How we grew ThemeIsle into a $50k per month business

The article is well-written and presents some interesting insight and seemingly useful advice. But there are 2 major red flags here:<p>There are 2 fawning comments here on HN by newly created accounts. Maybe the green color of new accounts can be used to detect astroturfing. I have to assume this is on the front page in part due to such tactics (I don&#x27;t know the exact HN algorithms however, so could be wrong--but the perception remains). Why risk any chance of organic interest by poisoning the well like that?<p>Especially since the article just leads me to uncover more shady behavior. The Medium article reveals and then glosses over a sudden halving of monthly revenue. Why write an article about $50K monthly instead of $100K? The link goes to another self-promoting &quot;transparency&quot; report has a link to a WP ticket [1] where anyone can read that the author refused for over a year to comply with WP theme rules. And these rules were specifically in areas to reduce self-promotion and one could characterize the theme&#x27;s behavior as spammy. And this lack of rules compliance created extra work for WP in enforcing those rules (in other words copy-cats).<p>So in the end, what sounds like a nice and encouraging story now seems to be more of a whitewashing. This is sad because the ideas of WP theme development and marketplace sound interesting and perhaps rewarding as a small business opportunity, but now I tend to think success is due to spamminess, bending&#x2F;breaking of rules, and astroturfing stories (and maybe reviews) on relevant sites.<p>In this light, the business model outlined and promoted here--buying and improving existing niche products--seems more like adding spamminess for profit. In fact, I am now questioning what creative and useful code did this company actually create (since they talked about buying every single one of their profitable products), as opposed to taking products that can&#x27;t stand out in a crowded market and adding spammy and sticky features to them to game those marketplaces in ways that are not beneficial to consumers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;themes.trac.wordpress.org&#x2F;ticket&#x2F;35906" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;themes.trac.wordpress.org&#x2F;ticket&#x2F;35906</a>

&quot;Another thing we learned through A&#x2F;B testing was that changing the default screenshot and the default demo of a theme, <i>along with employing a good copywriter,</i> makes a big difference.&quot;<p>Yup. This is part of why I get aggravated that people are so negative about paying writers. Good copy makes money for a business.

One big take away is how much these guys just kept at it despite fiscal failure for months&#x2F;years on end. This business isn&#x27;t for the meek at heart. It&#x27;s so easy to get so discouraged, when your livelihood depends on it.

I&#x27;m curious why this was posted on Medium instead of using it as an opportunity to show off one of your WordPress themes?

I don&#x27;t know enough about SEO to be sure but I believe Google will ding you for copy and pasting from your IndieHacker article. However, since neither of these sites are your main business, maybe it doesn&#x27;t matter if G drops your medium account ranking a bit.

What is the google SEO game like for themes nowadays? I see so much competition. It is even possible for a new player to get on the first page? I feel like all the big outfits like thememonster etc own all the real estate.

Well done.<p>How heavy is the support load for themes? With plugins there is a lot of customer support involved, and this is why good premium plugins are so expensive. Is it the same with themes?

No questions (at least for now) but Zerif Lite has been my personal favorite. Have used it for several client sites. Thanks for the theme and all the best.<p>e.g. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lamindiallo.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lamindiallo.com&#x2F;</a>

Interesting read, I appreciate stories like this and I think they are even more interesting when the struggles, dips, failures, mistakes, etc, are included in the narrative.<p>Often, persistence pays off. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

Cool to see this picked-up as a 2nd chance experiment on HN front-page. I would to answer questions about it :).<p>Until now is interesting to see how most of the people see it as a success story while we lost 50% of our revenues few months ago.

This is a great write up. Blog posts like this, open and honest help a lot for starting entrepreneurs. I recommend it to everyone who is here just for comments.

I feel like I had a quality business consultancy session worth top dollars after reading this. Thanks for the inspiration, and by the way, I love the Hestia WordPress theme.