On WordPress.com, that is. Matt Mullenweg on Automattic recently announced a WP Theme Marketplace on WordPress.com. Now you can sell premium themes on millions of bloggers running on WordPress.com.
The announcement has attracted both praises and criticisms. The main contention is that theme pricing is very subjective depending on the designer. David over at Blog Herald adds that this move smacks of hypocrisy from Matt considering that the latter has been on a crusade against theme designers making a living off of sponsored themes. Tony thinks that the 50% commission by Automattic is a bit too steep and I totally agree. The 50% split for just hosting and marketing the premium themes on WordPress.com does seem unfair especially for existing WP theme designers charge thousands of dollars for their custom designs.
On the other hand, the arrangement stipulates that the themes should open under GPL and be free to everybody hosting their own WordPress blogs. Now, that should actually make it even more convincing for bloggers to move out of WordPress.com and run their own hosted blog.
In any case, this new development opens the door to theme designers who wanted to make a name for themselves and be exposed to millions of WordPress.com bloggers. That should be a bigger bonus on top of the profit sharing scheme with Automattic.
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