Wordpress Marketplaces: Matt Mullenweg Vs. Small Potato
I’m going to talk a bit about ‘Small Potato‘ (SP), a blogger who surfaced after completing a Wordpress-theme-a-day challenge for 30 days (a trend that was initiated by Phu Ly of If Else) which resulted in some excellent free Wordpress themes. He is a self-professed entrepreneur and web designer, keen to cultivate a candid, ‘man-of-the-people’ approach to blogging - a trait that has seen him embroiled in a trifle controversy over the growing market of premium Wordpress themes and the monetary greed and poor design standards it occasionally incites.
His latest venture comes as a counterpoint to Matt Mullenweg’s theme marketplace, in which the latter proposed to set up a system whereby designers could sell premium themes to Wordpress.com users. SP was quick to point out some of the fallacies in Matt’s model, particularly the 50/50 money split and the idea of capitalising on what SP calls the “uninformed WordPress.com users” whilst allowing themes to go GPL free to the informed Wordpress.org users, a move that would put the whole notion of GPL licensing into question. While SP was quick off the mark with his attack, he was even quicker to follow suit and propose his own marketplace (still a work in progress) - a model that would only accept themes compliant to what SP calls ‘quality inspection’ (I’d like to know what that actually means) and one that posits the designer as principal beneficiary.
SP’s marketplace offers the designer web traffic, exposure and 100% financial remuneration for his/her designs. In return he would require each designer to write 2-4 pieces of blog content for WPDesigner.com per month. So whereas Mullenweg asks his would-be designers for a cut in the cash generated by sales of so-called ‘premium themes’ and seeks to exploit the financial potential of millions of WP.com users (is this a sign of Mullenweg approaching a final big ‘cash out’ with WP?), SP asks his designers for a couple of blog posts. So on paper, Mullengweg’s model could be construed as exploitative, but in reality both models seek to exploit, it’s just that the measurement of currency is slightly different. What SP doesn’t gain in the short term in terms of hard cash, he will be rewarded in the long term with more blog content, more traffic and therefore the chance for cash through publicity, hosting and any other venture he puts forward through WPDesigner.com.
So while SP may like to appear altruistic and philanthropic on the surface, underneath we all know that these are strategies for personal gain, just like Mullenweg’s ‘open source’ Wordpress has become. False pretenses? No, just parts of a huge game that we call blogging. And we accept this. Why? Well it’s as old as the study of capitalism itself. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith famously wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
But why do I care? I mean do I really gives a monkey’s ass about Wordpress and what ever else goes on behind the scenes? Well put it this way, if someone pressed the delete key on Wordpress and WPdesigner.com, twigged.net and any other .com, I’d still go on living. But at the same time I’m aware of the fact that the Internet, and the blogging industry in particular, have begun to play an increasingly important role in the formation of 21st century human culture. The Internet and web business is fast becoming the way we sustain life, much akin to the field or the factory in the pre/industrial ages; so it is increasingly difficult not to pay attention to it. Approaching web trends through the business of people such as SP is a way of bringing things back down to earth.
Love him or hate him, Small Potato certainly knows how to divide an audience. It is his ability to turn a shot in the foot into a new wave of blog traffic coupled with an insatiable desire to take on new projects and think beyond the box that account for his web popularity. Personally, I have a rather arcane ‘inspector gadget’ image of SP, sitting in a dark room, black swivel chair, one hand stroking a large fluffy cat, the other strung to the mouse, fingers clicking, scanning the web, taking mental notes, monitoring trends, plotting his next devious move!
November 5th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Hahaha (literally). Andrew, thanks for the write up first of all. It was entertaining to read.
I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur because I don’t really like taking risks. Although, I do have a financial goal.
I’m not a web designer, only an amateur. It says so on my blog
My comment about “selling to uninformed users” was not a baseless assumption. Matt Mullenweg actually stopped by Wpdesigner to confirm that.
