The recent revelation that Automattic wouldn’t allow designer’s names in the footer on themes sold on the upcoming WordPress.com Theme Marketplace – which I blogged about recently – got me thinking. For me, it’s crucial that my name is visually exposed on the sites I design. These are the guarantees of gigs delivered, and a way for gaining recognition. Aside from pure recommendations, I know I’ve gained a few clients this way, and would probably gain more if I had the time, and put up a serious portfolio.
Personally, I don’t care about building pagerank with these design credits in the footer, but I could understand people wanting to do that as well. If a client requested a nofollow on my design credit I’d probably think he was a bit cheap, but fine, I’d probably be OK with it. Unless I took a principal stand for some reason… Anyway, the point is, I’m not putting those links in there to build Google juice, I have them there to prove that I did the design, and to possibly gain new clients.
In the post about the WordPress.com Theme Marketplace, I said that I would probably be on it, even though Automattic is claiming 50% of my revenue. That opinion will be seriously considered if I won’t get my name in my theme’s footer, linked to my site. A nofollow is OK, but just giving me credit in the metadata, that Matt’s talking about, isn’t an option for me.
I doubt any of my clients gained with online recognition (and that includes blog posts where my services are namedropped) would even think of looking for the designer’s name in the metadata, and some would probably not even be aware of the fact that there is such a thing as metadata, let alone know how to find it!
How do you value your link in the footer on designs you’ve sold, or released for free for that matter?
Originally posted on November 6, 2007 @ 2:24 am