How to Prepare a Template for Selling it on the TemplateMonster Marketplace

The general rule is simple: your product must visually differ from the original theme. We have prepared for you a cheat sheet, so you do not have to guess what details have to be changed, and what can be left as is.

What Should Be Changed

Here is a list of things that must be modified in order for your theme to be accepted by our team of moderators. We praise creativity and believe that every product on our marketplace should bring something new to our ecosystem and our customers. That’s why we encourage our sellers to create really unique products.

1. Topic of the Template

The first thing you should think of is the topic of your theme. If you want to modify a TemplateMonster WordPress theme and sell it on our marketplace, you must change its niche by either expanding or narrowing down the niche of the original theme, or by to changing its topic to a similar one.

For example, you if you have a WooCommerce theme for an online store selling tires, you can turn it into a store selling auto parts. As you see, in this case we expand the niche.

Another example: a template for lawyers will be suitable for financial advisors after a series of modifications. Here we change the niche to a similar one.

In a nutshell: Change the topic of the original template.

2. Name and Branding

Obviously, you need to build up your own brand. To do this, follow these simple steps:

• Change the name of the template. Pick a creative, yet clear name that reflects the purpose of your product.
• Change the logo. If you feel like logo design is not your forte, refer to specialists and create a custom logo that will give a unique character to your new theme. Don’t forget that each theme features several logo positions: header, footer, etc. You need to replace them all.

In a nutshell: Replace the default logo and the template name with your own.

3. Color Scheme

Changing the colors used in the design of your theme is one of the first steps of giving it a unique look.

Millions of color combinations are at your disposal. Only you decide how your theme will look like. In-built tools such as the WordPress Live Customizer modified specifically for our themes and Power Builder will help you recolor any element of the theme in absolutely no time. All you need is to come up with a fitting color palette and embody it in your new product.

In a nutshell: Create a unique color palette and replace the original one with it.

4. Demo Images

Since you are going to change the niche of your product, you will also need to use appropriate demo images that fit the topic of your theme.

We strongly recommend using royalty-free photos (namely the CC0 license), as they can be redistributed with your theme.

In a nutshell: Download free photos suitable for the niche you have chosen for your project and incorporate them into your theme.

5. Homepage Layout

 Changing the homepage layout of our themes is super easy thanks to Power Builder with its enormous toolkit of content modules. The Live Customizer will help you with the basic modification of the layout.

Each GPL theme by TemplateMonster comes with a selection of blog layouts, footers and headers, which can be mixed and matched on the fly. Do you need a 3-column masonry layout with no sidebars? Or a 2-column grid with a left sidebar?

You can get any of these variations in a matter of minutes by simply choosing the right options in the Live Customizer. Test them there before pushing them live.

Also, don’t forget to make minor adjustments to the internal structure of blocks: e.g. change the position of a title or a featured image.

In a nutshell: build your own homepage layout using premade content modules, header and footer styles and blog layouts. Change the content blocks by modifying its elements.

6. Icons and Charts

All the icons, charts and infographics must be changed as well. Luckily, Font Awesome offers a huge choice of icons for any occasion.

In a nutshell: replace the original choice icons with your own combination from Font Awesome.

7. Documentation

If you are going to launch your own product, you should polish even the smallest details of it.

And the documentation is no exception. Thoroughly study the original documentation (yes, you can freely use it as a basis) and replace the original branding, names and links to your own.

Also, provide links to your website, social accounts and other places where you sell your products.

In a nutshell: Adjust the information in the documentation files, so they fully match your theme.

8. Get rid of unwanted links and banners.

As a final step, make sure that the template or its documentation doesn’t include banners, logos or links of other theme marketplaces and template providers.

What Should Be Left As Is

Some things are not necessarily to be changed. They don’t influence the look of a theme strongly, so their modification is not required.

1. Product and category page layouts

Our eCommerce templates are built according to the latest conversion studies, and we believe that they are perfectly optimized. So, why try to improve the perfection?

2. Layouts of inner pages

It’s also OK to leave the supporting pages such as Services, Contact Us and Our Team unchanged.

3. Blog and gallery page layouts

Inner pages of a blog and a gallery also can be left as it. After all, you will change all the imagery and the color scheme, so your pages will look completely different.

4. Functionality

Each theme in our inventory is extremely powerful, do there is no need to extend its functionality. You can add extra plugins and widgets, but this is not obligatory.

5. Typography

In case you need to fine-tune it in order to add a specific touch to the design, use hundreds of Google Fonts available in our themes out of the box. Otherwise, it’s not necessary to change it.

Wrapping up

Making basic changes to a template, polishing the documentation, creating screenshots and uploading the product will take will take some time but it definitely worth it. As a result you will have a product ready to be sold on the TemplateMonster marketplace.