I'm quite suprised that you wasn't shifting skins at ?10 pop. Did you have quite a large selection of skins to choose from at that price. Or just the odd 2 or 4 to choose from? I'm wondering how large your list of skins was for ?10?

As I would have though if you'd build up a pretty large collection of cheap skins for fast turn over, maybe 40-50. You should have done quite well on sales.

It just depends on what you want to do and how you want to go about it. My experience is there is a good market for both. Whatever you do as a business, you have to be prepared to provide support after the sale...that is the key to success.

But I see that your site is selling two skins that vBCore are advertising they created called ATX and 360 for you site. So would I be right in saying that some skins your selling you did not create though?

And your doing like other site, selling skins created by other people like vBCore were you buy the rights to re-sell them.

EDIT:

Sorry I take that back. The ATX skin is being sold both on your site and vBCore

I bought full rights from vbcore to several designs. He doesn't own rights to them to sell them any longer. You would be correct in your assumption. I am like several of the large skin sites in that I employ designers and coders to come up with my products. There are plenty of freelancers and custom skin makers and they fill a good market need and persue what they enjoy I suspect. The large resell skin sites like mine are a business, approaching the market differently than custom designers.

I hope I'm not being too abrupt by jumping in here. Just thought I'd like to share my experiences with vBulletin skins. :)

First off, thanks to Chris M. for listing me first. :p

Anyways, in the long run, from my experience, providing per-client custom solutions has generated far more income than pre-made skin sales. With that said, the work-to-money-earned ratio for pre-made skin sales is very nice and is a great source of (relatively) passive income.

I've tested the waters with selling made-for-mass-consumption styles a few times with a few skins over the past two years. It seems to me that while it may be lots of fun waking up to a hundred PayPal payments in your bank, it becomes extremely hectic once Jelsoft updates vBulletin and you try to update a dozen styles within a couple of hours.

In addition, providing support for non-custom skins is a major pain. There is always the 10-year-old kid who somehow came up with the money for a vBulletin license and demands support for every little template tweak and nags on you 24/7 to change an element of the skin or add a feature that he wants.

Designing custom skins, on the other hand, is not only great fun, but also becomes more profitable than reselling skins, in the long run. Contrary to smacklan's post, I will heartily disagree about the business potential of doing custom work. Providing custom forum skins is not too different from designing a custom website. I've worked with many clients who needed not only a custom vBulletin skin, but also server setups, backend-programming, and even database administration. Contrary to what's been mentioned by just about everyone in this thread, there are companies that are more than willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on their websites. In my experience, working with companies on a one-to-one basis provides more income with a faster turnaround time than simply selling pre-made skins to mostly individuals and small companies.

You get that with free mods too, which is what makes me cranky ;)

You make some good points. There is good money to be made in both markets and there is also good residual income to the pre-made market. Alot of whats making me successful are the little things I provide to my clients that invaribly leads to more work and is a great source of satisfaction for me...it's not just about selling you a skin for me and many of my clients will attest to that.

Not all pre-made skin sites operate that way. Just as not all custom designers do either. One disadvantage custom designers have is they have a larger pool of competition as do they (sometimes) have a harder time proving a reputation for support.

I would venture to guess, that most freelance designers aren't going to have the 5 figure opportunities you have, nor the skills to follow through on those opportunities if they present themselves.

So like Smacklan, you agree the money to be made is in custom work, rather than mass-made-skins which are sold over and over to everybody. But on saying that, do you still make a nice earner out of mass made skins though?

I've stopped selling pre-made skins publicly.

you may be surprised at how many of us do "fit" in this category

there are many advantages/disadvantages on both sides -- the key is to find a company that will be around for the long haul

TIP WHEN BUYING SKINS:
1)__ Do not buy or use skins that contains deprecated code. ie. <font> :down:
2)__ Do not buy or use skins that do not validate XHTML. (validate code at http://validator.w3.org/)
3)__ Purchasing a custom skin will make your site stand out. Paying upwards of $1000 is not uncommon.

NOTE:
- Skins with deprecated code are usually bloated with unneccessary code.
- Skins that do not validate is a sign that "designer" does not know what they are doing OR a sign that "designer" is in it for the quick buck.
- 9 out of 10 skins that do not validate will usually give you problems down the road.

If you don't mind me asking, Why?

If they was bring in some income from sales, what made you decide to stop selling ready made skins

It just ended up requiring too much of my time that could've been spent on doing other things that pay better and are personally more enjoyable.

As much as I love designing, it really becomes a pain to test and debug each skin every time a new release comes out, while still providing support for the skin (and for those who haven't upgraded)--in addition to doing custom design work and maintaining clients' servers and being on-call for back-end tech-support.

You do realize that vBulletin uses the <font> tag everywhere, especially on showthread and BBCode-generated code, right? :p What I've (slowly) come to accept with vBulletin is that while you can get standards-compliant XHTML code, you can never go beyond that (except for recoding every single template, of course) and achieve semantically-correct code, tableless layout, and seperation of XHTML content and visual display.

