Here's a little background information, so you know why I'm asking. After redesigning this site, I've gotten a lot of email from people inquiring about Drupal work. But most of these emails were about only doing the visual design and Drupal theme. I usually do larger projects and turn down small work that doesn't involve more of the user experience design process. But quite a few people over the years have expressed interest in just Drupal theme design work.
I'm considering opening up a store to sell Drupal themes that are suited to different purposes and don't have that cookie-cutter Drupal look. They'll look good. So that's the purpose of this poll. I'm trying to guage the market for this type of work before I consider investing time in it.
Just so you know, a lot can be done via the theme files, but to get Drupal to really sing, you have to know how to configure it. This is additional time and money you might spend on a consultant if you don't have the PHP chops. There's a bunch of developers out there who can do that part of the job, myself included (for common project types). What you'll be getting with these themes is the visual design and graphic files, the XHTML marked up PHP theme files, and style sheets. Configuration and installation is up to you, although I will provide support for the current stable version.
02Anonymous
12/14/05 @
12:13
There are really two different questions:
* how much for a theme you can be first to use and that will be GPLed and possibly put up on drupal.org ?
* how much for a private theme you'll own for you to use as you wish, with the GPL restraints meaning essentially you'll have to
a) either keep it just for your site
b) or distribute it under GPL
c) or hire a lawyer
For the second case, 400 is well under what one would expect to pay (which I did), but it seems hard to obtain as much for the first case.
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03jibbajabba
12/14/05 @
12:59
I'm trying to figure out the model here. It seems there are quite a few people who just want original visual design, markup and style sheets for a theme file. But these people don't have a budget that matches my cost. I haven't done these projects because the pay off for the effort is not very good.
But, yes this is a difficult model to figure out. The cases for me are:
1) Free themes -- Very basic, you do all the CSS customization and visual design)
2) Standard themes -- You do minor CSS adjustments to affect the design, but the layout and visual design is much better than cookie cutter Drupal themes. You would be buying a license here to use the theme as you want for as many sites as you own, but you would not be free to publish the code or to share with other site owners. I do have a lawyer who would help me with the terms of this.
3) Premium themes -- You purchase high end themes that the owner will have complete rights to, (with the exception that they can not be offered for resale or distributed for free, e.g. via Drupal site.) The files will be delivered to only one owner and will not be available for resale by me.
4) Custom themes -- This option is the one where you hire me for real web design consulting. The type where we undergo a real design process: I interview you to help discover your business goals, your users goals (e.g. do some user reseearch, design personas), work on the content strategy and information architecture with you, the design concept, user interface and visual design, site development and implementation.
#4 above is what I do for the clients in my portfolio and is why I turn people away who just want Drupal themes.
04Boris Mann@bryg...
12/14/05 @
13:01
Themes aren't covered under the GPL. Some of the code, if template.php etc. are used, *may* be.
And I agree: a custom, private theme I would peg starting at around $1500.
For templates that get sold over and over? Tough call.
05jibbajabba
12/14/05 @
13:24
That's right, Boris. Thanks for your feedback. Helps me benchmark. $1700 - $2000 is what I've been quoting to people for custom Drupal theme work in the past 2 weeks. This is for theme work only. When people start to talk to me and answer my questions, I think they eventually see that design is more than just giving you bunch of PNGs, a theme file and style sheet. The folks I've done work for (see my portfolio) have used me mostly for more of the user experience design and implementation process, so pricing for this theme work is new territory for me.
All of my estimates are based on hourly cost summaries, which are based on the scope of the project -- determined by the answers to questionairres and interviews with prospective clients. The above is the range for the clients I have spoken to in the past few weeks.
This is a sure sign to me, that Drupal is moving beyond pet project and is entering the big scene where professional work is being done. This also means that compensation has to follow.
Still I believe that most Drupal projects in the near future will not be able to shoulder that kind of cost for the theme design alone. But they ought to.
Drupal needs good designers to help the system advance as a viable solution for larger projects. You are clearly one of those, who could help Drupal in that respect.
07thumb
01/02/06 @
13:09
I've been contemplating the same thing for "Gallery":http://gallery.menalto.com themes and I'm having the same experience that you're describing. I've been looking at some of the HTML stock template sites in my research. Many of "Template Monster's":http://www.templatemonster.com/ templates are well over US $2000 to purchase exclusive use rights and well under $100 for non-exclusive rights.
