Brief introduction to the Market Theme

The market theme is a premium Wordpress theme that was launched in late February 2008. As my first premium theme it has become very successful and has brought in revenue of $13,946.90 in 6 full months (March-August). The idea for the theme originally came about after I had done two back to back projects for clients who were both looking for ways to turn Wordpress into an ecommerce engine. Since its launch in the end of February, Market has been redesigned three times and now includes a product manager plugin as well as its own ajax shopping cart.

Why Sell?

I decided to re-write this section mainly because I am aware there is plenty of doubt as to why someone would be so interested in selling a site which has made a pretty decent amount of money and in fairly short period of time. In today's world, it's hard to find honest people, and I believe that is why many people are skeptical and are trying to find what the catch is since I am wanting to get out of the project. I am selling Market because I personally am ready to move on, begin new projects, and free up time for myself. Most importantly, I am now going to college and I am looking for "cash now" as opposed to earning it month by month through Market license sales. I did not simply wake up one day and say to myself "I need to get rid of this site before it tanks" When I originally launched this project, I already had it planned that so long as everything went well, I would list it for sale shortly before school started again. It is in no way a sign of current or future troubles for the site.

Market is far from reaching it's full revenue abilities. I did minimal advertising here and there when the site was first launched, but have done nothing in the past few months. The license sales have been prompted by how good the product is (ask any current customer), but when you consider how vast the Wordpress community is and how many people have items in which they sale, the ~200 license sales are no where near the peak. I've been asked how long Market could stay popular, and if it will continue to pull in profits like it has. I say easily. Advertise to some of the specific niches I have not put any focus on (ebay sellers, crafter's, artists, print designers, etc) and you are talking about doubling the profits if not by increasing them by even more. Market has is no way reached its max audience, so for anyone to expect to see a sharp decline and all of sudden not be making any profits is mistaken.

What you get:

With the purchase of the Market theme you will have full ownership to:

* The domain www . markettheme . com (expires: 3/5/2009, registered on Namecheap)
* Full rights to the theme and all 3 variations of its design (only thing I ask is that I can keep the theme / site design in my portfolio)
* Full rights to 3 variations of Markettheme.com (also powered by Wordpress)
* Full rights to Market Product Manager plugin, Paypal (market lite) plugin, and custom Ajax Cart Script.

The value of this package itself would be around $8-9,000+. You are getting two (3) site designs / themes specifically for Markettheme.com, three (3) different designs / layouts of the Market Theme (versions 1-3), a custom built Ajax Cart and a backend plugin, all custom build specifically for use with the Market Theme.

*Market Product Manager by John Kolbert (admin[at]simply-basic.com)

*Ajax Cart developed by Devon Parris (thecreative.d[at]gmail.com)

Revenue, License, and Traffic Breakdown:

Included in the attachments to the right of this post are breakdowns of each month through generated sales reports directly from Paypal. The month breakdown of revenue looks like this:

* February (3 days) – $100.25
* March – $2,034.67
* April – $3,065.93
* May – $1,836.16
* June – $1,617.49
* July - $2,706.30
* August - $2,586.10
* Total Revenue to Date: $13,946.90
* A monthly average of: $2,324.48/month (in 6 full months)

There are two types of licenses: A standard license for $55 and a developer’s license for $150.00.

The license breakdown per month is as follows. You’ll notice that while it may appear profits have been on a significant decline, the large spike in profits for April 2008 was caused by the price increase when standard and developer’s licenses increased in cost. In fact, the same amount of licenses were sold in March 2008 as in April 2008, so profits have been holding steady around $2,000 per month on average.

* February (3 days) – 3 licenses
* March – 48 Licenses
* April – 48 Licenses
* May - 32 Licenses
* June – 29 Licenses
* July - 46 Licenses
* August - 35 Licenses
* Total licenses purchased to date: 241 Licenses

The only ongoing cost is a $5/month fee to E-Junkie, which I use to help process payments and make download notification instantly. You will need to find your own host, although I will assist you in getting everything moved over.

What I'm Looking for:

Ideally I am looking for anything between the $35-50K range, but will accept $30k. I understand this may seem high, but it is the number I was quoted back a few months ago on Sitepoint. Also, a year ago Wpdesigner was sold for somewhere in the $60k range and it's revenue was only in the $800 range. Yes, the site is now only 6 months old, but consider the size of the package you are getting and the revenue that it has already shown it is capable of making without a heavy marketing drive.

Important Update: $30,000 would take the site. I had a deal lined up which fell through on the buyers end. Please email me at hi[at]astereostudio.com if interested.

Revenue Details:

Selling of theme licenses. See full auction description for entire revenue rundown. Proof of revenue is available on request which is a PDF of an exported Paypal report from Feb-June 24, as well as a csv for the rest of the time period (June 24-July 27). For privacy reasons for my customers I've removed individual names / addresses.

Traffic Details:

* Organic and Direct

* Advertisements and theme reviews

* Those interested in selling their own items without needing to learn a whole new ecommerce platform.

If you are interested please email me directly at hi [at] astereostudio.com