Plugin prices Vs Theme prices

I hope my message will not be taken as a contempt for designers but I notice, at least in my country, that web developing as job is by far higher paid than being a web designer

But what surprised me the most in Envato marketplaces was that plugins in CodeCanyon have a lower average than themes and template in theme forest. I’d always assumed that the niche skill set of working with programming languages as PHP /jQuery paid better, not worse

Which just shows that the graphic creativity is priceless

TOTAL RESPECT Designers

What do you think about that ?

Themes take a lot longer to make than plugins, so of course people selling themes will make more.

I think plug-ins pays better, there just weren’t good plug-ins. The themes in ThemeForest matches great coding skills and design abilities. In CodeCanyon there are a few successful plug-ins which deserves it. I think the plug-in market is huge because a plug-in can work in any theme; and since people paid for themes they’ll pay for extensions.

True We also can find mature free plugins and rarely hight quality free themes… and when it’s the case, it is not attractive at all to share the same good free theme with some thousands other websites… Most people aim to raise themselves above their competitors and may be that’s what creates the demand for designers… against plugins that are partially transparent and invisible in backend

LandonWilson said
Themes take a lot longer to make than plugins

developers who have spent many weeks (including nights) in programming/debugging please raise your hand

Many themes aren’t just designs. They include a lot of complex code which extends the functionality of Wordpress. Things like custom widgets, etc.

Themes do undoubtedly take longer to create than plugins.

NuclearThemes said
Many themes aren’t just designs. They include a lot of complex code which extends the functionality of Wordpress. Things like custom widgets, etc. Themes do undoubtedly take longer to create than plugins.

I totally agree. Also the demand for themes is much higher then for plugins. So you can charge more.

fayway said

LandonWilson said
Themes take a lot longer to make than plugins

I don’t agree developers who have spent many weeks (including nights) in programming/debugging please raise your hand

we are 5 months in the making for a theme man…

Yer a lot of the good themes (especially wordpress) take many months to create. All bar two of my scripts I punched out in 4 days max. I’m quite happy with the prices of items on both marketplaces. I actually wasn’t when I began here (most people go through that phase) but over the years I’ve seen envato knows what they’re doing with their prices.

Sure developers get paid more than designers on average in most countries. Have a think how much “developer” is required in a wordpress theme these days compared to how much “designer”. Even in HTML themes you need your “developer” hat on for javascript widgets or any other fancy pants stuff.

I would say some themes require more developer time than designer time (from our limited WordPress theme building experience – 4 days for PSD +HTML+CSS and 10 days for WP implementation / coding).

I am not a coder or theme designer, but, as @dtbaker points out, code products may be punched out in a few days, but how long did it take you to learn that skill to such a level?

Just curiosity as to which one takes longer to learn.

But also, being a customer of @dtbaker’s and several other codecanyon authors, I feel that i would ALWAYS be willing to pay $35 for the plugins I pay $8.

I don’t think twice about paying $35 for a WP theme I like, same would apply for CC files.

After all, it’d cost me hundreds to have privately dev’d