WordPress is Getting Rid of Sponsored Themes

In a move that probably will send some shockwaves through the SEO community, WordPress Themes has started the process of taking down themes that sell sponsored links.
For those of you who don’t know, selling links on very popular themes have been one of the easiest and most cost effective ways of getting backlinks for your website using a specific anchor text. Last year, links to sponsored themes were going for well over $100 bucks, but as more and more people learned about this SEO technique, the effectiveness of this technique has decreased, lowering the amount of the links down to as low as $15.

To be honest, I don’t think it’s going to effect the overall market of sponsored themes much, since selling links on these themes has been a great source of revenue for some extremely talented designers and coders. Putting my economics degree to use, the law of supply and demand will probably say that that we won’t be able to demand quality themes if we don’t supply them the cash! OK . . that probably isn’t the best explanation, but you know what I mean. Instead of combating the “evils” of SEO, WordPress might have driven at least one nail into their proverbial coffin, since it’s obvious they’re not abiding by one of my golden rules – Quality over Quantity (except when it comes to sushi and brazilian buffets). Designers of quality themes are going to start uploading their work to other, less restrictive sites, taking the themes market share away from WordPress.

What are your thoughts about WordPress’ goody two-shoe move? Did you even know about buying links on themes? Basically . .what do you think?