major and minor WordPress theme marketplace vendors are experiencing the trends towards responsive themes and e-commerce. The question is how will these trends influence these marketplaces as they prepare for 2013 and beyond?

It is our opinion that responsive themes will continue to be in high demand as the transition to mobile platforms is still ongoing. About 6.1B mobile subscriptions are still yet to convert to internet ready smartphone subscriptions. The recent introduction of WooCommerce and Jigoshop indicates that the market is also only in the early stages of adaptation and mainstreaming of this technology. 2013 will be a year for continued acceptance as more sites exploit the democratization of e-commerce with these two plugins. Perhaps more eCommerce plugins will be introduced into the market and WordPress users will have more options and solutions to choose from.With a big year ahead for responsive themes and e-commerce, developers now have to bid for the best products to serve these markets as well as look at what lies ahead in 2014.

As ThemeForest continues its commitment to evolve and improve its review standards on what WordPress themes are made available in the marketplace we can expect higher quality WordPress themes that will satisfy even the strictest Code gurus out there. The renewed commitment to become more involved in the WordPress community is also a welcome move that will surely benefit us all.