I just noticed this tweet a few hours ago:
http://twitter.com/#!/sudaththa/status/46426315418636288
converting a Wordpress theme to @modxcms. Someone should start a modX template marketplace !!!
I agree!
And I would be willing to invest time in developing this (for Revolution), although it would probably take a few months to get functional.
Now the big question though, are there designers / front-end developers that would create templates, wrap ’m up in a transport package, upload to the website and start selling them?
ThemeForest gives (25-)50-75% of sales to the designers.. if I’d end up developing this, it would probably start at 50%, but go up to 75% in a couple of months, just to kickstart development a lil’ bit in the beginning. The whole sales volume thing themeforest uses (
http://themeforest.net/wiki/selling/getting-paid/payment-rates/) would be overkill imo. Just one standard percentage the designer gets, and a part for ongoing development etc.
Other ideas?
UPDATE
http://twitter.com/rthrash/status/46609141275426816
@sudaththa a #MODX template marketplace and more is definitely coming this year.
I guess the main reason ThemeForest, or something like that, can take a portion of it (albeit quite some to start with
) is cause they are offering you a central location to offer your designs, where end users go looking for them. Good luck competing with those sites when it comes to people finding your site and actually making the purchase..
(Not to think about developing your own check out system that gives your buyers instant access to the template
)
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Yes you’re right, my point is that I can spend many hours making a template, then I sell it to few people for a very low price, and I give 50% to themeforest. I can see a benefit only for the buyer and few top seller. Isn’t this a kind of slavery?
Obviously this doesn’t mean that I am against your idea, which is great. It was just a personal consideration of ThemeForest prices :p
Yeah, true there.
I was thinking of setting it at 50% the first few months to fund all the development that went in pre-launch, but obviously a designer has a different view on it.. in the end, it’s the designers that will be bringing in the revenue (by selling their designs) so it’s definitely worth reconsidering that amount...
This will be coming to the MODX community and will support premium Templates, Content Packs and other Add-ons, including integration into the Package Manager for Revo. We’ll definitely be borrowing heavily from a certain fruit-flavored company in how it works and the pricing overall. We don’t expect it to be perfect or to please everyone, but we do expect it to work fairly well for most. Selling awesome premium Add-ons through the official MODX channels will be a great way to support the project and to give back.
Ryan Thrash, MODX Co-Founder
Follow me on Twitter at @rthrash or catch my occasional unofficial thoughts at thrash.me
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Thanx a lot Mark for starting this topic.
I have few points to add to this. I run a small web designing company based in Colombo Sri Lanka and use modx as the primary CMS. Even when the customer does not need a back-end to their sites, we anyway do the site in modx coz it makes things more easy and streamlined.
Our working process is very simple (and so far effective)
1. We buy a HTML template from Themeforest.
2. Do the back-end using modx.
Most of the customers don’t want much functionality, and if they need any, we can easily build it using snippets. Anyway, most customers don’t need much functionality than a contact from.
So it would be great for our business operation if there is a market place where we can buy templates already ported to Modx so all we would have to do is add content and publish the site. I think many web designing firms would find something like that attractive and they would surely switch to modx if there is an easy way to get templates they want with quality support.
I had been a loyal customer of Themeforest for a long time, and I noticed several things that they did "right" when they developed their market place. For some reason they choose WordPress to be the CMS platform that they want to push. Wordpress is a GREAT publishing platform and has many addons and an active community, there is no doubt about that, but Wordpress is publishing platform, NOT a CMS and hacking Wordpress to become a CMS takes a lot of effort and it is not very flexible as a CMS.
However, after they choose Wordpress, they first started teaching developers how to make themes using Wordpress, they used their Nettuts website to promote using Wordpress as a CMS and bombarded the community with high quality tutorials on how to do that. That I believe is the success factor behind Themeforest. If you notice when Themeforest wants something on their site, they first start teaching it !!!, for example jQuery, I myself learnt jQuery through their screen casts.
Anyway, getting back to the original point, we NEED a modx market place, but first, developer community should first ’find’ what a great platform modx is and how it is a great alternative for other CMSs available. I’m thinking we should first start at a great tutorial site. Modx documentation is great, but nothing beats a good tutorial.
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MODX Staff
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