Just looking for some feedback from the Anvil community.
I have been thinking of starting a template store for Anvil soon (I know it has been done before Anvil Custom Template Store but is sadly abandoned).
I have noticed that a lot of Anvil projects go for building the homepage using Wordpress, Wix etc. and integrate their Anvil App to it. The idea behind the store will be to keep it “Anvil-only” by offering similar templates built entirely using Anvil. With the help of recent updates like layouts, making changes will be easier as well.
Here are some of the websites I have built completely using Anvil:
(Of course, these websites are more on the fancy side but I can do other themes as well).
Pricing
Of course, pricing is an important factor. And hopefully, the pricing system I have decided for now will be a relief (there may be changes to it):
The prices for each template will vary based on their quality and other factors.
A “pay what you want” system will be present but with a minimum price.
Minimum price for a template will be on a lower end. Some of the normal templates will be available between $5-10 (Being a student, this will just be a side project for me. Besides, any price in dollars will be slightly higher in my currency).
Non-commercial projects may request certain templates for free.
Before going for this, I need to make sure that there is enough demand for that! So what is everyone’s opinion on this?
I’m all for a template store. Having a wider variety of quality templates for Anvil apps is only going to make Anvil more attractive.
That said, it’s really tough to make templates that fit all needs.
For example, I (personally) don’t want my potential customer facing website on Anvil. Anvil doesn’t (yet) have good SEO, I don’t want tire-kickers using up Anvil compute units, there are better platforms than Anvil for handling traffic spikes from news coverage, etc. So I don’t particularly need a template that looks like a landing page.
But cool templates that look like web apps and are customizable to some degree would be amazing. I wish I had the design skills (any design skills really) to create them myself.
I initially wanted to build a landing page in Anvil, but now I am happy with having the landing page in Wordpress and include Anvil apps in iframes where needed. I would do that again.
But I would gladly pay $149 for a full library of Material 3 components for Anvil…
I think it is a great idea. However, two items I feel you would need to address are as follows: 1 - marketing so that you get enough paying customers to make this worth your time and you stay motivated to maintain and improve. 2 - support, don’t underestimate how much time it can take to support newbies .
My advice. See if you can convince Anvil to showcase your store in several areas of their site so you get enough visibility / foot traffic to sustain interest and hopefully get paying customers. You may consider giving Anvil a % of sales for this marketing.
For support, before you launch do what Anvil did and establish a support community of like minded “customers” to help answer getting started and frequently asked questions and common troubleshooting. You will need the community of your product to help or support may become an issue.
Good luck and once you launch, I will definitely purchase.
Thanks for providing your suggestions. I will certainly by paying attention to marketing and support if I go ahead with it.
However, the problem that seems to arise right now is that there just isn’t much demand for it right now. As such, marketing will do me little good.
For now, I plan to put this project in hold. As Anvil grows, so will the demand for a Template Store. However, for those in need right now, I plan to do some freelancing work during my college breaks this summer.
My business partner likes to summarize a tale of two shoe salespeople, sent to a tropical country. One telegraphs back, “There’s no market here. Nobody wears shoes.” The other telegraphs back, “There’s a HUGE market here. Nobody wears shoes!”
The truth, of course, lay somewhere in between. But learning exactly where the truth lay required the application of some substantial resources. Only you can decide where best to spend yours.
I will see what can be done. However, as a student, I have lots of things to do and little time. So I’ll see what can be done. In any case, I will definitely be doing some freelancing work on Anvil so until the template store comes, interested people can directly get in touch (I will be posting the Job advert in a few days).