From the other side, selling ThemeLab
Leland Fiegal posted an incredible wrap-up blog post about his journey with ThemeLab and about selling it to Syed Balkhi, as I reported just a bit ago.
I love seeing something with this much detail, that’s so frank and honest. I can also relate in many ways to what it’s like running a website that’s “your baby” (hint: this one is mine).
Also of interest is his insight about being early to the theme market:
Just to put it in perspective, the time I started Theme Lab, companies like WooThemes and iThemes didn’t exist. No ThemeForest either. StudioPress was probably still in its “Revolution” stage, and WPDesigner was arguably the most popular WordPress theme-related site in the world.
The WordPress theming community has take a sharp 180 turn since then.
Back then, people loved free WordPress themes. I’d sometimes get over 100 comments on a single theme release post, mostly from people who were just thankful for it being free.
When you released an especially good-looking one, you’d end up getting a lot of attention on a lot of popular blogs. My themes were featured on Weblog Tools Collection, Smashing Magazine, and even made it on Mashable a couple times.
Really, read the whole thing. It’s just so human and refreshing. Congrats to Leland on a successful handoff and I wish him the best going forward.
Thanks Brian for sharing this. I was debating whether or not to go into so much detail on that blog post, so it’s been great to see the positive feedback on it thus far. Appreciate it.