Ian Stewarts Business Model

[Jeffro]

Recently, I was contacted by Ian Stewart as he shared his business model with me and I wanted to share it with all of you to get your take on it. Here it is in a nutshell.

Thematic = GPL and free.

Support = Open and free but paid for, in part, by the funds generated from the GPL Child Themes sold on ThemeShaper.

Ian also let me in on a secondary way he plans on earning income but because he's not ready yet, I have to keep it under wraps :P

The framework is open to edit and is GPL, the support forums are wide open as well with no restrictions but the forum is paid for in part by the purchases of child themes through Ian's store. So what do you think?

[PaulCunningham]

Are we talking about a business model that creates a full time income itself, or just one of several revenue streams for Ian?

[Jeffro]

Well, if Ian has a secondary source of revenue planned, then I guess it would fall under multiple streams.

[tekzt]

I think it´s hard to discuss Ians business model, because there are very few people who tried in this very user friendly way what he does now. In fact i don´t know of anyone :D

Of course you´re never guaranteed to have success, but for me it would be a little bit too risky. I still think Ian can provide the high level quality support and child themes that will be necessary to be successful. IMO It will be important to release child themes on a regular basis to keep the people coming in and to release very different childthemes to attract more people and to expand the audience. Means: for every 4 released clean themes you should release one very original artsy theme. Even if people won´t buy it, it will definitely attract attention and expose your service (with VERY good prices btw) too a wider audience that you didn´t get in touch with before. But you probably already thought about how to spread the word before, so i don´t need to tell you this ;)

[Murtaza]

Multiple streams of income is much better than a sole source of income.