08CJ
01/26/06 @
02:31
I have to say that this is the overall best-designed Drupal site I have seen - it certainly meets the aim of my wanting to employ you to work up my site. Alas that I had the cash!
I'm not sure where the impetus rests for encouraging a better standard of basic template. It's extremely hard to escape the blocky, generic styles. Of course, this is good for Drupal developers, but for Drupal to nudge ahead of the game and, like Gunnar suggests, move out of the little league, Average Jane has to have a sense that her site is distinctive __enough__. Raise the quality for everyone, raise the rewards for the real skills.
Perhaps I'm way out here...
09iraszl@drupal.org
03/31/06 @
17:34
I don't know how can anyone do a decent theme for under 400 USD. I've done couple and all of them were sold for much more than 400USD.
I could not help but comment on this although it seems to be 6 months old. I have been converting static site templates to Drupal themes for the last few months for less than 400 USD and I feel a little cheated now. Since I previously did them for salary for my employer, I felt that extra money was OK as I tried tokeep the balance between not diluting the market, and not turning peple away (of-course I turned away those that wanted 100-200 USD templates)
I am yet to find someone to offer me more than 500 for a template. I do good work see www.cmsproducer.com , but most of the people that contact me seem to be cheap or poor. i think that I will have to grandfather my existing customers at the current prices (for 6 months) and play tough with all others cause I seem to get too many offers (an indicator that I may be too cheap).
On a different topic, indeed its true that creating templates (XHML/CSS/PHP) is a problem cause if you do not see eye-to-eye with the customer on the vision, the template you build will not work properly with their configuration. I have done some work that I wish I had never accepted because the owner did not have a vision and I had a tough time understanding why I was structuring te theme as I did.
Going forward, I will quote only respectable prices to protect us all, and I will only do projects that are well crafted. What do you think?
how is this any harder than setting up a website? I could probably make it in a couple of hours...
12jibbajabba
12/09/06 @
00:10
Wealth Strategy wrote:
> how is this any harder than setting up a website? I could probably make it in a couple of hours...
I think you're missing the point of the conversation here. If you don't use Drupal and aren't familiar with content management systems, this poll will be irrelevant to you. We're talking about theme design/development for the Drupal CMS.
44% (the highest percentage) said $50?? Jeez! I don't think people really realize what it takes to create high-end themes for Drupal. Even paying $80-100+ for a custom Drupal theme like many Joomla sites is worth it in my opinion because it saves SO much time by not having to tweak them theme yourself - hour upon hour.
I guess people want it for close to free. But I'm a big believer of "you get what you pay for."
14jibbajabba
01/16/08 @
14:30
Yeah, I agree. I was interested in seeing how much people would pay for a theme that they would then have to customize. It's promising that 66% would pay over $100 though.
Oh it's no question that most people would pay more than $100. Paying for a design and paying for someone to implement. Some implementations and customizations are deserving of over a couple thousand dollars, especially if the client is extremely picky, which they usually are!
I guess it depends on the client, their budget and their knowledge of the going rates. For the uninitiated i'd imagine the rates would go up very quickly.
Same goes for any web design no one wants to pay for all the work that goes into them. There are to many sites selling trmplates for a dime a dozen and scripts are getting that way too.
I voted $100, but this is simply slicing the image design. Now if the contract had some usability and accessibility study. Along with some SEO bundled with it making sure the template does not go in conflict with the recommendations here, then my willingness to pay a higher amount might reallybe higher.Even in the thousands.
If I was guaranteed that I was the only one using it, I would pay around $1k. For a theme designed for me but released to the general public, maybe $300.
Even if it was kick ass and everybody had it then that takes away from the value. so it would have to be a limited amount of Releases. That is what is going to get the value up. Kick Ass and every one has it no value $20. but Kick Ass and only 10 sold $300 has to be good.
Why do u ask this question i dont know drubal. but it is really 400 worth?
28jibbajabba
03/08/08 @
10:19
I asked this question in 2005 because people were asking me to do Drupal themes for them and I was not able. I was interested in finding out what people would pay for themes that could be user customized.
