Who gains most from nulled themes?
Background: Few months back I got a chance to work with a company and help them with their web presence and online store. I am not a designer, so I outsourced the theme development. The result I got was absolutely beautiful, done for dirt cheap and in less time than I could imagine. This raised some questions! I checked the CSS files, just to find that the theme was actually a nulled theme. Nulled themes can be thought of like Premium Themes that are sold somewhere, available for free somewhere else.
To me, it’s purely unethical for a person to sell someone else’s work for free and make money out of it. The incident initiated a thought process that lead me to do some research and write this article.
The web templates market is a growing market. Specially with the ever changing design guidelines and UX patterns several new themes are released every day. Over many years, Theme-Development market has seen several buzzwords including Web 2.0 Design, Long Landing Pages, Flat, Flatty, Material Design, Parallax scrolling and so on. Every time a new buzzword came in, several new themes were developed for it. With thousands of legit themes developed and sold, there are even more(themes) that are distributed illegally. Some smart people(for simplicity let’s called them hackers) take themes, remove all the tracking code(if any) and distribute the themes for free.
Now the question is, who gains most out of this piracy?
Theme Marketplaces
Thousands of themes from Themeforest and TemplateMonster are downloaded every single day without paying them anything. Who can be at a loss more than them (hint: The theme developer)?
Considering a modest case of 1000 themes downloaded everyday worth $50 each from different sources, there is a lost revenue of over $18 Million per year($ 50* 1000* 365 days = $18.25M) for sites like ThemeForest and TemplateMonster. That is really bad, right? No. Nulled Themes mean a LOT of free marketing for these guys. These nulled theme sites are ranked pretty well on Google. So these quality backlinks are much more than $18M revenue, specially if we consider the long term value of these backlinks. Most of these sites link to ThemeForest/TemplateMonster and not the author’s demo site, something I find suspicious.
Nulled Theme Authors
What can be better than launching a nulled theme and getting 300+ views in an hour with zero marketing? This is a common thing for sites distributing nulled themes. These views bring in ad-revenue for the nulled theme distribution websites, but they are source of something more important. These “nulled” themes often have malicious code that can help hackers gain access to the remote server(and sensitive data). This data can be more valuable than any ad revenue. Did I tell about the DDoS attack possible when you have access to these many servers?
Most of these nulled theme sites allow the theme developers to send a DMCA notice for taking down the nulled theme. Theme authors don’t do it for two reasons
- Some freelancers/companies use nulled themes just for demo and then buy the real theme if it fits the requirements.
- Theme developers do not get much support from ThemeForest to fight this piracy(I think the reason is obvious). Many of them have accepted this as a reality and are focussing just on the paying customers. Theme developers are good at making themes, they should focus on doing that.
Theme Authors
Themes that are nulled get much more attention. (Any theme designer willing to share insights?). As mentioned above, the victim theme-developers have a better chances of showing up higher on Google, thanks to backlinks. Some freelancers get a chance to test the theme with their data for free (Feature request for you, ThemeForest!!), and buy the theme later. Yes, theme authors face the biggest loss. But this loss comes with few benefits.
Freelancers/Software Service Industry
I personally know people who make over $3000 a month in freelancing(it’s a lot of money in Indian Subcontinent). And they use nulled themes most of the times. I rest my case.
Opinions are personal. I have intentionally not linked to any Theme Developer, Theme, Nulled Theme Distributor or Freelancer. The facts mentioned in the article are based on observations and interviews of freelancers, theme developers (and a nulled theme developer). Please share your experience with the world and let us know your take on nulled themes and piracy.
You can get in touch with me on twitter (_gautam), drop me a line at iam[at]aman[dot]pro or join my professional network on LinkedIn.
