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Changing Affiliate Programs is a PAIN

As mentioned in our previous article on ThemeFuse’s new Club Membership, members now enjoy 30% commission on initial fees and 10% on monthly fees of every user that goes through a member’s affiliate links. This scheme departs from the previous direct commission to a multi-tiered referral scheme.

In theory, commissions tied with a membership have the high likelihood of being a continuous income stream because it is associated with a long term business relationship rather than a single purchase. This is why direct selling clubs and multi-level marketing companies have emphasized membership over purchases. The question is whether or not ThemeFuse’s new scheme is truly advantageous to the affiliate or not.

We have done a quick comparison of both commission schemes to determine the advantages/disadvantages of one over the other. It is apparent that a single purchase of an all theme pack has higher yield than a club membership. Membership commission only comes at par with a single theme pack purchase only when the member stays for 34 months. This is too long a period for financial projections in the industry.

	Single Purchase Scheme	Membership Purchase Scheme
Transaction:	$389	$199 (one-time) + $17 (monthly)
Commission:	30%	30% of $199 + 10% of $17
Total:	$116.70	$71.10

In addition to the financial disadvantages of ThemeFuse’s new affiliate programme, one has to deal with the logistics of redoing or changing affiliate links. This tedious and error prone process may lead to referrals being dropped because of un-updated links. In times like these, you wish that an automated link changer was available if ever there was one.

With all the inconvenience and hassle arising from these changes, it somehow makes you wonder if starting afresh under another affiliate program is a more acceptable option. Although, on the other hand, one also has to consider the financial impact of making a switch from one Affiliate program to another because this is a significant business move. Conservatively, it is best to take a step back and study the ramifications of such a strategy to determine a solution that grants a win for all stakeholders involved.

Nimble Theme: Coming Soon from Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes recently gave a sneak peak of their upcoming Nimble Theme. Nimble is a business theme described to be simple, flexible, and balanced. It will be interesting to see how Nick Roach pulls this one off – balancing bold and colorful design without going over the top. Nimble will also be responsive and will definitely be generously packed with features and functionality, as is characteristic of each and every Elegant Theme.

A quick look at the theme’s snapshot shows that this theme has a carousel style slider prominently placed on the homepage. Elegant themes has stated that this is to give business websites a platform to present a call to action. The slider can be enabled or disabled if so desired. The slider is followed by 3 sections and a footer. The first section is a place to put product and service summaries which lead to pages that describe business offerings in detail. The second section is for news and update summaries to give your visitors a good idea of how things are going in the business. The third section is a place to put projects that can be linked to portfolio or gallery pages.

The theme has been well received by most of those who left comments. There have be a handful who feel that Elegant Themes should veer away from themes that spend a significant chunk of the homepage on sliders or big images. Elegant Themes has responded that this design approach has been what business clients have been looking for and leads to greater conversion rates for the clients.

According to Nick Roach:

Most corporate sites do indeed need to convey a message, and it is important for that message to be big, bold and in front of the users right when he/she lands on the page. Giving a clear call to action with a single image, large header and a button is what I have found converts the best and results in the lowest bounce rates. It works because it is easy to understand. In almost every occasion, simplicity is what wins out over clutter. Having too much “stuff” in view when you land on the page can confuse the user. It’s better to lead them on a clear path.

Coming from someone who has been doing this for so many years, and who by now, knows and understands this market pretty well, it’s safe to assume that this new theme, considering all other factors, has been well-thought out and designed.

For now, we all just have to be content with twiddling our thumbs and waiting for Nimble to be fully released and then make our conclusions thereafter.

Check Out the Nimble Theme

ThemeFuse Launches Monthly Membership

ThemeFuse has recently launched its Monthly Club Membership. For a monthly fee of $17 a month + a one time fee of $199, members get all themes on the ThemeFuse inventory including future themes and updates over the course of your Club Membership. On top of this, Club Members enjoy additional perks such as VIP status on the support forum and can take special sneak peaks in the Members area of the ThemeFuse website with the privilege of deciding what themes to create next. In addition, extra money comes with every user that comes through a member’s affiliate link. Member gets 30% on the initial fee and 10% on every monthly fee of every user that joins through his/her affiliate link.

This scheme replaces the “All Theme’s Pack” product. As a special offer to purchasers of the old scheme, the initial $199 is waived. These members only need to pay $17 monthly fee. All you need to do is email your “All Theme’s Pack” transaction ID and ThemeFuse will email a voucher for the $199 initial registration fee.

Single themes at ThemeFuse cost $49 for standard single domain use and $79 for developer unlimited domain use. These prices do not give the user access to upgrades or new theme releases. A Club Membership takes care of upgrades and new themes. It also gives you access to all themes in the ThemeFuse inventory which is relatively reasonable at $17 a month compared to the single theme pricing if you see yourself using a lot of themes for a lot of websites. The one time fee is valid for as long as you keep your membership current. If you decide to cut your membership and re-continue your membership later, you will need to repay the one time fee.

While other developers offer lower priced membership ($39/$79 yearly), it all boils down to the question of how much are you willing to pay for ThemeFuse themes? If you consider these themes to be the perfect solutions to your clientele’s needs then price should not be an issue. To learn more about the new Club Membership at ThemeFuse, you can visit their blog and read about it.

