Editor Review
StudioPress Overview
2013 Edition – Choosing the right theme provider is important! A poorly designed and coded theme can not only have devastating consequences on your visitors and sales it can also effect your brand and business.
In line with this, we are conducting reviews on all major premium WordPress theme providers and reporting back to you. Our first StudioPress review was in 2009, however it has been updated many times throughout the years with our current 2013 Edition being the latest.
With Brian Gardner as the founder, StudioPress is well-known in the WordPress community. Specifically, they have created the very popular Genesis Framework which allows users to quickly and easily build sites with WordPress.
The credentials of the company owners and managing officers are one of the aspects that you should check when selecting for the best provider of WordPress themes. It is important ake sure that they are experts in the field of website development and WordPress specialists with years of experience. Thankfully Brian and his team have been long standing members of the WordPress ecosystem.
Knowing the expertise of the people behind the services that you are subscribing is important because it can give you assurance that you are getting premium services and backed by exceptional support from experts who can provide excellent technical assistance if you encounter difficulties and issues on the use of your chosen theme. In this case, the people behind StudioPress have excellent credentials; each of them has their own specialty and expertise in different fields to ensure broader knowledge for the whole team.
Woothemes affiliate program is legitimate. But the policy is NOT in favor of affiliates.
Woothemes is one of the best WordPress theme providers and received mostly positive reviews in the community. With about 378 theme providers listed on this site, Woothemes is now ranked on #2 in the Overall Best category. And many of their customers leave good comments about their themes and support on Woothemes’ review page too.
This article will touch on a different aspect of Woothemes. It is the experience I had with their affiliate program.
When it comes to treating the affiliates, it is to my dismay that Woothemes falls short.
On September 10, 2010, I login to my Woothemes’ account to check my affiliate sale. When I clicked on the August report, I found a sale reversal of $10.5.
See the screenshot below.
Immediately, I contacted Woothemes via their contact form and the following is what I wrote to them.
Hi,
I found out something about your affiliate program. I checked my affiliate report and found out that you reversed a sale in August (see the attached screenshot). Since there is no money back policy for your themes, why is it that you reversed the affiliate sale?
Please advise.
Regards,
Brian
Adii, the co-founder of Woothemes, replied within 12 hours with the following:
Brian,
The reversed sale was for a fraudulent transaction i.e. it was reversed by our payment processor.
Kind Regards
Adii
The WooThemes Team
It is perfectly normal to have fraudulent sale on internet but I decided to check my report in more details and found something not right.
I managed to track down that the reversed sale was locked in January 2010 and the commission had already been paid on Jun 02, 2010 (I input my payment info in May 2010 so this is my first commission payment).
It just didn’t make sense to reverse a sale which were paid out months ago! Obviously, I didn’t accept their explanation and wrote back to demand a better one.
Hi Adii,
This is not right. That transaction was locked in Jan 2010 and the commission was paid via Paypal on Jun 02, 2010
Paypal Transaction ID: 49487968K1215093J
So there is no reason that it is a fraudulent sale when you reversed it in August 2010.
Please give a valid explanation.
Thanks.
Regards,
Brianbtw, my account username is “xxxxx” (removed for privacy reason)
Adii replied with an explanation below:
Brian,
Chargebacks by Mastercard / VISA sometimes happen months after the actual purchase. That is the valid explanation; I realize it’s unfortunate, but this is a reality online with fraudulent purchases.
Kind Regards
Adii
Though they have the rights to do so but I don’t think it is good to treat their affiliates this way so I replied with the following:
Adii,
I have been earning affiliate income for many years and I understand about the chargebacks but this is the first time I encounter sale reversal after more than 6 months. I think all the other affiliate programs I joined absorb the loss if chargebacks happened after the commission had been paid out.
So can I come to the conclusion that with Woothemes affiliate program, all the sales I got few months ago were not 100% secure even after the commission has been paid out?
Regards,
Brian
And Adii replied…
Brian,
All sales are 100% secure unless they were fraudulent to start off with. 🙂 I truly understand your frustration in this regard and unfortunately this is a byproduct of other companies’ policies (i.e. VISA / Mastercard).
Kind Regards
Adii
So I come to a conclusion that Woothemes will pass the chargeback to the affiliates no matter when the sale was made. I then replied to him.
Adii,
You have a point. But from the affiliates perspective, ALL the sales that we made in the past (no matter how long it was) may be reversed if they were fraudulent.
Thanks for the clarification. I think what I am experiencing is worth sharing with other affiliates.
Regards,
Brian
Are you one of Woothemes affiliates? If you are, we are eager to hear your experience.
What’s your thought on this? Kindly leave your comments below.
Thousands of people everyday want to create their own blog, but because most WordPress start-up guides online are too complex for some of them to understand, they end up asking on Webmaster forums on how to set-up a WordPress blog. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, most user-friendly, and has all the features every blogger needs. This guide will help everyone to start his/her own blog easy and fast.
Whether it’s a personal or a business blog, there are several important things you need to prepare.
There are thousands of WordPress themes in the market and everyday, new ones are being developed. Faced with the flood of WP themes, it becomes extremely hard to spot the quality ones. This is when we thought, Hey, why not create a site reviewing WP themes and grade theme based upon the score they receive?. To cut things short, after months of conceptualization and implementation, ThemeGrade was finally launched in September 2009!
We don’t stop innovating new ideas to make theme selection easier for the users. Beginning with individual theme reviews and ratings, we now extend the grading for the theme providers.
To sum it up, ThemeGrade is a site that provides:
• The most comprehensive review of WordPress themes in the general and SEO category.
• Grading of the individual themes with quality themes being awarded with Gold, Silver or Bronze ranking.
• Easy search function that allows you to quickly find your ideal themes (try it in the sidebar to your right).
• Top 10 rating of theme providers in the functionality and usability, graphic design, coding and overall best category.
• Detailed editor reviews of over 40 WordPress theme providers.
• Grading of theme providers based on the users scoring and feedback.
What do you think of all these features found in ThemeGrade? If you have any comments or suggestions, we’d like to hear from you. Also, we get a LOT of great user generated feedback through the comments on our provider reviews with many of the theme shop owners actively monitoring and responding to comments. Make sure your voice is heard (please just be respectful even if you are complaining…nobody likes that guy).
Welcome to ThemeGrade!