There are a couple of ways to make money with WordPress themes:

1. Create a WordPress theme and sell it. This is the difficult option as it requires not only the technical expertise to create a stylish theme, but also the supreme marketing skills to sell it. Invariably WordPress theme designers pay affiliates to push their themes. It's a hassle, but many designers do this, and some make buckets of money.
2. Talk about a selection of premium WordPress themes in your blog posts and provide affiliate links to them. Readers of your blog posts are suitably impressed with the themes they see, click your link and buy the theme. Kerching - you get a commission.

Option 2 is by far the simplest, easiest and quickest way of making money from WordPress themes. Be prepared for stiff competition if you choose this route though, as the whole blogosphere and their dog are doing this. The good news is that there are 3 million new themes created every millisecond for you to promote. OK, I made that number up, but there really are enough new themes to keep you going for a while.

So You Want To Make Money With WordPress Themes

I've highlighted the steps you'll need to perform below:

• Generic keyword research
• Theme specific keyword research
• Select some premium WordPress themes and become an affiliate for them
• Collect images of the themes you are going to promote
• Decide whether you are going to push an individual WordPress theme or a selection using a blog post (I'm assuming you're blogging, but the concept is the same regardless of the platform you're using)
• Write a compelling blog post that includes your affiliate link

Keyword Research For WordPress Themes

You will need a keyword research tool such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Type in a generic seed phrase like "Wordpress template" and see what other related phrases the tool suggests. You need to pick a phrase that doesn't have too much competition. You'll find this post on writing keyword research driven content particularly useful here. At this point we are finding generic top level phrases to target - i.e. write about. The post I just linked to will also tell you how to do that.

In addition to the generic keyword research, you should do some keyword research about specific WordPress Themes. For example, I know that Woo Themes are a popular group of theme designers, so let's put "Woo Themes" in the keyword tool. Surprisingly, it turns out that both "Woo Themes" and "Woothemes" get searched a lot and neither have too much competition, so WooThemes Premium WordPress Themes would seem to be a good phrase to target.

The Seedier Side Of Keyword Research

If you were an unscrupulous web publisher, you might be inclined to use the traffic statistics that website sellers provide in their auctions to drive your key phrase selection. To illustrate, there is a website currently up for auction on the site that has no name, and the seller has kindly provided their Google Analytics statistics for all the world to see. You can bet your bottom rupee that there are some people who are rubbing their hands together in glee as they pore over the most popular keywords that bring traffic to that site. Those keywords are:

• Free Premium Blogger Templates
• Thesis Skins
• Best Blogger Templates
• Premium Blogger Template

Those search phrases are currently bringing traffic to this person's site, so the less moral among us might think they can cut out the keyword research task and simply target those phrases. Don't do this. It's naughty.

Become An Affiliate For A Premium WordPress Theme

Visit a website that sells a premium theme. Let's use WooThemes as our example. At the bottom of the page is a "Become An Affiliate" link. Click that, fill out the form, and your license to print money will magically appear in front of you. Get your affiliate links, and each time you mention Woo Themes in a blog post, use the affiliate link.

Collecting Images Of The WordPress Theme

The WordPress theme designers always provide images of their themes for our convenience. They wouldn't sell many themes otherwise! We can use these to showcase the themes. In addition, you can also demo a theme yourself and take screenshots of it. You can then manipulate the images in the graphics application of your choice, or even just use your blog's image handling capabailities to resize them.

Insert said images into the blog posts that promote the WordPress theme to give your readers something to salivate over!

Write The Promotional Content

It's an easy job to simply summarise the selling points of the WordPress theme you are pushing, because these selling points are always given on the designers' websites. Many affiliates do just that, and no more. However, you are the James Bond of the affiliate world and we expect a little more from affiliates of your calibre.

Go to town with your content. Inject humour, make it compelling copy, dazzle and entertain! Sell those themes!

If you don't have the time, inclination or skill to write promotional material, you can always display an affiliate banner on your site. It won't be as big an influence on potential buyers as actual content written about the theme, but there may be some people who click the banner and buy.

People are making a lot of money selling premium WordPress Themes as affiliates. You should too.