One of the great things about creating free WordPress themes is the natural link building benefits you get out of it.
Just over a month ago, I blogged about Gail’s WP theme Dapit Hapon.
Now, if you check here Technorati profile, she already has 54 links from 41 sites and almost half of it is because her theme has been used by other bloggers.
If you can get just around 20 of them links each month, you’ll end up with 240 link backs at the end of the year. That’s a good source of traffic and PR.
This is the same benefit Markku and Kates get with their respective WP plugins.
Time to make one for myself. 
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sometimes I don’t understand Google. I just started a domain 2 months ago and it’s Google page rank on the main page is PR 5 . I know it’s linked to 2 PR 6 sites though so I’m not sure if that helps. And from what I know, it has only 10 sites linked to it from technorati. Another domain that started 8 months ago only ranks PR 4 . (same condition as the first domain but with even more technorati links with the latter).
Hmmm that’s strange. Are the links raw (i.e. no rel=’nofollow’).
Could be other factors as well.
I’ve observed that a page linked from a PR X page gets a PR X-1 value. This is by no means authoritative, as I’ve seen sites linked only from my blog (a PR4) get a PR5. So yeah, I’m with you on this Noemi, I too don’t understand Google hehehe
Marc
According to Google toolbar, my inner pages have a higher PR (4) than the main page (3). And there seems to be no external site that’s directly linking to the inner pages. So I guess there’s really something weird going on in Google right now.
isnt it a little bit time consuming..? you know, making a wordpress theme..? i myself is contented with the theme that came with my fresh installation of wordpress for my new blog.. the one with kubrick..
Yuga: The only difference between the new domain (which is less than 2 months old) and the old domain is that you and sassy blogged about it once.
Marc: and I thought I was going to wait for months to even get a PR 4.
Being linked to by a couple of PR6 (or higher) sites is more favorable than getting 100 links from PR4 (or lower) sites.
@ wrencelot
I know a couple of Pinoy css gurus that can do a theme overnight. It depends if you start from scratch or modify an existing theme to create your own.
Hmmm… why not get avid photographers (i.e. Anton Diaz) and WP/css gurus together and come out with a ton of modified WP Themes?
That would pull in a lot of links to some kind of aggregator site. The aggregator site can then provide links to those involved in the WP Theme modification project.
Wouldn’t that be a quick way to share PR juice?
Just like everyone else, I find it hard how google ranks pages. The 3 blogs I started just a few weeks ago are now at PR5. Go figure.
A nice thing to have, really, but I just wish it also increases the rank of older, more established sites, especially those with truly worthwhile content.