Michael, I'm just seeing this post for the first time and it's interesting to see how things have evolved in 2.5 years! There are a handful of people branching out into premium, for-sale Drupal themes now. Many of them are priced in the lower end ($50-$100) but I really think you'd need to make a lot of sales of a theme in order to recoup the cost at that price.
We're pricing our Drupal themes in the $200-400 range (higher end reserved mostly for Ubercart e-commerce themes or with extensive Organic Groups theming and the like), with the exclusive buyout prices at 10x that, which I think actually reflects a reasonable cost when you consider the 30-50 hours that goes into creating each one.
I would pay up to 750$ if the design was worth it. To be honest, I haven't seen many Drupal templates that didn't look "Drupal". They all seem to have the "Slashdot" type look and feel.
38Heislyc
09/10/08 @
05:34
Hi jibbajabba,
Wow it is a 2005 post/poll that I could still find it today in 2008!
I was wondering, till now have you already decided and setup an online drupal theme shop for the purpose?
Just curious if you did what you thought so. =)
*What's the URL if you do running one?
Heislyc
39jibbajabba
09/10/08 @
08:52
@Heislyc:
No, I haven't yet set up a Drupal theme shop yet. The reward at the time seemed pretty low compared to other projects I was interested in doing. Maybe one day in the future I'll do it. I already own a domain for this purpose :)
Comments
12/14/05 @ 11:00
Here's a little background information, so you know why I'm asking. After redesigning this site, I've gotten a lot of email from people inquiring about Drupal work. But most of these emails were about only doing the visual design and Drupal theme. I usually do larger projects and turn down small work that doesn't involve more of the user experience design process. But quite a few people over the years have expressed interest in just Drupal theme design work.
I'm considering opening up a store to sell Drupal themes that are suited to different purposes and don't have that cookie-cutter Drupal look. They'll look good. So that's the purpose of this poll. I'm trying to guage the market for this type of work before I consider investing time in it.
Just so you know, a lot can be done via the theme files, but to get Drupal to really sing, you have to know how to configure it. This is additional time and money you might spend on a consultant if you don't have the PHP chops. There's a bunch of developers out there who can do that part of the job, myself included (for common project types). What you'll be getting with these themes is the visual design and graphic files, the XHTML marked up PHP theme files, and style sheets. Configuration and installation is up to you, although I will provide support for the current stable version.
12/14/05 @ 12:13
There are really two different questions:
* how much for a theme you can be first to use and that will be GPLed and possibly put up on drupal.org ?
* how much for a private theme you'll own for you to use as you wish, with the GPL restraints meaning essentially you'll have to
a) either keep it just for your site
b) or distribute it under GPL
c) or hire a lawyer
For the second case, 400 is well under what one would expect to pay (which I did), but it seems hard to obtain as much for the first case.
12/14/05 @ 12:59
I'm trying to figure out the model here. It seems there are quite a few people who just want original visual design, markup and style sheets for a theme file. But these people don't have a budget that matches my cost. I haven't done these projects because the pay off for the effort is not very good.
But, yes this is a difficult model to figure out. The cases for me are:
1) Free themes -- Very basic, you do all the CSS customization and visual design)
2) Standard themes -- You do minor CSS adjustments to affect the design, but the layout and visual design is much better than cookie cutter Drupal themes. You would be buying a license here to use the theme as you want for as many sites as you own, but you would not be free to publish the code or to share with other site owners. I do have a lawyer who would help me with the terms of this.
3) Premium themes -- You purchase high end themes that the owner will have complete rights to, (with the exception that they can not be offered for resale or distributed for free, e.g. via Drupal site.) The files will be delivered to only one owner and will not be available for resale by me.
4) Custom themes -- This option is the one where you hire me for real web design consulting. The type where we undergo a real design process: I interview you to help discover your business goals, your users goals (e.g. do some user reseearch, design personas), work on the content strategy and information architecture with you, the design concept, user interface and visual design, site development and implementation.
#4 above is what I do for the clients in my portfolio and is why I turn people away who just want Drupal themes.
12/14/05 @ 13:01
Themes aren't covered under the GPL. Some of the code, if template.php etc. are used, *may* be.
And I agree: a custom, private theme I would peg starting at around $1500.
For templates that get sold over and over? Tough call.
