For Authors · themeBASE

The numbers

An economics page you don't have to squint at.

80–90% author share 10–20% marketplace fee + processing

Why 80–90%, not 50% like the old marketplaces.

The 30% you may have seen mentioned on the home page is the buyer-side founding discount stacked with bundle pricing — a customer acquisition spend, not your revenue split. As an author you keep 80–90% of every transaction. The marketplace fee covers concierge AI inference, customization compute, hosting, fraud protection, AEO/GEO tooling, and Suppilot.

80–90%

Author share, varies by license tier (Personal vs Commercial).

$19–79

Recommended price band. You set your own price within it.

0

Buyer fees. Marketplace doesn't tax your customers on top.

20

Founding-author slots. Locked-in share never adjusted downward.

What you get

A marketplace that does the growth work for you.

Old marketplaces gave you a category page and a forum. themeBASE puts AI between you and the buyer — and that AI is on your side.

M

Intent-matched discovery

Buyers describe what they need in plain English. The concierge picks your theme when it's actually the best fit — not because it's "newest" or paid for promotion.

C

Customization, handled

Conversational chat-to-customize is built into the marketplace. Buyers tweak your theme before purchase. You don't ship custom builds; the AI does the variations.

S

Suppilot does support

Every theme ships with an AI copilot indexed on its documentation. Repetitive "how do I change X" questions stop hitting your inbox.

A

AEO & GEO tooling

Semantic HTML, schema.org markup, FAQPage blocks, llms.txt and machine-readable summaries — all auto-generated for your theme's demo and docs. Authors who care about this list first.

D

One-click deploy

WordToSite handles installation. Buyers get a live site in 60 seconds. Refunds tied to "I couldn't get it working" drop to near-zero.

P

Honest payout cadence

Net-15 payouts via Stripe Connect. Transparent statement of fees per transaction. No "we hold your money for 60 days" surprise.

Then vs. now

How themeBASE compares to the marketplace you currently sell on.

Old-school theme marketplaces

50–70% author share. Exclusive vs non-exclusive penalty.
You compete with 10,000 themes. Discovery is "popular this month" + paid placement.
Every customization request becomes a custom-work email thread.
Support is a forum. Response SLA: "when the author wakes up."
Refunds and "buyer fees" eat 5–15% of headline price.
No tooling for AEO/GEO. Your theme demo gets crawled, not cited.

themeBASE

80–90% author share. Same tier whether you list one theme or twenty.
Intent-matched discovery. AI ranks themes by fit, not by who paid the most.
Chat-to-customize built into the buyer flow. You ship the theme once.
Suppilot answers buyer questions 24/7 from your docs.
No buyer fees. Net-15 payouts. Transparent per-transaction statement.
AEO/GEO tooling generated automatically. AI search assistants cite your themes.

How onboarding works

Four steps. About two weeks end-to-end.

01 / Apply

Share two themes

Submit two of your strongest themes (demo URL + code). We review against AI-Verified quality bars: performance, accessibility, AEO/GEO, code health, active maintenance.

02 / Review

Get feedback in ~5 days

You hear back within a week with a yes, a "fix these three things," or a constructive no. No silent rejections.

03 / Onboard

Wire up payouts & metadata

Stripe Connect, payout cadence, license tiers, and the metadata fields the concierge needs to match your themes well. ~1 hour of your time.

04 / Launch

Ship into a buyer wave

Your themes go live with the next buyer wave. You start earning at the founding-author share, locked in for life.

● Founding author cohort

Get in before the share ratio tightens.

themeBASE caps the founding-author cohort at 20 authors. The 80–90% share, AEO/GEO tooling credit, and homepage feature rotation are locked in for life — not adjusted as the marketplace scales.

80–90% share locked in (vs. ~70% post-founding cap)
Homepage feature rotation for your first three themes
Co-marketing on launch (themeBASE blog, newsletter, social)
Direct line to product team. Your feedback shapes v1.

Average response time: 5 business days. Honest yes / no / "fix these three things" — no silent rejections.