

Show HN: Marketplace for Bootstrap themes and templates - cgimmer
http://bootstrapbay.com/

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manishsharan
I wonder why Zurb Foundation does not get as much love from HNers?

I use Foundation and I have really no need for a themes market . SaSS and
Foundations' media responsive layout enable me to create new themes easily and
painlessly even though I am am a back-end programmer.

~~~
capex
There's Foundation Made[0], which seems to be operating for about a year now.
[0] [https://www.foundationmade.com](https://www.foundationmade.com)

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rschmitty
1 year and that is all they have (and not very diverse) says a lot about the
Foundation market.

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heyimwill
Nice work! But why should I use this instead of
[https://wrapbootstrap.com](https://wrapbootstrap.com)?

~~~
cgimmer
Unlike most marketplaces, we're offering high payments for authors who don't
sell exclusively with us. We're seeing a lot of high-quality theme shops
opening up who want the option to sell on their own platforms but still
utilize marketplaces for additional exposure.

While wrap has done a great job building up a user base and getting first
mover advantage, we're always reading complaints on social media and forums
that their support is lacking and that the site has not been updated. We
wanted to give designers a better option and give great support to both buyers
and sellers. Once we increase our sales and following, I'm confident that
authors will want to switch over. Right now we're on page 3/4 of Google hoping
to move up to page 1 very soon.

Our goal is to grow a great community around the marketplace. We've already
started doing this with our blog and tutorials. We will be adding more
features in the near future.

~~~
ansimionescu
Then don't say you're " _a_ marketplace for Bootstrap themes & templates", but
"jump" at your visitors with what makes you unique and/or better.

Btw: I really dig the smaller thumbnails, they make me feel I have a better
overview over what's going on.

Edit: wait, that's just on the first page. Sigh. I don't really like large-ish
thumbnails á la [0], especially in the retina age.

0: [https://wrapbootstrap.com/](https://wrapbootstrap.com/)

~~~
cgimmer
That makes a lot of sense. I think there's a few adjustments we can definitely
make.

[Edit] Just modified our homepage text. Hopefully this communicates our value
proposition a bit better. Thanks again for pointing this out.

~~~
heyimwill
I'm seeing lots of themes that are also available at other theme stores, what
safeguards are in place to stop people from selling themes that aren't theirs
to sell?

~~~
cgimmer
We always do a quick search and cross reference the email, author name, and
theme info to make sure everything matches up. It's usually pretty easy to
sniff out when someone uploads a theme that isn't theirs.

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arfliw
Alexa 94,000. It would seem this site has been around for awhile.

Methinks some people are taking advantage of the Show HN renaissance...

~~~
cgimmer
The site has been up for about 2 months now. We wanted to polish it up and get
a few authors on board before sharing it.

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arfliw
Congrats on that much repeat traffic after only two months. Unless your Alexa
is way off.

~~~
cgimmer
We did a blog post listing 12 great sites to get free stock photos and it did
VERY well. I suspect this is part of the really good Alexa rank.

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liquidcool
I note that if you're using this for SaaS (paid subscription site, etc.), you
need a premium license, which is 50X more expensive.

[http://bootstrapbay.com/licenses](http://bootstrapbay.com/licenses)

I think that's a consideration for a lot of people here. And this is not the
case with wrapbootstrap.com.

(edit) I originally said Themeforest had the same restrictions as
BootstrapBay, but it appears they have changed their license description
significantly and it only affects you if you're distributing it in a sold
product. But don't take my word for it:

[http://themeforest.net/licenses/regular](http://themeforest.net/licenses/regular)

~~~
liquidcool
Sorry, I was wrong about Themeforest (or originally correct) - if the end user
of the site pays to access it, an "extended license" is required, also at 50X
the cost. As that's often $2500-3000, I'd rather find a good free theme and
pay a designer/UI person (perhaps the one who created it) to customize it for
me or my client.

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techaddict009
Good work. Will surely publish my own theme under construction.

Saw your alexa it is 90K~ great job that too in two months.

Whats your daily traffic count? Reveal only if you don't mind.

~~~
cgimmer
We wrote a blog post on great places to get free stock photos and shared it on
StumbleUpon. We ended up getting 17,000 visits that day and it just went crazy
somehow, even though our domain rank was non-existent. We were getting 10,000+
visits for about a week because of that blog post.

After the dust settled a bit on that post we were getting over 1,000 visits a
day (still a lot from StumbleUpon) and now we're creeping over over 2,000 a
day and slowly climbing.

Obviously, a lot of that traffic was not highly targeted but it still gave us
a huge boost and our Google rankings have shot up lately. We're now on Page
3/4 for "Bootstrap themes" and getting more organic traffic which is great.

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someguy1233
Just a small fix, my work blocks Google fonts, and your fallbacks don't work,
so everything goes times new roman. Please add sans-serif as a fallback.

~~~
cgimmer
Thanks for the heads up, fixed!

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lalwanivikas
Awesome work cgimmer! Would be great if you can add some more basic (one pager
maybe) free themes. Anyway, you've done a great job already :)

~~~
cgimmer
We're definitely going to release more free themes along the way so make sure
to check back.

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wilsmex
What's the back end stack? Frontend looks similar to other theme sites. Is it
a custom cms, or did you use a framework ect?

~~~
cgimmer
It's built with PHP and a custom CMS. There's still some dev work to do but we
wanted to get it out there.

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thehodge
Just a heads up, eBay have been a bit legal-y for ecommerce things ending in
Bay previously..

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sandGorgon
this. I came here to post the case between Foodiebay (now Zomato) and ebay
[1]. They had to change the name. I really recommend moving away from the *bay
name... unless you want to scratch that particular itch.

[1]
[http://techcorplegal.com/Blog_Technology_Law_Business_Resear...](http://techcorplegal.com/Blog_Technology_Law_Business_Research/2013/07/02/law-
for-startups/)

~~~
cgimmer
Wow good to know. Hopefully they don't come after the small fries...

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billiumx
Clean and simple! How long did it take you to build?

~~~
cgimmer
It took about 2.5 months but we're not 100% done yet. We still need to
implement theme editing.

