Blog-based websites seem to be a hot trend with photographers right now. And, being that WordPress is the most popular hosted blogging platform at the moment, creating premium WordPress themes and selling them to photographers may seem like an obvious niche. But is it a viable business? I'm doubtful. Here's why.

You see, WordPress is licensed under the GPL (or GNU General Public License). Additionally, any work that is derived from it (i.e. shares code with) automatically falls under the GPL license as well. That applies to just about every theme and plugin available for WordPress.

"So what?" you ask. Well, to answer that, you must understand that the GPL is an open-source, copyleft, free software license. And that means once you own GPL software, you can alter it, give it away to other people, or even sell it yourself. To understand this more, read the GPL FAQ regarding reselling and redistributing GPL software.

Yes, that's correct–once you purchase a WordPress theme, you can give it away to all your friends. You can even sell it for half or double what you paid for it.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people selling WordPress themes, and I'm all for people getting paid for their efforts. I just don't see it as a viable, long-term business. You're basically banking on (a) most photographers remaining ignorant about GPL or (b) most photographers being gracious enough not to share or resell your theme (even though they have every right to). In my opinion, option a may work short-term, but option b definitely won't. That's not to mention all the very nice, free WordPress themes that exist.

Thoughts?