Need Custom Theme

How much are you willing to pay?

I think that most people at these forums think that they will be able to get away with paying like 16 USD for a plugin, or at least less than the price for MW as such. That is a total misconception of the reality, of what is possible.

We have developed a highly flexible theme for both backend, frontend and customer. With our theme we will never need another theme again. It's just friggin' awesome, and we did it for our own use.

To create such software and then sell it is a loss from the start. Looking at the development costs (specification, development and test) for it and then split that on a maximum of 7737 potential installations (this is the number of sold MW licenses right now) of which 95% is most likely either not used or not interested, leaves a total of 387 potential sales. I would guess that a max of 10% could considering buying it, which leaves 39 potential customers.
In our case we use a library that costs 1200 USD in a one time licensing fee so just to cover that cost on 39 sales, would mean roughly 31 USD/sale. (and we are dead serious with our licenses, software costs money and cheating on licenses is a big no-no. Just look at my profile frame here to see how many MW licenses we have)

Then there is of course the specification, test and development costs. I won't give out our such costs, but let's say like this. Assume an hourly self cost of 10 USD (that's super cheap, only in low labor cost Asian/African countries it would be possible to reach that) and that it would take 4 months to develop and test the theme, would mean a total self cost of 6880 USD + the cost for the license for the library 1200 USD = 8080 USD. Spread that across the 39 potential sales and it would render in a self cost price of 207 USD. Since everyone wants life time support that means that the self cost will increase by AT LEAST 25%, so now we are at 207 * 1.25 = 259 USD.

What? Test? Why charge for test? Because a malfunctioning MW installation is lost revenue. Lost sales. Pissed off customers. We test our themes and plugins a LOT. Sometimes I wonder how much time others spend on tests of their products. Enough? I doubt it!

No one wants to sell their products at self cost and of course they want a bit of profit on it. It's also likely that the licenses will be spread among the not-so-serious-ones meaning lost sales.
Ok, let's assume that they want to add 30% profit margin for the ideas, and the profit. This would render in a total price per license for 39 sales of 337 USD.
Who is willing to pay 337 USD? Anyone?

Not even if there would be 4 times more sales, I think that anyone would be willing to pay 84 USD license.
Anyone who is willing to pay 84 USD for a theme?

Why? Since the script itself only costs 69 USD (adn actually it doesn't, if you have a need for a customer theme, that also means that you sell the service to customers which in turn means that you must pay the higher license cost - 245 USD) so why should any addon to that cost more than that? That's easy. The script has a potential market of a couple of hundred thousands of digital marketers, while any add-on has a potential market of (at this very moment) 7737 holders of a MW license, of which most are either inactive or not interested.

If you succeed in finding a good theme, then let me know. I might be willing to purchase the exclusive rights to that theme. In fact, if it's well written I might be interested in buying EVERYTHING related to MW from that seller. ;)
 
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Harsh reality .... thanks for taking time to write such a detailed and honest assessment @OptiBiz1

Thank you! It IS the reality and yes, it IS harsh too at least for those that thinks that thinks that they can get quality plugins or themes for 16 USD.
I would not let my devs stop doing what they are doing for 10 USD/hour either. I would even prefer to have them pull navel lint instead of selling them as cheap as 10 USD/hour. :D


Many ppl don't see how much work is invested and that there needs to be a return on the investment. It's better, for serious marketers, to instead sign up to become a partner/reseller to someone who already have all what they are wanting and that way get access to all the plugins and themes as a SaaS.
 
Many ppl don't see how much work is invested and that there needs to be a return on the investment. It's better, for serious marketers, to instead sign up to become a partner/reseller to someone who already have all what they are wanting and that way get access to all the plugins and themes as a SaaS.

@OptiBiz1 I purchased Mailwizz for EXACTLY that reason.

I have a system I am developing ... and rather than write all the list-handling, email scheduling, etc ... I looked around for a suitable system and found Mailwizz.

My system feeds emails into Mailwizz via the API, and Mailwizz then handles all the follow-up emails, bounces, etc, etc ... and with the new Campaign Webhooks, it can then feed info back to my system.

Fabulous value for a $69 investment ... had I tried to do it myself, I'd be looking at thousands of dollars.
 
Thank you! It IS the reality and yes, it IS harsh too at least for those that thinks that thinks that they can get quality plugins or themes for 16 USD.
I would not let my devs stop doing what they are doing for 10 USD/hour either. I would even prefer to have them pull navel lint instead of selling them as cheap as 10 USD/hour. :D


Many ppl don't see how much work is invested and that there needs to be a return on the investment. It's better, for serious marketers, to instead sign up to become a partner/reseller to someone who already have all what they are wanting and that way get access to all the plugins and themes as a SaaS.
So I didn't really get if you actually meant selling your theme for your proposed 84 USD but I am interested for that price but I would love to see it first. I am sure others might follow me so you can get your production costs back at least partially.
 
So I didn't really get if you actually meant selling your theme for your proposed 84 USD but I am interested for that price but I would love to see it first. I am sure others might follow me so you can get your production costs back at least partially.

Sorry if I was unclear. I have no intentions to sell it. My point was to show that most people aren't willing to pay what it costs to develop and maintain software.

If I were to sell it I would have to give lifetime support too, so no, it won't happen.

You could always become our partner and resell our turn-key all-in-one-solution with all our plugins and themes, it's just that I don't recruit resellers here.
 
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