How I Won a Free iPad!

My shipment of my shiny new 64 Gig 3G model iPad finally arrived this weekend.  It’s awesome.  Like, really awesome.  But I’ll get to my in-depth review in a later post.  Today, I’d like to share the back-story of how I won this beautiful device for free : )

A very special thank you goes out to Mojo Themes.  They are a new themes and templates marketplace where designers/developers can upload and sell their digital products.  Mojo launched around the same time that I launched ThemeJam.  As part of their launch, they held the March Padness contest, where they gave away iPads to 3 designers who uploaded the most products to their new marketplace.

You may (or may not) remember that when I first launched ThemeJam, I wasn’t selling only WordPress themes.  I was also offering matching HTML and Email templates as lower priced or packaged alternatives.  While offering “themes across multiple platforms” helped to create a unique selling point for ThemeJam, these byproducts weren’t selling nearly as much as the WordPress themes.  To a certain extent, I expected this would be the case.

So at the time of the iPad contest, I had already created four themes, plus matching HTML and Email templates for each.  I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the extra time/effort to continue releasing these “extras” on themejam.com.  Their sales numbers simply couldn’t justify the extra time spent preparing and promoting them myself.  So I decided to move these products over to the new Mojo Themes marketplace as a way to give these products new exposure on their own, away from ThemeJam.  And while I was at it, it didn’t hurt to have a chance at winning an iPad!

And that’s exactly what happened.  By moving my non-WordPress products over to Mojo Themes, I was able to grab the first place prize in the March Padness contest!

It also worked out very well for my business.  I’m able to sell a few products on the awesome new Mojo Themes marketplace, while continuing to focus my efforts on selling WordPress themes on ThemeJam.  It’s a much simpler approach than what I originally set out to do, which is proving to work out perfectly.

Once again, a special thanks goes out to Mojo Themes for holding an awesome contest, and really shaking things up with their new themes/templates marketplace.