12/14/05 @ 13:24
That's right, Boris. Thanks for your feedback. Helps me benchmark. $1700 - $2000 is what I've been quoting to people for custom Drupal theme work in the past 2 weeks. This is for theme work only. When people start to talk to me and answer my questions, I think they eventually see that design is more than just giving you bunch of PNGs, a theme file and style sheet. The folks I've done work for (see my portfolio) have used me mostly for more of the user experience design and implementation process, so pricing for this theme work is new territory for me.
All of my estimates are based on hourly cost summaries, which are based on the scope of the project -- determined by the answers to questionairres and interviews with prospective clients. The above is the range for the clients I have spoken to in the past few weeks.
12/21/05 @ 17:05
This is a sure sign to me, that Drupal is moving beyond pet project and is entering the big scene where professional work is being done. This also means that compensation has to follow.
Still I believe that most Drupal projects in the near future will not be able to shoulder that kind of cost for the theme design alone. But they ought to.
Drupal needs good designers to help the system advance as a viable solution for larger projects. You are clearly one of those, who could help Drupal in that respect.
01/02/06 @ 13:09
I've been contemplating the same thing for "Gallery":http://gallery.menalto.com themes and I'm having the same experience that you're describing. I've been looking at some of the HTML stock template sites in my research. Many of "Template Monster's":http://www.templatemonster.com/ templates are well over US $2000 to purchase exclusive use rights and well under $100 for non-exclusive rights.
01/26/06 @ 02:31
I have to say that this is the overall best-designed Drupal site I have seen - it certainly meets the aim of my wanting to employ you to work up my site. Alas that I had the cash!
I'm not sure where the impetus rests for encouraging a better standard of basic template. It's extremely hard to escape the blocky, generic styles. Of course, this is good for Drupal developers, but for Drupal to nudge ahead of the game and, like Gunnar suggests, move out of the little league, Average Jane has to have a sense that her site is distinctive __enough__. Raise the quality for everyone, raise the rewards for the real skills.
Perhaps I'm way out here...
03/31/06 @ 17:34
I don't know how can anyone do a decent theme for under 400 USD. I've done couple and all of them were sold for much more than 400USD.
07/08/06 @ 03:03
I could not help but comment on this although it seems to be 6 months old. I have been converting static site templates to Drupal themes for the last few months for less than 400 USD and I feel a little cheated now. Since I previously did them for salary for my employer, I felt that extra money was OK as I tried tokeep the balance between not diluting the market, and not turning peple away (of-course I turned away those that wanted 100-200 USD templates)
I am yet to find someone to offer me more than 500 for a template. I do good work see www.cmsproducer.com , but most of the people that contact me seem to be cheap or poor. i think that I will have to grandfather my existing customers at the current prices (for 6 months) and play tough with all others cause I seem to get too many offers (an indicator that I may be too cheap).
On a different topic, indeed its true that creating templates (XHML/CSS/PHP) is a problem cause if you do not see eye-to-eye with the customer on the vision, the template you build will not work properly with their configuration. I have done some work that I wish I had never accepted because the owner did not have a vision and I had a tough time understanding why I was structuring te theme as I did.
Going forward, I will quote only respectable prices to protect us all, and I will only do projects that are well crafted. What do you think?
12/08/06 @ 19:35
how is this any harder than setting up a website? I could probably make it in a couple of hours...
12/09/06 @ 00:10
Wealth Strategy wrote:
> how is this any harder than setting up a website? I could probably make it in a couple of hours...
I think you're missing the point of the conversation here. If you don't use Drupal and aren't familiar with content management systems, this poll will be irrelevant to you. We're talking about theme design/development for the Drupal CMS.
01/16/08 @ 12:00
44% (the highest percentage) said $50?? Jeez! I don't think people really realize what it takes to create high-end themes for Drupal. Even paying $80-100+ for a custom Drupal theme like many Joomla sites is worth it in my opinion because it saves SO much time by not having to tweak them theme yourself - hour upon hour.
I guess people want it for close to free. But I'm a big believer of "you get what you pay for."
01/16/08 @ 14:30
Yeah, I agree. I was interested in seeing how much people would pay for a theme that they would then have to customize. It's promising that 66% would pay over $100 though.