Check Out ThemeFuse’s Monthly Membership

Elegant Themes Shortcodes: Now Responsive!

With the advent of mobile platforms, WordPress themes have to adapt to the demands of this steadily growing user base. It can really be quite frustrating to read articles from any major newspaper’s website on iPhone or Android and get all the content mish mashed. Theme developers and web designers need to move more and more toward this emerging trend towards responsive themes.

It is a welcome development that Elegant Themes recently released its responsive shortcodes. While Elegant Themes has been churning out responsive themes for quite a while, the shortcodes were left out. It took 10 responsive themes before mobile friendly shortcodes were released. Great news, indeed!

So how do these new shortcodes, improve mobile browsing experience? Elegant Themes’ blog cites two examples of their improvement strategy. Tabs have always been an issue when websites typically viewed on a 960px wide screen to a 320px width. No matter what you do, having 10 tabs will alway come out cramped. Solution: Tabs turn into a slider when switching to mobile mode. It just makes sense to have sliders rather than have unreadable tab labels. Another example cited was the case of columns. As the content width gets narrower, text in columns become a bunch of flying letters. Solution: the new shortcodes convert columns into boxes when switching to mobile screens. Brilliant isn’t it? Regarding the new shortcodes, Elegant Themes has declared them to be fluid width giving them the capacity to shrink and expand according to screen size.

Web design and the emerging technology innovation and trends are accelerating even faster. More and more mobile users prefer to access the web through their devices and WordPress Themes providers need to step up their game. For loyal subscribers of Elegant Themes, these concrete steps towards updating and upgrading all Elegant Themes products is always welcome and appreciated.

Congratulations to Elegant Themes for taking WordPress theme development one step further and fully embracing the future of WordPress.

See Elegant Themes’ Responsive Shortcodes

CSSIgniter Goes After Elegant Themes

In September 2010, CSSIgniter started churning out Premium WordPress themes for the WordPress community. What was intended to be a side project to augment the founders’ day jobs didn’t bring in the cash they were hoping for.

Early this year, CSSIgniter put some focus and resources to keep its creative engines running consistently. In the last 7 months, this developer has released 16 new themes, half of its existing inventory of 29. A closer look at their last 7 releases show how they have significantly up their game by joining the responsive bandwagon and now this dynamic development team of 4 is now cooking up their 2nd responsive e-commerce theme.

CSSIgniter offers members a year’s access to its catalogue of themes for the price of $39. This brings them in direct competition with Elegant Themes who offers similar access to its members at the same price. What differentiates CSSIgniter is its willingness to give out PSD files to all its members. Elegant Themes gives out these files to its Developer members who pay $89 annually. While Elegant Themes continues to create stunning, highly functional, easy to use themes, CSSIgniter isn’t far behind. Considering the bold shifts in pace and design the Greek quartet have taken in the last few months, it would not be surprising to find their products standing toe to toe with Elegant Themes in the very near future. Their Aegean Resort Theme now offers visuals which can be developed to generate the stunning effect of Elegant’s Gleam.

CSSIgniter still has to master how to showcase their work on their website. A casual visitor, would probably find their Theme descriptions too concise in comparison the level of detail one finds on Elegant Theme’s website. To offset this, CSSIgniter may consider including video introductions as part of the live demo similar to the video introduction on their blog post to introduce Femme.

CSSIgniter appears to be beyond the stage of ignition and is now beginning to burn up really bright. We looking forward to the next releases of this rising star among the current WordPress premium theme providers community.

Check Out CSSIgniter

Thesis Theme: What’s The Latest?

The Thesis Theme. Some people love it and swear by it. Some people hate it. But those who stand by it are extremely happy that they’ve stuck with it. For those who are unfamiliar, Thesis is the brainchild of one of the most respected and sought-after WordPress theme designers, developer and founder of DIYthemes – Chris Pearson. Although it is called and generally known as Thesis Theme it really functions like a powerful WordPress Framework.

Thesis has been around for quite a while and has since been updated several times. The latest update – version 1.8.5 – was in response to the WordPress 3.4 update. A lot of Thesis users have been waiting for a real major update from DIYthemes since Chris Pearson announced the soon to be released Thesis 2. When exactly is it going to be released? Here’s what Chris had to say:

We’ve got about 120 hours of development and testing left before the alpha (only available to DIYthemes staffers) will be ready. Based on experience, I think we’ll probably have another 60 hours of development on top of that plus a couple of weeks out in the wild before the beta is ready for release.

With that information in mind, I think Thesis 2 will probably make its world debut in August.

And it will be one hell of a debut.

So far it hasn’t been released (as of this writing) so the countdown continues. Meanwhile take a look at some of the features that will hopefully be part of Thesis 2 when it finally comes out.

What to Expect

New Skins
New Add-ons
An updater that will allow you to update the new elements with the push of a single button in the admin panel
Template editor will allow you to create custom pages much more quickly and in a much more organized manner than ever before
Automatic updates
Customization will be easier, more organized, easy to maintain and use
Integrated page navigation
API add-ons
Drag and drop feature

There’s been a lot of anticipation and so much expectation ever since the announcement on this much awaited release. For Thesis fans,hopefully the wait will finally be over soon.

Check Out the Thesis Theme