Second, you caught me. Your observation is spot on. But on the other hand, you can’t really expect me to tackle this marketplace without some form of compensation.
We already know why I’m doing this through reasons you listed above, but let me add to those list of reasons.
While forming the alternate marketplace idea, I asked myself what I needed to make this thing worthwhile without having to charge the theme designers a ridiculous amount of money.
It turned out that what I need comes down to time, traffic, content, and a way to tie everything about Wpdesigner together, which includes its upcoming web hosting service.
I was struggling with the idea of charging a flat fee at first and ended up settling with the 2-4 blog posts “exploit” for two reasons:
- I hate fees. I sold premium themes before and I hated transaction fees.
- The main reason is I don’t want my blog to die. With my time divided among so many projects and now another one, I need the theme designers to kind of take care of themselves while using Wpdesigner.com as their platform.
As for your question about quality inspection, nothing has been drawn out for this. For all I know, the quality inspection will be based everyone’s general opinion of what qualifies a theme for the high quality title.
If you’ve read the whole article, I briefly mentioned the “community consensus” idea, which can be used to filter out bad or poorly developed themes. It can also be used to stop me from playing favorites.
When everything has to go through one person, there bound to be some form of disagreement further down the road. Right now, I’m leaning toward the “community consensus” idea, but don’t really know how to approach it yet.
November 6th, 2007 at 1:31 am
“My comment about ’selling to uninformed users’ was not a baseless assumption. Matt Mullenweg actually stopped by Wpdesigner to confirm that.”
Actually I didn’t mean that at all. I think some folks have a bias against WordPress.com users and interpreted my comment in that light. WP.com users are NOT cheap, or dumb, or too lazy to run their own WP.
Quite the opposite, WordPress.com users are quite sophisticated — they’re journalists, small businesses, enthusiasts, families… I actually think they’re a better audience to sell to than .org users, just like Apple users are more accustomed to buying software, WP.com users are more accustomed to value-added paid upgrades and there’s a completely integrated shopping experience with their details saved if they bought something before. (Which many, many have.)
There’s people in the world who have more time than money, and there’s those who have more money than time, and I think WP.com biases toward the latter because of its ease of setup and maintenance.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:26 am
Highly amusing post, Andrew.
I know SP has his moments, but for the most part, he’s a really benefit to the WP community. He offers a lot more value than the majority of bloggers (although, with a sting in the tail).
November 7th, 2007 at 3:57 am
@Matt - There’s a big difference between uninformed and dumb / cheap / lazy.
Here’s what you said:
“On top of that, consider that WordPress.com is adding 150,000 blogs a month and there is no additional marginal cost for you to reach that audience, every one with one-click integration so simpler someone who couldn’t spell FTP could buy your theme.”
November 8th, 2007 at 9:35 am
OK first of all, thanks very much to Matt, SP and Armen for taking time out to comment on this post. I know you’re all busy and have far more important things to tend to than a comical rant like this.
I must say that if there’s one thing that makes Matt stand out amongst all other blogstars, it’s his constant professionalism and humility. For that I say respect!
The comments from SP and Matt clarify many of the misreadings and wily extrapolations in my post. While I tried to cover all angles of the marketplace affair, there were clearly huge gaps in my information. Apologies to you guys for all the gaping voids.
Whilst I’ll always remain skeptical towards people in any position of power (that’s what happens to you when you grow up in France!) I think both Matt and SP deserve recognition for their time and energy spent promoting what has become the world’s premier blogging platform.
SP, the notion of ‘Community consensus’ sounds reasonable to me, how you’re able to implement ‘democracy’ within a Wordpress theme and also within a marketplace will be of interest to many. I for one will be watching closely.
Thanks again for stopping by and for leaving your comments. I appreciate it.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
A question about WordPress Premium Themes…
WordPress requires web hosting
…of some sort - so you can either
Buy some hosting from someone else,
Get some hosting from someone else for free (various alternative exist here… mostly involving someone else’s ads)
Or you can do it …