Is there money in creating WordPress Themes?

I'm going to go against the grain a bit here and say that there is some money to be made selling Wordpress themes, but you have to be a pretty talented developer/designer to make any money at it. The most popular site to sell themes on is Themeforest.net. At the high end of the sales range, there are some themes that have sold 15,000-25,000 units @ $40-$50 a piece. That is obviously the high end of the range, but there are quite a few 500+ sale themes on there that usually sell for $30-$40 per piece.

As mentioned before, to have any success you must be a talented theme developer and designer. Plus, if you do end up selling a lot you will be tied up in support questions from your customers. It's not uncommon for most of these sellers to have a few people on staff to update, support and create themes. If you do decide to go this route you will need to research what niche your theme will target and what other successful people are incorporating into their themes.

Going to agree with Steven here. I purchase themes occasionally when I don't feel like coding and Themeforest is always the way to go. I don't mind spending the $30 to $40. They fare way better than most of the free themes and have a lot more room for simple customization. Some WP developers over at Themeforest make a couple thousand a month. You need to keep making QUALITY themes (both design- and code-wise), keep your older themes updated, and have great technical support. It can be difficult but if you can eye the trends and make awesome code, then you could live on making WP themes alone. Some people do that.

On a side note, I wouldn't try to make money the phone app way just because the market is so saturated already. It's too competitive. Unless you've got a talented team working with you, then I'd probably stay away from the phone app area.

If I was going to do this I would develop Thesis 2.0 skins instead of WordPress themes. At the moment there's a lack of decent Thesis skins which makes it easier to compete rather than with all the competition of WordPress themes. I know one guy who is making good money from Thesis skins.

This may be too premature to consider seriously as a business opportunity, but Ghost is another powerful blogging platform that will be launching soon. Like Wordpress, it will have customizable themes and Woo Themes has committed to having a store ready on launch.

If you're one of the designers that has themes ready early on, you can capture this new market and make some money off it. But it's hard to say how popular this platform will be.

I haven't honestly done any research into it, but my gut feeling is that it's not great money. I wouldn't expect to be able to build a business or quit my job over doing it. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but by and large I'd guess it's a tough market to really break into.