Those who are new to WordPress might wonder why there are sponsor links at the bottom of their free themes. Aside from the usual WordPress and designer links, you also get links to other web sites, which are totally unrelated to your theme or your niche. These are called sponsor links. They’re the reasons why you get some themes for free. Basically, sponsors “pay” designers to create WordPress themes. Although they won’t exclusively use these themes, their links would be in the bottom of various blogs in the future, giving them numerous back links.

Many frown upon the practice of sponsored themes but frankly, I don’t see why. Sponsored themes benefit advertisers greatly. If the theme proves to be timeless, the growth of backlinks could only exponentially increase. Sponsors might see an increase in backlinks not only for the first few months of the theme’s release, but even for the next years to come as long as the theme works for the future WordPress updates. And who wouldn’t want backlinks, right? I think it’s a great investment to make, something that benefits not only for the time being but for the long run for reasons already discussed.

Sponsored themes also benefit the designer greatly, so it works both ways. Think of it like this: a designer decides to create free WordPress themes as a promotional effort. Creating a free WordPress theme means the designer would get nothing out of it in revenue other than a backlink at the bottom of the theme, which may or may not generate a future sale. However, having a sponsor means the designer is actually paid for the time spent on creating a WordPress theme. Perhaps not as much as a bankable designer would have earned selling themes, but hey, it’s a theme you’re giving away for free yet you still get paid for it, how sweet is that?

The bottom line is, for me, sponsored themes are beneficial to everyone involved. The sponsor gets tons of backlinks, the designer gets paid and most of all, we get our free WordPress themes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Wordpress. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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