WordPress Plugins on ThemeForest?

This one is 100% hypothetical, and is for the plugin devs among you. What are your reactions to the idea of porting WordPress plugins over to ThemeForest?

If you think about it, it sort of makes sense. A website owner visits ThemeForest, and he expects to purchase a theme, and potentially a plugin to extend the functionality that he requires. I’m not sure that this fictional blogger will think to visit CodeCanyon.

Pros

• Your items will get much more exposure.
• Sales will likely increase, because your item(s) is now sold on a much larger marketplace.
• Your plugins will be sold to more regular website owners, rather than developers and designers specifically.
• Shouldn’t the world’s largest WordPress themes marketplace also be home to WP plugins as well?

Cons

• Should a theme marketplace even sell plugins? Will that confuse buyers? The marketplace is exclusively for templates…and now we may sell plugins as well? Is that confusing?
• WordPress plugins are the bread and butter of CodeCanyon. To remove them would be to potentially reduce traffic to this site…which might decrease sales in the other categories.

So chime in with your thoughts, or tweet me at @jeffrey_way. I often post news/info about the marketplaces, so it’s probably a good idea to follow me (especially if you don’t want to get cut.)

What if there were a way to have more cross-promotion between the sites? You might do something like recommend plugins for themes. These could be automated or just manually selected by plugin and theme authors. I think partnerships in both directions could be beneficial if handled properly. Offering discounted packages (Theme + Plugins) might even be possible

A simple option might just be to put a “WordPress Plugins” link in the ThemeForest “WordPress” Menu dropdown – and just have it redirect to CodeCanyon.

Any stats on the differences in traffic between the sites that you’d be able to share?

Anyway, I think this is a great discussion to have

Another option is to add a WordPress Plugins link to ThemeForest, but still keep the home on CodeCanyon. So the link would direct ThemeForest users to CodeCanyon.

...But I worry that this would really confuse them. All the sudden, they’re on a similar, but different marketplace entirely?

@Chris – Sorry, we posted at the same time.

We do have banners in the sidebar of each marketplace that links to relevant categories on sister-marketplaces. See here:

But, my instinct is that most visitors don’t even realize they’re there.

JeffreyWay said
Another option is to add a WordPress Plugins link to ThemeForest, but still keep the home on CodeCanyon. So the link would direct ThemeForest users to CodeCanyon. ...But I worry that this would really confuse them. All the sudden, they’re on a similar, but different marketplace entirely?

Good point about the confusion. Perhaps some sort of welcome message/popup for first-time CodeCanyon visitors arriving via that link that quickly explains the situation?

JeffreyWay said
@Chris – Sorry, we posted at the same time.

We do have banners in the sidebar of each marketplace that links to relevant categories on sister-marketplaces. See here:

But, my instinct is that most visitors don’t even realize they’re there.

Haha no worries

I think you’re right, I’ve never noticed that before. Obviously it’s tough given that it makes sense to devote the most prominent locations to promoting ThemeForest while on that site.

It’d be interesting to make that single change (adding Plugins to the menu) and seeing how much it affects CodeCanyon traffic.

@Gordan – That’s a neat idea. What if theme developers could specify up to three premium WP plugins on CodeCanyon that would extend the functionality of the theme being sold (perhaps the theme has built-in styling support for the plugin).

These choices would then be displayed somewhere on the item page, and, if a user purchases a plugin through those links, the theme seller gets some sort of compensation/commission. (Or maybe none at all, but some incentive is needed, I think.)

We can talk more about it at the meetup. You’re coming, right Gordan?