01/17/08 @ 23:10
Oh it's no question that most people would pay more than $100. Paying for a design and paying for someone to implement. Some implementations and customizations are deserving of over a couple thousand dollars, especially if the client is extremely picky, which they usually are!
02/02/08 @ 10:52
I guess it depends on the client, their budget and their knowledge of the going rates. For the uninitiated i'd imagine the rates would go up very quickly.
02/02/08 @ 23:30
Same goes for any web design no one wants to pay for all the work that goes into them. There are to many sites selling trmplates for a dime a dozen and scripts are getting that way too.
02/06/08 @ 11:06
I voted $100, but this is simply slicing the image design. Now if the contract had some usability and accessibility study. Along with some SEO bundled with it making sure the template does not go in conflict with the recommendations here, then my willingness to pay a higher amount might reallybe higher.Even in the thousands.
02/10/08 @ 15:42
I prefer to design them myself. Saves tons of money that way.
02/13/08 @ 15:13
I would pay at least $500 for a good one if I needed one.
02/14/08 @ 03:51
Actually it depends on if it's a individual theme made only for me or a copy of a standard theme ..
02/15/08 @ 13:09
voted for 200$ if this satisfies my needs like the organized magazine style, i will pay even more.
02/16/08 @ 22:21
$50 still seems too high for me. I will pay if it is about $20.
02/22/08 @ 15:58
Themes aren't covered under the GPL. Some of the code, if template.php etc. are used, *may* be.
And I agree: a custom, private theme I would peg starting at around $1500.
For templates that get sold over and over? Tough call.
03/06/08 @ 17:43
If I was guaranteed that I was the only one using it, I would pay around $1k. For a theme designed for me but released to the general public, maybe $300.
03/07/08 @ 19:43
Even if it was kick ass and everybody had it then that takes away from the value. so it would have to be a limited amount of Releases. That is what is going to get the value up. Kick Ass and every one has it no value $20. but Kick Ass and only 10 sold $300 has to be good.
03/08/08 @ 09:54
Why do u ask this question i dont know drubal. but it is really 400 worth?
03/08/08 @ 10:19
I asked this question in 2005 because people were asking me to do Drupal themes for them and I was not able. I was interested in finding out what people would pay for themes that could be user customized.
03/10/08 @ 01:55
I vote $50. That's my budget...
03/16/08 @ 19:02
Hello
I would pay about £300 or about $600
would seem a fair price to me
mally
03/18/08 @ 16:58
Hello
I would pay about 300€.
It's something correct in my opinion.
Regards
03/19/08 @ 14:08
Around 300$ is a fair price taking into consideration my financial status.
03/30/08 @ 14:50
Michael, I'm just seeing this post for the first time and it's interesting to see how things have evolved in 2.5 years! There are a handful of people branching out into premium, for-sale Drupal themes now. Many of them are priced in the lower end ($50-$100) but I really think you'd need to make a lot of sales of a theme in order to recoup the cost at that price.
We made a similar distinction as you in comment #3 on the approaches to acquiring Drupal themes.
We're pricing our Drupal themes in the $200-400 range (higher end reserved mostly for Ubercart e-commerce themes or with extensive Organic Groups theming and the like), with the exclusive buyout prices at 10x that, which I think actually reflects a reasonable cost when you consider the 30-50 hours that goes into creating each one.
04/25/08 @ 10:01
I would pay around 300$.
06/10/08 @ 17:17
vote $50. That's my budget...
06/20/08 @ 10:24
I voted for 50$ too...i think that is a pretty reasonable price for such a product.
08/15/08 @ 16:50
I would pay up to 750$ if the design was worth it. To be honest, I haven't seen many Drupal templates that didn't look "Drupal". They all seem to have the "Slashdot" type look and feel.
09/10/08 @ 05:34
Hi jibbajabba,
Wow it is a 2005 post/poll that I could still find it today in 2008!
I was wondering, till now have you already decided and setup an online drupal theme shop for the purpose?
Just curious if you did what you thought so. =)
*What's the URL if you do running one?
Heislyc
09/10/08 @ 08:52
@Heislyc:
No, I haven't yet set up a Drupal theme shop yet. The reward at the time seemed pretty low compared to other projects I was interested in doing. Maybe one day in the future I'll do it. I already own a domain for this purpose :)
-m