Premium WordPress Theme Affiliate Programs Suck

If you’ve ever promoted premium WordPress themes and have made money with them, congratulations. Consider however, you could have made a lot more money promoting some other product from your blog!

Although I have made at least $300-$400 a month promoting Brian Gardner’s themes in the past, that’s really an exception because (1) he had the quality and the quantity (2) I used rather “creative” affiliate marketing methods.

While Brian can be credited with starting this whole premium theme craze, his predecessors have done a much shabbier job. Here’s my 3 biggest complaints of premium WordPress themes affiliate programs:

• They Suck at Selling – A lot of themes out there are great, but they do not let visitors know exactly what they would get, and exactly how their offer is different from the huge amount of “premium” themes being regurgitated in the market. Their product pages focus one the demo of the theme, but that’s as far as it gets. You don’t need a 12-page long salespage, but the selling point and the USP just has to be there of they are wasting my time and yours.
• They Pay Peanuts – 20% commissions for your hard work? Come on it has to be a joke. Some theme creators to their credit offer up to 40% commissions, but even that is much lower to some of the good, high-converting products you can find in ClickBank. The fact is, they are selling a digital product with zero delivery cost and no substantial increment cost. The low commissions is just a lack of recognition to the power of affiliates.
• They Provide Almost No Marketing Help – Most of them provide no banners, no email templates, and close to zero marketing help. Could this be because they pretty much don’t get what this “marketing” thing is all about?

It’s almost sad to see the amount of hard-working affiliates working their asses off to make money with these affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing is simple:

Good Product + Converting Salespage + High Commissions / Sale

Leaving out any part of the formula simply results in a waste of time, space and effort for you, as an affiliate. Look around, find better offers. That space on your blog and that small AdWords ad could be making you a lot richer than you are now.

Related posts:

1. Most Affordable Premium WordPress Themes Collection
2. WP Affiliate Review – ClickBank Ads Plugin for WordPress
3. Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
4. Ninja Affiliate Plugin – Turn Keywords Into Affiliate Links!
5. Would You Pay For A Wordpress Theme?