(This auto-merge code is pretty neat!)

Have you ever just thought about maybe offering budget templates for ?5 -?10 a chuck to the mass market that come with "no support" due the the price there sold for as an alternative method of still selling mass-market templates. But at a budget price with no support because of the price structure there sold for. Then that would free up the support side of them templates sold, while still offering templates at a budget price for specific vBulletin versions only.

That would then leave another avenue to make cash from sales and not have to worry about supporting them low cost templates.

We'll see. Maybe I'll release a few skins for free to everybody after I get some more time on my hands. As a personal project, just for fun. I'm so busy these days, I don't even know how I find the time to post on forums. :p

by default, vbulletin is XHTML valid

the <font> tag is ONLY used in some bbcode which in this case is not a designer issue but a vbulletin issue

I highly recommend that everyone tests (validates) a style before purchasing or installing. To test a style, all one has to do is test the forumhome, forumdisplay, and showthread (with no bbcode on posts) pages. Testing these pages alone will give you a good indication if style validates.

While I agree with you, I would like to point out a nice article to read that keeps everything about validation in perspective: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/a...r-own-standard

Validation isn't everything, and while it's important, it is imperative to note that validation does NOT necessarily mean good code. Validating your code is a great tool to help debug your XHTML and your CSS, but does not guarantee accessibility, good coding practice, nor good design (both visually and semantically).

i agree.

not a good idea to try debate with him dp he doesnt listen bud ;) as proved in a thread wer he tryed to tell me the rules of designing ;) lol..


also i dont mind companys buying styles from freelance designers then reselling them.. gives me someone to try sell my styles to lol

I find the article hilarious.
All he has to do to validate his page is to change the DOCTYPE or if he desires to create "new attributes"--he can create a new one.

The answers are available but, if you choose not to do the homework ... well, that's on you.

Standards are available to help your "web pages" appear identical on all web appliances.

I think you missed the point of his article. ;) Actually, I think you may have missed the point I was trying to convey as well.

I did not realize I was asking a question...

here's one that shouldn't talk .. selling skins that do not validate
what's really bad is that most of the "problems" in his coding style is common sense -- anyone with coding knowledge could tell you this

regarding the thread: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=108958
you ask for a "review" yet you feel hurt when something doesn't go your way ... why not cry somewhere else bud?

No, I didn't miss the point ... it's just that people like that usually do not do their homework. Hence, they cry foul when they cannot be bothered with STANDARDS. Standards are available for a reason ...
1)__ they can save you money
2)__ they can make your pages appear the same on many appliances

Sorry, that statement wasn't directed to you ... but, to the general public

There is a difference between STANDARDS and VALIDATION. I'm talking about validation. There's a difference.

Let me use the site listed in your signature as an example. http://www.gtwebhost.com -- I'm assuming that's your website, correct?

I put it into the W3C validator. It validates. Congratuations!

But that doesn't mean it's coded properly, nor does it guarantee it'll render properly in all browsers. Let's see... not commenting at your website's visual rendering but only at the source code itself, I found the following problems:

* Excessively nested <DIV> tags. You don't need 3 layers of <DIV> tags, 1 nested table, and another layer of <DIV> tags just to display your main navigation links.

* Tables not used for tabular data. The point of tables is to show tabular data. Not for layout. While your tables do validate because you've provided a summary attribute, you are using them improperly in a fashion not recommended by W3C (the organization and standards body behind your all-so-mighty XHTML Validator)

* Using ID's and Class names that are not descriptive of the content. Another recommendation made by W3C and adopted by designers worldwide.

* Inline tag-level stylesheet declarations. Again, not only bad coding, but also recommendations by the W3C. If you are going to be making tag-level stylesheet declarations, you're better off assigning either an ID and a Class (or both, and use the ID as a modifier of the class).

These are the first few lines of your <body>. Every single thing I just mentioned above applies.

These are just a few of the problems I found after taking a quick glance at the source code. I'm not trying to belittle your website or your skills--I am simply trying to point out that there is more to good web design and coding than simply validation.

There are many elements that contribute to "good coding", and proper validation is only one of them.

Not necessarily true. For many corporations, converting all their legacy pages to become standards-compliant can be very costly. However, I do agree--in the long run and when coding pages from scratch, making them standards-compliant may save a considerable amount of money.

However, being standards-compliant definitively does NOT mean your page will look the same in all browsers. There are rendering bugs in just about every major browser out there, which will affect how your final page will look.

Also, it's important to remember that the W3C validator only checks up on your XHTML markup. It doesn't check your linked stylesheets. Depending on your CSS, even the best-coded XHTML page can be broken in all the major browsers.

And if you REALLY want to get nit-picky, your DOCTYPE is XHTML Transitional. It is recommended by the W3C as a solution for transitioning between old-school HTML and modern standards. Under XHTML Strict (which, in today's world, is a very suitable doctype to use), your site would not render properly at all, since attributes such as "align", "border", "width", etc. have all been deprecated.

now, you are talking about "coding style"...

