Magnus Jepson creates free and premium WordPress themes under the PremiumPress name. His premium themes, PortfolioPress and GrungePress, differ from most in that they focus on offering exceptional and unique looks with standard WordPress features. In addition to his premium works, Magnus has several free themes available as well.

What prompted you to begin selling premium WordPress themes?

I had been doing freelance web designs locally in Norway, which doesn’t get you that many jobs, especially since I didn’t market myself. I really wanted to increase my skills as a web designer, but grew tired of redesigning my portfolio X number of times. So I started designing a couple of free themes and made a site to showcase them. I saw how popular they were and thought I would try to put out a paid theme and hopefully sell one copy in the first month. I sold one the first day and immediately started designing my second premium theme.

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?

I haven’t sold that many themes to generate much support yet, but there has been a few emails. Most support has gone to my free themes via comments and emails.

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

My premium themes are more focused on the design rather than having extra features. They are therefore easy to setup and don’t require much from the customer. My commitment to release more themes has been altered, but only because I have received numerous custom design jobs that have taken up my time so far.

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

One of the hard parts of being a custom theme designer is getting noticed. This would obviously be a great chance to get some traffic. Taking 50% of the sale price sounds quite much, but that is the price you have to pay to get noticed. I think Adii’s idea of a hybrid marketplace is good, where you design some themes for Matt’s marketplace and some for your own site. I want my themes to be available to people who aren’t on WordPress.com as well.

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?

I do think we will see more and more designers trying to sell their themes, and I think there is a big market for it. But spitting out themes that look like all the rest will not get any revenue. Good designers will make it in the premium themes market. Bad designers trying to get rich quick will not.

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

I would say the best method is by designing free themes as well as premium themes. They get lots of traffic if they are posted on Weblog Tools Collection. I have also started putting some money back into advertising on sites about Wordpress.

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

Start out with making some free themes, and see what feedback you get. Just because you can make a Wordpress theme doesn’t always mean it is worth more than a free theme. If you are already a good web designer then I would jump on the bandwagon immediately.

I’d like to thank Magnus for taking the time to answer my questions. His premium and free themes are all available at PremiumPress. This was the third in a series of interviews with designers of Premium WordPress Themes. If you’re interesting in keeping up with them all I suggest you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.