WTH is a Ghost?
There are a lot of productivity YouTubers out there, one of them is Ali Abdaal. You might hear about him, he is a doctor turned YouTuber based in the UK. He made 4 Million dollars in 2021, basically he is a multi-millionaire person but this story is not about him but rather about the man who built his personal website. His name is Dan Rowden. I don't want to go deep into his personal life but into his web development career. He was a very successful software engineer at Articheck yet he quit his high-paying job because of the same repetitive cycle every 9 to 5 worker suffers ( I don't know the exact reason, just guessing) and started making & selling themes for websites, yes, you've read it right, he left the job that provided him the comforts and luxury for a very long time to make themes for ghost (I'll talk about ghost later) now he is a digital nomad, doing his work while travelling all over the world. He had made thousands of dollars by just selling website themes, currently, he is working on ilo. so, cove, codelet, super themes co. (Search it yourself)
Other day, I was watching one of Ali Abdaal's video in which he mentioned a guy. He met him through YouTube and became friends. He was also a web developer but not an employee. He taught himself web design and specialized in a very small niche of orthodontists. First, he made a bunch of sample websites to showcase, then reached out to one orthodontist in his area, and showed him the website, tell him the benefits of any business's online presence and when an orthodontist purchased his website, he made different themes for the same website and then he was reaching out to all of the orthodontists presence in his state and selling them the same website but with a different theme, now he is also a millionaire.
This selling theme thing got my attention basically I am not into web development but curiosity flows in my veins so I started researching I was randomly reading articles, watching YouTube videos, in between I found a website called ThemeForest and there I saw something that blew my mind. It was just a paid WordPress theme from theme fusion nearly about $69 and the total number of sales was 832,844 since 2012, you've probably known how to calculate profit. There is one other guy named Oliur who made $684,030 by selling Tumblr themes. There are hundreds of web designers out there who made millions just selling WordPress themes, Shopify themes, Squarespace themes and now Ghost themes.
Shopify is used for e-commerce, Squarespace is for content creators mostly photographers and videographers, and WordPress is for online publishing & blogging, you know WordPress powers 30% of the internet, it was perfect then how ghost came into the scene?
Ghost is just like WordPress or Squarespace but it is open-source, you might be thinking WordPress is also open source so what's the big deal? WordPress is just outdated, it's time has come regardless of owning most of the Internet where Ghost is a simple, minimalistic and yes free open-source web designer (no code way).
Now it's open source so anyone can contribute to it or make themes for it, there is also a theme market on the Ghost website. Hundreds of free themes are available on the Ghost marketplace but still you can sell your own themes there.
Now we know the benefits and the income, here comes my speciality to speak of negativity. Everything has two sides, when there is light there will be darkness somewhere and the same rule applies to this market also. It is so obvious when anyone can make themes and sell them then there will be a large number of themes out there that nobody ever heard of. I was reading an article, it showed the total number of themes available on ThemeForest which is approximately 31,000. So how did you stand out? There's one more thing, making themes for websites is not child's play. You have to be good at HTML, CSS or javascript and at least some experience in using them. Let's assume, you learnt HTML and CSS, you also made a fantastic website theme and now the tough part comes, who do you sell? You will probably be thinking how negative am I? It is what it is. But don't get upset, as I said earlier when there is darkness somewhere light has to be. And every problem comes with a solution we just have to act upon it even Kashmir's problem has a solution but our beloved politician doesn't want to solve problems, if they did, then there won't be any issues in the upcoming election, anyway, where was I? So I was saying that every problem has a solution. As Paulo Coelho called one's personal legend, in every person's life there was a time when his or her heart wanted to do something but most of the time we ignored the calling of the heart and we immediately fulfilled the Naf's desire. In case your personal legend was to become a web developer but you just postponed it and now it doesn't even have in your plans. Now is the time to pursue it, (you'll be getting anxious that I should've spit out the solutions by now) the solution is very simple, if you ever wanted to now start it, just start learning CSS, and javascript, there are hundreds of YouTubers teaching HTML and stuff online for free. Don't go deep, start small, learn and practice only one hour per day, it's not a big deal if you don't have that much time, do it for half an hour but start it. Once you get your hands on these things smoothly make one or two themes to showcase. Early on nobody will come to you to buy themes. You have to go to them to show them your work, to show what you are capable of, what you have been working on, to convince them and In the end to sell them. The first time will be difficult but as you sell your first them, you will get the idea of what's working or what's not. Don't just make themes for any random websites. Pick a niche just like Ali Abdaal's friend did to choose an orthodontist.
I know you'll be thinking, isn't it a too long process? When will I master CSS and javascript? When will I make themes? And then when will I sell them? Yes, it takes time, every great thing takes time. Nobody has gotten rich overnight and if anybody did so somehow he or she got broke overnight. So you just have to keep doing it until it works. As Naruto taught us, "Quitting is not an option." Once your themes start selling, and you become a well-known web designer, millions will be pouring into your pocket.
One thing I want to say before I wrap up this newsletter is "Find and Pursue your personal legend, if millions will be in your fate, the money will definitely come one way or another."
I hope you find this topic interesting if you do so. Don't come in person to say that this topic was amazing, say it here in the comment box or write in reply to this email. Even if you already knew about this topic, write it anyway. That's it I'll come into your inbox next week until then Assalam Alaikum ✌️.
Give it a Read: I tried replacing Google with TikTok, and it worked better than I thought / Is this the search engine of the future?