When I opened my little template shop in 2019, I figured the hard part would be the design. Six years later the shop is still small, still run from my kitchen table in Vilnius, and I’ve sold premade Blogger templates and WordPress themes to a few thousand hobby bloggers. The design was the easy part. Here’s what actually took work.

Pretty sells the click, tidy sells the theme

pretty woman, portrait, hands, pretty, face, skin
Photo by panajiotis on Pixabay

My first three templates were gorgeous and broken. Slow to load, widgets in odd corners, a footer nobody could edit without opening code. Sales picked up only when I gave the boring structure the same hours I gave the look. Whitespace, consistent margins, an obvious home for a photo. People buy the screenshot of the demo blog. They keep the theme because it behaves.

Hobby bloggers have real constraints

yarn, wool, handwork, hobby, crochet, yarn, yarn, yarn, yarn, yarn, wool, wool, wool, crochet, crochet, crochet
Photo by congerdesign on Pixabay

My customers write in the evenings, after work, often after the kids are asleep. They get maybe two hours on a Saturday. They will not read a 40-page setup guide, and I don’t blame them. So my install notes shrank every year, down to one page with screenshots. The theme that sells best is the one I can explain fastest.

One font too many is one font too many

Detailed view of different font styles printed on paper, showcasing typography.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels

Early on I bundled five fonts per theme because it felt generous. Customers changed two and the whole design fell apart. Now every theme ships with two typefaces and a short note about why I paired them. Restraint reads as confidence.

Support is the product

I answer email myself, usually within a day. Nine times out of ten the question is tiny (“where do I change the header photo?”), and a kind answer turns a customer into someone who tells a friend. I have repeat buyers on their third and fourth theme, one for each season of their blog.

Prices can be simple

I used to run sales, coupons, and bundle tiers. It confused everyone, including me. Now: one price per theme, free updates, a small fee if you want me to install it for you. Revenue went up when the pricing page got shorter.

Six years in, my studio is one person, one laptop, and a lot of pink sticky notes. The work that lasts respects someone’s Saturday morning.