A Geek Apart

After designing several themes, I have come to the realization that it’s much harder work than I originally anticipated. Some gotchas to watch out for:

• Browser Testing:
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 5.X (does anyone user that any longer?)
  • FireFox
  • Opera
  • Safari (and Omniweb and other browsers that use like engines
• WordPress Versions
• Wordpress 2.1.3
• The new and improved 2.2
• Provide an organized, layerd .psd
• comment your code, especially your css file
• Validate, Validate, Validate
• Your XHTML
• AND your CSS
• Test Every Page and Function:
• Front Page
• Sample Static Pages
• Long Posts
• Very Short Posts
• Search Results Page
• Comments List, and Comment form
• Category and Archive pages

So as you can see from the abbreviated list above, this kind of thing takes time. Don’t even attempt to charge based on hourly. That’s not how you should approach it. If a theme takes you 3 or 4 hours to complete (from conception to mockup, to coding, to validating, to sale), and you base it on roughly $25.00 per hour, you’re right at the top-end of the market rate for WordPress Themes.

So how do you really make a buck? What if you’re really talented, and have a passion for making Themes? What if you really are happy just sitting down and producing fantastic themes?

Well, you may be able to charge more per hour, if you’re really great. But it would be smarter to also take a moment to think about your workflow to shorten the production time.

If you could work on several similar themes simultaneously, you could produce 3 themes in 4 hours rather than 1 theme in 4 hours. Group your tasks together. This way you can focus on each step instead of bouncing from photoshop to dreamweaver to the browser so much.

If you are an aspiring theme maker, check out Small Potato’s posts over at WPDesigner. He’s got some really great insight, and everyone can use a little more of that.

With the going rate for great themes, if you produced (ha, and sold) 3 themes a week, that could add quite a bit in supplementary income to your freelance biz.

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