I can have a page with <font> tags all over the place and still get it to validate. The difference is I know more than just "coding in html".

the difference between the style at gtwebhost and the styles that people are selling is that it is not for sale ... that style was made 3-4 years ago AND it is POWERED BY a vbulletin platform which is NOT xhtml compliant

and, I do agree with some points you made regarding said style - point taken
however, it has been edited many times since LAUNCHING the site; so, you will find some things that were not from the original

I wholeheartedly agree with the above statement; however, that is not a problem with STANDARDS but with browsers. In time, all pages will display the same no matter what appliance you use.

Anyways, let's get back on-topic. ;)

and yes, you are right ... so, what does that make me ... hmmmmm... knowledgable at what I ' doing.

Now, try to get vbulletin to render correctly with XTHML Strict.

I never mentioned your work ... hmm, I'm wondering if I should take a look. Ahhh, that's ok ... I don't have the time. I'm guessing that I would tear it to pieces but that wasn't the intentions of my postings.

cheers mate .. it's been good discussing this with you but I have some work to do :up:

lol @ saying my styles dont validate ..

a dont care they work in the mainstream browsers perfectly fine :P

oh and did i mention am NOT a coder? i dont claim to be a coder, am a graphics designer and know very little code.. enough to get a style working in most mainstream browsers without problems and enough to get it coded to look how i want and work how i want.

dont care if it validates or not as long as it doesnt slow it down or coz problems its fine.

realy do think your a twat tho princeton lol

anyway its about time this got back on topic as said.

hehe...good advertising there ;)

btw, "coz" isn't a word...it's spelled "cause". Do try and use proper spelling if you want people to take you seriously.

I love a good debate, much less boring! :)

But I have to say I do think sometimes this whole validation thing is taken much too literally. And I do think people get confused sometimes in thinking just because there site validates means it will work perfect in all browsers.

Which is not the case sometimes, as already pointed out.

I have a set of 8 skins in 1 named 'Lapsus7' (with one extra skin for your pleasure) ...guess how much? :) Free... i did decide on making this all free as ultimatly it's the pleasure of using my skins that gives me great joy... maybe a few donations that come my way make up for alot anyways :)

Lapsus7 will be released in about a week!

-b6

Uhh even this site has quite few errors.... I honestly dont care as long as it is functional.

:cry: I guess I need to start working harder and get my site re-released, not even the first 2 letter of my name is mentioned :disappointed:

lol

yes, it's exciting and it does make people think; regardless, if you agree or not

my point in posting is to alert people to the coding style of some of these "designers" (not implying that anyone listed here is bad) ... but, some so-called "designers" are in it just for the money ... these are the people that you have to avoid

buying from the right people will save you money in the long haul -- people have asked me many times how they can tell the "good" from the "bad" ... well, using the W3C validation tool is a good start

using the W3C validation tool is the quickest way to check the "validity" of a designer - it's easy; it's fast; and, it's free

:up:

back to topic

Yes I agree with the validation and it is very important to check it. However, this will not apply if you are only buying the design alone and coding it either yourself or having someone else do it for you. But if the designer is doing both coding and designing, it is important to check the validation cause it could tell how experienced or inexperienced the designer is or how he/she cares about the coding or not.

Well, ok, tell that to vb... because theres an element within the default vB css that isn't XHTML1.0 compliant (or is that css2) :)... i.e using 'hand' for a menu drop downs! - i dunno... it shows that designer has taken time out to make his/her style pan-browser-dynamic :)

-b6

still get alot of clients without any problems ;) not everyone thinks validating is the holy grail.

sorry about the spelling, am scottish so my slang normaly takes over if ranting on. you will get used to it in time :P

and princeton if

"but, some so-called "designers" are in it just for the money ... these are the people that you have to avoid"

was aimed at me then u know so little... i sell my stuff alot cheaper than most ppl and have been known just to give stuff away coz i didnt want any cash for it.

also been known todo ALOT of free jobs just cause i was bored.

so the money aspect of it is just a bonus

Since I design pretty much full-time, I guess I'm in it for the money. Don't want to be living on the streets, ya'know. ;)

But the work is fun, too. It's definitively a job that I like, which just happens to pay. :p

kolby is a thief he did the same thing to me. but it was "the power has been out all over arlington for about a week now" and "my cousin died" "dude, i have been trying to reach you via e-mail" i am taking him to small claims court. normally wouldn't go this far, but this kid has really pissed me off. here is his information if anyone else wants to file a claim

* Edited: Personal info edited out as it is not proper to list it without the person's consent.

kolby aka vbcore aka vbtotal

Gents/Ladies
I HAVE BEN CONTACTED a-ok! A Mis Understanding

good luck to you...hope you get what you are expecting and are pleased :)

What does this mean my friend, are you suggesting Kolby will not perform?
Please tell me your feelings.

And who might you be?

New member just registered to make this post?

Please explain what your interest and/or input to this subject is.


Edit: This member contacted me in PM. He made it clear to me that he is just someone who also has done business with said designer and also had some troubles.