Adriaan Pienaar, better known as Adii online, is a South African designer who has recently jumped head first into the premium theme market for WordPress. You can find some of his WordPress themes for sale at Unique Blog Designs and his most recent release for WordPress is called Premium News Theme. Adii was nice enough to take some time to answer a few questions I’ve been posing to a handful of the more popular WordPress designers selling premium themes.

What prompted you to begin selling premium WordPress themes?

My main motivation was my desire to establish a more passive income stream and in such a way diversifying my revenue streams.

How do the number and type of support requests a premium theme is generating compare to the requests you receive for one of your free themes?

Oh, it is definitely a lot more intense and insane - plus, since the client has paid for the theme, you are OBLIGATED to support him / her and iron out their issues. Providing the support is probably the worst part of the job, but is also probably the most important aspect of becoming a successful seller.

I assume there’s a larger sense of responsibility when dealing with premium theme support. Do you sometimes feel like you’ve signed on with dozens of clients all at once?

For sure… Every morning when I get up, half my unread messages are from clients that need support / help with with customisations of the Premium News Theme. One way to soften this “blow”, is to establish a support forum where clients can basically help other clients - unfortunately I’ve not had time yet, but I will be adding that in the near future.

If so, has that new level of commitment altered your plans for future themes in regards to features, release schedules, etc.?

I think the only influence the “added” support has had on my plans, is to shift the main emphasis in developing the themes to the quality thereof - I will thus be releasing less different themes, but invest heavily in the quality of its back- and front-end. A high quality theme will also result in less support queries from clients…

What are your thoughts on the notion of an official theme marketplace that was mentioned by Matt Mullenweg at the beginning of November?

I’m definitely not opposed to the idea of a official theme marketplace, but until Matt & co has announced more concrete plans (with details), I would rather not be drawn into a discussion about a marketplace, where we need to speculate about the exact details.

With the crackdown on sponsored themes and sponsored links, do you fear the premium theme market will be flooded with WordPress designers looking to make back lost revenue?

Maybe… But I don’t think that everyone is capable of releasing premium themes, as the coding, design & support needs to be top-notch to get recognized in the community. A lot of small-time designers got into sponsored themes for a quick buck - whereas premium themes is not about a quick buck - instead you need to work REALLY hard to generate a return on your money & time invest.

Without giving away any personal trade secrets, what have you found to be the best methods of promoting your premium themes?

Word of mouth… Nothing beats a glowing review by a satisfied customer!

Do you have any tips or words of advice for WordPress designers thinking about entering into the premium theme market?

Work your way up to it - you can’t just enter the community as a premium theme designer, when you have not built up a reputation yet, as the community will not trust you enough to spend money on your work.

Once again, I’d like to thank Adii for taking the time to answer my questions. This was the first in a series of posts and interviews related to Premium WordPress Themes I’ll be making here. If you’re interesting in keeping up with them all I suggest you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.