Late last year, I decided to give myself a bit of a digital makeover. I left my last part-time web design gig with revamped WordPress skills, and even as I ditched the job I still wanted to make WordPress design and development a part of my career.
I added a Web Design section to Otaku Journalist. I created a portfolio site to showcase some of my previous work. And, most time-consumingly, in order to prove that I knew what I was talking about, I built my own WordPress theme from scratch.
It’s been five months, and I have to say, business is slow. I do have several recurring web clients, but not because I advertised my availability online—I got them all through work connections. Every now and then somebody fills out my “get a quote” form, but after pricing out a potential contract in the three figures, I never hear from them again.
It’s easy to ignore the web business failure, because I’m still getting web clients, just not the way I planned. As for the theme, Asuna, I’ve sold exactly one copy.
That stings because I spent more than 20 hours building Asuna to be absolutely perfect. If you check out the demo, you can see I gave it 13 points of customization out of the box, while your average WordPress theme only has one or two.
However, if before putting in that 20 hours I had taken one hour to do a little research, I would have noticed a couple major hints this wasn’t going to sell:
- Most anime bloggers who use WordPress have a free theme, not a paid one.
- Heck, most bloggers in general don’t pay for themes, since so many are free.
- Not as many people like Asuna from Sword Art Online as I previously thought.
Long story short, enough is enough. Starting today, you can get Asuna for free.
I’m actually excited about this because it’ll mean more people than me are trying and testing my theme. Plus, since I’m a professional and you don’t have to worry about it being buggy or broken, I’ll at least be able to feel pride in my well done work helping people out.
More than that, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I was trying so hard for so long to make it happen, trying out different price points and advertising. Now I can give up and expend my energy elsewhere.
Additionally, Asuna has helped me find a clearer answer to the question, “What is valuable?” Just because I spent hours agonizing over it didn’t make Asuna a valuable product. On the flipside, just because writing is easy and fun for me doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. This is why I even monetize projects I do for enjoyment.
Asuna was a failed project long before I decided, this week, to quit promoting it. So when in a project’s lifespan do you decide to give up? As soon as it starts to become more trouble than it’s worth. Asuna was a ton of work up front, and then nothing but minor maintenance and updates since then, so I was able to push it to the back burner in terms of time investments. Really, it’s the mental and emotional investment I freed myself from when I decided to start giving it away.
If Asuna had succeeded, I wanted it to be the first in a series of WordPress themes I design from scratch. Maybe I’ll still make another (I’ve got a design concept based on Holo from Spice & Wolf waiting in the wings) but it won’t be as a part of my business. I’ve closed the book on this attempt so I can free myself up to try new projects. Sure, they might be failures, too, but what if they aren’t? The only way I’ll know for sure is if I try.
Lead photo by Markus Spiske.
7 Comments.
If you don’t mind a bit of constructive criticism from an outsider: you have 3 blogs, none of which used the theme you’re trying to sell. If you are not willing to use your own product, why would anyone else? The term is ‘dogfooding’ and it’s essential when trying to sell something like a wordpress theme. It’s one thing to say “here’s what you can do with this”, it’s another to say “here’s what I am doing with this”.
@brokeotaku:disqus WELL ACTUALLY I have 8 blogs =P I use Asuna on Lorsini.com, but worried about being repetitive using it on more than one blog. But you bring up an especially good point—that most people don’t visit all of the blogs I am running, so it wouldn’t look like repetition to anybody but me!
Well, shoot. I didn’t know that. :)
“Most anime bloggers who use WordPress have a free theme, not a paid one.” – Indeed. If enough decent themes are available for free, most people will not bother with paid ones, unless it has an air of exclusivity or unless you’re able to market it as well as Apple does with its products.
“Not as many people like Asuna from Sword Art Online as I previously thought.” – It kind of surprises me that you didn’t know this beforehand. SAO is one of the those franchises that people love to hate on. If I would choose a theme for a blog, I’d avoid anything related to franchises that triggers a lot of people (even if it would prove to be the best designed theme ever).
I think a lot of WordPress designs usually have upgradable options, so the free version helps promote the creator while some people pay for the upgraded version since they don’t want to figure it out.
I’d rec maybe looking into Genesis themes, since that’s where a lot of the market is?
Many bloggers are also hosted on WordPress itself, which limits their ability to use custom themes. That being said, Asuna was on my list for next year when my sub is up and I have a chance to switch hosts.
I think it can quite often boil down to a gut-feeling kind of thing – the old ‘you know when you know’ adage, or to the same extent, when it stops being fun, you know it’s time to get out/stop. I remember in the past I had lots of projects – work or hobby related – on the go, and after three or four years I’d always move on, as my interests shifted. For a while I always wondered whether it was just a lack of determination on my behalf, that I should have ‘stuck the course’ – but what I think I’ve come to think more recently is that deep down, the things that have most value to you will always float to the surface, and you can quite cleanly and clinically decide what you really want to spend time on. I think having a firm goal and area of focus helps a lot in that regard too – as opposed to being spread too thinly, juggling too many plates that it becomes impossible to really master any one in particular.